Philip Goff's Panpsychist Conceivability-to-Possibility Argument (2)

The following piece is a response to Philip Goff's paper, 'The Phenomenal Bonding Solution to the Combination Problem'.

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conceive: to develop an idea; to form in the mind; to plan; to devise; to originate; to understand (someone).

conception: the act of conceiving.

The state of being conceived.

The power or faculty of apprehending of forming an idea in the mind; the power of recalling a past sensation or perception; the ability to form mental abstractions.

An image, idea, or notion formed in the mind; a concept, plan or design.

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Philip Goff writes:

“Just because we are unable to form a transparent conception of the phenomenal bonding relation does not mean we cannot form a conception of it. We can think of it as ‘the relation such that when subjects stand in it they produce a further subject’ and we can suppose that there is such a thing.”

First of all, when we form a "conception" of a “little subject”, what does that conception amount to or involve? What if we have no genuine conception of little subjects? This would mean, by inference, that we can't form a conception of how they can “stand in a relation” so as to “produce a further subject”. Nonetheless, perhaps all this boils down to how Goff himself defines - or interprets - the word conception. Goff does give us a clue. He writes:

“We may even be able to identify it with some relation we can observe in the world, or some relation that features in physics.”

Surely nothing “in the world” can possibly match up to little minds/subjects and their bonding together; as Goff seems to acknowledge when he concludes by saying that

“[n]one of the relations that appear in perception or in physics are conceived of as phenomenal bonding relations”.

That, presumably, is why such a conception isn't what Goff calls “transparent”; though it is... something else...

The Conceivability-to-Possibility Argument

In all Goff's musings about little minds/subjects, their bonding, and their being part of a Big Mind/Subject, David Chalmers' idea of conceivability-leading-to-metaphysical-possibility plays a very important role. For example, Goff states that

“most panpsychists are motivated by an opposition to physicalism, commonly grounded in conceivability arguments”.

Goff expresses his view about the importance of conceivability (leading to possibility) in this way:

“If P is conceivably true, then P is possibly true.”

This is expressed in possible-worlds jargon thus:

“If P is conceivably true (upon ideal reflection), then there is a possible world W, such that P is true at W considered as actual.”

Or, less technically, Goff also says that

“Chalmers holds that every conceivably true proposition corresponds in this way to some genuine possibility”.

All the above seems to assume that there's a determinate and precise meaning of the words “conceivably" and "conceivably true”. Goff must be aware of this because he also says that

“conceivability entails possibility when you completely understand what you’re conceiving of”.

However, in the case of little minds/subjects taken in themselves (as well as small minds/subjects constituting or "composing" a Big Mind), is there any genuine “understanding of what you're conceiving of”? (In other “thought experiments”, this principle may well be useful and even accurate/true – such as with David Chalmers' zombies!)

Clearly, as Goff acknowledges, the

“crucial difference between Lego combination and subject combination arises when we try to move from conceivability to possibility”.

Since Goff often speaks against any reliance on intuitions or on commonsense (if not in this paper); perhaps the same can be also said about conceivability. After all, people may reject panpsychism - or some of its individual claims - because they can't even conceive how it could be true. This may not matter, however, because Goff or Chalmers may simply say that we can - or could - conceive how it/they could be true.

Goff puts the case for conceivability-leading-to-possibility more explicitly - and less technically - when he states the following:

“We could not coherently conceive of the seven bricks being piled on top of one another in the way that they are in the absence of the tower. In contrast, it is eminently possible to conceive of our seven subjects of experience experiencing the colours of the spectrum, existing in the absence of a subject of experience having an experience of white."

Thus, on the surface, it appears that the conceivability-to-possibility argument doesn't work for “seven subjects of experience”; though it clearly does work for Goff's seven Lego bricks constituting a tower (i.e., even before the tower is actually experienced or seen). However, we could go further. We can question the very conceivability of seven subjects of experience in the first place; never mind their making a super-subject. In other words, what does it mean to conceive of “seven subjects of experience experiencing the colours of the spectrum”? How would Goff - or anyone else - conceive of such a thing? Can Goff - or anyone else - describe that act of conceiving and then describe its content?

For example, can we conceive of seven subjects/minds which (who?) experience various colours? Can little minds/subjects experience various colours? For a start, they can't have sensory receptors - so how can they experience the colours of the spectrum? More clearly, how can anything experience colours without sensory receptors? And thus how can micro-subjects (at the atomic or even subatomic scale) experience colours at all? Nonetheless, if we do indeed conceive of such things, then what is it, exactly, that we're conceiving of?

All this may mean that the conceivability-to-possibility argument may not get off the ground (at least in this case) because nothing is really conceived of in the first place. Alternatively, that which is conceived of is, basically, ridiculous.

Having said all that, Goff does offer some logical and metaphysical arguments as to why phenomenal bonding is a “metaphysical possibility”.

Goff also goes much further than this logical principle. Not only is the argument that the conceiving of x is a reason for believing that x is metaphysically possible, Goff also argues that it may be the case that “metaphysical possibility is just a special kind of conceivability”. Note the use of the “is of identity” here. We're told that metaphysical possibility is conceivability. Thus it's not just that our conceiving of x may - or does - give us one reason to believe that x is possible. The very conceiving of x seems to bring about the metaphysical possibility of x.

There are three responses to that conclusion. One, Goff's grammar is incorrect. Two, I've simply misinterpreted Goff's position. Three, his philosophical position is false.

Three Conceivings?

A Round Square 

The idea of conceiving of little subjects/minds - and then their bonding together to form a Big Subject/Mind - can be questioned. However, let's firstly take a more extreme example:

i) If we can conceive that there is a round square, then it's metaphysically possible that there is a round square.

ii) We can't conceive of a round square. Therefore round squares are metaphysically impossible.

So what about this? -

i) If we can conceive of little minds/subjects and their bonding together to form a Big Mind/Subject, then such things are metaphysically possible.

ii) If we can't conceive of such things, then they are impossible.

It was argued above that we can't conceive of such things; regardless of their metaphysically possibility. In other words:

There's no “radical separation” between our conceivings of little minds/subjects (as well as their phenomenal bonding) and their metaphysical possibility because we don't conceive of such things in the first place.

In other cases, the move form conceivings to metaphysical possibility may well be legitimate. Alternatively, every move from conceivability to metaphysical possibility may be somewhat suspect.¹

A Million-sided Object

Let's go into more detail about the nature of conceiving with Goff's very own example of a million-sided object.

In one sense it can be said that we can indeed conceive of such a thing. Or, more helpfully, if I ask someone this question:

What do you conceive of when you conceive of a million-side object?

that person can reply by saying:

I conceive of an object which has a million sides.

But what does that mean? What is he conceiving of? Is he simply saying the following? -

i) A million-sided object has a million sides.

ii) Therefore I have conceived of a million-sided object.

Is there any more to it than that? Doesn't he simply (analytically) know that if something has a million sides, then he's conceived of an object having a million sides? Though is that really a case of his conceiving of a million-sided object or is it a statement of a tautology?

For a start, no one can picture or imagine a million-sided object. So that's ruled out. What's left? Again, the words “conceiving a million-sided object” seem vacuous. Yet Goff says that “the concept million-sided object is transparent”. That is,

“it is a priori (for someone possessing the concept, and in virtue of possessing the concept) what it is for something to have a million sides”.

Goff's quote above is simply a rerun of what's already been said. That is:

What is it to conceive of something which has a million sides? It's to conceive of a million-sided object.

Here again, one simply restates the description of a fictional/possible object.

Nonetheless, perhaps my position is too psychological in nature (i.e., too dependent on our contingent mental states and their content); whereas Goff's position is strictly logical. Alternatively, perhaps Goff's position is strictly mathematical/geometrical (therefore abstract) in nature. Thus, perhaps it's an entirely logical and/or metaphysical point to say that

the concept million-sided object is conceivable and transparent.

Then again, what does that claim amount to? Indeed how different is conceiving of a million-sided object to conceiving of a round square? However, it's certainly the case that a round square isn't in the same logical space as a million-sided object. 

What would be easier to say is that a million-sided object could – or even does - exist (if abstractly); though it still can't be conceived of. It this case we can cite René Descartes' example of a chiliagon. (I suspect that Goff had this in mind!) This is a million-sided polygon. It's classed as a “well-defined concept” that, nonetheless, can't be imagined or visualised. Indeed, even if massive in size, it would be visually indistinguishable from a circle. Thus I would also say that a chiliagon can't be conceived of either - even if we have a concept of it. Thought that, again, depends on what's meant by the words “conceived of”. In any case, I would call a million-sided polygon a mathematical/geometrical abstract object; not a concrete object. In other words, it couldn't be found or even made. Nonetheless, that doesn't stop it from being a well-defined concept.

The question is, are Goff's little subjects/minds in the least bit analogous to a million-sided polygon? And even if the words “having a well-defined concept” and “conceiving of” were seen as virtual synonyms, it's still the case that both the layperson and the expert would need to conceive of (or have a well-defined concept of) the following definition; which is severely truncated. To quote:

"A regular megagon is represented by Schlafi symbol {1000000} and can be constructed as a truncated 500000-gon, t{500000}, a twice-truncated 250000-gon, tt{250000}, a thrice-truncated 125000-gon, ttt{125000), or a four-fold-truncated 62500-gon, tttt{62500}, a five-fold-truncated 31250-gon, ttttt{31250}, or a six-fold-truncated 15625-gon, tttttt{15625}.

A regular megagon has an interior angle of 179.99964°. The are of a regular megagon with sides of length a is given by

The perimeter of a regular megagon inscribed in the unit circle is:

...."

Thus it seems that we've moved a very long way from Goff's little subjects/minds and their bonding together.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously

So what if we use Chomsky's famous grammatical sentence? -

“Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.”

All the predicates and their concepts (in the quote above) are “transparent” (as Goff puts it) when taken individually. We can also say that the sentence itself is grammatically correct and it may even be logically correct. It's also, of course, empirically, scientifically and even metaphysically false. Nonetheless, we can understand the words within that statement. Can we also conceive of that statement being true? Or, more accurately, can we conceive of a situation in which colorless green ideas sleep furiously?

Here it seems that grammatical (or even logical) correctness runs free of conceivability. In other words, perhaps we don't - and can't - actually conceive of colorless green ideas sleeping furiously. Thus is the same conclusion true of conceiving of a million-sided object? More relevantly, is the same conclusion also true of conceiving of little minds/subjects and their bonding to make a Big Mind/Subject? However, and as already stated, Goff believes that “the concept million-sided object is transparent”. Moreover,

“when one conceives of a million-sided object one completely understands, or is in principle able to reason one’s way to a complete understanding of, the situation being conceived of”.

Goff goes further when he says that

“it is a priori for the conceiver what it is for the state of affairs they are conceiving of [i.e., a million-sided object] to obtain”.

Thus we reach the important conclusion which Goff has been leading up to all along. Namely,

“that we can move from the conceivability (upon ideal reflection) of the states of affairs so conceived, to its genuine possibility”.

And it's from here that Goff moves to talk about little minds/subjects and their bonding together to form a Big Mind/Subject.

Goff Against Conceivable Possibilities?

Goff himself expresses the position that conceivability may not always give us metaphysical possibility. That is, even if we do allow various moves from conceivability to metaphysical possibility, sometimes what we think is metaphysically possible still remains unbelievable. Or as Goff himself puts it:

“When metaphysical possibility is so radically divorced from conceptual coherence.... I start to lose my grip on what metaphysical possibility is supposed to be.”

However, it also seems that metaphysical possibility has moved beyond conceivability here – or at least beyond “conceptual coherence”. Thus that may mean that the move from conceivability to metaphysical possibility is sometimes illegitimate anyway. That is, a specific conceiving may not warrant the metaphysical possibility which is derived from it. To stress that point, Goff also says that

“a radical separation between what is conceivable and what is possible has the potential to make our knowledge of possibility problematic”.

Though doesn't David Chalmers provide a tight link between conceivability and metaphysical possibility? If that's the case, then how can there ever be a “radical separation” between the two? Thus if that link were to be broken, would that be due to the fact that some conceivings aren't really genuine conceivings at all? (This is what I think is the case when it comes to little minds and their bonding.) Either that, or some links between conceivings and possibilities aren't tight enough. Alternatively, perhaps some moves from conceivings to possibilities are completely bogus from the very start.

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Note:

1 It's the case that Chalmers' and Goff's conceivings are related to Descartes' notion of “clear and distinct ideas”. However, Descartes' various moves from his conceivings to metaphysical possibilities have been rejected by many philosophers; though some philosophers - such as James Van Cleve (in his 'Foundationalism, Epistemic Principles, and the Cartesian Circle') – haven't rejected them.

To follow: 'Emergence' and 'Little Subjects?'. See also my 'Against Philip Goff's (Panpsychist) Phenomenal Bonding'.

Against Philip Goff's (Panpsychist) “Phenomenal Bonding” (1)

i) Introduction

ii) Little Minds (or Little Subjects)

iii) Phenomenal Bonding

iv) Four Little Matchsticks and Four Little Minds

v) A More Technical Argument

What is usually called the combination problem is said to be the most important problem facing (at least most versions of) panpsychism. This problem raises the question as to how (to use Philip Goff’s words) “little subjects” can come together in order to constitute, create or compose the mind (or consciousness) of a “larger” human subject.

In Philip Goff’s own particular case, the combination problem is solved by what he calls “phenomenal bonding”. Or, if not exactly solved, then such phenomenal bonding is simply a possible example of combination. Thus Goff attempts to explain how such bonding may actually work or come about.

Little Minds (or Little Subjects)?

In his paper, ‘The Phenomenal Bonding Solution to the Combination Problem’, the contemporary English philosopher Philip Goff states that

“[i]t is natural to suppose that my mind, the subject of my consciousness, is not a microscopic entity”.

It can be assumed here that Philip Goff must also believe that a rejection of a microscopic mind is some kind of intuitive take by laypersons on their own minds. Yet most people don’t believe that their minds are either microscopic or macroscopic entities. I say that because Goff himself has a problem with the fact that some philosophers take intuitions seriously. This must also surely mean that Goff doesn’t care too much about what it’s “natural to suppose”. So when Goff continues by saying that his

“mind is a macroscopic entity which derives its nature from the microscopic entities which compose it”.

that may also be problematic.

Thinking that the mind is a whole (or a single entity) isn’t the same as thinking that it’s macroscopic… or microscopic for that matter. If Goff were talking about the brain and its parts, then there’d be no problem. However, he’s talking about the mind or consciousness. After all, the little minds (or his “little subjects”) of the brain are supposed to make up a Big Mind (or Big Subject) in this version of panpsychism. Thus Goff is arguing that every physical entity — all the way down — also has phenomenal (or experiential) properties. Or, as Goff himself puts it, the Big Mind (or Big Subject) is

“ultimately [constituted by] the entities that fundamental physics talks about, which the panpsychist takes to be conscious subjects”.

So this isn’t about small non-phenomenal brain-parts (as it were) ganging up together to create a phenomenal Big Mind (or Big Subject). It’s about small physical and phenomenal brain-parts doing so. More scientifically (or not!), this is about the possibility that

“little subjects, such as electrons and quarks, come together to produce big conscious subjects, such as human brains”.

It’s certainly true that “little” atoms, electrons, quarks, etc. (or little bits of the brain) “come together” together to constitute a big brain. However, do “little subjects” come together to produce “big conscious subjects”? Goff himself says that it’s “hard to make sense of this kind of combination”.

Phenomenal Bonding

Philip Goff uses the term phenomenal bonding to account for all the above. It’s defined in very simple terms when he states the following:

“If we identify the phenomenal bonding relation with the spatial relation it follows that, for any group of material objects, the members of that group, being spatially related, determine a conscious subject.”

Put simply, if all these little minds (or little subjects) are part of the same brain (therefore they’re all “spatially related”), then it may make some sense to argue that they can (not in Goff’s own words) “sum together” to form a Big Mind (or Big Subject).

Goff goes further than that when he continues:

“Particles form a conscious subject when and only when they form organisms (or a subset of organisms, or the brains/central nervous systems of organisms…).”

Despite that, spatial relatedness can’t be enough. After all, this cup I’m holding is spatially related to my arm. Does my arm and that cup make up a single object? In the case of the brain (as well as central nervous system), however, things are different. For one, my arm isn’t always attached to the cup; whereas little minds (or little subjects) may always be part of the same package — i.e., the brain and also, perhaps, the central nervous system. However, spatial relatedness — even in the very same package — doesn’t show us how little minds (or little subjects) sum together to form (or constitute) a Big Mind (or Big Subject). We need to know how such little minds (or little subjects) “bond” together and how that resultant sum can constitute a Big Mind (or Big Subject).

Goff, of course, recognises this problem. He writes:

“The nature of organisms and car engines are accounted for in terms of their parts, but those parts constitute the organism/engine only when related in the right way. The same is surely true of the explicability of subjects in terms of other subjects.”

At first glance, the relatedness of small minds must be — at least partly — a scientific (or neuroscientific) issue. That is, little minds are related to each other within the brain and central nervous system because they are (among other things) “spatially connected” . After all, it’s neural networks, neurons, microtubules, molecules, biochemicals, atoms, electrons, quarks, etc. which are said to have “phenomenal properties” — and all these are scientifically legitimate entities. The claim that such entities also “have” or instantiate phenomenal properties, on the other hand, isn’t scientifically legitimate. Yet these phenomenal properties are supposed to be embedded in the neural networks, neurons, microtubules, molecules, biochemicals, atoms, electrons, quarks, etc. which are indeed scientific entities. Thus it’s clear that these entities are indeed physically related. (If sometimes in peculiar ways; at least according to those who emphasise the quantum-mechanical aspects of the brain.) Yet surely that alone isn’t enough to sustain the panpsychist argument here.

Four Little Matchsticks and Four Little Subjects

It’s certainly true that Goff is well aware of the problems which phenomenal combinatorialism faces. He states these problems in various places. For example, Goff writes:

“Small objects with certain shapes, e.g. Lego bricks, can constitute a larger object with a different shape, e.g. a Lego tower. But it is difficult to see how, say, seven subjects of experience, each of which has a visual experience as of seeing one of the colours of the spectrum, could constitute a distinct subject of experience having a visual experience as of seeing white.”

Thus four matchsticks put in random places — even if close together — won’t constitute a square shape. However, they can be arranged to make a square shape. Nonetheless, the square shape will be entirely the product of the four matchsticks. Thus there’s no strong emergence here.

Philip Goff himself doesn’t actually use the words “strong emergence” and “weak emergence” in his paper. However, that distinction is at the heart of at least some sections of it.

The basic question is whether or not a Big Mind (or Big Subject) is more than the mere sum of “its” (that word implies weak emergence only) little minds (or little subjects). That is, does something additional happen when little minds (or little subjects) are added (or “summed”) together to “constitute” (that word, again, implies weak emergence only) a Big Mind (or Big Subject)?

Goff concedes that when it comes to little pockets of experience and Big Minds (or Big Subjects), on the other hand, we have something very different. Again, is it strong emergence?

Goff’s own scenario is about the sum of the little minds’ experiences creating an entirely different experience — that of a Big Mind (or Big Subject). Thus each little mind (or little subject) is like a little matchstick. Taken on its own, each little matchstick can’t constitute a square. Taken with three other little matchsticks, they can together constitute a square. Similarly (or fairly so!) with little pockets of experience. Taken individually they “see” different “colours of the spectrum”. Taken together (at least in theory) they may bring about “a visual experience as of seeing white”. However, and as hinted at above, these examples certainly aren’t of the same kind (i.e., they don’t belong to the same logical space). A matchstick square is nothing over and above the individual four matchsticks which constitute the square. In Goff’s case, we have little minds (or little subjects) experiencing various colours of the spectrum summing together to produce a Big Mind (or Big Subject) which experiences another colour — the colour white. A Big Subject’s experience of white is, therefore, over and above the experiences of all the little minds (or little subjects). It’s an example of strong emergence…. or is it?

There is a spectrum of colour. However, would — or could — it follow from this that because little minds (or little subjects) experience the different colours of the spectrum individually that their sum would bring about a Big Mind (or Big Subject) which experiences the colour white? How on earth would that work — either scientifically/physically or philosophically?

A More Technical Argument

Goff also puts his position in a more technical way by expressing the following argument — which he rejects. Thus:

“[The metaphysical isolation of subjects thesis] implies that there is no state of affairs of the form <subject of experience S1 exists with phenomenal character x, and subject of experience S2 exists with phenomenal character y> which necessitates <subject of experience S3 exists with phenomenal character z>.”

This is a position against cases of “phenomenal bonding” which can be seen to bring about states which are strongly emergent . It rejects any causal or even conceptual relation between different “subjects of experience”. More correctly, S1 and S2 alone don’t — or can’t — “necessitate” S3. Or, at the least, the phenomenal realities of S1 and S2 alone don’t — or can’t — necessitate the phenomenal reality of S3.

Despite that, it can still be said that the different phenomenal reality of S3 can’t be ruled out a priori. At the same time, it seems to lack any empirical or scientific credibility. It is, in fact, a case of pure metaphysical speculation (as Goff himself may admit). In addition, whereas the first position has it that “there is no state of affairs” of S1 and S2 necessitating S3, Goff also argues that this scenario “does not imply that there is not some state of affairs” of S1 and S2 having R to S3. Or in Goff’s own words:

“[MIS] does not imply that there is not some state of affairs of the form <subject of experience S1 with phenomenal character x bears relationship R to subject of experience S2 with phenomenal character y> which necessitates <subject of experience S3 exists with phenomenal character z>.”

This hinges on the (possibly false) move from

S1 (with “phenomenal character x”) and S2 (with “phenomenal character y”) necessitating S3 (with “phenomenal character z”).

to the (possibly correct) move that is:

S1 bearing relationship R to S2 and then, in turn, both S1 and S2, “via” R, necessitating S3.

To sum up:

i) S1 alone doesn’t necessitate S2.

ii) S2 alone doesn’t necessitate S3.

iii) However, S1 standing in relation R to S2 may necessitate S3.

I really don’t know what’s going on here. Prima facie, it’s hard to see why there cannot be a relation of necessitation when both S1 and S2 necessitate S3. Yet, on the other hand, when S1 and S2 are taken together via relation R, then both S1 and S2 can indeed necessitate S3.

Note:

In a seminar entitled ‘Phillip Goff on Non-Compositional Panpsychism’, Goff claims that the “mind is multiply located”. This, at first glance, seems to create a problem for much of what’s been argued above. That said, Goff (in this seminar) doesn’t really provide much detail for this position. And even if there are arguments in its favour, they may not make much of a difference to what has been argued.

Prima facie, if the mind is multiply located and (as Goff also says) “wholly present many times in the brain”, then this seems to create problems for the positions on phenomenal bonding enunciated above. That said, what do Goff’s claims mean? Surely if the mind (i.e., not minds in the plural) is multiply located, then that must surely go against claims about “little subjects” which bond together. It also seems to rule out any (strong) point of “bonding”. If the mind is multiply located (as well as wholly present many times), then there doesn’t seem to be a (strong) requirement for either little subjects or their bonding together.

[I can be found on Twitter here.]

Kant, Implication and Conceptual Containment

On an old reading, the statement

A implies B

is taken to be true (or false) because

B “contains” or “involves” something that is also “in” A.

This is the standard Kantian view of implication (or, later, synonym-based analyticity). However, B can be the consequence of A without it “containing” or “involving” something that's common to A. How, then, would B be a consequence of A? In physical nature, A can cause B without sharing anything with B. Non physically, B can also be deduced from A without sharing anything with A. If all that's so, how does this deduction or implication actually come about?

(All this hints at both “relevance logic” and “material implication”; as well as at the sharing of “propositional parameters”.)

In terms of statemental implication, to imply something means that there's actually something about the statement which somehow contains the implication. That doesn't really explain the relation between the implication and the implied. Can there be causal implication, for instance? In what sense is the implied actually in the implication?

We can also ask what it means to say that “B is contained within A”? Quine accused Kant of speaking at a metaphorical level when talking about “containment”. Thus what non-metaphorical way have we of describing what's at issue here? (If A is simply an inscription or “syntactic form”, then of course it can’t contain B – it can’t really contain anything except itself.)

So A will demand content if it's to imply B. In that case, it all depends on what the symbol A stands for. Is it a concept, sentence, statement or a proposition? All these possibilities have content.

If the symbol A stands for the concept [politician], then what content would it have? Can we say that contained within the concept [politician] are the macro-concepts [human being] and [person]; as well as the micro-concepts [professional] and [Member of Parliament]? However, in a certain sense it's quite arbitrary to categorise certain concepts as micro-concepts and others as macro-concepts because that distinction will depend on the context.

However, we can ask within which context we can categorise [politician] as a micro-concept. There's a simple way to decide what is what. We can ask this question.

Is it necessary for a politician to be a person or a human being?

The answer is no. It's not logically necessary; though what's been said is empirically the case. (A robot, computer or alien could be a politician.)

Is it necessary for a human being or person to be a politician?

The answer is: Of course not! In this simple sense the macro-concepts encompass the micro-concepts. Of course there are yet higher levels of concept. For example, [biped] and [animal]. This would include the concepts [human being] and [person]. And there are yet higher-order concepts than that. For example, [living thing] and [organism]. This could go on until we reach the concepts [object], [thing], [entity], [spatiotemporal slice] and so on.

If A is taken to be a concept, then it may well have a huge amount of implicit and explicit content. It could imply all sorts of things. However, it's a strange thing to take A as simply something standing for a single concept. It's hard to make sense of a concept all on its own (as it were). We need to fill in the dots ourselves.

If A is a sentence, then things become a little clearer and not as broad-ranging. The sentence may of course include concepts; though such concepts - within a sentential framework - will be more finely delineated and circumscribed. Something will be said about the concepts contained and they may be contextualised.

To say that the concept [politician] implies the concepts [human being] and [person] just sounds strange. In a sense, the bare concept [politician] isn't actually saying anything. The idea of containment must be taken less literally in the case of A standing for a concept than when if A stands for statements, sentences, etc.  This parallels, to a small extent, Frege's “context principle”.

Chalmers and the Evolutionary Point of Consciousness

Word Count: 2299

i) Introduction

ii) Evolution: Why Consciousness?

iii) Consciousness is Good for Us

iv) Frank Jackson's Warm and Heavy Coat

v) Neuroscience on the Point of Consciousness

vi) Evolution and Panpsychism

vii) Conclusion

The following piece doesn't tackle David Chalmers' well-discussed and well-known Hard Problem. That is, it doesn't attempt to find an answer to the question:

Why does the physical brain give rise to consciousness?

Instead, it asks us why we human beings - and other animals - needed consciousness in the first place. Thus we have this question:

From an evolutionary perspective, if the functions of the brain (which Chalmers often refers to) might have occurred “in the dark”, then why did we need (if we did need) - and why do we still need/have - consciousness?

The nature of the physical-consciousness link is only tangential to this issue. 

Evolution: Why Consciousness?

Is it really possible that experience/consciousness is truly gratuitous from an evolutionary – or from any – point of view?

Thus perhaps the obvious answer to David Chalmers' question

“Why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience?”

is that experience (or consciousness) may - or does - contribute to these functions. It adds something.

The most important point against the (possibly) adaptive nature of consciousness (i.e., how it may “increase fitness”) is an idea – often stressed by Chalmers himself - that consciousness doesn't (or may not) add anything to the brain functions which underpin it. In other words, such brain functions may achieve the same advantages for survival even if higher organisms didn't have consciousness. This possibility clearly ties in with Chalmers' fixation on zombies. That is, zombies have the same physical brains and mental functions as conscious human beings. However, they're also “devoid of mentality”.

So does consciousness or experience give us an evolutionary advantage? Or is consciousness/experience simply a redundant byproduct of other things which did indeed give us an advantage? (Steven Jay Gould called this kind of phenomenon a “spandrel” - an unintended byproduct of something else.) Can we even conceive of the possibility that something that's so useful, immediate and particular as consciousness is simply a byproduct of something else?

We can.

Perhaps we shouldn't see the divide between x's being advantageous and x's being disadvantageous in such absolute terms. After all, it's also been said that the brain's big size and weight weren't (really?) conducive to human survival. (More precisely, the human brain is much bigger than all the other brains in the mammalian species.) Nonetheless, a big consciousness and a big set of cognitive skills are also a result of a big and heavy brain.

In addition, if consciousness is an accidental byproduct (evolutionary products, strictly speaking, are also accidental) of other features which were indeed selected for by evolution, then perhaps it can't be an adaptation either. Nonetheless, it may be what's called an “exaptive” phenomenon. Consciousness might have been an exapation  of other things which were indeed selected for by evolution. As just stated, the brain's size and physical nature were selected for by evolution. And one consequence of brain size and its physical/chemical arrangement was consciousness/experience.

Despite all this talk of consciousness being a byproduct of something else (as well as talk of consciousness being pointless - if only in evolutionary terms), we can also take a very different position on all this, as Peter Carruthers does.

It's not surprising that Peter Carruthers (i.e., as a philosopher) should explicitly say that consciousness itself is conducive to survival and it is so in a strictly philosophical sense. Carruthers has argued that consciousness allows us – and other beings – to "distinguish appearance from reality". Now what could be more conducive to survival than that useful philosophical skill?

We can give a quick and easy example of this appearance-reality problem for survival.

Take the case of a very-hungry creature which was able to work out whether or not the water he sees in the distance is a mirage. If this creature hadn't had this evolutionary advantage, then it might have wasted valuable time and energy traipsing towards non-existent water. It might have even died in the process.

If we get back to Carruthers' philosophical Sahelanthropus man and other philosophical creatures. Many philosophers have also said that “accurate representations” (Richard Rorty) - and even truth itself - were irrelevant when it came to survival. Though surely this can't apply to Carruthers' mirage example!

Consciousness is Good for Us

It can be said that not all the brain's information-processing "goes on in the dark” because if it did so, then we wouldn't have the added advantages that experience (or consciousness) give to these examples of information-processing. That means that Chalmers' “inner feel”, for example, also contributes because it too is a property of experience/consciousness.

The fact still seems to be that because all of this could occur in the dark, then we need to explain why it doesn't. Though, as already stated, what if what occurs in the dark is at a lesser (evolutionary) level than what occurs in the light? Indeed isn't that obviously the case? With, say, microorganisms or even spiders, everything does (or may) occur in the dark. With adult human beings, that's simply not the case. And that's why we live and experience at a higher evolutionary level than microorganisms or spiders.

Despite the above, Chalmers himself writes:

“This is not to say that experience has no function. Perhaps it will turn out to play an important cognitive role.”

I would say that it obviously does; especially from an evolutionary perspective. There are indeed epiphenomenal attributes (or hangers-on) when it comes to evolution. However, why should we believe that consciousness/experience itself fits that bill? I don't see how experience could be like, say, a human's little toe: i.e., something that serves no purpose. Having said that, just as all human beings have experiences, so too do all humans have little toes.

Frank Jackson's Warm and Heavy Coat

As we've seen, it's certainly true that consciousness could be an adjunct to physical features which were “conducive to survival” - without consciousness itself being conducive to survival.

This is Frank Jackson (in his well-known paper 'Epiphenomenal Qualia') on the subject of bears.

“The Theory of Evolution explains this (we suppose) by pointing out that [bears] having a thick, warm coat is conducive to survival in the Arctic. But having a thick coat goes along with having a heavy coat, and having a heavy coat is not conducive to survival. It slows the animal down.

“… Having a heavy coat is an unavoidable concomitant of having

a warm coat (in the context, modern insulation was not available), and the advantages for survival of having a warm coat outweighed the disadvantages of having a heavy one. The point is that all we can extract from Darwin's theory is that we should expect any evolved characteristic to be either conducive to survival or a by-product of one that is so conducive.”

There are of course many other things which are deemed to be byproducts of evolution. Perhaps a more relevant example is the the blind spot in the retina. In this case, the blind spot wasn't an adaptation of the retina: it was simply a byproduct of the way the retinal axons were/are wired.

There are many other positions on the issue of consciousness being a byproduct of something else. Steven Pinker (in his How the Mind Works), for example, argues that consciousness is a byproduct of our our “evolved problem-solving abilities”.

So clearly consciousness might have been a byproduct of something else. However, it's certainly not in the same ballpark as Frank Jackson's warm-and-heavy coat. A heavy coat - in and of itself - was disadvantageous for a bear. A warm coat wasn't. When in comes to consciousness, we can say that whatever it was that was responsible for consciousness - and from which consciousness is a byproduct - was also conducive to survival. However, it might have been the case that the byproduct that is consciousness was also conducive to survival.

To return to Frank Jackson's warm-and-heavy coat example. Jackson concluded the quoted passage above by tying all this to qualia: He wrote:

“The phenomenalist holds that qualia fall into the latter category [i.e., an epiphenomenal byproduct or evolution].”

That is, qualia are (or may be) a byproduct of evolution. It also follows from this that they are – or may be - epiphenomenal. However, that doesn't necessarily follow. Something that's an evolutionary byproduct needn't also be epiphenomenal. Or, in our case, it needn't also be non-conducive to survival. Sure, there's a mountain of philosophical arguments which have stated that Jackson's qualia - and even consciousness itself - are epiphenomenal; though this particular argument-from-evolution doesn't establish that.

Neuroscience on the Point of Consciousness

It may help to give some neuroscientific examples of this nonconscious/consciousness opposition (or distinction).

We can say that actions (or movements) which are related to reflexes, vegetative functions, low-level perceptual analyses, unconscious motor programs, etc. all occur at the non-conscious level. However, clearly there are also things which are products of consciousness: perception, language, cognition, integration, memory, etc. However, even some of these examples could still occur without consciousness. Thus we're left with two conclusions:

i) Nonconscious processes occur.

ii) There are conscious processes; though they could be - or might have been - nonconscious processes.

A more down to earth – or neuroscientific – explanation of the adaptive point of consciousness is the position that conscious states integrate neuronal activities and processes. This has been called “the integration consensus”. A more technical variant on this has been offered by Gerald Edelman. His “dynamic core hypothesis” is about the “reentrant connections” which link different areas of the brain in a “massively parallel manner”.

Nonetheless, the autonomy-from-consciousness problem arises here too. It's certainly the case that there are kinds of information that are integrated without also being conscious. However, simply because there is such nonconscious integration, that doesn't automatically mean that conscious integration is ruled out of the picture. Clearly the two can stand side by side. It's still the case, however, that nonconscious processing creates philosophical and scientific problems for the philosopher and scientist. Nonetheless, like the possibility of zombies, these problems don't - in and of themselves - logically or metaphysically rule out consciousness.

Thus it's certainly a fact that we don't always know which kinds of information are integrated by consciousness and which aren't. However, that doesn't have an impact on consciousness itself or even on its role in helping us survive. 

Yes, there are indeed nonconscious functions or processes. So what?...

Evolution and Panpsychism

Chalmers himself now fully accepts (I believe) some form of panpsychism. 

The panpsychist position doesn't have it that consciousness/experience evolved from something else. It's been with us (or with the universe) since the very beginning - perhaps since just after the Big Bang. Thus the advantageous/not-advantageous-to-survival distinction doesn't seem to be that relevant in the case of panpsychism.

Of course it can also be said that even if panpsychism is true (and that experience/consciousness has always been with us), then it may still be the case that experience wasn't advantageous to survival. That is, panpsychism doesn't seem to tie in very well with evolutionary theory; at least in this respect. If experience has always been with us (or with the universe), then it can't have evolved to have given us an evolutionary advantage.

Though is it that simple?

Even if experience has always been with us, it might still have been the case that evolution got to work (as it were) on it. What I mean by this is that evolution changes biological matter. According to panpsychism, all the parts of biological – as well as inanimate! - entities have consciousness/experience. However, evolution impacted on the arrangements of biological entities so as to make some examples which were better equipped to survive than others. Thus those pockets of biological matter which resulted would still have included phenomenal properties - all the way down. Yet it might also have been the case that the new arrangements of matter (care-of evolution) brought phenomenally-basic entities into new alignments which - being more complex biologically and therefore phenomenally - made them better equipped to survive.

Thus, depending on how we look at this, there are two possible responses to this panpsychism-evolution situation:

i) If phenomenal properties have always been with us, then that fact alone is hard to square with evolution.

ii) Even if experience has always been with us, then there's nothing to rule out the possibility that evolution itself might have had an impact on phenomenal properties (non-teleologically, of course) by making them the parts of more complex biological entities. This would have made the aforesaid biological entities more phenomenally complex too.

Conclusion

To repeat. 

It's certainly possible that all the brain functions and processes (which David Chalmers often refers to) might well have occurred - and could still occur - “in the dark”. However, not all of them do occur in the dark. (As Philip Goff puts it: Consciousness is a primary "datum in its own right"; which - by definition - can't be ignored.)

As to how experience/consciousness is added to - or comes from - these functions (or from the brain itself), then that seems to be a different question. And it is indeed problematic and difficult.

However, if the evolutionary approach sketched above is broadly correct, then Chalmers' Hard Problem doesn't (or perhaps shouldn't) bring forth the following why-question:

Why does the physical brain give rise to consciousness?

Instead it simply raises (or perhaps should raise) the following how-question:

How does the physical brain give rise to consciousness?