Abstract
On the assumption that phenomenal consciousness (the what-it-is-like) is real, and ruling out Cartesian isolation from the non-mental world, we have two choices for its introduction: either it comes about in the course of the development of the non-conscious realm or it was there from the beginning. The latter comprises versions of panpsychism, a recently trending view in some quarters. In their view the former are broadly taken to be versions of emergentism, embracing even non-eliminatiivist materialisms. After producing what seem to me to be powerful objections to panpsychism, I defend emergentism against pansychist attacks on it. As I explain, my version is also dualist. Finally, with respect to both outlooks I briefly review the prospects of a rapidly advancing AI for expanding (or replacing!) the current population of natural mental subjects.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
My thanks to Phil Atkins for bringing this to my attention.
- 2.
See Seager and Allen-Hermanson (2010) and Van Gulick (2001). (In Philip Goff’s substantial revision of the Seagar and Allen-Hermanson entry, this dichotomy is no longer part of the exposition, but it is not repudiated, and panpsychists widely regard the options this way although their titles for the non-panpsychist alternative may vary.)
- 3.
And not them alone. This is a staple of non-radical emergentists of every stripe. For example, (non-monist) Colin McGinn writes “It is implausible to take these correlations as ultimate and inexplicable facts, as simply brute. And we do not want to acknowledge radical emergence for the conscious with respect to the cerebral.. ..” (McGinn 1989, p. 353).
- 4.
(b) marks yet another difference from Cartesianism.
- 5.
The eventual combined law PV/T = k, with T as temperature in kelvins and k a constant of units of energy divided by temperature.
- 6.
Questions have been raised about each of these ways of characterizing the things themselves. For present purposes as long as we agree that there are also non-relational properties/things, we can bypass disputes over the best way to explicate intrinsicality.
- 7.
As George Theiner and Mark Bickhard brought to my attention, this isn’t a problem for process theories. But that view opens up a host of much wider issues that aren’t factors in the views currently under consideration.
- 8.
On the other hand, Galen Strawson (2008) holds that this makes CAs themselves material. For more on this see below.
- 9.
Cf. Carl Hempel (1965, p. 260).
- 10.
This notion comes out of Chalmers’s two dimensional semantics, demanding that the designator be rigid both epistemically and metaphysically. We need not say more about that refinement. I mention it here simply to bring out the epistemic – that is, a priori – part of the appeal to a priori entailment. It plays no further role in the points under consideration.
- 11.
None of this speaks against (or for) monist proposals that are not attempts to support (ii).
- 12.
However, in this section’s last two paragraphs I shall comment briefly on the respective debating positions of emergentism’s physicalist and dualist forms.
- 13.
This term is employed by the hesitant panpsychist William Seager (1995).
- 14.
Widespread disparagement of brute relations is discussed in Vision (2018). Much of the discussion of the next few pages summarizes that more detailed treatment.
- 15.
Nothing novel here. In a celebrated passage John Tyndall wrote “Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously: we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from one to the other” (1897, p. 87).
- 16.
- 17.
Turing (1950) may be suggesting either that behavior delivers the answer or that a less ambitious question about behavior should replace it with the only real (or intelligible) one. (I take the original question to be kosher, but don’t try to answer it behaviorally.) This doesn’t prevent Turing from hypothesizing that conscious experience is only a matter of storage capacity, which would make him an emergentist.
- 18.
Given the trove, we may ask why those who have undergone cataract surgery, replacing their organic lens with a plastic one, are having genuine, rather than ersatz visual experiences. Given trove of empirical data at hand, why has this sort of case been near-universally ignored in these debates?
References
Chalmers, D. (1996). The conscious mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chalmers, D. J. (2002). Consciousness and its place in nature. In Philosophy of mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chalmers, D. (2012). Constructing the world. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chalmers, D. (2015). Panpsychism and panprotpsychism. In Alter, T. and Nagasawa, Y. (Eds.), Consciousness in the physical world: Perspectives on Russellian monism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Chomsky, N. (1968). Language and mind (enlarged edition). New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Hempel, C. G. (1965). Studies in the logic of explanation. In Aspects of scientific explanation. New York: The Free Press.
Hume, D. (1739). A treatise of human nature.
James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology (Vol. 1). Henry Holt.
Kim, J. (2000). Mind in a physical world. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lewis, D. (2009). Ramseyan humility. In D. Braddon-Mictchell & R. Nola (Eds.), Conceptual analysis and philosophical naturalism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Locke, J. (1700). An essay concerning human understanding (4th ed.).
McGinn, C. (1989). Can we solve the mind-body problem? Mind, 98, 349–366.
Montero, B. G. (2015). Russellian physicalism. In Alter, T. and Nagasawa, Y. (Eds.), Consciousness in the physical world: Perspectives on Russellian monism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nagel, T. (1974). What it is like to be a bat. The Philosophical Review, 83, 435–450.
Russell, B. (1918). On the notion of cause. In Mysticism and logic (pp. 171–196). London: George Allen & Unwin.
Russell, B. (1927). The analysis of matter. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner.
Schneider, S. (2017). Idealism or something near enough. In K. Pearce & T. Goldschmidt (Eds.), Idealism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Seager, W. (1995). Consciousness, information and panpsychism. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2, 272–288.
Seager, W., & Allen-Hermanson, S. (2010). Panpsychism. In Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/.
Stoljar, D. (2001). Two conceptions of the physical. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 62, 253–281.
Strawson, G. (2008). Real materialism and other essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Turing, A. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 59, 433–460.
Tyndall, J. (1897). Fragments of science,: A series of detached essays, addresses, and reviews (Vol. 2). New York: D. Appleton.
Van Gulick, R. (2001). Reduction, emergence and other recent options on the mind-body problem. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 8(9–10), 1–34.
Vision, G. (2018). The provenance of consciousness. In E. Vitaliadis & C. Mekos (Eds.), Brute facts (pp. 155–176). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Vision, G. (2021). Consciousness: Philosophy’s Great White Whale. In: Clowes, R.W., Gärtner, K., Hipólito, I. (eds) The Mind-Technology Problem . Studies in Brain and Mind, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72644-7_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72644-7_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-72643-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-72644-7
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)