In2-MeC

Sridhama Mayapur, West Bengal, India
24 February 2004

Gaura Purnima is Coming!
(6 March 2004, Gaurabda 518)

 

The Bias at the Heart of Mechanistic Science

So this is the opinion of the modern scientists or the Buddha philosophy, that soul, there is nothing like soul separately, but by combination of matter, at a certain stage, the living symptoms are manifest. And as it is combination of several chemicals, so it is also finished as soon as the body is finished. There is no, nothing as soul. That is their opinion. [Bhagavad-gita lecture, 30 November 1972, Hyderbad, India]

In my In2-MeC entry for 11 February I pointed to the attempt of modern science to answer questions that for millenia have been raised by philosophers and theologians. Yet most scientists today are not trained in philosophical and theological thinking, which is prominently introspective. As a matter of fact, scientists are often impatient with introspection. They put their faith in "facts" that can be demonstrated within the perview of sense perception.

Well, speaking of demonstrations, I'll try to demonstrate to you how this works. I'll do this by first introducing you to a paper entitled "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness", written by David J. Chalmers, a professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona in Tucson. His paper was first published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies 2(3):200-19, 1995. I'll offer some key points from Chalmers' paper and then give you a summary. After that we shall consider what a man of modern science has to say about Chalmers' ideas.

What is quoted below are some paragraphs selected from "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness. " The original text is a good deal longer. But hopefully you'll be able to get Chalmers' basic position on the nature of consciousness just by reading these excerpts:

Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing that is harder to explain. All sorts of mental phenomena have yielded to scientific investigation in recent years, but consciousness has stubbornly resisted. Many have tried to explain it, but the explanations always seem to fall short of the target. Some have been led to suppose that the problem is intractable, and that no good explanation can be given.

The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but there is also a subjective aspect. As Nagel (1974) has put it, there is something it is like to be a conscious organism. This subjective aspect is experience. When we see, for example, we experience visual sensations: the felt quality of redness, the experience of dark and light, the quality of depth in a visual field. Other experiences go along with perception in different modalities: the sound of a clarinet, the smell of mothballs. Then there are bodily sensations, from pains to orgasms; mental images that are conjured up internally; the felt quality of emotion, and the experience of a stream of conscious thought. What unites all of these states is that there is something it is like to be in them. All of them are states of experience.

Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? A simple explanation of the functions leaves this question open.

. . . if someone says "I can see that you have explained how information is discriminated, integrated, and reported, but you have not explained how it is experienced", they are not making a conceptual mistake. This is a nontrivial further question.

This further question is the key question in the problem of consciousness. Why doesn't all this information-processing go on "in the dark", free of any inner feel? Why is it that when electromagnetic waveforms impinge on a retina and are discriminated and categorized by a visual system, this discrimination and categorization is experienced as a sensation of vivid red? We know that conscious experience does arise when these functions are performed, but the very fact that it arises is the central mystery. There is an explanatory gap (a term due to Levine 1983) between the functions and experience, and we need an explanatory bridge to cross it. A mere account of the functions stays on one side of the gap, so the materials for the bridge must be found elsewhere.

This is not to say that experience has no function. Perhaps it will turn out to play an important cognitive role. But for any role it might play, there will be more to the explanation of experience than a simple explanation of the function.

The first strategy is simply to explain something else. Some researchers are explicit that the problem of experience is too difficult for now, and perhaps even outside the domain of science altogether. These researchers instead choose to address one of the more tractable problems such as reportability or the self-concept. Although I have called these problems the "easy" problems, they are among the most interesting unsolved problems in cognitive science, so this work is certainly worthwhile. The worst that can be said of this choice is that in the context of research on consciousness it is relatively unambitious, and the work can sometimes be misinterpreted.

The second choice is to take a harder line and deny the phenomenon. (Variations on this approach are taken by Allport 1988, Dennett 1991, and Wilkes 1988. ) According to this line, once we have explained the functions such as accessibility, reportability, and the like, there is no further phenomenon called "experience" to explain. Some explicitly deny the phenomenon, holding for example that what is not externally verifiable cannot be real. Others achieve the same effect by allowing that experience exists, but only if we equate "experience" with something like the capacity to discriminate and report. These approaches lead to a simpler theory, but are ultimately unsatisfactory. Experience is the most central and manifest aspect of our mental lives, and indeed is perhaps the key explanandum in the science of the mind. Because of this status as an explanandum, experience cannot be discarded like the vital spirit when a new theory comes along. Rather, it is the central fact that any theory of consciousness must explain. A theory that denies the phenomenon "solves" the problem by ducking the question.

In a third option, some researchers claim to be explaining experience in the full sense. These researchers (unlike those above) wish to take experience very seriously; they lay out their functional model or theory, and claim that it explains the full subjective quality of experience (e. g. Flohr 1992, Humphrey 1992). The relevant step in the explanation is usually passed over quickly, however, and usually ends up looking something like magic. After some details about information processing are given, experience suddenly enters the picture, but it is left obscure how these processes should suddenly give rise to experience. Perhaps it is simply taken for granted that it does, but then we have an incomplete explanation and a version of the fifth strategy below.

A fourth, more promising approach appeals to these methods to explain the structure of experience. For example, it is arguable that an account of the discriminations made by the visual system can account for the structural relations between different color experiences, as well as for the geometric structure of the visual field (see e. g. , Clark 1992 and Hardin 1992). In general, certain facts about structures found in processing will correspond to and arguably explain facts about the structure of experience. This strategy is plausible but limited. At best, it takes the existence of experience for granted and accounts for some facts about its structure, providing a sort of nonreductive explanation of the structural aspects of experience (I will say more on this later). This is useful for many purposes, but it tells us nothing about why there should be experience in the first place.

A fifth and reasonable strategy is to isolate the substrate of experience. After all, almost everyone allows that experience arises one way or another from brain processes, and it makes sense to identify the sort of process from which it arises. Crick and Koch put their work forward as isolating the neural correlate of consciousness, for example, and Edelman (1989) and Jackendoff (1988) make related claims. Justification of these claims requires a careful theoretical analysis, especially as experience is not directly observable in experimental contexts, but when applied judiciously this strategy can shed indirect light on the problem of experience. Nevertheless, the strategy is clearly incomplete. For a satisfactory theory, we need to know more than which processes give rise to experience; we need an account of why and how. A full theory of consciousness must build an explanatory bridge.

At the end of the day, the same criticism applies to any purely physical account of consciousness. For any physical process we specify there will be an unanswered question: Why should this process give rise to experience? Given any such process, it is conceptually coherent that it could be instantiated in the absence of experience. It follows that no mere account of the physical process will tell us why experience arises. The emergence of experience goes beyond what can be derived from physical theory.

Although a remarkable number of phenomena have turned out to be explicable wholly in terms of entities simpler than themselves, this is not universal. In physics, it occasionally happens that an entity has to be taken as fundamental. Fundamental entities are not explained in terms of anything simpler. Instead, one takes them as basic, and gives a theory of how they relate to everything else in the world. For example, in the nineteenth century it turned out that electromagnetic processes could not be explained in terms of the wholly mechanical processes that previous physical theories appealed to, so Maxwell and others introduced electromagnetic charge and electromagnetic forces as new fundamental components of a physical theory. To explain electromagnetism, the ontology of physics had to be expanded. New basic properties and basic laws were needed to give a satisfactory account of the phenomena.

Other features that physical theory takes as fundamental include mass and space-time. No attempt is made to explain these features in terms of anything simpler. But this does not rule out the possibility of a theory of mass or of space-time. There is an intricate theory of how these features interrelate, and of the basic laws they enter into. These basic principles are used to explain many familiar phenomena concerning mass, space, and time at a higher level.

I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take experience as fundamental. We know that a theory of consciousness requires the addition of something fundamental to our ontology, as everything in physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness. We might add some entirely new nonphysical feature, from which experience can be derived, but it is hard to see what such a feature would be like. More likely, we will take experience itself as a fundamental feature of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. If we take experience as fundamental, then we can go about the business of constructing a theory of experience.

Summary:

Dr. Chalmers is a dualist, meaning that he believes there are two irreducible principles, matter and consciousness. The experience of my self's existence, and my self's field of consciousness in which things other than my self are perceived, cannot be explained by talking about physical phenomena--even the phenomena within my body's sense organs, nervous system, and brain. Any phenomena we wish to discuss, we must first be conscious of. This is the meaning of "consciousness is irreducible. " It is not very logical to argue that consciousness reduces to brain functions when first I have to be conscious of what a brain is in order to be able to say anything about it. Whatever we know--even the hard facts of science--begins with pure experience.

If we compare Dr. Chalmer's dualism to Vedic philosophy, we have to conclude that he is in the camp of the Sankhya philosophers. The word sankhya means "to count"; these philosophers count two ultimate realities, prakrti (matter) and purusa (spirit). The Bhagavat Sankhya philosophy of Devahuti-putra Kapiladeva also teaches about prakrti and purusa, but concludes that they are controlled by Lord Vasudeva, the Personality of Godhead. In Bhagavat Sankhya philosophy, the ultimate reality is therefore one: the Lord alone. In Nirisvara (atheistic) Sankhya, matter and spirit cooperate independently of any higher controller. On this view, ultimate reality is a dualism. Dr. Chalmers does not go farther than the Nirisvara Sankhya conception.

Still, Chalmers' contention that consciousness cannot be reduced to matter means that he is in disagreement with the gross materialism professed by many scientists. And this perturbs them. I told you in the beginning of today's entry that I'd demonstrate how this works. Have a look at the following criticism of Dr. Chalmers' position. It is published on the Internet under the name of Max Velmans. As with the Chalmers essay, only key portions of the Velmans essay are reproduced here.

It was enough for me to just read David Chalmers' article "The Puzzle of Conscious Experience" in Scientific American December 1995, pages 80-86.

Chalmers is a dualist. Human kind has grown up with dualism, we are all naturally dualists: the mechanistic basis of our thoughts is invisible to our introspection and casual powers of observation. Even now that objective scientific investigation of the human brain has allowed us to understand that mind is just a functional consequence of complex brain activity, even now dualism remains a persistent meme. Chalmers is not alone in his dualism, but he is innovative in trying to construct a modern form of dualism upon which a modern career in philosophy can be built.

Let me interrupt Mr. Max Velmens at this point to make a comment. In 11 February In2-MeC I quoted some passages from a book entitled The Unnatural Nature of Science by London biology professor Lewis Wolpert, who argues that science does not respect the rules of philosophy or even common sense. The paragraph cited above serves as an illustration of this. Here Velmens states that human beings are naturally dualists. Thus he admits that it is human nature to distinguish between matter and consciousness. Certainly those who are Godly in their thinking will be happy to agree with him; furthermore they will add that it is the Lord's kindness that human beings naturally gravitate to dualism, because that viveka (discrimination) is a step toward spiritual life. But Velmens is in a priori denial that the human tendency to dualism is any kind of advantage at all. He all but says that science proves that the mind or consciousness is a functional consequence of complex brain activity. Now, it is simply not true that science proves any such thing. But by choosing his words carefully, Velmens makes a statement of faith appear to be a statement of fact. In the last sentence of the above paragraph, he begins a pugnacious dismissal of philosophy that reminds me of Lewis Wolpert's comment that "the physicist who is a quantum mechanic has no more knowledge of philosophy than the average car mechanic. "

Let's continue looking at what Velmens has to say about Chalmers' philosophical dualism.

This is an audacious surgical splitting of the both mind and brain into two essentially different parts. If we accept Chalmers' claim that his is the proper way to approach the problem of mind then we can follow him on a wild and mysterious ride, a ride likely to be long enough to sustain a modern career in philosophy. But what if we do not accept Chalmers' assumption that this is a reasonable way to approach the problem? How should we decide the question of whether the mind actually adheres to Chalmers' dualistic classification scheme?

To start our evaluation of Chalmers' approach to the mind, we can compare it to that of other investigators of the mind. According to Chalmers, introspection is a corner stone of the study of mind: "For a start, each one of us has access to our own experiences. " Clearly, the human brain, the sole source of our subjective theater of experience, does not have any direct means of learning about the material basis of its own activity. In short, subjective experience sucks as a source of reliable knowledge about the brain.

In the above paragraph Velmers offers us a chance to buy into logic of a type that is called cakraka in Sanskrit, or in English, "circular argumentation. " He says that the human brain is the sole source of our subjective experience. (And how do you know that, Mr. Velmens? Because, as I mentioned above, first you have to gain experience of the brain before you can declare it the sole source of whatever. First experience, then brain. ) He goes on to say that the experience generated by the brain is not a reliable source of knowledge about the brain. Oh, my. By this Velmens is suggesting that science has access to knowlege outside of subjective experience. This is an appeal to the objective reality that I wrote about in several In2-MeC entries last December. As I pointed out then, at some point objective reality (i. e. that which we can physically measure "out there" in the world) turns out to indistinguishable from consensus reality (that which some group of human beings agree upon, i. e. a "reality" that is socially, culturally and, yes, scientifically constructed). And so, at the end of the day, a careful investigatation of the processes of human knowledge reveals that objective reality manifests out of consensus reality--these two "realities" being more or less the same thing--while consensus reality turns out to be nothing but a collection of subjective experiences! Velmens is just talking in a big circle.

Velmens continues:

What else does Chalmers rely upon for insight into mind? "Philosophical arguments and thought experiments also have a role to play. " Gee, such an arsenal. I supose it warms Chalmers' heart to imagine a long career unfolding before him during which these rapier investigative tools will have no chance of solving the mystery of mind.

Here Velmens is arguing that philosophers employ methods that come to no certain conclusion. The reason philosophers do that is to simply sustain their careers as philosophers. But Mr. Velmens, how are scientists any different? Let's see what he has to say about that.

Compare Chalmers' approach to that of neuroscientists like Francis Crick and Christof Koch who propose to, "Concentrate on the processes in the brain that are most directly responsible for consciousness. " I am on their side: experimental investigation of the brain is what we need. It is astounding that anyone even vaguely familiar with the history of science could still fail to see the comparative sterility of introspection and philosophizing as compared to objective experimental investigation.

"Have faith in scientists, not philosophers. " That's what Velmens has to say. Why? "Scientists are working hard on the problem of consciousness, philosophers are just speculating. Sure, science has no certain answer to the problem yet, but you can bank on it right now that an answer will be found, later. Just be reasonable and give our fellows in the laboratory the time they need. "

Srila Prabhupada said,

All rascals. Mayaya apahrta-jnanah. They appear to be very learned, but maya has killed them already. They have no knowledge. Mayaya apahrta-jnanah. Just see. Why? Asuram bhavam asritah. Life is created by God. They'll not accept. "Life is created from dirt. " That's all. Mayaya apahrta-jnanah. Where is the instance that you create life by chemicals? "That we shall see in the future. " Kick him immediately on his face with boot. Rascal. Will you accept any check, "It will be paid in future?" Will you accept? So why shall I accept this rascal's theory? If somebody gives me check, one million dollar, payable three hundred years after, shall I be inclined to accept such check? So why these fools accepting this post-dated check?

Next Velmers bares his fangs:

In discussing the crass mechanical functioning of brains Chalmers claims, "Nobody knows why these physical processes are accompanied by conscious experiences at all. " Is this really the great mystery that Chalmers makes it out to be? Chalmers sounds like the thousands of philosophers, their asses firmly held to the ground by gravity, who have gazed up in the sky at the planets and smugly concluded, "Nobody will ever know what mysterious force guides the planets through the sky. " Chalmers is so convinced that explanations of subjective experience are inherently mysterious that he refuses to make the Newtonian leap of imagination.

Well, Newton believed in God. So did Einstein. No doubt they were highly imaginative men of science, but neither was so bold as to claim that God could be explained away by physical laws. Chalmers is similarly saying that consciousness cannot be explained away by physical laws. But one remark of Velmers does strike true: that by Chalmers' method of knowledge, consciousness cannot be explained at all. Remember, Chalmers tells us that in trying to understand what consciousness is by his philosophical method,

We might add some entirely new nonphysical feature, from which experience can be derived, but it is hard to see what such a feature would be like. More likely, we will take experience itself as a fundamental feature of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. If we take experience as fundamental, then we can go about the business of constructing a theory of experience.

He seems willing to entertain a proposal of something nonphysical (like the spirit soul?) to explain consciousness, "but it is heard to see what such a feature would be like. " Chalmers' own position is simply that we have to accept consciousness as an irreducible principle. After that he can envision someone constructing a theory of conscious experience. But it is hard to see what such a theory would be like, because as Chalmers goes to great lengths to explain in his paper, consciousness is "the hard problem. "

I'll point out here that consciousness is hard for scientists and philosophers to explain because an investigator of consciousness quickly comes face to face with a "why?" question: "Why are we conscious?" If the investigator turns away from the "why?" question, insisting that consciousness is just a "how?" question--"How are we conscious?"--his method of inquiry again and again leads him back to the mechanics of matter: to brain functions and the like. Chalmers argues that this functional approach (i. e. asking "how?") is too easy. Agreed, but in the absence of metaphysical truth, who will answer the "why?" question with any finality? (The word metaphysical comes from the Greek ta meta ta physika, "those beyond the physics", or knowledge that transcends the mechanics of matter. ) Velmers, a materialist, is not happy with the prospect of philosophers making careers out of metaphysical speculation because history shows that they come to no tangible conclusion. Understandable, but what Velmers fails to see is that science--which is equipped only to deal with "how?" problems--likewise cannot explain consciousness.

It seems to me that Velmers is, in a sense, more a man of faith than Chalmers is. He really believes science will explain what consciousness really is one day. Chalmers on the other hand is a man of experience. His argument is that when it comes to consciousness, we know what we experience, and very likely that's all we can know (though we may theorize so many things). Even Velmens admits that what we know through experience is dualism: consciousness is different from matter.

This brings us again to the unnatural nature of science. Velmens agrees that dualism is natural. But he thinks we should use our imagination to find a "scientific" way of demonstrating that the difference between consciousness and physical brain functions is only an illusion. Isn't it more natural to use the imagination to scientifically demonstrate that the apparent dependence of consciousness upon physical brain functions is an illusion? No, the hard knot of faith in materialism at the core of the rascal scientist's heart will never permit that. If an investigator with scientific credentials offers evidence that consciousness continues after the clinical death of brain functions, the rascal scientist will strain his imagination to demonstrate that such evidence is all illusion.

Velmens' conclusion is laughable:

In another 10 or 20 years we will be able to present Chalmers with a theory of how brain memory processes construct subjective experiences. Newton constructed his theory of gravitation based on a few simple measurements and calculations. The brain is vastly more complex, but we have no need to suspect incredibly deep mysteries. If we roll up our sleeves and keep our young students of the mind busy in neuroscience labs studying the brain, we may even be able to send Chalmers into an early retirement. And we won't even have to rely upon physicists finding "experience" as a fundamental property of the universe, just a fancy tool brains have evolved for getting the next meal. Gee, maybe that's where Chalmers got the idea of making a career out of the philosophy of subjective experience.

Yes, here we are again with the religion of evolution staring us in the face. "Experience" (the inverted commas suggest this word doesn't mean much) is just a fancy tool that brains have evolved for getting the next meal. Wow. That is mysticism. One day a long time ago a sponge of flesh inside some primate's skull just started working in a different way to cook up what we now call the human consciousn experience. And why? To find answers to questions like "Who am I?", "Where does everything come from?", "What is the purpose of life?", and "Why am I suffering in this life?" Oh, no. It's all just a way of getting the next meal. Velmens uses this glib argument to cancel the validity of the philosophy of subjective experience. But the same argument cancels his own science of brain functions also! If the brain evolved consciousness just as a means of filling the belly, then why waste time trying to figure out how it happened? Just go fill your belly. Oh, sorry--that's why neuroscientists make a career out of studying the brain, right? Just to get their next meal.

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