This little thought experiment clearly illustrates that all conceivable structure and function of conscious beings can, in principle, and under materialist assumptions, be achieved without consciousness. Therefore, evolutionarily speaking, consciousness just shouldn’t be there. Yet, materialists keep trying to argue otherwise. Case in point: neurologist and militant materialist Steven Novella, while implicitly acknowledging the existence of subjective experience, argued that there are at least three survival advantages for brains to have evolved it:56
1. The brain needs to pay attention to certain things and subjective experience is required for attention.
2. The brain needs a way to distinguish a memory from an active experience. Therefore, memories and active experiences must ‘feel’ different.
3. Behavior conducive to survival requires motivation and, therefore, conscious emotion.
All three are incoherent arguments within the framework and logic of materialism itself. Under materialism, attention has absolutely nothing to do with a need for consciousness. It is simply a mechanism by means of which an organism focuses its limited cognitive resources on priority tasks or functions. Computer operating systems do this all the time – using techniques like interrupts, queuing, task scheduling, etc. – in a purely algorithmic manner that doesn’t require any of the associated computations to be accompanied by experience.57 Regarding point 2, and still under the assumptions of materialism, there are countless ways to identify, classify and differentiate data without anything ‘feeling’ anything. Computers do this all the time as well, without being conscious. Does your home computer have trouble separating photos of last year’s holidays from the live feed of your webcam? Information streams from memory and active experience can simply be tagged or routed in different ways so the brain – assumed to be akin to a computer under materialism – never mixes them up. What would be easier to evolve: mere data tagging or the inexplicable property of becoming conscious? Finally, point 3: motivation does not require emotion or any sort of subjective experience. Within the logic of materialism, motivation is simply a calculation; the output of an algorithm tasked with maximizing gain while minimizing risk. As any computation, it doesn’t need to be accompanied by experience in order to be functionally efficacious. Novella’s attempt to present consciousness as something ‘natural’ or ‘advantageous’ within the framework of Darwinian evolution fails internal logic.
You see, whichever way one looks at it, consciousness is an unsolvable anomaly under materialism: we can neither explain how it is generated, nor why it evolved. Unfortunately for materialists, this one anomaly is also the very matrix of all knowledge and the carrier of everyone’s reality!
So you may now ask: ‘How do you, Bernardo, solve the hard problem then?’ My solution is simple: there is no ‘hard problem’ to begin with; it is merely a linguistic and conceptual construction. If you think that this is precisely what eliminative materialists say, you are right! But there is a twist: I don’t absurdly deny the existence of consciousness. Allow me to elaborate.
An entire universe fundamentally outside consciousness is an inference – an explanatory model – not an empirical observation. Our failure to explain consciousness itself on the basis of this inference is the ‘hard problem.’ As such, the ‘hard problem’ is the result of our getting lost in conceptual labyrinths of our own making. It has no existence outside our own mentation. We, as a culture, find ourselves now in the strange position of having to explain how abstractions of consciousness generate consciousness. Such a circular problem, of course, can never be solved! We’re just chasing our own tails at light speed.
Every theory of nature must grant at least one free miracle: a primary entity. This is so because we can’t explain one thing in terms of another, and that in terms of another, and then another, forever. At some point, we hit rock-bottom and encounter one or more entities that we simply cannot explain, but in terms of which we can explain all the rest of reality. Thus, the best theories of nature postulate the smallest possible number of primary entities and then explain as much as possible on that basis. Materialism requires several primary entities, like the irreducible, abstract subatomic particles of the Standard Model of particle physics. It then succeeds in explaining many ancillary aspects of reality in terms of these abstract particles, but fundamentally fails to explain the most obvious and concrete one: consciousness itself. This is a double whammy that renders materialism highly problematic as a metaphysics. Despite requiring multiple primary entities, it still fails to explain consciousness, which for all we know is all there is.
I propose that the self-evident alternative is to take consciousness itself as the sole primary entity of reality. This has been staring us in the face from the moment we were born. Not only is it a parsimonious choice by requiring a single primary entity, it completely avoids the ‘hard problem’ without absurdly denying the very existence of consciousness. As discussed in essay 2.1, we can then explain all other aspects of reality solely in terms of excitations of consciousness, somewhat analogously to how quantum field theorists attempt to explain reality in terms of excitations of a postulated quantum vacuum.58 Even the leading-edge mathematical apparatus of physics can be ported straightforwardly onto this view by taking consciousness itself to be, for instance, the hyper-dimensional ‘brane’ of M-theory.59
Because the notion that the brain generates consciousness is so deeply inculcated in our culture, my proposal is bound to raise many questions. Many people may even consider it excessively counterintuitive, since reality at large seems to be so disconnected from our inner lives. All these questions, however, can be answered rationally, coherently and in an empirically honest manner, as done in essay 2.2. We, as a 21st century society, deserve better than the convoluted, mad systems of abstraction that keep materialism alive. We deserve to restore our connection to reality.
3.2. The incredible trick of disappearing consciousness
Explaining consciousness remains a vexing failure in science and philosophy today. How can the warmth of love, the bitterness of disappointment, the redness of an apple, the sweetness of strawberries be explained in terms of mass, momentum, charge or any of the attributes of matter? How can concrete qualities be explained in terms of abstract quantities and relationships? Nobody has an answer to this, and not for lack of trying. Such failure to solve the so-called ‘hard problem of consciousness’ has led to a bizarre twist in philosophy of mind over the past three decades or so: the trick of disappearing consciousness. In a nutshell, it consists of this: since we cannot explain consciousness in terms of unconscious matter, it must be the case that consciousness is an illusion.
In a book inaccurately titled Consciousness Explained,60 as well as in a talk titled The Magic of Consciousness, Philosopher Daniel Dennett shows that many of our perceptions and beliefs do not correspond to consensus facts. He parades a whole list of perceptual illusions to make his point. This, he suggests, chips away at what we call ‘consciousness’ and may eventually lead to the conclusion that there is nothing there; that the notion of consciousness will disappear once we understand all the tricks employed by the brain. It’s difficult to see how illusions of and in consciousness can suggest the non-existence of consciousness – I tend to believe they suggest the opposite – but bear with me. Although Dennett claims explicitly that consciousness is an illusion,61 he doesn’t close his argument: he remains unable to actually explain how some perceptual illusions – particular contents of consciousness – could possibly imply the non-existence of consciousness itself.
Despite this, Dennett is far from alone in claiming that consciousness is an illusion. Other magicians suggest the same thing in mainstream video documentaries,62 some of which provide a rather sobering peek into the surreal state of our culture. Indeed, I often wonder how the mainstream media can so consistently get away with in-your-face incoherence. I guess it has to do with the fact that people tend to get bewildered by authority figures telling them that the
ir most fundamental intuitions about reality are wrong. There is some kind of dazzlingly ‘wow’ factor about this. Yet, sometimes, counter-intuitiveness is simply what it seems to be: a sign of utter intellectual confusion. The media seems to be filling the vacuum left by the incomprehensible wonder of religion with the incomprehensible wonder of scientific and philosophical folly. All the airtime dedicated to unprovable theories about parallel universes, as well as to all kinds of science fiction marketed as science possibility, seems to be part of this broader pattern. But I digress.
Let us try to remain lucid. If consciousness is indeed an illusion, who or what exactly is having the illusion? Where can the illusion reside if not in consciousness itself? After all, if the illusion weren’t in consciousness, we couldn’t be talking about it, could we? Moreover, the supposed non-existence of consciousness simply does not follow from the observation that certain perceptions or beliefs fail to correspond to consensus facts. If anything, what does follow is that there is such a thing as consciousness, where the illusions pointed out can reside. Dennett suggests that, if enough aspects of experience are found to lack any correspondence with consensus fact, consciousness will be shown to be inexistent. This is wholly illogical: even if we find one day that everything we experience fails to correspond to consensus fact, that will simply show that consciousness is populated with illusions. It will leave consciousness itself intact. We are still conscious of illusions, in exactly the same way that we are conscious of our dreams.
To try to escape the inescapable, magicians appeal to a kind of word dance that philosopher Galen Strawson called ‘looking-glassing’: to use the word ‘consciousness’ in such a way that, whatever one means by it, it isn’t what the word actually denotes.63 What could motivate this kind of semantic obscurantism? If we carefully deconstruct it, we find that what appears to be actually denied are just some of the face-value traits ordinarily attributed to consciousness, not consciousness itself. Consider this passage from a New Scientist article titled ‘The grand illusion: Why consciousness exists only when you look for it’:
If consciousness seems to be a continuous stream of rich and detailed sights, sounds, feelings and thoughts, then I suggest this is the illusion.
First we must be clear what is meant by the term ‘illusion’. To say that consciousness is an illusion is not to say that it doesn’t exist, but that it is not what it seems to be – more like a mirage or a visual illusion.64
Naturally, this completely empties the trick of any significance. Yes, it looks like consciousness isn’t exactly what it seems to be at face value; so what? To refute some of the face-value traits ordinarily attributed to consciousness doesn’t render consciousness itself – raw subjective experience – an illusion. To argue otherwise is entirely equivalent to proclaiming that, because the Earth isn’t flat – as it appears to be at face value – then it must be an illusion; and to proclaim this while standing firmly on the Earth! Where is one ‘standing’ when one consciously proclaims consciousness to be an illusion?
Obviously, raw subjective experience – that is, consciousness – isn’t an illusion: it is the only carrier of reality anyone can ever know. It is the sole undeniable empirical fact of existence. Yet, magicians often choose their language so to still be able to state that ‘consciousness is an illusion.’ Consider this part of the quote above again: ‘To say that consciousness is an illusion is not to say that it doesn’t exist, but that it is not what it seems to be.’ This usage of language is counterintuitive to me. When we say that the alien spaceship in the sky last night was an illusion, we mean that the spaceship wasn’t there; that it didn’t exist. Maybe an airplane existed there instead, but not the alien spaceship. When we say that the voice we just heard was an illusion, we mean that the voice wasn’t there; that it didn’t exist. But when it comes to consciousness, magicians depart from this intuitive usage of the term ‘illusion.’ Why? At the very least, this departure opens the door to misunderstandings, since the word ‘illusion’ clearly evokes non-existence. When we learned that the Earth was actually a spheroid, we didn’t turn around and proclaim the Earth to be an illusion. We simply said that the Earth wasn’t what it seemed to be. So why not just say: ‘consciousness isn’t what it seems to be’ and stop there?
You see, if a magician were to acknowledge that the ‘illusion’ of consciousness is just a matter of false attributions – like we falsely attributed flatness to the Earth without the Earth becoming any less real because of it – then the magic trick would be revealed and lose its appeal. That some of the face-value traits ordinarily attributed to consciousness are false is trivial: it means exactly nothing as far as solving the hard problem of consciousness. It leaves us exactly where we started: we cannot, even in principle, explain how raw subjective experience arises from mass, momentum or charge. But to acknowledge this would be tantamount to admitting that we are not making real progress in understanding consciousness; that the ‘hard problem’ is not becoming any more treatable despite the many promissory notes to the contrary and the huge amount of resources spent on researching it. Do you see the dilemma?
Other magicians don’t go as far as denying consciousness as a whole, but buy into and promote the fundamental notion underlying the magic trick. Some claim that certain aspects of experience – such as beliefs – do not really exist,65 even though something most of us would call a ‘belief’ is undeniably experienced by every living person. The magicians make such a claim because these aspects of experience appear to be structured along syntactical patterns that have no obvious correspondence in brain anatomy or function. Naturally, we could criticize their rationale by pointing out that we also cannot find the high-level structure of software in the gates and wires of a computer chip, but that obviously doesn’t mean that the software structure is inexistent. Be it as it may, the point here is that these more limited eliminativist claims still contribute to the absurd notion that one can deny the existence of direct, felt experience on the basis of theoretical abstractions. Have your beliefs disappeared just because someone couldn’t find anything directly corresponding to them in the brain? Even if it were correct to call these experiences illusions, the then-illusory experiences would still be facts as such. An experience isn’t nothing.
All attempts to turn consciousness into some kind of illusion ultimately fail. It couldn’t be any different, since the attempts themselves necessarily reside in consciousness. It is consciousness that is trying to convince itself that it is an illusion. How could this ever work?
Now, having rejected all these different avenues for tackling the ‘hard problem,’ you may be wondering how I would solve it. It may then come as a surprise to you that I think there is no such a thing: the ‘hard problem’ is merely a linguistic and conceptual construction of human beings. It only arises when you conceptualize a whole universe outside consciousness and then postulate that this conceptual universe somehow generates consciousness. So you end up in the position of having to explain how an abstraction of consciousness can generate consciousness. Instead of playing this hopeless circular game, I propose that we must bite the bullet and accept the obvious fact that nature presents to us the moment we are born: consciousness is the one fundamental aspect of reality; the canvas of existence. Reality is nothing but excitations of consciousness itself. For further details on how this simple idea can explain literally everything, see essays 2.1 and 2.2.
3.3. What are memories, after all?
Under the materialist metaphysics, memories are supposedly analogous to information stored in a computer. Everything you can potentially remember must be physically encoded somewhere in your brain, like a little computer file. While in storage, the file is supposedly outside consciousness. When you play it back, it somehow re-enters consciousness. This, in a nutshell, is the materialist hypothesis of memory. It is so pervasive that the media routinely and casually speaks of memories being ‘stored in the brain,’ as if the hypothesis were an established fact.
&
nbsp; The problem is that, if the hypothesis were true, we should be able to find those little files in the form of material traces stored somewhere in the brain. Neuroscience has been looking for them for more than a century, but hasn’t turned up anything conclusive. In 2012, Science Daily summarized the present status: ‘Despite a century of research, memory encoding in the brain has remained mysterious. Neuronal synaptic connection strengths are involved, but synaptic components are short-lived while memories last lifetimes.’66 What has been found are some neural correlates of memory formation – that is, brain activity that accompanies it – but not the information storage itself.67
The pressure to produce results confirming the materialist hypothesis seems to be immense. A 2008 study was reported to have finally revealed ‘where in the brain a specific memory is stored.’68 What the researchers in fact found was that the same subset of neurons in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex – two areas of the brain – get activated during both recall and the original experience. Having had volunteers watch short video clips during the experiments, the researchers ‘found that the neurons that responded during viewing of a particular clip also responded during recall of that clip. …This recurrence of selective activity during recall was not an isolated observation found in a few neurons, but was also evident when the population of responsive [neurons] was examined as a whole.’69 This isn’t really surprising: we know that particular subjective experiences correlate with particular patterns of neural activation. When we recall an event we are, in essence, re-experiencing that event lucidly, so it’s entirely reasonable to expect that many of the same neurons should activate again. The real question, of course, is: how does the brain know which neurons to re-activate during recall? Where is the information about the pattern of re-activations stored? The study sheds no new light on this question, which is the only question that really matters when it comes to explaining where memories are stored. Provided that the headlines suggest a confirmation of the materialist hypothesis, it is surprising how much inaccuracy one can get away with. Society is very forgiving when the error is on the side of the reigning metaphysics; a virtuous cycle that tendentiously maintains its ruling status.
Brief Peeks Beyond Page 8
