Consciousness and the Limits of Reason

CONCIOUSNESS

AND THE LIMITS OF REASON

S.M. MORETTA

Conciousness And The Limits Of Reason 

S.M. Moretta 

Copyright 2015 by S.M. Moretta

Smashwords Edition

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stevem@baymoon.com 

Cover design by Sylvie-Marie Drescher of Book Shop Santa Cruz. 

Special thanks to Sylvie-Marie Drescher for formatting this book, for cover design, and for arranging for printing and E-book distribution. Thanks also to Harriet Lister for her assistance in trouble shooting technical issues.  

Preface

Landing upon a title for this book was challenging. I was searching for something which was short and simple and would capture the principle focus of this essay. Hence Consciousness and the Limits of Reason seemed to work. I say principle focus because given the multiplicity of topics covered here, I could hardly expect the title to point to each and every one of them.

The mind-body problem, like so many philosophical perplexities, can easily be set out in one sentence: what exactly is consciousness and from what entities, forces, processes, etc., does it arise? In contemporary philosophy, informed, as it is, by a science-based worldview, it is generally assumed that the mental must be explainable via natural, physical events. So the question this essay, in however roundabout a way, is intent on answering is this: is it logically possible for us to explain consciousness, in all its diverse manifestations, via physical processes, or is a comprehensive explanation of consciousness beyond the limits of our understanding, our reasoning?

And I come to this question circuitously, after devoting, perhaps, one-hundred pages to foundational issues that, I believe, must be confronted before moving on to anything else. By foundational issues, I mean the following: (1) developing a fairly comprehensive definition and categorization of mental events; (2) coming to grips with the problem of free-will, a matter any proposed theory of consciousness must address; (3) a discussion of the neurobiological underpinnings of consciousness, inclusive of an analysis of the relationship between neurobiology and mental events; and (4), given that we are attempting to determine whether or not we are capable of explaining consciousness, we are compelled to define, in an at least rudimentary way, both the nature and boundaries of possible human knowledge.

Naturally, as this book is not of epic length, these questions will be explored in a general, macro sort of way, consistent with the needs of this inquiry. I am not attempting to do anything encyclopedic here. Further, this work is devoted to determining which approaches to the mind-body problem, and to the study of consciousness generally, are plausible and which are not, which are fruitful and which are not. It is intended as prelude, not as a final movement - a work which has the merit of sending us off in the right direction, but no more.

And, by the way, I am well aware that there is a contemporary school of philosophy that is very explicit in questioning whether or not consciousness poses problems that are beyond our cognitive capabilities. These theorists are oft referred to as mysterians. I will not split hairs here: my own analysis parallels that of the mysterians in many respects, however, I break with them on key issues as well.

The mysterians pose what I believe to be the most basic possible issue: does the mind-body conundrum arise from out of something deeply bizarre about the nature of the universe, or does it merely reflect certain inherent limits and characteristics of our own cognition? I think it is more than notable that the universe has no more difficulty in producing consciousness than the liver has in producing bile; in fact, it does so all the time. Nonetheless, it would be extraordinarily naïve to presuppose that all aspects of how or why the universe functions can be understood by us. Which is not to say that many in philosophy and in science have not assumed that a sort of omniscience is possible, they have. We must question whether or not this assumption makes any sense.

This book is quite derivative in nature and I make no secret of that. I am very much indebted to the work of Descartes, Schopenhauer, Searle, Sartre, the general systems theorists and others as well. But first and foremost, I am indebted to what I believe to be the greatest volume in the history of modern philosophy, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.

This is, in some ways, an odd place to start for a project of this type. In the Critique, the nature of mind and body was largely a peripheral issue and is chiefly felt in Kant’s attack on Descartes and his followers – or to use Kant’s words, the rational psychologists. Nonetheless, the Critique greatly affects almost every area of philosophical inquiry and the mind-body problem is no exception. It will, in fact, thread its way through almost every chapter of this book.

Much of this essay can be thought of as a kind of experiment. What if we were to assume that the epistemological framework developed in the Critique is valid? What would be the implications for: (1) the mind-body problem in general; and (2) the determination of whether or not the explanation of consciousness is even logically possible for us.

And it is precisely this experiment which sets my work, derivative though it may be, apart from so much of the current discussion. Most contemporary work on the problem of consciousness occurs within the context of the Anglo-American tradition of analytic philosophy, which largely operates as if Kant did not exist. If, in the alternative, we use Kant’s epistemological framework as a springboard for our inquiry, we can examine the whole problem of consciousness in a manner that is otherwise impossible. To be clear, I am not looking for ways to fine tune any standard approach to the issues at hand; rather I am in search of a way out, and Kant is my guidepost here.

Last of all, a very short note about style. I have made every effort to be as concise, comprehensible and non-technical in my use of language as possible. Further, I have gone to great lengths to clarify difficult points through concrete examples. Nonetheless, I must admit that given both the nature of the subject matter and the contorted wording of many of the philosophical texts referenced here, this essay is occasionally daunting. It is my hope that with some care and patience, an educated layman can generally understand what I am getting at. That said, it is time to begin.

PART I.

THE BASICS

Consciousness is arguably the most philosophically resonant problem posed by the mind, but it is also arguably the most intractable and impractical problem¹

— John Horgan

"A feeling of great happiness washed over me like a wave. At the very moment of experiencing this wave of joy, it occurred to me: How strange it is that there is an I who experiences this. Here is this organism, responding to various sensory stimulations and neural memory traces. Somehow, this organism experiences itself as a unified subject. There is a person, a self, to whom a wave of joy happens here, and not just a collection of neurons and muscles and electrochemical impulses. Why should this be so? What makes it so?"²

— Barbara Hannan

INTRODUCTION

OVERVIEW

Consciousness - It should hardly come as a surprise that questions about the nature and generation of our mental life are central to the history of modern philosophy, as consciousness is, in so many ways, what we are.

What Hannan is reflecting on here is the mind-body problem at its most basic: I have a certain experience of myself, a certain understanding of my biology, how am I to reconcile the two? And Horgan’s point reflects the painful truth in this matter: the problem of consciousness is as vexing as they come.

Schopenhauer said that the true philosopher invariably starts out from some great conundrum from which he desperately wishes to be delivered. And what is more, this difficulty has arisen in the course of life, not in the course of study. Consciousness is so unique, so ephemeral, so different from anything else we might perceive or conjure up, it should hardly be a surprise that the philosophically inclined are drawn to its study.

In consciousness we have, or perhaps, we are, an intimacy, an oneness, that is absolute; we are our consciousness, we are engulfed by our consciousness; it is perfect in its intimacy, it is always with us. We have more control over our own thoughts that we do over anything else in this world. The qualitative essence of our conscious experience can be shared with no one, it is beyond description, beyond mutual understanding; at the same time, the choice to share what we can of our experience by reducing it to language is entirely under our command. It cannot be forced upon us. We thus have a relationship to consciousness that is radically different from our relationship to anything else.

So this thing we call consciousness, so different from all other phenomena, how are we to describe it, from what does it arise, where is it housed, how is it generated? If it is the product of some purely material entity, say, the brain, how are we to account for the notion that our experience of redness can be created by what appears to be a great lump of meat? Is it possible that consciousness depends (in part, at least) upon the intervention of some immaterial entity, a soul, a mind? If so, how does this soul interact with the body? If, on the other hand, consciousness simply arises from the brain, what is its role, vis-à-vis the body, as we do experience our thoughts, our commands, our consciousness, as directing our actions, as directing our lives?

And what of free will? We experience ourselves as deciding, as choosing from among alternatives. Is this purely illusion? Is our neurobiological system simply acting according to deterministic physical laws, despite the fact that it is impossible for us not to believe that we are, feel that we are, think that we are, making very real choices? Or is the alternative the case: that consciousness represents a great upswelling of freedom in what appears to be a relatively deterministic universe. And how would this free will, this great anomaly, manifested through consciousness, somehow have a role in a deterministic world? How would it affect our body, which presumably functions in accordance with natural law?

What of beings other than ourselves? As long as I am thinking, as Descartes famously observed, I cannot doubt that I, really meaning my own consciousness, actually exists. We naturally assume that other members of our species, and other animate beings, cats, dogs, etc., are also conscious, but in truth, we are only witness to their actions, to behavior. How can I know, with any certainty, that there is a consciousness that stands behind that behavior? The consciousness of others is not, after all, something I can witness.

I believe that, in general, the above questions involve real philosophical perplexities, by which I mean that they arise naturally from the nature of our experience. At the same time, as this essay will make clear, I believe that a thorough enough investigation will reveal that some of these perplexities are generated through a false framing of the issues at hand, which framing is the inevitable result of starting out from a compendium of naive and unjustifiable assumptions.

It should also be noted that since the mind-body debate has so long been part of the history of philosophy, it is common enough to come upon purely false problems (entirely academic conundrums that do not relate to experience at all), as well as purely semantic distinctions parading as actual differences of opinion. Naturally, all of this will be discussed in the course of this essay, for it is paramount to separate the wheat from the chaff.

But again, to return to the true core issues in the mind-body debate, it is plain enough that they arise, ultimately, from the nature of our experience. We experience the material world as solid, as enduring, as extended in space. We understand consciousness as having only a temporal, and not a spatial dimension (Again, from Descartes, thinking does not extend into space). We understand it as being not solid, ephemeral, as disappearing almost the moment it is born, as ungraspable/indefinable. This seeming dichotomy between the physical and the mental has made the explanation of consciousness, as well as its role vis a vis the body, rather problematic.

This dichotomy is so central to our experience that from time immemorial both the common, and the not so common, man has generally assumed what is oft referred to as the natural ontological attitude, meaning the belief that this mysterious thing we call consciousness is housed in an immaterial soul, as opposed to a purely material body. The natural ontological attitude involves a rigid dualist division of the world into two spheres that somehow co-exist and interact: the material/physical on the one hand, and the immaterial/non-physical on the other.

This dualist division sits in quite comfortably with a certain metaphysics, in that it allows for the possibility of life-after-death, God, Angels, etc., all of which have been part and parcel of religious beliefs throughout history; it is consistent with a western (and, to some degree, an eastern) religious view of the world. This is not to say that the view that consciousness is housed in some immaterial soul or spirit is necessarily accurate. It is merely to bring to light the simple fact that the dualist dichotomy reflects commonly held beliefs; that it arises from human experience; and that the dualist metaphysics common to religion does not arise from out of thin air, but arise from concrete experience.

As Descartes was the first great philosopher of the modern era, and as he subscribed to a particularly rigid dualism, he is oft treated as the virtual inventor of this great wall between mind and body that has plagued western thought since the 17th century. However, it is a lot closer to the truth to simply say that Descartes cast his net upon a dualist river that had been part of both the religious and the man-in-the-street vision of the universe for a very long time. Descartes certainly fine-tuned this dualism, and developed a version of it that made both its strengths and weaknesses manifestly obvious, but he certainly did not invent it.

Descartes’ chief advantage was that he assembled a concise and straightforward logic: the fundamental attribute of matter is extension in space, and the fundamental attribute of consciousness is thinking, which has no spatial attribute, and thus is not extended in space, and thus cannot derive from a material entity. So what type of entity does it derive from? An immaterial entity, namely, the soul.

So let us assume Descartes’ logic. What questions arise? If consciousness is the product of the soul, and not the material body, how does the soul interact with the body? How does the body interact with the soul? Where exactly is the soul housed? There are other difficulties facing Descartes’ dualism, but these are the principal ones. As to the last question, Descartes chose the pineal gland as the place where the soul resided. As to the other problems, he really had no adequate answer. Once mind and body have been split so severely, it is difficult to form a logic by which one can ever put them together again, and this has been the principal fault of Cartesian dualism ever since.

This brings us to what I call The Great Cartesian Divide. Descartes’ interactive dualism is oft viewed as having split mind and body in such an extreme manner as to make our very functioning as sentient beings incomprehensible. Much of the work on the mind-body problem can be seen as an effort to answer one question alone: is it possible to bridge the Cartesian divide, to make fully comprehensible, and to fully explain, the relationship between consciousness, on the one hand, and the body (principally the brain), on the other?

For the materialists, this has principally meant developing a logic through which it would be possible to fully explain consciousness, in all its manifold characteristics, through the body, and, in turn, fully delineating the relationship between consciousness and body. In terms of most contemporary philosophy, this is the mind-body project in a nutshell.

It may seem baffling that an approach to consciousness as problematic as Cartesian dualism was to have such an influence. However, it must be remembered that Descartes’ prescription targeted central concerns of the era, much as contemporary approaches target contemporary concerns. Descartes’ dualism met the three criteria that, I believe, a theory must necessarily meet if it is truly going to take hold, and by take hold I mean take hold in the broader intellectual culture (as opposed to say, the narrow world of the academics): (1) the theory must address a fundamental perplexity that arises directly from human experience; (2) its tenets cannot have implications that are violently contrary to basic human experience; (3) it must address key theoretical concerns in a manner that comports well with the intellectual/cultural zeitgeist of its era.

As an entire chapter will be devoted to Descartes, the historical context in which his approach was hammered out will be touched upon later. For present purposes, I only wish to bring to light the connection between philosophy and the climate in which it is fashioned.

In the 18th century, Newton’s mechanics ushered in a relentless effort to achieve a comprehensive understanding of the physical universe. It is in this context that philosophical approaches to the mind-body problem have developed over the last 100 years. Whatever their differences, these approaches hold certain characteristics in common: the vigorous rejection of efforts to explain consciousness via any immaterial entity (the soul); deference to explanations that derive from scientific inquiry (principally neurobiology); the desire to explain consciousness via systems that can be studied empirically (principally, the brain).

In this light, a central project of philosophy is to prove that it is logically possible to account for any and all aspects of consciousness via brain processes. Were this project to succeed, consciousness would succumb to an entirely naturalistic, physical explanation; supernatural or religious explanations relating to this important aspect of the universe could be disposed of; and the last great gap in achieving a scientific, naturalizing account of all phenomena would be filled. In any event, this is certainly how the materialists appear to see things.

In terms of the mind-body problem, this, in short, is the materialist project. Obviously, materialism is attempting to confront a fundamental perplexity that derives directly from human experience (the explanation of consciousness), and it is an approach that is consistent with the science centered paradigm of the contemporary world. If materialism is found to be wanting, it should come as no surprise that this derives largely from a tendency to form conclusions that do not appear to sit so comfortably with basic human experience; that are, perhaps, violently contrary to that experience. That is to say, we experience ourselves and our behavior a certain way, and materialist theories oft have the effect of running completely contrary to that experience. More on this later.

While materialist and dualist approaches are demonstrably different in many ways, we shall find that they have more in common than meets the eye. To wit, both models assume (uncritically and, perhaps, unconsciously), what upon closer examination turns out to be a rather naive epistemology (to be discussed in detail later).

In the case of materialism, however, what began as a genuine, and well-founded respect for science has devolved into what has been derisively called the tradition (John Searle), Scientism (Allan Wallace), or the deification of science (myself). This deification of science by contemporary materialism involves several interrelated assumptions: (1) it is possible to have an objective, God’s eye view of the universe; (2) such a view can only be developed via empirical, scientific inquiry; (3) since only the scientific method is capable of producing an exhaustive, God’s eye understanding of the universe, and since science only studies physical phenomena, all true knowledge is of physical phenomena; (4) if we wish to develop an objective, comprehensive understanding of consciousness we must do so via the scientific method, and on the basis of physical phenomena, since all true knowledge is of such phenomena.

It should be clear, at this point, what I mean by deification: the belief that a particular method of inquiry is capable of giving us God-like powers; that is, objective, relatively certain knowledge, unadulterated by our own prejudices, cognitive structure, etc. It is in this sense that science is commonly deified in contemporary culture. It should be noted that this grand project of developing a God’s eye view, of overcoming human limitations, prejudices, subjectivity, has been with us for a very long time. It is a motivator of much of the spirit of philosophy, and I believe it can be said, without exaggeration, that we humans can be described as "being towards transcending subjectivity’; meaning that the drive to get outside of our own subjectivity, to achieve true, objective knowledge is fundamental to who we are.

But if it is assumed that the scientific method is the only true route to understanding consciousness, what else do we need to know about this method? Principally, one thing: that science is dedicated to the study of phenomena from a third-person point of view, meaning from a perspective that is equally open to all observers. So what can we study, vis a vis consciousness, that is equally open to all observers? Here there is a consensus: language, behavior, neurobiology, and the physics and chemistry that underpin neurobiology.

Given the above, it should come as no surprise that these are precisely the variables materialist philosophers generally focus on, while the actual characteristics of consciousness, as consciousness, which can only be described from a subjective, first-person point of view, are often slighted.

Once the five assumptions I have described above are laid-out explicitly it should be self-evident that they are open to debate. The fact that these assumptions are generally not voiced explicitly, but rather are uncritically assumed, is the result of the historical reality in which they arise: scientific inquiry has been foisted high upon a lofty throne, to the point that it is assumed that all true knowledge derives from it, and thus, in the end, any explanation of consciousness must ultimately succumb to it.

Cartesian dualism is dismissed out-of-hand in contemporary circles, but it is not dismissed (contrary to popular opinion) because it involves us in a myriad of logical problems (it does), but instead because it makes a naturalizing, science-based explanation of consciousness impossible. Thus, there is simply no possibility of seriously entertaining it. The four interrelated assumptions that I have defined as forming the basis for the deification of science have their parallel in an analysis presented by Searle in The Rediscovery of the Mind. What Searle is critiquing here is what he calls the tradition, an approach to the explanation of consciousness which assumes: (1) that reality is physical; (2) ergo dualism must be wrong; (3) that everything that is part of reality is, in principle, knowable; (4) and that the only legitimate way to investigate consciousness is from an objective, third-person point of view:

"…Because reality is physical, and because science concerns the investigation of physical reality, and because there are no limits on what we can know of physical reality, it follows that all of the facts in the universe are knowable and understandable by us.

….The only things that exist are ultimately physical, as the physical is traditionally conceived, that is, as opposed to the mental. This means that in the traditional oppositions-dualism vs. monism, mentalism versus materialism-the right-hand term names the correct view; the left-hand term names the false view. ³

….Science is objective… Science is objective because reality itself is objective.

…. Because reality is objective, the best method in the study of the mind is to adopt the objective or third person point of view. ⁴

…. From the fact that reality is ultimately physical…, and the fact that it is completely objective …, it is natural to assume that everything in reality is knowable by us... Finally, one thing is obvious – there is no place – or at least very little place – for consciousness in this overall picture."⁵

Searle, like the present writer, inquires as to the cultural backdrop that makes the materialist, third person approach to consciousness the predominate orthodoxy. And, again, the answer is fairly straightforward: it is viewed as the only scientifically acceptable alternative to the anti- scientism that accompanied traditional dualism. (At pg. 3)

Allan Wallace critiques the modern tendency to deify science from a Buddhist perspective. He ascribes the pejorative term scientism to the current orthodoxy. Wallace’s analysis is focused broadly on our intellectual culture as a whole, less on philosophy, and only superficially on the mind-body debate. Nonetheless, its relevance could not be more obvious:

"Although signs of scientism can be found in writings as early as the seventeenth century, they have become far more prevalent since the nineteenth century with the rise of scientific positivism…, Its three central assertions are that (1) science is our only source of genuine knowledge about the world, (2) science is the only way to understand humanity’s place in the world, and (3) science provides the only credible view of the world as a whole.

In short, scientism adopts an absolutist perspective on reality and denies the value of all other avenues of inquiry and knowledge. Much as the fundamentalists of traditional religions regard the revealed message of their scriptures as self-evident, requiring little or no interpretation on the part of humanity, so do advocates of scientism regard the Book of Nature as revealing its own truths to objective, impersonal observation and reasoning. According to this view, there are no significant philosophical problems in the scientific acquisition of knowledge, and the subjective cogitations on this subject by philosophers is useless." ⁶

Wallace is particularly cogent in arguing that the basic premises of physical materialism, (which, philosophically, is the foundation of scientism) are pure metaphysical speculation. Paradoxically, this places materialism on par with certain primitive nature religions:

Twentieth-century scientific materialism abandoned belief in any form of theism by adopting the principle of physicalism, which states that in reality only physical objects and processes exist. In other words, only configurations of space and of mass/energy and its functions, properties, and emergent phenomena are real. A closely related principle maintains that everything that exists is quantifiable, including the individual elements of physical reality, as well as the laws that govern their interactions. At this point scientific materialism becomes compatible only with some of the more primitive nature religions.⁷

The materialist approach to the explanation of consciousness clearly arises from the intellectual zeitgeist of our time, including, of course, the tendency to deify science. Its proponents would argue that it offers certain philosophical advantages over competing doctrines: (1) a naturalistic, empirically grounded model for explaining consciousness; (2) the ability to circumvent the myriad problems that are generated by any model in which an immaterial mind and a material body must be made to somehow interact.

This model, however, generates several problems of its own. The first is practical in nature: the brain is monumentally complex and any meaningful analysis of consciousness reveals a seemingly endless number of states and qualities of conscious experience. Finding the brain states that would, in theory, correlate to all possible states of consciousness may not be a logical impossibility, but it could prove impossible in practice.

Then there are certain rather difficult philosophical issues. First, if consciousness is entirely explicable via brain processes, is it a mere epiphenomena, meaning an impotent by-product, really, of the brain? If so, how do we square that with our self-understanding that we, meaning our conscious decisions, cause things to happen? Or are we to accept that that notion is sheer illusion? If, alternatively, a materialist is to hold that consciousness, despite being purely explicable via micro processes in the brain, does retain causal powers, what could that possibly mean, and how is that possible?

A second problem, noted earlier in this essay, is what strikes many as the deeply counter- intuitive proposition that what is really a piece of meat (the brain) could possibly account for one’s experience of, say, a deep whooshy sort of sound. And lastly, what of free-will, is there room for it in the materialist model, and if so, how? If not, how do we reconcile a deterministic neurobiology with our unshakable self-understanding that we are free to choose? Is this simply to be accepted as another illusion?

THE GOD’S EYE VIEW

But before examining materialism, per se, I believe it is important to preface our discussion of any approach to consciousness with an epistemic query: is it, in fact, possible for us to develop a God’s eye view of what is ultimately real? Perhaps we are consigned to apprehend the world through the lens of our cognitive structure, our perspective as a species, the questions we pose, etc? As has already been stated, the standard approaches to consciousness, both materialist and dualist, assume that a God’s- eye, objective view is possible.

What I am getting at here is that we cannot blithely go on posing questions about the basic nature of the universe, and the mind-body problem is generally represented as such a topic, without first considering fundamental epistemic issues, by which I mean, per the usual definition, issues relating to the nature, the limits, and the definition of possible knowledge. The materialist model, as the prevailing orthodoxy, generally assumes that the study of the natural world allows us to discover facts and laws that exist out there, in nature, independently of our concepts, our cognitive structure, our prejudices, etc. What happens if this is not the case? If, in fact, all our knowledge is conditioned by, mediated through, and delimited by, our cognitive structure and our subjectively introduced constructs? What implications would this have for the whole mind-body dispute?

For the materialists have built this grand palace of explanation upon an epistemic foundation that may or may not be defensible, and if that foundation collapses, the palace goes with it. The mind-body debate is normally defined as a dispute relating to ontology, meaning that branch of metaphysics which asks the question: what is ultimately real? The materialists are certainly purporting to provide an answer to that question.

But what if it turns out, upon close examination of the relevant epistemic issues, that it is not possible to determine what is ultimately real, that it is not possible to answer ontological questions, because any answer we give will simply be a reflection of our own limited perspective, mediated by our cognitive structure, etc.? What then happens to the whole mind-body debate? Is it possible to re-format the discussion so that it can meaningfully address issues that are within the realm of possible knowledge?

So again, we must address basic epistemic issues before proceeding with metaphysical ones. This project was at the heart of Kant’s seminal work, the Critique of Pure Reason, which informs much of the rest of this book. In the Critique, Kant set out to determine the limits to, as well as the ground of, possible human knowledge. Kant recognized that we cannot simply deploy whole frameworks of concepts without first asking from whence these concepts arise, and how are they to be justified. I think it will become clear that the physical materialists have committed precisely this error.

As noted earlier, the materialists (and for that matter, traditional dualists) believe that it is possible to develop a God’s eye view of the universe. A central, but rarely examined, epistemic framework lies at the base of this belief. This framework is commonly called empirical realism (I sometimes think of it as, correspondence epistemology). According to this model, it is generally the case that objects, entities, processes, etc., exist out there independent of us, in a manner that largely corresponds to what we perceive. So when I see a table, for example, the table pretty much exists out there, independent of my cognitive structure, prejudices, history, culture, etc., with, more or less, the characteristics I perceive it as having. This epistemology is natural enough, since it reflects our common sense view of the world.

Kant’s principal accomplishment was that he rejected this approach in favor of what he called transcendental idealism. Within this model, to put this in the simplest terms possible, the table, as I apprehend it, is mediated through, and a product of my cognitive processes. In the absence of a subject for whom a table can be said to exist, something exists, but a table, per se, does not. The objects that we apprehend do not exist out there, independent of us, in correspondence to, our perceptions.

It shall become clear, in due course, that if transcendental idealism provides the best possible epistemic framework (and I shall argue that it does), and we are to therefore reject all correspondence epistemologies, than the mind-body debate no longer relates to the nature of the universe (ontology) but, rather, to the nature of how we understand things (epistemology).

METHODOLOGY

So a description of Kant’s epistemic framework, and how it stands in relation to empirical realism, will precede a detailed analysis of the problem of consciousness (for epistemic questions must be settled first) in a section entitled "Part II – Foundational Issues. This section will cover other basic issues as well: the principal characteristics of the two central phenomena in the debate (consciousness and the brain); the definition of the self; a general discussion of the definition of knowledge; freewill and determinism; and, the eternal philosophical controversy over what is usually called the problem of other minds. Once these issues have been considered, we will have laid the grounds from which to critique the current debate.

I would note that the methodology of this essay is grounded in two principles: (1) we must clear up relevant epistemic issues before considering proposed theories of consciousness in any detail; and (2) we must be extremely clear as to the basic characteristics of the principal phenomena in question (consciousness and the brain), before we can even begin offering up theories concerning their inter-relationship. This second point might seem obvious enough, but it is surprisingly common for philosophers to jettison this process completely.

The next section of this essay (part III) will be devoted, in part, to the study of three contemporary approaches to the mind-body problem, all of which have considerable merit, and all of which fall short in their own unique ways. I see these approaches as worthy of consideration for three reasons: (1) they provide real insight on fundamental issues relating to the explanation of consciousness; (2) they take consciousness, as consciousness, and, in particular, consciousness from the perspective of a first-person, subjective ontology, seriously; (3) they are presented relatively clearly and focus on real issues, as opposed to purely semantic distinctions parading as real differences in philosophy.

So, in a nutshell, if an approach does not directly address the most fundamental issues relating to the explanation of consciousness, and does not seriously concern itself with our own self-understanding of experience, I see no reason to expend significant effort considering it. It is surprising how many contemporary models fail this simple test.

It will become increasingly clear, upon analysis of each approach, that certain failings of the materialist model are extremely difficult to overcome; that certain problems, which appear particularly vexing, turn out to not be problems at all; and that what will be revealed as the most significant perplexity in the whole mind-body debate (our self- understanding that we, through consciousness, are free to choose) tends to either be ignored completely or brushed aside dismissively.

I want to make it clear, however, that my purpose here will not be merely to critique or to refute, but to give full exposition to the value of these approaches. At the same time, by uncovering the inherent weaknesses of these models, we uncover certain inherent deficiencies of materialist philosophy in general. On this basis it may be possible to transcend at least some of these deficiencies and develop a more satisfactory way of addressing the problem of consciousness.

In addition to the rich models just cited, I will consider two other approaches which I feel obliged to discuss simply because they are, or have been, of some influence. Both fall into the camp of what is generally referred to as reductive materialism. If one considers these approaches against the three criteria referenced above, they fail on all accounts. They will be given the level of review necessary to make this clear, and that is about it. Suffice it to say that I do not believe these models offer any real insights, or deal with any substantive issues.

But let us back-step for a moment. Before even visiting the epistemic issues that are central to this essay, I will briefly set the historic context in which the whole contemporary debate takes place (Part I). By this I mean the historic context that was set at the beginning of the modern period through Descartes’ strict division between mind and body.

Many discussions of consciousness enter the pool a bit late in history; by which I mean diving in some time after World War II, with little to say about anything that occurred in the preceding three centuries. I believe that this approach is rather impoverished. Descartes, for one, should absolutely be studied and not for historical reasons alone. Despite the problematic nature of Cartesian logic, there are important insights that shine through.

Following my discussion of Descartes, I will offer a brief review of contemporary materialist philosophy in general, which, in turn, will result in two important discoveries: (1) the distinctions between different brands of the materialist approach are far less substantial than the participating philosophers would have us believe; and (2) the reduction of consciousness, as consciousness, to the physical is conceptually impossible; consciousness is irreducible to the material and no amount of semantic acrobatics can change that. This does not, however, imply a wholesale rejection of materialism, but it does imply that certain types of materialist reductionism are, simply, not possible

After setting the historical context for the current debate (Part I), considering foundational issues in some depth (Part II), and critiquing a variety of contemporary materialist approaches (Parts III and IV), there is still more to do. For at this point, it will be clear that all traditional approaches (whether dualist or materialist) are completely inadequate. So I will consider two alternative platforms (Part V) from which a better explanation of consciousness might conceivably arise: quantum mechanics and general systems theory. I think it will become clear that the quantum approach does not get us very far, however, systems theory, when considered in conjunction with specific aspects of other models, is quite promising.

Once Part V is complete, I will have succeeded in beating a wide array of issues to death (a time honored tradition in philosophy), at which point there will be nothing to do but summarize our travels together and tie up loose ends. But all of that is a long way off. As hinted at earlier, propositions that no one actually believes should not be taken particularly seriously. But I will go a bit further. Real philosophical issues relate to propositions that it is possible to either believe or to not believe. If no one really believes a given proposition X, or doubts a given proposition Y, than all discussion of these propositions is sheer wind, a purely academic exercise. This is an important matter, for there are significant issues relating to consciousness that are, at least on one level, purely academic.

The most notable of these conundrums is what is generally referred to as the problem of other minds. The query generally goes something like this: I know that I am conscious upon self-reflection (a self-evident proposition made famous by Descartes), but how do I know that other beings, e.g., other humans, cats, dogs, scorpions, bats, etc., are conscious?

An important distinction is implicit here: on the one hand we have a proposition that is universally justified from the first-person perspective (I am conscious), and on the other we have a proposition that we cannot possibly bare direct witness to (that other beings are conscious), and that is simply assumed to be the case. Not that this is an unreasonable assumption, but it is clearly an assumption nonetheless. In posing this question, fundamental issues concerning the nature, the grounds, and the limits of our knowledge are brought to light.

Nonetheless, we are not dealing with a real philosophical dispute here, because (to take the most important example) no one has ever believed, or will ever believe, that other humans are not conscious. This is just not how we understand the world. The same can be said of our beliefs concerning the inner workings all higher order animals, and we have to go down at least to the level of insects before the question is this creature really a conscious being? ever gets to be a serious concern.

There is, however, a classic Kantian type question we can pose to turn this inquiry into something that is truly enlightening, by which I mean enlightening concerning the grounds upon which we draw our conclusions. And that question is this: since it is universally the case that everyone believes that other people, and all other higher order creatures, are conscious, why is that the case; upon what logic, evidence, experience, is that belief grounded? We will find that by tackling this question we shall gain some insight into the nature of our knowledge, and the character of our experience, as well as certain aspects of the mind-body debate.

I want to be clear here: it is not possible to prove that other people, cats, rabbits, etc. are conscious. I am fully aware of this. But this is irrelevant. Real perplexities, as opposed to purely academic ones, involve matters in which it is possible for humans to have real doubts. It is not enough that some particular belief, some particular assumption, is outside of the realm of logical proof.

Some issues do not involve real philosophical perplexities, while others, however popular in the literature, tend to veer us way off course, and into matters that do not stand to enlighten us as to anything relevant.

First consider the famous zombie problem. Assume that it would be possible to make a machine that would duplicate every cell in your body and create another being that was physically identical to you, including all behavioral functions, but that was not conscious. That was a zombie. How would you know that it was not conscious? How do you tell the difference between a zombie and a sentient human being?

Let’s assume another scenario: Some extraordinary philosopher develops a model under which it is possible to explain each and every aspect of human consciousness via neurobiological processes. This would mean that your consciousness could be explained. And the mind-body debate would be over. The zombie problem would still be with us, for it points out the obvious fact that neither structure or behavior are absolutely reliable guides to whether or not some creature is conscious, but so what?

The central debate would still be over, because the genius philosopher in question did not get waylaid onto such unproductive issues as zombies, but stuck with the core, productive question: is it possible to explain all aspects of human consciousness via neurobiological processes? I would invite the reader to review the literature on the zombie problem and to determine whether or not it is useful for any purpose at all; it is not.

Suffice it to say that I will not waste the reader’s time with discussion of the zombie problem, or any other pseudo-dispute. At the end of the day, there is principally one substantial issue before us in the contemporary philosophical debate, and that it whether or not it is possible to fully naturalize consciousness, to explain all aspects of human (and by extension, other animal) consciousness via neurobiology (or, perhaps, some combination of neurobiology and physics).

But before we segue into Part I, I believe it is important to explain my intended interpretation of three terms which will appear repeatedly in this essay: reification, phenomenology, and ontology. Other terms will also be given a specialized meaning, but these terms will be defined as I go along. By reification I simply mean the all too common practice of discussing a certain X as if it is a thing, an entity that exists out there in the world, when it should be transparent enough that X is merely a conceptual construct, a product of our mind, our cognition.

The term reification has been used in different ways, so it is important to be clear on the intended usage here. A discrete example will help. Consider a classification system. In biology we have the categories of kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species, and any living thing is assigned an identity within this structure. At the same time, while we understand that a particular cat, call her Lulu, may exist as a real, sentient being, out there, in the world, independent of our concepts, the phylum chordates, even though this cat falls into it, does not exist out there in the world; it is simply a concept and has no existence outside of our use of language.

Thus, for example, we cannot say that we discovered chordates. To do so, would be to take a concept that we developed to better understand concrete, existing beings/plants and to talk as if it is something that exists out there, and we somehow found it. I have found the tendency to reify our concepts to be all too common in contemporary philosophy.

This brings us to phenomenology. This term can be used to refer to a specialized area of study, complete with a specialized (often excruciating) language of its own. In this sense, Brentano, Husserl, Heidegger and Sartre, as well as other philosophers who followed in their footsteps, were proponents of phenomenology. However, I am not adopting so technical a use of this term, and for purposes of this essay would define it as follows: by phenomenology I mean the examination of the structural components of conscious experience as well as the structural components that cause experience to have the characteristics that it has, in given concrete circumstances".

By structural components I mean characteristics that are universal to all human subjects, as opposed, for example, to psychological components that would vary greatly depending upon the individual history, character, preferences, etc., of a given person. Some examples. Raw perceptions, such as my experience of the color green, are generally described as ineffable, which means that it is not possible for me to meaningfully reduce to language, and thus describe to someone else, what my experience of the color green is like; that is, to answer the question what is green like? The ineffability of raw experience is thus a structural (hence phenomenological) aspect of consciousness that is universal to all human experience.

Now what do I mean when I suggest that there are structural components that cause experience to take on a certain character? An example of a causal phenomenological component: both memory and anticipated future events have a dramatic effect on the character of present experience. Sartre presented a particularly engaging and concrete case for this proposition: When I read a particular passage in a novel, my memory of how the events in the novel have unfolded thus far is embedded in my understanding of that passage, as is my anticipation of how the novel is likely to unfold as it progresses. My present experience is thus always pregnant with both past events and my anticipation of future events. Temporal factors can thus be said to have a causal role vis a vis the character of present experience.

Consider the possibility that I simply pick up the novel from a bookstore shelf and read that same passage at random. My understanding, and my experience, of that passage would be entirely different. When we understand the causal, structural components that are incorporated into a given experience, we can more fully flesh out the character of that experience for the individual.

Similarly, by considering particular psychological variables that may be present we can better flesh out, better individuate, the characteristics of a given, concrete experience. To fully understand the phenomenology of experience, as experience, we would need to delineate structural, psychological, anthropological, and cultural elements that lie beneath experience. These elements will be considered, to the extent practical, in my attempt to delineate a basic, skeletal formulation of the phenomenology of experience.

Phenomenology can be differentiated from most other forms of inquiry in that its conclusions are founded directly upon self-reflection: that is, I consider my own conscious experience and seek to determine the phenomenological structure of that experience. So how can someone else subject my conclusions to critique? Again, through self-reflection: they examine their own experience and then see whether or not the structural elements of experience, as I have described them, appear to be accurate when applied to such experience.

Consider that there is no third-person, objective way to engage in phenomenological analysis, to get at the structure of conscious experience. It should come as no surprise that analytical philosophers, enamored as they are with objective scientific inquiry, tend not to go very far down this path, which means that their descriptions of mental events are often superficial and naive.

This brings us to the last term, ontology; Ontology and cosmology being the two branches of metaphysics. Both terms have, in the course of history, been defined differently by different philosophers, as has the term metaphysics itself. My own use of the term ontology will be fairly traditional. Ontology is generally defined as that area of inquiry that asks "what is the ultimate, real nature of the universe? For example, western thought has tended to envision the universe in terms of the concept of substance; e.g., matter is a substance. So an ontological question would be whether or not the substance of matter is sufficient to explain all the real properties of the universe, or do we need to posit an immaterial substance" (e.g., the soul) as well?

Again, I will be adopting the traditional definition: ontology is the area of inquiry that asks what is the real, ultimate nature of the universe? For Kant and Heidegger, in the alternative, ontology was the study of the metaphysics of the person, which is a radically different issue. For Kant a key question (not that he would have phrased it this way) is whether or not ontology, as traditionally defined, is even possible. This question is critical to my entire essay and will be discussed in great detail as we go along. More on all of this later.

As noted above, many other terms well be given a technical meaning in the course of this essay, and I will define my usage of these terms as I go along. However, since the three concepts just defined figure so prominently throughout, I felt that it was necessary to lay out the meaning I have attached to them right from the start. That said, we can now set the historical context for the contemporary debate, which begins in the middle of the seventeenth century with Descartes’ Meditations.

THE CONTEXT OF THE CONTEMPORARY DEBATE

1. DESCARTES AND DUALISM

PART I

In some sense, the groundwork for the entire mind-body debate is set forth in Descartes’ most well-known work, the Meditations on First Philosophy, published in 1642. The basic scheme of what came to be known as interactive dualism is presented here. The Meditations generated a considerable history of correspondence between Descartes and his contemporaries, and as this correspondence is often quite elucidating, I will refer to it as needed. Also of some interest is Descartes’ later work, The Passions of The Soul, which, along with the Meditations, will be considered in some detail.

Descartes employs a particularly systematic approach through which a broad range of epistemological and ontological issues are tackled. Three broad features of Descartes’ approach are as follows. First, he is insistent upon building his philosophy upon a foundation of rigorous questioning and doubt; to doubt all that cannot be known clearly and distinctly: I will proceed at once to attack the very principles on which all my former beliefs rested".¹ He extends this doubt to all that he has learned from the senses, and rather than assuming that there is a supremely good God, the source of truth, he will assume that there is an evil spirit, who is supremely powerful and intelligent and does his utmost to deceive me.² Following this line of reasoning, he will reject whatever admits of the least doubt.

But in the course of this inquiry, and precisely because Descartes sets out from the perspective of his own subjective ontology, he discovers that whatever else he may doubt, he cannot question that I, meaning my consciousness, exists, at least so long as I am conscious; hence cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. After expending some effort on this issue, Descartes proceeds to offer several proofs for the existence of God, a supreme, all powerful being, and only then does he return to the issue of having doubted the existence of the material world, that is to say, the world revealed by his senses.

The reality of the material realm, the body, is not ultimately established on the mere basis of what we perceive through the senses, but is instead inferred from the character of a good God; a God who would not deceive us in these matters. In the final chapters of the Meditations, Descartes addresses the unity of mind and body.

In this essay, I will only dwell upon Descartes’ work to the extent it directly addresses three principal issues: the nature of consciousness; the origins of consciousness; and the interaction of mind and body. Thus much will be left out. It is notable that despite having promised to subject all his beliefs to the most rigorous questioning, Descartes ultimately assents to empirical realism: the universe, as it is, in and of itself, corresponds, in large part, to our perceptions, to our natural understanding of it. It is upon this point that Descartes’ dualism and the materialism of contemporary analytic philosophy agree.

That said, we can now consider a second critical feature of the Meditations. Descartes is generally looked upon as the founder of what came to be known as continental rationalism. Descartes begins with pure reason; we must be skeptical towards all we have learned through the senses, and only accept as true that which can be validated through the rigorous pursuit of reason, through our own internal logic. Information that is gathered empirically can only be validated once it has passed through the filter of reason; with the proviso that we are only to accept that which can be known clearly and distinctly.

A third feature of Descartes’ methodology has been particularly important to the development of continental philosophy. Consider the point at which Descartes’ inquiry begins; self-examination. Descartes differs from most of his predecessors in that his path of inquiry begins with his own subjective ontology. He asks, in however roundabout a way, what is the nature of my experience, what is its structure, what is its logic. It is through this method that Descartes arrives at some of his most penetrating observations. It is precisely this examination of one’s own thinking, one’s own conscious states, that is to feature so prominently in Kant and his successors.

The meat of the work begins with the Second Meditation, where Descartes is characteristically concise in describing his methodological skepticism:

"Yesterday’s meditations plunged me into doubts of such gravity that I cannot forget them, and yet do not see how to resolve them. … But I will make an effort to try once more the same path I entered yesterday; I will reject, that is, whatever admits of the least doubt, just as if I had found it was wholly false; and I will only go on until I know something for certain – if it is only this, that there is nothing certain. …

I suppose, therefore, that whatever things I see are illusions; I believe that none of the things my lying memory represents to have happened really did so; I have no senses; body, shape, extension, motion, place are chimeras. What then is true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing is certain".³

But whatever he may doubt, there is an I that is doing the doubting, and this simple fact brings Descartes to the realization, established in self-reflection, that the I that is doubting, that is conceiving, that is thinking, must exist, of this he can be certain:

"But if I did convince myself of anything, I must have existed. ‘But there is some deceiver, supremely powerful, supremely intelligent, who purposely always deceives me.’ If he deceives me, then again I undoubtedly exist; let him deceive me as much as he may, he will