Consciousness V: Responses

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Today we set out to consider some of the responses to the various 'gaps' we've discovered which make it difficult, if not impossible, to see how phenomenal consciousness could emerge from purely physical processes: thus 'the hard problem', to recall Chalmers' memorable, albeit pithy, designation.

There are many, many responses to the hard problem. Consider this synopsis an attempt to back-fill our meeting just a bit.

Broadly speaking, responses to the hard problem involve either abandoning physicalism or maintaining allegiance to physicalism while working to explain the hard problem away.

There are, of course, a number of ways to abandon physicalism, and we have already seen some of the alternatives. Cartesian Interactionism is one, but recall that upon originally formulating the Case of Mary, Jackson himself favored epiphenomenalism, whereby physical events cause mental events, but not vice versa.

Another approach to rejecting physicalism we considered at some length is Chalmers' 'panpsychism', whereby consciousness itself is woven throughout the physical universe but is not thereby a physical phenomenon. Thus everything has some phenomenal consciousness, but it is in some places concentrated (dogs, dolphins, and us) and in other places diffuse and attenuated (the table).

Physicalist responses, put somewhat simplistically, divide between Higher-Order Thought (HOT) theories and Representational theories. HOT theories attempt to describe how purely neurological processes can, by attending to other neurological processes, give rise to phenomenal consciousness. Representational theories note the representational role of qualia and attempt a conceptual reduction of qualitative experience to the cognitive process of representing states of affairs.

Thus, representational theories attempt to eliminate the problem of phenomenal consciousness by a kind of conceptual reduction, while HOT theories attempt to eliminate it via a neurological reduction. The responses to either approach have not been more than tepid, however.

Churchland sets out to counter all such arguments by arguing that the conceivability of having pains without the physical states the physicalist assures us they must be will eventually disappear when we do have a (more) complete science of psychology. His argument is by analogy to the property of electromagnetic waves and their capacity to illuminate or special property of luminosity. So imagining a pain with a physical state is just like imagining a dark universe rich in electromagnetic waves, which we cannot do.

Churchland invites us to give psychology a rain check it may not deserve. Nevertheless, it is intriguing to think that perhaps our intuitions are simply mistaken when it comes to the Knowledge, Model, and Explanatory Gaps.

Continuing our discussion of possible responses to the hard problem of phenomenal consciousness today, we next considered mysterianism, or the view that although there is a physical explanation for phenomenal consciousness, it is not an explanation we can understand because we are cognitively closed to it. I got more than a few puzzled looks at the proposition that physicalism is true even though the gaps cannot be bridged, so let me see if I can explain it better here.

Following McGinn, assume physicalism and let P be the property of the brain causally responsible for phenomenal consciousness. Reflecting on P, McGinn concludes that we are driven to mysterianism, or the thesis that we cannot solve the hard problem of phenomenal consciousness because we suffer cognitive closure with respect to P. That is, our conceptual resources are limited in such a way that we are necessarily blind to P even though P is the very property making possible our own phenomenal consciousness. Being essentially blind to P, we cannot provide a theory of the physical basis of phenomenal states. Absent a theory of the physical basis of phenomenal states, the natural explanation solving the hard problem of phenomenal consciousness--in spite of its existence--is necessarily inaccessible.

Our continuing failure thus far to provide such an explanation at least raises the specter that we are cognitively closed to P. That the failures have been abjectly dismal (and the problem hard in such a way that we cannot even envision how conceptual or empirical investigation might solve it) solidifies the specter of cognitive closure enough to make it worrisome for optimists. McGinn, however, goes further than observing our puzzling lack of progress and gives an argument for cognitive closure.

Briefly, the facts of phenomenal consciousness are available by introspection alone, while the facts of brain states are available by sensory perception alone. That is, we cannot introspectively grasp brain states any more than we can perceive phenomenal states by our senses. Thus P escapes us working from the top down since no amount of introspection can reveal the brain states constituting P, yet no property working from the bottom up can be identified as a candidate P by brain scans since every mere brain property is spatially located and extended in sensory perception. The spatial properties attending sensory perception of brain states, however, make them not merely ill-suited to explaining phenomenal consciousness: The spatial nature of sense perception is incompatible with explaining consciousness. Thus, to paraphrase McGinn, phenomenal consciousness is fully noumenal with respect to brain studies. New and improved brain scans offer no hope of breaching the gap between the noumenal explanandum, phenomenal consciousness, and the explanans, P.

We are cognitively closed to P inasmuch as P is neither introspectively available nor identifiable in sensory perception, yet we are cognitively confined to introspection and sensory perception. For us, the natural explanation of phenomenal consciousness occupies an epistemic occlusion. Lacking the right sort of conceptual resources, phenomenal consciousness is thus essentially mysterious to creatures like us. Our inclination to invoke supernatural explanations (souls) or at least lavishly enrich natural resources (epiphenomenalism or pan-psychism) is understandable if unjustifiable.

McGinn has been rightly criticized for asserting that we can fully understand a problem while wholly lacking the capacity to grasp solutions to it, since understanding a problem seems to require at a minimum a conception of possible solutions.

In any case, it is clear that the hard problem flummoxes philosophers, which is much to their delight, notably. After all, if one is given to relishing the puzzle more than the solution, to finding inspiration and not frustration in aporia, one can scarcely do better than take a dive into the deep philosophical waters of the hard problem. Those impatient for a solution to the hard problem who insist that, given enough time, our science will eventually rise to the challenge of explaining just how subjective experience can arise in an objective, purely physical universe surely may be right. Understanding just how their passionate commitment to physicalism will one day be borne out is, to be sure, the hard problem itself in other guise.