I will soon be producing a 5000 word disertation about consciousness and I think I will write an evaluation of Prof David Chalmers' book: 'The Conscious Mind: in search of a fundamental theory'.
I have read well over 1/2 of it so far (its a big book) but that means I've read his whole argument for property dualism and why consciousness cannot supervene logically on the physical (though it may supervene naturally).
I will over the next few weeks also read Daniel Dennent's 'Consciousness explained' and David Papinea's 'Thinking about Consciousness'. At the moment I have a rough idea of Dennent's arguments but not of Papinea's.
I have an idea of what may be the flaw in Chalmer's argument. I want to write this thread out to articulate my ideas, so that they can be examined etc. I will first explain his argument and that suggest my criticism (which is by no means definitive and it may be that I am totally wrong; Chalmer's is a proffesor of Philosophy and has studied cognitive science so he is more likely to be right than me :nonooo:)
OK this is his argument [summarised and phrased in my own words]:
i) We can clearly concieve of a physically similar world (i.e. mass, energy, laws, force strengths, space/time etc all the same as in our world) in which there are like humans which do not have experiences of phenomenal qualities (qualia) (i.e. these humans do not have consciousness: they are zombies)
ii) If something is clearly and coherantly concieveable then it is logically possible. e.g. a mile-high bicyle is logically possible but a round square is no
C1) Therefore consciousness in our world (in the experience sense as opposed to the awareness or behavioural sense) does not logically follow from the physical (it does not supervene on the physical)
iii) But there is consciousness in our world at least with humans and probably most organic life: he admits he can only be
certain of his own consciousness but he argues that if natural biology (biology is a subset of the pysical: if you think of the physically similar world it does follow logically that the biology of that world will too be similar) produced consciousness in him then it would do so for other natural humans at least.
C2) Therefore is seems that there is some fundamental (brute) pscho-physical laws in this world that ensure the link between certain life (e.g humans) and consciousness. So human awareness (awareness is a psychological aspect of the mind, Chalmer's accepts that our psychological mind does supervene on the psysical but not out phenomenal mind) will correlate with consciousness (e.g. if I am
aware of someone screaming I will behave accordingly {such as go to help them, this is the psychological aspect} and
experience sound and anxiety {this experience is the phenomenal aspect}).
C3) These psycho-physical laws are NOT physical laws (this is where the position become property dualism) because the physical is about structure and function whereas our brute consciousness is irreducible and serves no function (Chalmer's appears to adopt a hard determinist position, or at lease accepts the plausability of it. I do feel that I have not adaquetly expained this last point [C3] but I must confess I failed to quite follow him here and he did no spend very much effort in justifying this bit. He knew other philosophers who argued that these psycho-physical laws should be added to the back of brute pysical laws {along with space/time, mass etc} but argued that they should be understood as non-pysical)
Essencially he is arguing that the facts of conscious experience do not follow from physical facts. Another of his arguments may help illustrate this [this one originated with Frank Jackson, {1981} I think]:
i) Imagine Mary is raised in a black and white laboratory and has any colourful objects removed from her sight {he body is always dressed in white overcoat and black shoes etc). She lives in a world where scientists have discovered/understood every physical law that exists and she is taught everything about colour. Mary knows about light waves and our optical cortex etc.
ii) Imagine then that someone gives her a fresh
red apple. When she sees the apple she has a red colour experience and she learns the
fact of what
it is like to
experience redness.
iii) This is a totally new fact to her: she already knew every physical fact about colour [and apples!] but now she has learnt a
new fact
iv) Therefore facts about phenomenal qualities (qualia) are
non-physical facts
There is loads I could say to futher explain Chalmers' argument. He goes through 5 arguements (the Zombie and Mary arguments are the 1st and 3rd arguments respectively) and he justifies every principle and assumption and defends himself from immediate counter-arguements etc.
I will explain two counter-arguments and his response to them:
1) The first is that we can explain awareness and responce and cognition and behaviour etc all through psychology (i.e. a physical science). Chalmers' responds that these theories of consciousness still fail to answer the actual question: why should I
experience something
like this or experiece it
at all. A robot can recieve, process and respond to infomation, a robot can be aware of present stimuli and have memories of such: but that does not mean that the robot
experiences anything.
However it could be further argued that our 'experience' is simply the unification of all the information much like a sheet of paper being scibbled over or maybe a computer hard drive can 'experience' my work or the games I play on the computer. Chalmers' responds that this still only explains information and behaviour and there is no logical reason why a physical organism like us should have phenomenal experiences: on physics, and logical application of, we need only be mindless organic robots, but WE'RE NOT.
2) The second is very interesting and follows from the zombie argument:
i) The zombie equivalent of David Chalmers' behaviors just like the real Chalmers' and has the same cognitive capacities. In fact his zombie has the same functional believes and judgements as Chalmers' [though he does not experience anything!]. So logically, his zombie has also thought about the mystery of consciousness [he behaves as if he has consciousness] and written a book arguing for property dualism.
ii) So effectively Chalmers' would think he had phenomenal consciousness (and his conclusion that it must follow from non-physical laws) whether or not he actually had consciousness at all!!! Both he and his zombie are convinced that physicalism [the belief that the world is of one stuff: physical stuff] is false, the only difference is that real Chalmers' is right and the Zombie is wrong (he argues)
C) Therefore we can never know whether or not we have phenomenal consciousness at all.
Chalmers' responds very bluntly "So what?". Chalmers' (the real one) argues that experience is at the heart of our entire epistomologic world and we are innately certain of its reality ("cognito ego sum", Descartes: I think therefore I am, I can doubt the world exists or that my body exists but I cannot doubt that my experience of thoughts exists). Yes the zombie thinks he has consciousness even though he doesn't, that doesn't diminish from the fact that WE do know that we are conscious. The poor old zombie acts like he has a conscious mind, but since he does not, it follows that he would not know he was wrong because there is no 'him' or 'mind' to experience anything at all.
Ok again, there is loads I could say (his book is very long and thorough) but now I feel I can suggest my criticism of his argument for property dualism.
I think his fallancy is essencially trying to derive a objective fact (something that is) from a subjective description. I'll use an analogy to explain:
Imagine a piece of art, e.g. a painting, or the symbolism of a poem or literature. These contain physical facts such as the actual paint, or the cognition of the artist/poet/author. But the fact of what they
are like or what they
mean to you is not another fact at all expept the fact of your cognitive interpretations. If a painting
seems beutiful, that beuty is not another fact above the physical facts, it is just a cognitive interpretation of the facts that are there. And if a poem
seems to express a
feeling of love or fear, those feelings are not supraphysical facts, they are just interpretations of the facts that are there.
Now it might be objected to that I haven't actually addressed the problem of why I should actually experience anything at all: why shouldn't I behave as if I'm experiencing it? (i.e. why shouldn't I have awareness without experience? Surely that experience is a
further fact.) My defence is this: that humans have very sophisticated
language. Language is simply the
expression of meaning. So we are pychologically aware of the beutifulness (the sense of beuty may derive from cultural memes) of the painting, and we express that beutifulness cognitively through our internal language: experience! So to sum up I would argue that qualia are not non-physical facts, but they are linguistic interpretations of the first physical facts. Our 'consciousness' is simply our interal language to express our awareness of the world (notice how babies or people with severe language difficulties can seem to be less conscious of the world).
That we need to linguistically express ourselfs and our awareness can be easily explained in that these expressions can prepare information in a way that can be understood: try to imagine how well a species would thrive if it interally express its awareness of the world! Here's a little thought experiment for you: imagine you were aware of a door that you needed to open and walk through but had no conscious experience of it (i.e you 'saw' it but could not visualise it), in this case your brain would be struggling to understand what's going on - "there's a door there, and I need to open it, but I don't understand what any of this means, it's just meaningless code to me! Someone PLEASE help me understand" said the brain. And just then: is it a bird, is it a plane, no it's consciousness! "I'll save you brainy, this is what a door is like, now does it make sense to you?" "Yes thank you consciousness, what would I have done without you!" remarked the brain "Don't thank me, thank evolution. Good' old natural selection killed of all your brothers who did not have me to help them" explained consciousness.
Let's put it another way. Imagine an animal were aware of pain (e.g. burning) but it could not internally express that pain (i.e. you could not
experience the burning sensation). Do you think the animals that had evolved the linguistic capabilities to
feel pain would thrive better than those who did not? Of course they would. The pain
sensation is an inevitable product of natural selection: it is not a non-physical fact, it is.
When we say "I have a conscious experience of a red colour sensation" what is physically happening is that our brains have a linguistic representation of the information which your eyes recieve.
Experience of thoughts (e.g. thinking of red, remembering a red item etc or even feeling happiness from thinking about the good ol' days) can be easily explained by my theory: our cognitive (i.e. pyschological, physical) minds are simply accessing the linguistic representations of those items.
So in responce to his zombie arguement, I would argue that a physically similar HUMAN in a logically possible world would have consciousness just like us. The only way it would not is if it had no significant language skills, but in that case it would not be a physical homo-sapiene (as a consquence of being a homo-sapien is advanced language skills) and so it would not be a true human 'zombie' and so his arguement would be invalid.
In responce to the Mary argument, I would argue that Mary was previously only aware of redness and apples in particular ways that did not involve immediate awareness of it. When she became immediately aware of a red apple (by seeing it) she did learn a new fact (what it is like to see a red apple) but this IS a physical fact because it is simply her optical cortex recieve
new information. The
experience of the redness is not a non-physical fact, but rather an internal cognitive linguistic representation of the the new information which her eyes just received.
If I examine my arguments here and decide that they do hold water then my 5000 word essay will probably be an evalution of David Chalmers' arguments in reference to the work of Daniel Dennent and David Papinea whereby I explain my criticism of it. My other worry is that when I read Papinear's book Thinking about Consciousness, I hope he has not provided a similar criticism to mine because I thought it up all by myself and I'd like to take credit for it but if he thought of it first then I'd have to give it to him.
Anyway I'm very impressed if anyone read this whole post lol. :bigsmile:
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