Preface
Based on the feedback I got from this comment, it seems the masses of Hexbear (three or so people) clamor for some philosophy slop.
In this TED talk I will expand in detail an argument which lead me to think physicalism in the philosophy of mind is wrong and will lead to dead ends if pursued further.
I was hoping I would be able to cite actual marxists but unfortunately I've found not many dealt with the mind-body problem in great detail. Both Engels and Lenin argued against vulgar, or mechanistic, materialism (which is essentially what physicalism is today) but IMO didn't really give a coherent enough alternative that doesn’t just boil down to the same thing anyway. If you're interested in an overview of the classical marxist view of the problem check this out, it’s a sci-hub link so beware if you’re on a corporate/academic network.. If you know about some stuff from lesser known marxist authors feel free to share.
The argument I'm about to present is not original, I found it in at least three separate places but it was never never given a fair shake IMO or it was not elaborated in enough detail.
Some definitions
- Physicalism: The idea that every phenomenon in the universe can be explained entirely in terms of physical properties and interactions of matter. This is essentially synonymous with materialism but I’m using this term since it’s a more popular name in scientific circles and to differentiate it from dialectical materialism.
- Qualia: individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. You can think of them as pieces of phenomenal consciousness that add up to be what is like to be you.
- Hard problem of consciousness: the problem of explaining how or why we have qualia at all given a (seemingly) entirely physical world.
The argument
The outline of the argument is as follows: The theory of evolution and a physicalist solution to the hard problem of consciousness are incompatible unless you make some really strange assumptions which I believe you have no business to be doing if you at all care about scientific rigor.
The physicalist asserts that all there is to qualia is configuration or movement of matter and energy in the physical world. Their solution to the hard problem boils down to finding out how brain matter interacts with the body and the rest of the physical world and that is all that phenomenal consciousness is.
This line of thinking entails that since the contents of qualia themselves are wholly dependent on (or derived from, created by, supervenes on… the exact wording doesn’t matter much) the workings of the physical world, the qualia in of themselves do not have any causal efficacy on the physical world. You’ve probably seen this formulated elsewhere as “there is no true free will”, what we feel, think and do is, according to the physicalist, entirely determined by the physical world.
You could now make the “philosophical zombie” argument and ask why is there even qualia at all if the physical universe would act just the same without them existing. The standard physicalist answer to that is that “clearly we live in such a universe so what’s the point in asking that question” seems like begging the question to me but this is not the focus of this thread so let’s just assume the physicalists are right and there are some configurations of matter and energy that result in qualia being experienced.
Let’s put all of that aside for a bit and remember how evolution works in the natural world. You have a bunch of biological organisms competing for survival in various ways through the mechanism of natural selection. Natural selection works through random genetic mutations that happen in organisms over generations. If the random mutation on average leads to traits that help that species survive more easily then the mutation be passed on to future generations of that species because the organisms that have it will on average live longer or will be more capable of reproducing. If the mutation leads to traits that are harmful, the organisms that have that mutation will die off more quickly or will not reproduce as effectively.
From this it naturally follows that if an evolved trait is to be tested in the material world as either beneficial, harmful or even neutral it needs to have some sort of causal efficacy in the material world. It’s clear why our arms and legs evolved such as they did, they are material things that interact in obvious ways with the rest of the material world. So where does this leave our consciousness, which the physicalists deny all causal efficacy?
Intuitively, it is evident that the contents of our qualia have helped us evolutionarily. We don’t put our hands in fire because when we do it makes us feel great pain which is extremely uncomfortable to our minds. We have sex and reproduce because it makes us feel very good. However according to the physicalist account these subjective feelings of hurt and pleasure are entirely irrelevant to our behavior.
This leads me to the core of the argument: How is it possible under a physicalist account of consciousness that the contents of our qualia correspond so closely to our actual wants, needs and behavior in the physical world when they had no reason to evolve in such a way, or even at all?
Why have we evolved to see a red apple when a red apple is put in front of us? For every configuration of matter that we assume produces some specific set qualia, in this case seeing a red apple, we can also imagine a mind-bogglingly large number of sets of qualia that could be produced by that same configuration of matter: seeing a green pear, seeing a chair, near infinite permutations of randomly flickering colors etc. Why should we, under a physicalist account of consciousness, expect to see a red apple when the experience of seeing a red apple had no causal efficacy on the physical world when we evolved sight?
There is one coherent counterargument to this that I know of. The physicalist could assert that qualia are a spandrel, meaning a trait that is an accidental byproduct of evolution that isn’t a result of natural selection. To that I would respond that would be quite a remarkable spandrel. We’ve already determined that for any configuration of matter in the brain we can imagine an enormous amount of qualia that configuration could produce. If the contents of these qualia are accidental it would be quite a spectacular coincidence that they just so closely correspond to what our body is actually doing. Why aren’t we all screaming internally in agony while the neurons of our body do whatever they do according to the laws of physics? Assuming this amazing coincidence is true over rethinking physicalism is for me absurd and entirely unscientific since it goes against all scientific instincts and rules of thumb that helped scientists of the past make great leaps in our understanding of the world. How is assuming a one in damn near infinity coincidence the most parsimonious explanation for what’s happening? It would be akin to particle physicists seeing consistent measurements that go against their latest models and shrugging their shoulders and declaring them as anomalies and really strange coincidences.
In most aspects of human life we put great importance on our qualia. All of politics, the fight for rights, the entire field of ethics, psychology, psychiatry and most laws we made all revolve around achieving a more desirable state of human consciousness, yet on the most fundamental level mainstream science gives it no credence at all. I think it’s time to rethink this.
FAQ
Q: But I’ve seen experiments that strongly indicate that physicalism is correct, how does this mesh with all that was said?
A: The science isn’t all that clear on what’s really going on. There is still a whole lot we don’t really understand about the brain. Some experiments have shown this, but others have rebuttals for these results, some results have shown the opposite, other people have rebuttals for that etc. It’s definitely not as clear cut as it is in the global pop-sci culture. For example this shows that an old experiment that seemingly proved physicalism is flawed.
Q: Does this mean God exists?
A: Don’t know, I’m so far only convinced there is something that is non-physical, I don’t know what it is exactly, where it came from or how it works.
Q: Should I get into astrology and magic?
A: Probably not. There is no reason we should be making such huge leaps in logic. Our scientific methods can IMO still very much be useful when exploring the non-physical. We just need to get over ourselves a bit and admit we were wrong about physicalism.
Q: Does this mean dialectical materialism is bunk?
A: I don’t think this means much for Marxism and dialectical materialism. Like I said in the beginning most marxist thinkers didn’t really invest much time in thinking about the fundamental relationship between mind and matter nor should they IMO, marxism should be more concerned about history of society, actual lived experience and improving society over highly theoretical debates like this. Moreover I think the dialectical method is flexible enough to accommodate the non-physical.
This concludes my TED talk, thank you for sticking around for this long.
I don't understand this argument:
Why can't qualia have causal efficacy on the physical world? In the physicalist argument as I understand it, "the meat thinks", that is, physics is what makes the atoms in a human able to think. If physics is the thoughts, then the thoughts are made of matter and energy, and can act upon the world. Evolutionarily, the ability to reason abstractly is obviously useful, or at least potentially useful. The rest of the argument appears to rest on this statement, but it doesn't make sense why it should be true. As you say, "[Physicalists say] there are some configurations of matter and energy that result in qualia being experienced." Why does that preclude causality? That configuration of matter and energy is the qualia, and that configuration of matter and energy then makes the body move in ways to, say, go looking for that red apple.
Maybe I'm just too STEM-brained to get it, having taken all of Philosophy 101 and no further, but physicalism just seems obviously true to me, though I'll readily admit that scientific evidence for or against is almost entirely lacking (again, at least as far as I'm aware). The fact that I do 'feel' like its obviously true definitely gives me cause to question it, as I'd like to not just assume things, but I've yet to encounter an argument against it that makes sense to me.
Sure you could say "thoughts are literally matter and energy" but then you're left with the question of why exactly is that, and why are the contents of those thoughts exactly like that. Matter and energy exist independently of thoughts according to physicalism, so why do thoughts even exist? There is no strictly physical reason for it being so.
I don't think you can handwave that question away as easily as you do and still pretend you're being scientifically rigorous. That's the core of my argument. Physicalism doesn't have to be the be all end all of science.
I mean, its is that way because it is. Physics don't really exist for a reason, they exist, and we study them with math and science. You can 'save state' on a computer to capture it's current 'thoughts', and I think if we could perfectly copy a brain, you could do the same thing. Now, the brain is analog, rather than digital, so instead of capturing 1's and 0's, you have to capture not only the precise amount of energy and chemicals, but also the positions and lengths of all the neurons, something I think that is not quite literally impossible, but basically unfeasible. But as a thought experiment, it feels to me that that should be true, that you should be able to 'capture' a thought, and for that matter, basically a whole person, with a perfect brain copy.
And I'm aware I'm not being scientifically rigorous, as science doesn't really have adequate ways to conduct experiments on things like The Hard Problem of Consciousness. The most purely scientific thing you can currently say about it is good ol' Newton's Flaming Laser Sword, which is to say science™ has no current opinion one way or the other. But, to say physicalism can't be true, also doesn't really feel right to me, as I've said, I haven't really read anything that made sense to me as a counterargument to pure physicalism. That's certainly not hard evidence physicalism is true, I've just seen several philosophers declare that 'materialism is dead', which just feel like a bold statement to put on arguments that read to me as spurious.
I apologize if I sound dismissive or big-brained; it seems this is something you've studied more than me, so I'm trying to understand it, but my limited experience in philosophy, plus my engineering school mindset, means I don't really understand some of what you're stating as implicitly true. But I'm trying to understand.
As for why thoughts exist as they exist, if they're just emergent phenomena? Probably because consciousness is a useful and perhaps vital part of abstract reasoning. It feels difficult for me to imagine a mind that can fully abstractly reason in a flexible manner, that wouldn't be conscious of itself. It makes sense to me that, in our more-or-less analog computer brains, that our conscious thoughts would be the way we'd interpret our incoming sensory data with our subconscious reasoning. And I don't think asserting that our thoughts and qualia, conscious and subconscious, are just meat physics lessens their realness. Hell, we still don't even know if physics is deterministic. I hate to just handwave vaguely at quantum weirdness, but like, there are multiple interpretations, and while I think the current model of physics is leaning towards probabilistic rather than deterministic, we just don't know yet.
What I'm claiming is saying "it do be like that" is not a good enough answer in this case. This is not the same question as "why is the speed of light exactly this value instead of slightly slower or faster". The speed of light needs to exist because if it doesn't our physical models don't work. Consciousness doesn't need to exist for our physical models to work as they do.
You did the thing again where you implicitly gave qualia causal efficacy where they don't have it under physicalism. Equating qualia with physical processes doesn't give them causal efficacy, it still rests solely within the physical process, not the qualia.
That final sentence, that's the part I don't get. Why? Why can't they have causal efficacy? It seems intuitive that they do, since under the physicalist argument, they are also material processes? Some looking up of stuff on Wikipedia seems to show that this is a common argument that is treated as cogent, but I feel like I just cannot understand why.
As for the first part, we don't have a cohesive theory of mind. Sure, there are theories of mind, but some are contradictory to others, and none are as of yet True™, even if certainly some seem more accurate than others. But it doesn't feel like it should be prohibitive to have a theory of mind that is a) compatible with physics and b) requires consciousness to work. Again, I'm not asserting that it is true, just that it doesn't yet seem to be proven false.
I'm too a physics graduate that does not understand your arguments. However I felt compelled to comment on this remark:
I find it strange, I don't know what's the name for it but it's like a negation of epistemology? Our physical models already do not work. We can't even argue the principles on how anything on a scale bigger than our solar system moves, let alone predict it. The 'speed of light' is not a hard physical fact, it's our interpretation of countless experiments: because of the way electricity behaves, we deduced that there would be a speed of light, then we measured in every context we could and found it to be the same all the time, and from then on we use it as an axiom to make predictions. The most puzzling thing is precisely what you take for granted: why does it always seem to measure exactly the same when as far as we know it doesn't really matter if it's slightly slower or faster.
And back to the principles thing, even if we some day found the principles that can model every physical process (I'm not totally convinced of that), so much of the behaviour comes from interaction that we still won't be able to explain everything. We have a wonderful and accurate little models for protons, neutrons and electrons, but simulating even a single, say, Uranium atom is beyond any supercomputer we've ever built, because the interactions between them are both total—everything with everything else—and very strong. In this utopia of the perfect first principles, using these would require prohibitive amounts of information about the system, and a simulator at least as big as the thing we want to analyse, so we would still need bespoke models for the "emergent" complexity that lies in the interactions.