“There is every reason to think the truth about consciousness will eventually be discovered by scientific investigation.”
Nicholas Humphrey, Seed Magazine
There is more written about consciousness than there was time to think it through in the first place, apparently. Here is an example of the willful creation of fantasy entities in order to fatten up a pre-existing theory. The theory, of course, is that consciousness is a material aspect of the material brain and no more. Either that or it is just an illusion, and we are not really conscious; no, really.
Humphrey starts off with the obligatory “qualia” statements, then wanders into his new personal definition, something he calls “sentition”. But these things are not used in his conclusion, so we needn’t spend time on them. They do however fill out an extra page or so in his article.
Concerning the difficulty of grasping consciousness, Humphrey quotes Jerry Fodor:
“Fodor has stated this aspect of the problem bluntly: "There are several reasons why consciousness is so baffling. For one thing, it seems to be among the chronically unemployed. What mental processes can be performed only because the mind is conscious, and what does consciousness contribute to their performance? As far as anybody knows, anything that our conscious minds can do they could do just as well if they weren't conscious. Why then did God bother to make consciousness?"
Perhaps Fodor was not conscious at the time he made this statement. Repairing the tractor or planning a sewer system or creating a high-rise, an airplane, a mass produced automobile, a world novel, these might be better done while unconscious?
Humphrey continues to opine:
“Yet I want to suggest the role of phenomenal consciousness may not be like this at all. Its role may not be to enable us to do something we could not do otherwise, but rather to encourage us to do something we would not do otherwise: to make us take an interest in things that otherwise would not interest us, or to mind things we otherwise would not mind, or to set ourselves goals we otherwise would not set.” (emphasis added)
So the fact of consciousness is actually a force from outside, making us get off our butts and get to work, a metaphysical nanny; otherwise, we would be just unconscious…? Beyond dubious, this is just ridiculous.
He continues,
"To test this idea we will need evidence as to how being phenomenally conscious changes our worldview: What beliefs and attitudes flow from it? What changes occur in the way conscious individuals think about who and what they are?"
As opposed to unconscious individuals and their attitudes and beliefs?
Humphrey:
“I will not hold back from telling you my own main conclusion from a lifetime's interest in what consciousness does. I may shock you by what may seem the naivety of my conclusion (I've shocked myself): I think the plain and simple fact is that consciousness—on various levels—makes life more worth living.”
“We like being phenomenally conscious. We like the world in which we're phenomenally conscious. We like ourselves for being phenomenally conscious. And the resulting joie de vivre, the enchantment with the world we live in, and the enhanced sense of our own metaphysical importance have, in the course of evolutionary history, turned our lives around.”
I personally would like to fly, with the maneuverability of a hummingbird and the grace of a hawk. The resulting joie de vivre would be immense. If wanting it makes it so, then where is my ability? It would definitely enhance my sense of metaphysical importance!
The popularity of speculation on the nature of consciousness, including and especially amongst philosophers and wannabes, is rampant. There is no position too dense, too unconscious - if you will - that it will not be published. It is not possible to respond to every muttering on the subject. I suspect that I won’t be able to resist a few in the future, though. This one was too unconscious too let past without comment.
1 comment:
This reminds me of Dennett's book, which is called 'Consciousness Explained', but which does not explain consciousness. Dennett does have an interesting argument, though: whereas many scientists and philosophers don't see how you could begin to study consciousness, Dennett argues that you could build a 'heterophenomenology' that emphasizes the similarity and differences at work in evaluating conscious experience. It's interesting, and I would like to see more metastudies synthesizing research programs...which is something of a vain hope at present, since that in turn would require some agreement on methodology. Ack! What a tangle, and as Hofstadter says, we are strange loops.
So, in the short term, trying to study consciousness experientially seems fraught with problems. There are, however, two other approaches which are more promising. One is the clinical neuroscience program of the Churchlands, in which specific structures or mental modules are stimulated in very specific ways. The other is comparative sociobiology: that is, granted that human consciousness is different from that enjoyed by other social organisms, what are the similarities in difference in social organization and the role of the individual in that society? If consciousness is a natural object, it may be profitable to connect the dots between a given population's social environment and the individual's mental landscape. This program is ongoing and has yielded some important insights. Neither sociobiology or neuroscience gets at what Chalmers calls the 'hard problem' of consciousness. Instead, they look for correlates to aspects of conscious experience, either by doing experiments, or by looking at the 'experiments' that have already been run by Dame Nature.
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