The Hard Problem(s) of Minds

The explanatory gap, that is

The 1980-90’s proved to be the decades of consciousness studies in the academic philosophy of mind.  It was during this period in particular that the matters of what consciousness is, whether it exists, and how it is possible were under serious discussion.  Unfortunately, the discipline seems to have moved on to greener pastures since then, but the questions raised during this period are still of the greatest degree of interest.  Probably the most interesting problem raised during this period was that of the ‘hard problem of consciousness’.  The idea here is that consciousness – defined as the very fact of experience, or the ‘what-it-is-like’ to be (and for)\ an experiencing being – cannot be accounted for by appeal to known facts about the material world.  There is an explanatory gap between our physical theories of the world and our lived experience that no collection of data about electron spin or loop quantum gravity seems to be able to bridge.

Of course, there are those who deny that there is a hard problem, insisting instead that the trouble only arises in the minds of people already predisposed towards a dualist outlook.  Dennett, the Churchlands, Hardcastle, and others all are of the opinion that there is no problem, that we have all the conceptual and scientific tools necessary to unravel the knot of consciousness and that refusal to acknowledge this comes from some emotional need to preserve the ‘specialness’ of the mind.  Of course, this is rife psychologizing [1] (and not very compelling, at that) – to say that the Kims or McGinns of the world are predisposed to dualism or trying to save mental ‘specialness’ is a grossly misleading statement that borders on slander.  One could here inject speculations about the sources of the refusals of some to acknowledge the cogency of the case for there being a hard problem, but I shall restrain myself – I am not here for a brawl.

Coming back to the point – how might we get to the hard problem?  [2]

The Weirdness of the Mental

The mind is a really weird thing.  Everything else in the world appears to exhibit certain publicly available properties like mass or spatio-temporal location.  The mind, however, does not have properties like this.  Where, for example, is its location in space?  It might seem like it is in the head, but if much closer attention is paid, it becomes unclear that this is so – sometimes the head seems to be in the mind.  How much space does the mind take up, is it limited or boundless?  If the mind is physical, why does it seem totally unlike all the other stuff we see around us?

The Possibility of Zombies

‘Zombie’ in this context does not refer to the brain-eating undead monsters of the films – rather, we are speaking here about ‘philosophical zombies’.  This sort of zombie is alive, mild-mannered, and doesn’t want your brains because it has its own.  This kind of zombie might live right next door, have a job, wife, mortgage, and kids, and get really excited when it’s playoff season, and you’d never know it was a zombie.  In fact, the only thing this kind of zombie doesn’t have that the rest of us do is consciousness – unlike ordinary humans, there is nothing that it is like to be a zombie.  The point of this sci-fi thought experiment is to demonstrate that because it is conceivable that there could be highly sophisticated cognitive entities that are without consciousness, it is therefore possible that such things could exist and, this being so, the fact of consciousness is difficult to explain.

Building a Better Zombie

If the zombie example seems unconvincing, perhaps that is because we started with a fully formed zombie.  What if we built one from the ground up?  So we take one neuron and study all its actions under various conditions.  Now, we know that whenever chemical c or electrical pulse e is applied under a given condition, the neuron reacts in some specific way, but we don’t imagine that the neuron is conscious.  So we add a second neuron and hook it up in the right way to the first and then apply our chemical or electrical pulse to the first, which reacts in its way and thus causes the second to react in another way.  We still don’t concede that the two neurons are conscious, whether considered individually or collectively.  Then we add a third neuron, then a fourth, then… rinse and repeat.  Since we know what each neuron will do when acted upon in a specified way, eventually we could build a fully functional human brain.  The trick is, since each additional neuron is without consciousness, and we understand perfectly how the entire set-up produces seemingly intelligent responses based on simple stimuli/response action, we would have no reason to make any appeal to consciousness or emotion or any other feature of the mental in describing our new zombie’s activity – it would all simply be the working out of physical cause/effect.  So how are ordinary conscious humans any different?

Intentionality

This is the final problem that I consider a hard problem (or at least sufficiently closely linked to the hard problem to warrant mention here).  Intentionality is the ‘aboutness’ of mental content.  So, for instance, my ‘cat-thoughts’ are about my pet cat, who is just now trying to climb onto my keyboard.  [3]  But intentionality is tricky for two reasons.  Firstly, material objects are not ‘about’ anything at all.  For example, if I see Jesus on my grilled cheese sandwich, the sandwich is not ‘about’ Jesus, I have just made a bunch of hay about a perceived resemblance.  But if my cat-thoughts just are the states of my brain (or some of its subcomponents), how can they anymore be about my cat than the cheese sandwich likeness is about the Lord of Toasts?  Secondly, representation is always of something and to someone, but without consciousness, how can cat-thoughts be represented to anyone (anything)?

These, then, are the ways I think fruitful to construe the hard problem.  I intend in the future to go much more deeply into each of these subjects and, in the interest of disclosure, I am tentatively favourable to the notion that there is a real problem here.  But I am also more than open to go the other way too.

Endnotes:

[1] Psychologizing is philosophical bad form, generally.  One ought to deal with one’s opponents’ arguments first – if their arguments are bad or nonsensical, however, then psychologizing may be in order (but only as an error-theory).  By psychologizing their opponents in this way, the individuals listed are in essence saying that one cannot rationally disagree with their general outlook, that disagreement on this point is tantamount to arguing against 2+2=4, or that a thing is not identical to itself.

[2] I have deliberately left what follows sketchy and underdeveloped because I want to leave myself something to write about in the future!

[3] Bad kitty!