Michael Blamauer (Ed.)

The Mental as Fundamental

New Perspectives on Panpsychism

antes

verlag

Bibliographic information puhlished by Deutsche Nationalbihliothck The Deutsche Nastionalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie;

detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de

IT:] transaction

G

North and South America by Transaction Books Rutgers University

Piscataway, NJ 08854-8042 trans@transactionpub.com

United Kingdom, Ire, Iceland, Turkey, MaJta, PortugaJ by Gazelle Books Services Limited

White Cross Mills Hightown

LANCASTER, LAI4XS saJes@gazellebooks.co.uk

Livraison pour la France et la Belgique: Librairie Philosophique lVrin

6, place de la Sorbonne ; F -75005 PARIS Tel. +33 (0)143 540347; Fax +33 (0)143 5448 18

www.vrin.fr

©20 II ontos verlag P.O. Box 1541, D-63 133 Heusenstamm

www.ontosverlag.com

ISBN 978-3-86838-114-6

2011

No part of this book may he reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted , in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying. microfilming. recording or otherwise

without ""Titlen permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any materiaJ supplied specifieally for the purpose of being enlered and executed On a computer system, for exclusive use of the purchaser of the work

Printed on acid-free paper ISO·Norm 97j)..6

FSC-certified (Forest Stewaroship COlmcll) This hardcover binding meets the International Library standard

Printed in Gennan)' by cpr buch bOcher.de

Tuble of Contents

Mkhucl Blamauer Int/'oduction: The Mental as Fundamental 7

I. (lmlchard Briintrup /'IIIII)"'.I'('hism and Structural Realism 15

J. Picrlrancesco Basile '11'1' I,as' Man Standing A rgumentfor panpsychism: A rejoinder 35

" I )lIvid Skrbina 71,c' Man Still Stands: Reply to Basile 53

4. I ,udwig Jaskolla "Mind Matters ... " Towards a concept '1l'proto-mental causation 57

~, Riccardo Manzotti Tht' Spread Mind: Phenomenal Process-Oriented V,·hide Externalism 79

6, Michael Blamauer Taking the Hard Problem of Consciousness Seriously: Dualism, Punpsychism and the Origin of the Combination Problem 99

7, David Skrbina Mind Space: Toward a solution to the combination problem 117

H. Philip Goff Tht're is no combination problem 131

9. Freya Mathews IJ{lnp~ychism as Paradigm 141

10. Matthias Rugel / Benjamin Andrae NIII bound to feel everything? A dialog on the scope of experience 157

78

Cartwright, N. (1983): How the Laws of Physics lie, Oxford. Honderich, Ted (1982): The Argument for Anomalous Monism, in: (42), p.S9-64. Hume, D. (Treatise): A Treatise on Human Nature, edited by David Norton and Mary J. Norton, Oxford: 2008. Kim, J. (2002): The Many Problems of Mental Causation, in: Chalmers, (ed.): Philosophy of Mind - Classical and Temporal Readings, p.170-179. Lewis, D. (1994): Humean Supervenience Debugged, in: Topics (24), S.101-127. Montero, B.: Varieties of Causal Closure. Retrieved as well as cited J 2Sth 2010 at 3 p.m.: http://barbara.antinomies.org/papersNarietiesofCausaIClosure O'Connor, T. (2000): Causality, Mind and Free Will, in: NoUa. Philosophical Perspectives 14: Action and Freedom. p.l OS-117. Puntel, L. B. (2006): Struktur und Sein - Ein Theorierahmen for systematische Philosophie, Tiibingen. Rosenberg, G (2004): A Place for Consciousness - Probing the Structure of the Natural World, Oxford. Rugel, M.: Panexperientialismus Das Erleben kleinster Einheiten Bauplan von Geist, Materie und Welt (Arbeitstitel), forthcoming. Russell, B. (KEW): Our Knowledge of the External World - as a Field Scientific Method in Philosophy, Reprinted from the Original (1914) new Introduction by John G Slater, New York, 1996. Stapp, H. (2000): Quantum Interactive Dualism, II - The Libet and Podolsky-Rosen Causal Anomalies in: Erkenntnis (6S), p.117 -142. Strawson, G (2006): Consciousness and its Place in Nature • Physicalism entail Panpsychism? E'Xeter. Strawson, G (2009): Selves An Essay in Revisionary Metaphysics, Whitehead, A. N. (PR): Process and Reality, New York, 1985. Wright, C. / Hale, B. (2009): The Meta-Ontology of Abstraction, III Chalmers, D. I Manley, D. I Wasserman, R. (eds.): Metametap/tJllila Oxford. Zimmennan, D. (1997): Immanent Causation, in: Nous - Philola""" Perspectives 11: Mind, Causation and World, p,433-471. Zimmennan, D. (2006) Dualism in the Philosophy of Mind. Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2nd Edition, London, p.113-122.

The Spread Mind: Phenomenal Process-Oriented Vehicle Externalism Riccardo Manzotti (Milan)

I. Does phenomenal experience really occur inside the nervous Nystem? In neuroscience, most of the available literature assumes that the mind is the result of some yet-to-be-defined activity taking place inside the nervous Nystem, possibly inside the brain. Many different subsystems have been Ilroposed (ranging from microtubules up to the complete talamo-cortical lIystem, Crick and Koch 1998; Hameroff 1998; Tononi and Edelman 1998; I(delman, Baars et al. 2005; Tononi and Koch 2008), but no conclusive .vidence has been presented up to now. Neuroscientists are looking for the neural underpinnings of phenomenal 'Kperience (Dehaene, Changeux et al. 2006; Tononi and Koch 2008; Koch 2111O; Revonsuo 2010). Consider Christof Koch's certainty that "Scientists Ire now revealing the material basis of the conscious mind. In coming ~."rs they will gradually fill in the details, making much of the armchair philosophizing moot. [ ... ] Such theories will provide quantitative answers to questions that have long stumped us." (Koch 2010, p. 76)

luch confidence justified? For one, there are not yet any available explaining how and why quantitative phenomenal should lead to

emergence of qualitative phenomenal qualities. Nor has it been ned in the least how to connect the normative aspect many mental

"1"Omena to the physical domain. On this regard, Shaun Gallagher warns "Neither the cognitive neurosciences nor phenomenological

.runches to consciousness, however, should be satisfied with simple fIM't','ufions that might be established between brain processes described 11m Ii third-person perspective and phenomenal experience described hn a first-person perspective. Such correlations do not constitute ."""'ions, and indeed, such correlations are in part what need to be .. pl,llled." (Gallagher 2005, p. 6) .. ",withstanding the great success in many respects of neuroscience, many

do not share such faith in neuroscience as the forthcoming cnce' (for a review see Manzotti and Moderato forthcoming). As a

III' these and similar issues, a few authors raised some skepticism as

80

to the soundness of such neural SciOVlnlSm (Faux 2002; Bennett and Hacker 2003; Noe and Thompson 2004; Manzotti and Moderato forthcoming). [n this paper I will consider a different approach that, albeit still in its infancy, has not yet been exploited adequately: could the neural activity be only a subset of a more extended bundle of physical processes either responsible or identical with consciousness?

2. The location question As to consciousness, it is often assumed that the most basic question is about the nature of consciousness. What is the phenomenal experience? What is the stuff phenomenal experience is made of? If you physicalist, as I assume you probably are, you should consciousness as something physical (in this I agree with most scientific and philosophical literature; see Dennett 1995; Kim Strawson 2005). This is a very broad statement that is not commitment and yet it is sufficient to draw some preliminary suggestions. If phenomenal experience is a physical phenomenon, it has be located somewhere in space and in time. This means that it should possible to pinpoint a spatiotemporal region that corresponds to a mental occurrence. Let us dub the question as to where the mind is location question. Looking for a spatiotemporal region is perhaps a convoluted way to for what is commonly referred to as a process. This is not a conceptual step, shifting from other widespread and less yet philosophically popular notions such as state of affairs, states, For in physics what happens is usually closer to the occurrence process rather than to the instantiation ef a state of affairs. Just to make few examples, in physics it makes more sense to speak of the process oxidation rather than of a state of affairs corresponding to oxidation. physics things happens and that is another way to say that processes are basic building blocks of a physical understanding of the world 1925; Eddington 1929; Heisenberg 1958; Pylkannen 2007). But even without committing too strictly to a process-ontology, it is uncontroversial that any physical phenomenon is located in time and spacoJ If phenomenal experience is a physical phenomenon - and I do not see any viable alternative - it ought not be an exception. The location question lies at the very foundation of current scientifiC research on the nature of subject and so far there is neither consensus nor

81

hope of getting close to a solution anytime soon. Yet it is possible to envisage two rivaling alternative views whose respective value is still largely unresolved. On the one hand, many authors tried to locate the relevant physical phenomena inside the physical boundary of the subject's body often inside the physical limits of the nervous systems or some subset of it. This trend can be labeled internalism - namely, the idea that the mind depends on or is identical with properties or events taking place inside the boundary of the subject's body or some subset of it. Internalism is the view that all the conditions that constitute a person's thoughts and sensations are internal to the nervous system (Koch 2004; Adams and Aizawa 2008; Mendola 2008). Consider Koch's claim that "If there is one thing that scientists are reasonably sure of, it is that brain activity is both necessary and sufficient for biological sentience." (Koch 2004, p. 9) The crucial claim in this sentence is whether brain activity is sufficient or not. Internalism advocates that it is, while other views either weaken to a certain extent or straightforwardly reject the sufficiency of brain activity. As to the necessity, more or less all agree, although what kind of necessity is still an open issue. Coherently, internalism can be seen as the view that answers to the location question by pinpointing to some neural process. According to internal ism, the spatiotemporal boundaries of mental phenomena are limited to a short span of a few hundreds of milliseconds and to the bursts of neural firings spreading through axons, dendrites and cellular bodies. An aesthetic experience would allegedly correspond to some neural process initiating and ending inside the nervous system although undoubtedly historically originated by external stimulation, learning, and development. On the other hand, many scholars are skeptical as to resources of the body alone. In particular, it doesn't seem plausible that the internal properties of a body can cope with certain aspects of the mind whose properties seem unmatched by the properties shown by neural activity. Among such resistant features of the mind two broad categories can be outlined: semantic/intentional/relational properties and phenomenalll st person properties. The first group expresses the fact that the mind seems to be projected outward the body towards events scattered in time and space accordingly to the ends and stimuli of the subject. The mind seems to have a not reducible relational and externally oriented attitude expressed by hard core philosophical issues such as intentionality and semantics. As a result, it has been considered whether the environment and the spatio-temporal

82

physical surrounding of the subject's body could be literally constitutive of the mind. This other approach has been labeled externalism the view that the mind depends on or is identical with properties or events taking place outside the boundary of the subject's body. In its more radical form, as we will see, an externalist answers to the location question by suggesting that' the spatiotemporal boundaries of the physical processes identical with thq. mind are, at least in principle, larger than those of the body and temporally i as extended as they need to be to encompass what they refer to (in practice; a lot more than a hundreds of milliseconds). ..; From the onset it is worth to stress that externalism is no less physicalist] than internalism. This should not come as a surprise although it often is" There is a widespread and rather surprising misconception according which only internalism is a genuine physicalist position. As a matter fact, physicalism requires only that the mind is explained in physical te Physics is not made by the nervous system alone - being "neural" is, ~

subset of being "physical". Thus, in principle, there are many physical' explanations which are not confined to the neural domain. Equating mind with the brain is not the only possible option for physicalis However, it is the only possible option for a physicalist who embr internalism in some fonn. Yet, for the physicalist internalism is only 0

possibility among many and there is no conclusive evidence for it. In the following, after having outlined the present state of the internalis. vs. externalism debate, the various fonns of externalism will be listed. T variety of the available models of externalism highlights the value externalism as a broad approach. In the near future, it is probable that so· of these versions will be discarded some because too daring and oth because too conservative. It is something to be expected.

3. Journey to the center of the nervous system At the onset, I will start from a relatively simple case of direct veridi perception. There is an object in front of a human subject for instance. red apple in full sunlight. As every schoolboy knows, the sunlight hits apple surface and other photons are reflected anywhere. Some of the ... photons go straight against the subject's eyes. They pass through ~ cornea, are deflected by the lens, and eventually end their joUl'llO)f smashing against its photoreceptors (rods and cones). The energy of tbI photons is transferred to very fast chemical reactions whose result is to increase the density of rodopsin in localized portion of the retina. Suob increase triggers the emission of action potentials in the surroundiDi

83

neurons. In turn the action potential travels down an axon headed toward the junction between this neuron and another called a synapse. The presynaptic ending contains synaptic vesicles that contain transmitter chemicals. When an action potential reaches the presynaptic ending it causes some of these vesicles to bond to the presynaptic membrane and to spew its transmitter chemical into the synaptic cleft. It migrates across the cleft and is received by the postsynaptic receptors. In this way, synapsis after synapsis, cell after cell, axon after axon, the sunlight triggered a chain of neural activities whose result is, among other things, the subject having an experience of a red apple. This is very well known. What it is usually forgotten is that we have a physical chain of events and that we keep considering only the last part. The situation can be represented as follow

E 1 - E 2 -E3 - ... - -EN

When the process is complete, the subject reports a phenomenal experience of red. Now, what is the relevant part of the chain of events as to the occurrence of phenomenal experience? We can be a little more precise and assign to each step a more or less defined role - something like the following

Esurface - Ephotons - E lens - Ereceptors - Erodopsin - EopticalNerve - Egeniculate-

- - E V2-N - Einferotemporal

Of course this is still a simplification of the actual complexity involved in such a process (many steps were omitted). And yet, for the sake of the argument, we can further simplifY it as follows (Pextended)

Eextemal word - Ereceptors - Enerves - E early cortical areas - E final cortical areas

Of course leaving to the reader to define precisely what are the final and early cortical areas. An interesting fact is that, although it is possible that such chain, especially in the final steps, is made of feed-forward as well as feedback connections between neurons, from a temporal point of view is nevertheless a feed-forward chain. Regard the complete perceptual chain of events, neuroscientists usually focus their attention on the final part of it (Pinner)'

Enerves - cortical areas - E final cortical areas

They tried to find some good reasons to justifY the appearance of phenomenal experience of this physical chain of events. Famously and mistakenly, during XIX century, Johannes Muller tried to assign phenomenal quality to undetermined specific energies located in the ufferent peripheral nerves (Muller 1840). The failure to find anything in

84

peripheral nerves led scientists to consider only the inner portion of the chain:

Eeady cortical areas -+ Efinal cortical areas

Afterwards, other authors tried to locate consciousness in the early cortical areas. Recently many authors discredited this idea. For instance, VI is now believed to not contribute directly to conscious experience (Crick and Koch 1995). The ablation of many early areas does not always lead to the ,. disappearance of the corresponding mental content. As a result, many authors are now trying to identifY an even smaller and inner portion of the, original chain (Zeki and Bartels 1999; Kreiman, Koch et al. 2000; Zeki, 2001; Rees, Kreiman et al. 2002; Koch 2004). They focus on P cortical

EfinaJ cortical areas

However this choice, which I have to stress once again it is based undemonstrated assumption that consciousness has to be produced ,,,",,,,u,,. the nervous system - is plagued by the above mentioned faults. Apart the fact that the properties of anything located in Efinal cortical areas

completely different from our conscious experience - a fact that I consider at greater length below there is one more dilemma to be If our experience of the red comes out of a certain neural activity by .. ",;aAj;.

we are faced with two options: either certain neural patterns are by very nature phenomenal (and there is no evidence for this so far) or neural patterns becomes phenomenal due to their relation with else. The second option blatantly contradicts the assumed sufficiency neural activity. Let me spend some more words on this last issue. Let suppose that I want to defend a position like the following. A pattern N, by itself, is not phenomenal. Yet when it has some relation with something else, it is phenomenal. Now, the relation could be <I""'Jthlin ••

you like. For instance, it could be the fact that N takes place inside human skull, or it could be the fact that N was caused by an external apple, or it could be the fact that N is the result filogenesis/ontogenesis/epigenesis. These are very interesting facts all • .,..,,,.

N, but facts that do not change what N is, when N takes place. So if N the same in all these situations, it cannot have different properties (at physical properties). Thus, either N is different or N is the same and then cannot be the fact that N has some relation that assign to N diflerl.' physical properties. To claim that N becomes different leads to absiurclltYlI since by definition it hasn't changed by being in some kind of exte~ relation.

85

In sum, neither we can say that neural activity is identical with phenomenal experience since nor we can say that a certain neural activity is phenomenal depending on its past history. It would violate a simple physical principle according to which two physically identical systems must have the same physical properties.

4. The Spread Mind After having outlined some of the problems that plague the search for consciousness inside the brain, we can reconsider the problem as a whole. What are the physical limits of the conscious mind? And what are the physical phenomena that can be suggested as being identical with the mind? Let's go back to the whole perceptual process sketched above (P extended):

Eexternal word -+ Ereceptors -+ Enerv.s-+ cortical areas -+ Efinal cortical areas

Is there any really strong reason why the physical process either responsible or identical with consciousness couldn't be the whole process from E.l<ternal word Up to E rlIla! cortical I suggest that the physical foundation of phenomenal experience is larger than the neural portion of it. This is the core idea of this paper. I suggest that whenever a phenomenal experience occurs the relevant physical process is not confined to the boundaries of the nervous system but is physically extended to comprehend the external world as well. It may sound like a strange idea. But it is hardly stranger, I think, than the commonplace conception that our phenomenal experience of the world stems out of neural activity alone. To begin with, I will address the apparently simpler case of veridical direct perception (which is still unpredictable and unexplained for most perceptual theories, by the way). I suggest that the physical set of events either responsible or identical to conscious experience is the whole causal chain going from the external perceived thing up to the final relevant neural activity. I admit that the proposal could appear as rather counterintuitive and thus, if it ever has surfaced, it has been, as fast as possible, dismissed. Yet, I will argue, there are no substantial reasons to reject it. Although many authors suggested that the content of consciousness (as well as intentional beliefs and mental representation) could be external to the body (Putnam 1975; Burge 1979; Gibson 1979; Varela, Thompson et al. 1991/1993; Honderich 1998; 0' Regan 2001; 0' Regan and NBe 2001; Nagasawa 2002; Noe 2004; Tonneau 2004; Rockwell 2005; Byrne and Tye 2006; Honderich 2006),

86

almost no one ventured to consider the possibility that the mind could be physically larger than the body, especially as to phenomenal experience. It seems that it is very hard to question the widespread consensus as to whether the core physical substratum of the conscious mind is internal to the body. For instance, Jaegwon Kim proclaims that "if you are a physicalist of any stripe, as most of us are, you would likely believe in the local supervenience of qualia" (Kim 1995, p. 159), that is the mind must somehow depend on what take place inside the body. He must believe that the notion is so self evident that does not need any explicit explanation. Yet, a physicalist could appeal to physical phenomena external to the body and thus be a physicalist and not accept the local supervenience of qualia. Yet, there have been many counterexamples to this kind of premise other areas. For instance, take flight. Is flight only a biological phenomenon since and insects perform it? Yes and no. Of course, the biological machinery made of wings, feathers and membrane - is necessary in order to advantage of the atmosphere. Yet animals would not fly if there atmosphere were not dense enough. It would not make sense to deny flight is not physical because it extends in time and space beyond confines of the muscles and the wings of the flying animal. Yet, no would deny that muscles and feathers are very useful, either. Yet, and feathers are neither necessary nor sufficient. For one, a helicopter without any feather or muscles. Flight is a physical phenomenon extends beyond the boundaries of pure biological machinery consciousness akin to flight in this respect? Here I would like to contradict explicitly the apparently conviction that if consciousness is a real physical phenomenon, it has reside inside the nervous system. :fhis is a non sequitur both from a . and an empirical perspective. First, because it could be a physical ,,,,,m.Tn_ not constrained into such confines. Secondly, because all the evidence does not show that the brain is sufficient, but rather that the is necessary. Therefore, I suggest considering seriously whether there any scientific and empirical reasons to reject phenomenal externalism. This hypothesis has several consequences in the way in which we concei~ and single out the physical boundary of the subject. Usually we take tht subject to be made of a body and, possibly, by a mind. The mind has beeQ forcefully located either in the brain or inside the body by many recent authors. In the lack of any empirical confirmation, we consider here the possibility that the mind is actually physically larger than the body.

87

Thus, at every instant, for a given subject, we should consider two physical bundles. The first bundle is roughly defined by the skin (although such boundaries are much fuzzier than it could seem at first sight). To avoid any ambiguity, we could call this bundle the traditional body. At each instant there is another set of physical processes. This set is identical with the subject consciousness. These processes, not differently from any other physical process and not differently from the more orthodox neural processes, are extended in time and space. Therefore, they began earlier than the instant in which we consider the subject traditional body. How much time before? There is no common span. They have different temporal duration depending on their causal structure. All together they form a bundle of processes, larger than the traditional body, that we could call the extended body. According to the position presented in this paper, the extended body is identical with the subject consciousness. It comprehends all those events - either near or far, either in time or in space constituting the phenomenal experience of the subject. In short, although with respect to the traditional view (according to which the mind, whatever it is, has to be carried along comfortably inside the head), the position presented here is classifiable as a kind of externalism, from a more liberal perspective, it is a better form of internalism. In fact, both the structure and the content of the experience remain inside the extended body. However, here, the boundaries of the subject are extended beyond those of the body, thereby permitting to the perceived world to be internal to the mind, without requiring an incorporeal mind.

5. Intuitive arguments and empirical proofs against the spread mind I will mention here a few of the main commonsensical reasons to dismiss such an intuition. Identification between the body of the subject and the subject. It is commonly held that the subject must somehow be identified with her/his body. Since Galileo, the body is considered to host the machinery relevant for the occurrence of the mind. The alternative has always been that of considering an immaterial soul. Yet, there is nothing immaterial in considering the larger set of physical processes whose fulcrum is the body of a subject. Perceptual center of gravity. Our eyes, our ears, our mouth and nose are all centered in the skull. This fact gives a powerful feeling of being where our senses are centered - that is inside the skull. However, such feeling is no more authoritative than the feeling that our planet cannot rotate since we

88

always feel to be standing up. In fact, our brain could be located somewhere else without any sensible difference in our conscious experience (Dennett 1978). Social skills. When we look at someone, it is convenient to identify that someone with herlhis body. Analogously, we feel that others identify us with our body. Children learn to recognize themselves in mirror (Staller. and Sekuler 1976; Robinson, Connell et al. 1990). Yet what they recognize ~

is their body, and not themselves. Confusion between necessity and sufficiency. Since the body is a necessary.l

.1 part of the subject, it could never be absent. Whenever there is a subject,i there is the body of the subject. This is not a proof that the subject is identical either to her/his body or to a part of it. Rather it is a proof (b)'t induction) that the body is necessary for the subject. We should not deriv . unwarranted conclusion out of this simple fact. For instance, there are n . examples of environment-less bodies (brain in a vat). So we do not reall know whether a body is sufficient to host a conscious subject. "Brain-i vat cases have always been seriously undefined. Until the scenario is mue better fleshed out, we can't say what the brain's intentional contents woul be. Simply to assert that they are the same as yours begs the questio (Lycan 2001, p. 34). Common usage of words vs. exact meaning. In everyday life, it is useful identify a subject with her/his body. However such identification is more practical than a theoretical one. It could be something more akin somethi like the "rising sun". We all know that the sun does not literally ri anywhere. Yet the common usage of words could endorse some wro intuition where the exact meaning of terms is unclear, as it happens wi . consciousness. Although such vague commonsensical views can lurk in the background the evaluation of a proposal, they are not serious theoretical challenge.' listed them to bring them in the open of a discussion. I will now consid more serious empirical and theoretical drawbacks. 1

, I

5.1 Spatial limits of a process .' It has been objected that the whole process cannot be taken to be a good candidate for phenomenal experience since it extends on an excessive spatial dimension. The red apple could be many meters from me. It. mountain could even be at several kilometers. The moon is a 1 light second from the standard human observer. Yet this is a very unsound argument,

89

since there is no known law of nature by which processes must have a upper bound limit for their spatial length. On the other hand, neural processes are spatially extended too. Their spatial extension goes from a few microns (the smaller neurons) up to the scale of the whole brain. As far as we know, there is no upper limit. Of course, neurons are constrained to a limited space due both to the practical constraints of a mobile organisms and to the speed limitation of signal axonal transmission. However, in principle, if we accept spatially extended physical processes in the case of neural activity, why should we reject other physical processes only because of their different spatial size? In short, since neuroscientists accept to consider Pcortical although is spatially extended, there is no reason they should reject P extended for the same fact.

5.2 Temporal limits of a process Here the same argument applied above goes. Neural processes are extended in time. A neural process of object recognition, from the sensory input to the final triggering of some object correlated neural firings, takes approximately 300·400 msec. In physical terms, it is a lot. Plenty of separate events can take place in that amount of time. If we consider the larger physical process, we are outlining here, it is only slightly longer than the neural part. The increase in the total duration is the amount of time necessary for the nervous signal to be transmitted from the retina to the early visual cortex: a few msec. For the sake of completeness, it should be considered also the time needed for light to travel from the object to the retina, but such time is really infinitesimal. Furthermore, as in the case of space, there is no upper limit to the duration of a process. In our brain processes are constrained by the fact that the organism has to react with reasonable speed to incoming stimuli. But there is no reason to suppose that if it were possible to slow down a brain, consciousness should disappear. There is no known law of nature that constrains phenomenal experience to a certain temporal dimension. In short and as above, since neuroscientists accept to consider Pcortical although is temporally extended, there is no reason they should reject Pexteoded for the same fact.

5.3 Material discontinuity Many neuroscientists could find more congenial to accept only processes mediated by the same kind of chemical reactions and kind of cell. The

90

argument, if there is any, is more or less the following. While Pcortical takes place among cortical neurons, there is a discontinuity once you step out of the brain. Alternatively, a neuroscientist could accept all kind of neurons and the discontinuity is at the receptor. Besides, at the receptor there is another kind of discontinuity, psychologically very demanding: the discontinuity between organic material belonging to one organism and other material (either inorganic or organic of some other organism). After all the psychological need for a material uniformity is the what pushed Camillo Golgi in believing that neurons were interconnected by means of sharing the same intracellular fluid (eventually Ramon y Cajal showed that neurons are, in fact, separate cells). Yet this is a very weak argumentation. A physical process does not depend on the tassonomic uniformity of its constituents but rather on the causal . transmission of a certain amount of energy (Reichenbach 1956; Salmon 1980/1993; Dowe 1999; Dowe 2000). As a trivial example, consider. mechanical wave passing through various medium before dissolving thermal noise. It could pass through concrete, steel, air and remain th. same physical process. After all, isn't the same thing that occurs in neurld processes? As every schoolboy knows, neurons are separate autonomous cells. They communicate by spreading chemicals k"",,,, .... '" synapses. What takes place inside the axon is very different from happens between neurons. What matters is the propagations of a signal not the material used for its propagation. Once more, since neuroscientists accept to consider Pcortical although mediated by discontinuous materials, there is no reason they should P extended for the same fact.

5.4 Counterexample from indirect perception In this category I consider a huge range of various phenomena such hallucinations, dreams, after images, hallucinations, phosphenes, images. There is no space left to consider all these phenomena since eacb will deserve at least a whole paper. Here I will focus only on dreams mainly because they are the most often quoted case of phenomenal experience occurring without direct contact with the external world! During a dream, the brain seems indeed sufficient to sustain phenomenal experience identical or very similar to actual perception. This fact has been so convincing that many scientists consider direct perception as a special case of dreaming, namely a case where the external stimuli control that

91

special dream that we take as the real world (Edelman 1989; Revonsuo 1995; Lebar 2003; Metzinger 2003). However fascinating this idea could be, there are no fmal evidence as to its soundness. First, we are not sure what a dream is. And, above all, there is no proof that a neural tissue could be sufficient to host the occurrence of a dream without being part of an extended network of physical processes. The confusion is here due to the fact that it is taken for granted that a dreaming brain is physically separate from the environment. Is it completely correct? Is the brain ever disconnected from the external world? I have argued elsewhere that it is not the case, due to very basic physical considerations (Author in press). Consider a simpler physical system: a bottle of water. You rotate the bottle of water. As a result, the liquid inside will keep moving for a while. Suppose that, after a powerful rotation, you close the bottle inside a box. Is the bottle disconnected from the environment? Yes and no. Of course, the bottle is disconnected from what is taking place in her surrounding after the inboxing. However, are the events inside the bottle (the rotation of the liquid) autonomously produced by the bottle? Of course not. From the point of view of the physical processes involved, what is going on inside the bottle is causally continuous with external events occurred a few moments ago. Similarly, the brains of real subjects reporting having dreams are never disconnected by their past environment. Even if they are sleeping in a hermetically closed room, their brain is still the result of many past events that are causally continuous with the dream-correlated neural activity. Instead of considering normal perception as a special case of dream, dreams could be seen as a delayed and disordered case of perception. Another fact that could support this view is provided by the sever limitation of dreamed mental content during dream. As far as we know, dreams are made of phenomenal building blocks that are always the result of direct contact with the corresponding physical phenomenon in the external world. In dreams as well as in other cases of mental imagery, the brain seems incapable of autonomously producing new phenomenal content but only to recombine them. Systematic studies of dream content showed a remarkable lack of novelty in dream with respect to real life (Domhoff and Schneider 2008). The overall finding of several studies is that "dreaming consciousness" is "a remarkably faithful replica of waking life" (Snyder 1970, p. 133). Not only in dreams it seems that there are no complete novel mental content, but even their combination is seldom really unusual, a condition referred to as bizarreness of dream, i.e. any events

92

outside the conceivable expectations of waking life. In most surveys the majority of dreams were rated as having little or no bizarreness (Snyder 1970; Domhoff and Schneider 2008). Specific studies emphasized "the rarity of the bizarre in dreams" (Dorus, Dorus et at 1971). A convincing example is offered by born blind patients that seem unable to have any phenomenal experience of colour. It is surprising that there is a widespread and unsupported belief that there are subjects that, although systematically deprived of some sensory modalities, are able to mentally, conceive them somehow. A simple case is represented by the alleged ability of born blind subjects capable of dreaming colours l

. This is, at best of my knowledge, largely dismissed by actual data (Pons 1996; Ittyer~ and Goyal 1997; Kerr and Domhoff2004). Real born blind subjects do not dream any colour. Real born blind subjects do not have mental imagerj with colours. They do not experience the phenomenal experience we ha ~ when we open our eyes and see a coloured world. There is some confusion in the literature since many alleged born blin subject are neither blind nor born with that condition. Truth is that m classified born blind became blind at a very early stage in development (a few months, a few years), but had some kind of con with light-related phenomena. However, if we set aside all the dubious vague cases, it seems that without some residual sight, no congeni blind subject ever reported a mental colour of any kind - whether dream or imagined. As reported by a detailed study on 372 dreams from IS bI' adults "those blind since birth or very early childhood had (l) no vis imagery and (2) a very high percentage of gustatory, olfactory, and tact .. sensory references" (Hurovitz, Dunn et al. 1999, p. 183). Of co completely born blind subject can have mental imagery of various kin They can experience shapes and forms. This is coherent with the kind phenomenal externalism I advocate here. In fact, a born blind subject plenty of physical contacts with shapes and forms by means of her ot senses. For instance, she can touch a ring and feel the circular shape. It has been suggested that since patients who lose their primary vis cortex to strokes continue to experience visual dreams, the activity in VI unnecessary for dreaming (Koch 2004, p. 109). As a result, consciousno should be located innermost. Apart from the fact that the neurobiology of dreaming is still the theatre of heated discussions (Domhoff2005),

I For instance, it has been reported that a Turkish painter, allegedly born blind, II capable of mentally feeling colors (Kennedy and Juricevic 2003). Yet there is l'1li evidence that he can have any phenomenal feelings associated with colors.

93

If this were confirmed for every sensor modality, it would support the fact that mental content is not generated inside the brain, but rather is the result of physical continuity with external phenomena. A possibility offered by phenomenal externalism is that the difference between unconscious processes and conscious processes (either direct perception or dreaming or whatever) lies in the existence of a physically causally continuity with real events in the environment, no matter how long and complex. In short, instead of being a counterexample of phenomenal externalism, dreams could offer a convincing test bed for phenomenal externalism. On the other hand, also in normal perception we are not in contact with the instantaneous environment, which is the environment taking place at the exact time of our neural activity, but rather with a temporally proximal environment. In dreams, due to the relative physical and functional isolation from such temporally proximal isolation, there could space left for a temporally more extended spatial continuity with the environment.

6. Advantages ofpbenomenal externalism I hope I have made it clear that, at least, there are no compelling reasons to reject phenomenal externalism from the start. We need to collect more empirical data and to carry on more dedicate experimentations such as to explore a neglected option. Yet, on a more positive note, why should we take the trouble to consider phenomenal externalism? What are the advantages that could we derive from it? In fact there are many possible advantages. I will mention a few. A different candidate for phenomenal experience {hard problem}. So far, consciousness research mostly focused on neural activity. Adopting a process and externalist view, different and more promising physical processes could be identified. A solution to the representation problem. A crucial aspect of the mind­body problem understands how the brain represents the external world. Adopting an internalism approach entails to postulate the existence of intermediate representations physically distinct from what they represent. Phenomenal externalism could allow to get rid of the problem of representation all together, since there would be no need to have representations in the classical sense. What we would perceive would be identical with what is perceived the vehicle of representation and what is represented being one and the same. An easier approach to mental causation. If mental processes were identical with physical processes, they would have causal antecedents and

94

postponents. They would belong to the physical causal flow. These processes would not face the epiphenomenalist risk since they would n01 be a property emerged out of an otherwise already coherent causal network. They would be already a part of the causal network.

7. Conclusion The spread mind theory tries to outline a radical ontological twist. 1114 spread mind suggests that most of current problems in dealing witll phenomenal experience are due to a series of unwarranted ontological premises. The most obnoxious of them is probably the assumption tI:uI phenomenal experience stems out of neural processes alone. ..~

As it has been argued by other authors, there is not a magic thresho~ dividing what takes place inside our nervous system and what takes plaC!J outside. Indeed there is a continuous flow of causal processes seamless,. going from the environment to the brain and backward. After all, neural activities are instantiated by series of action potenti distribute in time and in space. They are processes spanning a spati temporal region. Once we accept a neural process as something that is located at a precise point in time and space, there ought not be difficulty in accepting other kinds of physical processes.

References Adams, D. and K. Aizawa, (2008): The Bounds of Cognition, Singa Blackwell Publishing. Bennett, M. R. and P. M. S. Hacker, (2003): Philosophical Foundati011l\ Neuroscience, Malden (Mass): Blackwell. Burge, T., (1979): "Individualism and the Mental" in: French, Uehling Wettstein, Eds, Midwest Studies in Philosophy IV, Minneapo University of Minnesota Press: 73-121. Byrne, A. and M. Tye, (2006): "Qualia ain't in the Head" in: NOlls 40 241-255. ~ Crick, F. and C. Koch, (1995): "Are we aware of neural activity in primlllll visual cortex?" in: Nature 375: 121-123. r4 Crick, F. and C. Koch, (1998): "Constraints on cortical and thal_ projections: the no-strong-Ioops hypothesis" in: Nature 391(15): 245-250.-' Dehaene, S., l.-P. Changeux, et aI., (2006): "Conscious, preconscious, iii subliminal processing: A testable taxonomy" in: Trends in CognjdW Sciences 10: 204-211.

95

Dennett, D. C., (1978): Brainstonns: philosophical essays on mind and psychology, Montgomery: Bradford Books. Dennett, D. C., (1995): Darwin's dangerous idea: evolution and the meanings of life, New York: Simon & Schuster. Domhoff, G. W., (2005): "Refocusing the neurocognitive approach to dreams: A critique of the Hobson versus Solms debate" in: Dreaming 15: 3-20. Domhoff, W. G. and A. Schneider, (2008): "Studying dream content using the archive and search engine on DreamBank.net" in: Consciousness and Cognition 17: 1238-1247. Dorus, E., W. Dorus, et a1., (1971): "The incidence of novelty in dreams" in: Archives of General Psychiatry 25: 364-368. Dowe, P., (1999): "The Conserved Quantity Theory of Causation and Chance Raising" in: Philosophy of Science 66: 486-501. Dowe, P., (2000): Physical Causation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Eddington, A. S., (1929): The Nature of the Physical World, New York: The MacMillan Company. Edelman, D., B. J. Baars, et aI., (2005): "IdentifYing hallmarks of consciousness in non-mammalian species" in: Consciousness and Cognition 14: 169-187. Edelman, G. M., (1989): The Remembered Present: A Biological Theory of Consciousness, New York: Basic Books. Faux, S. F., (2002): "Cognitive Neuroscience from a Behavioral Perspective: A Critique of Chasing Ghosts with Geiger Counters" in: Behavior Analyst 25: 161-173. Gallagher, S., (2005): How the Body Shapes the Mind, Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press. Gibson, 1. J., (1979): The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Hoston: Houghton Mifflin. tlameroff, S. R., (1998): "Quantum computation in brain microtubules? The Penrose-Hameroff 'Orch OR' model of consciousness" in: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 356: 1-28. Heisenberg, W., (1958): Physics and Philosophy, New York: Harper & Row. Ilunderich, (1998): "Consciousness as existence" in: A. O'Hear, Ed., ('urrent Issues in Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge, Cambridge University I'ress: 137-155.

96

Honderich, T., (2006): "Radical Externalism" in: Journal of Consciousness Studies 13(7-8): 3-13. Hurovitz, C. s., S. Dunn, et aI., (1999): "The Dreams of Blind Men and Women: A Replication and Extension of Previous Findings" in: Dreaming 9(2/3): 183-193. Ittyerah, M. and M. Goyal, (1997): "Fantasy and reality distinction of congenitally blind children." in: Percept Mot Skills 85«3 Pt 1»: 897-8. Kennedy, J. M. and I. Juricevic, (2003): "Haptics and projection: Drawingtf by Tracy, a blind adult" in: Perception 32: 1059-1071. Kerr, N. and G. W. Domhoff, (2004): "Do the blind literally "see" in theil dreams? A critique of a recent claim that they do" in: Dreaming 14: 230i 233. ,~ Kim, J., (1995): "Dretske's Qualia Externalism" in: Philosophical Issues 1. 159-165. ~ Kim, J., (1998): Mind in a Physical World, Cambridge (Mass): MIT Pres~'. Koch, C., (2004): The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach, Englewood (Col): Roberts & Company Publishers. Koch, C., (2010): "An answer to the riddle of consciousness" in: Scienti American 303(3): 76. Kreiman, G., C. Koch, et aI., (2000): "Imagery neurons in the hum brain" in: Nature 408: 357-361. Lehar, S., (2003): "Gestalt Isomorphism and the Primacy of Subjec . Conscious Experience: A Gestalt Bubble Model" in: Behavioral and B Sciences 26(4): 375-444. Lycan, W. G., (2001): "The Case for Phenomenal Externalism" in: J. Tomberlin, Ed., Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 15: Metaphysi Atascadero, Ridgeview Publishing: 17-36. Manzotti, R. and P. Moderato, (forthcoming): "Is Neuroscience Forthcoming 'Mindscience'?" in: Behaviour and Philosophy. Mendola, J., (2008): Anti-Externalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Metzinger, T., (2003): Being no one: the self-model theory of subjectivi Cambridge (Mass): MIT Press. ~ Muller, J., (1840): Handbuch der Physiologie.'1 Nagasawa, Y., (2002): "Externalism and the Memory argument" tat Dialectica 56(4): 335-346. 'l Noe, A., (2004): Action in Perception, Cambridge (Mass): MIT Press.! Noe, A. and E. Thompson, (2004): "Are There Neural Correlates 01 Consciousness?" in: Journal of Consciousnesss Studies 11: 3-28.

97

0' Regan, K., (2001): "What it is like to see: a sensorimotor theory of perceptual experience" in: Synthese 129: 79-103. 0' Regan, K. and A. Noe, (2001): "A sensorimotor account of visual perception and consciousness" in: Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24(5): 939-1011. Pons, T., (1996): "Novel sensations in the congenitally blind" in: Nature 380(11): 479-481. Putnam, H., (1975): Mind, language, and reality, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pylkannen, P., (2007): Mind, Matter and the Implicate Order, Berlin: Springer. Rees, G., G. Kreiman, et al., (2002): "Neural Correlates of Consciousness in Humans" in: Nature Reviews 3: 261-270. Reichenbach, (1956): The Direction of Time, New York: Dover. Revonsuo, A., (1995): "Prospects for a cognitive neurosciences of consciousness" in: Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18: 694-695. Revonsuo, A., (2010): Consciousness. The Science of Subjectivity, Hove: Psychology Press. Robinson, J. A., S. Connell, et aI., (1990): "Do Infants Use Their Own Images to Locate Objects Reflected in Mirrors?" in: Child Development 61(5): 1558-1568. Rockwell, T., (2005): Neither ghost nor brain, Cambridge (Mass): MIT Press. Salmon, W., (1980/1993): "Causality: Production and Propagation" in: E. Sosa and M. Tooley, Eds, Causation, New York, Dover: 154-172. Snyder, F. W., (1970): "The phenomenology of dreaming" in: L. Madow nnd L. Snow, Eds, The psychodynamic implications of the physiological IItudies on dreams Springfield (Ill), Thomas: 124-151. Staller, J. and R. Sekuler, (1976): "Mirror-Image Confusions in Adult and Children: A Non Perceptual Explanation" in: 89 2(253-268). Strawson, G., (2005): "Why physicalism entails panpsychism", in: Danish National Research Foundation. Tonneau, F., (2004): "Consciousness Outside the Head" in: Behavior and Philosophy 32: 97-123. Tononi, G. and G. M. Edelman, (1998): "Consciousness and Complexity" In: Science 282: 1846-1851. Tononi, G. and C. Koch, (2008): "The neural correlates of consciousness: 1111 update." in: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1124: 239-ft!.

98

Varela, F. 1., E. Thompson, et al., (1991/1993): The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience, Cambridge (Mass): MIT Press. Whitehead, A. N., (1925): Science and the modern world, New York: Free Press. , Zeki, S., (2001): "Localization and Globalization in Conscious Vision" in: 1 Annual Review of Neuroscience 24: 57-86.j Zeki, S. and A. Bartels, (1999): "Toward a Theory of Visual i Consciousness" in: Consciousness and Cognition 8: 225-259. I

,I

j

~ \

"it

Taking the Hard Problem of Consciousness Seriously: Dualism, Panpsychism and the Origin of the Combination Problem Michael Blamauer (Vienna)

About the nature of the external world we have at the onset nothing but hypotheses. Before we test them in any very exact way, we may with safety try to understand them. Perhaps what seemed the wildest of them all may turn out to be the very best. 1

Josiah Royce, "Mind and Reality"

1. From dualism to panpsychism The "hard problem of consciousness", made prominent by David Chalmers over the last fifteen years (cf. Chalmers 1995, 1996, 2002) essentially concerns the idea of fundamental mental properties and the concept of naturalistic dualism. The present paper aims to discuss two important implications of this notion of the hard problem. The first regards the principle difficulty of limiting the scope of fundamental properties. The second regards the combination problem. I will argue firstly that naturalistic dualism entails panpsychism, by demonstrating that the fundamentality of mental properties entails their Ubiquity. Secondly, I will show that the core dualistic assumptions presupposed in the formulation of the hard problem within the standard materialist framework might be the origin of the combination problem.2 In the last section I will discuss two alternative positions - substance dualism and metaphysical idealism with the primary aim of showing that a reformulation of panpsychism in one of these frameworks may have the advantage of sidestepping the combination problem.

I Royce (1882), 35. 2 r wish to thank Galen Strawson for the remark that the formulation of the "hard problem of consciousness" is essentially entailed in the assumption of the "standard materialist framework". This remark substantially influenced my thoughts on the combination problem.