Once More: The Hard Problem of Consciousness Revisited (My Brain Is Starting To Hurt. Or, Is It MY Brain?)

What follows is not merely idle speculation. It is a core problem of neurophilosophy as neuroscience searches for the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC).

Causal closure is what it's all about. How can a cause, brain matter, produce consciousness as some kind of physical phenomenon? How is my delight in the exquisite beauty of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata a physical phenomenon? How can you explain as physical phenomena what it feels like to be you? How is all that a physical effect from a physical cause, which philosophically would be physical monism? If we don't accept monism we are thrown back to dualism with its two things, some kind of (1) ghost in this (2) machine we call the body.

Put it differently and in grammatic conjugation: How do we get from the first person, "I," and how I live my life to the third person, where all is an object related to me, including my consciousness? How does this sense of being me get rendered so that it can be discussed in the third person? Can it ever be rendered thus?

For some time I have believed that the way out of this problem is to view the world as also containing consciousness. One way to think about it is this: Just as some quantum phenomena are up quarks or down quarks, or photon particles, so others could be consciousness phenomena.

As conjecture, this is not a great leap. We find that non-locality operates at the quantum level. That is, across great distances, photons, for example, can "talk" to one another so they change polarity as they speed toward a target. This is what Einstein would call "spooky action at a distance" but this quantum entanglement is nonetheless a proven case. So, too, perhaps, this is the case with consciousness as non-local. I find that Galen Strawson has a view that would be sympathetic to mine. Read on.

"The hard problem is this: it is widely supposed that the world is made entirely of mere matter, but how could mere matter be conscious? How, in particular, could a couple of pounds of grey tissue have experiences?

Until quite recently, there were two main schools of thought on this. According to one, the hard problem is actually very easy: the answer is that consciousness ‘emerges’ from neural processes. This succeeds in replacing ‘what is consciousness and how is it possible?’ with ‘what is emergence and how is it possible?’ But it doesn’t seem to get much further; many find it less than satisfactory. According to the other view, the hard problem is so hard that it can’t be real: consciousness must be some sort of illusion. Many of this persuasion tried hard to convince themselves that they are, in fact, not conscious, but few of them succeeded. Centuries ago, Descartes suggested, plausibly, that the attempt is self-defeating.

There is, I should add, another way to respond to the hard problem. One might hold that the world isn’t made entirely of matter after all; there is also a fundamentally different kind of stuff – mind-stuff, call it – and consciousness resides in that. Notoriously, however, this view has hard problems of its own." More

Theodore Dalrymple: And So, Why Do You Behave Like That?

Let me see, first there was Freud, who would launch people into a new world of self-understanding. He is now passé. I recall a book by behaviorist B.F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity, in which he claimed that both are illusory attributes and the sooner we stop believing in them the better. Skinner was a highly respected public and academic intellectual in his day, but his ideas have faded into the background.

Of course, there was also the Steady State Theory of the universe's origin. Then along came the Big Bang. Way back when, there was the ether. A brainy Swiss patent-office examiner put that one to rest. What else? The patent-office examiner said God does not play dice with the universe, but quantum physics revealed that apparently He does. With breakthroughs in quantum physics, humankind was headed for brave new horizons. Then that cussed wave form collapse could not be understood and Heisenberg had to formulate his Uncertainty Principle. More recently, we have string theory, which presently is hanging by a thread for many.

Ah, but don't despair. A bold new group of men and women has emerged. They are highly confident they will find the answer about consciousness. Trumpet fanfare and drum roll, please. Enter: neuroscientists and neurophilosophers who will explain why you feel like you.

Theodore Dalrymple sees this kind of confidence as more than bothersome. Consider the issues of free will, the self, the soul, and human nature. Neuroscience and neurophilosophy have staked out the turf on these topics, and certainly it is turf that will unsettle the public mind, undermine the common weal. Some of the findings will have profound and unsettling implications for individuals and societies, in part because of public misconceptions, in part because researchers make arrogant claims without concern for religious as well as ethical and moral implications for societies and people. If neuroscience teaches us anything, it is that human beings are not ruled by reason.

Dalrymple attended a neuroscience conference and found great optimism toward unraveling the mysteries of consciousness and the brain. He does not seem especially impressed. More

Zen Buddhism At War

In history, Zen priests and monks did not always behave according to popular conception of those in the West. That it was practiced by samurai is sometimes forgotten. In 1933 the Japanese government withdrew from The League of Nations after coming under sharp criticism for its aggression in China. After invasion, it set up Manchuria as Manchuko, a puppet state. In Zen temples, the mother country was seen as following a kind of divine right. During the Rape of Nanking and its unspeakable atrocities, there was no outcry from those wearing robes. (Nor does Japan to this day acknowledge its atrocities, a source of friction with China.) Instead, Japan was regarded as the natural heir to all the city's riches. The attack on Pearl Harbor did not disturb their Zen meditation. There was no attempt to "awaken" generals in the Japanese Imperial Army. Buddhist priests, whom we assume to be pacifists, did not act that way.

In WWII for the Japanese war effort, Zen Buddhists of the Soto sect raised money for two fighter planes. The Rinzai sect raised money for three. As well, Kanzeon, bodhisattva of compassion, was renamed Kanzeon Shogun, rather like Jesus General, an oxymoron.

A reading of D.T. Suzuki--the man generally acknowledged as introducing Zen to the West--reveals that Zen has no clear moral position. Suzuki says that Japanese Zen teaches its practitioners to merge with circumstances and be loyal. Hence, if you are governed by Tojo, Mussolini, or Franco, be a good fascist and make bullets, but don't make waves.

Quite simply, for all the vaunted emphasis on compassion of Eastern teachings, you must enter Zen (or any meditative religion) with your own moral compass accurately calibrated. More.

Steven Pinker on Moral Progress

Critics have scoffed at atheism evangelist Richard Dawkins for his belief that humankind has made moral progress over the centuries. Dawkins, of course, uses his contention to argue that religion is not needed to control moral behavior. (For Naysayers to Dawkins, see my 11 June 2009 post.)

Roger Scruton allows that while institutions are no longer medieval and, indeed, have progressed, human beings have not. Their institutions hold them in check. Just read the news to find daily examples, either among individuals or with countries, of cruelty and violence. He cautions us against looking on the bright side, saying it can be a dangerous tendency. More. In short, Scruton would have a lively "discussion" with Dawkins and Pinker.

Critics of Dawkins and Pinker could cite Auschwitz, Buchenwald, the Armenian Massacre, Stalin's Ukraine Famine,Darfur, East Timor, Idi Amin and Uganda, and on and on. I would add the Lord's Resistance Army, or LRA, of Uganda, which has no agenda--certainly not religion--and serves only its own barbaric appetites, such as kidnapping school girls, raping them, and turning them into prostitutes. One girl refused a commander, and he ordered other children to bash her head in. The girl's sister was forced to participate. Atrocities such as this leave me shuddering, and I know that for some children life is a vale of tears. They are not part of any statistics for moral progress.

For all that, statistics seem to bear out Dawkins' argument, though I would add, not support his atheism. (Atheism, like theism, comes about by a leap of faith, not through numbers.) Steven Pinker has entered the fray, and argues that human violence has indeed declined and, of course, Pinker has no need of religion to explain it.

I quote: "social scientists have started to count bodies in different historical periods, they have discovered that the romantic theory gets it backward: Far from causing us to become more violent, something in modernity and its cultural institutions has made us nobler. In fact, our ancestors were far more violent than we are today. Indeed, violence has been in decline over long stretches of history, and today we are probably living in the most peaceful moment of our species' time on earth."

What causes people to think our times are so horrific? Well, the Associated Press, Cognitive Illusion, and rising expectations, among other factors. More

Macular Degeneration & A Ray of Hope

My brother-in-law has macular degeneration. When we visit I joke with him, and ask if being unable to see the center of things has turned him into a political extremist. He can be looking right at me yet only see a blur of colors. He lives in a very small town and used to walk to the local coffee shop but stopped doing so. People would greet him, and he would say good morning to them in return, but he had no idea who the person was. Embarrassed by this, he stopped walking the sidewalk and now spends all his time at home, his eyes seeing a smear of colors on the television screen, only his ears able to understand. The disease is hereditary. His mother had it and he may have passed it on to his children and grandchildren. Some have decided to take the test to determine if they have it. Others don't want to know.

There is hope for some people like him. Consider this: "Partially sighted and registered blind people can be taught to read and see faces again using the undamaged parts of their eyes, say experts.

When only the central vision is lost, as with the leading cause of blindness, age-related macular degeneration, peripheral vision remains intact.

And patients can be taught to exploit this, the Macular Disease Society says." More

A Hiccup of Gross Irrationality?

According to Hindu advaita philosophy, or nondualism, your "I am" is a manifestation of the great "I AM," and for that reason you don't die because your apparent self is only an illusion, a manifestation, a projection on the screen of your mind. In Christian doctrine, our immortal souls are sent to either heaven or hell. (Fortunately, Pope Benedict not too long ago saved innocent babies from limbo by decreeing that it does not exist.) Descartes found he could not doubt that he was doubting, and for that reason he existed. Each of these perspectives provides a stratagem for positing some kind of eternal being against the fear of dying.

Of course we knew it would only be a matter of time before neuroscientists and neurophilosophers would take aim at such beliefs as so much nonsense. I am reminded of Tom Wolfe's famous essay about them, titled "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died." (See the sidebar on this page.) An argument for the evolution of the brain and from evolutionary psychology provides them with their starting point. Read on.

Some researchers "are increasingly arguing that the evolution of self-consciousness has posed a different kind of problem altogether. This position holds that our ancestors suffered the unshakable illusion that their minds were immortal, and it’s this hiccup of gross irrationality that we have unmistakably inherited from them. Individual human beings, by virtue of their evolved cognitive architecture, had trouble conceptualizing their own psychological inexistence from the start." More

Do Animals Commit Suicide?

"Forty years ago, Richard O'Barry watched Kathy, a dolphin in the 1960s television show Flipper, kill herself. Or so he says. She looked him in the eye, sank to the bottom of a steel tank and stopped breathing. The moment transformed the dolphin trainer into an animal-rights activist for life, and his role in The Cove, the Oscar-winning documentary about the dolphin-meat business in a small town in Japan, has transformed him into a celebrity.

' The suicide was what turned me around,' says O'Barry. ' The [animal entertainment] industry doesn't want people to think dolphins are capable of suicide, but these are self-aware creatures with a brain larger than a human brain. If life becomes so unbearable, they just don't take the next breath. It's suicide.'

Animal suicide may seem absurd, yet the concept is as old as philosophy. Aristotle told a story about a stallion that leaped into an abyss after realizing it was duped into mating with its mother, and the topic was discussed by early Christian theologians and Victorian academics. . . .

The Romans saw animal suicide as both natural and noble; an animal they commonly reported as suicidal was one they respected, the horse. . . .

In 1845 the Illustrated London News reported on a Newfoundland who had repeatedly tried to drown himself: ' The animal appeared to get exhausted, and by dint of keeping his head determinedly under water for a few minutes, succeeded at last in obtaining his object, for when taken out this time he was indeed dead.' . . . " More

The Psychopaths Among Us

Social predators who charm, manipulate, and ruthlessly plow their way through life, psychopaths, according to at least one author, are neither sociopaths nor psychotics. They know the difference between right and wrong and just ignore it. Egocentric, they feel no empathy, guilt or remorse. For them, others are potential victims. Psychopaths are indifferent to the trail of unhappiness they leave behind through victims they have deceitfully manipulated.

Are they psychopathic because of nature or nurture, genes or environment? The answer is uncertain, but they are almost impossible to treat because they believe the problem is with others, not themselves. They think they have no psychological or emotional problems. Not all psychopaths are criminals and not all criminals are psychopaths. Chances are good that you have met one or will some day. Beware. A checklist for the personality type would include these: glibness, grandiosity, lack of guilt, and shallow emotions, as well as social deviance traits such as impulsiveness, lack of responsibility, and antisocial behavior. More

Elyn Saks, Schizophrenia, & High Accomplishment

"Elyn Saks is a law professor at the University of Southern California, a Marshall scholar, and a graduate of Yale Law School. She also suffers from schizophrenia -- an illness that many would assume makes her impressive resume an impossibility. In 2007, she published an acclaimed memoir of her struggle with the disease, 'The Center Cannot Hold'. Her book is a frank and moving portrait of the experience of schizophrenia, but also a call for higher expectations -- a plea that we allow people with schizophrenia to find their own limits. "

Of her condition, she says this, "At one end of the spectrum, I will have transient crazy thoughts (e.g. I have killed people) which I immediately identify as symptoms of my illness and not real. A little further along the spectrum, I may have three or four days of being dominated by crazy thoughts that I can’t push away. And at the far end I am crouching in a corner shaking and moaning."

Despite all that, she attended graduate school at Oxford and has a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant. More