Len Yabloko's List: Philosophy of Mind

Roger Vergauwen, Symmetry 2010, 2 1260

In this paper, functionalist, physicalist, epiphenomenalist, and biological models of the mind are discussed and compared. Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism is proposed as a unifying framework for a non-reductive theory of qualia and consciousness. Downward Causation, Emergence through Symmetry-breaking, and Dynamical Systems Theory are used to show how consciousness and qualia emerge from their neural substrate and can also be causally efficacious. The theory presented here is non-reductive and semi-functionalist. It allows for the emergence of mental states that are informational, but not fully functionalizable, since the information is embodied information.

The activity of the dynamic core leads to successive discriminatory states, which entail sets of phenomenal experiences: "but who or what experiences these higher-order discriminations, these qualia? A reasonable suggestion emerges from the facts of embodiment. The brain and body exchange signals from the earliest times of neuronal development and together they interact with the world" Consciousness in this view arises from re-entrant interactions among neural populations and the causal activity is produced by the dynamic core; so, the qualia emerging from this core are caused by it, but, according to Edelman, this does not necessarily lead to epiphenomenalism because these emerging qualia are informational structures even if they are not causal and it may sometimes be useful to talk about these qualitative informational states "as-if" they are causal, depending on the level of description.

But from a functionalist perspective, causal efficacy is a criterion for existence. After all, consciousness does seem to make a difference, but it is not clear if consciousness can be causally active and neither is it immediately clear how all of this can be reconciled with Davidson's anomalous monism, which was discussed earlier and which explicitly endows mental states with causal efficacy. In this respect, Edelman writes: "underlying each quale are distinct neuroanatomical structures and neural dynamics that together account for the specific and distinctive property of the quale. Qualia then reflect the causal sequences of the underlying metastable neural states of the complex dynamic core"

At this point, one may do any of two things. Either one holds that "the buck stops here," in the sense that, as Edelman holds, qualia are real and are not just epiphenomenal, but that they are a-causal. But then, of course, what is the status of these qualia as entities? One might as well say that they do not exist then. Or one may attempt to construct a (mathematical) model of the processes that give rise to conscious experience and qualia, but then again, one may risk a kind of explanatory gap and have no real account of their causal powers. There is, however a third option, which will allow us to draw the threads together, and which allows a unification of the proposals discussed before. Or, if one wants a fourth one, an option we will not take here, there is the denial of the possibility of any theory of consciousness at all, because it is just not possible for human beings to construct such a theory, thus declaring the scientific study of consciousness as off-limits.

Chalmers concludes that information is therefore a natural candidate to play a role in a fundamental theory of consciousness. However, it is not clear how to account for the causal nature of consciousness and of qualia in such a theory so that epiphenomenalism might still be an option. ... If we want to make sense of the causal nature of qualia and phenomenal consciousness, it is important, firstly, to notice that qualia emerge from their neural substrates. They are, therefore, a direct consequence of the embodiment of the mental, and at the same time, the expression of the dual nature of physically embodied information. Finally, once these higher-level properties (e.g., mental states or qualia) emerge, they are able to manifest causal powers in their own right, thus affecting the lower-level phenomena ("downward causation"). This idea of "the whole being more than its parts" is explicitly present in the non-linear dynamical systems approach and the concept of downward causation is used extensively nowadays in psychology, cognitive sciences, and the interpretation of biologically complex data

To a reductionist philosopher, downward causation, which we would suggest is a property of mental states and qualia, is outright unacceptable, because it would mean that one gives up the causal closure of the physical world, thereby invoking weird entities that supposedly would have causal powers, while remaining irreducible themselves: "to give up this principle [causal closure] is to acknowledge that there can in principle be no complete physical theory of physical phenomena, that theoretical physics, in so far as it aspires to be a complete theory, must cease to be pure physics and invoke irreducibly non-physical causal powers-vital principles, entelechies, psychic energies, élan vital, or whatnot"

The concept that is needed here is that of causation as "constraint" or "selection". In physical systems, the causal powers of the objects are not determined only by the physical properties of the constituents and the laws of physics, but also by the organizational patterns. These patterns can have "downward causal capacities" in that they can affect which causal powers of the composing constituents are activated. "Higher-order patterns can have a degree of independence from their underlying physical realizations and can exert what might be called downward causal influences without requiring any objectionable form of emergentism by which higher-order properties would alter the underlying laws of physics. Higher-order properties act by the selective activation of physical powers,not by their alteration"

This order is informational first and foremost and can, in our view, at least in part be said to constitute the phenomenal aspect of physically embodied information: "there seems to be no way around the idea that form, or organization, can be a legitimate locus of emergent causal powers… namely that once a macro level structure has emerged, it is capable of acting as an organized whole whose activities constrain (that is, dynamically constrain) the unfolding of causal processes at lower levels of organization in ways that were not possible prior to emergence and so, in part, in virtue of the emergent organization"

In all likelihood, if any laws exist, on the basis of which mental events (consciousness and qualia) can be explained or predicted, these laws might be deterministic but non-linear and chaotic or, alternatively, stochastic and nonlinear, which implies that the emergence of patterns here could only be explained probabilistically. Our approach has attempted to show just how this causal efficacy may be explained as downward causation, but it still requires an explanation of the mechanism of how emergence happens.

Deacon makes a threefold distinction between different kinds of emergent systems. In doing so, three interconnected hierarchical levels of emergence can be described. The first kind of emergence is "first-order emergence" or "supervenient emergence". This happens in systems in which relational properties determine the emergent higher-order properties, For example, the liquidity of water is determined by the aggregation of water molecules. A second kind of emergence, "second-order emergence", is present in diachronic symmetry-breaking. This kind is typically also found in living systems and mental processes: "in contrast, there is a self-differentiating feature to living and mental processes, which retains and undermines aspects of self-similarity... These complex emergent phenomena share this characteristic change of ensemble properties across time, and are often computationally unpredictable". To begin with, there is every reason to believe that the very concept of information is intimately related to symmetry-breaking. Third-order emergence involves, in addition, information or memory. It is the kind of higher-order regularity which can additionally exert a cumulative influence over the entire causal future of the system, thus encompassing the evolution of second-order processes. According to Deacon, this involves an additional leap of recursive causality: "the relationship implicit in third-order phenomena demands a combination of multi-scale, historical, and semiotic analyses..."

Thus, D. Chalmers' pessimistic view in this respect might be unjustified. This is the more so because within non-linear complex dynamical systems, the concepts of emergence and downward causation can find a natural explanation. On the philosophical level, Davidson's anomalous monism can provide a unifying framework intended to show that epiphenomenalism is not a necessary consequence of a non-reductive theory of consciousness and qualia. To the contrary, the theory we have presented does not deny the causal closure of the world, but hinges on the embodiment of the mental. If the mind, therefore, is indeed meat, it is because of this very same fact that it is more than just that.

Scientific understanding of consciousness in neural terms requires the acceptance of a number of constraints. Any account of consciousness must reject extraphysical tenets such as dualism, and thus be physically based as well as evolutionarily sound. Consciousness is not a thing but rather, as William James pointed out (6), a process that emerges from interactions of the brain, the body, and the environment.

Gerald M. Edelman Neurosciences Institute, San Diego, CA 92121Contributed by Gerald M. Edelman, March 7, 2003

"the neural systems underlying consciousness arose to enable high-order discriminations in a multidimensional space of signals [and] qualia are those discriminations. Differences in qualia correlate with differences in the neural structure and the dynamics that underlie them and I have stressed that it is the distinctions among the entire set of experienced qualia that allow the specific defining property of each quale to appear". However, a scientific account of the individual experiences of these qualia is not to be expected since: "a scientific theory cannot presume to replicate the experience that it describes or explains: a theory to account for a hurricane is not a hurricane. ..." In other words, simulation is not duplication.

So Edelman, who has a rather broad conception of qualia, and in fact states that "consciousness consists of qualia, by which I mean … the entire rich panoply of subjective experience", claims that qualia are reducible, but only with respect to their differences (and similarities). What he has in mind comes close to a functionalist approach in which not the qualia themselves, but their differences and similarities can be functionalized, a view that is also held by Shoemaker and Kim: "Intrinsic qualities of qualia are not functionalizable and therefore are irreducible, and hence causally impotent….certain important relational facts about qualia, in particular their similarities and dissimilarities, are detectable and functionalizable, and can enjoy causal powers as full members of the physical world"

"There is, however, no need to conclude that C [qualia] is therefore meaningless and unnecessary. C states [qualia-states] are informational even if not causal. C states are the discriminations entailed by causal transactions among C' [neural states]" The qualia, then, are the reflections of the permanent causal interactions in the (complex) dynamic core, but are themselves not causally active: "underlying each quale are distinct neuroanatomical structures and neural dynamics that together account for the specific and distinctive phenomenal property of that quale". As for the phenomenal experience of the quale itself, the theory holds that it is no problem, and that therefore, the "hard problem "and the problem of the "explanatory gap" are ill posed ...

This blog is devoted to the discussion of creative philosophy. The goal here is to follow a path of clarity, choosing the best descriptions of mind and mental activities that are available. The view is prospective, looking to the future and not repeating the past.

Review of Zombies and Consciousness (Robert Kirk, 2005)