A Recent Discussion

So, I'm real close to writing a blog about the next part of the Mind book, but I gotta talk about something else first. However, to give a preview, I'm starting to like where Searle is suddenly headed, so needless to say it is getting much more interesting!



Anyway I was having a discussion with my friend the other day. And I'd like to begin by saying he's really smart, he understands math and science way better than I do, he got a degree in it. However our discussion was about consciousness and it's existence and the nature of physics and such. So it was somewhere between a logic/science/philosophy discussion, but over all it deffinitely got me thinking.



Essentially my position was consciousness exists and is irreducable by physics. It is essentially not physical. He on the other hand said that this is absolutely impossible, and at one point claimed that this theory would be "magic." So I'll go a little back and forth. I'll begin with mine which is clearly less orthodox and needs more explanation, because science in most cases would certainly be on my friends side.



One of the most important parts about arguing about consciousness is being clear on what it is before you start arguing. Otherwise things can get muddy quickly. Consciousness is the subjective experience. When observation is going on it is the thing that is observing. It is the first person. And furthermore as far as my hypothesis goes, and was a topic of contention in the discussion, consciousness is not synonymous with brain states or the cognitive properties that may give rise to it. I.e. "the experience of red" is not synonymous with "the cognitive interpretation of light recieved by the eye at a certain wavelength," even though the latter may give rise to the former.



So I gave him some classic examples to illustrate what I was trying to say. One was the famous zombie example. Essentially imagine an entity that is an exact replica of yourself, physically, physiologically, everything, going through the exact same life that you do, the only difference is, this replica has no conscious experience, no first person reality. It is in essense a zombie. It is physically on all levels exactly the same, but there is no consciousness. Therefore consciousness would be an additional property, not a physical one.



Secondly, I gave the inverted colors argument. This is the idea that when I look at blue and you look at blue, we both call it blue, we both react to it entirely the same way, and behave the same around it, but it turns out what you call blue, is what I call red. There is no way to know that this is not the case. There is no way that physics could prove one way or another what precisely the color that you or I see is. The only person who knows what blue likes like to me, is me.



So my friend responded to the zombie idea by saying that it was impossible for the zombie not to be conscious. Essentially saying that it was necessary that if it was physiologically precisely the same as him, it would necessarily be conscious. He explained that consciousness is an emergent property. For example, the planet earth has an extremely complex weather system. On other solid planets that are larger, the complexity of the weather system increases exponentially. There are different types of weather that we do not experience at all on earth in addition to those that we get on earth. And essentially, because are brains are large and extremely compact, it allows for tons more neural connections than our closest ancestor, and with this exponential increase in complexity, consciousness becomes an emergent property of this new level of complexity. But it is also necessary physically that it emerge at this level of brain complexity.



As for my second example he explained that either a, if we saw different colors there must be a physical explanation. and b. if the two people were physically and physioligically the same then we would know conclusively that they were seeing the same color.



Essentially, his arguments as far as I can tell, revolved around something like, 1. physics is a closed system, 2. if two things are physically identical they are the same thing, 3. if it doesn't exist inside physics, it doesn't exist, 4. consciousness exists, therefore 5. consciousness must be a physical property.



Ultimately it sounds like a pretty solid argument. And his other arguments are also very interesting and on certain levels persuasive, however there are some deffinite holes and fallacies.

Describing how something has occured does not describe what it is. This is the problem with his emergent property argument. Even if consciousness is an emergent property its other problems, the hard problems as Chalmers puts it, don't go away. Secondly as far as the response to his second argument, it is decidedly not conclusive that two people necessarily see the same thing. There is absolutely nothing to check the experiment with. If you look at all the action in the brain, even with superfuturistic technology, you won't see green in the brain, or more importantly you won't see "them seeing green" in the brian, which is actually what consciousness is. Consciousness is unobservable. Brain states that happen at the same time in the brain as someone seeing red, are not seeing red. Red itself is indiscribable to another person, other than pointing to something that is red and saying "it looks like that."

Ulitmately, both of his responses are just attempts at dodging the issue. The examples themselves are by no means a practical explanation, but more an illustration of how consciousness is not observable objectively. How it can be conceived that there are physical replicas of ourselves that are merely computers or zombies and not conscious. The only way to observe consciousness is through the first person. And if it cannot be observed physically than it is not a physical property. This was the point when my friend said "what you are explaining is magic." But consciousness undeniably exists. There is experience being had. This clashes hard with his assumption that "if it does not exist in the physically it doesn't exist." But if that were true, then consciousness wouldn't exist. But it does necessarily, by the mere axiom a=a. If it exists it exists.