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Bill Meacham, Ph.D. Austin Philosophy Discussion Group 8 October 2014 www.bmeacham.com 1 Theories of Subjectivity

Theories of Subjectivity

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Summary and evaluation of various theories from Chalmers "Consciousness and its Place in Nature."

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  • Bill Meacham, Ph.D.Austin Philosophy Discussion Group 8 October 2014www.bmeacham.com * Theories of Subjectivity

  • IntroductionHow is mind related to body? How is consciousness, or awareness, or experience related to the physical world?First, what do we mean by these words?Exercise: Say something to yourself silently.*

  • Definitions (1)Subjective:Detectable or observable in principle by only one person. First-person.Not directly observable by anybody else.Private, hidden, interior.Mental.Examples: Thoughts and feelings, particular shades of colors, particular qualities of sounds.Objective:Detectable or observable by more than one person. Third-person.Public, exposed, exterior.Physical.Examples: Trees, chairs, other people, chemical elements, subatomic particles.*

  • Definitions (2)Experience:The subjective, first-person aspect of a persons taking into account his or her environment.Includes the entire spectrum from alert and focused attention down to dim and vague apprehension.Being Conscious:Experience in which the objects of which one is conscious are present vividly and intensely.Being Aware:The entire spectrum of experience, particularly the less vivid and acute end. In my terminology one can be aware of a great many things without being conscious of them.

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  • The Hard Problem(From Chalmers, Consciousness and its Place in Nature.)How and why does experience arise from physical processes? (A restatement of the mind-body problem, how mind is related to body.)Easy problems: Explaining functions in terms of mechanisms: how physical processes discriminate stimuli, report information, monitor internal states and control behavior.Hard problem: Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?

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  • Types of ExplanationReductiveHigh-level phenomena are explained in terms of low-level phenomena.Experience is explained wholly in physical terms.Non-reductiveExperience is a basic part of the explanation.MaterialistExperience is seen as a physical process (reductive).Non-materialistExperience is seen as non-physical, even if closely associated with the physical (non-reductive).*

  • Arguments Against MaterialismExplanatoryPhysical accounts explain at most structure and function, or structure and dynamics.But experience is more than just structure and function.ConceivabilityThought experiment: Zombie, a being physically and behaviorally just like a human, but lacking subjectivity. If this idea is conceivable, then experience is more than the physical.Knowledge (Epistemology)There are facts about experience that are not deducible from physical facts.Thought experiment: Mary is a neuroscientist who sees only in black and white. If she sees red, she learns something new.*

  • Various Theories of ConsciousnessTypes A, B and C: various forms of materialismReductive; physical is primary. Requires no expansion of physical ontology.Types D and E: DualismNon-reductive. Requires expansion of ontology.Type F: Dual-aspect monism, or panpsychismNon-reductive.Type O: DualismNon-reductive.Type I: IdealismReductive; mental is primary.

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  • Type A MaterialismThere are no facts over and above physical function and structure that need explaining. There is no ontological gap. Explaining function and structure explains everything.Two flavorsEliminativist experience does not exist.Analytical Functionalist the concept consciousness is defined in wholly functional or behavioral terms (Dennetts Intentional Stance).There is no epistemic gap between physical and experiential truths.When Mary leaves her black-and-white room she gains an ability, but no further knowledge.Problem: Type A does not actually explain experience. It denies what is to be explained.*

  • Type B MaterialismThere is an epistemic gap, but no ontological gap.When Mary leaves her black-and-white room she learns old facts in a new way.Phenomenal states can be identified with certain physical or functional states, analogous in certain respects to the identity between water and H2O, or between genes and DNA. Experience just is states of the brain.The concept of consciousness is distinct from any physical or functional concepts, but we may discover empirically that these refer to the same thing in nature.Problem: Type B is at best ad hoc and mysterious, and at worst it is incoherent. It just asserts primitive identity.*

  • Type C MaterialismThere is an epistemic gap, and it is closeable in principle.The apparent gap is due to our own limitations.Physical explanation has to do withStructure: Particles, fields and waves described in space and time.Dynamics: How states of affairs change over time.When we learn enough about the brain, we will have explained experience.Problem: Type C collapses into Type A or B materialism or into Type D Dualism or Type F Monisim.*

  • Type D DualismThere is an ontological gap. Substance dualism: There are two kinds of stuff in the world, physical and mental (Descartes).Property dualism: There is only one kind of stuff in the world, and it has both physical and mental properties.Interactionism: The mental exerts causality on the physical and vice versa.Objection: The physical world is causally closed. There is no room for mental influence.But quantum mechanics seems to have a place for the conscious observer in the collapse of the wave function.

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  • Type E DualismEpiphenomenalism: Experiential properties are distinct from physical properties, but have no effect on them.Physical states cause phenomenal states, but not vice versa.Compatible withSubstance dualismProperty dualism.Emergentism, that experience emerges when physical matter gets organized in a complicated enough manner.Advantage: Retains physical causal closure.Problem: Inelegant. Counter-intuitive. Our mental states do seem to affect our physical states.*

  • Type F MonismPhenomenal or proto-phenomenal properties are inherent in the fundamental level of physical reality.Entities with intrinsic phenomenal qualities stand in causal relations to each other within space and time.Physics emerges from the relations between these entities.Consciousness emerges from their intrinsic nature.Everything has an inside and an outside, a subjective aspect and an objective aspect.Known as Panpsychism, Neutral Monism and Dual-aspect Monism.Problem: How do experiential properties of tiny elements combine into full-blown human consciousness?

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  • Type O Over-determined DualismPhenomenal properties are ontologically distinct from physical properties, but phenomenal properties play a causal role with respect to the physical nevertheless.One way this might happen is by a sort of causal overdetermination: physical states causally determine behavior, but phenomenal states cause behavior at the same time.The mind enters the physical causal nexus without altering the structure of the network.Problems:Fragmented view of natureLucky psychophysical laws

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  • Type I IdealismThe physical world is itself constituted by the conscious states of an observing agent. (Berkeley)Physical states are constituted holistically by a "macroscopic" mind.Problems:Non-naturalDoes not explain physical regularities (laws of nature)*

  • Which one makes the most sense?Empirical studies cant decide.Assess how well each theory meets the following criteria:The theory is congruent with our experience. It fits the facts. No fact is left unexplained by the theory.The theory is internally consistent. It has no contradictions within itself, and it all hangs together elegantly.The theory is coherent with everything else we consider true. The theory is useful. It has predictive power. It gives us mastery both over physical reality and in the realm of the intellect.*

  • SourcesConsciousness and its Place in Nature, by David Chalmers. http://consc.net/papers/nature.html. In Defense of Panpsychism, by Bill Meacham. http://www.bmeacham.com/blog/?p=568.

    Bill Meacham, Ph.D. http://www.bmeacham.com/ *