review of �Introducing consciousness� by David Papineau
Greg Detre
Friday, 19 May, 2000
It�s a review of Papineau�s book, Introduction to consciousness. Honderich seems to think that Papineau is subversive in his discussion of the problem. Papineau claims to mean �raw feels�, �the pain of having a tooth drilled without an anaesthetic and the look of a red rose�, i.e. qualia. However, Honderich is concerned that qualia are being misguidingly portrayed as an �aspect� of consciousness, as though there is something besides/beyond qualia that we mean by consciousness. He attacks any attempts to baffle us with objective, scientific explanations of what Chalmers would term the �neural correlates of consciousness�, as missing the hard problem.
He also doesn�t like Nagel�s mouthful �what-it�s-likeness�??? Meaningless tautologies???
The Jackson �Mary� (the neuroscientist in a B&W room who sees colour for the first time) argument could be seen in materialist terms � the neural correlate of colour and the seeing of colour are the same, and Mary has simply acquired a new concept for a property that already exists in her world. In Fregean terms, the senses (intensions) are different, but the referent (extension) is the same. But Honderich argues that the two intensions refer to two separate properties, and the distinction that Jackson is trying to draw remains.
There is also a discussion of epiphenomenalism (attacked) and Neural Functionalism. Neural Functionalism runs up against The Wholly Resilient Proposition About Consciousness, that �the properties of conscious events aren't neural ones�. Is there a need to prove this? Can it be proved? What premise could be firmer than this conclusion?
There are two types of dualism. Traditional dualism, that
posits physical and non-physical mental stuff. Makes no sense to Honderich. How
can something non-physical be said to exist � inside your head? But the second
type says that consciousness is physical, but non-neural. But consciousness
does not appear to be extended or localised �in my head�. And the Resilient
Proposition about consciousness can be extended to �the properties of
consciousness just don�t seem physical at all�, and no new physical stuff in
the brain is going to help here. So can the traditional dualist be rescued if
he admits the determinism of the physical world and escapes the mind-body
causal interaction problem by becoming an epiphenomenalist? No, because the
first, hard half of the mind-body problem, how does the phenomenal bit arise in
the first place, is still there, even if the downwards causation from mental
back to physical is ignored.
Honderich finds Papineau to be an eliminative materialist somehow. �He makes a meal of saying that if you say consciousness is cells you don't eliminate it, but say it really exists -- as cells�. �Conscious experience, say unpleasant feelings, 'are nothing different from the relevant brain states. To be in pain is simply to be in a certain brain state. That's what it is "like for you" if you are in that brain state�. �Consciousness, for materialism, 'isn't any extra "mind-stuff", in humans or elsewhere. There are just physical processes, some of which are "like something", for the creatures that have them.' Honderich reckons there�s a contradiction here � either these last two sentences are saying the same thing, or they are saying something different and contradictory.
New idea for the millennium � Consciousness as Existence. Sounds like �I think therefore I am�.
The virtue of philosophy is
that it is logically more hard-headed than science. The virtue of science is
that it knows a lot more about the empirical nitty-gritty of the world
could your thought at this
moment or your hopeful feeling be microtubules � or quantum theory? -- the
stuff taken as having the consequence that Schrodinger's cat is neither
definitely alive nor definitely dead until and because someone has a look to
see which?
�feels
and looks�, qualia, �the felt nature of consciousness�
e.g. the pain of having a tooth drilled without an
anaesthetic and the look of a red rose
'conscious
states feel a certain way', 'the feelings involved', 'something
about experience' -- conceivably as distinct from experience itself
So
is our subject an aspect or property or side of
consciousness generally?
or a distinguishing feature of consciousness?
no � our real subject of course is not an
aspect -- but the nature of consciousness, the fundamental fact of it
???
Thomas
Nagel's famous line:
there is something it is like to be a bat � to be
getting around by means of echo-location
Are we also supposed to take it, more generally,
that all states with feels and looks are ones such that there exists what it is
like to be in them?
Or, is talk of 'what-it's-likeness' (p. 15) to be
taken as some gesturing not just at the side of consciousness, but the whole
general nature of conscious states -- a first understanding or analysis of
that?
Saying that there is something it's like to be a bat
just comes to saying, doesn't it, that there is some kind of consciousness
that bats have? That is no analysis of their or anybody else's consciousness.
saying about conscious states in general that 'there
is something it is like to be in them' -- doesn't that come to saying, at best,
that there is what it is like to be conscious in them? That is no help
as a definition of consciousness. Again the term to be defined turns up in the
definition.
'conscious states are "like something"',
that there's something it's like to be conscious
but the only like sort of thing that comes to mind
as like is conscious states additional to the conscious states in
general. That is another circular disaster, even nonsense.
is
it something of which the best you can have is a 'subjective' view?
is
it what's left over after you spend time on the important business of getting
an 'objective' view of consciousness?
is
it what escapes 'objective definition' because it's 'something ineffable'?
don�t
give up consciousness because of the problem of subjectivity
It's
not true that trying to find the real nature of consciousness is trying to
convey to somebody else what nobody else can have, at least not yet, which is
your own private experience. Whatever obstacle there is in the way of that,
probably temporary, whatever this particular fact of subjectivity and the rest
of consciousness comes to, the job in hand is precisely that of being objective
about consciousness.
no
definition of objectivity is supplied to us in Introducing Consciousness
objective
propositions =
subject-matter that can be seen + touched by more
than one of us?
the scientific ones of the age
tied to common tests for truth
\ consciousness = an objective
business
our
subject is not 4 things:
consciousness
purely neural/brain facts that go with consciousness
causes of consciousness
effects of consciousness
tendency
to regard consciousness itself as just an �ingredient� in the subject of
Philosophy of Mind
e.g. the �conscious pain� and the �conscious visual
experience� vs the other ones, presumably the �neural pain� and the �neural
visual experience�
i.e. the �subjective� side of consciousness, and the
three �objective� sides
when
studying consciousness itself: the three other things aren�t important
materialism = pretty good on three quarters of a
subject, but it�s missing out that �last bit�, that one �ingredient� missing �
but that�s no use
stop
being distracted by the side of consciousness that is feels + looks, give up
the mouthfuls about �what-it�s-likeness�, escape the stuff about mere
subjectivity and the bundle of three irrelevant bits
�/span> clear-headed concentration
on the nature of consciouness itself
Germaine:
on the question of what consciousness is, it is the
question of:
'how it relates to scientific
goings-on in the brain'
'where the feelings come
from'
'the source of conscious
feelings'
the 'relation between mind
and matter'.
if
you believe that consciousness isn�t the particular neurons of our bodies
then you�ve got to try to say what it is
this isn�t the question of how it�s related to the
cells, of its general source in them or dependency on them
you do answer the question of
how consciousness is related to the brain if you say it just is the
brain -- has only neural properties. But if you don't say that about the nature
of consciousness, Germaine's question isn't even on the agenda. That's some
other meeting. ???
familiar answers:
consciousness, according to
one answer, is 'genuinely distinct' from brain activity
they're not a 'unity', not
'identical', not 'the same thing'
then: what is
the 'genuine distinctness' in question? What is the 'unity' in the opposite
answer?
unfortunately, we aren�t usually told
sometimes: the unity could just be a psychoneural
lawlike connection (mind + brain going together by scientific law)