David Chalmers' Panprotopsychism (2)

Consciousness is Fundamental and Elemental

It's possible that David Chalmers came to the speculative conclusion that experience/consciousness is elemental and omnipresent because only that could satisfactorily explain (at least in part) the reality of experience/consciousness. In other words, if consciousness/experience is everywhere at all times, that that makes consciousness easier to explain. Thus, according to Sandra Blakeslee, Chalmers argues that “scientists need to come up with new fundamental laws of nature”.

Chalmers himself said:
 

"My approach is to think of conscious experience itself as a fundamental property of the universe. Thus the world has two kinds of information, one physical, one experiential. The challenge is to make theoretical connections between physical processes and conscious experience.” [1996]

 

 

David Chalmers was also explicit about his position during a conference in 1994. This is how Barbara McKenna tells that story:
 

“Over the millennia scientists have concluded that there are a handful of elemental, irreducible ingredients in the universe--space, time, and mass, among them. At a national conference in 1994, philosopher David Chalmers proposed that consciousness also belongs on the list.” [1997]

At first glance it's hard to even comprehend how consciousness/experience is (or could be) an elemental and fundamental aspect of the universe, on par with space, time, mass, etc.

In any case, Chalmers comes clean as to how philosophically massive it would be if experience or 'information' were seen to be everywhere. Chalmers himself says that

“[o]nce a fundamental link between information and experience is on the table, the door is opened to some grander metaphysical speculation concerning the nature of the world”.

Thus we aren't just talking philosophy of mind here; or even about the nature of human consciousness. We're essentially talking about ontology or some “grander metaphysical speculation”.

What and Where is Experience?

The first trick is to explain experience in terms of something else – something which isn't (initially) deemed to be experience. That something else is the processing of information.

Thus firstly Chalmers talks only in terms of processing. He tells us that “changes in experience correspond to changes in processing”. A process is itself seen as a functional property of the brain-mind. Thus if such mind-brain processes actually are experience (rather than causing experience), it follows that “any two functionally isomorphic systems must have the same sort of experiences”.

To recap. A mental process is a mental function and such functions determine – or actually are – experiences.

So what's being processed in the mind? According to Chalmers, it's “information” which also works as an “organizational property”.

Thus we can ask if experience is a functional process which is, as it were, getting to work on information; or is that getting to work itself information? Does information go in (as input) and only then do processes (therefore experience) make sense of that informational input? Or, at the least, is information the content of experience?

In fact Chalmers does talk about information as if it's input and not itself an aspect of the mind-brain. That is, input-as-information goes in, and then processing (therefore experience) follows. That's the case because Chalmers himself says that “experience is much more widespread than we might have believed, as information is everywhere”.

Thus not only is information external to the mind - so is experience. That's not a surprise as we've only just stated that experience is information.

To repeat. From the following, it would seem that “information processing” is experience because, to quote Chalmers in full, he says that

“[w]here there is simple information processing, there is simple experience, and where there is complex information processing, there is complex experience”.

Minds and Mental States

Chalmers also appears to make a strong distinction between minds and mental states. Every object or thing may not have a mind; though they may still have mental states. Or as Chalmers puts it:

“Instead, we can understand panpsychism as the thesis that some fundamental physical entities have mental states. For example, if quarks or photons have mental states, that suffices for panpsychism to be true, even if rocks and numbers do not have mental states. Perhaps it would not suffice for just one photon to have mental states.” [2013]

Prima facie, it's hard to grasp the distinction between mental states and mind. That's not because I can't see the difference. It's because saying that a photon has a mental state is as problematic as saying that it has a mind.

The other problematic thing in Chalmers' quote above are the words “just one photon to have mental states”. Surely if one photon has mental states, then all photons must have mental states. Photons are fundamental and elementary enough as they are without saying one photon may have mental states and all the other photons may not. How could that be?

In any case, since Chalmers makes a distinction between mental states and minds, now we need to know what it means to say that, say, a photon has mental states. According to Chalmers, if photons have mental states, then

“there is something it is like to be a quark or a photon or a member of some other fundamental physical type”. [2013]

From that one could say that photons can (or could) experience different qualia. Isn't it qualia, after all, that makes a mental state (or experience) “like something”?

Thus we've rejected minds and accepted mental states. And now it's said that some fundamental physical entities are conscious.

Qualia?

Firstly, what do the words “proto-experiential properties” mean? And how can we grasp the thought that such properties are “inside of the entities characterized by physics”?

Chalmers also introduces the term “phenomenal (or experiential) properties” . Qualia must constitute what it's like to be an object. Chalmers, on the other hand, says that

“phenomenal (or experiential) properties are properties characterizing what it is to be a conscious subject”.

It can now be said that the words “qualia” and “phenomenal properties” are virtual synonyms here since they appear to be playing the same role.

This leads to another point. Experience is made up of qualia. In that sense, a particular experience is a particular set of qualia. Or, at the least, an experience is made up of a given set of qualia, even if/though that set doesn't always exhaust that experience's content. (It's problematic to talk about a single experience when, like William James's “stream of consciousness', we may actually have a constant stream of experiences, none of which are discrete and neatly circumscribed.)

Either way, it's such qualia or phenomenal properties which problematise physicalism/materialism. After all, if we are physicalists then we must believe (as Chalmers puts it) that “all phenomenal truths [must be] grounded in microphysical truths”.

References

Chalmers, David. (2013) 'Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism'.

(2010) The Character of Consciousness.

• (1995) 'Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness'.

Blakeslee, Sandra. (1996) 'The Conscious Mind Is Still Baffling to Experts of All Stripes'.

McKenna, Barbara. (1997) 'UCSC Review Winter 1997'.

David Chalmers' Panprotopsychism (1)

Let's firstly state how literal the panpsychical idea can actually be. Take David Chalmers saying that “we can expect a quark’s experience to be much simpler than an experience of redness”. Yes, Chalmers is saying that quarks may well experience things. He mitigates that by saying that “[w]e are not in a position to say much about what microexperience is like”. He adds that a quark's experience is “much simpler than an experience of redness”. Chalmers also says that microphysical experience “is almost certainly much simpler than human experience”.

So at first glance there's no doubt at all that panpsychism is a bizarre theory. It just seems so intuitively unbelievable.

On the positive side, one can argue (perhaps ironically) that Chalmers' panprotopsychism is more naturalistic (or scientifically kosher) than many of the physicalist alternatives. After all, if panpsychism is the position that consciousness/experience is as elemental and irreducible as space, time and mass (and therefore can found in single-celled organisms and even in inanimate matter), then panpsychists have a better explanation of why consciousness 'emerges' from the brain than many of their rivals. There's a big problem, however. And that is that there's no reason to believe that consciousness/experience is elemental. This basic panpsychist assumption is thoroughly speculative.

Experience is Everywhere

The most counterintuitive aspect of Chalmers' position is that he doesn't take experience to be only an aspect (or part) of human minds or even of animal minds generally. He believes that experience is something to be found outside of minds – or “everywhere” (as he puts it).

Take a mouse. Chalmers writes:

“A mouse has a simpler information-processing structure than a human, and has correspondingly simpler experience.” [2010]

So at least we're still talking about minds here (if the mind of a mouse).

What about, say, a thermostat? Chalmers says that

“perhaps a thermostat, a maximally simple information processing structure, might have maximally simple experience?”

On this reading, inanimate objects may have experiences (or have experience).

Perhaps none of this should be a surprise if we see experience as a “fundamental property” - which is just how Chalmers himself sees it. Experience-as-a-fundamental-property is, by definition, “everywhere”. That's partly why the word “fundamental” is used in science. Thus because experience is (or may be) a fundamental property, Chalmers concludes by saying that

“it would be surprising for it to arise only every now and then; most fundamental properties are more evenly spread”. [1995]

Tiny Minds?

Clearly a distinction has to be made here between that which is necessary for experience/consciousness and experience/consciousness itself. The panprotopsychical position is that what may be responsible for minds can be found right down the line to basic matter. However, why should we also say that such things are minds or that they display “experiential properties”? That's like saying that an individual brick has something in common with the house it is part of. Or, alternatively, it's like saying that each brick somehow "contains" the house in miniature. A better example may be to say that each neuron is a miniature mind. That is, experience or mind can be found at the level of the individual neuron.

Despite saying all that, it's clear that Chalmers himself has a pretty deflationary view (hence the 'proto' in 'panprotopsychism'!) of what it means to say consciousness/experience pervades the fundamental levels of matter. He writes:

“There needn't be anything like 'minds' as we usually think of them at the fundamental level, for example -- I'm not suggesting that electrons are having deep thoughts about the protons they're revolving around!”

[1998]

So what is Chalmers suggesting? He's suggesting the following:

“It's just some sort of very simple, primitive analog of experience, going all the way down.” [1998]

The above begs the question: What does Chalmers mean by “primitive analog of experience”? Does it mean (as in my house and brick example) something that's necessary for experience or something that is itself experience?

Of course stating that “experience itself as a fundamental feature of the world” seems counterintuitive and even eccentric. That's primarily because most people hold the view that consciousness is a consequence of something that's highly complex – i.e., the brain. Thus to be told that a stone or even a lump of shit can have (or contain) experience seems unfathomable. Again, a stone or lump of shit can contain experience because experience itself, according to Chalmers, is in the same ballpark as mass, charge and space-time.

In Chalmers' panprotopsychism we move away from the general view that consciousness is a result of some kind of complexity. Panprotopsychism, on the other hand, is partly about special fundamental entities. Chalmers says that

“the view that fundamental entities are protoconscious, that is, that they have certain special properties that are precursors to consciousness and that can collectively constitute consciousness in larger systems.” [2013]

From the above we can conclude that consciousness is a question of fundamental entities as well as as question of complexity. After all, it's not being said here that an atom or rock is conscious. There's talk, instead, of “properties that are precursors to consciousness” which “collectively constitute consciousness in larger systems”. The use made of the word “collectively” hints at the importance of complexity. That is, these fundamental protoconscious entities aren't conscious themselves. Instead, they are “the precursors to consciousness”.

Thus arguing that everything has a constituent that is necessary for consciousness/experience isn't the same saying that everything has a mind. On this reading, then, Chalmers isn't actually a literal (or true) panpsychist. Chalmers himself puts that point in the following way:

"In practice, people who call themselves panpsychists are not committed to as strong a doctrine. They are not committed to the thesis that the number two has a mind, or that the Eiffel tower has a mind, or that the city of Canberra has a mind, even if they believe in the existence of numbers, towers, and cities." [2013]

Emergence and Complexity

It's clear that an emergentist can hold the position that experience (or consciousness) emerges from the physical. As it stands, though, this isn't a very informative position.

However, various philosophers have given reasons for such emergence. They've argued that new fundamental physical principles came into being at certain levels of physical complexity. It's those new fundamental physical principles which may be responsible for consciousness or experience.

Chalmers, on the other hand, says that panpsychism is the “view on which the novel properties are somehow inside the microphysical network from the start”. That statement in itself can be seen as an indirect argument against emergentism in that if “novel properties” exist “from the start”, then nothing truly novel can be said to emerge from complexity (or from anything else). Higher degrees of novelty (to carry on using Chalmers' word) may well occur; though since novelty exists from the very beginning it's hard to say that novelty suddenly emerges from complexity. (As with Leibniz's 'monads'?)

This idea is put in another way by Chalmers when he says that “constitutive panpsychism holds that microexperiences somehow add up to yield macroexperience”. So here again we have the idea that complexity may be necessary; though it is “microexperiences” in addition to complexity which are required for human consciousness.

Despite saying all that, there's still a hint at emergence when Chalmers says that we “can allow that macroexperience is not wholly grounded in microexperience”. However, instead of referring to complexity-in-the-abstract, Chalmers says that macroexperience “might be grounded in microexperience along with certain further structural or functional properties”. Again, it's not only microexperiental properties which “ground” macroexperience, we need to take on board “further structural or functional properties” as well.

References

Chalmers, David. (2013) 'Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism'.

(2010) The Character of Consciousness.

• (1995) 'Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness'.
• (1998) 'Much Ado About Consciousness', Chalmers interviewed by Andrew Chrucky.

A Short Note on Husserl's Notion of Phenomenological Reduction

He means WW1, not WW2.

With Edmund Husserl's method of “suspension-of-belief” the phenomenologist must literally erase all scientific and empirical knowledge from his mind - at least during the period of the phenomenological reduction and analysis. Is this suspension any more psychologically possible than Descartes’ ‘doubt’? Indeed without the empirical (never mind the scientific), the phenomenologist wouldn't even have the words to describe his phenomenological experiences. His language would be public. Thus of necessity he couldn't ‘bracket’ everything empirical if the phenomenological analyses were themselves described in a public language.

The Husserlian phenomenologist had the same kinds of problem as the Cartesian epistemic doubter – the problem of a genuinely private language of private states of consciousness (or of private experiences).

In a sense Husserl was right: objects can only ‘display’ themselves in particular ‘profiles’. Not only is the phenomenological display our only access to external objects: that display itself must also be a profile (or mode of presentation) of some kind. Thus, despite all of Husserl’s objectivism and strong anti-psychologism, he still painted the subject as essentially trapped within his own consciousness; or as necessarily determined by - and dependent upon - displays which are themselves perspectival.

It's primarily scientists who don't accept such displays "as they appear". Husserl said that we must do. Thus, in that sense alone, the scientist is surely more of an objectivist than a Husserlian phenomenologist.

It's still only the reduced conscious state that tells us the truth about what is displayed. A non-bracketed conscious experience could indeed tell us lies about itself or its objects. It would do so, according to Husserl, because the present conscious state would be weighed down with past empirical and scientific knowledge; which, Husserl argues, simply distorts conscious states, their acts and objects. We need, therefore, a clean slate of consciousness to get to the truth of the matter.

To the phenomenologist:

objects and acts appear - as they are

whereas to the scientist or layperson:

objects appear - not as they are

That negative conclusion is a consequence, Husserl argues, of our not proceeding without ‘presuppositions’ and thus not having reduced consciousness and bracketed all references to empirical externals.

Afterword

Husserl’s philosophy is ethico-philosophical in the sense (like Heidegger, Levinas and Derrida) that he believed that man’s moral position (or 'being') must be the subject of Ethics as First Philosophy. In Husserl’s case, instead of emphasising the social or moral nature of man, he emphasised man’s subjective experiences. Here too science is the offender. Husserl believes that science had “progressively cut off subjective experience from the life-world”.

Kripke’s Second Argument Against the Descriptive Content of Proper Names

Kripke’s second argument against descriptivism is much simpler than his first. Schematically it goes as follows:

       ◊ NN isn't the F.

That means that for any description we may have for, say, the proper name ‘Tony Blair’, it always makes sense to state the above – say, ‘It's possible that Tony Blair wasn't the first leader of New Labour’. We can now say that ‘the first leader of New Labour’ can't give us the meaning of the name ‘Tony Blair’ because we can ask ourselves how do we understand the thought that Tony Blair mightn't have been the first leader of New Labour? This amounts to the very simple possibility that in the mid-1990s Tony Blair might never have become New Labour’s first leader. Clearly this is logically possible.

Let’s just say that the only thing that most people know about Tony Blair is that he was the first leader of New Labour. We can follow this by saying that if any description constituted the meaning of the name ‘Tony Blair', the description ‘the first leader of New Labour’ would be the best option. Let’s summarise this description as ‘the F’. However, let’s suppose that I'm one of those people who only know one thing about Tony Blair: that he was the first leader of New Labour. Thus:

      Tony Blair was the F.

It would still be possible to understand the thought that

      ◊ Tony Blair wasn't the F.

If the only thing I know about Blair is that he was the first leader of New Labour, I can't say that I don’t understand the above because, in actual fact, it's another meaning that fixes the name ‘Tony Blair’. I can't say this because no other description of Tony Blair is known to me. And neither can I say that the thought that Tony Blair wasn't in fact the first leader of New labour doesn't make any sense to me. I may think it false; though I still understand it and understand it clearly. That's because even if I only know the description ‘Tony Blair was the first leader of New Labour’, then clearly the statement

      Tony Blair was not the first leader of New Labour.

would make sense. Not only that: someone could, in principle, convince me that it's a fact that Tony Blair wasn't the first leader of New Labour. Again, that's logically possible. For example, say that a political historian tells me that recent research has conclusively shown that it was Gordon Brown who was the first leader of New Labour and that Tony Blair was just a front-man who obeyed Brown’s commands. Because of these ostensibly new and conclusive facts, I could easily come to believe that Blair wasn't, in fact, the actual first leader of New Labour. However, despite this piece of historical revisionism, I may, instead, have never acquired any new historical facts which refute the source of my original description of Tony Blair. Now I couldn't possibly rely on the description ‘the first leader of New Labour’ because it would contradict my new or alternative knowledge of the Prime Minister. Clearly Blair can't both be and not be the first leader of New Labour.

The example above is supposed to show us, Kripke argues, that we can’t - or don’t - actually rely of any descriptive content to fix a proper name. Following on from that, it follows that something other than a description (or descriptions) must come into play when we name someone and also when we later understand and use that name. What all this means, again, is that even if I knew sod all about Tony Blair (if that's possible), I can still effectively use the name ‘Tony Blair’. More relevantly to Kripke’s argument, I successfully refer to the man. This is a Wittgensteinian point about the communal nature of meaning. That a reliance on descriptive content would be an example of private meaning – our private descriptions of Tony Blair which ‘fix the content’ of the proper name ‘Tony Blair’. It would therefore be both a Cartesian and therefore an ‘internalist’ take on the semantics of proper names. Alternatively, if we don’t rely on private or subjective meanings or descriptions, then we must, instead, commit ourselves to semantic conventionalism in that it's the community which fixes the meaning of our names and words and thus makes such things inter-subjective in nature. Thus reference isn't only (or partly?) de re, according to Kripke, because a name (or namer) relies not only on the referent or named object itself, but also on other namers and speakers. This again shows us that descriptivism isn't only a matter of (partly?) de dicto expressions: it's also Cartesian and therefore subjectivist. Kripke, therefore, paints descriptivism as being radically non-Wittgensteinian in nature. The reference-relation between name/namer and named object is socially constituted.

Kripke also elaborates the ostensible fact that descriptions are of little or no relevance to the reference-relation.

For example, we not only may not know anything about a named object (like our previous Tony Blair): we can become adept name-users of names even when we have little contact with any users of the name or the name itself. This is another way of saying that we don’t need the name’s content (if it has any) in such situations of naming scarcity. Whatever we do need, Kripke argues, it's not name-content of any kind.

For instance, I may be on a bus and hear the name ‘Reginald Sniff-Peters’ being used by people on the back of a bus. I have little (or even no) knowledge of Reginald Sniff Peters and have never even heard the name ‘Sniff-Peters’ before. However, when I get off the bus and go home, I can quite easily refer to Sniff-Peters and use the name ‘Reginald Sniff-Peters’ in an ordinary conversation despite my dearth of knowledge of this man and his name. However, by talking to these ‘Sniff-Peters’ novices I could easily bring on board more members of the community of ‘Sniff-Peters’ name-users and even namers.

That is an example of a Kripkean causal chain.

I first heard ‘Sniff-Peters’ spoken on the bus by a group of strangers. Then I passed this name on to yet another group of people who've never heard that name before. And they too could quite easily pass it on and increase the set of users of the name ‘Sniff-Peters’. Of course the people who originally used that name (on the back of the bus) would have had it passed on to them by others. In that case, they too might have been ‘Sniff-Peters’ novices like me.

This causal chain must end, Kripke argued, with what he calls the initial "naming baptism" – i.e. when Sniff-Peters was first named.

Importantly, despite this emphasis on Reginald Sniff-Peters’ name, these new name-users are now talking about him qua person: they aren't simply playing (as it were) with his name.

References:

Kripke, S. (1972/1980) Naming and Necessity, Oxford: Blackwell

Wittgenstein, L . (1953) Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe, Oxford: Blackwell

Thoughts on the Logic of Nineteenth-Century Mathematics

 

[Written circa 2005.]

 

One 19th-century view of a proposition is that it's simply the attribution of a quality to a subject. For example, the quality of being blind can be attributed to an individual man. Of course if we think so strongly in terms of qualities and subjects, then clearly we're committed to the ancient ontological distinction between qualities and subjects (or properties and objects).

The ‘new analytic’ moved away from this model. Within that position two classes of objects are identified, rather than qualities and subjects. Thus the notion of classes was brought into logic.

Thus we have these questions: Does class X belong to class Y? Or alternatively: How many subclasses belong to class Z? This thinking in terms of classes (rather than subjects and qualities) clarified and helped codify what many 19th century logicians were trying to do.

At that time logic was see as being purer than both geometry and mathematics. This was the case, so logicians thought, because logic didn’t concern itself with such things as space or quantities. Now, the mathematicians thought, we don't need to refer to anything like space or quantity. These are simply accretions or ways of simplifying mathematics and geometry. In fact mathematics, like logic before it, is essentially about nothing. Or, more certainly, it's not about the world and not even about the necessary features of the world. It's completely non-empirical. (Though clearly maths can be applied to the world.)

Thus mathematics was seen as the “science of order”. Maths isn't about things or processes: it's about the relations between all objects and processes. To put this bluntly: mathematics is the analysis of implications. That is, what implies what and why does this imply that? It isn't concerned with the things which imply one another; but with the implications themselves.

What is the nature of implication? Why does X imply Y? And if you're only concerned with implications (including inference, entailment, and consequence), then you're not concerned with truth. Truths, essentially, are exclusively about the empirical world (as the logical positivists later stressed). And because mathematics isn't concerned with the empirical world, then it's not concerned with truth either.

This parallels Wittgenstein’s distinction between truth and correctness. Put simply, something is correct if it abides by certain conventions. However, something may be true regardless of conventions. For example, there may be truths about how certain conventions have got things wrong.

Mathematics is a conventional phenomenon; therefore it's concerned with correctness and not truth.

Platonists believe that mathematics is concerned with truth because they have a view of mathematical objects which parallels the empiricist view of the relation of reference between names/statements/etc. and the world of concrete objects. To Plato, the things he was concerned about are abstract and non-spatiotemporal. However, there was still some kind of correspondence-relation between the statements of mathematics and the abstract objects to which they referred. The fact that these things are non-empirical didn’t mean that Plato jettisoned the old notion of correspondence. In Plato’s book, mathematical statements need to correspond with his ‘ideal objects’, whether that's the perfect circle or whatever.

Correspondence is a completely wrong way of looking at mathematics. Those that do so are seeing mathematics through the eyes of someone who thinks that it somehow matches or parallels the nature of empirical correspondence. What does matter in mathematics is what follows from certain postulates.

Thus in a sense it doesn't really matter about what these postulates are or what their nature is: what matters are the things we derive from them. Indeed if postulates can generate more fruitful theorems then, by definition, they may be better postulates. The truth of these postulates is completely irrelevant to mathematicians. If they're good tools with which we can derive a superabundance of theorems, then they're good postulates. However, they still aren't true postulates. They aren't even correct postulates. What is derived from them can either be correct or incorrect; though not true or false.

It follows from these facts that it doesn’t really matter what postulates (or axioms) a geometrical or mathematical system uses. Thus there can be alternative mathematical and geometrical systems. The nature of the postulates or axioms will determine the systems from which they're derived. If these postulates and axioms needn't be true, then we may have an indefinite number of geometrical and mathematical systems on our hands. If truth isn't the issue, then only correctness matters. And a system is correct if it contains no contradictions.

Thus we're concerned with validity, not truth. A conclusion can be validly derived and still be false. Validity is, therefore, system-relative. Something is valid if it doesn't create a contradiction within a given system. Truth, on the other hand, is purported to transcend all systems. Something is either true or false. Full stop. A statement doesn't need a system to validate (or justify) its truth. Just as someone can be uttering a truth outside all systems, so one can only be correct vis-à-vis a system and true outside of all systems.

Proof also became important in the new mathematics. Here too truth isn't relevant to proof. We can have a proof that doesn't depend on truth. The fact that it's a proof depends on the system to which it belongs. The fact that it's a proof depends on the nature of the other parts of the mathematical or logical system, not how it stands on its own. Proof is relative to the system in which it works as a proof. The proof utilises the very parts of the system it's trying to prove. If it were a truth about the system, on the other hand, it wouldn’t need to have any relation to that system. What is true is true regardless of its relation to the system. A proof, on the other hand, has a relation to the system in which it provides a proof.