RESPONSE To THE HARD PROBLEM by STEFANIA R. JHA David H. Nikkel, Responder Solving the mind-body problem, that is, the hard problem of accounting for consciousness or subjectivity in a non-reductive manner, is hard indeed. Stefania Jha has provided a rich overview of various attempts from modern and contemporary philosophy, as well as from contemporary science, to address that very problem. Given the difficulty of the task, it may come as no surprise that I will conclude that Jha s various interlocutors fail to solve the problem. Of course, my conclusions may also stem from failures on my part part to adequately understand the thinkers Jha expounds and her interpretations thereof. Jha rightly begins with Descartes, who set the terms for the debate about the relationship between mind and body. I do think that Jha lets Descartes off the hook too easily on the charge of inaugurating modern dualism. No serious philosopher has argued the complete separation of mind and body, that there exists no connection at all; for that would entail that humans have no awareness of our bodies and the physical objects our bodies engage. Descartes does, however, advocate the completely different natures of mind versus body, with the result that, as the quote from Passions of the Soul indicates, soul and body can only indirectly affect each other (2). (We also have the incongruity of Descartes holding that the immaterial mind or soul is jointly united to all parts of the body, yet at the same time, this soul has its principal seat in the pineal gland [2].) Jha s next influential thinker chronologically is Husserl. While he advances on Descartes in emphasizing the ego s interactions with a temporal world, still I discern a mind-body/mindmatter dualism favoring the mind. Key passages cited by Jha follow (8): 1) Husserl asserts that the soul is something psychical inserted in the body in objective space and time. 2) Material
2 things are conditioned exclusively from the outside and are history-less, while psychic realities have history that is not reversible. 3) The body is inserted between the material world and the subjective sphere. I would opine that the human mind is an intrinsically embodied mind, a mindbody, to use Poteat s term, from the get-go. There is no need to insert it in the body, nor to insert the body in relation to the subjective. Our subjectivity is embodied at its roots. And I believe that Polanyi, at his best, would agree. Husserl, F. S. Rothschild, and Polanyi are invoked to advance a biosemiotics, whereby language, symbolism, and semantics supposedly explain consciousness as the meaning of the body. Implied, and more than implied insofar as Polanyi is invoked, is the notion that consciousness focuses on holistic meaning as it integrates bodily parts. A comment by Jha at least hints at a problem with this strategy: the crucial problem of the organismic principles of the organizing field remains unclear (6). Observing non-conscious organisms or non-conscious parts of an organism, in the sense of lacking sentience based on neural cells, can bring the problem into focus. They detect particular semiotic or symbolic clues from the environment that yield holistic information about their environment in correlation with their biological needs. So what supposedly explains consciousness also occurs apart from any consciousness. In a converse type of move, Velmans offers an argument that sentience may be more than just physical: if (emphasis mine) sentience can be dissociated from functioning, then consciousness demands some explanation beyond mere evolutionary adaptiveness. That if is a big if. Both neuroscientists Damasio and Edelman, in their embodied models of consciousness, and others do regard consciousness as adaptive: conscious as opposed to non-conscious representation and self-representation amplify attention and interest, adding salience to stimuli, and allow for greater manipulation of images in planning, modeling, and comparing. Damasio
3 adds that certain brain-damaged patients continue to have the relevant unconsciousness representations for complex behaviors in their brains, yet because emotional motivation or intentionality is lacking, they function poorly. So consciousness probably does have purposes relating to our survival and flourishing. Of course, some may then conclude that meaningless physical processes have issued in consciousness; others however may conclude that some direction or meaning lies behind those processes that lead to consciousness. Hut and Shepard seem to attempt to dissolve the hard problem of consciousness in a sense reminiscent of Wittgensteinian dissolution of false problems created by bad philosophizing. Certainly in our everyday lifeworlds, in so-called second person encounters in our natural and social worlds, we do assume at least an intimate correlation or commonality of mind and brain/body if not identity. Yet philosophy and religion have had this tendency to reflect on the relationship of mind and body, not only because of wrong-headed dualistic philosophizing, but because something interesting, complex, and even mysterious seems to be going on. Sometimes we recognize that some difference pertains among a particular thing or object I and others observe, how my perception brings that object into focus, and how my fellow human being s perception and even more the perception of a member of another animal species, say a bird brings that object into a different focus. What accounts for different firstperson perspectives, not to mention third person or so-called second-person accounts? I completely agree with Jha s characterization of Varela s position, that the ontology of the mental is irreducibly first-person (11). But that just restates the hard problem! How can we explain subjectivity in a non-reductive fashion? To appeal to ordinary everyday experience where we do not ponder such issues may end up being a way of avoiding hard thinking.
4 Jha sees considerable promise in accounts of consciousness that call upon quantum mechanics. I must confess that I am far less sanguine, indeed pessimistic, given my interpretation of contemporary physics. As I understand it, we lack evidence that quantum events, micro events, causally affect ordinary macro reality, including the activities of most self-organizing, complex, dynamical systems. For example, we lack evidence that exactly where a particular electron is located at a given time as it moves around an atomic nucleus or in an electrical current in a brain affects any synapses. Let me say more about self-organizing, complex systems, which is what our bodies including our brains and nervous systems are: we do know that such systems are governed by non-linear, quadratic equations. These equations are so complex that, practically speaking, the activities of self-organizing systems are unpredictable. However, we do not know whether these equations are deterministic or somewhat open. I prefer to believe in openness. But if openness obtains, again no evidence obtains that the outcome of a particular quantum event determines the direction of a self-organizing system. Moreover, there is theoretical, even circumstantial, evidence that particular quantum events do not result in macro events within ordinary reality. Quantum events are probabilistic, yet in a rigid way. So if electron A is in a certain orbit in a certain atom, then electron B will be in this other orbit. Or if nucleus C does not decay at a certain time in an unstable element, according to its half-life, then nucleus D will. So given macro space and time, quantum events, micro events, even out so to speak, suggesting that when they occur within a holistic system, their role in the system may always be the same. So to attempt to explain consciousness through quantum mechanics is extremely speculative. But let us concede that quantum events may have macro effects in human bodies, human brains. This may provide cold comfort, given the rigidly probabilistic nature of quantum
5 mechanics. As quantum events lead to a self-collapse which coincides with a conscious event, according to Jha s summary of Penrose and Hameroff, it would seem that such collapses must occur according to set mathematical formulas. For instance, let us say that given certain conditions, collapse A will happen 75% of the time, while collapse B 25%. This would snatch a sort of free will out of the jaws of determinism, but it would be an arbitrary one unconnected with moral responsibility. Jha refers to a further development of Hameroff s model, suggesting that Hameroff might be more interested in macro brain events influencing quantum events than vice versa. She quotes Hameroff s words about neuro networks conveying conscious experience and choice to otherwise non-conscious cognitive modes (16). Plus she describes the quantum collapse or reduction as one not in the sense of naturalism, but in the sense of self-reduction (quantum event) of a self-organizing process in living things (17). So what should we say about the notion that the self-organizing process of a human being deciding a moral question may determine correlative quantum events? We still have the problem of rigid probabilistic formulas. Suppose quantum laws apply. To use the previous example of probabilities, out of four times we make a moral decision in a certain type of context, we are free to decide which three times we ll go one way and which one time we ll go the other way (that preserves the 75%-25% ratio). However, we are not free to act outside that arithmetic. Or if we are free, we have the capacity to violate the laws of quantum mechanics. I am curious about what kind of bridging laws Chalmers and Varela contemplate. Do they offer hypothetical examples? My understanding of animal and human sentience or consciousness in brief is this: an emergent property of complex, self-organizing systems, in which the whole is not reducible to the properties of the parts, and in which both the whole and
6 the parts exercise causal efficacy on each other. If this generalized understanding is correct, it also applies to divers other self-organizing systems. For example, take an element whose atoms consist of x number of neutrons, protons, and electrons, compared with the next element in the periodic table with x + 1 of the same particles. The properties of both types of atoms are radically different from the properties of their constituent particles taken separately. Moreover, the properties of element x + 1 cannot be deduced from those of element x by adding 1, so to speak, by any kind of linear formula or I would guess any other mathematical formula. This is to say, there is an irreducible or sui generis quality to the holistic properties associated with the various self-organizing systems within nature, including sentient ones. If a bridge to explain consciousness reaches all the way across, then we have reductionism. If so, the whole can be explained by some mathematical function or formula where the separate properties of the parts constitute the variables. But if a bridge or bridging law does not reach the other side, we have an ontological gap, we have a givenness, a suchness, that cannot be adequately expressed in terms other than itself. Regarding holistic properties, including consciousness, we would have to declare, that s just the way nature is, those are nature s laws. We will almost certainly learn more about the human brain and nervous system that will make our present knowledge appear small indeed. Nevertheless, given that human--and other mammalian--brains are the most complex things in the universe as far as we know, practical considerations militate against our ever finding a bridge. And the theoretical considerations I have outlined argue that such a bridge does not exist. This leaves us with a model that rejects any notion of consciousness as a supernatural property, but rather a model that understands sentience or consciousness as a nonreductive physical or natural phenomenon: consciousness cannot be reduced to the properties of its constituent parts nor to an epiphemenon. There is still mystery. However, consciousness itself
7 is not a supernatural mystery. If my analysis of consciousness is correct, of course there will be differing opinions as to any purported source of the surd nature of the holistic property of consciousness (not to mention other holistic properties of nature). These opinions will necessarily be non-scientific. Agnostics will say we cannot know. Atheists will likely say that the nature of reality is brute fact or ultimately due to chance. Believers will say that a source exists that has provided some directionality to the laws of nature, including those that have resulted in the presence of creatures such as you and me. Clearly I think the hard problem of consciousness is one well worth pondering. So again I thank Stefania Jha for stimulating us to engage this fascinating topic through consideration of the thinking of great minds of our modern and contemporary periods.