The Ontology of Subjective Physicalism, by Robert Howell

Books and Papers
1

The Ontology of Subjective Physicalism

This paper outlines in explicit terms one of those theories of physicalism which attempts to address the hard problem of consciousness without elimination and without dualism.

The original reason someone mentioned it to me was because of my thoughts on the problem of consciousness resolving in what people will find problematic, namely scientific anti-realism.

This is a view which basically allows for scientific realism while also allowing for consciousness consistently: something in-between eliminativism and dualism that is not epiphenomenal. It’s also just a generally good review of the history of the arguments on the hard problem of consciousness.

I can’t find anything wrong with it as a metaphysics other than I’m uncertain about how much we need to cave to science in creating a metaphysics, but that’s not really the focus of the paper since it’s outlining something which is consistent and keeps both intuitions of (a kind of) scientific realism with (a kind of) consciousness realism.

Anyone have any thoughts on it? It’ll take some time to read through, so I don’t expect responses right away. But I’d like to hear others’ thoughts if they have them because the paper just seems so “smooth” to me: there’s not much to nit-pick, so I’m having a hard time with an “against the grain” reading.

1 Like
2

Quite some time, given the occasional windows of opportunity to make headway.

The abstract seems like something I’d agree with. The inability of an objective description to convey subjective knowledge does not necessarily imply that subjectivity doesn’t supervene on the physical.
“there are some physical states that are subjective, in that those states must be undergone in order to be fully grasped.”
I absolutely agree with this. One cannot know what it’s like to be a bat. Given physicalism, one can in principle sufficiently describe a bat to the point of being able to accurately simulate it. Neither the computer nor the people implementing the simulation will learn from this what it’s like to be a bat, but the simulated bat will know.

That epistemic knowledge (redundant, I know) cannot be conveyed any more than I can convey my subjective experience to any entity that lacks it. We only presume a similar experience with peers such that discussion of such states has relatable references.

Mary’s room also illustrates this disconnect between objective and subjective knowledge.

1 Like
3

I’m glad you’re reading.

He utilizes Mary’s room in an interesting way in the paper.

I look forward to your shared thoughts after you finish reading.

4

Thanks for sharing the paper. To contribute to further discussion, I share some reactions.

Two intuitions generate the core of the mind-body problem. On the one hand
there is the idea that conscious mentality, with all its Technicolor vivacity, is
bound to have aspects that elude the cold, objective descriptions of science.

Objective descriptions are “cold.” Why this metaphor cold ? Because objective means “unbiased.” Basically the standpoint is made as generic as possible. No value judgements. Just measurements.

On the other hand, there is the deep sense that everything is composed of the
same basic physical stuff, and that to think otherwise is to grant conscious
beings like ourselves a convenient pride of place in the world’s ontological
catalogue. Upon reflection, however, many people are inclined to give up
one or the other of these intuitions because they seem to conflict. On some
level one of the intuitions maintains that there is something “special” about
conscious mentality, while the other maintains that it is not “special,” but is
crafted of the same clay as everything else.

Is there a really a deep sense that everything is made of some basic stuff ? I grant that there is a common assumption of some vague X that functions as a truthmaker. This X, which comes in many flavors, is “external” or “really there.” So that statements are “true” or “false” in an absolute sense.

Also “conscious” beings don’t want to get big heads ! So it’s “good” to be a physicalist. It’s even a duty. Which goes against the “cold” mentioned earlier. We are warm about being cold. The colder the better. The colder the more truthful. There is something in this, but taken to the limit it’s nonsense. Or ?

We are warm about being objective. About practicing a certain art of the generic quantitative standpoint. We are so warm about being cold that color becomes “unreal.” Yet most of those measuring the world, repressing their feelings about it, still see it in color. Still feel something, that they omit from the report. What goes in the report, and only that, is “real.”

A decision to ignore most of the world within a certain game results in a forgetting of the context of that game. The context of that game, social sensory reality with values and feelings and norms, gets transformed into an illusory internal stuff.

5

Some physical properties can be grasped only subjectively. The properties
that underwrite conscious experiences (e.g. qualia) are physical, but they are
not identical with any property mentioned in a completed physics.

This is strange stuff ! A “completed physics” ( unpack that ! ) does not include certain physical properties.

All physical properties can only be grasped “subjectively.”

Am I saying something radical here ? I don’t mean that an image of the world is in my head, an image made of “qualia.” I just mean you or I perceive this or that. And you or I understand this or that piece of physics.

The “from-a-point-of-view-ness” of perceiving and understanding the world ( of the world’s being there and showing itself ) gets misread in terms of perceptions being non-world stuff in the head.

So much of what’s called “physicalism” ends up being dualism with a privileging of the “homogenous external stuff” as pseudo-primary.

6

This slightly modified version of Jackson’s argument goes as follows. Mary
is a brilliant scientist who has lived her life in a black and white room. During
her prolonged imprisonment she was taught all of physics, neuroscience, and
biology through black and white computer screens. In fact, she eventually
gained all the information about the world that could possibly be conveyed
to her through such screens and monitors. At that point she had all the
objective information about the world. Nevertheless, when she left the room
to be presented with a red rose by her captor, she saw the red of the rose and
learned something new—she learned what it is like to see red. Thus, not all
information is objective information.

She studies physics, appropriates important and warranted beliefs. But why is physics not just numerology ? Or beautiful mathematical fantasy ? What constrains the math ?

Perception. Observation. Of colorful and noisy objects by a generic observer. By many actual observers, but the point is to “lift away” from particular observers. The theory predicts the perceptions of unborn observers.

So “objective information” here is about generic perceptions in the future. An observer can’t loan us his or her eyes or ears. They write that the measurement was this or that. That process of measurement is ignored here. The leap to the generic observer tacitly becomes a leap from the “quality” that becomes numerical through measurement.

This “objective information” is presented like the “mind of God.” The word “objective” leaps from “no relevant bias” to “in the mind of God.” This “mind of God” is “true” apart from the perceptions that made us take it seriously in the first place.

7

I didn’t get very far with this paper because I had trouble understanding how the author was using the words ‘subjective,’ ‘objective,’ ‘physical’,’ and ‘consciousness.’ I’m no philosopher so forgive my intrusion, but my brief acquaintance with some of the writings of William James has led me to a profound change of perspective.

In his Essays on Radical Empiricism, James repudiates the idea of consciousness as substance, and re-deploys the word ‘consciousness’ for a function in place of this repudiated substance. But he still has to appeal to the fact that all of this activity is arising, and he recruits the term “pure experience” in order to allude to this.

In later works (Some Problems in Philosophy, and Pluralistic Universe) James seems to have softened his distinction between these two. It seems to me that having dispensed with the idea of consciousness as substance, he may have felt drawn back into using the word ‘consciousness’ in place of the more cumbersome term “pure experience.”

From the vantage point of James’s pure experience, the concepts ‘physical,’ ‘mental,’ ‘subjective,’ and ‘objective’ are just ways that pure experience divides into categories. So, having been swayed by James’s philosophy, to me any attempt to squeeze consciousness (pure experience) into a category of itself seems perverse.

Am I missing something?

1 Like
8

I agree. “Pure experience” is a gesture toward “the total fact.” I take the word “experience” to gesture toward the “for-me structure” of this “total fact.”

James almost “had” to use “experience” to remind people of this total fact, since so many were in the habit of using “reality” for a curated fragment of this “total fact.”

1 Like
9

Yes, I think that’s the same error that I was alluding to. We regard a category of consciousness as ‘reality’ and then wonder why we can’t find a place for consciousness in ‘reality.’ Some solve this irritating problem by claiming that consciousness is an illusion (eliminative materialism) – it’s like they put the cart before the horse and then can’t find a use for the horse so they shoot it.

1 Like
10

Yes. You got a laugh out of me with this one.

11

On the first page the author says it’s important to maintain a “rigorous separation between epistemological and
metaphysical issues.”, and I agree. Yet in the article the words ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ are used ambiguously between epistemological and metaphysical senses via the figurative expression ‘grasp’. For example:

  1. A full physical description of the world leaves nothing out. All properties can receive objective, physical descriptions. Nonetheless, there are some properties that cannot be grasped fully unless they are grasped subjectively, via
    conscious experiences, as well as by objective physical descriptions.
  2. Some physical properties can be grasped only subjectively. The properties that underwrite conscious experiences (e.g. qualia) are physical, but they are not identical with any property mentioned in a completed physics.

What could it mean to grasp physical properties "only subjectively?

Any experience is subjective. Doesn’t matter if it’s a private headache or a public building. Both are ‘subjective’ in the sense that they exist only for the one who has them. This is the metaphysical or ontological sense of the word ‘subjective’.

Your knowledge of your own headache is also subjective in the sense that it exists in your head, but that doesn’t mean that it’s epistemically subjective. You can have epistemically objective knowledge about your head ache, and share the knowledge publicly by means of language.

There’s certainly a difference between experience and description. A description is seldom sufficient for learning a craft or a sport, and in this sense I believe there’s some knowledge that you acquire only by doing things. But that’s not a shortcoming of descriptions.

It seems trivially true that a full description of the physical reality omits what one has yet to learn and describe.

12

I have not read the whole paper, but one thing it seems to omit is that it assumes that matter is most fundamental while ignoring the view that math is more fundamental than matter. At the same time, its “monism” seems to be defined in opposition to mind-body dualism, which is what it appears to mean by “dualism”, rather than in a rejection of a privileged position of math in the universe. (I myself am a dualist in that I believe in a separate ideal realm of math while I reject Cartesian mind-body dualism.)

13

I’ll definitely read it. Gotta finish something up first…