The Why of Consciousness: A Non-issue for Materialists (1996)
By Valerie Gray Hardcastle
In Heil, pp. 798-806
Introduction (798)
A. two kinds of people who study consciousness
1. naturalists or materialists
a. hold that consciousness is part of the physical world
b. not mysterious, though poorly understood
c. believe science will some day explain it
2. skeptics
a. although consciousness may be part of the natural world, it is very mysterious, and perhaps not physical
b. science has not explained why we are conscious
c. three kinds of skeptics:
1.) those who think a scientific theory of consciousness is nearly impossible
2.) those who think a scientific theory of consciousness may be possible, but it will provide little of value
3.) those who are confused and don’t know what to think – e.g. perhaps Chalmers (798, q.v.)
B. Hardcastle falls into the first camp, of materialists
C. she doesn’t think she can convert anyone on the other side, so rather her purpose here is to explain the differences
1. first section, explains her disagreement with Chalmers, argues that consciousness is not a brute fact about the world (798-99)
2. second, explains difference between materialists and skeptics, suggesting that it is something argument cannot settle (799)
3. third, proposes that the difference may lie with different ideas about scientific explanation
I. Hardcastle vs. Chalmers
A. divergence between those who do and those who do not think science can explain consciousness turns on their respective views about what counts as an explanation
1. some, like Hardcastle, Churchland, and others, believe that the way to explain something is to give a causal account
2. the skeptics, like Chalmers, Nagel, McGinn, and Searle believe that such a causal account would leave out why it is that nerve processes produce the qualitative aspects of awareness. (799)
a. that, why Crick and Koch’s neural oscillations should have a qualitative aspect
b. similarly for Baars’s global workspace
B. Although Hardcastle doesn’t believe that anything she could say in defense of materialism could convince the other side, she thinks she can clarify the disagreement between Chalmers and herself (q.v.)
C. Hardcastle’s position
1. consciousness is something physical
2. of Chalmers’s five different research strategies (cf. 624-25)
a. she advocates number 5: isolate the substrate of experience
b. and number 4: explaining the structure of experience (800)
3. if we add to those a third research strategy Chalmers does not include, providing a functional account of the biological advantage of consciousness, we will have a complete account
D. Hardcastle then has us imagine that science has completed only the first step: providing a causal substrate for experience. Call it C.
1. she suspects that this wouldn’t satisfy Chalmers (800)
a. he’d say science hadn’t explained why C should be conscious
b. for Chalmers, a good explanation would make the relationship between C and consciousness seem reasonable, plausible, intelligible. Make it seem less weird.
2. in response, one might simply say that the fact that consciousness is C is just a brute fact about the world
a. it may seem that this is what the naturalists are doing
b. but it is also what Chalmers is doing with his dual aspect theory of information
3. but Hardcastle finds that too simple
a. there are some things that we accept as brute facts and others that we do not
b. but the brute facts we accept tend to be fundamental things, such as that gravity exists
c. but we don’t accept facts like the liquidity of water as brute facts. We expect an explanation in terms of other facts, and these in terms of others, etc., and ultimately in terms of facts that might be brute facts
4. two things: (800)
a. brute facts are relatively few and basic
b. unlikely to included “relatively chauvinistic” biological facts, since these depend on other facts
5. thus, she thinks it is perverse to consider consciousness a brute fact
6. however, Chalmers tries to overcome this problem by denying that consciousness is biological (800-1)
E. contra Chalmers (801)
1. Hardcastle doesn’t think that Chalmers has any good reason to deny that consciousness is biological
2. indeed, his first two principles would seem to support some form of materialism
a. that awareness and consciousness are structurally isomorphic (cf. 632)
b. that two systems with the same functional organization will have the same qualia (cf. 635)
3. and as for his third principle, the dual aspect theory of information, Hardcastle finds it refuted by the data (801)
a. not all information has a phenomenal aspect, insofar as the brain processes quite a bit of information unconsciously
b. Chalmers would have to either deny this that information processing is going on in these cases, or try to argue that we are nevertheless conscious of all these things but without realizing it (801)
c. either of these moves would be implausible and the second in fact runs counter to what Chalmers wants to defend
F. So, Hardcastle thinks we can conclude that consciousness is biological
G. the question, then, is how to make this sound plausible to those who don’t agree
1. Hardcastle says she can’t
2. the problem is a difference in attitude
II. Materialism vs. skepticism (802)
A. returns to example of water being liquid
1. imagine a water-mysterian who wonders why water is wet
2. now suppose this person is not convinced by your explanation in terms of the molecular constitution of water
a. it’s not that they doubt the truth of what you say
b. but rather, they ask why water has to be H2O, why it can’t be something else. They can imagine a possible world in which water has some other chemical composition
3. Chalmers and Kripke would argue that one can’t really imagine that water is something else. Water = H2O is a conceptual truth (802)
4. Hardcastle says that if there are people who are unconvinced and insist that they can imagine water that is not H2O, there is nothing you can say to such people.
a. they find the wetness of water mysterious
b. no amount of science can dispel that sense of mystery about the wateriness of water
B. of course, there probably are no water-mysterians
C. so she turns to the example of life-mysterians
1. the life-mysterian wonders what makes living things alive
2. this person is not satisfied by your molecular and evolutionary biology explanations
a. would claim that you haven’t explained the aliveness of life
b. would ask why life couldn’t be caused by something else, such as a soul, or exist in another possible world, where there is no DNA, etc.
3. Again, Hardcastle finds that there is nothing you can really say to such people. No amount of science will ever dispel their feeling that life is just mysterious (803)
D. now she turns to consciousness-mysterians, such as Chalmers
1. she finds them no different than the first two cases:
a. already previously convinced of the mysteriousness of consciousness and no amount of scientific evidence will change their minds
b. either you already believe that science will explain it, or you don’t
2. for instance, Chalmers says experience is not entailed by the physical and will ask why the performance of cognitive tasks should be accompanied by consciousness (q.v.)
3. Hardcastle’s response to the consciousness-mysterians is that it’s their ideas that are at fault, not the scientific method. They fail to appreciate the world as it is.
4. again, what can you say to people who insist that science is incapable of explaining consciousness? It’s like trying to convince the religious that souls don’t exist.
E. consciousness is no more mysterious to Hardcastle than the wetness of water or the aliveness of life: they’re all sort of strange, and it is interesting to see how science explains them (803, q.v.)
III. Explanation (804)
A. Perhaps she is being unfair and the case of consciousness is different
1. water-mysterianism is implausible because our understanding of H2O fits within a larger scientific framework
2. life-mysterianism is implausible for similar reasons
3. but perhaps consciousness is different, because there is no suitable larger scientific framework in which to fit our understanding of it
B. however, even if this argument were correct, all that follows from it is that we’ll have to wait and see how the science develops
C. as an aside, she argues that it is no good to appeal to intuitions about what seems reasonable
1. for instance, it might seem reasonable that the universe is Euclidean, but it isn’t
2. such intuitions change over the course of time
3. at present, we just don’t know enough about the brain to have well-founded intuitions
D. Nevertheless, although there is a great deal we don’t know about the brain, there is a great deal we do know
1. we have discovered striking parallels between phenomenal experience and brain processes through brain lesions (804-5, and note 4 for examples, q.v.)
2. we also know about the effects of chemicals on the brain (805)
E. Perhaps more science will change the minds of people like Chalmers, but she doubts it, because the difference between her and people like him concerns their views on what it means to explain consciousness
F. Explanations are social things
1. that is, they are meant for a certain audience who shares a certain framework
2. if you don’t buy into the materialists’ framework, their explanations won’t satisfy you.
a. Similarly, if you don’t accept the rules of the game, the game makes no sense.
b. that is not to say that if you buy in, you will agree with all these explanation. Rather, it is just that you will regard them as the right sort of explanation, that is, as scientific explanations.
G. within her materialist framework, explanations in the cognitive and biological sciences just are a matter of finding the parallels between the phenomena and physical processes (805, see examples)
1. so, to explain consciousness is to find the parallels between brain processes and phenomenal experience (806)
2. others, such as Chalmers, simply have different criteria for explanation