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. Itâs also just a generally good review of the history of the arguments on the hard problem of consciousness.
I canât find anything wrong with it as a metaphysics other than Iâm uncertain about how much we need to cave to science in creating a metaphysics, but thatâs not really the focus of the paper since itâs 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? Itâll take some time to read through, so I donât expect responses right away. But Iâd like to hear othersâ thoughts if they have them because the paper just seems so âsmoothâ to me: thereâs not much to nit-pick, so Iâm having a hard time with an âagainst the grainâ reading.
Quite some time, given the occasional windows of opportunity to make headway.
The abstract seems like something Iâd agree with. The inability of an objective description to convey subjective knowledge does not necessarily imply that subjectivity doesnât supervene on the physical.
âthere are some physical states that are subjective, in that those states must be undergone in order to be fully grasped.â
I absolutely agree with this. One cannot know what itâs 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 itâs 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.
Maryâs room also illustrates this disconnect between objective and subjective knowledge.
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 âcold.â Why this metaphor cold ? Because objective means âunbiased.â 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 worldâs 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 âspecialâ about
conscious mentality, while the other maintains that it is not âspecial,â 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 âexternalâ or âreally there.â So that statements are âtrueâ or âfalseâ in an absolute sense.
Also âconsciousâ beings donât want to get big heads ! So itâs âgoodâ to be a physicalist. Itâs even a duty. Which goes against the âcoldâ 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 itâs 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 âunreal.â 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 âreal.â
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.
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 âcompleted physicsâ ( unpack that ! ) does not include certain physical properties.
All physical properties can only be grasped âsubjectively.â
Am I saying something radical here ? I donât mean that an image of the world is in my head, an image made of âqualia.â I just mean you or I perceive this or that. And you or I understand this or that piece of physics.
The âfrom-a-point-of-view-nessâ of perceiving and understanding the world ( of the worldâs being there and showing itself ) gets misread in terms of perceptions being non-world stuff in the head.
So much of whatâs called âphysicalismâ ends up being dualism with a privileging of the âhomogenous external stuffâ as pseudo-primary.
This slightly modified version of Jacksonâs 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 newâshe 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 âlift awayâ from particular observers. The theory predicts the perceptions of unborn observers.
So âobjective informationâ here is about generic perceptions in the future. An observer canât 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 âqualityâ that becomes numerical through measurement.
This âobjective informationâ is presented like the âmind of God.â The word âobjectiveâ leaps from âno relevant biasâ to âin the mind of God.â This âmind of Godâ is âtrueâ apart from the perceptions that made us take it seriously in the first place.
I didnât get very far with this paper because I had trouble understanding how the author was using the words âsubjective,â âobjective,â âphysicalâ,â and âconsciousness.â Iâm 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 âconsciousnessâ 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 âpure experienceâ 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 âconsciousnessâ in place of the more cumbersome term âpure experience.â
From the vantage point of Jamesâs pure experience, the concepts âphysical,â âmental,â âsubjective,â and âobjectiveâ are just ways that pure experience divides into categories. So, having been swayed by Jamesâs philosophy, to me any attempt to squeeze consciousness (pure experience) into a category of itself seems perverse.
I agree. âPure experienceâ is a gesture toward âthe total fact.â I take the word âexperienceâ to gesture toward the âfor-me structureâ of this âtotal fact.â
James almost âhadâ to use âexperienceâ to remind people of this total fact, since so many were in the habit of using ârealityâ for a curated fragment of this âtotal fact.â
Yes, I think thatâs the same error that I was alluding to. We regard a category of consciousness as ârealityâ and then wonder why we canât find a place for consciousness in âreality.â Some solve this irritating problem by claiming that consciousness is an illusion (eliminative materialism) â itâs like they put the cart before the horse and then canât find a use for the horse so they shoot it.
On the first page the author says itâs important to maintain a ârigorous separation between epistemological and
metaphysical issues.â, and I agree. Yet in the article the words âsubjectiveâ and âobjectiveâ are used ambiguously between epistemological and metaphysical senses via the figurative expression âgraspâ. For example:
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.
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. Doesnât matter if itâs a private headache or a public building. Both are âsubjectiveâ in the sense that they exist only for the one who has them. This is the metaphysical or ontological sense of the word âsubjectiveâ.
Your knowledge of your own headache is also subjective in the sense that it exists in your head, but that doesnât mean that itâs epistemically subjective. You can have epistemically objective knowledge about your head ache, and share the knowledge publicly by means of language.
Thereâs 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 thereâs some knowledge that you acquire only by doing things. But thatâs 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.
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 âmonismâ seems to be defined in opposition to mind-body dualism, which is what it appears to mean by âdualismâ, 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.)
Funny that I posted (mentioning Mary and bats) just before he got into both. He uses Mary to turn the dualist conclusion on its head by making her the expert in âectoplasmâ, but still not being informed of any subjective facts.
I got lost around the conceivability argument around pg 13, acknowledging that the argument has teeth when I never thought it did. To me itâs like, âIâm willing to entertain utter implausibility, therefore it must be the caseâ. Sure, Howell addresses the argument, but I never thought Chalmers had an argument to start with.
Objective is the antonym of several things, and here they mean ânot subjectiveâ as opposed to âbiasedâ. Often when discussion ontology, I use the word to mean absolute, or ânot relativeâ.
I donât think it is within the scope of this paper to ponder what the physical (some of which is matter) might in turn supervene on. Itâs about physical being enough, there not being some 2nd thing to the side, neither supervening on the other. This fairly old view admits that a full physical description cannot convey subjective knowledge, and why thatâs not a problem.
For a lot of people, sure. And even if we are recalcitrant to attribute âstuffâ because of worries about substance (which includes me) thereâs still the intuition that it all hangs together somehow: even if I end at relationship or process as the turtles all the way down rather than things thereâs still this notion that Iâve arrived at an ending: however I render it, all the âstuffâ hangs together in a kind of unity: for many even though I feel like such-and-such there is a deep sense that thereâs some explanation for that experience which bottoms out in the world we inhabit, be it idealist or materialist.
It can result in that, but if we reflect then it seems â like ourselves here â weâd start being a little cautious about inferring things from a particular way of describing the world (which, necessarily, ignores most of reality) to a general understanding of what reality fundamentally is.
Here we might say that the game is taking place in the ontology room which is attempting to unwrap that possibility while acknowledging itâs something of a game.
Yup. Thatâs the takeaway of the position being described. And really heâs more pointing out that one may hold both intuitions at once, given this consistent stance, not that this is the best way to look at the world as a whole per se.
Iâm not sure itâs so radical here. âGraspâ could be stipulated to be the subjective side of understanding. But I think thatâs not exactly what the paper is getting at. It seems to me that we can grasp physics â which, for purposes of this paper, serves as the âobjectiveâ physicalism (which may include intentionality in it, which is kind of how I read you here when talking about point-of-view), but there are still some physical states of affairs which the objective physicalism leaves out, namely whatever âqualiaâ tends to refer to. Also note here that the view heâs defending is the inclusive version which weakens the claim somewhat to say that there are only some aspects which can only be fully grasped through the subjective, like the sensation of pain (as opposed to the behavior of pain).
Yup. Dualism has a way of reappearing everywhere.
I think we can skip this explanation of âobjectiveâ and say âhowever you want to cash out scientific facts, like physics, is what we mean by objective physicalismâ: for an idealist the mind of God, for the materialist the inert fact, but either way both can point and share the measurement whereas they cannot share their experience of the measurement. Iâd put it that âobjectiveâ changes with time and place and practice and all that, but there are still general ârulesâ that arise from practice that people utilize to work together in generating knowledge, and thatâs close enough to count for âobjectiveâ for the purposes of this paper.
I see the argument. Itâs not persuasive to an eliminativist, but the argument follows through well enough. Iâm not sure itâs sound, but that it has traction is enough want to address it.
I found the re-dressed Maryâs Room argument interesting. Given subjective physicalism it makes sense to say Mary does learn something more, even if it isnât the sort of knowledge we tend to mean.
Letâs say that it means ânot-objectivelyâ, where âobjectivelyâ is something like modern physics, chemistry, and biology. (or, better, a perfected version of these in the future â since everyone will admit that right now things are âleft outâ of science, since there are more questions)
Nope, youâre just reading the paper from a different perspective. Youâre thinking about it from the perspective of William Jamesâs Pragmaticism Pragmatism, whereas this is a paper thatâs written in the tradition of contemporary analytic metaphysics.
Itâs not so much that youâre missing something as the paper starts from entirely different concerns than William James, and utilizes the terms differently from James.
It assumes that because thatâs the assumption heâs working from in the beginning. Howellâs not arguing that this is the one true metaphysics. Heâs pointing out a possible way to reconcile two common intuitions that are frequently thought to conflict upon reflection.
The argument is more âIf you reflect even more, hereâs a consistent way to hold both beliefsâ
If you donât hold both beliefs then the paper is something of a non-starter for your beliefs, though it is worthy to understand why others believe as they do even if you donât believe as they do.
The words âobjectiveâ and âsubjectiveâ tend to create false dichotomies. Such as âscience is objective, experience is subjective, and therefore some knowledge canât be objective, and whatâs subjective canât be scienceâ.
So letâs clarify the epistemic and ontological senses in which the words âsubjectiveâ and âobjectiveâ are used.
You can have epistemically objective knowledge of physical properties, despite their objective mode of existing and the subjective mode in which your knowledge and experiences exist. We can have and share epistemically objective knowledge of the ontologically subjective domain of our individual experiences, headaches, joys, thoughts etc.
Now, what could it mean to know (grasp) physical properties âonly subjectivelyâ?
Itâs trivially true that you grasp things âonly subjectivelyâ in the sense that experiences and knowledge exist in your mind. But if the experience is epistemically subjective, then the question arises⌠how could it be an experience of anything ontologically objective such as physical properties?