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Three of the greatest perplexities are these. Why is there something rather than nothing? How did some of the stuff there is come to be alive? How did some of the living stuff come to be conscious? Alongside and intimately related to the questions of how and why matter, life, and consciousness came into being are questions about the nature of matter, life, and consciousness.
Here I take on the third perplexity and sketch a naturalistic theory of consciousness… Subjectivity has emerged so far only in certain biological systems. It makes sense, therefore, to seek a theory of consciousness with the guidance of the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution and the best current brain science.
There are several main philosophical positions on the problem of consciousness. First, there is nonnaturalism, the view that consciousness is not a natural phenomenon and therefore cannot be understood in naturalistic terms. Some nonnaturalists think that consciousness can be made intelligible if it is understood as a power of a nonphysical substance or as composed of nonphysical properties (Popper and Eccles 1977). Others think that we need to invoke a supernatural cause to explain why phenomenal qualia, the sensation of red or the scent of a rose, are correlated with specific types of brain states (Adams 1987, Swinburne 1984). Still others think that consciousness is miraculous. Like transubstantiation and the Trinity, it is not for us to fathom.
Second, there is principled agnosticism (Nagel 1974, 1986). Naturalism is a position that we do not understand, because we do not understand (at least at present) how the relation of consciousness and the brain can be made intelligible in naturalistic terms. We don’t understand what it would mean to give an objective account of subjectivity. Since one should not believe a theory one does not even understand, agnosticism is the best policy.
Third, there is anticonstructive naturalism, noumenal naturalism, or the new mysterianism, as I will also call it (McGinn 1991). This is the view that naturalism is true. There are in fact properties of the brain that account naturalistically for consciousness. But we cannot grasp these properties or explain how consciousness depends on them. Consciousness is terminally mysterious to our minds but possibly not to minds of greater intelligence. It is terminally mysterious not because it is a nonnatural phenomenon, not because it is a miracle, but because an understanding of its nature is “cognitively closed” to us. The problem of consciousness is a case where we know how to ask the question but lack the mental powers to find the answer.
Fourth, there is eliminativist naturalism (P. M. Churchland 1981, P. S. Churchland 1983). According to the eliminativist, naturalism is true. The complete story of our brain will tell the complete story of our mental life. But there is a sense in which consciousness cannot be explained. Consciousness is a concept that is simultaneously too simplistic, too vague, and too historically embedded in false and confused theory to perspicuously denote a phenomenon or set of phenomena in need of explanation. Concepts like consciousness, qualia, and subjectivity are unhelpful in setting out the explanatory agenda for a naturalistic theory of mind. Whatever genuine phenomena these concepts inchoately gesture toward will be explained by the science of the mind. But the explanation will proceed best if we eliminate these concepts from the explanatory platter and seek more perspicuous and credible replacements undergirded by a rich neuroscientific theory.
Finally, there is constructive naturalism. This is the position I aim to defend. Like the anticonstructivist and the eliminativist, I think that naturalism is true. Against the anticonstructivist and principled agnostic, I maintain that there is reason for optimism about our ability to understand the relation between consciousness and the brain. We can make intelligible the existence of consciousness in the natural world. Against the eliminativist, I maintain that the concept of consciousness, despite its shortcomings, is needed, at least at the beginning of inquiry, to mark what is in need of explanation. Phenomenal, qualitative consciousness is what needs to be explained…
Even at this early stage in the development of the science of the mind, there are deep differences of opinion among naturalists about whether the mystery of consciousness can be made to yield, about whether there are such things as phenomenal consciousness and qualia in need of explanation, about the importance of consciousness in the overall economy of mind, and about what shape the theory will take and what methods will be used to construct it…
Happily, I am not alone in believing that a constructive theory is possible. Recent work by P. S. Churchland (1986), P. M. Churchland (1989), and Daniel Dennett (1991) is in the mode of constructivist naturalism. All three take conscious experience seriously as a phenomenon or set of phenomena to be explained. No one now defends the outright elimination of our common sense ways of conceiving of mind… The disagreements within constructive naturalism are plentiful. The important point is that these disagreements proceed in a context of agreement that mind in general and consciousness in particular will yield their secrets only by coordinating all our informational sources at once.
— Owen J Flanagan,
Consciousness Reconsidered
Filed under: natural philosophy
