I think ciphergoth is correct to mention the Sorites paradox.
It always surprises me when people refuse to swallow this idea that “sometimes there’s no fact of the matter as to whether something is conscious”.
However difficult it is to imagine how it can be true, it’s just blindingly obvious that our bodies and minds are built up continuously, without any magic moment when ‘the lights switch on’.
If you take the view that, in addition to physical reality, there is a “bank of screens” somewhere (like in the film Aliens) showing everyone’s points of view then you’ll forever be stuck with the discrete fact that either there is a screen allocated to this particular animal or there isn’t. But surely the correct response here is simply to dispense with the idea of a “bank of screens”.
We need to understand that consciousness behaves as it does irrespectively of our naive preconceptions, rather than trying to make it analytically true that consciousness conforms to our naive preconceptions and using that to refute materialism.
The possibility of exact description of states on both sides [conscious subjectivity, physical brain], and of exactly specifying the mapping between them, must exist in any viable theory of consciousness. Otherwise, it reifies uncertainty in a way that has the same fundamental illogicality as the “particle without a definite position”.
So the only way I can countenance the idea
sometimes there’s no fact of the matter as to whether something is conscious
is if this arises because of vagueness in our description of consciousness from within. Some things not only exist but “have an inside” (for example, us); some things, one usually supposes, “just exist” (for example, a rock); and perhaps there are intermediate states between having an inside and not having an inside that we don’t understand well, or don’t understand at all. This would mean that our first-person concept of the difference between conscious and non-conscious was deficient, that it only approximated reality.
But I don’t see any sensitivity to that issue in what you write. Your arguments are coming entirely from the third-person, physical description, the view from outside. You think there’s a continuum of states between some that are definitely conscious, and some that are definitely not conscious, and so you conclude that there’s no sharp boundary between conscious and non-conscious. The first-person description features solely as an idea of a “screen” that we can just “dispense with”. Dude, the first-person description describes the life you actually live, and the only reality you ever directly experience!
What would happen if you were to personally pass from a conscious to a non-conscious state? To deny that there’s a boundary is to say that there’s no fact about what happens to you in that scenario, except that at the start you’re conscious, and at the end you’re not, and we can’t or won’t think or say anything very precise about what happens in between—unless it’s expressed in terms of neurons and atoms and other safely non-subjective entities, which is missing the point. The loss of consciousness, whether in sleep or in death, is a phenomenon on the first-person side of this divide, which explores and crosses the boundary between conscious and non-conscious. It’s a thing that happens to you, to the subject of your experience, and not just to certain not-you objects contemplated by that subject in the third-person, objectifying mode of its experience.
You know, there’s not even any profound physical reason to support the argument from continuity. The physical world is full of qualitative transitions.
it’s just blindingly obvious that our bodies and minds are built up continuously, without any magic moment when ‘the lights switch on’.
Couldn’t you make the same argument about literally switching on a light? :-) Obviously the idea that a light is sometimes on and sometimes off is a naive preconception that we should dispense with.
Couldn’t you make the same argument about literally switching on a light? :-) Obviously the idea that a light is sometimes on and sometimes off is a naive preconception that we should dispense with.
Correct—the impression that it is an instantaneous, discontinuous process is an illusion caused by the speed of the transition compared to the speed of our perceptions.
Yeah, but I think “mental discretists” can tolerate that kind of very-rapid-but-still-continuous physical change—they just have to say that a mental moment corresponds to (its properties correlate with those of) a smallish patch of spacetime.
I mean, if you believe in unified “mental moments” at all then you’ve got to believe something like that, just because the brain occupies a macroscopic region of space, and because of the finite speed of light.
But this defense becomes manifestly absurd if we can draw out the grey area sufficiently far (e.g. over the entire lifetime of some not-quite-conscious animal.)
perhaps there are intermediate states between having an inside and not having an inside that we don’t understand well, or don’t understand at all. This would mean that our first-person concept of the difference between conscious and non-conscious was deficient, that it only approximated reality.
Well then I’m not sure that we disagree substantively on this issue.
Basically, I’ve said: “Naive discrete view of consciousness --> Not always determinate whether something is conscious”. (Or rather that’s what I’ve meant to say but tended to omit the premise.)
Whereas I think you’re saying something like: “At the level of metaphysical reality, there is no such thing as indeterminacy (apparent indeterminacy only arises through vague or otherwise inadequate language) --> Whatever the true nature of subjective experience, the facts about it must be determinate”
Clearly these two views are compatible with one another (as long as I state my premise). (However, there’s room to agree with the letter but not the spirit of your view, by taking ‘the true nature of subjective experience’ to be something ridiculously far away from what we usually think it is and holding that all mentalistic language (as we know it) is irretrievably vague.)
You know, there’s not even any profound physical reason to support the argument from continuity. The physical world is full of qualitative transitions.
I’m not sure exactly what you’re thinking of here, but I seem to recall that you’re sympathetic to the idea that physics is important in the philosophy of mind. Anyway, I think the idea that a tiny ‘quantum leap’ could make the difference between a person being (determinately) consciousness and (determinately) unconsciousness is an obvious non-starter.
Couldn’t you make the same argument about literally switching on a light? :-) Obviously the idea that a light is sometimes on and sometimes off is a naive preconception that we should dispense with.
Well, this is where we actually need to look at the empirical data and see whether a foetus seems to ‘switch on’ like a light at any point. I’ve assumed there is no such point, but what I know about embryology could be written on the back of a postage stamp. (But come on, the idea is ridiculous and I see no reason to disingenuously pretend to be agnostic about it.)
Maybe you’re familiar with the phenomenon of “waking up”. Do you agree that this is a real thing? If so, does it not imply that it once happened to you for the first time?
Whatever the true nature of subjective experience, the facts about it must be determinate
I agree with that.
there’s room to agree with the letter but not the spirit of your view, by taking ‘the true nature of subjective experience’ to be something ridiculously far away from what we usually think it is and holding that all mentalistic language (as we know it) is irretrievably vague.
What do you think you are doing when you use mentalistic language, then? Do you think it bears no relationship to reality?
A little group of neurons in the brain stem starts sending a train of signals to the base of the thalamus. The thalamus ‘wakes up’ and then sends signals to the cortex and the cortex ‘wakes up’. Consciousness is now ‘on’. Later, the brain stem stops sending the train of signals, the thalamus ‘goes to sleep’ and the cortex slowly winds down the ‘goes to sleep’. Consciousness is now ‘off’. Neither on or off was instantaneous or sharply defined. (Dreaming activated the cortex differently at times during sleep but ignore that for now). Descriptions like this (hopefully more detailed and accurate) are the ‘facts of the matter’ not semantic arguments. Why is it that science is OK for understanding physics and astronomy but not for understanding consciousness?
Why is it that science is OK for understanding physics and astronomy but not for understanding consciousness?
Science in some broad sense “is OK… for understanding consciousness”, but unless you’re a behaviorist, you need to be explaining (and first, you need to be describing) the subjective side of consciousness, not just the physiology of it. It’s the facts about subjectivity which make consciousness a different sort of topic from anything in the natural sciences.
Yes we will have to describe the subjective side of consciousness but the physiology has to come first. As an illustration: if you didn’t know the function of the heart or much about its physiology, it would be useless to try and understand it by how it felt. Hence we would have ideas like ‘loving with all my heart’, ‘my heart is not in it’ etc. which come from the pre-biology world. Once we know how and why the heart works the way it does, those feeling are seen differently.
I am certainly not a behaviorist and I do think that consciousness is an extremely important function of the brain/mind. We probably can’t understand how cognition works without understanding how consciousness works. I just do not think introspection gets us closer to understanding, nor do I think that introspection gives us any direct knowledge of our own minds - ‘direct’ being the important word.
Maybe you’re familiar with the phenomenon of “waking up”. Do you agree that this is a real thing? If so, does it not imply that it once happened to you for the first time?
Right, people wake up and go to sleep. Waking can be relatively quicker or slower depending on the manner of awakening, but… I’m not sure what you think this establishes.
In any case, a sleeping person is not straightforwardly ‘unconscious’ - their mind hasn’t “disappeared” it’s just doing something very different from what it’s doing when it’s awake. A better example would be someone ‘coming round’ from a spell of unconsciousness, and here I think you’ll find that people remember it being a gradual process.
Your whole line of attack here is odd: all that matters for the wider debate is whether or not there are any smooth, gradual processes between consciousness and unconsciousness, not whether or not there also exist rapid-ish transitions between the two.
What do you think you are doing when you use mentalistic language, then? Do you think it bears no relationship to reality?
There are plenty of instances where language is used in a way where its vagueness cannot possibly be eliminated, and yet manages to be meaningful. E.g. “The Battle Of Britain was won primarily because the Luftwaffe switched the focus of their efforts from knocking out the RAF to bombing major cities.” (N.B. I’m not claiming this is true (though it may be) simply that it “bears some relationship to reality”.)
Your whole line of attack here is odd: all that matters for the wider debate is whether or not there are any smooth, gradual processes between consciousness and unconsciousness, not whether or not there also exist rapid-ish transitions between the two.
I am objecting, first of all, to your assertion that the idea that a fetus might “‘switch on’ like a light” at some point in its development is “ridiculous”. Waking up was supposed to be an example of a rapid change, as well as something real and distinctive which must happen for a first time in the life of an organism. But I can make this counterargument even just from the physiological perspective. Sharp transitions do occur in embryonic development, e.g. when the morphogenetic motion of tissues and cavities produces a topological change in the organism. If we are going to associate the presence of a mind, or the presence of a capacity for consciousness, with the existence of a particular functional organization in the brain, how can there not be a first moment when that organization exists? It could consist in something as simple as the first synaptic coupling of two previously separate neural systems. Before the first synapses joining them, certain computations were not possible; after the synapses had formed, they were possible.
As for the significance of “smooth, gradual” transitions between consciousness and unconsciousness, I will revert to that principle which you expressed thus:
“Whatever the true nature of subjective experience, the facts about it must be determinate”
Among the facts about subjective experience are its relationship to “non-subjective” states or forms of existence. Those facts must also be determinate. The transition from consciousness to non-consciousness, if it is a continuum, cannot only be a continuum on the physical/physiological side. It must also be a continuum on the subjective side, even though one end of the continuum is absence of subjectivity. When you say there can be material systems for which there is no fact about its being conscious—it’s not conscious, it’s not not-conscious—you are being just as illogical as the people who believe in “the particle without a definite position”.
I ask myself why you would even think like this. Why wouldn’t you suppose instead that folk psychology can be conceptually refined to the point of being exactly correct? Why the willingness to throw it away, in favor of nothing?
I think ciphergoth is correct to mention the Sorites paradox.
It always surprises me when people refuse to swallow this idea that “sometimes there’s no fact of the matter as to whether something is conscious”.
However difficult it is to imagine how it can be true, it’s just blindingly obvious that our bodies and minds are built up continuously, without any magic moment when ‘the lights switch on’.
If you take the view that, in addition to physical reality, there is a “bank of screens” somewhere (like in the film Aliens) showing everyone’s points of view then you’ll forever be stuck with the discrete fact that either there is a screen allocated to this particular animal or there isn’t. But surely the correct response here is simply to dispense with the idea of a “bank of screens”.
We need to understand that consciousness behaves as it does irrespectively of our naive preconceptions, rather than trying to make it analytically true that consciousness conforms to our naive preconceptions and using that to refute materialism.
I’ll stick with the principle
So the only way I can countenance the idea
is if this arises because of vagueness in our description of consciousness from within. Some things not only exist but “have an inside” (for example, us); some things, one usually supposes, “just exist” (for example, a rock); and perhaps there are intermediate states between having an inside and not having an inside that we don’t understand well, or don’t understand at all. This would mean that our first-person concept of the difference between conscious and non-conscious was deficient, that it only approximated reality.
But I don’t see any sensitivity to that issue in what you write. Your arguments are coming entirely from the third-person, physical description, the view from outside. You think there’s a continuum of states between some that are definitely conscious, and some that are definitely not conscious, and so you conclude that there’s no sharp boundary between conscious and non-conscious. The first-person description features solely as an idea of a “screen” that we can just “dispense with”. Dude, the first-person description describes the life you actually live, and the only reality you ever directly experience!
What would happen if you were to personally pass from a conscious to a non-conscious state? To deny that there’s a boundary is to say that there’s no fact about what happens to you in that scenario, except that at the start you’re conscious, and at the end you’re not, and we can’t or won’t think or say anything very precise about what happens in between—unless it’s expressed in terms of neurons and atoms and other safely non-subjective entities, which is missing the point. The loss of consciousness, whether in sleep or in death, is a phenomenon on the first-person side of this divide, which explores and crosses the boundary between conscious and non-conscious. It’s a thing that happens to you, to the subject of your experience, and not just to certain not-you objects contemplated by that subject in the third-person, objectifying mode of its experience.
You know, there’s not even any profound physical reason to support the argument from continuity. The physical world is full of qualitative transitions.
Couldn’t you make the same argument about literally switching on a light? :-) Obviously the idea that a light is sometimes on and sometimes off is a naive preconception that we should dispense with.
Correct—the impression that it is an instantaneous, discontinuous process is an illusion caused by the speed of the transition compared to the speed of our perceptions.
Yeah, but I think “mental discretists” can tolerate that kind of very-rapid-but-still-continuous physical change—they just have to say that a mental moment corresponds to (its properties correlate with those of) a smallish patch of spacetime.
I mean, if you believe in unified “mental moments” at all then you’ve got to believe something like that, just because the brain occupies a macroscopic region of space, and because of the finite speed of light.
But this defense becomes manifestly absurd if we can draw out the grey area sufficiently far (e.g. over the entire lifetime of some not-quite-conscious animal.)
That, and the stability of the states on either side.
Well then I’m not sure that we disagree substantively on this issue.
Basically, I’ve said: “Naive discrete view of consciousness --> Not always determinate whether something is conscious”. (Or rather that’s what I’ve meant to say but tended to omit the premise.)
Whereas I think you’re saying something like: “At the level of metaphysical reality, there is no such thing as indeterminacy (apparent indeterminacy only arises through vague or otherwise inadequate language) --> Whatever the true nature of subjective experience, the facts about it must be determinate”
Clearly these two views are compatible with one another (as long as I state my premise). (However, there’s room to agree with the letter but not the spirit of your view, by taking ‘the true nature of subjective experience’ to be something ridiculously far away from what we usually think it is and holding that all mentalistic language (as we know it) is irretrievably vague.)
I’m not sure exactly what you’re thinking of here, but I seem to recall that you’re sympathetic to the idea that physics is important in the philosophy of mind. Anyway, I think the idea that a tiny ‘quantum leap’ could make the difference between a person being (determinately) consciousness and (determinately) unconsciousness is an obvious non-starter.
Well, this is where we actually need to look at the empirical data and see whether a foetus seems to ‘switch on’ like a light at any point. I’ve assumed there is no such point, but what I know about embryology could be written on the back of a postage stamp. (But come on, the idea is ridiculous and I see no reason to disingenuously pretend to be agnostic about it.)
Maybe you’re familiar with the phenomenon of “waking up”. Do you agree that this is a real thing? If so, does it not imply that it once happened to you for the first time?
I agree with that.
What do you think you are doing when you use mentalistic language, then? Do you think it bears no relationship to reality?
A little group of neurons in the brain stem starts sending a train of signals to the base of the thalamus. The thalamus ‘wakes up’ and then sends signals to the cortex and the cortex ‘wakes up’. Consciousness is now ‘on’. Later, the brain stem stops sending the train of signals, the thalamus ‘goes to sleep’ and the cortex slowly winds down the ‘goes to sleep’. Consciousness is now ‘off’. Neither on or off was instantaneous or sharply defined. (Dreaming activated the cortex differently at times during sleep but ignore that for now). Descriptions like this (hopefully more detailed and accurate) are the ‘facts of the matter’ not semantic arguments. Why is it that science is OK for understanding physics and astronomy but not for understanding consciousness?
Science in some broad sense “is OK… for understanding consciousness”, but unless you’re a behaviorist, you need to be explaining (and first, you need to be describing) the subjective side of consciousness, not just the physiology of it. It’s the facts about subjectivity which make consciousness a different sort of topic from anything in the natural sciences.
Yes we will have to describe the subjective side of consciousness but the physiology has to come first. As an illustration: if you didn’t know the function of the heart or much about its physiology, it would be useless to try and understand it by how it felt. Hence we would have ideas like ‘loving with all my heart’, ‘my heart is not in it’ etc. which come from the pre-biology world. Once we know how and why the heart works the way it does, those feeling are seen differently.
I am certainly not a behaviorist and I do think that consciousness is an extremely important function of the brain/mind. We probably can’t understand how cognition works without understanding how consciousness works. I just do not think introspection gets us closer to understanding, nor do I think that introspection gives us any direct knowledge of our own minds - ‘direct’ being the important word.
Right, people wake up and go to sleep. Waking can be relatively quicker or slower depending on the manner of awakening, but… I’m not sure what you think this establishes.
In any case, a sleeping person is not straightforwardly ‘unconscious’ - their mind hasn’t “disappeared” it’s just doing something very different from what it’s doing when it’s awake. A better example would be someone ‘coming round’ from a spell of unconsciousness, and here I think you’ll find that people remember it being a gradual process.
Your whole line of attack here is odd: all that matters for the wider debate is whether or not there are any smooth, gradual processes between consciousness and unconsciousness, not whether or not there also exist rapid-ish transitions between the two.
There are plenty of instances where language is used in a way where its vagueness cannot possibly be eliminated, and yet manages to be meaningful. E.g. “The Battle Of Britain was won primarily because the Luftwaffe switched the focus of their efforts from knocking out the RAF to bombing major cities.” (N.B. I’m not claiming this is true (though it may be) simply that it “bears some relationship to reality”.)
I am objecting, first of all, to your assertion that the idea that a fetus might “‘switch on’ like a light” at some point in its development is “ridiculous”. Waking up was supposed to be an example of a rapid change, as well as something real and distinctive which must happen for a first time in the life of an organism. But I can make this counterargument even just from the physiological perspective. Sharp transitions do occur in embryonic development, e.g. when the morphogenetic motion of tissues and cavities produces a topological change in the organism. If we are going to associate the presence of a mind, or the presence of a capacity for consciousness, with the existence of a particular functional organization in the brain, how can there not be a first moment when that organization exists? It could consist in something as simple as the first synaptic coupling of two previously separate neural systems. Before the first synapses joining them, certain computations were not possible; after the synapses had formed, they were possible.
As for the significance of “smooth, gradual” transitions between consciousness and unconsciousness, I will revert to that principle which you expressed thus:
“Whatever the true nature of subjective experience, the facts about it must be determinate”
Among the facts about subjective experience are its relationship to “non-subjective” states or forms of existence. Those facts must also be determinate. The transition from consciousness to non-consciousness, if it is a continuum, cannot only be a continuum on the physical/physiological side. It must also be a continuum on the subjective side, even though one end of the continuum is absence of subjectivity. When you say there can be material systems for which there is no fact about its being conscious—it’s not conscious, it’s not not-conscious—you are being just as illogical as the people who believe in “the particle without a definite position”.
I ask myself why you would even think like this. Why wouldn’t you suppose instead that folk psychology can be conceptually refined to the point of being exactly correct? Why the willingness to throw it away, in favor of nothing?