I’d like to offer what I think might be objections to this post. When I imagine myself as a non-reductionist and non-materialist reading this post (I am, in fact, neither of these things), I believe I find myself unconvinced by this thought experiment. I suppose I’m not sure convincing this hypothetical me is the goal… nonetheless here are my hypothetical objections:
When I introspect on my thought processes, I am using my mind. I might imagine that I can isolate a “specks of consciousness” just as you ask me to do, but this is a fact about my state of mind which does not necessarily correlate with reality. Perhaps my consciousness is indecomposable. It feels that way to me. What it seems like you are asking me to do in this thought experiment is build a model of consciousness in which consciousness is already similar to matter in that it is decomposable. This seems like question begging! I need more evidence that shows that such reductionism is actually possible.
In any case, suppose that I put my reductionist hat on, and examine my model of decomposable consciousness. Calling infinitesimal specks of my consciousness electrons isn’t helpful to me. It also feels like question begging since it seems to assume that my consciousness is made of the same stuff as ordinary matter. If you want to call these specks of mind electrons, feel free. But labeling something is a fact about maps, not about the territory. I need evidence of this which speaks directly about the phenomenon of consciousness.
My perceptions or feelings may sometimes lead me astray, but often times they work really well! For example, when I perceive a rock flying at my face, I do much better when I trust my instincts and feelings than when I don’t. How can I tell that my feelings that there is something extraphysical about my consciousness or that the only right way to think about consciousness is by taking a holistic approach are, in fact, wrong?
There is a big difference between decomposing consciousness into its constituent fragments, vs. simply identifying the degrees of freedom in your conscious experience. Drilling down into your introspection and identifying the smallest specks of experience which you can think of as being details of your consciousness is doing the latter. You can go about modifying any of these tiny details more or less independently, but your consciousness is still a self-contained object.
It’s only after you isolate a single electron that you can talk about what its conscious experience would look and feel like.
I have no problem letting decomposition refer to details of mind that can be adjusted independently of others. I can imagine such things. But I do not know if such things actually exist in my mind.
I have a math background so I tend to think a bit like that. Here’s a silly analogy: consider a linear transformation on a vector space. Sometimes there are invariant subspaces of the vector space called eigenspaces, but sometimes there are not. In this case, you cannot just analyze the effect of a linear transformation by examining a smaller subspace of the vector space since the transformation sort of forces all subspaces to interact with one another.
I can imagine that I adjust some detail of my mind’s inner workings and I might imagine that this detail is somehow independent from all the other details. But perhaps, in reality, my mind has no eigenspaces. Perhaps adjusting one detail necessarily has an effect on all the other details of my mind. I can’t really understand my consciousness unless I look at the whole thing at once.
Maybe this is embodied in the qualification you made: “more or less independently”. Seems fair. But this is the sort of objection I think a non-reductionist might have.
They might also reject the notion of an electron having a conscious experience (as do I) for reasons mentioned elsewhere in the comments section.
I’d like to offer what I think might be objections to this post. When I imagine myself as a non-reductionist and non-materialist reading this post (I am, in fact, neither of these things), I believe I find myself unconvinced by this thought experiment. I suppose I’m not sure convincing this hypothetical me is the goal… nonetheless here are my hypothetical objections:
When I introspect on my thought processes, I am using my mind. I might imagine that I can isolate a “specks of consciousness” just as you ask me to do, but this is a fact about my state of mind which does not necessarily correlate with reality. Perhaps my consciousness is indecomposable. It feels that way to me. What it seems like you are asking me to do in this thought experiment is build a model of consciousness in which consciousness is already similar to matter in that it is decomposable. This seems like question begging! I need more evidence that shows that such reductionism is actually possible.
In any case, suppose that I put my reductionist hat on, and examine my model of decomposable consciousness. Calling infinitesimal specks of my consciousness electrons isn’t helpful to me. It also feels like question begging since it seems to assume that my consciousness is made of the same stuff as ordinary matter. If you want to call these specks of mind electrons, feel free. But labeling something is a fact about maps, not about the territory. I need evidence of this which speaks directly about the phenomenon of consciousness.
My perceptions or feelings may sometimes lead me astray, but often times they work really well! For example, when I perceive a rock flying at my face, I do much better when I trust my instincts and feelings than when I don’t. How can I tell that my feelings that there is something extraphysical about my consciousness or that the only right way to think about consciousness is by taking a holistic approach are, in fact, wrong?
There is a big difference between decomposing consciousness into its constituent fragments, vs. simply identifying the degrees of freedom in your conscious experience. Drilling down into your introspection and identifying the smallest specks of experience which you can think of as being details of your consciousness is doing the latter. You can go about modifying any of these tiny details more or less independently, but your consciousness is still a self-contained object.
It’s only after you isolate a single electron that you can talk about what its conscious experience would look and feel like.
I have no problem letting decomposition refer to details of mind that can be adjusted independently of others. I can imagine such things. But I do not know if such things actually exist in my mind.
I have a math background so I tend to think a bit like that. Here’s a silly analogy: consider a linear transformation on a vector space. Sometimes there are invariant subspaces of the vector space called eigenspaces, but sometimes there are not. In this case, you cannot just analyze the effect of a linear transformation by examining a smaller subspace of the vector space since the transformation sort of forces all subspaces to interact with one another.
I can imagine that I adjust some detail of my mind’s inner workings and I might imagine that this detail is somehow independent from all the other details. But perhaps, in reality, my mind has no eigenspaces. Perhaps adjusting one detail necessarily has an effect on all the other details of my mind. I can’t really understand my consciousness unless I look at the whole thing at once.
Maybe this is embodied in the qualification you made: “more or less independently”. Seems fair. But this is the sort of objection I think a non-reductionist might have.
They might also reject the notion of an electron having a conscious experience (as do I) for reasons mentioned elsewhere in the comments section.