Explaining Consciousness Provides Physicalism With Challenges That Place Limits On Scientific Knowledge, And What It Can Uncover About Consciousness
Consciousness is one of those topics that are in the position of trying to understand one’s own organism with one’s own organism. The topic of consciousness is so elusive that it mirrors child hood games of trying to catch your own shadow. In the World of philosophy, discerning the truth about consciousness is no childish game. Materialist J.J.C Smart and philosopher Thomas Nagel agree that qualia exist, but are diametrically opposed when it comes to what consciousness is. In this paper I will argue for Nagel’s point of view that consciousness falls outside the nucleus of scientific explanation. Physicalism cannot objectively uncover consciousness using scientific methods because consciousness cannot be reduced to material parts. If Smart’s reductionist view points were correct, where as physics can explain all there is to know about everything in the universe, then why does consciousness seem to evade physical laws of investigation? Explaining consciousness provides physicalism with challenges that place limits on scientific knowledge, and what it can uncover about consciousness.
J.J.C Smart proposes that a scientific explanation of consciousness must fall with in universal physical laws. Furthermore, if science could not explain consciousness within scientific laws, than we would have a problem called a nomological dangler. For Smart, this is unbelievable. It would seem that this move by Smart is one based on scientific bias. The nature of consciousness rests in the experience of the first person account, and if philosophy of mind is to have a complete scientific knowledge of the...
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...the sense that they are easily detectable. Physically looking for something that does not have a physical structure is like trying to get rid of the left by going to the right side. Ultimately, science is looking in the wrong direction because it cannot by default take into consideration first person quotes.
In conclusion, it is very difficult to come up with scientific solutions to the problem of consciousness. Science may never be able to solve the mysteries of qualia. New methods might need to be introduced to uncover personal experience that lie far off in the future. Philosophers will just need to continue in their search for a complete theory of a science of mind. In addition, humility within the sciences may go along way towards an understanding of consciousness. “ We do not know what consciousness means outside the frame of personality”- Albert Einstein
Barbara Montero is an associate professor of philosophy at the City University of New York. In her article “Post-Physicalism” she aims to convince people, mainly physicalists, to begin thinking of the mind/body problem from a new perspective. Montero reasons that the term “physical” is too difficult a term to define, which leads to a serious flaw of the direction of physicalist arguments. Her main idea is that the mind/body problem is really the problem of finding a place for mentality in a fundamentally nonmental world, not a fundamentally physical world. Directing the question towards “Is mentality a fundamental feature of the world?”, in her opinion, relieves the conflict between naturalism and ontological significance, and paves the way
Smart argues from the stance of identity theorist and believes that mental sensations are identical to a corresponding brain-process. Much of Smart’s paper is a counter argument against an identity theorist’s greatest rival, the dualist. Most of the human body has been explained by science in terms of biology, chemistry, and physics; though the brain remains largely mysterious. Recent technological advances regarding the research of the brain has allowed us to understand the mind in much better ways which is why Smart feels “that science is increasingly giving us a viewpoint whereby organisms are able to be seen as physicochemical mechanism” (61). He introduces the concept of Ockham’s razor and feels that scientists use it to introduce simplicity into their theories, which makes their explanations of concepts simpler. This simplicity is preferred because it also adds a sense of beauty to the laws discovered. With regards to his lightning example, Smart highlights how our experience of lightning is the physical process of discharged electrons from the ionization of water vapor in the atmosphere. Important to note here is that the two cannot be separated; you will not have a flash of lightning and then an electric discharge, rather lightning is electric discharge. This metaphor is crucial essay’s argument that sensations are identical to brain-processes. Ockham’s razor eliminates unnecessary nomological danglers from scientific theories, so why not apply the same concept to a theory of mind? We wouldn’t describe in our theory of lightning the ‘flashiness’ or ‘jaggedne...
The philosophical theory of dualism holds that mind and body are two separate entities. While dualism presupposes that the two ‘substances’ may interact, it contrasts physicalism by refusing to denote correlation between body and mind as proof of identity. Comparing the two theories, dualism’s invulnerable proof of the existence of qualia manages to evade arguments from physicalism. While a common argument against qualia—non-physical properties defined in Jackson’s Knowledge Argument—targets the unsound nature of epiphenomenalism, this claim is not fatal to the theory of dualism as it contains claims of causation and fails to stand resolute to the conceivability of philosophical zombies. This essay argues that epiphenomenalism, while often designated as a weakness when present in an argument, can remain in valid arguments from qualia.
In Thomas Nagel’s book, Mind and Cosmos, Nagel argues that physical sciences cannot provide a full picture of life. A few of his arguments are that consciousness is naturally assigned to the brain, [Nagel 35] materialist arguments denying the mind means that the premise is false, [Nagel 15] and lastly, high cognitive functioning such as thinking can only be performed by beings that have a mind. [Nagel 73]
The doctrine of physicalism is a widely discussed philosophical issue in which the mind-body problem is heavily explored. This controversial topic has left philosophers questioning the relationship between mind and matter, and more specifically, consciousness and the brain. There are a number of arguments supporting either side, but two that are rather compelling are Nagel’s What is it like to be a bat? and Jackson’s What Mary didn’t know. These two objections of physicalism use the subjective aspect of experience to suggest that the mind exists as something separate from the brain. Although both of these objections are a challenge physicalism, Nagel’s argument poses more of a threat to it because of his specific use of bats rather than humans. In this paper, I will be discussing how Nagel’s objection is more damaging to the doctrine of physicalism than Jackson’s.
In the articles, “When Do We Become Truly Conscious” by Daniel Bor and “The Future of Consciousness” by Lance Strate, they both share similar approaches to their viewpoints by infusing emotional and scientific evidence to explain their opinions. Even though they share similar approaches, they do not share similar opinions or conclusions. They show their differences in ethics, structural, tonal, and diction variations.
Rosenthal D 2002, 'Explaining Consciousness', in Philosophy of mind classical and contemporary readings,Chalmers D J (eds), Oxford University press, New York
The desire to avoid dualism has been the driving motive behind much contemporary work on the mind-body problem. Gilbert Ryle made fun of it as the theory of 'the ghost in the machine', and various forms of behaviorism and materialism are designed to show that a place can be found for thoughts, sensations, feelings, and other mental phenomena in a purely physical world. But these theories have trouble accounting for consciousness and its subjective qualia. As the science develops and we discover facts, dualism does not seems likely to be true.
Within the realm of philosophy, how creatures operate is a mystery that craves to be solved. Within Paul Churchland’s “Matter and Consciousness”, materialism, functionalism, and eliminative materialism attempt to explain such mystery.
Physicalism is the position that nothing can exceed past what is physically present, and what is physical is all that there can be. This idea is reductive in that it suggests there is no more to the universe than physical matters, including brain processes, sensations, and human consciousness. J.J.C. Smart explains sensations as a means of commentary on a brain process. He believes that, essentially, brain processes and what we report as sensations are essentially the same thing in that one is an account of the other. He writes in “Sensations and Brain Processes” that “…in so far as a sensation statement is a report of something, that something is in fact a brain process. Sensations are nothing over and above brain processes,” (145). Though
"Artificial Intelligence and Consciousness." Encyclopedia of Consciousness. Oxford: Elsevier Science & Technology, 2009. Credo Reference. Web. 26 April 2011.
The 'mind-body' problem has troubled philosophers for centuries. This is because no human being has been able to sufficiently explain how the mind actually works and how this mind relates to the body - most importantly to the brain. If this were not true then there would not be such heated debates on the subject. No one objects to the notion that the Earth revolves around the sun because it is empirical fact. However, there is no current explanation on the mind that can be accepted as fact. In 'What is it like to be a bat?', Thomas Nagel does not attempt to solve this 'problem'. Instead, he attempts to reject the reductionist views with his argument on subjectivity. He examines the difficulties of the mind-body problem by investigating the conscious experience of an organism, which is usually ignored by the reductionists. Unfortunately, his arguments contain some flaws but they do shed some light as to why the physicalist view may never be able to solve the mind-body problem.
With each of our senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, and hear), information is transmitted to the brain. Psychologists find it problematic to explain the processes in which the physical energy that is received by the sense organs can form the foundation of perceptual experience. Perception is not a direct mirroring of stimulus, but a compound messy pattern dependent on the simultaneous activity of neurons. Sensory inputs are somehow converted into perceptions of laptops, music, flowers, food, and cars; into sights, sounds, smells, taste ...
“Consciousness is defined as everything of which we are aware at any given time - our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions of the external environment. Physiological researchers have returned to the study of consciousness, in examining physiological rhythms, sleep, and altered states of consciousness (changes in awareness produced by sleep, meditation, hypnosis, and drugs)” (Wood, 2011, 169). There are five levels of consciousness; Conscious (sensing, perceiving, and choosing), Preconscious (memories that we can access), Unconscious ( memories that we can not access), Non-conscious ( bodily functions without sensation), and Subconscious ( “inner child,” self image formed in early childhood).
The brain has been studied with growing levels of scientific precision for hundreds of years. Many great psychologists, like Sigmund Freud and Wundt, have questioned why we think a certain way and how it makes us feel. They all came up with different ways to answer the question. Some, like John Watson, thought you should only look at what can be directly observed about a person, others focused on a person’s mental behavior, and social scientists hold that our culture plays a pivotal role in shaping how we act or believe. None of them are completely wrong about how we should look at the human mind. We need to look at the mind in all these ways to truly understand its processes. There are 6 main perspectives in psychology that help us deepen