Panexperientialism

Does Secular Buddhism entail rejection of Rebirth?

2011-08-19T14:57:00.000-07:00

In recent times there has been interest in the congruence of some of the core concepts of buddhism and consciousness studies. Concepts such as impermanence and the lack of a permanent, enduring self have been argued to be consistent with modern findings of neurosicence and physics. It has also been suggested that the methods of introspective investigation and insight utilised in buddhist practices could be useful in developing a first-person methodology for studying consciousness. For instance, in her book "Consciousness: An Introduction", author and consciousness researcher Susan Blackmore devotes a chapter to buddhism and meditation as exemplars of "first person" aproaches to consciousness.

However, one sticking point in the development of a harmonious relationship between buddhism and consciousness research is the issue of rebirth. Belief in rebirth is contended to be incompatible with a scientific worldview. For instance, Stephen Batchelor, an ex monk and popular writer who has written "Buddhism without Beliefs" and "Confession of a Buddhist Atheist" (both of which I highly recommend) argues for a rationally based buddhism consistent with modern science. He argues here that rebirth is a "relic of ancient Indian culture that has attached itself to Buddhism throughout its history, and that is perhaps no longer necessary."

Similarly, Blackmore, who has practised Zen meditation for 25 years and is also known as a prominent skeptic of the paranormal writes that "If human consciousness can really leave the body and operate without a brain then everything we know in neuroscience has to be questioned".

In my view, the views of Blackmore and Batchelor could be argued against on at least two fronts.

Firstly, their position seems more akin to a buddhism based on physicalist beliefs rather than a buddhism without beliefs. Batchelor writes in Connfession of a Buddhist Atheist (p36) that " Given current scientific knowledge of the brain, I did not find it difficult to believe that such an organ was capable of producing thoughts, feelings and perceptions". This seems to reflect a naive faith in physicalism and ignorance about the philosophy of consciousness.

Susan Blackmore, a close follower of Daniel Dennett, is more philosophically grounded in her reflections but, to me at least, evokes a world view in which, to quote Whitehead, " nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless; merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly."

Contra Batchelor and Blackmore, I think there is enough philosophical and scientific uncertainty in relation to consciousness to conclude that a secular, skeptical buddhism does not necessarily mean a buddhism based on physicalism.

Secondly, I believe that it is incorrect to assert that a belief in rebirth is necessarily incompatible with a rational and scientific world view. Here are some reasons why:

If a plausible form of panexperientialism is that which posits a universal, cosmic subject (as previously discussed here and here)then, by analogy with human experience, it is reasonable to assume that such a cosmic subject would in some sense retain previous experiences through memory. It is also reasonable to assume that the memories of the cosmic subject from the life cycle of one organism could potentially influence, be recalled by, or be passed on to other organisms.

Therefore, it seems to me that if panexperientialism is a plausible explanation of consciousness then it is also plausible that rebirth happens. Of course, this does not show that rebirth does occur, only that it plausibly could.

Implications

So, if one accepts that rebirth could be the case, why does this matter?

There are many implications, but here are just a couple:

Firstly, it means that claims of empirical evidence of rebirth are worthy of being taken seriously. For example, the work of Ian Stevenson may be worthy of close scrutiny. I have not assessed in much depth any of the purported evidence he has collected so am not in a position to comment on this.

Secondly, it means that a secular based buddhism (by which I suppose I mean one that is devoid of religious superstitions) need not necessarily disregard claims of rebirth. After all, if we respect the insights into consciousness of those such as the Buddha, then it is not very consistent to ignore or "bracket" important aspects of what they had to say.

In this respect it seems to me that insights into rebirth are a highly relevant aspect of many of those who have ventured into the deepest and most profound realms of consciousness. For example, the Pali Canon, the earliest written Buddhist scriptures, frequently records the Buddha recollecting past lives in deep state of meditation, such as here :

"When the mind was thus concentrated, purified, bright, unblemished, rid of defilement, pliant, malleable, steady, & attained to imperturbability, I directed it to the knowledge of recollecting my past lives."

Contemporary contemplatives, such as Ajahn Brahm also report recollection of past lives being an intrinsic part of deep meditation:

"When the memory of your own birth appears, it is just like you are there and you experience all feelings of that birth. Then you can ask yourself for an even earlier memory, and then you get back into your past lives."

So a sympathetic view of rebirth I think allows a more consistent and integrated reading of the teachings of those such as the Buddha.

As an aside however, regardless of the rationality of the concept of rebirth, from another angle I think there is some merit in the view that the illusory, transient and empty nature of the "I" means that the question of rebirth is by and large irrelevant. As Buddhadasa, another senior monk from the Thai Forest tradition, puts it:

"There is just a feeling of "I" and "mine" arising due to the foolishness whereby one is deluded by the beguiling nature of sense-experience. Therefore, there being no one born here, there is no one who dies and is reborn. So, the whole question of rebirth is utterly foolish and nothing to do with Buddhism at all."

To me, perhaps the most significant thing is that, whether or not one believes in rebirth, panexperientialism opens up the opportunity for a secular buddhism that is not only free of superstition but also frees the world of the sterility and lifelessnes of physicalism.

But to return to the primary topic of this post, I think it can be concluded that a belief in rebirth is not necessarily irrational or inconsistent with a logical, scientifically informed view of the world.

Panexperiential Holism and its implications

2011-02-04T16:15:00.000-08:00

I came across this interesting little article by Ludwig Jaskolla and Alexander Buch regarding panexperiential holism. This is the thesis that:

“there is exactly one entity - the Universe itself. This entity can be
adequately described as being essentially
(i) an objective matter of fact,
(ii) objectively structured, i.e. not completely homogeneous,
(iii) a subject of experience and
(iv) exemplifying experiential content.”

I have previously discussed similar ideas in previous posts on this blog here, here and here. I think the authors make a good case for panexperiential holism as a cogent form of panexperientialism that circumvents the combination problem, on the obvious basis that if “human selves are to be understood as relatively stable experiential patterns within the big experiential subject”, then there is no combination problem.

One point of possible disagreement I have with Jaskolla and Buch is their view that physicalism is superior to panexperientialism in respect to parsimoniousness, whilst panexperientialism is superior in respect to coherence. My view is that although panexperientialism multiples the number of individual things which are experiential, as it does not posit a class of entities that are devoid of experience, it actually applies Occam’s razor more efficiently than physicalism and is more parsimonious.

The authors are part of a “group of philosophers, mathematicians and physicists working on ontology and metaphysics” from Munich with an interest in panexperientialism. This is the group's website. Looks like they have a very interesting conference coming up in June this year.

It is good to see that there are concentrated pockets of researchers seriously working on panexperientialism these days, which is where real advances and refinements are likely to be made in the field. I think the main barriers restraining panexperientialism from being widely accepted as a viable explanation of consciousness have been cultural and institutional, rather than logical. It seems these barriers are gradually being eroded.

Perhaps this erosion will be accompanied by an expansion in the intellectual regions which can safely be ventured into and explored using a panexperientialist framework. Which leads me on to the second theme of this post..

Implications

Given the above and other argumentation discussed on this blog I think that it can be said that panexperiential holism is at least as rational, coherent, plausible and logical as physicalism as an explanation of consciousness. In short, there is no rational reason not to accept that panexperiential holism may be the best explanation there is.

Given this, the issue that arises is what does this mean for other beliefs, contentions and phenomena which hitherto have been regarded by many, including myself, as irrational or kooky. I am referring to things such as telepathy, psychokinesis, quantum mysticism, all forms of new age ideas, religious themes, astral projection and so on. Under a physicalist outlook many of these beliefs can be dismissed outright, but if the Universe is a single, internally connected experiential being, the realms of the possible seem to expand enormously, and what may have looked prima face irrational no longer is. Much of what I am saying here could also be applied to other forms of pan experientialism, but the issue seems to me more acute in relation to panexperiential holism.

So, what to do if a rationally based metaphysics appears to lend support to putatively irrational and loopy ideas?

I think the answer here lies in a focus on science and empirical investigation. The arguments for panexperientialism are essentially philosophical arguments which are not significantly contingent on the findings of science. However, any empirical claim which is based on panexperientialist assumptions can be subject to the same investigative rigour as any other empirical claim.

Essentially this entails being open minded and skeptical at the same time. Where this differs from ‘standard science’, is in relation to the assumptions that are brought to bear in any empirical investigation. For instance, a claim of psychic phenomena may be dismissed by a skeptically minded person on the basis that there is a very remote chance of fraud having occurred. This may be accompanied by the assertion “such fraud may seem unlikely but it is more likely than the fundamental foundations of physical science are wrong”. If panexperiential holism is accepted as a real possibility, then the latter assumption has no validity and it may be more rational to assume the psychic event has occurred.

To give another example of the above approach, Richard Tarnas is a philosopher and cultural historian who wrote the best-selling Passion of the Western Mind , which outlines the history and intellectual development of the modern world view.

When I read that Tarnas’ latest book Cosmos and Psyche, deals with the subject of astrology and the “uncanny correspondence between the movement of the planets and the timing and character of historical events“ my immediate reaction was to dismiss it as the work of a new age crank. However, more investigation told me that this work deals with archetypal astrology, which does not imply that planetary events “cause” earthly events, but that they are both part of an underlying cosmic pattern. Such a position could be consistent with panexperientialist holism, in which the unity of consciousness of the Universe means many postulated forms of ‘cosmic connections’ could have rational coherence.

None of this is meant to say that I accept the conclusions of Tarnas’ book (which I have not read). However, as the conclusions of the book are consistent with a rational and reasonable model of consciousness, it is not rational or reasonable to dismiss the claims made out of hand . Rather, to make an assessment of his thesis would involve a thorough examination and assessment of the empirical claims made in the book regarding the linking of planetary and historical events.

To sum up, extraordinary claims do indeed require extraordinary evidence. However, if one accepts that panexperiential holism is a viable explanation of consciousness, then perhaps the threshold of what should be considered extraordinary is lowered.

Strawson on Nietzsche's Metaphysics

2009-12-19T15:56:00.000-08:00

Galen Strawson has delivered what looks like a very interesting paper on Nietzsche's Metaphysics at the recent Nietzsche on Mind and Nature conference. Here is an abstract of his presentation:

"Consider ten claims.
[1] There is no persisting and unitary self.
[2] There is no fundamental (real) distinction between objects on the one hand and their properties on the other.
[3] There is no fundamental (real) distinction between the base/categorical properties of things and the dispositional/power properties of things.
[4] There is no fundamental (real) distinction between objects or substances on the one hand and processes and events on the other.
[5] There is no fundamental (real) distinction between causes and effects.
[6] It is incorrect to say that objects are ‘governed’ by laws of nature.
[7] There is no free will.
[8] Determinism is true.
[9] Reality is one.
[10] The fundamental stuff of reality is suffused with—if it does not consist of—mentality in some form.

I’ll argue that Nietzsche’s mature position certainly includes [1]-[7], and also [8], properly understood, and probably or very probably [9] and [10]. I take it that [1] and [7] are clearly true, in the sense in which Nietzsche intends them, and I’ll argue that [2]-[6] are also true, and that [8]-[10] are also probably or very probably true. I take the claim that [1]-[10] are either certainly true or probably true to be powerful support for the view that Nietzsche held them."

There is a short review of Strawson's presentation on this blog.

Here are some previous posts of mine relating to panexperientialism and the work of Strawson or Nietzsche which might be of interest (most recent post listed first):

Nietzsche's naturalism - considers Brian Leiter's criticisms of a metaphysical interpretation of the Will to Power.

Property Dualism - micro, macro and mystery : discusses whether, if experience is taken to be a fundamental natural property, this fundamentality is best explained at the level of human consciousness or at the level of nature's most basic physical constituents.

The Will to Power, life and parsimony: considers whether Nietzsche unnecessarily invokes a ’vitalistic’ principle into biology which undermines his doctrine of the Will to Power and renders it unparsimonious.

Strawson reviews: reviews of Strawson's Consciousness and its Place in Nature.

Implausibility and Irrelevance - considers Nagasawa’s metaphysical argument against Strawson that panexperientialism is implausible or is irrelevant to the problem of consciousness.

Experience and the subject - discusses Strawson's views on experience, the subject of the experience and the content of the experience.

Bridging the gap: critique of an argument against Strawson that even in a best-case scenario―in which the phenomenal properties of the ultimates are known in complete detail―panpsychism still wouldn’t help us with the mind/body problem.

From fundamentality to ubiquity: Considers whether, if it is true that experience cannot emerge (in the sense described by Strawson) from the non-experiential, then it follows from this that some ultimates must be experiential.

Strawson on physicalism and panspychism - abstract of Strawson's argument for panpsychism.

Update Feb 2010:

Video and podcast of Strawson's talk is available here. Well worth a listen, though not much on proposition 10 (re panexperientialism) and I found it heavy going at times.

I quite liked the reference at 1:25 to "the most plausible, though difficult, view of the nature of reality ... the really hard nosed monist view, which is the Spinozian, Hegelian, Russellian, Eddingtonian and Whiteheadian view that reality is suffused with, even if it doesn't consist of, mentality in some form or sense".

Links and Web Resources

2009-11-20T18:23:00.000-08:00

Please note that I don't intend to update or post on this blog on a regular basis any more (too much to do in 'meat-space' for me at the moment!).

If you come across any interesting links or news in relation to panexperientialism, please feel free to post a comment below.

INTRODUCTORY

Why I became a Panexperientialist by Charles Birch

Panpsychism by William Seager (encyclopedia article)

Panpsychism by David Skrbina (encyclopedia article)

PHILOSOPHICAL

Panpsychism by T.L.S. Sprigge (encyclopedia article)

Panexperientialist Physicalism and the Mind-Body problem by David Ray Griffin

Consciousness, Information and Panpsychism by William Seager

Panpsychism by William Seager (his most recent paper on the topic).

Why Physicalism entails Panpsychism by Galen Strawson

Recent Naturalistic Dualisms by William Lycan. Although no fan of panpsychism, Lycan argues that the most coherent form of property dualism implies panpsychism.

Online papers on Panpsychism compiled by David Chalmers.

Mind Dust - a group of philosophers, mathematicians and physicists working on ontology and metaphysics from Munich, Germany with an interest in panexperientialism.

WHITEHEADIAN PERSPECTIVES

Whitehead by John Cobb

Whitehead and the revival(?) of Panpsychism by William Seager

Whitehead's even more dangerous idea by Peter Fairleigh

Everything is Permuted
Website of Paul Cecil with numerous Whitehead/Hartshorne links

Center for Process Studies The Center is a faculty of Claremont School of Theology. Focus on Whitehead, Hartshorne and Process Theology. Extensive resources.

NONWHITEHEADIAN PERSPECTIVES

Participation, Organization, and Mind: Toward a Participatory Worldview by David Skrbina. Interesting panpsychist theory based on ideas from chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics. Also contains an excellent history of panpsychism.

A place for Consciousness
by Gregg Rosenberg. Explores the problems of causation and consciousness, leading to a panexperientialist solution.

Group Reading of Gregg Rosenberg's book (Physics Forums).

GENERAL SCIENCE

A Purpose For Everything by Charles Birch. On-line book examining purpose in nature.

Nature and Purpose by John F. Haught. Book with similar themes to that of Birch. Some chapters may not appeal to the secular minded.

Guide to Reality Science and philosophy blog with numerous panexperientialism related posts.

BIOLOGY/NEUROSCIENCE

Mind in Nature: the Interface of Science and Philosophy
Online book with various contributors. Edited by John B. Cobb Jr and David R. Griffin

Processing Towards Life by Charles Birch. Examines Self-organisation and subjectivity.

Embodied Human Consciousness, Abrupt Global Climate Change, and Freedom
Website of physiologist David Stoney which covers climate change issues as well as neurophysiology from a Whiteheadian panexperientialist perspective.

Psychological Physiology From the Standpoint of a Physiological Psychologist
by George Wolf

Whitehead'Psychological Physiology: A Third View by William Gallagher.
Relates how individual occasions of experience might give rise to the unified experience of human consciousness. Addresses (although in an indirect fashion) what Philosopher William Seager has described as the "Combination Problem".

Single-neuron Theory of Consciousness by Steven Sevush.
Proposes that the full content of conscious experience may be a property of individual neurons and that this would present a solution to the 'binding' problem.

Is Consciousness Only a Property of Individual Cells? by Jonathon CW Edwards.
Similar theme to previous paper, with more emphasis on the physics that might be involved.

See also website of Stuart Hameroff (under 'Physics').

CHEMISTRY

Self-Organization and Agency: In Chemistry and In Process Philosophy
by Joseph E. Earley

Towards a Process Philosophy of Chemistry by Ross Stein

PHYSICS

Online papers of Whitehead-influenced Quantum Physicist Henry Stapp

Quantum Consciousness Website of Stuart Hameroff, with focus on Hameroff-Pensrose microtubule/quantum model of consciousness.

Process Physics School of Chemistry, Physics and Earth Sciences, Flinders University. I have not tried to understand this stuff but apparently it has affinities with Whitehead's views, although arrived at independently.

MEDICINE/HEALTH

The Power of Thought to Heal:An Ontology of Personal Faithby Arthur Preston Smith. Psychosomatic healing from a panexperientialist perspective.

Panpsychic Marxism?

2009-11-19T19:39:00.000-08:00

In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis and the apparent inherently crisis-prone nature of capitalism, I have been doing some reading of Marxist theory. Hence, I thought it worthwhile to explore some of the relations between panexperientialism and Marxism.

This post will build on previous posts and will encompass consideration of what I believe are two viable forms of panexperientialism (which term I use synonymously with 'panspychism'). Micropanpsychism ('MP') holds that the fundamental constituents of nature are experiential in nature, from which human subjectivity is constituted. Cosmopanpsychism ('CP') holds that the universe itself is an experiential subject, from which human subjectivity is derived. The relation of each of these positions to Marxist theory will be considered.

Micropanpsychism and Marxism

As I see it, the major influence MP would have on Marxism is in relation to Dialectical Materialism ('DM'). DM is derived more from the writing of Engels than Marx and I suspect it lost its vitality when it became an official state doctrine. As far as I know it is is supported by few, if any, contemporary philosophers. Nevertheless, as a speculative metaphysics I think it gels quite well with Micropanpsychism.

One of the criticisms of DM is that a "Dialectics of Nature" appears to attribute agency to natural, non human events. Whilst there have been various attempts to refute this from DM proponents, from the perspective of MP there is no issue to address because MP assumes that experientiality (and by reasonable implication, agency as well) is ubiquitous throughout nature.

Thus, for example in response to the criticism of Jordan that " to describe natural processes in terms of dialectical negation or the negating force is to endow material objects withs consciousness and purposiveness which only human beings display", the micropanpsychist would reply that some form of consciouness (or 'protoconciousness') is not solely the province of human beings and is indeed a part of all natural processes. Of course, critics of panexperientialism would contend that this does nothing to bolster DM but only makes it sound as crazy and absurd as panexperientialism itself allegedly is.

Nevertheless, it is noteworthy in this regard that Lenin himself seemed to adopt some form of panexperientialism. For instance, he says here that:
"..it is logical to assert that all matter possesses a property which is essentially akin to sensation, the property of reflection"
and here that:
"matter is not devoid of the basic capacity for “sensation,” which provides such rich “spiritual” fruits among the higher animals."

Thus MP could be seen as lending support to DM in ways which had hitherto been regarded as detracting from the coherence of DM.

In relation to Historical Materialism, I think MP would have less of an influence. MP does allow for micropsychic experiential entities to give rise to higher level 'compound individuals' which can act with a unity of response and action in relation to their environment - for instance atoms, molecules, eukaryotic cells and animals - (see, for example, this book for a discussion of Whitehead's speculations on the issue). However, there does not appear to be any grounds to postulate an entity above that of a human being which has the necessary unity to act as a social agent in its own right. The agency through which social classes interact under MP is the result of the collective action of individual human agents, rather than a result of "class consciousness" in any literal sense.

So the influence of MP on Marxist theory would seem to be primarily as complementing DM and the "Dialectics of Nature" rather than at the level of historical and social change. Conversely, there may be much in DM that could be of relevance to the development of theoretical issues in relation to MP.

Cosmopanpsychism and Marxism

In postulating the existence of an all-embracing universal subject, Cosmopanpsychism seems at first blush to be a lot closer to Hegel rather than to Marx. For instance, in comparing his method to Hegel's, Marx says :

"For Hegel, the process of thinking, which even he transforms into an independent subject, under the name of ‘the Idea’, is the creator of the real world, and the real world is only the external appearance of the idea. With me the reverse is true: the ideal is nothing but the material world reflected in the mind of man, and translated into forms of thought".

However, whilst there may be some similarities between CP and the "absolute spirit" of Hegel there are important differences. Firstly, for CP the experiential and material are intrinsicaly codependent - the experiential does not produce the material but is the 'inner' aspect of objective material processes. Secondly, for CP the universal subject is experiential in nature, but not necessarily thinking or reasoning.

Thus, where Engels says of Hegel : "To him, the thoughts within his brain were not the more or less abstract pictures of actual things and processes, but, conversely, things and their evolution were only the realized pictures of the "Idea", existing somewhere from eternity before the world was. This way of thinking turned everything upside down, and completely reversed the actual connection of things in the world", this can be seen as consistent with CP, in that individual human consciousness under CP is largely the result of material processes in the brain. Hence, CP need not detract from Historical Materialism and the view that social being determines individual consciousness.

It is of note here as well that CP does not mean a resignation to fatalism, as CP allows for individual subjectivities to be causally efficacious. For instance, the Spinozistic model Freya Mathews put forths in her book the Ecological Self postulates that systems exhibiting self-regulation, homeostasis, equifinality (the reaching of a final state from different initial conditions) and goal-directedness can be described as self-realising. Such entities can impact on their environment, such that all is not determined by an overarching cosmic fate.

However, in positing a universal conscious subject, CP does potentially add an extra dimension to Historical Materialism. Whilst individual consciousness may be a product of the brain, CP also posits a larger consciousness that could potentially exert a "downward influence" on natural and social events. Whilst such an argument would need a lot of development, Class struggle could perhaps arguably then be seen as the outward mainfestation of the struggle of the cosmic subject to strive for higher levels of freedom, complexity, beauty or whatever. Thus, on this view while it is human beings that make history, there is also an underlying progressivity and purposiveness in nature which may influence the way in which history is made.

This is a form of Marxism which is closer to Hegel than even the most Hegelian of Marxists such as Lukacs, but it can I think nevertheless be strongly distinguished from an idealism which eschews practical action.

All of this is highly speculative of course, but to sum up, I think there are many potentially fruitful areas of interaction between Marxist and panexperientialist philosophy.

Nietzsche's Naturalism

2008-09-27T04:51:00.000-07:00

Brian Leiter's draft paper "Nietzsche's Naturalism Reconsidered" is an engaging look at the issue of "whether and in what sense Nietzsche is a naturalist in philosophy". Leiter contends that perhaps the most worrying obstacle in reading Nietzsche as a philosophical naturalist is his doctrine of the Will To Power and the "crackpot metaphysics" that some interpretations of this doctrine may imply.

In this post, I intend to argue that a metaphysical interpretation of the Will to Power ('MIWTP'), in which 'the world is will to power', is both consistent with Nietzsche's naturalism and of contemporary relevance.

The Scope of Nietzsche's Naturalism

Drawing on his earlier work, Leiter characterises Neitzsche's naturalism as Speculative Methodical Naturalism ('M- Naturalism'). Leiter describes M-Naturalism as the view that “philosophical inquiry…should be continuous with empirical inquiry in the sciences”. Speculative M-naturalists want to construct theories that are "modeled on the sciences…in that they take over from science the idea that natural phenomena have deterministic causes”. Speculative M-Naturalists do not appeal to actual causal mechanisms that have been scientifically confirmed (because their theories are speculative), but their explanations are bound by the constraint "that they not invoke entities or mechanisms that science has ruled out of bounds."

I am very much in agreement in reading Nietzsche as a M-Naturalist and am glad to see his philosophy being rescued from the excesses of postmodernist irrationalism (though as an aside, I think Nietzsche's M-Naturalism might better be characterized as being committed to natural, rather than deterministic causes, given his skepticism about deterministic laws). However, I think legitimate questions can be asked regarding whether Nietzsche's naturalism extends further than this.

Leiter raises the question of whether, if Nietzsche is a skeptic about what he takes to be the underlying metaphysics of science, how could he then be a naturalist who takes science seriously? Yet, not invoking entities or mechanisms that science has ruled out of bounds does not preclude the critical examination and possible displacement of the metaphysical presuppositions underlying scientific explanations (even if this activity itself is not part of science). Of course, in order to qualify being described as such, their are some assumptions which must be endorsed by a philosophical naturalist, such as belief in some form of causation (as Leiter explains). However, there may be other metaphysical assumptions which are conventionally accepted as being part of science which could be rejected without compromising an explanation being naturalistic in character.

Whilst it would obviously take more than a short blog post to give this issue full justice, that Nietzsche's naturalism did incorporate questioning the metaphysical assumptions of science is supported by the "We scholars" chapter of "Beyond Good and Evil". In this chapter, Nietzsche says the man of science or "objective man" is a "mirror: accustomed to submitting to whatever wants to be known", and an "instrument, something of a slave, certainly the sublimest kind of slave, but in himself he is nothing" (Aphorism 207). Nietzsche castigates those who would have science "taking upon itself to lay down laws for philosophy and for once to play the 'master'... to play the philosopher itself" (204).

Overall, I think the chapter supports the view that Nietzsche's naturalism is one that is against the unwarranted priority of science over philosophy, and is open to the critical examination, displacement and transformation of the metaphysical assumptions underlying science. Of course, in line with Nietzsche's anti-metaphysical stance any such alternate metaphysical assumptions would, like scientific theories themselves, not be presented as absolute, transcendent truths but would be open to further critical revision and transformation (BGE 22, 43,211).

The World as Will To Power

Turning now to the issue of whether Nietzsche did in fact endorse a metaphysical interpretation of the Will to Power, Leiter says that he is hopeful that the "crackpot metaphysics is really presented in an ironic spirit, and that Nietzsche, the otherwise sound naturalist, knew better." This hope is based primarily on the view that the doctrine is based on premises that Nietzsche explicitly rejects in his published works and that Nietzsche assigns the MIWTP no significance in his own appraisal of his corpus. In his analysis, Leiter also addresses the significance of an apparently metaphysical interpretation of the WTP in II:12 of the Genealogy of Morals.

Leaving aside the issue of what significance should be placed on unpublished works in the case of Nietzsche (whose productive life was cut short with many ideas still under development, with the developmental stages of such ideas perhaps being explanatory of why they are not addressed in his reflective self-appraisals), I think a good case can be made for the MIWTP both having a significant role in and being consistent with his published corpus. Although rigorous philosophers such as Clark have argued against this, others such as Schacht have cogently argued for it. Schacht's references to the unpublished works in his analysis do not, I think, significantly detract from his argument for the coherence of MIWTP with Nietzsche's other ideas.

In Leiter's analysis of GMII:12, he argues that the fact that MIWTP is only mentioned in that single passage in the book, coupled with Clark's critique, supports the view that II:12 was included for rhetorical purposes and perhaps "should not be taken too seriously at all". Yet, the Genealogy of Morals is restricted in scope, as its name suggests, and in order to assess Nietzsche's commitment to MIWTP it is appropriate to address a book with a broader philosophical compass, such as his ''Prelude to the Philosophy of the Future", Beyond Good and Evil.

From a sympathetic reading of Part One of this book ("On the Prejudices of Philosophers"), along with aphorism 36 of the following chapter, it can plausibly be argued that Nietzsche is not only critiquing conventional metaphysical and scientific presuppositions relating to such topics as physical laws, atomism, substance, free will, causation and the metaphysical biases of subject-predicate grammar, but also offering a tentative alternative metaphysical hypothesis consistent with this critique (aphorisms 13, 19,22 , 23 and 36 being most relevant to this alternate hypothesis). Thus, Nietzsche here speaks of an interpretation embracing "the universality and unconditionality of all will to power", in which " all efficient force" could be defined as such, with the world described according to its intelligible character being "will to power and nothing else".

Hence, it seems to me that Beyond Good and Evil supports the view that Nietzsche regarded the MIWTP as something which, whilst not fully developed, was of considerable significance to his philosophical project.

Is a Metaphysical Interpretation of The Will to Power Consistent with Speculative Methodological Naturalism?

In analysing the issue of the coherence of the MIWTP with Neitzsche's M-Naturalism, aphorism 22 of BGE is of interest. In comparing the view that the regularities of nature are a consequence of conformity to laws or of the "inexorable enforcement of power demands", Nietzsche makes the point that the latter interpretation would also assert that the world has a "necessary" and "calculable" course. He questions the ontological status of physical laws as externally imposed constraints and asks whether regularities could more appropriately be characterized as being a consequence of the internal dynamics of natural events. This is very reminiscent of Whitehead's depiction of physical laws as the "habits of nature".

So this passage can be read as Nietzsche as offering an interpretation which is consistent with the 'calculable course of events' investigated by M-Naturalism but which entails a different set of metaphysical assumptions than that conventionally accepted by science. This is not a view which contradicts M-Naturalism but instead one in which the intrinsic experiential dynamic of physical events (in which the world "seen from within" is will to power) runs parallel to their outer character described by the physical sciences.

Whilst this 'parallelist' reading of MIWTP is consistent with and complementary to M-Naturalism, there are passages where Nietzsche appears to be saying that the WTP is an additional causal factor over and above the forces and processes described by the physical sciences. For instance, GM11:12 appears to impute to the WTP, in relation to the physiological and adaptive processes of life, a causal role that is distinct from known biological mechanisms. This would appear to be in contradiction with the generally held tenet of biology that life can be explained mechanistically in terms that are ultimately reducible to the work of natural selection on physical processes governed by laws operating at the microphysical level (an issue I previously discussed in this post).

However, this issue relates not to the MIWTP being incorrect in toto, but rather that a particular inference derived from MIWTP, proferred in accordance with the speculative spirit of Speculative M-Naturalism, has turned out to be erroneous and should be disregarded. On the other hand, the MIWTP doesn't discount the possibility that nature may turn out to operate differently from what one would expect from reductionist assumptions ( through mechanisms such as top down causation or strong emergence). Of course, it is a matter for science to investigate whether such phenomena which may be consistent with MIWTP do in fact exist.

Contemporary Relevance

In relation to the issue of whether the MIWTP has any relevance to contemporary philosophical positions that seek consistency with modern science, I do not think the panexperientialist implications of this interpretation detract from its potential relevance. Espousal or interest in panexperientialism from contemporary philosophers within the analytic tradition such as Galen Strawson, David Chalmers, Gregg Rosenberg, David Skrbina and William Seager show that this topic is now a legitimate area of mainstream philosopical inquiry.

In assessing the relevance of MWITP, reference again to the philosophy of Whitehead is apposite. A strong analogy can be made between the concresing 'actual occasions' of Whitehead and quanta of will to power (see here for example). Therefore, I think there is a potential for the MIWTP to form a basis for a salient and coherent metaphysics of the world that is consistent with modern science to the same extent that Whitehead's philosophy has this potential.

Conclusion

In view of the above, I think a strong case can be made that a metaphysical interpretation of the Will to Power is consistent with the methodological naturalism of Nietzsche, was tentatively endorsed by him and is of contemporary relevance. Whilst I think the MIWTP is complementary to and runs parallel to Nietzsche's methodological naturalism (and therefore is not essential to it), in my view it has significant philosophical merit in its own right.

A Case for Intelligent Design?

2008-08-28T05:02:00.000-07:00

In this post I aim to have a go at the heresy of presenting a case for the plausibility of intelligent design as a factor in biological evolution (although ID of an atypical, non-supernatural sort).

In the first part I'll put forward a philosophical argument for the plausibility of ID, building on arguments made in previous posts. Then I'll address some concerns regarding parsimony constraints in explanation. Finally, I'll address how this all relates to science.

The plausibility of ID

The argument goes as follows:

1. Subjective experience exists.

- I take this as self evident.

2. Panexperientialism is a plausible explanation of the relation between experience and the physical world.

- For general arguments regarding panexperientialism ( which I use synonymously with the term 'panpsychism') refer to external links page. Some biologists who have been sympathetic to a panexperientialist position include Sewall Wright and Bernhard Rensch- papers here and here.

3. A plausible form of panexperientialism is that which posits a universal, cosmic subject.

- Refer to posts here, here and here).

4. It is plausible that the universe is 'finely tuned' for life as a consequence of the drive towards differentiation of an anticipative cosmic subject.

- Refer here

5. Given 4, it is also plausible that the drive towards differentiation of an anticipative cosmic subject could be a factor in biological evolution.

I think that if one accepts the first four premises, then the conclusion (5) is fairly uncontentious - if the universe can fine tune itself for life, then it is reasonable to conclude that it could also direct it's further biological evolution. Thus, to argue against the plausibility of ID as presented here it would be necessary to attack those premises.

Parsimony

In my previous post on the fine tuning problem I noted that putative explanations should be both plausible and parsimonious. To this end, I argued that the the inner workings of the postulated cosmic subject should be correlated with the observed physical world as far as possible, and that one could parsimoniously attribute to it an instinctual and anticipative drive towards differentiation. Parsimony and plausibility constraints also apply in relation also apply in relation to arguments for ID. Thus, inferences regarding the cosmic subject's effect on evolution should impute it with as little intelligence or complexity as possible.

I also noted in that post that the major disadvantage which I see in positing a cosmic subject which can anticipate the future is that the physical correlates of the anticipative propensities of the cosmic subject are not observable (or at least have not been observed to date), which goes against the parsimony constraint.

To address this issue further, although the lack of physical anticipatory correlates lessens the appeal of positing an anticipative cosmic subject, I do not think it is fatal to it. A naturalistic explanation can posit unobservables without being fundamentally flawed. For instance, the multiple universes postulated by quantum physicists, string theorists and so forth are inferences which are not directly observable. Also, something may be unobservable in practice but not in principle always unobservable. For instance, perhaps the anticipatory workings of the cosmic subject could be correlated with fluctuations in the vacuum energy of empty space. In this case (and continuing the analogy from the prior post), just as the neural correlates of a jumping dog's anticipative functions are not obviously observable to an undeveloped science, so too the passive workings of the cosmic subject's anticipative functions may not be readily observable, with only its active actions being so.

If one accepts the first four premises above, then in comparing alternate possible evolutionary explanations the lack of parsimony of the anticipative functions of a cosmic subject could perhaps be weighed against the purported implausibility of evolution having occurred solely through random variation and natural selection. One could argue at length from a philosophical perspective as to which explanation is more plausible or parsimonious. More progress if of course likely to be made by actual testing competing hypotheses.

Scientific implications

So how specifically might an anticipative evolutionary drive toward differentiation work and how could it be tested?

Two possible mechanisms are saltation or adaptive mutation. In relation to saltation, the cosmic subject might anticipate that certain major changes in genetic structure could result in the synthesis of proteins which enable the formation of more differentiated organismic forms. Natural selection would then do the work of selecting those forms which are suited to the environment into which they emerge. In relation to adaptive mutation, perhaps the cosmic subject anticipates that certain mutations could lead to new structures that will overcome environmental obstacles an organism faces and thus enhance its potential for differentiation. The latter hypothesis is probably less parsimonious than saltation because it requires attunement of genetic changes to environmental influences. But on the other hand, it is probably more amenable to actual testing (it is difficult to see how one could test for 'hopeful monsters').

To show that adaptive mutation was a result of an anticipative evolutionary drive it would be first necessary to eliminate other possible causes. These could be Darwinian (such as selection acting on a generalised increase in mutation rate in response to environmental stress), or some as yet undiscovered Lamarkian mechanism that provides relevant phenotype to genome feedback.

If such physical explanations had been eliminated then perhaps it could be said there was some support for the anticipative drive hypothesis. The next question would then be what is the actual mechanism by which the anticipative drive effects evolutionary change. That is, how are mutations 'directed' without violating natural law. I think there are two options here. Firstly, the directed mutations could be effected through exploiting indeterminacy at the quantum level. Secondly, one could take a different metaphysical view of the character of physical law, adopting the perspective of Alfred North Whitehead that laws are the 'habits' of nature which on rare occasions may be broken (such a view is also more in keeping with the organic nature of a cosmic subject).

It could be objected here that explaining directed mutation on the basis of quantum events or temporary alterations in nature's habits does not suffice as an explanation at all, because it does not explain the actual mechanism of how the cosmic drive 'causes' the copying errors that lead to the required mutations in nucleotide sequences . But bearing in mind that under the model proposed here the observed physical world is the external aspect of a cosmos with an intrinsic inner subjective dynamic, it may be the case that to ask this question is like asking why fundamental laws and properties are the way they are, and that no further physical explanation can be given.

So it seem to me the scientific investigation of ID as described here would work on a fundamentally negative heuristic - other possibilities are eliminated and we are left with nonrandom directed mutation without a more fundamental physical cause which can be pointed to. In this regard, explanation of direct mechanisms of biological changes, evolution and development are always going to yield a more productive science than that which operates on a negative heuristic of eliminating other possible causes.

Nevertheless, although ID may never be a productive research program in terms of helping us to learn more specifically about how the natural world works this is not to say it may not, after all other physical explanations have been exhausted, be shown to be the best explanation of some evolutionary changes. Of course, even then some might say that deferring to an as yet undiscovered explanation by normal physical means is preferable to postulating an ID mechanism which includes unobservable features. Here we are in the borderlands where philosophy of science meets metaphysics, the issue being whether methodological naturalism needs to be modified to incorporate inferences derived from the natural phenomena of subjective experience.

Conclusion

In light of the above, I think that under a panexperientialist framework some form of minimalist ID could be part of a plausible and parsimonious possible explanation of evolution. Whether such an explanation could ever fall within the realm of science is more problematic. Ultimately, accommodating ID within a scientific framework may require an enlarged conception of what science is (just as David Chalmers has proposed may be necessary for a theory of consciousness ).

In relation to whether such an enlarged conception of science is necessary at the present time, I think the answer is no. There is still so much to learn about life in conventional fields such as molecular biology, genetics and evolutionary developmental biology that it would seem premature to resort to hypotheses concerning a cosmic evolutionary drive. So perhaps the most can be said at the moment is that a panexperientialist form of ID is a plausible hypothetical possibility which is not yet ripe for testing, and may never be.

The Goldilocks Enigma

2008-08-08T04:24:00.000-07:00

Paul Davies recent book "The Goldilocks Enigma" is a fascinating exploration of why the universe seems to be "just right" for life. Interest in the fine tuning issue (which is related to the anthropic principle) has received something of a revival in recent years, primarily because of the attention paid by some physicists to the view that our universe has an improbably appropriate amount of dark energy to allow galaxies to form and hence life to evolve. In this post, I aim to evaluate possible solutions to the fine tuning problem from a panexperientialist perspective.

It should be noted that some physicists argue that the universe is as not as fine tuned for life as others would suggest, most prominent among them being Victor Stenger (papers on the subject here). This is not an area where I am qualified to judge, but Davies' comment in his book that the odds of the amount of dark energy in the universe canceling out by chance to an amount that is appropriate for life being 10 to the power of 120 to one helped convinced me that the issue is one that demands consideration.

Some critics also eschew proposed solutions to the fine tuning issue on the basis that the proposed solutions cannot be tested and hence are not scientific. Whilst I think this criticism can have relevance in relation to unscientific claims which claim to be otherwise (for example, it seems to me that aspects of string theory may be more appropriately termed mathematicised philosophy rather than science), I don't believe falsifiable, scientific explanations are the only sort of explanations that are valuable or rational. Although generally a falsifiable model is preferable to one that is not, sometimes the most that can be hoped for is inference to the best explanation.

In assessing putative inferences to the best explanation, I think two key criteria to address are those of plausibility and parsimony - explanations should be credible and no more complicated than necessary. These criteria will be used as the basis for assessing the various possible solutions to the fine tuning problem in the remainder of this post. I will also be assuming in this post that the existence of an overarching universal subject (which I have previously discussed in posts here, here and here) is a plausible form of panexperientialism.

Another preliminary point to be made is that some critics of fine tuning arguments state that as we do not know that life occurs anywhere else in the universe other than Earth, the universe may not in fact be 'just right' for life. Davies makes the point that the fine tuning argument still applies in relation to the fact that the universe permits life in at least one place in the universe. For this to occur the universe must have laws which allow stable complex structures to form, must contain the sorts of substances that life requires and must provide a setting so that substances can come together in the appropriate way. Thus , the fine tuning argument still applies even if life only occurs on Earth. A related point here is that the fine tuning argument is separate from claims regarding the evolution of life- the universe being fine tuned for life to have formed initially is entirely compatible with the subsequent evolution of life occurring through random variation and natural selection.

In his book Davies discusses various proposed solutions to the fine tuning problem - coincidence, multiverses, intelligent design by God and variations of these - and finds all of them wanting. I won't reiterate his arguments here other than to say that I agree that these explanations do not seem to rate very well on the criteria of parsimony or plausibility.

I do think the multiverse concept may have some advantages over other options if it turns out to be indirectly testable and hence scientific. Davies says that this may be the case if the multiverse theory makes the prediction that galaxy formation should be frustrated by a value of dark energy such that the universe is marginally biofriendly rather than optimally biofriendly - which would seem too 'flukey'. But one wonders that if the result did come out as too flukey that multiverse proponents might then just fall back on the argument that we just happen to be living in a universe that is even more flukey than originally supposed.

Davies also elaborates on and expresses a preference for another intriguing possible solution to the fine tuning argument derived from the work of Johnathon Wheeler. Very briefly, Davies proposes that the universe may contain a 'life principle' that constrains the universe to evolve towards life and mind. This , of course, invokes a teleological aspect to cosmic evolution. Davies introduces this teleological element without abandoning naturalistic explanation by invoking quantum theory and backwards in time causation. By extending the delayed choice experiment from the scale of photons to the scale of the universe, Davies proposes that if the entire universe could evolve until it is permeated by mind and life, then it could engineer its own creation and evolution through backwards in time calibration of its initial conditions. This has the added bonus of forming a self-explanatory loop explaining the issue of why the universe exists at all!

I must admit that this solution initially struck me as kooky as panexperientialism no doubt seems to be to many physicalists. But, on reflection, I find it an ingenious attempt to naturalisitically explain fine tuning. The main problem I would have with it is in the likelihood that non-preexisting mind could evolve to saturate the whole universe (including, presumably, the interior of stars and the vastness of empty space), which I gather is a requirement for backward causation to work on a cosmic scale. In my view, it is more plausible that mind was their to start with. Hence, I'll now propose how a panexperientialist might explain the fine tuning problem.

In constructing a panexperientialist solution to the fine tuning problem, parsimony and plausibility constraints are paramount. It would not be hard to solve the problem by imputing a cosmic subject with all the powers of a super-intelligent and omnipotent God. However, the requirement of parsimony entails that the cosmic subject should be no more complicated than necessary.

To this end, I think that the starting point for the simplicity of the cosmic subject is that the inner workings of the subject are correlated with the observed physical world. Thus, as far as possible the internal subjectivity of the cosmic subject should manifest itself to an observer as the operation of physical laws, and postulating cosmic experiences which do not have observeable physical correlates should be avoided wherever possible.

Another related application of the simplicity criterion to the cosmic subject is that the subjective dynamics of the cosmos should be correlated with its outward evolution. On this point, what can be observed from the initial conditions of the big bang to the formation of galaxies, stars and planets which permit the evolution of life is a progressive differentiation. Thus, I think the cosmic subject can be parsimoniously attributed with a drive or urge towards self differentiation (incidentally, Freya Mathews explores the idea that the cosmos realises itself through self-differentiation from a psychological perspective in her book For Love of Matter).

Whilst positing a cosmic subject with an urge towards self differentiation may get some way toward solving the fine tuning problem, it is not enough. The parameters that allowed the universe to evolve into a biofriendly state were laid down in the early stages of the big bang or shortly thereafter, whereas the conditions of the universe that allowed life to evolve (for example the differentiation from a featureless primordial gas into galaxies and stars) occurred millions or billions of years after these initial conditions were determined. Thus, even allowing for a cosmic urge towards self differentiation , how would the universe 'know' to set the parameters such that differentiation would occur far off into the future?

I can envisage two possible solutions to this dilemma. The first is the universe must be imputed with a degree of foresight such that it was aware that the setting of the parameters at the initial stages of it's evolution would allow it to differentiate further in the future. In accordance with the simplicity criterion, this ability of foresight should not be made any more complex than need be. Hence, I do not think it would necessary to ascribe any intellectual, calculative or linguistic elements to it. Rather it could be likened to instinctual anticipation on a cosmic scale. An analogy could be perhaps made with a dog knowing how high to jump to catch a ball, without knowing any of the physics involved in assessing the trajectory of the ball and the muscular forces required for the jump; and the universe knowing how to differentiate itself in it's early phases such that it's potential for further differentiation would b enhanced. Of course, the time scales between a dog catching a ball and billions of years of cosmic evolution is great, but if a subject exists on a cosmic scale then it is reasonable to assume its experience of time would be vastly different from organisms on our scale.

The other solution to the dilemma is to embrace a modified backward causation model in which the universe evolves itself through backward causation. The difference (from the previously discussed backward causation model) being that the universe already possesses an experiential character at the time of its inception, with the direction of its evolution being engineered by a more explicitly intelligent and evolved subjectivity from the future.

In terms of weighing up these two alternatives to the foresight issue, I will just say a couple of things for now. The major disadvantage which I see in positing a cosmic subject which can anticipate the future is that there are no obvious physical correlates of this anticipation. The physical correlates of a dog anticipating catching a ball could be located in the firing of its neurons, but where would the equivalent physical correlate be for the anticipative propensities of the cosmic subject? It would appear that characteristics which permit this foresight are not physically observable (or at least have not been observed to date), which goes against the parsimony constraint previously discussed .

Another factor counting against the anticipative model is that it lacks the self explanatory loop explaining the existence of the universe, which is a purported feature of the backward causation model.

However, considering parsimony from another aspect, if one is already prepared to admit the existence of a cosmic subject at the beginning of the universe on other grounds, then it is not that much more to allow this subject to possess powers of foresight. Overall, I prefer the anticipative model to the backward causation model, but this is probably just an intuitive preference more than anything else.

By way of conclusion, I think it is reasonable to say that if one accepts a panexperientialist explanation of consciousness, then a plausible and parsimonious explanation for the universe being finely tuned for life may be that this is a consequence of the drive towards differentiation of an anticipative cosmic subject. The major challenge for this model lies in explaining how the cosmic subject anticipates the future and what the physical correlates of such anticipation might be.

Conversely, I also thinks that the fine tuning problem itself adds weight to versions of panexperientialism which posit the existence of a cosmic subject.

Forthcoming Book

2008-07-16T17:56:00.000-07:00

I noticed on this blog that David Skrbina, author of the highly regarded "Panpsychism in the West", is editing a new book on panpsychism due out in 2008 or 2009.

The contributions in "Mind that Abides" aim to move "beyond a basic defense of panpsychism, and toward new positive theories as they relate to mind, consciousness, and reality."

Contibutors include Skrbina himself, Galen Strawson, Riccardo Manzotti, Stephen Deiss, Carey Carlson (Steve Esser reviews one of Carlson's books here), Stuart Hameroff and Freya Mathews (whose work was discussed in the post below).

One to look out for!

Thoughts on "The Ecological Self"

2008-06-12T02:54:00.000-07:00

Further to my last post, I've recently read Freya Mathew's book "The Ecological Self" (also partially available on Google books). In this post I'll give a brief outline of the book and make some comments on it. There is not much by way of other reviews I could find to link to (which is not to say the book has been without influence- it is frequently referred to in environmental philosophy texts and the like).

The backcover of the book describes it as a treatment of the metaphysical foundations of ecological ethics. As such it is part an elaboration of a metaphysics and part an examination of the normative implications of this metaphysics. In this post I will be focusing on the metaphysical aspects of the book.

In constructing her model Mathews draws on theories and hypotheses from various disciplines including relativity physics and systems theory. Mathews says her project "was to find a metaphysical and ethical expression for the intuition of 'oneness' and interconnectedness, and Spinoza and Einstein provided a starting point." Mathews acknowledges that quantum mechanics could potentially also form a basis for a metaphysic of interconnectedness, but considers that the interpretation of QM is still in a state of uncertainty and flux such that it may not a stable base for such a project.

Chapter 1 provides a historical and analytical critique of "Newtonian Atomism" and it's ethical, environmental and ideological implications. This sort of critique of the atomistic portrayal of the world as "inert, insensate, devoid of telos, purpose and meaning" is of course fairly common, but the chapter was an enjoyable read nonetheless.

In Chapter 2, Mathews present her alternative cosmology to Newtonian atomism in the form of a monism based on Geometrodynamics. This model posits the existence of only one substance in the universe - spacetime. By way of some background on what Geomterodynamics ('GMD') is, here are some words Mathews quotes of it's founder, Johnathon Wheeler:

"Is spacetime only an arena within which fields and particles move about as 'physical' and 'foreign' entities. Or is the four-dimensional continuum all there is ? Is curved empty geometry a kind of magical building material out of which everything in the physical world is made: (1) slow curvature in one region of space describes a gravitational field; (2) a rippled geometry with a different type of curvature somewhere else describes an electromagnetic field; (3) a knotted-up region of high curvature describes a concentration of mass-energy that moves like a particle? Are fields and particles foreign entities immersed in geometry, or are they nothing but geometry?"

The reduction of matter and every other physical phenomenon to the geometry of spacetime sounds like an intriguing and fascinating project. However, the problem with GMD from a scientific point of view is that it failed to adequately account for all the empirical data (eg it could not explain the existence of fermions) and so was largely abandoned by physicists, including Wheeler himself in the 1970s.

Despite the lack of scientific support for GMD, Mathews argues that a geometrodynamical cosmological model can be defended on metaphysical grounds alone. Thus, while there is no (current) scientific support for GMD, Mathews believes that as a metaphysic this view can be defended, based on two primary arguments:

(1) It provides a response to Hume's critique of causation. The basis of this critique was that there are no necessary connections between 'distinct existences' , where a distinct existence is a thing that can be conceived of existing independently of anything else (such as a cause and an effect, or the interactions between two objects). Mathews argues that by positing the existence of just one substance, changes within this substance (such as waves propagating through it) are intrinsically connected, so the problem of the lack of necessary connectedness does not arise. Mathews argues that this notion of causation can be applied both to classical determinism, which relates to local changes in the geometry of spacetime and quantum indeterminism which could be related to changes in the topological structure of spacetime (refer to page 75 to 76 for examples).

(2) The second argument is a dense metaphysical argument focusing on Spinoza's conception of substance (refer page 76 to 90), which I won't attempt to summarise in detail. The thrust of the argument is based on the characterisation of Spinoza's conception of substance as essentially relating to plenitude, where the formal properties of plenitude are unity, continuity, indivisibility and unboundedness. Mathews presents an argument for the principle of plenitude based on the view that if there is sufficient reason for the existence of one thing then there will be sufficient reason for the existence of every thing with which it can logically coexist. Thus, "a sufficient reason for the sheer fact of the actuality of substantivality then appears to entail a sufficient reason for unconstrained actual substantivality." Mathews uses the argument to conclude that the Principle of Plenitude "'implies that reality takes the from of dynamic spacetime, a spherical, finite but unbounded space that expands in time".

Whilst I found the metaphysical argument of Mathews for GMD, as much as I understood them, to be of considerable merit, I did not find it very satisfying that her model was partially derived from an unsupported scientific theory (especially as the incompleteness of the interpretation of QM was the reason given for not using it as a metaphysical basis - though it should be noted that this was in reference to the philosophical foundations of QM and not in relation to any particular empirical model). Whilst metaphysics can exist independently of science, I prefer a metaphysics that gels with physics, otherwise it is unlikely to be considered to be of contemporary relevance.

Despite this perceived flaw in Mathews model, I do not think it is fatal to it. The reason for this is that a substance monism based on spacetime does not have to confine itself to geometric properties. For example, Johnathon Schaffer in his paper Spacetime the One Substance types makes the distinction between moderate monism which is restricted to intrinsic properties as fundamental properties of spacetime, and strict monism which restricts itself to to intrinsic geometric properties only. Whilst strict monism appears to be without scientific support, Schaffer presents arguments from both General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory in favor of moderate monism.

Briefly, in relation to General Relativity Schaffer provides support for the view that GR models can be expressed as being in relation to fields which are properties or attributes of spacetime, with the physical world being fully describable in terms of attributes of the spacetime manifold. In relation to Quantum Field theory, he provides support for the view that the fundamental physical ingredients are fields rather than particles and that ‘particles’ are in fact excitation properties of spacetime.

Assuming Schaffer's arguments are sound, then the geometrodynamic model of Mathews can be modified to a moderate monist model, which is supported by current science. I believe this modification would not detract from the major features of her model (although maybe the second metaphysical argument may not have as much weight under moderate monism).

In addition to this, Schaffer puts forward another strong argument for spacetime monism - that of parsimony. If a single substance can in fact account for all ontological and empirical facts, then it seems unnecessary and extravagant to introduce another form of substance to account for material objects.

Having elaborated her monistic metaphysics of spacetime, in the next chapter Mathews outlines how a criterion for individuality within this substance might nevertheless be found, given that material objects no longer possess an absolute substantival identity. Mathews seeks this principle of individuation in systems theory and argues that an open system exhibiting self-regulation, homeostasis, equifinality (the reaching of a final state from different initial conditions) and goal-directedness can be described as self-realising. Self-realisability is then put forward as the principle of individuation. Mathews calls a self-realising system a 'self'.

The paradigmatic instance of the self-realising system is of course the organism (although Mathews leaves open the question of whether other systems such as ecosystems could also qualify as selves). So under this model, the only true individuals in the universe are spacetime itself and selves. I think the criteria for individuation here seem sound.

As an aside, I find it interesting and perhaps supportive of the significance of organisms as true individuals, that coming from the opposite ontological direction, Peter Van Inwagen in his book Material Beings argues that the only true material beings are fundamental particles and living organisms.

It is important to note here that "selves' are characterised by Mathews in systems theoretic terms and she does not rely on consciousness or experiential features of selfhood in this book (although this is a theme that she develops in her later book). As I read it, Mathews' metaphysical model in "The Ecological Self" could theoretically apply to a world in which consciousness was absent.

The next step in Mathews project is to investigate whether the concept of selfhood can be applied to the Cosmos itself. Here she also uses Spinoza's term of conatus as an equivalent to self-realizability, accept in so far as the former lacks systems-theoretic connotations. Using the previous argument regarding the essence of substance as being to seek plenitude (this being the reason that substance takes the form of an expanding space), she contends that this is a straightforward 'translation into the cosmic context of the principle of the conatus'. Thus Mathews concludes that the cosmos fulfills the self-realisability feature of a self-realising system. Mathews then considers whether the cosmos could meet the systems-theoretic model of a self-maintaining system and concludes that it does meet such requirements, though one of a special sort in that it is not an open system.

I found the arguments for the self hood of the cosmos, at first blush anyway, interesting but less than fully convincing. The expanding nature of the cosmos in itself does not seem to me to equate with the self-realisability which an organism posseses. But this is something I may need to dwell on some more.

The final chapter of the book traces the ethical implications of the model. Mathews cites three levels of value; that of the cosmos itself as a self-realising system; that of value which inheres in individual selves or self-realsing systems; and value which a self ascribes to elements in the environment (which is not an intrinsic value but represents the utility of the environment for a particular self).

These notions of value are then applied in the context of environmental ethics. Again, the notion of value used here does not imply consciousness, as "to be self-maintaining is just what it is to be valuable" and "it is not that an organism seeks to maintain itself because it values its existence, but rather that seeking to maintain itself is constitutive if its valuing itself."

Whilst I am not going to analyse Mathews ethical arguments here, to me the notion of intrinsic value is tied up with the subjectival or experiential aspect of an entity being "for itself", and so consideration of ethical value demands consideration of experientiality. Nevertheless, the chapter is an absorbing read, though the extent to which one buys the ethical arguments will depend on to what extent one has agreed with the metaphysics on which it is based.

In conclusion, I think the The Ecological Self covers some very interesting territory. Whilst I don't agree with all the arguments in the book, it has attracted me to the idea of a monistic cosmology. I have found in the past that perspectives which claim to be "holistic" often end up being either incoherent or a repackaged form of reductionism. But a scientifically based substance monism seems to open up the genuine possibility of a coherent holism.

Mathews later work in developing her model to incorporate subjectivity, and the recent work on monism by Johnathon Schaffer, have now sparked my interest and will probably be where I delve into next.

Does Physicalism entail Cosmopsychism?

2008-05-24T20:24:00.000-07:00

The increase in interest in panexperientialism (which I use synonymously with the term panpsychism) in recent years has focused mainly on a micropsychic form, in which microepxeriential events at the most fundamental level of nature are the basis from which human experience is constituted. However, another strand of panexperientialism imputes an overarching experience at the level of the universe as a whole.

For example, the model of Freya Mathews (briefly discussed in this blog previously here) posits the cosmos itself as a subject - "a vast field of felt impulse, of intrinsic activity, of internal expansions, swellings, dwindlings, contractions, surges, urges, and so forth." Within this "great internally differentiated field of felt impulsion" (which is described from an objective viewpoint by physical laws), certain local modes of self-realizing systems, such as human organisms, may themselves become centers of subjectivity or secondary subjects.

In this post, I aim to explore the concept of an overarching cosmic subject in the light of Galen's Strawson's influential paper "Realistic Monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism" (much discussed in previous posts on this blog).

For want of a better term, I'll call the view that there is a cosmic subject "cosmopsychism".

1. Strawson's argument

For the purposes of this post, I take the critical propositions in Strawson's argument to be the following:

1) physicalism is the view that every real, concrete phenomenon in the universe is physical . Concrete is equated with ‘spatio-temporally (or at least temporally) located’.
2) physicalism is true.
3) there is a plurality of ultimates ('using the term ‘ultimate’ to denote a fundamental physical entity, an ultimate constituent of reality, a particle,field, string, brane, simple, whatever').
4) everything physical (everything physical that there is or could be) is constituted out of ultimates of the sort we actually have in our universe.
(5) the universe is spatio-temporal in its fundamental nature.
(6) experience is a real concrete phenomenon.
(7) experiential phenomena cannot be emergent from wholly non-experiential phenomena.

Therefore,

(8)at least some ultimates are intrinsically experience-involving.

Proposition (8) follows from the premises that everything concrete is physical, that everything physical is constituted out of physical ultimates, and that experience is part of concrete reality.

Stawson derives panpsychism (all ultimates being experience involving) from micropsychism (some ultimates being experience-involving) on the basis of doubts that if this were not the case there would be a "radical heterogeneity at the very bottom of things".

He also takes "experience-involving" to indicate being a subject of experience, on the basis that every experience has a subject of that experience (this issue will be further discussed later).

2. Is Cosmopsychism consistent with Physicalism?

In order for cosmopsychism to be consistent with physicalism as characterized above, it is clear that at least one of the premises must be rejected. I think the most likely candidate for rejection is premise 4. This premise could be modified to:

(4) everything physical, with the possible exception of experience, is constituted out of ultimates.

The question which then arises is whether a position with this modified premise could still be called physicalism.

The modified premise could be the consistent with known physical laws. For instance, if one takes the epiphenomenalist view that experience has no effect on measurable physical activity, or the view that consciousness does not logically supervene on such activity, then it is clear that experience could be constituted from something other than ultimates without violating the laws of physics. Further, to say that experience is not constituted by ultimates is not to say that the arrangement of ultimates within a system such as the brain could not have a determining influence on the system's particular experiential features (ie the brain could be responsible for the character of human experience without being the cause of experience per se).

An analogy here could also be made with spacetime, which is not generally thought of as composed of ultimates (notwithstanding theories such as string theory which might may say otherwise) but is nevertheless part of the physical universe.

So I think with the modification of premise 4 the above set of propositions could still warrant the name physicalism. In view of this modification, the conclusion (8) now becomes:

(8)Either the universe itself, some ultimates, or something in between is intrinsically experience-involving.

With regard to what this "something in between" could be, the obvious candidate is the brain or part thereof. I considered this issue previously in the context of whether experience is a fundamental property characteristic of systems such as brains. In that post I concluded that given that other fundamental properties are widespread and associated with the most simple of systems, it seems implausible, arbitrary and unparsimonious to suppose that experience is fundamental yet also rare and wholly dependent on uniquely complex and specialized systems such as the brain. The same principles apply here to any other subsystem of the universe.

In relation to the universe itself being experiential, it might be objected here that even if experience is not constituted from ultimates it is nonsensical to speak of the universe as a single unified subject, as it is mostly empty space and it's distributed activities could not form a unified experiential whole.

I do not think this is a strong objection. In relation to human experience it is not known how the distributed activities of the central nervous system give rise to the unity of conscious perception ("the binding problem"). Nevertheless we know that conscious perception is real. Thus, just as we do not know how disparate activities of the brain give rise to the unity of conscious experience, so too we do not know how the disparate activities of the universe might be associated with a unity of experience. But the fact that human experience exists means that the analogous case of cosmic experience is not implausible.

It might be further be objected on this point that the brain is connected through the activity of neural networks whereas the universe is not. But the various elements of the universe, even across vast regions of empty space, are connected as well (through the the interactions of the fundamental forces, for instance). Certainly the type of connectivity is vastly different and presumably these differences would give rise to vast differences in experientiality, but the connectivity is there nevertheless.

The above reasoning leads to the conclusion that cosmopsychism is indeed consistent with physicalism, and that experience is most likely a property of either ultimates or the universe as a whole.

In the remainder of this post I will make some comments regarding the relative merits of these two positions.

3. Micropsychism Vs Cosmopsychism

Intuitional considerations

For those who regard the notion of sub atomic particles being experiential as crazy, the notion of a cosmic subject may appear even more bizarre. Whilst micropyschism has the issue of trillions of subjects at the level of ultimates pervading the universe , cosmopsychism has that of a single subject having trillions of simultaneous experiences (assuming that every event at the subatomic level is experienced separately by the cosmic subject, which may not necessarily be the case and would depend on the model developed ).

There does not appear to be any logical or conceptual impossibility to a single subject having trillions of experiences. For instance, I can be aware of a pain in my toe, a rumbling in my stomach, the screen in front of me and the shopping list on the fridge all at the same time and there is no reason in principle that this multiple experiencing could not be stretched indefinitely for a cosmic subject. This is analogous, in the case of micropsychism, to envisaging experiences becoming simpler and simpler right down to the level of fundamental particles. So I don't think that either position has an advantage here. It may be the case, as Strawson says in relation to micropsychist panpsychism, that it is just a matter of getting used to the idea.

The combination problem and the differentiation problem

One of the major problems with micropsychism is the "combination problem" of how one gets from discrete experiential events at the micro level to experience at the macro level such as human experience - that is, how the human subject is constituted from a myriad of subjects at the level of ultimates. For cosmopsychism, there is no combination problem. Rather there is a "differentiation problem"- that of how parts of the cosmic subject branch off and become unique subjects themselves.

Whilst both these problems are major issues for each view, cosmopsychism may have some explanatory advantage in relation to the evolution of human consciousness. For instance, Richard Dawkins speculates (in the "Selfish Gene") that "perhaps consciousness arises when the brain's simulation of the world becomes so complete that it must include a model of itself". While I don't think that such self-reflexivity does much to explain human consciousness under a standard physicalist view, under cosmopsychism it may have the potential to explain how a localised region of cosmic subjectivity could "loop back" on itself to create a secondary subject.

So perhaps the differentiation problem is less problematic than the combination problem in explaining human consciousness.

Subjectivity unity

Experiences belong to subjects and subjects are necessarily discrete, indivisible unities. That is, there are boundaries between subjects such that my experiences necessarily belong to me and not another.

The discrete nature of subjectivity accords well with some aspects of quantum physics, with each quantum event being perhaps associated with a discrete moment of subjectivity. However, I do not think that the unity and discreteness of subjectivity works so well with the wave aspect of wave-particle duality. Whilst this is a topic best left to those with more knowledge of physics than me, the continuous nature of electromagnetic waves, gravitational fields and so forth seem on the face of it difficult to reconcile with a micropsyhic view which requires experiences at the micro level to be associated with discrete subjects.

Under cosmopsychism, electromagnetic waves and the like could be experienced as part of a continuum or "stream of experience" and there is no need for each physical event to form a discrete package which can be assigned to a nonuniversal subject. The contrast between the unity of subjectivity and the continuous nature of the physical realm is a major point advanced by Freya Mathews in postulating a cosmopsychic form of panpsychism.

Another aspect of quantum physics which perhaps could be better accommodated within a cosmopsychic rather than micropsychic framework is quantum non-localism and entanglement. Quantum effects between spatially distant particles may be potentially explicable under a model in which the activities of these particles are experienced by a single cosmic subject.

4. Conclusion

Obviously there is a lot more that could be said on this matter, and all of the above falls far short of showing that physicalism necessarily entails cosmopsychism. Nevertheless, it may be the case that if one accepts that experience is real and physicalism is true, the most reasonable inference could turn out to be that a cosmic subject exists.

In any case, it definitely seems to me to be something worth further pondering on.

Panpsychism at Tucson 2008

2008-05-08T21:08:00.000-07:00

Panpsychism appears to have featured significantly in the recent Tucson Towards a Science of Consciousness 2008 Conference, to the extent that this reviewer remarks that "Pansychism is no longer crazy - it's the norm".

Other reviews of the conference can be found on David Chalmers' blog here.

A list of abstracts for the various presentations at the conference is here (search using the term "panpsychism" to find abstracts related to this topic, as they are not all under the one heading).

I note that William Seager is continuing work in relation to the "intrinsic nature" argument for panpsychism, which he has previously addressed in the first two papers here (the second paper addressing the issue in the context of Gregg Rosenberg's book).

The abstract for Daniel Krieglstein's presentation "Emotion: The Building Block for Panpsychism" looks intriguing. Noting the observation of social psychologists that in group settings a single emotional state can appear to take over the individuals of the group, the author suggests a formula for higher order experiences and unified behaviour:

"Xp + XoN + E = XpoN

In that, X is a given phenomena, Xp is the experience of that phenomena by a single (p)erceiver, XoN is one or more (o)ther points of perception for that phenomena, and E is an error term. The result is XpoN which is a truth about the given phenomena that is shared by the (p)erceiver and the (o)thers, but transcends the limited perception of either, to become a higher order experience with unique properties."

I see some resonances here with Hartshorne's "compound individual" and Whitehead's proposition that "the many become one and are increased by one".

Property Dualism - micro, macro and mystery

2008-01-27T02:05:00.000-08:00

Fiona Macpherson in this article contends that Galen Strawson’s proposed panpsychist solution to the mind-body problem is no less of a mystery than other proposed solutions.

Macpherson accepts that mainstream physicalism is inadequate in explaining consciousness, but thinks that Strawson’s proposed solution (which she characterises as a form of property dualism, although Strawson would not describe it as such) is not superior to either substance dualism or a form of property dualism in which the kind of experience with which we are familiar is a fundamental property which ‘ is not reducible to, or does not emerge from, other properties.’

In this post I want to address the issue of whether the property dualism of the micropsychist kind as characertised by Macpherson, which I’ll call microexperiential property dualism (microPD) is indeed inferior to the alternative property dualism model proferred by Macpherson, which I’ll call macroexperiential property dualism (macroPD). ( I also do not think that substance dualism has more merit than either of these two options but will not argue that in this post).

The difference between microPD and macroPD is that microPD holds that experientiality is a property of at least some ‘ultimates’ (fundamental physical constituents), whereas macroPD holds that experientiality of the type with which we are familiar is the fundamental type of experientiality. That is, macroPD brutely posits experiential properties at the human level, whereas microPD brutely posits them at the level of fundamental particles or similar.

Both these views hold that experiential properties are not reducible to or entailed by physical properties. However, this is not to say that there is no dependency of the experiential on the physical under these positions. Rather, the two are linked by, using Chalmers terminology, psychophysical laws - contingent laws of nature which are independent of physical laws.

Part of the consideration of microPD and macroPD involves consideration of the likely form of these psychophysical laws.

Macpherson contends that macroPD has the disadvantage of not explaining why macro experiential properties only seem to attach to non-experiential matter arranged in certain ways. I discussed this disadvantage in a previous post and concluded that it seems implausible, arbitrary and unparsimonious to suppose that experience is fundamental yet also rare and wholly dependent on uniquely complex and specialised systems such as the brain.

That is, if experience is too be explained as a fundamental in naturalistic terms it would seem preferable that it has the same characteristics as other fundamental properties such as mass, charge and spin - widespread and associated with the simplest of systems.

The type of psychophysical law linking the experiential and the non- experiential under macroPD would appear to be of a form such as “when a system reaches X degree of computational complexity, experience will be associated with it.” This is wholly unlike any other fundamental property and it seems indeed to render the natural world mysterious, such that William Lycan (refer previously mentioned post) states that this form of property dualism “while coherent, is loony”.

So this disadvantage of macroPD is indeed a major one.

Turning now to the advantages macroPD has over microPD, Macpherson contends that macroPD has an advantage over microPD in ‘not positing further (micro) experiential properties, which are the properties of ‘ultimates’’.

In assessing this purported advantage of macrPD it is necessary to consider whether positing micro experiential properties which we are not directly acquainted with is actually a problem. Certainly it does not seem hard to envisage a gradation of experientiality in animals from humans down to other primates, dogs, other mammals, birds, reptiles and all the way down to insects. There is nothing inherently mysterious about this.

By extension, there should also be nothing mysterious about proceeding with this envisagement all the way down to ultimate particles. There does not appear to be a problem with conceivability here, although it is certainly strange and unfamiliar.

Further, from a naturalistic standpoint , from what we know about other systems it seems perfectly natural for complex properties to develop from simpler properties. So this advantage of macroPD is not overwhelming.

In her evaluation of the advantages of microPD, Macpherson quotes Strawson in saying that the advantage of microPD is that it “ recommends a general framework of thought in which there need be no more sense of a radically unintelligible transition in the case of experientiality than there is in the case of liquidity”. This underscores the points above re the disadvantages of macroPD and highlights it’s arbitrariness. If laws of nature are such that experience just happens to arise when brains arise then it would appear that ‘anything goes’ in the realm of natural law (keeping in mind that in the property dualist view experience is not an ‘emergent property’ of physical complexity and the complexity does not in any way cause or entail the arising of experience).

Turning now to the disadvantages Macpherson finds with microPD, she states:

"Yet, it has a great number of disadvantages. Other mysteries or problematic features of the account that are just as great, if not greater,replace the mystery that is solved:

(1) There are a large number of subjects of experience and these
include the fundamental particles.
(2) If fundamental particles are the subjects of experience then is
anything composed from them such a subject? If not, what is the
principle that makes creatures like us such subjects (at least during
our wakeful and dreaming periods), and other conglomerations
not?
(3) The position says little about how macro experience (and different
types of such experience) arises from micro experience, other
than that it emerges in a wholly dependent way.
(4) Do the fundamental micro experiential properties have independent
causal powers? Do they abide by laws? If they interact
can they do so with non-experiential properties too?"

Dealing with each of these, briefly in turn:

"1) There are a large number of subjects of experience and these
include the fundamental particles."

The fact that there are a larger number of subjects of experience could be perceived as a problem if it violates Occam’s principle of parsimony. However if Occam’s principle that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily refers to the type of explanatory entity, not the number of times such entities are instantiated, then microPD seems to have an advantage. The choice is between a new class of fundamental property (one that is only present rarely and in complex systems) against a fundamental property of a similar class to others (widespread in simple systems). Thus, in this regard microPD is actually more parsimonious than macroPD.

Regarding the number of subjects including the fundamental particles, this does seem unfamiliar and strange, but, as Strawson attests, this is something one becomes accustomed to - as long as ‘subjects’ is interpreted in the most minimalist sense ( as previously discussed in this post).

"2) If fundamental particles are the subjects of experience then is
anything composed from them such a subject? If not, what is the principle that makes creatures like us such subjects (at least during our wakeful and dreaming periods), and other conglomerations not?"

This is something major which certainly needs to be addressed under microPD. But without understating the difficulty of the issue, coherent attempts have been made to address it. Charles Hartshorne made the distinction between aggregates of individuals which do not have experientiality (rocks, chairs, mountains etc) and true individuals which act as a coherent unit and are individually experiential (eg particles, atoms, molecules, cells, animals).

Alternatively, the subject associated with microexperience may be the only type of subject there is, and the character of our first hand experience is due to the nature of the environment it arises in, as suggested by the ‘actual occasions’ of Whitehead. On this view, the ‘macroexperience’ we are familiar with is really only another form of microexperience.

(Incidentally, the idea that particles and only particles are conscious proferred here had some discussion on the Journal of Consciousness discussion forum a while back. This view also has some resonances with Johnathon Edward’s theory of single cell consciousness - see here and here.)

"3) The position says little about how macro experience (and different
types of such experience) arises from micro experience, other
than that it emerges in a wholly dependent way."

This is another issue of importance which appears difficult. However, the explanation of something complex from other simple entities of the same type is something which occurs in nature all the time and would appear commensurate with naturalistic explanation more so than something complex appearing suddenly out of nowhere.

"4) Do the fundamental micro experiential properties have independent
causal powers? Do they abide by laws? If they interact
can they do so with non-experiential properties too?"

Again, these are issues which certainly are puzzling but which appear, if not explicable within a naturalistic framework, at least consistent with it.. Much of the same issues arise when considering the relationship between the macroexperience with which we are familiar (ie consciousness) and behaviour.

In summary, microPD may appear more strange and unfamiliar than macroPD but it also is less mysterious and more naturalistic in my view.

Macpherson’s states that Strawson ‘fails to make a fair assessment of his position relative to the others’. Making such a fair assessment is difficult and the weighing of various factors may depend to some extent on intuitional preferences (which view seems the least ‘loony’ perhaps).

However, I think a critical factor here is that the form of property dualism which states that experience is a fundamental property which occurs at the most basic levels of nature is more in keeping with what we know about the natural world than that which states that experience is a fundamental property which arises at the level of the brain.

A response to this could be that experience is a unique natural property with fundamental characteristics like no other - which may be the case, but this moves one further along the road to intractable mysteriousness.

So, if the laws linking the physical and the experiential are like other laws of nature, I think micro-experiential property dualism is a more reasonable inference than macro- experiential property dualism.

The Will to Power, Life and Parsimony

2007-09-02T05:11:00.000-07:00

Richard Schacht’s well-regarded book “Nietzsche” does a fine job of presenting Nietzsche’s philosophy, including his cosmology of the Will to Power, in a thorough and systematic manner. In this post I want to address a possible objection to the conception of the Will to Power and Schacht’s analysis of it.

The Will to Power in it’s most fundamental form can be characterised as “quanta of force” with the disposition to extend influence over and resist diminution by other quanta. In Nietzsche’s WTP cosmology (or, as most of his writings on the subject were unpublished, perhaps it is more appropriately described as a thought experiment or hypothesis), ‘the world is Will to Power - and nothing else besides’.

Schacht considers that although N does not compellingly demonstrate the validity of this interpretation, he does succeed in making a case for its validity that is worth serious consideration. Schacht considers that the WTP satisfies the methodological requirements of parsimony, explanatory power and plausibility. To quote: “The impulse to ordering transformation it imputes to all quanta of force serves to render intelligible the existence of the world as an affair of ceaseless ‘becoming’…the most basic pervasive features of which are the emergence of various sorts of order and their dissolution.”

A preliminary point here in relation to panexperientialism is to what extent the WTP is conjectured to have a experiential, felt, or subjective character. Some commentators eschew this notion, no doubt motivated by the ubiquitous “threat of panpsychism”. To me the idea that WTP is divested of any experiential aspect is not consistent with Nietzsche’s intention to posit an “inner” character to forces (though this of course need not denote self consciousness or consciousness as experienced by humans), fails to recognise Nietzsche’s Schopenhaeurian heritage and also robs the WTP of any significant explanatory value. If, for example, hunger can be construed as a drive which motivates food seeking behaviour yet the ‘felt’ aspect of this is removed , then it seems we are back at a purely mechanistic explanation of the behaviour, which N was opposed to.

The potential objection against WTP to be dealt with here revolves around N using it as an explanatory tool for the phenomena of “life”. Nietzsche uses life as a point of departure because it is that form of existence which is nearest and most readily scrutinized. He employs this method to life examined from a third person biological objective standpoint and from a first person experiential stance. Leaving aside the experiential aspect for the moment , Nietzsche takes it as given that life cannot be supposed to originate in (in Schacht’s words) the ‘aggregation of dispositionless dynamic quanta’. Therefore, WTP is invoked as an explanation.

However, I do not think it is at all clear that the objective aspects of life cannot be explained mechanistically and in terms that are ultimately reducible to the work of natural selection on dispositionless, non-intending and non-experiential matter. Whilst it is certainly the case that there are many aspects of biology that are not fully understood at the present time (such as cellular differentiation, embryology and morphogenesis), to me there is no reason in principle to suppose that adequate mechanistic explanations of such phenomena may not be possible (fields such as evolutionary developmental biology, previously discussed on this blog here, are making strides in this regard). Therefore, it seems that Nietzsche may be unnecessarily invoking a ’vitalistic’ principle into biology which undermines his thesis and renders it unparsimonious.

However, I do not think this objection is fatal to Nietzsche thesis, although it is serious.

If it is granted that biology can ultimately be explained mechanistically then (barring any genuinely emergent laws) it is reducible, in theory at least, to the fundamental laws and properties of physics. So in applying the principles of parsimony to Nietzsche’s thesis it is instructive to explore whether positing WTP has any advantages over positing the fundamental laws of physics as the ultimate basis and ground of life. There are two areas where I think that the WTP could have advantages in this regard.

Firstly, there is one aspect of life which, in my view is not reducible to physics, which is the ‘hard problem’ of phenomenal experience. Consciousness could be explained by WTP as the developmental of the experiential aspect of the WTP whereas, arguably, it is a phenomena which stands over and above the laws of physics.

Secondly, WTP is superior in that it can explain processes occurring at the level of physics as being due to the dispositional nature of quanta, whereas physics can at the level of the most fundamental laws describe the relationships of consecutive appearances of physical events but not explain why they are as they are - at the level of fundamental laws and properties one has hit bedrock and a further physical explanation cannot be given. As Nietzsche states it; “Mechanistic theory can therefore only describes processes, not explain them”.

By imputing an intentional, dynamic, dispositional aspect to the ‘quanta of force’ N offers a potential explanation as to why the fundamental laws and properties which govern how matter acts are as they are. It could be argued here that this is merely deferring the issue of why things are as they are up another level, as the question then arises as to why the WTP is as it is. However, I think that in explaining the behaviour of fundamental entities in terms of intrinsic, internal dispositions there is some explanatory gain in moving to this level.

A ’theory of everything’ could undermine the second point above if it were shown that fundamental physical laws and properties are as they are due to a matter of mathematical or logical necessity. However, if this were the case then unless such a theory could also accommodate the presence of phenomenal experience, the first point above would remain.

Thus, at the present time at least, although N attempts to incorrectly ground the WTP in biology I do not think this is fatal to his thesis. Nietzsche's thesis is not unparsimonious because it obviates the need for further explanations of phenomenal experience and provides a potential ontological basis for fundamental laws and properties.

If it is accepted that Nietzsche’s WTP thesis is significant independent of biological grounds for its justification, then another issue which then arises is what relevance it may have for biology and the explanation of life. Here we are not interested in justifying WTP on biological grounds but in exploring , given that WTP is a viable hypothesis on other grounds, what potential applications it could have for biology and the philosophy of biology. At first blush, I see two potential areas of application here.

Firstly, WTP could serve an explanatory role over and above that of Darwinian selection acting on mechanistic processes. Whilst it is stated above that in principle the obkective aspects of biology seem to be explicable, in principle, in mechanistic terms, this is not to say that there are areas of biology where other independently justified principles could be fruitfully applied.

For instance, The WTP ontology, through allowing for the combination of quanta of force into higher level ‘wills’ could be of relevance in the explication of behaviour in complex organisms such as humans. Nietzsche’s view is that in ‘the mutual struggle of that which becomes, often with the absorption of one‘s opponent …continual transition forbids us to speak of ‘individuals’… and ‘the ‘number’ of beings is itself in flux’. WTP thus provides for the emergence of higher level quanta which could exert ‘downward causation’ on lower level quanta within the organism. This could potentially provide an explanatory role, for example, in any effect consciousness has on behaviour.

Of course, such a principle as downward causation would be anathema to most biologists. But the WTP does not posit absolute laws operating at lower levels which fully determine activity at higher levels, so such an option remains open under the WTP ontology. The action of such "downward" willing would be an additional factor on which natural selection could act in the course of evolution. That is, quanta of force which comprise gene complexes which give rise to higher level wills with beneficial adaptive effects would tend to be selected for.

These speculations of course are probably moving beyond the realm of empirically testable hypothesis. It is difficult to see how such principles could be incorporated into biological experimental work, especially as any downward causation would appear to contradict the general biological view that organism function is determined by laws operating at the micro level. Experimental evidence that human subjective consciousness does indeed impact on behaviour is possibly the most fruitful area of exploration here.

Secondly, and on a more conservative level, if it is accepted that all objective biological phenomena could be explicable in mechanistic terms ultimately in principle reducible to physics (which are taken as ‘given’), the WTP could still have an explanatory role in explaining life phenomena from the ‘inside’. Thus behaviour associated with, for example, hunger and sex and so on could be adequately explained ‘from the outside’ by biology while the WTP could provide for understanding of such phenomena in their intrinsic nature.

So while hunger may be explicable in terms of brain signals and stomach messages, the WTP could serve an explanatory function in relation to why these phenomena are accompanied by the felt sensation of hunger. This explanatory role could extend to all subjective experiences and, by analogy, to the behaviour of other organisms and organs. On this view, there is no need to invoke any ‘downward causation’ but the WTP plays a role in explaining ‘from the inside’ phenomena which are reducible to physics.

In conclusion, I think Nietzsche’s WTP, while prima facie not necessary for an explanation of life can, once accepted on other grounds, be fruitfully applied to explaining aspects of life. To be sure, to most biologists the notion would smack of speculative, unverifiable metaphysics. However, positing experience as restricted to brains and natural processes as inherently devoid of experience and intentionality is also metaphysical, only this time the metaphysics is grounded in the presupposition of given fundamental laws and processes which are somewhat hidden as they are beyond the reach of biology.

WTP has an advantage over mechanistics expanations of life in my view in that firstly, it does not take the nature of fundamental processes as brutely given but potentially explains them; secondly, it potentially explains phenomenal consciousness which biology tends to leave out; and thirdly , it could also have relevance for new biologically operative principles or, if not, in an understanding of biology from ‘the inside’.

Molnar, Merlea-Ponty and Pan-Intentionality

2007-07-23T18:23:00.001-07:00

Steve Esser has an interesting post on his blog examining the late philosopher George Molnar’s claim that “something very much like intentionality is a pervasive and ineliminable feature of the physical world.”

Molnar stops short of extending this claim to a panpsychist position, by asserting that something else besides internationality may demarcate the physical from the mental. I agree with Steve that such a demarcation may not be necessary (the discussion in the comments section strays off topic but has been nonetheless stimulating too).

On the subject of intentionality, this article compares intentionality (focussing mainly on Merleau-Ponty) with the Whiteheadian concept of prehension.

The author notes that the differentiation of the two concepts by the generally anthropocentic application of intentionality in phenomeneology is "mitigated substantially if some form of sentience and intentionality is attributed to nonhuman entities, as it seems to be done in [Merleau-Ponty's] 'The Structure of Behavior' ".

Incidentally, whilst your at Steve's blog, he also has a post on a recent paper on quantum effects playing a significant role in energy transfer processes in photosynthesis. The discovery of such effects could be of some relevance for quantum theories of consciousness, as it counters the view that quantum phenomena are irrelevant at the level of biological function.

Strawson reviews

2007-06-06T03:58:00.000-07:00

Two good reviews of Galen Strawson et al’s “Consciousness and it’s place in Nature” by Jerry Fodor and Leo Stubenberg have come out recently. They raise some issues which I’ve discussed in previous posts.

Stubenberg considers the relation between the microexperiential and the macroexperiential and how the latter arises from the former poses "the most serious threat to panpsychism.” My take on this, in response to one of the papers in the book, is here.

Fodor in his enjoyable review ponders whether the putative brute emergence of consciousness from the brain need be considered any more miraculous than the operation of any other basic law : “The idea that the basic laws are the laws about the smallest things has been central to the ‘scientific world-view’ ever since there started to be one. On the other hand, as far as I can see, it’s not any sort of a priori truth.”

I discussed this issue here and concluded that it seems implausible, arbitrary and unparsimonious to suppose that experience arises as a result of fundamental laws whose operation is wholly dependent on uniquely complex and specialised systems such as the brain.

Feelings and fitness

2007-04-19T05:17:00.000-07:00

I have been reading Sean Carroll’s book “Endless forms, Most beautiful”, which tracks recent progress in the field of evolutionary developmental biology. One of the themes of the book is the pivotal role of 'genetic switches’ within the genome, which determine when and where in the course of development of the embryo genes will be expressed. The activation of these switches is itself determined by proteins which themselves had been translated as a result of the action of other switches and so forth. Carrol writes:

“ Ultimately, the beginning of spatial information in the embryo often traces back to asymmetrically distributed molecules deposited in the egg during its production in the ovary that initiate the formation of the two main axes of the embryo”. (p.116)

The role of switches in the coordination and choreography of the unfolding of developing organisms from single fertilised eggs to complex, multicellular and multifunctional creatures struck me as an example of what an intricate, amazing process evolution is.

Which brings me to the topic of natural selection and the evolution of consciousness.

Graham Cairns-Smith in his excellent book “Evolving the Mind : On the Nature of Matter and the Origin of Consciousness” argues that consciousness ( which he roughly equates with subjective feelings) would not have evolved if it did not have adaptive physical effects:

“..if it was natural selection that was the engineer then there must be consequences to feelings; they must have actual physical effects or there is no reason to expect that the means to produce them would have evolved.” (p.200)

An epiphenomenalist wishing to counter this argument could argue that consciousness evolved as a by-product of other brain processes. However, Cairns Smith responds that this does not help explain that feelings are generally appropriately “nice or nasty” in ways that enhance survival.

This argument seems to me to be a strong one for the casual efficacy of consciousness . I find it inconceivable that the fantastically sophisticated but blind machinery of random mutation, natural selection, genetics and embryology would produce phenomena which appear to be adaptive but which in reality do not do anything.

Note that this position does not imply that all feelings must be adaptive, only that the overall reproductive fitness of organisms with feelings would be greater than those without. Whilst there are undoubtedly many feelings which may not be adaptive (such as drug cravings, suicidal thoughts, destructive impulses, depression and so forth), on the whole feelings such as hunger, pain, pleasure and sexual attraction do, on the face of it, appear to enhance the chances of an organism surviving and producing off spring.

There is one possibility which could cohere with consciousness being epiphenomenal which Cairns-Smith briefly considers. This is the possibility that experientiality is concomitant to most or all physical processes, rather than a phenomena produced through natural selection. But Cairns-Smith argues that this option would still leave problems in relation to the fitness of feelings:

“..this would not explain why feelings are appropriately produced. It would not explain why pleasures on the whole go with acts that promote our survival and pains with the opposite.” (p.201)

However, a possible response to this view is that feelings are appropriately “nice or nasty” as a result of the development of fundamental principles operative in nature. So, for example, one could speculate that at some basic level gravitational, electromagnetic and nuclear forces are accompanied by primitive feelings or “protofeelings” (perhaps with attractive or repulsive forces being associated with incipient pleasures or pains).

To speculate further, these basic protofeelings could then have developed in organisms as a by-product of the increasing complexification of organised matter. So, for example, the movement of a bacterium toward a nutrient may be accompanied by some basic feeling of attraction. Moving up the evolutionary scale, when organisms with brains are in a position to create representations of the body and external world, a diversity of feelings would accompany such representations. This would occur not through any selective advantage, but through the incidental development of feelings which are fundamental in nature.

This option no doubt has problems of it own (with the foremost being how feelings at the elemental level interact with or relate to feelings at higher levels such as that of human consciousness). I imagine that many would find it even more unpalatable than the view that consciousness is an emergent phenomena that is causally efficacious.

Nevertheless, it seems to me that it if one accepts that feelings are “real” and a product of natural processes then the options are that either:

- Feelings are an evolved adaptation which generally enhance reproductive fitness and therefore have physical effects on the behaviour of the organism.
- Feelings are fundamental but epiphenomenal with no physical effects. They are appropriately produced in organisms because of the incidental development of their fundamental features, such as their attractive or repulsive character.
- Feelings are fundamental but also have physical effects, such that feelings are fundamental to at least some material processes, with natural selection ensuring they are appropriately produced in conscious organisms because they have survival value.

The Many and the One?

2007-02-07T02:15:00.000-08:00

One of the most problematic issues in panexperientialist theories is how purported centers of experience at the microexperiential level relate to each other and to human consciousness at the macroexperiential level. A related issue is whether there is one, all embracing experience which encompasses the whole Universe.

In the past I have rejected the notion of an overarching experience (which, for want of a better term, I’ll call “the One") as unnecessary, and regarded the postulation of such as wishful thinking on the part of the religiously or “New Age” inclined. I have also found Whitehead’s postulation of God as the necessary ground of creative potentiality difficult to understand and unconvincing.

On reflection, however, it seems to me that if one accepts that experience is not restricted to brains, then there are no a priori reasons why one should reject the concept of the One. Therefore, I think that each claim should be assessed on it’s merits.

Philosophers who support the notion of the One have a long lineage of course, most notably Hegel, Spinoza and Eastern traditions. However, I prefer to focus on reading those who have developed their ideas in the light of contemporary scientific knowledge (as an aside, from a sociological point of view I think that linking the One to panexperientialism will make the latter less likely to be taken seriously by the broader scientific and philosophical community, but that issue is separate from the issue of the merit of the claims).

Two contemporary philosophers who advocate both panexperientialism and the One are Freya Mathews and Timothy Sprigge.

Mathews in her book "For Love Of matter" (which, despite the title, I found to be generally well argued, though very speculative in later chapters) argues that the concept of the One solves the dilemma of the relationship between the generally indiscrete and discontinuous nature of space and matter and the unified, discrete character of experience. Microexperientiality is not even entailed under Mathews' views, which, following a Spinozistic model, only attribute centers of experience to entities showing purposeful or conative characteristics. Mathews' view that physical reality as a whole can be regarded as an indivisible unity is argued for at greater length in her earlier book, “The Ecological Self” ,which I don’t have at the moment so can’t comment on.

Timothy Sprigge in his book “The Vindication of Absolute Idealism” argues that if one accepts panexperientialism then the likelihood of the One existing follows. This is based on the view that things can only relate to each other through making up a whole together, and the only whole which experiences can form together is that of an overarching experience.

I found Sprigge’s argument rigorous, complex and difficult. Unforuntately, I no longer have access to the book, but hope to return to it some time in the future.

Implausibility and Irrelevance

2007-02-07T02:04:00.000-08:00

Further to my previous posts re recent work of Galen Strawson and Gregg Rosenberg, The Journal of Consciousness Studies has an issue devoted to Strawson’s paper (a good discussion of which can be found here in Steve’s Guide to Reality - also the JCS discussion forum has lots of interesting posts in response to the paper), and the online journal Psyche has a symposia devoted to Rosenberg’s book.

One of the papers in the Psyche symposia by Yujin Nagasawa, entitled “ a Place for Protoconsciousness”, claims that postulating the existence of noncognitive experiences occurring outside the brain (“protoconsciousness”) is either implausible or irrelevant to the problem of consciousness. Nagasawa’s argument relies on a metaphysical objection and a conceptual objection, the former of which I will address in this post.

Nagasawa’s metaphysical objection states:

“ Regardless of their precise characteristics, properties of protoconsciousness have
to be mental properties that are either metaphysically continuous with properties of
consciousness we ordinarily have or distinct from them. Suppose, first, that properties of
protoconsciousness are continuous with properties of ordinary consciousness. The only
difference is, perhaps, that protoconscious experience is more subtle than ordinary
conscious experience. In this case, there is a close connection between
protoconsciousness, which some noncognitive systems, have and ordinary consciousness,
which cognitive systems have. Hence, the analysis of protoconsciousness seems to be
relevant to the mystery of consciousness. However, the cost of supposing that properties
of protoconsciousness are continuous with properties of ordinary consciousness is very
high, because this supposition makes panexperientialism almost as implausible as
traditional panpsychism. That is, this supposition compels panexperientialists to accept
the implausible claim that noncognitive systems are conscious essentially in the way we
are (except on a smaller scale). Hence, if we assume that properties of protoconsciousness
are continuous with properties of ordinary consciousness, panexperientialism turns out to
be extremely implausible.

It then seems reasonable to think that properties of protoconsciousness are distinct
from properties of ordinary consciousness, and this is what Rosenberg thinks. He writes:

The experiences we might attribute to noncognitive systems…have some kind of
qualitative character very alien to us…Whatever we are attributing, it is not any
kind of feeling with which we can empathize (pp. 94-95).

This remark is consistent with the fact that Rosenberg gives the unique name
“protoconsciousness” to the postulated phenomenon, instead of calling it consciousness
itself.

However, if protoconsciousness, which noncognitive systems can have, is so
radically different from ordinary consciousness then it is irrelevant to the mystery of
consciousness, which is concerned with our ordinary consciousness. By introducing
protoconciousness, therefore, Rosenberg creates a further mystery; that of
protoconciousness!

Therefore, panexperientialism is either very implausible or irrelevant, depending
on how we interpret the relevant notions.” End of Quote.

I think the flaw in this argument is that Nagasawa is conflating two different senses in which one thing can be distinct from another. I don’t think anyone would sensibly deny that putative experiences of the most simplest systems would be distinct from human consciousness in that the two would be vastly different from each other. But this is not to say the two must belong to metaphysically distinct categories, in the same way in which a spec of dust is vastly different from but not metaphysically distinct from a diamond or a planet. Things can be distinct without being metaphysically distinct.

Once it is accepted that experiences can be distinct in the sense of being vastly different whilst still being of the same metaphysical type there does not seem to be much limit on how different other experiences could be from human consciousness. It is not the case that if consciousness and protoconsciousness are of the same metaphysical type that protoconsciousness must be conscious in essentially the same way we are. All that is necessary is that the two have a metaphysical equivalence in terms of a subjective , phenomenal, qualitative aspect.

Furthermore, because they are of the same metaphysical type, protoconsciousness would therefore not be irrelevant to the explanation of human consciousness, because it could form the basis from which more complex experiences could develop.

On the subject of metaphysical distinctness, it also does not seem relevant to me that a lack of ability to emphasize or having an alien qualitative character has anything to do with such a distinction. I may not be able to empathise with some of the experiences of an animal , a deranged murderer, or someone hallucinating under the influence of LSD, and such experiences may have a qualitatively alien character, but this is not to suggest that they are of a distinct metaphysical type from other experiences with which I can empathise.

Thus, Nagasawa’s metaphysical argument that panexperientialism is implausible or irrelevant to the problem of consciousness is not a strong one in my view. Firstly, the claim of implausibility can be refuted on the basis that human consciousness and experiences of other systems can be metaphysically continuous, without implying that the latter are conscious in the way we are. Secondly, the claim of irrelevance only applies if protoconsciousness is metaphysically distinct from human consciousness, which it need not be.

Experience and the subject

2006-10-28T04:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve noticed on the net that recent work of Gregg Rosenberg and Galen Strawson on panexperientialist themes seems to be generating more responses to the topic from mainstream analytical philosophy, which on the whole I think has hitherto often regarded the subject as something the absurdity of which had already been established, or for which one’s intuitions that this were the case were sufficient.

Amy Kind in the first paper in this list addresses various objections against the panexperientialism proffered by Rosenberg and concludes that while some of these objections could probably be addressed, there is another objection which “proves fatal to the coherence of panexperientialism”.

The alleged fatal objection of Kind is that Rosenberg’s model entails experiences that lack any phenomenal consciousness: “Rosenberg wants to claim that there can be states of experience that are not even p-conscious” (section 4 of the paper). Kind argues that experience without phenomenal content is conceptually incoherent, something for which I am inclined to agree (as it would seem to amount to experiences without any content at all). However, whilst I haven’t studied Rosenberg’s work closely, this does not seem to be a claim that he makes. Although he says that the simplest experiences would be “ too simple to support anything worthy of the name consciousness”, I think the phenomenal character of such experiences in his model would nevertheless be integral to them.

For example, whilst acknowledging that the simplest experiences would not be conscious in the cognitive or functionalist sense of the term, Rosenberg states that “ the properties of proto-consciousness are experiential properties properly considered phenomenal”. Thus, it seems to me that Kind’s fatal objection falls wide of the mark and is not relevant to Rosenberg’s model.

Despite the apparent misdirectedness of Kind’s argument, I think there is some intuitive appeal to what she calls “the problem of the subject and the problem of experiential unity” in relation to panexperientialism. Our experiences are necessarily unified and belong to a subject, so how on earth can this be reconciled with talk of experiences at the molecular or subatomic level?

Some assistance in this matter can be found in this paper, another one by Galen Strawson, on the relation between an experience, the subject of the experience and the content of the experience. It’s been too long since I studied formal logic for me to follow the paper completely but I found a lot of resonances in it with what Whitehead had to say.

One of the premises that Strawson starts with is that it is a necessary truth that “there cannot be an experience without a subject”, because experience is necessarily for someone or something.

Strawson moves on to distinguish various conceptions of the subject. Roughly explained, these are the thick subject (human beings or animals considered as a whole), the traditional inner conception of the subject (the persisting self) and the thin subject.
According to the conception of the thin subject, which is Strawson’s focus, a subject of experience does not and cannot exist unless it is having experience at that time.
Strawson notes that thin subjects are not an assumption but a “terminological rule” that picks out whatever portion of reality constitutes the existence of an experiencing subject.

Whilst thin subjects are unitary wholes, longevity and sustained persistence in time are not essential to them. Strawson speculates that they last for a maximum of three seconds in the human case. He also contends that thin subjects could be conceived as objects, as long as objects themselves are thought of as dynamic processes and matter itself is thought of as “process-stuff”. Strawson suggests that our experience consists of “one transient subject-constituting (and equally experience-constituting) synergy of process-stuff after another”. Thus, on this view rather than a persisting inner self there is a constant succession of thins subjects/experiences of short duration which together gives rise to one’s “stream of consciousness”.

Strawson goes on, after arguing at length, to say that the relationship between the experience, the subject and the content of the experience is one of identity. The existence of the experience is the existence of the subject which is also the content of the experience. Although experiences are necessarily “for” a subject , the two are in fact the same (to my mind, the term “subject” could therefore be redundant but I think this a terminological issue which I needn’t address here).

I won’t attempt to simplify Strawson’s arguments any more, but I think the conclusion he reaches, like the conclusion of Whitehead and others, is one which can address the intuitive qualms which surface when one considers talk of subjects and unified experience at the level of subatomic particles or below.

At such level there is no need to contemplate a persisting self which is the subject of continuous experience. Rather, the conception of brief, discrete processes or occasions of experience in which there is no subject distinct from the experience seems to me to be intuitively acceptable.

Bridging the gap

2006-09-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

In this interesting paper, Peter Carruthers and Elizabeth Schechter (‘C & S’) argue that the case for panpsychism expounded by Galen Strawson (previously discussed here and here in this blog) fails to close the explanatory gap “between description of the physical and functional properties of the human body and brain, on the one hand, and consciousness described in phenomenal and experiential terms on the other”.

C & S claim that “even in a best-case scenario—in which the phenomenal properties of the ultimates are known in complete detail—panpsychism still wouldn’t help us with the mind/body problem”. That is, they argue that even on the assumption that the ultimate constituents of matter are experiential and that we have complete knowledge of this experientiality, no gain is made in explaining the relation between this microexperientiality and human consciousness (henceforth referred to as ‘macroexperientiality’).

In support of this stance, the first argument C & S make is a corollary of the zombie argument against physicalism: “couldn’t there be someone who was composed of particles exactly like mine arranged in exactly the same way, each of which possessed the very same qualia as do the particles that compose me, yet who lacked phenomenal consciousness altogether”.

Given that current state of knowledge of microexperientiality (or lack thereof), the conceivability of zombies if microexperientiality obtained is hard to dispute. However, C&S' much stronger claim is that even if we had a complete knowledge of microexperientiality, it would still be conceivable that macroexperientiality didn’t exist, “[in] which case no amount of knowledge of the feely nature of the ultimate physical particles could ever explain phenomenal consciousness, in the way that knowledge of the component particles of water and the manner in which they interact can explain liquidity.”

The claim here is that macroexperientiality cannot be reductively explained in terms of microexperientiality in the same way that consciousness, at least in the view of some, cannot be explained reductively in terms of physicalism (where reductive explanation entails that an appropriate account of lower level processes will, in principle, automatically lead to explanation of higher level phenomena).

I do not think there is an equivalence between these two scenarios. Whilst it may indeed be conceivable that a complete knowledge of physics will never yield an explanation of consciousness, we don’t know whether it is conceivable that a complete knowledge of microexperientiality would not necessarily yield such an explanation. There is in fact no reason to believe macroexperientiality could not be reductively explained in terms of microexperientiality, because we simply don’t know enough about microexperientiality to make such a claim. It may be the case that a complete knowledge of microexperientiality would mean that an explanation of macroexperientiality would automatically follow in the same way that knowledge of the behaviour of the constituent particles of water explains it’s liquidity.

Thus, there is an epistemic asymmetry between the capacity of consciousness to be reductively explained in terms of physicalism on the one hand and microexperientiality on the other. Not knowing whether microexperientiality could give rise to macroexperientiality is not the same as knowing the physical could not give rise to the experiential.

C & S partially address the above objection in addressing a possible response to their argument: “Since we cannot really conceive, in detail, of millions and millions of experiential entities interacting in as-yet-to-be-specified and highly complex ways, we cannot really tell whether some such story mightn’t constitute a successful reductive explanation of our own experientiality”. The rejoinder of C&S to this is that “But this sort of reply is equally available to defenders of standard (non-experiential) forms of physicalism, of course (Dennett, 1991). So if it works, it would only serve to undermine Strawson’s own argument for panpsychism.”

However, I think it is doubtful whether these two solutions are “equally available”. The problem of the generation of the experiential from the physical is that of how physical predicates could lead to an explanation of experiential predicates, and the apparent lack of any explanatory connection between the two levels of description. But these limitations may not apply in the derivation of macroexperientiality from microexperientiality: the problem in this case is one of how something more complex arises from something simpler but of the same type, not of how something qualitatively and ontologically new arises from something of an entirely different nature. Thus, there is a lot less required to get from microexperientialism to macroexperientialism than from standard physicalism to macroexperientialism, so the two are not equally available options.

Another objection that can be made against the position of C&S is that even if it is accepted that macroexperientiality could not be reductively explained in terms of microexperientiality, this does not mean that explanation is impossible - a nonreductive explanation of the former in terms of the latter may be possible. Thus, for example, macroexperientiality could arise from microexperientiality through contingent laws of nature such that macroexperientiality is dependent on microexperientiality without being entailed by it (in the same way that antiphysicalists such as Chalmers contend that consciousness is dependent on the physical without being entailed by the laws of physics). The issue would then be one of what explanatory gain there would be in a non-reductive explanation arising from microexperiential ultimates as opposed to non-experiential ultimates (an issue which I discussed in the post previously linked).

One of the final points that C&S make is that the fact that microexperientiality is of the same metaphysical type of macroexperientiality does not procure any advantage in attempting to explain macroexperientiality: “For we have not the faintest idea how the phenomenal properties possessed by one entity or set of entities might contribute to a reductive explanation of the phenomenal properties possessed by another.”

This remark does not account for models have been put forth to explain how macroexperientiality might arise from microexperientiality. To use one example, Whitehead’s metaphysics addresses this issue (although his schema is non- reductive in that occasions of experience have an element of self-determination which is not explicable in terms of lower level experiences, it is equally adaptable to a reductive explanation in which such self-determination is absent). To put it very briefly, Whitehead proposed that occasions of experience of finite temporal duration are constituted largely from prior occasions of experience. Complex experiential occasions arise from synthesis of elements of prior simpler occasions (hence the phrase ‘the many become one and are increased by one’). Thus, under this model a multitude of microexperiential events within the brain could give rise to subsequent more complex experiential events, including what we experience as phenomenal consciousness.

C&S conclude that panpsychism does nothing to close the explanatory gap and that it is therefore preferable to remain a conventional physicalist (they also have their own approach in dissolving the explanatory gap by treating physical and experiential terms as conceptually isolable, which I won’t go into here). However, for the reasons above I do not think they have adequately demonstrated this preference. To recap: Firstly, we don’t know whether there is an explanatory gap between microexperientiality and macroexperientiality in the same way we know the gap exists between the physical and the experiential: secondly, the derivation of the macroexperiential from the microexperiential is less problematic than it’s derivation from the (non-experiential) physical; thirdly, even if microexperientiality could not produce a reductive explanation of macroexperientiality, this does not mean a non-reductive explanation may not be possible and preferable to other non-reductive explanations; and finally, it is not the case that models of how macroexperientiality might arise from microexperientiality are lacking.

So, in my view C & S do not present any strong blows against Strawson’s position that make it inferior to conventional physicalism.

From Fundamentality to ubiquity

2006-04-01T18:40:00.000-08:00

In a paper entitled "Realistic monism: why physicalism entails panpsychism" (linked on this page and previously mentioned on this blog here), Galen Strawson argues against experience being an emergent phenomena on the grounds that ‘If it really is true that Y is emergent from X then it must be the case that Y is in some sense wholly dependent on X and X alone, so that all features of Y trace intelligibly back to X ’. He contends that this does not apply in relation to the supposed emergence of experience from wholly non-experiential matter.

From this basis, Strawson argues that if experience cannot be emergent from wholly non experiential phenomena then, assuming there is a plurality of ultimates (‘using the term ‘ultimate’ to denote a fundamental physical entity, an ultimate constituent of reality, a particle, field, string, brane, simple, whatever’), then at least some ultimates must be intrinsically experiential.

In this post I am addressing the issue of whether, if it is true that experience cannot emerge (in the sense described by Strawson above) from the non-experiential, then it follows from this that some ultimates must be experiential.

I think another way of characterising experience as something which is not emergent (in Strawson’s sense ), is to say that it is fundamental or a fundamental property. In relation to fundamental properties, Strawson says ‘I’m prepared to allow for argument that an ultimate’s possession of its fundamental properties could be brute in the sense of there being no reason for it in the nature of things, so long as it is agreed that emergence cannot be brute.’

The issue which I don’t think is addressed sufficiently in Strawson’s paper is why a fundamental property need only be associated with an ultimate, rather than a group of ultimates. Although fundamental properties such as mass, spin and charge may be properties of ultimates, there does not seem to be any logical or metaphysical necessity that this be the case. Therefore, it is possible that experience could be a fundamental property of aggregations of ultimates, such as brains.

This view is not unusual. For example, strong emergentists such as C.D. Broad held that consciousness arises from brains as a result of new fundamental principles that operate at a certain level of complexity (note this form of emergence is different from that as defined by Strawson as ‘Y is not wholly dependent on X’ but arises as a result of additional fundamental laws).

Also, David Chalmers argues that experience is a fundamental property which arises as a result of fundamental psychophysical laws, but that this does not necessarily mean that experience is a property of the ultimate constituents of matter:

“ Like the fundamental laws of physics, psychophysical laws are eternal…it may be that in the early stages of the universe there was nothing that satisfied the physical antecedents of the laws and so no consciousness.. [A]s the universe developed, systems evolved that satisfied the relevant conditions… conscious experience accompanied them by virtue of the laws in question” (The Conscious Mind p 171).

However, although there does not seem to be any necessity for experience to be a property of fundamental entities if it is fundamental and non-emergent, this is not to say that this may not be the most reasonable inference. William Lycan makes a related point pungently in this paper:

“If any reduction of mind to the natural order requires a reconception and expansion of physics to incorporate novel entities and principles not motivated by the physical data themselves, then either those entities and principles will be localized where we now take minds to be, viz., in central nervous systems, or like other entities and principles of fundamental physics they will pervade nature. But the former hypothesis, while coherent, is loony. Are the new entities and principles just shy? Whyever would the entities occur and principles apply only in regions of spacetime shaped like the heads of sentient creatures, or be specific to neural tissue, which regions and tissue are specified only at a level of organization far higher than that of microphysics? Why would their occurrence depend on their so much larger molecular environment? The notion is imaginable, but grotesque. And again, how could the microphysicist ex officio explain why the new entities occur just in the small and idiosyncratically distributed regions of spacetime where they do?”

Similarly, Chalmers, whilst conceding that there is no necessity in experience being ubiquitous if it is fundamental, states that such a view avoids the arbitrariness of experience having to ‘blink in’ at a certain level of complexity in a system and that, other things being equal, it seems more natural for experience to be widespread like other fundamental properties- ‘It would be odd for a fundamental property to be instantiated for the first time only relatively late in the history of the universe and then only in occasional systems’ (p297 ).

Lycan’s and Chalmer’s views suggest that if experience is fundamental, then it is likely to be widespread and associated with the simplest of systems. This does not necessarily mean it is likely to be associated with ultimates (eg it could be a property of whole atoms), so further argument would be needed to establish that point.

To conclude, while I don’t think Strawson’s paper adequately demonstrates that if experience is not emergent then it must necessarily be a property of ultimates, I think it can be cogently argued that it is a reasonable, if not the most reasonable, inference that if experience is fundamental it is at least pervasive and associated with simple systems. It seems implausible, arbitrary and unparsimonious to suppose that experience is fundamental yet also rare and wholly dependent on uniquely complex and specialised systems such as the brain.

Experience debate at the Infidel's Forum

2006-02-17T01:59:00.000-08:00

Here is the link to an interesting on-line forum discussion I came across (on 'Panpsychism vs Materialism'). The Infidel Guy is an atheist radio announcer.

The discussion contains a number of posts by philosopher Christian de Quincey, author of Radical Nature.

Strawson on Physicalism and Panpsychism

2005-09-08T23:05:00.000-07:00

Philosopher Galen Strawson has recently presented a paper entitled “Why Physicalism entails Panpsychism”. Part of Strawson’s argument focuses on the incoherence of the concept of the emergence of consciousness from insentient physical processes. This argument of course is a common one against emergentism, but it is good to see a comprehensive critique of it presented by a prestigious analytical philosopher.

Strawson argues that for emergence to be meaningful there must be some form of dependence of the emergent phenomenon on the properties of that from which it emerges, and that such a relation does not apply to consciousness and physicalist conceptions of matter. He appears to be developing the ideas he put forth in the last few pages of this paper. The recent paper is not yet up on his website but here is an abstract of it (from this site):

"Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism

Abstract:
[1] A physicalist holds that every concrete phenomenon is
wholly physical.
[2]Arealistic physicalist is a full-fledged realist about consciousness. So
[3] a realistic physicalist must hold that consciousness is a wholly physical
phenomenon, and that at least some arrangements of matter are conscious
or constitute consciousness. I assume for argument the truth of
[4] realistic physicalism [RP] and also that
[5] all physical stuff is wholly constituted of the same fundamental entities
or ultimates (leptons and quarks, strings,...) I then argue against the
popular view that
[6] physical stuff is, in itself, in its fundamental nature, something wholly
and utterly non-experiential. [NE]. I defend the plausible principle that
[7] for certain things A, you cannot get A from non-A and argue that
[8] consciousness is one of those things.
Added to [4] and [5], [7] and [8] entail that [6] is false: that matter cannot
be wholly non-conscious in its intrinsic or ultimate nature. It follows that
[9] any realistic any truly serious physicalist must be a micropsychist,
and accept that at least some ultimates are intrinsically experience-
involving. From this it is a short step to [10] any realistic physicalist
must at least be a panpsychist.

[7] is crucial: the claim for certain things A,
you cannot get A from non-A. Liquidity phenomena can certainly be
said to emerge from non-liquid phenomena. But concrete phenomena
cannot be supposed to emerge from wholly non-concrete (abstract) phenomena.
Could consciousness emerge from wholly non-conscious phenomena,
like liquidity from wholly non-liquid phenomena? Or is the
conscious/non-conscious case more similar to the concrete/ non-concrete
case?

The concrete/abstract case is in a sense too powerful, and I restrict
attention to concrete-concrete cases: Could the extended emerge from
the intrinsically wholly non-extended? Could the spatial emerge from
the intrinsically wholly non-spatial? Could existence emerge from
non-existence something from nothing? Surely not. But whatever you
think about these cases, I argue that consciousness could not emerge
from wholly non-conscious phenomena. For if it really is true that Y is
emergent from X then it must be the case that Y is in some sense wholly
dependent on X. For any feature Y of anything that is correctly considered
to be emergent from anything X, there must be something about X
in virtue of which Y emerges. Emergence cannot be brute. It cannot be
brute in the sense of there being absolutely no reason in the nature of
thingswhythe emerging thing is as it is (so that it is unintelligible even to
God, as it were). One can allow for argument that a fundamental particle’s
possession of its fundamental properties could be brute in the sense
of there being no reason for it in the nature of things, so long as it is
agreed that emergence cannot be brute. One problem is that brute emergence
is by definition a miracle every time it occurs, for it is true by
hypothesis that in brute emergence there is nothing about X, the
emerged-from, in virtue of which Y, the emerger, emerges from it. It is
also a contradiction in terms, given the standard assumption that the
emergence of Y from X entails the supervenience of Y on X, because this
means that it is a strictly lawlike miracle and a miracle is by definition a
violation of a law of nature. Howdid the notion of brute emergence gain
currency? By one of the most lethal processes of theory formation, or
term formation that there is. The notion of brute emergence marks a position
that seemingly has to exist if one accepts both RP and NE. Many are
irredeemably committed to both RP and NE, and so the position that
relies on the notion of brute emergence comes to feel substantial to them
by a kind of reflected energy. It has to be there, given these unquestioned
premisses, so it is felt to be real. The whole process is underwritten by the
wild radical-empiricism-inspired metaphysical irresponsibilities of the
twentieth century that still linger on (to put it mildly) today."

Agar, Embryology and Evolution

2005-09-06T21:44:00.000-07:00

Australian Cell biologist Wilfred Agar (1882 to 1951 biography here) described his book, “A Contribution to the Theory of the Living Organism” (published 1943) as his most important contribution to biological theory. Yet the book has had a negligible impact on his field, probably because of the vast distance between the foundational assumptions of biology which he proposed and those with which mainstream biology operates. Nevertheless, I think Agar makes some seminal contributions not only to alternative foundational assumptions for biology, but also in the application of these assumptions to embryology and evolutionary theory.

The central theme of Agar’s exposition is that organisms are made up of purposively acting agents. These agents are experiencing subjects. Agar refers to the agent which has overarching control of the organism (which in the human case would be referred to as the self or ego) as the Central Agent. He contends that individual cells are also agents which subjectively experience their environment (including influences from the Central Agent), though this experience may not necessarily be conscious. Thus, for Agar, the organism consists of a multitude of feeling subjects each acting for their own ends and with varying degrees of control over their environment.

In the case of individual cells the purposive behaviour is directed towards what he refers to as hormic goals which are simple, non-cognitive and immediate goals such as seeking satisfaction and avoiding dissatisfaction (such as aversion or attraction to certain stimuli). Agar uses the analogy of the hormic goals of cells with those of a wasp building it’s nest for the feeling of satisfaction it obtains through this activity, rather than for any intelligent purpose such as caring for offspring.

Agar leaves it as an undecided issue as to whether parts of an organism which may act as causal units, such as self-differentiating organs, may also be experiencing subjects.

Agars position on the organism as a society of experiencing agents is based on both empirical and philosophical considerations. He contends that the existence of human consciousness supports the view that experience must exist at a more basic level rather than appear magically out of nowhere. But he also sees empirical support for the idea in such things as trial behaviour and learning in single celled organisms and embryonic cells.

Bizarre as it may initially sound, the idea that each cell in our bodies may be an experiencing subject is not without some contemporary currency. For instance, the conjectures of Jonathon Edwards that consciousness is a property of individual neurons has recently appeared in the Journal of Consciousness Studies.

Embryology

Agar applies his theory of the organism as being made up of subjects to what he refers to as the cardinal problem of biology - embryonic development and morphogenesis. The issue of how the multifarious cells of the developing body differentiate and result in the formation of a fully functioning organism is a remarkable and perplexing phenomena. Agar addresses this problem with a comparison of the behaviour of embryonic cells with instinctive, goal-oriented behaviour. He lists the following parallels between morphogenesis and instinctive behaviour:

1) Embryonic cells, at least in isolation, exhibit trial behaviour which, Agar argues, implies purposiveness. For instance, he cites the aggregation of dislocated amphibian embryonic cells into a smooth ball as being the result of random testing movements which cease when satisfactory contact with other cells is established.

2). Both morphogenetic and instinctive behaviour are directed to hormic goals, which have biological consequences that were not the end in view of the organism carrying out the action.

3). Both brain fields and morphogenetic fields are stimulus fields, providing stimuli to which their constituent cells or agents make specific responses (as in, for example, the stimulation of motor neurones concerned with muscular action).

4), Embryonic cells have a stock of potential responses, only some of which are utilised in the course of embryonic development, much like the variety of responses to animals to sensa in combination with internal states gives rise to specific forms of instinctive behaviour.

5). The fact that embryonic cells have a variety of potential responses yet their descendant tissue cells are limited to specific responses has an analogy in learnt animal behaviour in which a specific response is induced by a stimulus, although at first the stimulus evoked a variety of responses.

6). If a portion of an organism undergoing morphogenesis is removed, the remainder may reorganise itself into a similar organism of smaller size (as in, for example, the reorganisation of a planarian worm from which a portion has been excised into a complete worm of properly proportioned parts). Similarly, where portions of the brain of animals have been removed, other areas of the brain may compensate and learning processes may be taken on by the remaining areas of the brain.

7). Both in embryonic agents and in the completed organism instincts appear and disappear by the process of maturation.

8). There is a parallel between the control of the activities of the whole organism through the central agent of the organism with the apparent ability of individual cells to act as purposively acting causal units.

Evolution

Although Agar’s schema does invoke a form of teleology in that the activities of cells are directed towards goals of achieving satisfaction, this teleology is an immediate one which is not directly related to the functioning of the whole organism. To quote Agar:

“ The acts of embryonic agents by which they attain their goals we conceive to be the acts of purposive agents. But we cannot suppose that their hormic goals include the biological consequences of their activities; that for instance the hormic goals of the agents concerned in the development of the eye include its preparation as an organ of sight…. The fact that the multifarious activities of the numerous embryonic agents, which moreover during a part of the embryonic process develop in essential independence of each other, produce a unitary organism in which organs function in ways which are by no means a continuation of the processes by which they were formed, is a problem of evolution.” (p 199)

Thus, the processes by which the functioning organs of an organism arise is a product of the natural selection of agents pursuing hormic goals which have incidental biological consequences for the fitness of the organism.

Agar thus sees evolution occurring through standard Darwinian processes. There is a difference however, in that the purposive actions of embryonic agents may allow the assimilation of developmental changes induced by mutations. As Agar puts it:

“On the assumption that embryonic sub-agents act purposively, if a mutation occurs affecting predominantly only one embryonic process, then the remaining processes will accommodate themselves to the new conditions as best they can. Each will produce an end slightly different from the old one, but functioning in a similar way - as a spider accommodates its web-spinning to the space available to it.” (p.115)

Thus the purposive acts of embryonic agents, perhaps towards the attainment of satisfaction achieved through symmetry, pattern or cohesion, has the by product of increasing the likelihood of functioning parts with survival value evolving.

This feature of Agar’s speculations can act as a counter to some Intelligent Design arguments which have contemporary currency. One of the most common criticisms of Darwinism by ID proponents is that it cannot account for the evolution and functioning of complex organs such as the eye. But when natural selection is acting on organismic processes which strive towards the achievement of hormic goals which have incidental survival value, the process seems less incredible. For instance, the evolution of the lens of the eye could be seen as a by-product of the satisfaction derived by embryonic cells of the eye in becoming part of a network of cells with a smooth, spherical shape.

Thus, Agar postulates an additional factor in evolution upon which natural selection acts which can deflate arguments for Intelligent Design.

Occam and Epicycles

2005-05-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

A commonly expressed criticism of panexperientialism is that it is overly extravagant and violates Occam’s Principle that explanatory entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily . Thus, it is said, the cost of a panexperientialist explanation of human consciousness is the uneconomical view that experience extends into regions where it is not required and serves no explanatory function.

On the surface this sounds like a valid point - it is reasonable to ask whether the explanatory deficits of panexperientialism outweigh the gains. However, closer examination reveals that the supposed extravagance of panexperientialism is premised on physicalist and determinist assumptions about the nature of matter. These assumptions automatically exclude any possibility of experience playing a causal role in the world.

But at the margins of the physicalist world view, where its explanatory power and coherence begin to break down, it can be seen that panexperientialism can extend rational explanation into areas where physicalism has difficulties. Some of the areas where this could occur are quantum mechanics, human consciousness, the investigation of psychic phenomena and, at a more abstract level, the nature of causation and the problem of induction.

It may be interjected here that the mention of psychic phenomena signals a retreat into pseudoscience and reflects an inability to face up to the cold, hard facts of objective science. Yet under a panexperientialist framework, much of the world may be explained in the same fashion as under a physicalist, deterministic model. It is therefore entirely appropriate to focus on those areas where panexperientialism may interpret things differently from physicalism, rather than restricting enquiry to areas where they are the same.

In fact, when it comes to assessing the empirical evidence for psychic phenomena (which I personally have not read the literature closely enough to made my mind up about), panexperientialism is actually capable of a more objective assessment of the data than physicalism. There is an assumptional asymmetry between panexperientialism and physicalism whereby the verification of psychic phenomena falsifies physicalism, whereas the non- verification of psychic phenomena does not falsify panexperientialism. To elaborate on this:

Let physicalism be defined as the view that all observable phenomena can be explained by purely physical law and let panexperientialism be defined as the view that experience is a ubiquitous property of nature.

If psychic phenomena are true and are not the result of physical laws, then physicalism, as defined above, is false. However, if psychic phenomena are not true then it does not follow that panexperientialism is false - physicalism could be true and psychic phenomena be non-existent, yet panexperientialism could still be true. If this were the case then experience would be epiphenomenal, but panexperientialism would not be invalidated (although the assertion that Occam‘s principle is violated would then need to be addressed).

Thus, when it comes to assessing the veracity of claims about psychic phenomena, a panexperientialist standpoint is likely to be less subject to bias, as the truth or falsity of the such phenomena does not undermine the foundations of panexperientialism as it does with physicalism.

This can be approached from another angle. The assumption that all observable events can be accounted for by non- experiential physical laws can be described, using the framework of philosopher of science Imre Lakatos, as a hard core assumption of the physicalist research programme.

Under Lakatos’ schema, the hard core assumptions of a research programme must not be rejected or modified and are surrounded by a protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses, assumptions, initial conditions and so forth. For instance, one of the hard core assumptions of pre-Copernican astronomy was that the sun, stars and planets revolved around the earth. To explain perturbations in planetary movements without disturbing this assumption, a complex system of epicycles in planetary movements was postulated.

When a research programme wanes in it’s power to explain observational data it is said to be degenerating and may be replaced by another research programme (this is similar to Kuhn’s paradigm shifts).

In the case of physicalism, the denial of the possibility of psychic phenomena (assuming such phenomena are not explicable by physical law) is a hard core assumption of the physicalist research programme. Rather than admit this possibility, physicalism will postulate auxiliary hypotheses to invalidate evidence which purportedly demonstrates psyhcic events. In contrast to this, a research programme premised on panexperientialist assumptions is not threatened by the existence or non-existence of psychic phenomena, because such phenomena are not implicated in the hard core assumptions of panexperientialism.

One could argue that the grandest examples of physicalist epicycling are those breeds of modern philosophy which seek to deny the reality or primacy of subjective experience. That such weird and seemingly self-contradictory notions could gain such a firm stronghold within academia is a testament to the thickness of physicalism’s protective belt. Perhaps eliminative materialism could be called the ‘folk psychology’ of the physicalist research programme.

In summary, the charge that panexperientialism is unnecessarily extravagant and uneconomical in postulating the ubiquity of experience is a misconceived product of the delimiting assumptions of physicalism. Physicalism narrowly subscribes the supposed scope for rational, empirical enquiry by excluding, marginalizing or ignoring that which does not cohere with it’s hard core assumptions. In contrast to this, a panexperientialist framework can subsume all which physicalism can explain and can accommodate those areas where physicalism falters.

Feeling feelings - Or not?

2005-04-25T22:50:00.000-07:00

In previous posts in this blog there has been a tension between two interpretations of the way in which we may experience the world. The tension is between whether in our conscious experience we directly experience the feelings and emotional form of our body parts and the external world, or whether the brain is responsible for constructing these feelings. By ‘directly’ I do not mean without mediation, but that conscious feelings are the result of feeling other feelings.

This dichotomy has some corollary with the dispute between representationalist and direct realist theories of perception, except that 1) I am primarily concerned only with whether feelings and emotions are perceived directly and 2) the issue is not so much whether conscious feelings are represented by the brain so much as whether they are generated by the brain.

This issue has a major impact on many aspects of panexperientialism and this post outlines my current views on the matter. The two different views on the nature of our perceptual feelings I will call Direct Realist Panexperientialism (‘DRP’) and Construcitvist Panexperientialism (‘CP’).

Based on my understanding of current neurophysiological knowledge, I think that there is more support for CP than DRP. Some of the reasons that I have come around to this position are:

- The affective tone and feeling of our perceptions largely depend on where the neurons from out sensory receptors go in the brain, rather than on what happens to the sense organs. E.g. the crushing of a touch receptor cell will give rise to the sensation of touch, not pain. This is a consequence of the region of the brain that the neurons connected to the receptor cells go to.
- Stimulation of different areas of the brain produces different affects and sensations. E.g. stimulation of different areas of the amygdala produces emotions of fear, rage or a ‘warm,floaty feeling’ in the subject.
- Dreaming, hallucination and the experience of ‘phantom limbs’ in amputees indicate that the brain is capable of independently constructing representations of the body and external world and the affective accompaniments to these representations.

In short, there does not seem to be a need to postulate that in our conscious perceptions feeling is transmitted from the sense organs and the external world - the brain is capable of generating feelings by itself. Of course, in normal perception this generation of feelings by the brain occurs in response to information transmitted from the sense organs.

Some of the consequences of adopting CP are:

- Firstly, adopting a constructivist position on feelings does not mean there is any need to abandon panexperientialism per se.

Although some of the arguments for a panexperientialist view may be slightly modified under CP, in my view the strength of the panexperientialist position remains. Although all our conscious feelings may be generated by the brain, the brain is composed of the same matter as the rest of the world, so I think positing experience as a fundamental aspect of the natural world remains the most viable explanation of the relation between the mind and the body (though with CP it is more accurate to refer to the mind-brain problem rather that the mind-body problem). Refer to the links on the main page of this blog for detailed arguments for the panexperientialist position.

As an example of the compatibility of Constructivism and Panexperientialism, Steven Lehar is a strong advocate of a representationalist theory of perception and is also sympathetic to a panexperientialist metaphysics (as per this excerpt from his representationalism website).

- Secondly, adopting CP means there is less reason for postulating the basic panexperiential material or process as being affective or emotional in nature.

Following a basically Whiteheadian position, I have previously contended that the fundamental panexperiential properties of the world are emotional in nature. This is based largely on generalising, from our own first hand experience, that the emotional and affective aspects of subjectivity are the most elemental and basic.

However, if CP is adopted it means that conscious emotional experience is constructed by the brain rather than being transmitted from the world. Therefore, the generalisation argument for extrapolating affective experience to all natural processes does not hold (although there may be other reasons for adopting panexperientialism with an affective basis).

-Thirdly and as a consequence of the previous point, under CP panexperientialism develops similarities to Neutral Monism, under which the experiential and physical are aspects of an underlying neutral entity. If the fundamental experiential features of the world are not directly accessible, perhaps they should be ascribed to some neutral, underlying stuff.

It is possible under CP that the fundamental experiential nature of the world may always remain elusive and that we can only become truly knowledgeable about the experiences generated by our own brains. This also underscores the importance of neuroscience to CP - in learning about the brain we learn not only about ourselves but also about the fundamental features of nature, in so far as these features are knowable.

- Fourthly, under CP the authority of Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne as the foremost panexperientialists of our time is diminished.

If our experiences are not comprised of the ‘feelings of feelings’, then substantial parts of Whiteheads metaphysics and cosmology may need modification. Other forms of panexperientialism (such as that of Skrbina, Rosenberg, William James and Spinozistic theories) may require consideration on an equal footing with the panexperientialism of process philosophy.

However, there are still many aspects where the genius of Whitehead can be applied to CP. For instance, the rationale for emergent levels of causation explicated by Whitehead (‘the many become one and are increased by one’) is as relevant to CP as it is to DRP.

- Finally, if a naturalistic, evolutionary perspective is maintained then CP cannot be absolute throughout nature.

The brain evolved form simpler organisations of matter and simpler forms of perception preceded the ability of the brain to construct representations and generate emotions. Elements of direct perception of feelings may remain in human conscious experience.

Those are my thoughts on the matter for the moment. Whilst CP may be a little less poetic and a little more alienating than DRP, I think the evidence from neuroscience indicates that CP is currently the more sustainable viewpoint.

Hunting Zombies

2005-04-25T22:40:00.000-07:00

The zombie trail is a well-trodden path, so I thought I might venture out myself:

The logical possibility of a zombie world -in which humans behave identically to the way they do in the real world but in which conscious experience is absent- is often used in antiphysicalist arguments to show that consciousness does not supervene on or is not entailed by the physical facts of the world.

However, another consequence of the zombie argument is that experience is relegated to an inactive, epiphenomenonal role. So while the zombie argument may provide some foundation for panexperientialism, this is usually at the expense of any causal role for experience.

The standard zombie argument goes something like this:

1. Human behaviour is determined by purely physical laws (this premise may not always be explicitly stated).
2. In a zombie world the physical facts and laws are identical to that of the real world.
3. Therefore,in a zombie world human behaviour would be the same as it is in the real world.
4. Therefore, a zombie world is logically possible.

However, an equally valid argument is:

1. Human behaviour is only explicable as being enacted by a conscious, purposeful agent.
2. In a zombie world, conscious purposeful agents do not exist.
3. Therefore, in a zombie world humans would not act the same way that they do in the real world.
4. Therefore, a zombie world is not logically possible.

In both cases the reasoning is circular and the only significant premise is the first one. I think the zombie question only really becomes interesting when it is addressed from a standpoint of empirical investigation and metaphysical reasoning, rather than merely by appeals to logic and language.

In most zombie discussions, the premise that human behaviour is determined by physical laws is simply assumed without much elaboration. However, I do not think the truth of this premise is at all settled.

For instance, physicist Henry Stapp argues persuasively that the deterministic view of human behaviour is based on a redundant, outmoded classical physics that is not applicable to all activities of the functioning brain. Stapp contends that indeterminacy at the quantum level allows for consciousness to affect bodily actions. For a layman’s guide to the interaction between consciousness and quantum physics I recommend his book ‘The Mindful Universe’, available for download at his website here.

A similar point could be made regarding the distinction (originally proposed by David Chalmers) between the ‘hard’ and the ‘easy’ problems of consciousness. The easy problems of consciousness are those which supposedly are in principle solvable by neuroscience (e.g. how the brain processes environmental stimuli, integrates information and reports on internal states), whilst the hard problem relates to the fact of phenomenal experience itself.

However, this dichotomy tends to automatically assert all behaviour as being explicable in deterministic terms and again relegates experience to the position of epiphenomenal bystander.

It may be the case that many of the so-called easy problems - in particular, those concerned with the influence of conscious purposes on behaviour - may be inextricably bound up with the ‘hard’ problem.

Evolutionary Psychology and Experience

2005-04-17T20:28:00.000-07:00

The application of Sociobiology (the study of the evolutionary basis of behaviour) to humans has received a boost in recent times through the rise of Evolutionary Psychology (‘EP’). EP has numerous critics, from accusations of genetic determinism to claims it uncritically reflects prevailing political values (in much the same way that Social Darwinism and the ‘survival of the fittest’ reflected the values of 19th Century industrialised capitalism). Yet, human beings are part of the natural world and their must surely be a place for explaining human behaviour as the outcome of evolutionary processes.

Having said this, I am not sure if EP in its current form has much to contribute to the ‘hard problem’ of consciousness. I have not read widely in the field, but if Steven Pinker is taken as a representative spokesman, things do not augur well, as per the following excerpt from this interview:

“Pinker: Since we can imagine a robot that, behaviour-for-behaviour and state-for-state, is identical to a human, but in which there's "no one home" -- no one actually feeling the pain or seeing the red -- there can't be an adaptive explanation of sentience, because we've defined it as something that can have no external consequences.

the evolutionist: So it's not just a case of the adaptive explanation of sentience forever eluding us, but rather that there cannot be one?

Pinker: That's right. Something that has no consequences can have no adaptive consequences. We can imagine a robot or a zombie or an android that has no consciousness, but otherwise interacts with the environment in the same way a sentient human does.”

Thus, it seems that EP does not have anything significant to say as to how and why human’s feel and experience differently from dogs or sea-slugs, let alone differently from each other (although it will have a lot to say about differences in behaviour).

The direction in which EP tends to verge in relation to the subjective is a consequence of it’s physicalist and reductionist assumptions, which deny emergent levels of causation and the causal efficacy of experience. I do not agree with these assumptions, but by way of an immanent critique, I think they lead EP towards the following alternatives regarding experience:

1. The reality of subjective experience is denied. This could be along the lines of eliminative materialism or the theories of Daniel Dennett (as Pinker discusses in the above interview).

2. Subjective experience is the result of random factors not related to natural selection that became fixated in the human genome (and possibly that of other species). As an example of how this might have occurred, genetic drift is a phenomenon whereby mutations which do not have any selective advantage can become permanent features of small populations.

3. Experience is a primitive, fundamental feature of the natural world which existed prior to the evolution of life - the panexperientialist alternative.

Of the alternatives, in my view Option 1 is a denial of the obvious and immediate and Option 2 is stretching credulity beyond reasonable limits. Thus, I think that by it’s own internal dynamic EP tends towards a panexperientialist outlook.

Of course, the inferred differences in the richness of experience between sea-slugs, dogs and humans would remain to be explained under Option 3. This could be accommodated within the framework of EP by postulating a correllation of physical complexity with experiential complexity.

So although on the face of it EP does not seem to have anything useful to say about the ‘hard problem’, it’s own premises arguably drive it towards an epiphenomenalist form of panexperientialism.

The Primary Qualities

2005-03-28T20:06:00.000-08:00

I have been reading DM Armstrong’s book “Perception and the Physical World’, in which he proffers a defence of direct realism, based on a definition of perception as the acquiring of knowledge, or the inclination to believe, particular facts about the physical world by means of the senses. On the whole I found his thesis unconvincing, due to the insufficient attention paid to the phenomenal feel of sensations and to neurophysiology (which is understandable considering the book was written more than 40 years ago).

However, there is one argument in his book concerning the primary qualities which I aim to explore and develop further in this post. Armstrong presents an argument, based on the ideas of Berkeley and Hume, that it is logically impossible for a physical object to have nothing but the primary qualities.

Historically, primary qualities have been described as the ‘real’ properties of matter which exist independently of the human mind, such as shape, size, position, duration, divisibility, movability and impenetrability. Secondary qualities are those that supposedly do not inhere in the physical object but are dependent on the observing mind and the sensory organs, such as colours, smells, tastes, heat and cold.

The argument Armstrong puts forth is that the primary qualities by themselves do nothing to distinguish a physical object from empty space. For example, shape, size, duration and position are all things which could be ascribed to regions of empty space.

With regard to motion, a body is in motion if it is in a series of adjoining places at successive times. This means that motion can be analysed in terms of concepts of shape, size, position and duration but that it is not a new primitive concept which can serve to differentiate physical objects from empty space.

Similarly, divisibility refers to the propensity for a thing to be broken up into further things, so cannot be a primitive concept from which a ‘thing’ can be defined. As Armstrong puts it, this does not help to define a thing any more than it will help to define a cat by saying it is the offspring of two cats.

Impenetrability and hardness can also be analysed only in terms of their relations with other primary qualities (such as resistance to changes in shape and size) or with other physical objects. Finally, Armstrong attests that additions to the list of primary qualities by modern physics, such as mass and electric charge, cannot serve as fundamental defining concepts because they too dissolve into relations or dispositions to have relations that one particle has to another.

The conclusion which Armstrong draws from the above is that in order for a coherent account to be made of them, physical objects must possess a further quality (or qualities) over and above the traditional list of primary qualities. This extra quality must satisfy the following tests:

- it must not be analysable solely in terms of the other primary qualities (as in the case of motion).
- it must not be a relation that a physical object has with other physical objects (as in the case of divisibility and impenetrability). As alluded to above, this is because a property which is a relation between things cannot be a fundamental property, because in order to understand what the relation is, we already need to have an understanding of the thing.

Armstrong tentatively suggests that perhaps it is the secondary qualities which may satisfy these tests. But the traditional criticism of the view that secondary qualities inhere in the physical objects that they are dependent on the sensory apparatus of the observer. To see colours requires functioning eyes, to hear sound requires functioning ears and so forth.

Perhaps, then, what is required in exploring what the extra primary quality might be is to find what is common amongst the features of our different perceptions, and not dependent on the nature of the sensory organs.

Analysis of our perceptions shows a common feature they all share is their affective or emotional tone. The disgust of a foul odour, the beauty of a melody or harmony, the irritating or calming effect of colours, the soothing effect of a massage, the sweetness or bitterness of tastes- no matter what organ of the body our sensations are derived from, they are all accompanied by a certain affective tone.

Therefore, it may be that affective tone is the extra intrinsic quality which inheres in physical objects and allows a coherent account to be made of them. Affective tone certainly satisfies the two tests put forth by Armstrong - it is not analysable in terms of other primary qualities and is not a relations between physical objects.

However, two objections which will immediately arise to this suggestion are that firstly, emotions are produced subsequent to our perceptions and not part of what is perceived; and secondly, the affective tone of perceptions is dependent on the subjective state of the observer and so cannot be an intrinsic feature of what is observed. Each of these objections will be dealt with in turn.

Most people, scientists included, would regard it as common sense that emotions are produced in response to external stimuli, rather than being part of the actual stimuli. Surely, it is obvious that we perceive and then we emote. But is this view anything more than an unexamined prejudice?

In support of the view that it our brains the solely produce our emotions, evidence that stimulation of specific areas of the brain produces certain emotions could be adduced. For example, stimulation of a certain area of the frontal lobe produces feeling of spiritual transcendence, combine with a sense of some mystical presence. Similarly, stimulation of different areas of the amygdala produces feelings of rage, fear or a ‘warm,floaty feeling’ associated with appeasing behaviour. However, although examples such as these show that the exquisite architecture of the brain is attuned to the generation of certain emotions, they do not show that the brain is the only arrangement of matter capable of producing emotion.

Of course, the conscious experience of emotion is a complex phenomena. Emotional stimuli are registered by the amygdala, part of the primitive limbic system. Conscious emotion arises both by direct signals from the amygdala to the cortex and indirectly. The indirect path involves the sending of hormonal messages by the hypothalamus, which creates physiological changes such as increased blood pressure and heart rate. These changes are then fed back via the somatosensory cortex to the frontal cortex, where emotion is consciously experienced.

If, for simplicity’s sake, we focus on the direct pathway, we could ask in relation to the feeling aroused by a certain sight or colour, where does this feeling arise from? Does the amygdala or the cortex somehow transform the purely quantitative movement of energy and matter into a subjective quality? As Charles Birch has phrased it, “Nerve impulses to the brain don’t just miraculously become converted from electricity into feelings. In some way they must register the feelings of the cells of the retina... our feeling is the ‘feeling of feelings’ ”. Following this reasoning, the cells of the retina must, in turn, feel the feelings conveyed by the external stimulus.

In the future, neurophysiology may show that our emotional responses are in fact generated solely by the wiring of the brain, but in the meantime the possibility that part of the affective tone of our experiences is conveyed directly from the object perceived must be kept open.

With regard to the second objection, it is true that the affective tone of a perception is very much dependent on the state of mind of the observer. For instance, a depressed person may not experience as much joy at seeing a bunch of roses as the next person, and the capacity of different forms of music to produce emotions is very much a matter of personal taste.

However, as already stated, emotion is a complex physiological phenomena. Further, different emotions arise through different mechanisms. As neuroscientist Joseph Ledoux says, “each [emotional] system evolved to solve different problems that animals face and each has a separate neural basis”. Thus, the experience of emotion arises through multifarious routes and is very much dependent on the psychological and physiological state of the observer. But just as observers of a tree may see the tree differently but the tree is still there, so too the emotional substratum of a perceived object may still exist underneath the layers accreted by individual differences.

It might also be objected that the affective tone of a perception is dependent on our sensory organs because different aspects of a physical object may have different affective tones. For example, certain flowers may look attractive but have a unpleasant odour. However, physical objects are complicated affairs and what is happening in these instances is the perception of different physical ‘objects’. The affective tone of the odour is associated with certain molecules which arouse the olfactory organs, whereas the objects of sight are wavelengths of light.

Thus, affective tone may indeed be the primary quality of physical objects which enables them to be coherently characterised. Our strongest justification for our conception of matter may be that we feel its feelings.

This is something that can be tested and disproved by neurophysiology. Such testing may show that the emotions we experience are totally dependent on the activities of our neurons and not at all on the features of the physical objects perceived. Such evidence would show that emotions are, like secondary qualities, dependent on the physiological state of the observer. This would not mean that physical objects are necessarily devoid of affective tone. A “representationalist” form of affective panxperientialism could still be advanced. But it would mean that the argument for panexperientialism presented here would be void.

Lest it be thought that the subject matter of this post is too much out on a limb, I conclude with a quote from the respected philosopher David Ray Griffin:

“Whitehead’s view is that secondary qualities are produced by the mind out of values, or emotions. Recalling that such things are sometimes spoken of as ‘tertiary’ qualities, we could say that secondary qualities are produced by the mind out of tertiary qualities that are in the body and even nature in general... The qualities called primary in the dualistic and materialistic views are for him simply features of things as viewed from without.” (Unsnarling the World Knot p.141).

References

Armstrong DM, Perception and the Physical World, 1961, Routledge & Keagan Paul, London.

Birch C, Feelings, 1995, UNSW Press, Sydney.

Carter R, Mapping the Mind, 2000, Phoenix, London.

Griffin DR, Unsnarling the World Knot: Consciousness, Freedom and the Mind-Body problem, 1998, University Of California Press, California.

Hearing colors and seeing sounds

2005-01-19T13:45:00.000-08:00

Synaesthesia, is a rare condition in which a stimulus received in one sense organ causes an experience in another. For example, in colored hearing, sound and vision may mingle: the different tones of words and letters can involuntarily evoke distinct and vivid colors.

Some researchers believe that synaesthesia is how we originally experienced the world. For example, neurologist Richard Cytowic (whose website is here):

"Cytowic has tracked the source of the synesthetic experience back to the limbic system, one of the oldest parts of the brain and a site at which emotions and memories are processed. Cytowic calls synesthetes "living cognitive fossils" because he believes this kind of multi-sensory perception is as ancient as the place in which it originates. According to his theory, synesthesia may well have been our primeval way of experiencing the world — until the more rational cortex involved and filled the senses into the individual compartments. "Synesthesia is a normal brain function in every one of us," Cytowic says, "but its workings only reach consciousness in a handful. It may well be a memory of how early mammals saw, heard, smelled, tasted and touched." "(copied from Time Magazine article available on Cytowic's website).

This view dovetails with panexperientialist theories which see the fundamental units of experience as affective in nature, which are then differentiated and canalised by the brain and sensory systems. A panexperientialist extension of Cytowic's theory would see the limbic system not as the primeval source of affect and sensa, but as the conduit through which emotional energy is channeled from the body and the outside world, prior to it's conversion and corellation with particular qualia in the higher centers of the brain.

Synaesthesia is currently an area of major research interest and speculation in brain and consiousness studies. It will be of great interest to see how knowledge in this area develops over the coming years.

Cells and Sympathy

2005-01-19T13:07:00.000-08:00

Charles Hartshorne espoused the view that our cells and our conscious selves feel each other through sympathy. For example, here is a quote from this article:

"Take the case of pain. We have this feeling if certain cells of ours undergo damage. But if the cells have their own feelings, they can hardly enjoy being damaged. So what is our suffering but our participating in their suffering? Hurt certain of my cells and you hurt me."

This view has a lot of intuitive appeal. However, when the physiology of sensation is investigated in more detail, the situation becomes complicated. The experience of a sensation is largely dependent on what area of the brain the nerve fibres (connected to the receptor cells which received the stimulus) go to. For example, the burning, crushing or bending of a pain nerve receptor cell will give rise to the sensation of pain. Similarly, the burning, crushing or bending of a touch nerve receptor cell will give rise to the sensation of touch (not pain). Thus, the experience of the conscious subject may not be "in sympathy" with that of the original cell.

The broader issue here is how what is consciously felt in our subjective experience relates to the feelings of bodily cells and, by extension, aspects of the world external to the body. That is, how are the affects of the body and world correlated with those that humans experience by virtue of the brain?

To exemplify the issue in more aesthetic terms - is the feeling of beauty aroused by looking at a flower or a sunset produced solely by the brain - or do aspects of the flower, the sunset and the sensory organs also partake, in some form or another, in the beauty that is experienced.

For me to explore this issue in full adequacy, my knowledge of the physiology of sensation needs to be further developed. Nevertheless, at this stage I see four possibilities (on the assumption that panexperientialism is true) in relation to how the feelings of our sense receptor cells relate to what is consciously felt:

1). The brain amplifies or attenuates the feelings of the receptor cells.

Thus, while a touch receptor cell may ‘feel’ pain on being crushed, the architecture of the brain and the various neural pathways through which the nerve impulse travels from the receptor cells results in the attenuation of this feeling, so that the person experiences only the sensation of touch. However, the neural architecture means that the crushing of a pain receptor cell leads to amplification of the feelings of pain experienced by the receptor cells, resulting in the person experiencing a sensation of pain. Alternatively, the sensory receptors themselves may only be capable of a limited range of feelings (such as touch or pain), which are then transmitted to the brain for amplification or attenuation.

Note that in this scenario, the nerve impulses transmitted from different receptor cells may be associated with or transmit different feelings, although to the scientific observer there may not be any measurable differences between them.

2). The transmission of some feelings through the body occurs through nonsensory means.

This possibility correlates to some extent with Whitehead’s description of “perception in the mode of causal efficacy”. In this mode of perception, the feelings of bodily cells which contribute to the feelings of the person are not transmitted solely by the nervous and sensory systems, but are also transmitted through the body by direct feeling (in ways in which contemporary science does not recognise).

Thus, in this scenario what is felt by the bodily cells may be correlated with our subjective experience through being felt by nonsensory means. This would also account for parapsychological phenomena (if indeed there are such phenomena). In the case of the damage of a touch receptor cell giving rise to the sensation of touch, it can be deduced that this nonsensory transmission of feelings is not significant. However, other aspects of subjective feeling (for example, the experience of hunger, fatigue, nausea, excitement, fear), may be more significantly correlated with nonsensory transmission.

3). The feelings of bodily cells are re-presented by the brain.

Under this scenario, the actual feelings of receptor cells have no direct relation to what the person feels. Rather, the transmission of nerve impulses and the architecture of the brain “recreates” the feelings felt by the receptor cells. This is similar to representationalist theories of perception, whereby the brain represents data received from the external world to create an image of the external world which is subjectively experienced (for a lucid and easy to read explanation of representationalism click here).

Note that if the bodily feelings we experience are a result of representation by the brain, there is no a priori reason why our subjective feelings would be correlated with what is felt by our receptor cells. Rather, this correlation can be explained on evolutionary grounds. For example, if an animal’s cells are experiencing pain because they are being damaged, it is obviously of survival value for the conscious animal to also experience pain, so that that stimulus of the pain can be avoided. However, it may not necessarily always be evolutionary advantageous for feelings to be represented by the brain in the form in which they are originally experienced by parts of the body.

4). Feelings and sensations are solely produced by the brain.

This option follows from option 3 - If the feelings of the bodily cells are not directly relevant to what is felt by the person then there is no real need to assume that feelings exist anywhere other than when they are produced by the brain. Thus, under this scenario when the receptor cells of the body are damaged, they do not feel anything. It is only the coordination of nervous impulses by the brain that gives rise to sensation. Away from the brain, there is no sentience or feeling.

This option is a somewhat depressing prospect and brings to mind Whitehead’s lament that under this view “the poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves, and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellency of the human mind. Nature is a dull affair, soundless, scentless, colourless, merely the hurrying of material, endlessly, meaninglessly.”

Two factors which count against this option are firstly, if feeling is not ubiquitous in nature and the panexperiential ‘stuff’ has not relation to it, the question arises as to how feeling and sensation is generated by the brain. This is analogous to the problem of the ‘magical emergence’ of sentient properties from the insentient matter of the brain which plagues many forms of materialism (although it is less problematic to get from some form of panexperiential material to feeling and sensation then to get from totally inert matter to the same). Secondly, if the panexperiential material has no relation to feeling or sentience, it is difficult to conceive what it might consist of.

Conclusion

At present I have an open mind on this issue, but favour some sort of combination of options 1 to 3.

These three options are not mutually exclusive and the predominance of each mode in a particular organism could be explained in evolutionary terms. For instance, in prebiotic and unicellular organisms the direct mode of perception (option 2) would be the sole or dominant mode. As the nervous system developed in more complex organisms attenuation and amplification of feelings (option 1) may have concurrently evolved. Finally, in organisms with reasonably sophisticated brains, feelings and affects of the body may often be entirely represented to the perceiving subject through the brain (option 3).

The Philosophy of Smell

2005-01-17T19:59:00.000-08:00

Whitehead argued that theories of consciousness often flounder because they explain what is most primitive and basic in terms of what stands out most clearly and distinctly. In contemporary times, a similar argument could be made that attempts to explain or understand experience in terms of it's more complex accomplishments (such as thought, computational ability, cognition, or language) are starting at the wrong place.

I agree with Whitehead that the starting point for understanding experience (whether conscious or unconscious) is in examination of our emotional, purposive and appetitive responses. In this respect, the sense of smell is of major interest.

Smell is the most ancient and primitive of the senses. The limbic system, the unconscious part of the brain that deals with motivation and emotions, developed from it. Thus, analysis of smell can give us an understanding of the most basic elements of experience accessible to our consciousness.

This is something I hope to explore further sometime. In the meantime, here is an interesting and accessible introduction to the sense of smell.

Perception in the Lower animals and beyond

2005-01-17T18:39:00.000-08:00

This post will primarily be concerned with the question of whether the brain, sense organs and nerve cells are necessary for perception.

Perception in biological terms can be defined as the registering of information or the detection of environmental changes by an organism. Sense organs are specialised receptors designed for detecting environmental status and change, both internal and external. They are the means whereby an animal perceives it's environment. Sense organs convert diverse stimuli from the environment into nerve impulses, the common language of the nervous system. Here is a survey of the sensory systems of various animal phyla, with emphasis on the most basic of these:

Sensory systems in the Vertebrates

Vertebrates are characterised by major structural and functional developments in the nervous system. They have a clear separation of the brain from the spinal chord, and the sense organs are developed well beyond those of the invertebrates. For example, vertebrates possess paired eyes with lenses and inverted retinas; pressure receptors, such as paired ears designed for equilibrium, which then evolved into sound receptors; and well developed chemical receptor organs for taste and smell, particularly in respect to often extremely sensitive olfactory organs.

Sensory systems in the Arthropods (insects, crustaceans, spiders)

Sensory organs are found in great variety in the arthropods, from the compound eye to simpler senses that have to do with touch, smell, hearing, balancing, chemical reception, temperature, humidity and others. In insects, airborne sounds and mechanical stimuli dealing with touch, pressure, vibration and so forth are detected by very sensitive hairs connected to nerve cells (sensilla).

The central nervous system and ‘brain’ of arthropods consists of masses of nerve cells which function as coordinating centres chiefly by inhibiting or limiting certain reflex actions, although learning is also significant in many species. The sensory systems of arthropods contribute not only to very simple behaviour patterns such as kineses (nondirectional increase in activity upon stimulus) and taxes (directional movement in response to a stimulus), but also to highly complex behaviours such as the intriguing waggle dance of the honey bee (described here).

Sensory systems in Flatworms

Flatworms are the most primitive animals to have bilateral symmetry. They include parasitic species such as tapeworms and flukes, as well as larger, free-living species. Their nervous system consists of a pair of anterior ganglia (the ‘brain’) with lengthwise running nerves connected by transverse nerves, forming a ladder-like pattern. There are a variety of sensory cells spread over the body connected to this nervous system. Many of these are chemoreceptors or tactile cells and are not greatly differentiated from the epidermal cells around them.

In free living flatworms, there are two groups of sensory cells known as auricular organs at the sides of the ‘head’ and these are though to be specialised taste receptors. Ocelli, or light-sensitive spots, are also common in these species. These ‘eyes’ allow the animal to discriminate between light intensities and determine the direction of illumination and orient in relation to it. Some free living species also have statocysts (equilibrium sensing cells) and receptors for sensing water current direction.

Here is some basic information on flatworms, and here is a photogallery of some large, free-living species.

Sensory systems in the Cnidaria (jellyfish, sea-anemones, corals)

Cnidarians come in many shapes and forms and are characterised by the lack of concentrated grouping of nerve cells that would suggest a central nervous system. Rather, they possess a diffuse nervous system made up of networks of neurons called ‘nerve nets’. Many of the neurons in nerve nets are also unusual in that they allow transmission of nerve impulses in both directions. Although without central control, the movements of Cnidarians are coordinated by simultaneous firing of nerves and contraction of muscles.

Sensory systems in the Cnidaria are simple. Sensory cells are scattered among the epidermal cells, especially around the mouth and tentacles. The free end of each sensory cell bears a flagellum, which is the sensory receptor for chemical and tactile stimuli. The other end branches into fine processes, which synapse with the nerve cells. Jellyfish have simple sense organs called rhopalium, which contain statocysts and pits lined with sensory epithelia, as well as ocelli in some species.

Cnidarians are also characterised by stinging organoids (nematocysts). It is interesting that an animal with such simple sensory apparatus can provoke such intense sensory reactions in other animals - as anyone who has been stung by a bluebottle or jellyfish would attest!

Here are some pictures of various Cnidaria.

Sensory systems in the Porifera (sponges)

Sponges can be regarded as loose aggregations of cells without definite form or symmetry. Their cells act more or less independently and show minimal cooperation or coordination. Sponges have negligible bodily movement and have not evolved a nervous system or sense organs. For this reason, examination of sensory systems at the next most primitive level is best undertaken by consideration of the single celled organism.

Sensory systems in the Protozoa and Bacteria (single celled organisms)

The primary way in which single celled organisms sense their environment is through chemoreception, in much the same way that humans smell. Bacteria and protozoa detect chemicals through receptor proteins in their membranes. Sensing of molecules leads to behavioural changes such as movement with or against the concentration gradient of a stimulus chemical.

Ingenious experiments have shown that some bacteria ‘know’ to keep moving in a certain direction along a concentration gradient not through the differences in concentration of stimulus molecules at the different ends of the organism, but through a primitive form of memory associated with the different rates of enzymatic reactions which ensue from receptor stimulation (read this article for more information). Other experiments have shown that the reactions of some paramecium (a type of protozoan) is dependent on electrical potential differences across the cell membrane, analogous to the way in which nerve impulses are conducted.

Chemoreception is not the only form of perception in the single celled organisms, although it is the most studied. Other sensory responses occur, in varying degrees amongst different species, to light, heat, gravity, mechanical contact and electric fields. Here is another article, which discusses the evolution and varieties of perception in single celled organisms.

Sensory systems in bacteria and protozoa can lead to quite complex behavioural responses, to the extent that HJ Jenning, a leader in the field in his day, said of the amoeba in 1906 that:

“The writer is thoroughly convinced, after long study of the behaviour of this organism, that if Amoeba were a large animal, so as to come within the everyday experience of human beings, its behaviour would at once call forth the attribution to it of states of pleasure and pain, of hunger, desire, and the like, on precisely the same basis as we attribute these things to the dog”.

Perception in other organisms

Plants respond to external stimuli though growth responses called tropisms. Tropisms include responses to light, gravity and touch (phototropism,gravitropism and thigmotropism respectively).

In the case of phototropism, the initial response to light which leads to the subsequent growth response arises through protein-pigment complexes within cell membranes. The mechanisms of thigmotropism are poorly understood and operate differently in different species. Some species are believed to react to touch through stimulation of hairs on epidermal cells affecting membrane ionic permeability, which thereby gives rise to an action potential. More on thigmotropism can be found here. Gravitropism arises through specialised cells containing gravity responsive starch grains.

Outside the scientific mainstream, some researchers claim to have detected emotional and telepathic-like responses in plants (click here for more info), though the validity of these experiments is widely contested.

Viruses are conventionally regarded as the most simple living things. They attach to their host cells through recognition and attachment of viral proteins to receptor sites on the surface of the host cell. Thus, viral perception can be regarded as a form of chemoreception.

What’s so special about the neuron?

At this juncture, it may appear as if there has been an unjustified conflation of the activity of neurons with that of other types of cellular and organismic activity. Therefore, it is worth considering whether there is anything that uniquely distinguishes neural activity from other cellular and molecular processes.

The key features that allow neurons to transmit nerve impulses are a permeable membrane and a potential difference caused by variations in concentrations of ions on different sides of the membrane. This potential difference results in the movement of ions across the membrane and the propagation of the electrochemical impulse along the neuron.

Selective membrane permeability is a feature of all cells. As mentioned above, membrane potential differences are implicated in such activities as the movement of plants in response to touch and the coordination of protozoan cilia and flagella movement (here is another interesting article on protozoan behaviour). The mechanisms of ciliary coordination through membrane potential polarisation and depolarisation have in fact been postulated as the evolutionary antecedent of neural transmission and coordination in the multicellular animals. Clearly then, there is no difference in kind between the activities of neurons and other cells.

Molecular perception

The next question that arises is whether there is any difference in kind between cellular reactions and those at the molecular level. The cell membrane obviously gives a boundary which allows coordination and integration of cellular activity, in much the same way that the brain allows integration and coordination of the human body.

However, again there does not appear to be any difference in kind between the reactions of a cell to it’s environment and the reaction of a molecule or atom to it’s neighbour. Both entail an energetic response to a stimulus. In fact, the reactions at the cellular level would be explained by most biologists as the result of reactions at the molecular level, with no admission of the emergence of a unique category of interaction (though this is not exactly my view). For instance, the attractive bonding of the hydrogen end of one water molecule to the oxygen end of another is analogous to the movement of ions across the membrane of a neuron which result in a nerve impulse.

Perception as Causation

The examination of perception at different levels could be continued into the subatomic and quantum particle realms. The picture which emerges is that of perception being synonymous with the interaction of any entity with another. Thus, perception has an intrinsic connection with causation. To perceive is to act and to be acted upon. For instance, the mutual attraction of two particles is the result of the mutual perception of each particle by the other. Or, at the macroscopic level, the movement of an iron filing toward a magnet is the perception of the magnet and the filing of each other.

This fusion of perception with causation is obviously an idea which requires further development (but not in this post). Such development along these or similar lines has been pursued by philosophers such as Whitehead and, more recently, Gregg Rosenberg, whose book on the connections between consciousness and causation has recently been published (click here).

Implications

Thus far, perception has primarily been considered in this post from an objective perspective - from the viewpoint of an outside, scientific observer. As such, it could be said that all that has been demonstrated is that perception occurs through the same physical and chemical processes that operate throughout nature. This is no more than a reductionist explanation of perception in physicochemical terms. However, now we turn to a consideration of perception in it’s subjective aspect - how it qualitatively feels from the ‘inside’ to sense the environment.

Reductionism works both ways. If we are to explain nature in physical terms, then such explanation should encompass the whole of nature, including the fact of the subjectively perceiving person. The sentient properties we feel in ourselves and assume to exist in other humans must be explainable in the same terms as other physical systems. It has been shown that perception, considered from the objective viewpoint, is ubiquitous in nature and there is no particular point in the evolutionary chain at which it suddenly appears from nowhere. Therefore, we are led to ask what reason is there for not also attributing a universality to the subjective aspect of perception?

The extension of human qualities to other natural systems is usually dismissed as naïve anthropomorphism. But, it is worth considering whether the anthropomorphic approach is totally unwarranted. If we seek to explain human qualities as natural properties, then these qualities must surely be a property of nature. As Whitehead phrased the issue:

“Any doctrine which refuses to place human experience outside nature, must find in descriptions of human experience factors which also enter into the descriptions of less specialised natural occurrences. If there be no such factors, then the doctrine of human experience as a fact of nature is mere bluff.”

There is no obvious reason why the attribution of subjectivity should not be extended beyond human and similar organisms.

At this point, it may be objected that human perception is distinctly a property of the human brain and that no analogy between the human brain and other natural processes has been demonstrated. The present neurobiological, if not philosophical consensus, is that subjective perception occurs through the brain constructing or representing models of the world - it is not the eyes or ears which perceive, but the brain.

However, subscribing to this view does not alter the conclusions arrived at here. The brain utilises the same physical and chemical processes as the rest of nature. Leaving aside the difficult issue of how multifarious neuronal events are bound into a single unified subjective experience, the representationalist framework asserts that perception arises through the transmission of impulses between neurons in the brain. But the binding of a neurotransmitter to a postsynaptic membrane receptor is another form of perception, analogous to the chemoreception of molecules in olfaction. Similarly, if subjective perception under the representationalist thesis is somehow attributed to electromagnetic or other physical fields, such fields also occur in all physical systems. Thus, representation by the brain does not detract from the conclusion of the universality of perception.

There is thus no reason to believe there is a threshold at which the subjective properties of perception in nature suddenly vanish and only the objective features remain. Obviously, it is hard to imagine what the subjective feel of perception at the most basic levels of interaction between molecules and particles might be like. The closest resemblance we will find is probably with the most basic of our own sensations - an odorous whiff, the pangs of hunger, an itch, a throb of pain or the urge of desire.

A reasonable, if not uncontentious, conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing discussion is that, considered both objectively and subjectively, neither a brain, neurons or sense organs are necessary for perception, and that an act of perception may occur in nature every time a causal interaction takes place.

Reference

Hickman, CP. Roberts, LS & Hickman, FM. 1984. Integrated Principles of Zoology. 7th ed. St Louis, Times Mirror/Cosby Publishing. A dated but still useful standard zoology text.

Whitehead's Theory of Perception

2004-12-31T21:47:00.000-08:00

Whitehead’s theory or perception is integral to Whiteheadian panexperientialism. In particular, his analysis of ‘perception in the mode of causal efficacy’ lays the basis for the generalisation of elements of directly experienced feeling to the whole of nature. His theory of perception can also stand on its own and be fruitfuly utilised by other forms of panexperientialism, which may not be sympathetic to other aspects of Whitehead’s thought.

For these reasons, it is relevant to panexperientialist theory to examine critiques of Whitehead's theory of perception.

The following three links provide firstly, a criticism of Whitehead’s theory of perception; secondly, a response to this criticism; and thirdly, a further critique of ‘perception in the mode of causal efficacy’.

The Incoherence of Whitehead's Theory of Perception by Robert Kimball

Kimball on Whitehead and Perception by David L. Hildebrand

Error in Causal Efficacy by Robert H. Kimball

Here are some brief comments of mine on the latter paper listed above:

In “Error in Causal Efficacy”, Robert H. Kimball argues that in so far as Whitehead’s theory of perception is intended to stand alone without the rest of his system, then the theory is insufficiently justified. Kimball’s paper is primarily focussed on whether the theory of perception on it's own provides adequate justification that perception in the mode of causal efficacy ("PMCE")reveals actual causal connections. Kimball claims is that it doesn't, and therefore Whitehead’s theory of perception is inadequately justified.

I think consideration of Whitehead's methodology and of what he actually wrote in the theory of perception are sufficient to refute Kimball’s claims. In particular, strong arguments could be mounted to support the following points:

- Kimball’s claim that PMCE could be inaccurate or unreliable is incorrect, as PMCE by definition is incapable of error;
- Whitehead's theory of perception does not rely on the experience of PMCE alone to conclude that causation exists;
- it is unwarranted to expect that Whitehead’s theory of perception be devoid of any metaphysical or epistemological assumptions in order to be justifiable;
- the standard of certainty which Kimball applies to the theory of perception is inappropriate to Whitehead’s method of philosophising; and,
- the theory of perception and the other systematic considerations expounded in the works which comprise the theory of perception do provide adequate justification for belief in causal efficacy.

Whitehead, Abstruseness and Emotion

2004-12-31T21:44:00.000-08:00

One of the barriers to the wider appreciation of the philosophy of Whitehead has been the denseness, difficulty and near impenetrability of some of his writings. Secondary commentaries on Whitehead are also often weighed down with technical, obscure and arcane terminology and argumentation.

In my view, Whitehead’s cosmology can be usefully understood as a characterisation of the world as an ocean of interplaying emotions. The best method of comprehending this may often be with an aesthetic frame of mind, rather than with the logician’s scalpel.

Here are some quotes from Whitehead on emotion and feeling:

“..the philosophy of organism attributes ‘feeling’ throughout the actual world. It bases this doctrine upon the directly observed fact that ‘feeling’ survives as a known element constitutive of the ‘formal’ existence of such actual entities as we can best observe.’ (Process and Reality, 1978 ed,177)

“…the emotional appetitive elements in our conscious experience are those which most closely resemble the basic elements of all physical experience.” (PR, 163)

“The primitive form of physical experience is emotional- blind emotion- received as felt elsewhere in another occasion and conformally appropriated as a subjective passion. In the language appropriate to the higher stages of experience, the primitive element is sympathy, that is feeling the feeling in another and feeling conformally with another.” (PR, 162)

“A simple physical feeling is an act of causation…
But it is equally true to say that a simple physical feeling is the most primitive type of an act of perception, devoid of consciousness……
Thus a simple physical feeling is one feeling which feels another feeling.” (PR, 236 )

“Simple physical feelings embody the reproductive character of nature….Physical science is the science investigating spatio-temporal an quantitative characteristics of simple physical feelings. The actual entities of the actual world are bound together in a nexus of these feelings.” (PR, 238)

“Locke assumes that the utmost primitiveness is to be found in sense-perception…..The more primitive types of experience are concerned with sense-reception, and not with sense-perception….In sense-reception the sensa are the definiteness of emotion: they are emotional forms transmitted from occasion to occasion” (PR, 113)

“The simplest grade of actual occasions must be conceived as experiencing a few sensa, with a minimum of patterned contrast. The sensa are then experienced emotionally, and constitute the specific feelings whose intensities sum up into the unity of satisfaction.” (PR, 115)

“The experience [of the simplest grade of actual entity] has a vector character, a common measure of intensity, and specific forms of feelings conveying that intensity. If we substitute the term ‘energy’ for the concept of a quantitative emotional intensity, and the term ‘form of energy’ for the concept of specific form of feeling,‘ and remember that in physics ‘vector’ means definite transmission from elsewhere, we see that this metaphysical description of the simplest elements in the constitution of actual entities agrees absolutely with the general principles according to which the notions of modern physics are framed.” (PR,116 )

“The direct perception whereby the datum in the immediate subject is inherited from the past can thus, under an abstraction, be conceived as the transference of throbs of emotional energy, clothed in the specific forms provided by sensa.” (PR, 116)

“Hume and Locke…assume that emotional feelings are necessarily derivative from sensations…The converse doctrine is nearer the truth: the more primitive mode of objectification is via emotional tone, and only in exceptional organisms does objectification, via sensation, supervene with any effectiveness.” (PR, 141)

“Experience has been explained in a thoroughly topsy-turvy fashion, the wrong end first. In particular, emotional and purposeful experience have been made to follow upon Hume’s impressions of sensation.” (PR, 162)

“Thus the primitive experience is emotional feeling…In this vector transmission of primitive feeling the primitive provision of width for contrast is secured by pulses of emotion….In physics, such transmission can be conceived as corpuscular or undulatory, according to the special importance of particular features in the instance considered.” (PR, 163)

“The savouring of the complexity of the universe can enter into satisfaction only through the dimension of width. The emotional depths at the low levels have their limits: the function of width is to deepen the ocean of feeling, and to remove the diminutions of depth produced by the interference of diverse emotions uncoordinated at a higher level. In the place of the Hegelian hierarchy of categories of thought, the philosophy of organism finds a hierarchy of categories of feeling:” (PR, 166)

“ An actual entiy is a process in the course of which many operations with incomplete subjective unity terminate in a completed unity of operation, termed the ‘satisfaction’. The ‘satisfaction’ is the contentment of the creative urge by the fulfilment of its categorical demands” (PR, 219)

“… a feeling appropriates elements of the universe, which in themselves are other than the subject; and absorbs these elements into the real internal constitution of its subject by synthesizing them in the unity of an emotional pattern expressive of its own subjectivity.” (PR, 275)

“ The separations of perceptual fact from emotional fact ; and of causal fact from emotional fact, and from perceptual fact; and of perceptual fact, emotional fact, and causal fact, from purposive fact; have constituted a complex of bifurcations, fatal to a satisfactory cosmology.” (PR, 290)

“In our experience, as in distinct analysis, physical feelings are always derived from some antecedent experient….In bodily transmission from occasion to occasion of a high-grade animal body, there is a gradual modification of [the] functions of sensa. In their most primitive functioning for the initial occasions within the animal body, they are qualifications of emotion- types of energy, in the language of physics; in their final functioning for the high-grade experient occasion at the end of the route, they are qualities ‘inherent’ in a presented, contemporary nexus.” (PR, 315)

“The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production of Beauty.” (Adventures of Ideas)

The Placebo Effect

2004-12-30T21:51:00.000-08:00

Here is a (fairly crudely argued) essay I wrote in 1992, which sparked my interest in all things panexperiential:

Mind, Body and Affect: A Reconceptualisation of the Placebo Effect

It is commonplace to say that the placebo effect and related phenomena constitute a nexus at which the natural and social sciences converge. Like psychosomatic disorders, ‘Voodoo Death’, Culture-bound reactive syndromes and so forth, the placebo effect provides valuable material for interdisciplinary research. Yet the inherent mind-body dualism of all the sciences has hampered such research to date. The purpose of this paper is to put forward an alternative conceptual model for analysing these phenomena.

One of the most practical methodologies for studying placebo phenomena from a medical anthropological perspective is exemplified in a paper by Hahn and Kleinman (Hahn and Kleinman 1983). Starting from the observation that beliefs have the power to heal and kill, Hahn and Kleinman develop a model which posits that all events have both physical and mental aspects. Thus, any disease process possesses some accompanying physiological component while conversely, all mental events have a physiological correlate. This approach is summarised with the principle ‘the mind is embodied, the body mindful’. Hahn and Kleinman thus conceive of the mind-body relationship as being a dialectical process in which each influences the other and neither operates in isolation. Using this approach, the placebo effect can be explained as the result of the affective components of the patients belief system altering the physiology of the disease.

The above methodology is obviously more efficacious in explaining placebo phenomena than a crude sociological or biological reductionism which denies any interaction between mind and body. But the model is hampered by the fact that it does not make explicit that which is implicit within it. If the body is ‘mindful’, then questions arise concerning at which stage, if any, the mind-body relationship becomes inert matter. Or, equivalently, does the mindfulness of the body include outer extremities such as the hair? And if so, at what stage does a balding man’s departing hair ‘lose it’s mind’? Such oddities suggest that the model of Hahn and Kleinman has not been fully progressed.

In Hahn and Kleinman’s model, the placebo effect is analysed in terms of the emotional content of beliefs affecting the body. Hence, mind and body have fundamental ontological status and emotion is the bridge which links them. The apparent problems alluded to that arise from this framework can be resolved if this model is inverted; that is, if one takes affect to be the fundamental phenomenon. What this inversion means, for example, is that the feeling of anxiety and palpitations of the heart are not separate things. Rather, the rapid expansion and contraction of the heart and associated physiological correlates is, quite literally, the emotion of anxiety. This may initially sound preposterous, but demands some further consideration.

To elaborate, the thesis here is that one of the fundamental properties of physical existence is emotion. To take it one step further, one could say that emotion is the fundamental property of matter, and that matter is in some sense synonymous with emotion. The atomic quanta which constitute matter can thus be redesignated as primitive preconscious affect consisting, perhaps, of basic forms of attraction and repulsion. Human self consciousness can be seen as a highly evolved form of affect, but one which is not different in essence from ‘inert matter’. On this model then, all physical existence is a spectrum of emotional events, ranging from preconscious matter in simple elemental or compound form to complex, neurally based self consciousness. Thus the extension from Hahn and Kleinman’s model is that instead of mind and body being reciprocally related, they are a unity.

The application of this model to phenomena such as the placebo effect are self evident; instead of seeing medical therapy as having a ‘psychological’ and a ‘physical’ component, therapy can be seen as operating upon an affective continuum. All forms of therapy involve the interaction of affect with affect. These therapies vary depending on how physicalised (preconscious) or mentalized (self-conscious) the therapeutic affect is. Thus, at one end of the continuum would be the administration of drugs to a patient who is not consciously aware he or she is being given them. At the other end of the continuum would be highly intellectualised therapies such as psychoanalysis. In between these two extremes, in approximately increasing order of physicality, would be psychotherapy, ritual and ceremony, massage and ‘touch’ therapies, placebo drug therapy, surgery and conventional drug therapy. The physicality or mentality of these therapies is by no means fixed or absolute, nor directly correlated with the physicality or mentality of these therapeutic effects. Rather, therapeutic effects depend on the affective affinity between the therapy and the various arrangements of atomic-affective quanta which constitute the body organs. Thus, psychotherapy and psychotropic drugs affect the brain in a similar manner even though they come from different poles of the affective continuum.

Affect and the Natural Sciences

Having sketched an outline of the ‘matter as emotion’ model, it is apposite to explore some of it’s implications for the natural sciences. The model does not undermine the rigour, precision or validity of the methods of the natural science, although it does alter the relation of these to the social sciences and the humanities. This can be explained in the following way:

Because human beings’ bodies are built upon the same basic structure of atomic-affective quanta configurations, it can be said that humans live in the same sensual and perceptual world. That is, the physical constitution of the human organism means that all humans inhabit the same affective domain. But this does not yet solve the problem - the preconscious ‘ground of being’ is constantly melded with affects associated with self consciousness. That is, while humans may live in a world that is roughly the same for all, the problem remains of how the human community can have consistent and accurate knowledge of this world.

This issue can be resolved if the objective approach used by the experimental scientist is not regarded as a robotic, affect-free state, but as an affect in itself. That is, objectivity can be seen as an emotion of calm, concentrated non- volatility. From this, the character of the natural sciences becomes clear. A scientist’s observations and theorising are the result of the interaction of his or her atomic-affective quanta with the atomic affective quanta of the ‘external’ world (mediated through the sense organs). As all competent scientists undertake their work with the same objective mood, they all perceive essentially the same world. This explains why experiments are replicable and have predictive success - they are all dependent on the experimenters sharing the same affective state.

It could be argued that this model means science must renege any claims that it may have had that it’s object is a ‘reality’ that exists behind perceptual appearances, as both what is observed and what ‘is’ would be dependent to some extent on how one feels. But this in no way debases the validity, rationality and utility of the sciences. Or to put it more vibrantly- just as the world appears grey when one is depressed, bright and beautiful when in love, so too is it ordered and manipulable when one is feeling objective.

Reference

Hahn, R and Kleinman, A. ‘Belief as Pathogen, Belief as Medicine; ‘Voodoo Death’ and the ‘Placebo Phenomenon’ in Anthropological Perspective’. Medical Anthropology Quarterly V.14(4):16 -19 (1983).