Exploring the Mind-Body Problem: Part 1 – Consciousness and Materialism

Having spent considerable time these past few weeks debating the issue of consciousness among colleagues of mine (some, in fact, dear friends) who are atheists and materialists and so on, I would like to examine a series of objections that the existence of mind poses to the materialist paradigm–serious objections, and perhaps deadly ones.

Side note: In my upcoming book How to Be Better at (Almost Everything) I suggest that joining, and participating in, an online debate group is a productive way of sharpening ones critical thinking. All skills must be practiced, including logic. Just a tip!

We begin with an overview, however brief (or, for some, a reminder), of what materialism is. Fortunately, the philosophy can be simply stated: “Only physical things exist”, says the materialist, and so everything is (at bottom) reducible to, and explainable by, whatever the fundamental stuff of the universe happens to be (fermions, bosons, etc). The essential aimlessness, undirectedness, intentionless, and unconscious quality of matter: That is materialism.

Nothing out of the ordinary there, and surely a statement any orthodox materialist would agree with. But it’s here–right at the start–that the problems begin. Because how does anybody begin to explain the existence of mind given materialism as their starting point? But before we get too far into it, allow me to offer the personal remark that my time as an atheist was largely brought to an end by how insufficient the materialistic accounts of mind seemed to be, the more I looked into them. I came to the conclusion, in part by way of consciousness, in other part by arguments for God, that materialism–and therefore atheism–cannot possibly be true.

Anyway, there are a number of arguments that attempt to establish the logical difficulties between materialism and mind, but in the interest of time, I would like to focus on two: The argument from reason, and the problem of the categorical gap.

We’ll start with the argument from reason, which can be summarized follows. Reasoning involves: “The movement from one premise (or proposition) or another toward a conclusion in a coherent sequence whose connections are determined by the semantic content (or meaning) of the steps taken.” But if materialism is true, then all sequences are determined by impersonal laws governing unconscious, physical things. Therefore, one neuronal event can cause another neuronal event only by physical necessity, not by logical necessity. (Cause and effect vs. ground and consequent.) But should this be the case, then none of our thoughts can ever be rationally justified, including the thought that materialism is true.

We’ll borrow a formulation of this argument from philosopher Ed Feser to help us along:

1. Materialism holds that thinking consists of nothing more than the transition from one material process in the brain to another in accordance with causal laws (whether these transitions are conceived of in terms of the processing of symbols according to the rules of an algorithm a la computationalism, or in some other model).
2. Material processes have their causal efficacy, including their ability to generate other material processes, only by virtue of their physical properties (that is, those described by physical science), and not by virtue or any meaning or semantic content that might be associated with them. (For example, punching the symbols “1,” “+”, “1,” and “=” into a calculator will generate the further symbol “2” whether or not we associate the standard arithmetical meanings with these symbols or instead assign to them some eccentric meanings, because the electronic properties of the calculator alone are what determine what symbols get displayed. Similarly, neural processes that are in fact associated with the thought that all men are mortal and the thought that Socrates is a man would still generate the neural process that is in fact associated with the thought that Socrates is mortal even if those neural processes had all been associated with some other meanings instead, because the neuro-physiological properties of the processes alone are what determine which further processes get generated.)
3. But one thought can serve as rational justification for another thought only by virtue of the meaning or semantic content of the thoughts. (For example, it is only because we associate the symbols “1,” “+”, “1,” “=,”, and “2” with the standard meanings that “1 + 1+ = 2” expresses an arithmetical truth. Similarly, it is only because “all men are mortal,” and “Socrates is a man” have the meanings they do that the first two sentences logically entail the third, and only when the neural processes in question are associated with the corresponding thoughts that the first two provide a rational justification for believing the third.)
4. So if materialism is true, then there is nothing about our thought processes that can make one thought a rational justification of another; for their physical and causal relations alone, and not their semantic and logical relations, determine which thoughts follows which.
5. So if materialism is true, none of our thoughts ever is rationally justified.
6. But this includes the thoughts of materialists themselves.
7. So, if materialism is true, then it cannot be rationally justified; the theory undermines itself.

This argument could benefit from further exposition. Let’s see what we can do.

Premise one is standard materialist orthodoxy. The problem, of course, is that on this view (which is a common account with respect to computational theories of mind, which someone like Steven Pinker would hold) is that mental properties turn out to be mere epiphenomena or that which simply “floats atop” the physical, causal processes. They are then in no way related back into the causal chain, since it is the physical properties alone doing the work, not the mental beliefs themselves. Beliefs (on materialism, anyway) are just a sort of “mental residue”–mere driftwood, as it were, atop the stream of physical effects–and therefore causally impotent. But this seems to me strange, since we all do believe that our beliefs influence our behavior (it seems, for example, like my belief that all men are mortal, and that I am a man, influences me to act in line with other inferences I’ve made regarding healthy living, etc), but from this position, we must concede that such a belief is an illusion, for it is only the physical chain of events underlying those beliefs that determine our behavior. In other words, it’s not my belief that there is a beer in the fridge, followed by my desire to drink it that causes me to walk into my kitchen. Rather, it is all due to some irrational stew of chemicals underneath.

(Note: It is very important to pause at this point and note that we are not looking at the way things are, but rather the way things would have to be if materialism were true. It is enormously difficult to grasp this argument for many people just because it is so hard to believe that our beliefs impart no effect upon our behavior: But again, that is not what we are getting at. We are not concerned with what is, but rather what would have to be be if X were the case; X, in this case, being materialism.)

Let’s think back to the calculator example that Dr. Feser used. The meaning of the symbols “2,” and “2,” and “=” are in this case irrelevant to the causal efficacy of the calculator, for the same causal interactions would occur even if those meanings meant something else, or if there had been no meaning to begin with. They only have meaning (semantic content) because we assign that semantic content to them, because we are capable of conscious acts of understanding. The calculator runs solely from electrical signals, not semantic content (nor conscious understanding), since we could change or interpret the meaning of the symbols however we wanted and it would have no effect on how the device operates. But if the brain is supposed to operate like a computer then there is no reason to think this isn’t also the case for us.

As Dr. Feser explains, “If your thought was that ‘Socrates is a man’ is identical with a neural process instantiating a sentence in Mentalese which has a meaning or content that Socrates is a man, then that meaning per se plays absolutely no role in causing whatever events the neural process, and thus the thought, causes. The causal properties of the neural process/thought would be just as they are even if it had instead the meaning that ‘it is raining,’ or even if it had no meaning at all. And that entails that the fact that your thought has the content that ‘Socrates is a man,’ plays absolutely no role whatsoever in causing you, for example, to say or write the sentence ‘Socrates is a man.’ You would have written or uttered the same sentence even if your thought had been about the rain or even if it had had no meaning at all. The electro-chemical properties of the neural process implementing the thought are all that matter to its causal efficacy, just as the electronic properties of the symbols in a calculator are all that matter to their causal efficacy.” (Philosophy of Mind, pg. 150 – 151)

That is support for premise two, but we can surely expand on this, from, say, supervenience theory. The standard materialist account is that whatever happens on the macro-level is all but “supervening” on the micro-level. So, take it like this. All is the result of the basic particles described by physics and the laws governing them, then simply add to that the obvious notion that semantic content is not something on that (read: mirco) level. But this brings us right back to epiphenomenalism: That whatever our beliefs are, they can’t seem to be anything but a mere (however fantastic) residual of what’s going on physically underneath. In other words, our beliefs would (on this view) be causally effete. And so as long as you grant these two premises, the argument then goes through (I don’t see anyone arguing the later premises; least I’ve never seen it happen). Materialism, we must then conclude, is rationally self-undermining. In other words, even if materialism were true, we would have no reason for thinking so.

At this point, someone might attempt to salvage operation by bringing in evolution as a way to explain how true beliefs might arise through purely materialistic processes. But this won’t do for one very simple reason. It’s question-begging. The project of the argument from reason is to see, given the standard account of materialism, if we have justification for holding our beliefs as reliably true to with respect to anything. Therefore, we can’t start from the position that we’re already justified (given materialism) in believing the theory of evolution, since that is precisely what’s up for debate.

That said, many philosopher’s (famously, Alvin Plantinga) have ventured a similar line of argument from the standpoint of evolution with respect to naturalism, which is not exactly materialism, but close. The general idea is that there appears to be significant tension between the theory of evolution, on one hand, and naturalism on the other, in that evolutionary theory given naturalism seems to provide a defeater of itself (that you can’t rationally hold to both), for reasons similar to what we’ve already discussed: The view becomes self-undermining.

While this is not the argument I’m here defending, a few other reasons (aside from question-begging) why the evolution defense doesn’t hold:

• Evolution itself could well produce epiphenomenalism (or eliminativism: “there just are no such things as beliefs.”), and would seem to have to if we’re granting that the evolutionary process is 1) wholly unguided and 2) materialism is true. That is, evolution (on materialism) just would produce beliefs that have no causal relation whatever to behavior and thus no purpose or function. Evolution would select only for adaptive behavior, and beliefs formed by evolution (true or false) would then be ignored by selection pressures, since they are not responsible for conferring a fitness advantage. As Plantinga himself puts it, “Fleeing predators, finding food, and mates—these things require cognitive devices that in some way track crucial features of the environment, and are appropriately connected with muscles, but they do not require true belief, or even belief at all.”
• OR, beliefs could have causal efficacy (hard to see how, given materialism, but let’s grant it for the sake of argument), but, as philosopher William Lane Craig puts it, “not in virtue of semantic or mental content, but in virtue of the physical characteristics or syntax that are associated with, or part of them. Plantinga illustrates this with a person who reads a poem so loudly that it breaks a glass, but this causal effect is not produced by the meanings or contents of the poem (they, like beliefs in this third option, are causally irrelevant), but by the sound waves coming from the reader’s mouth.”
• Even if we grant that beliefs were causally potent, it’s certainly plausible that such a complexly organized system could very well be maladaptive and energetically wasteful. That is, beliefs could be seen as an unnecessary and wasteful “middle man”, between what’s really needed for survival. Scientists have produced two reasons why this could be: First, increased information-processing is potentially a liability (it plausibly seems that beliefs could altogether be bypassed for the sake of efficiency with respect to causal connections that confer a fitness benefit directly), and second, having such a complex system requires a longer and more vulnerable period of gestation for the young.
• “False, but useful” beliefs (that did have causal efficacy) could very well make it through the selection mechanism, and perhaps not at a low probability. In fact, that is almost certainly what the materialist would have to admit that belief in God or objective morality is, among other things. Daniel Dennett (himself an eliminative materialist) suggests this is the case with his theory of “error-management.” As Justin Barrett explains it: “Because the costs or benefits of getting things right or wrong are not equal, the cognitive system will become biased toward certain outputs that reduce risk and maximize reward at the expense of accuracy.” This is not just conceptually plausible on the naturalist account of evolution, but may even have some empirical support in well known cases of unrealistic fears (snakes, for example), as well as unrealistic optimism (in cases of selecting a mate).
• Plantinga further encourages us to consider other options for how these “false, but useful” beliefs might arise, such as how our friend Paul, a prehistoric hominid, might avoid tigers not because he dislikes being eaten, but because he actually does like being eaten, but believes there might be a better prospect of predator on the market, and so he runs away. This sounds silly, but shows that fitness advantages =/= a reliably true belief. (In his formal treatment of the issue, Plantinga offers further development of this; I shouldn’t want to sell the man short.)
• Finally, pretty much all modes of abstract issues (philosophical theorizing, for example, arguing about evolution, etc) go far beyond what would be required for survival, which makes you wonder why such beliefs were selected for to begin with. Again, they seem almost wasteful.
• But now to retract the previously granted assumption: The greatest difficult to the evolutionary defense is that it just seems wholly implausible that beliefs could, in fact, have any causal connection to behavior. This is a major problem because 1) the truth or falsity of a collection of beliefs can only be shaped or directed by selection pressure IF (and only if) the truth or falsity exerts causal influence. But on materialism such a position cannot be, since it is purely the neuro-chemical events themselves (and not their semantic content) that exert causal influence. But if that is true then evolution cannot account for cognitive reliability.

To summarize, even if the argument through evolution weren’t question begging, there are still not-inconsiderable reasons to doubt the reliability of our cognitive faculties toward forming true beliefs on the (unguided/naturalistic) evolutionary account. If materialism is true, then evolution would seem to lead to the same problems of epiphenomenalism anyway, such that even if we grant beliefs could be causally potent on materialism (which we shouldn’t, and which many a materialist themselves do not), there are multiple scenarios of a not low-probability that should cause us to think our cognitive faculties on evolution (+ naturalism) aren’t reliable; at the very least we should be agnostic about it. But to be agnostic about cognitive reliability brings doubt upon the entire epistemological project of evolutionism (evolution + naturalism), including the belief in evolutionism. Again, the position is self-undermining.

But I have probably devoted far too much time to the evolutionary argument than needed. It is only because people bring it up often enough as a response that I thought it merited discussion. That said, we must continually remind ourselves that given materialism, the attempted defense from evolution is simply question-begging.

Now that we’ve finished with that somewhat tedious excursus, let’s return to another problem faced by the materialist in relation to mind. (If you’d like to see another argument from reason, see this argument from Ed Feser.)

The argument for reason is only one of the now many, multiplying philosophical difficulties faced by the materialist when attempting to explain the existence of consciousness on a purely physical account. The other, and perhaps even more daunting obstacle, is what’s known as the categorical gap.

In short: There seems to be an insurmountable qualitative abyss between everything the materialist says reality is, and everything we know about ourselves and therefore mind. In other words, a seemingly impossible logical obstacle attains on how everything the materialist insists reality is composed of: a collection of disparate physical things that are unintentional, undirected, aimless, and unconscious—could somehow and suddenly “flip over” into its complete and perfect, qualitative opposite: intentional, directed, aimless, conscious unification.

The analogy occasionally given to explain this by the materialist (often in relation to emergence theory or supervenience) is that of a mosaic, or how tiny pictures can add up to a larger portrait, and that one cannot be changed without changing the other. In other words, given enough small pictures and enough time, eventually a larger, more coherent portrait may be assembled, or so the materialist says. But this example is grossly dis-analogous to the problem at hand (and therefore false), since in the example of a mosaic we are talking in qualitative parallels: pictures leading to other pictures. The problem, however, of consciousness on materialism is more like imagining how a person, given enough white blocks, and enough time, could somehow construct a black tower. (Set aside for a moment the miraculous difficulty in organizing such a complex structure—mosaic or otherwise—without an organizing intelligence behind it, and let’s focus purely on the principled qualitative distinction.) Surely it doesn’t matter how many white blocks a person has, or how much time you give them, a black tower is never being created within that realm of limitation. That is the appropriate analogy with respect to mind on materialism, not a mosaic.

To be clear: This is more than just a mystery or limit of neuro-scientific understanding, this is a problem of methodological limitation and, I would say, ontological confusion. Consciousness, as David Bently Hart explains, “is contrary in its sheer phenomenological structure to everything that modern (materialist) orthodoxy tells us nature is.” This seems to make a materialist understanding of mind and consciousness logically unsupportable.

But let’s take a moment to ensure we haven’t gotten too far ahead of ourselves. By denying the materialist account, one is not committing to any bizarre or exotic form of Cartesian dualism, Gnosticism, hovering spirits, or what have you. Clearly, there is a deep and intimate connection between brain events and mental phenomena, but a deep and intimate connection entails neither causation in any particular direction, nor a full and adequate explanation. My suggestion is simply there is more to the story than the materialist can give us and so the materialist worldview should be withdrawn, even if the common materialistic account does say many true things (and no doubt it does). For example: Should you whack a person in the head with a 9-iron, you may well impede their ability to think, perhaps even permanently. (I knew a guy, once). But we certainly don’t need “materialism” to tell us that; that much has always been obvious, especially to anybody who’s thought seriously about the mind-body problem. Nothing of the sort of the example above would have surprised thinkers like Aristotle or Aquinas, because, again, it’s just obvious. And to either them it would have seemed especially obvious given on hylomorphism (or Thomistic dualism) the soul is simply the “form” or organizing principle of the body, and not some entirely separate or mysteriously “cooped up” entity imprisoned in the pineal gland, or what have you.

A useful analogy of mind and body might be that of a musician and a piano. Damage the piano and the musician cannot perform his or her melodies. But it is not the piano itself which is wholly responsible for the melodies. The piano then, is simply a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for the playing of melodies, just as the brain–at least with respect to us humans while here on earth*–is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for mental phenomena. (*That said: The current state of research on veridical near death experiences seems to strongly suggest the brain is not as necessary for thinking as we may, well, sometimes think. We’ll leave that for another post.)

But all of that, for now, is beside the point, since we are not looking at what the possible relationship might be between that of mind and body (again, I’ll save that for a later part in the series) only that the materialist understanding is almost certainly not the case.

Either way,  I believe I’ve said enough for now. I’ll develop the argument more later, and venture some ideas on dualism after that. In the meantime, I leave you with his: David Bently Hart in his usual, beautiful style, describing the problem of consciousness on purely physical terms.

(Small note: What the host should have said with respect to admiring eliminativism is that he thinks it’s “consistent”, not “coherent.” I would agree that eliminativism is reasoning in a straight line given the metaphysics of materialism, but I’m with Hart in that such a position can only end in absurdity.)

– Pat

PS – This doesn’t fit exactly into the argument above, but its worth a mention. It seems to me a good argument, and is rather simple. (This too from Alvin Plantinga.)

Liebniz’s law states if A is identical to B, then whatever is true of A is also true of B. In other words, every property A has, B has, and conversely. This would also be true of all modal properties, as well, such as “the possibility of being such and such.”

Next: take the materialist position that who a person is “their “I” (A) =  that person’s body (B), and ask: Is there anything possible of “myself” (A) that might not be possible of my body (B)? And surely the answer is, yes–there is. We can, with no serious difficulty, conceive of a number of scenarios that might be possible of “me” (A) but not for “my body” (B): we might conceive of ourselves existing in, say, the body of antelope (which would be sweet, at least for a day or two),or as a disembodied soul. But these possibilities are not also conceivable of our body. It follows then that A = / = B; that who *I* am =/= my body.

Before anyone gets mixed up on what I’m saying, this argument isn’t claiming it’s ever actually been the case that a “person” has has existed in the body of antelope (as cool as that would be, for a day), nor does that need to be the case. But what that example is, is conceivable, and when making an identity claim (such that A = B) anything that is conceivable of A must also be conceivable of B, otherwise they are, in fact, not the same thing. And that’s all we need to show with respect to materialism that its account of who a person is, is false. So, while it may still the case (and I would argue it is) that a deep and important connection exists between ourselves and our body, they are simply not the same. In this case, A, in fact, =/=, B.