[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Elliott Sober once suggested to me in that spirit that consciousness might be like the redness of
blood—a side effect of functional biological features that has no function in itself, and no direct
explanation by natural selection. In that case consciousness would be like a giant spandrel, in the
sense of Gould and Lewontin13 (and a very lucky one for us). But clearly this bare identification of a
cause would not be a satisfactory explanation. Without more, it would explain neither why particular
organisms are conscious nor why conscious organisms have come to exist at all.
For a satisfactory explanation of consciousness as such, a general psychophysical theory of
consciousness would have to be woven into the evolutionary story, one which makes intelligible both
(1) why specific organisms have the conscious life they have, and (2) why conscious organisms arose
in the history of life on earth. At this point such a theory is a complete fantasy, but it is still possible
to pose some questions about what it would have to accomplish—in particular about the relation
between parts (1) and (2) of the explanatory task.
Suppose there were a general psychophysical theory that, if we could discover it, would allow us
to understand, for any type of physical organism, why it did or did not have conscious life, and if it
did, why it had the specific type of conscious life that it had. This could be called a nonhistorical
theory of consciousness. It would accomplish task (1). But I believe that even if such a powerful nonhistorical
theory were conjoined with a purely physical theory of how those organisms arose through
evolution, the result would not be an explanation of the appearance of consciousness as such. It would
not accomplish task (2); it would still leave the appearance of consciousness as an accidental and
therefore unexplained concomitant of something else—the genuinely intelligible physical history.
Let me call a conjunctive explanation one in which A explains B and B has as a consequence C.
Sometimes such a conjunction will not amount to an explanation of C as such. Suppose C is “the death
of several members of the same family,” as discussed above. If A gives the independent cause of each
of four deaths, B is the sum of those deaths, and they are in fact members of the same family, then C
is a consequence of B but it is not explained, as such, by A. We can explain why four people died who
are in fact members of the same family without explaining why four members of the same family
died.
Or consider the different conjunctive explanation in the case of the pocket calculator. A is the
physical explanation of what happens when I tap in “3 + 5 =,” which causes B, the display on the
screen of the figure “8.” It is a further fact that this figure is the symbol for the number 8, and the
figures I tapped in are the symbols for a certain sum, so we have the consequence C that the device
produced the right answer for the sum entered. But without more, this is merely an assertion, and not
yet an explanation of why the calculator gave that answer, or the right answer. Without the further fact
that the calculator was designed to embody an arithmetic algorithm and to display its results in Arabic
numerals, the physical explanation alone would leave the arithmetical result completely mysterious. It
would give the cause of the figure that appeared on the screen, but would not explain the number as
such.
The moral seems to be that a conjunctive explanation, going from A to B and B to C, can explain
C only if there is some further, internal relation between the way A explains B and the way B explains
C. In the case of the family, this would be satisfied if the same rare hereditary disease killed all four
people: each of them developed the disease partly because they were members of the same family. In
the case of the calculator, the condition is satisfied since the device has the physical structure and
function it has precisely in order to embody the arithmetic algorithm.
It isn’t enough that C should be the consequence, even the necessary consequence, of B, which is
explained by A. There must be something about A itself that makes C a likely consequence. I believe
that if A is the evolutionary history, B is the appearance of certain organisms, and C is their
consciousness, this means that some kind of psychophysical theory must apply not only
nonhistorically, at the end of the process, but also to the evolutionary process itself. That process
would have to be not only the physical history of the appearance and development of physical
organisms but also a mental history of the appearance and development of conscious beings. And
somehow it would have to be one process, making both aspects of the result intelligible.
If, for example, the explanation of nonreducible conscious life were to preserve the basic structure
of evolutionary theory, it would probably involve the following: (1) At least in later stages,
consciousness per se plays an essential causal role in the survival and reproduction of organisms. (2)
The features of consciousness that play this role are somehow genetically transmitted. (3) The genetic
variation among individuals which supplies the candidates for natural selection, at least after a certain
point, is simultaneously mental and physical variation. (4) Further, and most significant, it seems
unavoidable that these mechanisms should be preceded by others in the earlier stages of evolution that
create the conditions for their possibility.
This would mean abandoning the standard assumption that evolution is driven by exclusively
physical causes. Indeed, it suggests that the explanation may have to be something more than physical
all the way down. The rejection of psychophysical reductionism leaves us with a mystery of the most
basic kind about the natural order—a mystery whose avoidance is one of the primary motives of
reductionism. It is a double mystery: first, about the relation between the physical and the mental in
each individual instance, and second, about how the evolutionary explanation of the development of
physical organisms can be transformed into a psychophysical explanation of how consciousness
developed.
The existence of consciousness is both one of the most familiar and one of the most astounding
things about the world. No conception of the natural order that does not reveal it as something to be
expected can aspire even to the outline of completeness. And if physical science, whatever it may
have to say about the origin of life, leaves us necessarily in the dark about consciousness, that shows
that it cannot provide the basic form of intelligibility for this world. There must be a very different
way in which things as they are make sense, and that includes the way the physical world is, since the
problem cannot be quarantined in the mind.
4
Given this vacancy in our understanding, what kind of explanation does it make sense to imagine? So
far I have considered the possibility of additions or modifications to a standard evolutionary
explanation, but now I want to consider a broader range of options. All one can do is to describe
abstract possibilities, but to begin with, it is clear that any explanation will have two elements: an
ahistorical constitutive account of how certain complex physical systems are also mental, and a
historical account of how such systems arose in the universe from its beginnings. Evidently the
historical account will depend partly on the correct constitutive account, since the latter describes the
outcome that the former has to explain. Let me first discuss the constitutive possibilities.
The constitutive account will be either reductive or emergent. A reductive account will explain the
mental character of complex organisms entirely in terms of the properties of their elementary
constituents, and if we stay with the assumption that the mental cannot be reduced to the physical, this
will mean that the elementary constituents of which we are composed are not merely physical.14 Since
we are composed of the same elements as the rest of the universe, this will have extensive and radical
consequences, to which I will return below.
An emergent account, by contrast, will explain the mental character of complex organisms by
principles specifically linking mental states and processes to the complex physical functioning of
those organisms—to their central nervous systems in particular, in the case of humans and creatures
somewhat like them. The difference from a reductive account is that, while the principles do not
reduce the mental to the physical, the connections they specify between the mental and the physical
are all higher-order. They concern only complex organisms, and do not require any change in the
exclusively physical conception of the elements of which those organisms are composed. An
emergent account of the mental is compatible with a physically reductionist account of the biological
system in which mind emerges.
To qualify as a genuine explanation of the mental, an emergent account must be in some way
systematic. It cannot just say that each mental event or state supervenes on the complex physical state
of the organism in which it occurs. That would be the kind of brute fact that does not constitute an
explanation but rather calls for explanation. But I think we can imagine a higher-order psychophysical
theory that would make the connection cease to seem like a gigantic set of inexplicable correlations
and would instead make it begin to seem intelligible. Physiological psychologists are only beginning
to uncover the systematic dependence of visual experience on events in the visual cortex, for example,
but we can imagine that such explorations will lead to a general theory.
Still, this kind of higher-level theory, however empirically accurate, seems unsatisfactory as a
final answer to the constitutive question. If emergence is the whole truth, it implies that mental states
are present in the organism as a whole, or in its central nervous system, without any grounding in the
elements that constitute the organism, except for the physical character of those elements that permits
them to be arranged in the complex form that, according to the higher-level theory, connects the
physical with the mental. That such purely physical elements, when combined in a certain way, should
necessarily produce a state of the whole that is not constituted out of the properties and relations of
the physical parts still seems like magic even if the higher-order psychophysical dependencies are
quite systematic.
This dissatisfaction with an explanatory stopping place that relates complex structures to complex
structures is what underlies the constant push toward reduction in modern science. It is hard to give up
the assumption that whatever is true of the complex must be explained by what is true of the elements.
That does not mean that new phenomena cannot emerge at higher levels, but the hope is that they can
be analyzed through the character and interactions of their more elementary components. Such
harmless emergence is standardly illustrated by the example of liquidity, which depends on the
interactions of the molecules that compose the liquid. But the emergence of the mental at certain
levels of biological complexity is not like this. According to the emergent position now being
considered, consciousness is something completely new.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Because such emergence, even if systematic, remains fundamentally inexplicable, the ideal of
intelligibility demands that we take seriously the alternative of a reductive answer to the constitutive
question—an answer that accounts for the relation between mind and brain in terms of something
more basic about the natural order. If such an account were possible, it would explain the appearance
of mental life at complex levels of biological organization by means of a general monism according
to which the constituents of the universe have properties that explain not only its physical but its
mental character. Tom Sorell states the point clearly:
Even if the mechanisms that produced biological life, including consciousness, are, at some
level, the same as those that operate in the evolution of the physical universe, it does not
follow that those mechanisms are physical just because physical evolution preceded
biological evolution. Perhaps some transphysical and transmental concept is required to
capture both mechanisms. This conjecture stakes out a territory for something sometimes
called “neutral monism” in addition to dualist, materialist, and idealist positions.15
Sorell is here using “neutral monism” to designate not just a metaphysical position but a type of
systematic explanatory theory distinct from traditional materialism. Considered just metaphysically,
as an answer to the mind-body problem, monism holds that certain physical states of the central
nervous system are also necessarily states of consciousness—their physical description being only a
partial description of them, from the outside, so to speak. Consciousness is in that case not, as in the
emergent account, an effect of the brain processes that are its physical conditions; rather, those brain
processes are in themselves more than physical, and the incompleteness of the physical description of
the world is exemplified by the incompleteness of their purely physical description.
But since conscious organisms are not composed of a special kind of stuff, but can be constructed,
apparently, from any of the matter in the universe, suitably arranged, it follows that this monism will
be universal. Everything, living or not, is constituted from elements having a nature that is both
physical and nonphysical—that is, capable of combining into mental wholes. So this reductive
account can also be described as a form of panpsychism: all the elements of the physical world are
also mental.16 However, the sense in which they are mental is so far exhausted by the claim that they
are such as to provide a reductive account of how their appropriate combinations necessarily
constitute conscious organisms of the kind we are familiar with. Any further consequences of their
more-than-physical character at the microlevel remain unspecified by this abstract proposal.
5
Having described the difference between the two types of answers, emergent and reductive, to the
constitutive question, let me now turn to the historical question, again on the assumption that
psychophysical reductionism is false. The prevailing naturalistic answer to the historical question is
the materialist version of evolutionary theory, supplemented by a speculative chemical account of the
origin of life. The question is: What alternatives to this picture open up if psychophysical
reductionism is rejected?
The historical account of how conscious organisms arose in the universe can take one of three
forms: it will be either causal (appealing only to law-governed efficient causation), or teleological, or
intentional. (1) A causal historical account will hold that the origin of life and its evolution to the
level of conscious organisms has its ultimate explanation in the properties of the elementary
constituents of the universe, which are also the constituents of conscious organisms, together with any
further properties that may emerge as a result of their combination. (If the constitutive account of
consciousness is not emergent but reductive, then the causal historical account will also be fully
reductive.) (2) A teleological account will hold that in addition to the laws governing the behavior of
the elements in every circumstance, there are also principles of self-organization or of the
development of complexity over time that are not explained by those elemental laws. (3) An
intentional account will hold that although the natural order provides the constitutive conditions for
the possibility of conscious organisms, as it provides the conditions for the possibility of jet aircraft,
the realization of this possibility was due to intervention by a being (presumably God) who put the
constitutive elements together in the right way—perhaps by assembling the genetic material that
would result eventually in the evolution of conscious life. Since either a reductive or an emergent
constitutive account could be combined with any of the three types of historical account—causal,
teleological, or intentional—there are six options. Let me say something about causal accounts before
turning to the other possibilities, which depart much more radically from the usual form of scientific
explanation.
A causal historical account could be combined with either an emergent or a reductive constitutive
account. In the first alternative, the historical account would be restricted to purely physical
explanations of the origin and evolution of life until the point at which organisms reached the kind of
complexity that is associated with consciousness. After that, the history would be both a physical and
a mental one, and if the emergent mental element played an independent causal role, and was not
merely epiphenomenal, the causal process would cease to be strictly reductive. But I am interested in
the hypothesis of a physically reductive causal history leading at least to a point at which
psychophysical emergence occurs—perhaps in creatures with a nervous system, perhaps sooner. This
hypothesis would preserve the standard version of physical evolution without change up to the
emergence of consciousness.
Earlier I discussed the question whether a physical account of evolutionary history conjoined with
a nonhistorical psychophysical theory could really explain the appearance of consciousness, and I
concluded that unless there were some further link between the physical history and the
psychophysical theory, this would not render the result intelligible, even if it were causally accurate.
It would present consciousness as a mysterious side effect of biological evolution—inevitable,
perhaps, but inexplicable as such. To explain consciousness, a physical evolutionary history would
have to show why it was likely that organisms of the kind that have consciousness would arise.
That would be possible if the psychophysical theory governing the emergence of consciousness
revealed it to be inseparable from just the kind of physical organization and functioning of animal life
whose development a physical evolutionary history purports to explain through natural selection.17
That would go a long way toward making evolutionary theory an explanation of why conscious life
exists. It would imply that conscious organisms have developed through natural selection precisely in
virtue of the kinds of physical characteristics that systematically give rise to consciousness, according
to the psychophysical theory of emergence. This, then, is one serious option. It has the disadvantage
of postulating the brute fact of emergence, not explainable in terms of anything more basic, and
therefore essentially mysterious. And it relies on the large assumption that a reductive physical theory
could confer sufficient likelihood on the appearance in geological time of the right kind of physical
organisms to trigger that emergence. But it might be regarded as the historical account requiring the
smallest alteration to the prevailing physical form of naturalism, while nevertheless acknowledging
the irreducibility of the mental to the physical.
However, the other type of causal historical account, based on a reductive rather than an emergent
constitutive theory, would in principle explain more. In a different way, it might even be said that the
least radical departure from materialist reductionism would be a monistic reductive conception that is
both constitutive and historical, as physical theory aims to be with respect to the physical world. The
question is whether it makes sense.
A comprehensively reductive conception is favored by the belief that the propensity for the
development of organisms with a subjective point of view must have been there from the beginning,
just as the propensity for the formation of atoms, molecules, galaxies, and organic compounds must
have been there from the beginning, in consequence of the already existing properties of the
fundamental particles. If we imagine an explanation taking the form of an enlarged version of the
natural order, with complex local phenomena formed by composition from universally available basic
elements, it will depend on some kind of monism or panpsychism, rather than laws of psychophysical
emergence that come into operation only late in the game.
However, it is not clear that this kind of reductive explanation could really render the result
intelligible in the way that particle physics or something comparable ostensibly renders the character
and cosmological history of the nonliving material world intelligible. The protopsychic properties of
all matter, on such a view, are postulated solely because they are needed to explain the appearance of
consciousness at high levels of organic complexity. Apart from that nothing is known about them:
they are completely indescribable and have no predictable local effects, in contrast to the physical
properties of electrons and protons, which allow them to be detected individually. So we have no idea
how such a compositional explanation would work. Without something unimaginably more
systematic in the way of a reduction, panpsychism does not provide a new, more basic resting place in
the search for intelligibility—a set of basic principles from which more complex results can be seen
to follow. It offers only the form of an explanation without any content, and therefore doesn’t seem to
be much of an advance on the emergent alternative.
Yet the proposal is not empty. In its schematic, pre-Socratic way, this sort of monism attempts to
recognize the mental as a physically irreducible part of reality while still clinging to the basic form of
understanding that has proved so successful in physical theory. This is not just intellectual imitation;
it is encouraged by the close connection between minds and bodies. Organisms are physical
complexes whose existence and operation seem to call for reductive explanation, and their existence
and operation seem largely or wholly responsible for the existence of consciousness. It therefore
seems natural to try to fold the explanation of consciousness into the same reductive structure.
On the other hand, the idea of reducing the mind to elementary mental events or particles seems
unnatural in a way that physical atomism doesn’t. The space-time framework of the physical world
makes the physical part-whole relation immediately graspable, geometrically, but we have no
comparably clear idea of a part-whole relation for mental reality—no idea how mental states at the
level of organisms could be composed out of the properties of microelements, whether those
properties are similar in type to our experiential states or different. Yet a mentalistic reductionism
would presumably have to find the protomental parts in a monist counterpart of the physical parts of
the organism, and would have to include a theory of how they combine into conscious wholes.
It is even more obscure how properties that would explain how conscious beings are constituted
out of universal elements could also help to explain how conscious beings have arisen, historically, in
virtue of the laws or principles governing the behavior of those elements. If the theory is to be not
only constitutively but historically reductive, then the protomental character of the elements would
have to play a part in the explanation of how life began and evolved even before the appearance of
animal organisms

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

.
It is already a natural part of the monist conception that the protomental features of the basic
constituents are not merely passive but are necessarily also active, since this is needed to explain the
inseparability of active and passive in the consciousness of ordinary animals. Just as phenomenology
and behavior are internally connected in the mental life of organisms, something analogous must be
true at the micro level, if monism is correct. So the protomental will have behavioral implications.
Furthermore, if a universal monism is correct, it would mean that these psychophysical connections
are unbreakable: one cannot have the mental without the physical aspect, or vice versa.18
But this doesn’t help us to imagine a monist alternative to the materialist history of the origin and
evolution of life, prior to the appearance of conscious organisms. Once conscious organisms appear
on the scene, we can see how it would go. For example, a reductive monism would imply that certain
structures necessarily have visual experience, in a sense that inextricably combines phenomenology
and capacities for discrimination in the control of action, and that there are no possible structures
capable of the same control without the phenomenology. If such structures appeared on the
evolutionary menu, they would presumably enhance the fitness of the resulting organisms. In that way
the protomental would play a truly explanatory, and not merely epiphenomenal, role in biological
evolution.
But that would not explain why such structures formed in the first place. Even if the possibility of
a visual system is somehow already implied by the properties of the basic elements, how can a
nonmaterialist monism help to explain its appearance in actuality, over geological time? How could
the same active principles that account for action and perception in a fully formed organism also
account for the original formation of organisms and the generation of viable mutations over
evolutionary history? These questions are analogous to those that can be posed with respect to a
purely materialistic reductive evolutionary theory, and they seem just as hard for a nonmaterialist
theory.
There will be the same problems about explaining the origin of life and the availability of a
sufficient supply of viable mutations for natural selection to work on—sufficient to account for the
appearance of (now conscious) life as we know it. The kind of monism or panpsychism that would be
needed to provide a non-emergent solution to the constitutive problem will not make these historical
questions any easier. Chemistry is assumed to play this double role in the standard materialist
explanation of both the living operation and the evolutionary history of physical organisms, including
the origin of life. That is already highly speculative, but a hypothetical monism that has expanded to
encompass the mind is far more speculative, since it says only that there is more to the basic
substance of the world than can be captured by physics and chemistry. The object is to recast the
explanation of the evolution of animal organisms so that it explains not only their physical character
but also their consciousness and its character and functioning. But even if we conclude that the basis
of mind must be present in every part of the universe, that offers no hint of how the monistic
properties that underlie consciousness in living organisms lead first to the origin of life and
eventually to the appearance of conscious systems on the menu of mutations available for natural
selection.
Our beliefs about the properties of the physical elements and their constituents are based on what
is needed to account for their contemporary observable behavior and interaction and the results of
their combination into molecules and larger structures. The materialist form of naturalism assumes
that the history of the universe since the big bang, including the origin and evolution of life, can be
explained by those same properties. This is a very large assumption, and an analogous assumption
would have to underlie the historical hypothesis of a reductive monism, if it too is based on properties
of the elements needed to answer the constitutive question in a way that includes consciousness as a
physically irreducible feature of certain organisms. Why should those properties make the appearance
of such organisms, starting from inorganic matter, at all likely?
The idea of a reductive answer to both the constitutive and the historical questions remains very
dark indeed. It seeks a deeper and more cosmically unified explanation of consciousness than an
emergent theory, but at the cost of greater obscurity, and it offers no evident advantage with respect to
the historical problem of likelihood.
6
Let me comment more briefly on the intentional and teleological alternatives, whose attractions are
enhanced by the difficulties facing a causal account. Either answer to the constitutive question can be
combined with an intentional answer to the historical question. Suppose, for example, the constitutive
truth is reductive. Then if theistic explanations are possible at all, God might have carried out his
purpose of creating conscious beings either by assembling them out of elements with protopsychic
properties or by creating a universe with the appropriate highly specific initial conditions to give rise
to conscious beings through chemical and then biological evolution, entirely by nonteleological laws
of interaction among the elements. Purpose would in that case serve only as the outer frame for a
reductive system of efficient causation. For theists, this remains an option.
But if we are trying to imagine a secular theory, according to which the historical development of
conscious life is fully explained not by intervention but as part of the natural order, there seem to be
only two alternatives: either this development itself depends entirely on efficient causation, operating
in its later stages through the mechanisms of biological evolution, or there are natural teleological
laws governing the development of organization over time, in addition to laws of the familiar kind
governing the behavior of the elements.
This is a throwback to the Aristotelian conception of nature, banished from the scene at the birth
of modern science.19 But I have been persuaded that the idea of teleological laws is coherent, and
quite different from the idea of explanation by the intentions of a purposive being who produces the
means to his ends by choice. In spite of the exclusion of teleology from contemporary science, it
certainly shouldn’t be ruled out a priori. Formally, the possibility of principles of change over time
tending toward certain types of outcomes is coherent, in a world in which the nonteleological laws are
not fully deterministic.20 But it is essential, if teleology is to form part of a revised natural order, that
its laws should be genuinely universal and not just the description of a single goal-seeking process.
Since we are acquainted with only one instance of the appearance and evolution of life, we lack a
basis for bringing it under universal teleological laws, unless teleological principles can be found
operating consistently at much lower levels. But there would have to be such laws for teleology to
genuinely explain anything.
Admittedly, the idea of teleological explanation is often associated with the further idea that the
outcomes have value, so that it is not arbitrary that those particular teleological principles hold. That
in turn poses the question whether an explanation that appeals to value can be understood apart from
the purposes of some being who aims at it. Nonpurposive teleology would either have to be value-free
or would have to say that the value of certain outcomes can itself explain why the laws hold.21 In
either case, natural teleology would mean that the universe is rationally governed in more than one
way—not only through the universal quantitative laws of physics that underlie efficient causation but
also through principles which imply that things happen because they are on a path that leads toward
certain outcomes—notably, the existence of living, and ultimately of conscious, organisms.
The teleological option is in many ways obscure. I will have more to say about it later. The
reductive causal alternative is equally obscure, but if it made sense, it would have the attraction of
greater unity than the teleological, for it would mean not only that the elements of which the natural
world consists have properties that result in conscious organisms when suitably combined, but that
those same properties render it not unlikely that such combinations would actually form by some
gradual process in the course of cosmological history, given the time available. The constitutive and
the historical questions would then be answered by reference to a common set of principles.
7
So far I have posed the problem by emphasizing the irreducibility of conscious experience to the
physical. But I have alluded to the fact that human consciousness is not merely passive but is
permeated, both in action and in cognition, with intentionality, the capacity of the mind to represent
the world and its own aims. It may be more controversial to claim that intentionality cannot be
realized in a purely physical universe than that consciousness cannot be. However, if, as I believe,
intentionality, thought, and action resist psychophysical reduction and can exist only in the lives of
beings that are also capable of consciousness, then they too form part of what a larger explanation of
the mental must account for. This subject will be taken up in the following chapters. I believe that the
role of consciousness in the survival of organisms is inseparable from intentionality: inseparable from
perception, belief, desire, and action, and finally from reason. The generation of the entire mental
structure would have to be explained by basic principles, if it is recognized as part of the natural
order.
Philosophy cannot generate such explanations; it can only point out the gaping lack of them, and
the obstacles to constructing them out of presently available materials. But in contrast to classical
dualism, I suggest that we should not renounce the aim of finding an integrated naturalistic
explanation of a new kind. Such a theory cannot be approached directly. It would require many stages,
over a long period of time, beginning with greatly expanded empirical information about regularities
in the relation between conscious states and brain states in ourselves and closely related organisms.
Only later could reductive hypotheses be formulated on this evidential base. But I believe that it
makes sense to pursue not only neurophysiological but evolutionary research with a certain utopian
long-term goal in mind. We should seek a form of understanding that enables us to see ourselves and
other conscious organisms as specific expressions simultaneously of the physical and the mental
character of the universe. One might object that life is hard enough to understand considered purely as
a physical phenomenon, and that the mind can wait. But adding the requirement that any theory of life
also has to explain the development of consciousness may not make the problem worse. Perhaps, on
the contrary, the added features of the natural order needed to account for mind will in the end
contribute to the explanation of life as well. The more a theory has to explain, the more powerful it
has to be.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

It's an unreliable indicator of the reliability of an unreliable system, which is actually less unreliable than the indicator.

OIC - yes; sorry, I'm a bit slow today...

I think DonQ is actually female. When accused of talking improbable nonsense my mum used to say "I just know". 

It's a lovely thought!  (not)

That was , by the way ,a disgusting sexist statement  uttered by that guy .
I am no female though , even though i do have a feminine side to me as  well...
We all have male and female sides,both the "Martians and the Venitians " have  , including the women "Venitians " thus

[dlorde]

[/thread]
Cause of death - suffocation...

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

[/thread]
Cause of death - suffocation...

Are you hallucinating ? This thread is still alive and kicking ,it just needed some fresh air to make you ,folks, see  your silly denials, reductionist brainwash ...lack of understanding of what science proper is that cannot be confused with reductionism .... see some replies of mine to yours above as well .
Can't you handle all that ?
Need some more fresh air ?

[Skyli]

As far as Nagel himself is concerned, people who throw spears at things they don't understand worry me, whether they admit their ignorance or not. As far as his idea is concerned, his admission was certainly honest.

A process that caused a photo-tropic behaviour in a bacteria would, with a bit of trial and error and some recording, become a photo-receptor on a worm some time later. Simple statistics. Recordings get changed – DNA gets corrupted – and useful changes survive. From there to an eye and, with an eye, a centralisation of nerves to handle additional sensory info. From there to a brain requires no more than chemistry and statistics. Bigger, more powerful brains become a survival factor. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that one of the many species of “brainy” animals would live in groups, possess opposable thumbs, well developed sensory apparatus and a sophisticated social structure to handle all that brain power – still just statistics. In a social order of brainy apes, where order is pretty much dictated by the biggest chap and his cronies – it is logical that a sense of “knowing your place” would develop; without it you'd be quickly dead or exiled. That leads, statistically, to personal identity. If a process is good enough to go from a photo-tropic bug to an eye and the optic centre behind it, then it can certainly go from “knowing your place” to what you call consciousness.  If it isn't broke don't fix it.

Having had so much thrust upon me I'll give him credit for a reasonable style of writing, but this “science can't explain” argument smacks of aliens in Peru – and that was a better read.

God is irrelevant to science. God is not relevant to science. If you insist on a distinction, then both statements are true; God has no place in science. Science must explain “where we live” and it must do that by itself – “on the evidence of its own eyes”. If there is no evidence of a phenomenon then science must ignore it; that is what science is.

Other disciplines consider other aspects of our existence rather than “where we live”– Theology, Psychology, Art – but these are not within the realm of science. I have no idea what the future holds.

Everything you've said indicates that you object to the idea that God has no place in science although you are trying to portray this as a blunt “science is wrong!” argument. Your dedication to this blunt argument is very telling; you refuse to accept the evidence of your own eyes - the "explaining" that science has already done. I thought you were merely having difficulty distinguishing between a method and an ideology, now I see it runs deeper; you seem to think science is all there is or, worse, you seem to think that scientists think that science is all there is. I am certainly not the only member of this discussion who disproves that! Do you find the basis of science somehow “blasphemous”? The idea that God has no place in science?

I'm quite happy to replace science with reductionism anywhere in this post; the meaning would be the same, considering your arguments.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

As far as Nagel himself is concerned, people who throw spears at things they don't understand worry me, whether they admit their ignorance or not. As far as his idea is concerned, his admission was certainly honest.

A process that caused a photo-tropic behaviour in a bacteria would, with a bit of trial and error and some recording, become a photo-receptor on a worm some time later. Simple statistics. Recordings get changed – DNA gets corrupted – and useful changes survive. From there to an eye and, with an eye, a centralisation of nerves to handle additional sensory info. From there to a brain requires no more than chemistry and statistics. Bigger, more powerful brains become a survival factor. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that one of the many species of “brainy” animals would live in groups, possess opposable thumbs, well developed sensory apparatus and a sophisticated social structure to handle all that brain power – still just statistics. In a social order of brainy apes, where order is pretty much dictated by the biggest chap and his cronies – it is logical that a sense of “knowing your place” would develop; without it you'd be quickly dead or exiled. That leads, statistically, to personal identity. If a process is good enough to go from a photo-tropic bug to an eye and the optic centre behind it, then it can certainly go from “knowing your place” to what you call consciousness.  If it isn't broke don't fix it.

Having had so much thrust upon me I'll give him credit for a reasonable style of writing, but this “science can't explain” argument smacks of aliens in Peru – and that was a better read.

God is irrelevant to science. God is not relevant to science. If you insist on a distinction, then both statements are true; God has no place in science. Science must explain “where we live” and it must do that by itself – “on the evidence of its own eyes”. If there is no evidence of a phenomenon then science must ignore it; that is what science is.

Other disciplines consider other aspects of our existence rather than “where we live”– Theology, Psychology, Art – but these are not within the realm of science. I have no idea what the future holds.

Everything you've said indicates that you object to the idea that God has no place in science although you are trying to portray this as a blunt “science is wrong!” argument. Your dedication to this blunt argument is very telling; you refuse to accept the evidence of your own eyes - the "explaining" that science has already done. I thought you were merely having difficulty distinguishing between a method and an ideology, now I see it runs deeper; you seem to think science is all there is or, worse, you seem to think that scientists think that science is all there is. I am certainly not the only member of this discussion who disproves that! Do you find the basis of science somehow “blasphemous”? The idea that God has no place in science?

I'm quite happy to replace science with reductionism anywhere in this post; the meaning would be the same, considering your arguments.

What , on earth , are you talking about ?
Amazing ........No further comment .

[Skyli]

Yes, I should have said very blunt argument.

I assume the brevity of your answer indicates that you have realised this.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Yes, I should have said very blunt argument.

I assume the brevity of your answer indicates that you have realised this.

Realised what exactly ?
Seriously : what are you talking about ?

[Skyli]

You started this discussion by asking what on Earth human consciousness was. You explained your reasons for asking and opened the conversation. In your initial reasoning you asserted that Science alone cannot explain it. You backed this up during the conversation by frequent – and lengthy – extracts from T. Nagel. Most of the other participants, myself included, oppose your assertion and believes Science adequately explains human consciousness. Most of the other participants, myself included, have debunked Nagels work as a piece of pseudo-scientific speculation with little basis in fact. Your responses to opposition have been dismissive, evasive and often downright rude, from the point of view of this Mr. Eagle Has Landed at least; you do not like opposition.

To believe that anything other than Science is responsible for something as mundane as my consciousness would be the hight of arrogance.  But here, of course, you combine all the facets of the Mind – the Human Condition, if you like – and call it “human consciousness”. It has clearly not occurred to you that, even if there is some element of the Mind/human consciousness that cannot be observed and explained by Science, there is definitely a large portion that can. So, by your definition, human consciousness is composed of “a part that science can explain” and “a part that science cannot explain”. Of course you get nowhere holding such a position up to scrutiny; it is a ridiculously circular argument.

It is, however, a definition of the Mind – Existence even - that I would be happy with, but what place does that have on a science forum? I cannot defend my “spirituality” from “scientific scrutiny” - my spirituality is not scientific. Basta! To attempt to do so would be preaching, not discussion. Do you see the difference?

That's what I'm talking about.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Stop being a jerk, be serious : and do not try to derail the discussion you obvioulsly cannot handle .
I meant that my own belief warns me against the relative unreliability of that "radar ". so to speak .

I know; but it's hard to be serious when you say stuff like that. Having something that tells you when the something that tells you when something is unreliable, is unreliable, is truly Kafkaesque

I will give you yet another chance , the very last one , after that , if you screw up again, we will have to go our separate ways :

This is a side issue you're making such a fuss about,an easy one  : I told you that that "radar " ,so to speak, is relatively unreliable : my own faith or religion  tells me it is indeed.
Got it ?
When i said that you should not try to derail this discussion you cannot handle obviously : I meant : you either misinterpret my views or do not understand them properly as i meant them to be at least , you distort them beyond any recognition, you quote parts   of my statements by isolating them from their actual context , ...and you do put words in my mouth that are not mine ...to say just that :
Just try to compare  what i said in my previous posts to  how you responded to them as described above .
Example : I said that the reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian approach or conception of evolution ( as the direct consequence  of the reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature thus ) ,  for instance ,  is just  a reductionist misinterpretation of evolution   = the reductionist version of evolution that has no evidence to support it : in the sense that evolution is not exclusively biological physical , otherwise we cannot explain life , consciousness, their origins and their evolution fully .
You did not understand that : your response was like this : there is plenty of or overwhelming empirical evidence regarding   evolution ....
Compare what i said here to your reply then : i said 1 thing and you responded with a totally  different other  .
There is indeed overwhelming evidence regarding the biological physical side of evolution , but i was not talking about the latter , just about the reductionist exclusively biological physical version of evolution as a whole .

What i meant by  the reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian misinterpretation of evolution that has nothing to support it ,once again= the reductionist version of evolution, was  rather this in fact : evolution cannot be explained by just those reductionist naturaist neo-Darwinian exclusive biological physical explanations approaches , simply because evolution has a non-biological non-physical side to it as well , so , there is nothing out there that supports the reductionist assumption or reductionist version of evolution that evolution  is just a matter of exclusively physical biological processes .
Got it ?
Plus , those reductionist exclusive biological physical approaches  of evolution give just an incomplete acccount of evolution, simply because evolution has a non-physical non-biological side to it also = the reductionist version of evolution has nothing to support it = evolution is not exclusively biological physical .
Another example : i see it here below in 1 of your posts , i will respond to in a sec .
There are plenty of statements of mine like that , either you do not understand, misquote way out of their context , misinterpret ...beyond ny recognition...
Another example : i said that the reductionist "emergence " trick regarding consciousness is indeed reductionistic , in the sense that it reduces consciousness to biological processes : i did not say that the purely physical biological emergence phenomena were / are reductionist = only that "emergence " reductionist magical trick regarding consciousness is reductionist : see the difference ?

 

... Is there some particular 'real' issue you'd like me to look at?

What ? Do you want me to draw you a picture ? I think i was clear enough .

So, you can't remember either?

If you cannot deliver yourself from those reductionist indoctrinations  and brainwash you obviously do confuse with science proper , that's not my problem , but yours to deal with ,otherwise just go see a ..shrink .

If I don't agree with you I need a psychiatrist? Disappointing stuff... playground taunts really don't help your credibility.

These statements of yours are yet another major example of what i was saying here above regarding your  gross misinterpretations of my words :
That you would agree-disagree with me is certainly  not the issue here : that's a rather pretty normal fact = that's 1 of the reasons why i am here , in order to learn from different views, different conceptions of nature , from different world views ...from science proper that shuld not be confused with those reductionist world views, reductionist conception of nature ......
What i meant was : if you cannot either understand what i was saying regarding reductionism to the point that you distort and misinterpret my words on the subject beyond any recognition , or if you cannot see how you have been brainwashed and indoctrinated by reductionism you obviously still do confuse with science proper , than is that not my problem, but yours to handle, otherwise go see a shrink : that's what i meant when i said shall i draw you a pic ,when you responded that i was not clear enough or not concise : it is not that i was not clear enough , maybe  i was ,to some degree at least : it is in fact you who do not understand my words , distort them , misinterprets them , takes them out of context ,...beyond any recognition ....

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Well, David Cooper was correct about one thing. Trolls are impossible and it is probably best to ignore them. No matter what logical evidence you support your arguments with, no matter what credible scientific studies provide positive proof for something, they will say "But it fails to explain this other thing," followed by an ideological rant about why something is "obviously" false just because they keep saying it is.  What's worse, they offer no reasonable, verifiable alternative for any of it.
Don essentially says you cannot expect him to provide scientific proof of the immaterial because it is immaterial. And my response is "Great! Go post these immaterial things on the The Mystical Angel My Little Pony Website."

You got it all wrong , honey : see what i said to dlorde on the subject right here  above .
The exclusively biological physical reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is false , simply because it obviously and intrinsically inherently misses the non-biological non-physical side of nature ,as Nagel said, that's why he proposed a non-reductionist naturalist conception of nature,as an alternative to reductionism  .
Besides, that reductionist exclusively biological physical conception of nature has therefore implications for how reductionists approach ,see and explain the emergence of life , the emergence of consciousness in nature ,and for their respective origins and evolution , logically =reductionism gives thus an incomplete account of evolution in general , of life's origins , emergence and evolution, of consciousness ' emergence origins and evolution ...

But, there is indeed overwhelming empirical evidence indeed for the biological physical side of evolution ,it's just that evolution has also a non-physical non-biological side to it as well ,reductionism tries so desperately to reduce to just physical biological processes , simply because reductionism , per definition, cannot do otherwise .

All those wonderful amazing great "miracles " achieved by science proper were the direct consequences of the scientific method used by scientists  ,were  the direct consequences of the effective and unparralleled scientific method thus that's like no other : reductionism in science has absolutely nothing to do with all those scientific results and huge advances ...= reductionism just takes a free ride on the  unwilling back of science proper , in order to validate itself  so desperately  , in vain .

In short :

The main core issue here is that reductionist naturalist neo-Darwinian misconception of nature in science .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

I will give you yet another chance , the very last one , after that , if you screw up again, we will have to go our separate ways :

You're funny

No, i am certainly not in this case , i am deadly serious : remember your oversensitivity whenever someone misquotes you : you were not only misquoting my words , but you also did not understand them properly as i meant them to be at least , you distorted misinterpreted them beyond any recognition ...so.
Maybe , i did not formulate my answers properly : in that case , you should have asked for a better formulation, instead of  distorting my views ..
If one would continue  doing just that , there is absolutely no point in continuing any discusions for that matter with him / her : that would be an utter and total waste of time .

I see dlorde   saying to you that God is irrelevant for science , it is not the case...

So anyway Don, are you going to explain this? how is God relevant to science?

I told you here above that i would react to that , didn't i ?
I did not say that God is relevant to science ,did i ?
You still continue to misquote me , i see : my patience with you is really running out .
Anyway :
This is another example  concerning the fact that you were taking my words out of context by just quoting some parts of my statements on the subject : why didn't you quote the whole sentense  ?

I said : God is not the field of science , i see dlorde here saying to you that God is irrelevant to science , it is not the case , God is irrelevant only to reductionism in science in fact , reductionism as a secular religion in science ...stuff like that .
So, God is neither  irrelevant nor relevant  to science proper , simply because God is not the field of science,so to speak then ...
You're really making me nuts with these misquotes , distortions ...of my words .

And while you're at it, can you explain the methods by which science will make progress when all reductionist approaches have been expunged as you advocate?

Science has its own effective unparalleled method thanks to and through which science has been able to achieve all those "miracles " : what has reductionism as a misconception of nature  to do with science proper or with the scientific method , scientific approaches, scientific results = absolutely nothing= reductionism was/is  just crippling science via its reductionist meta-paradigm in science in fact ... .
Reductionism is no method , just a world view in science = a misconception of nature in science = science needs to be guided by a more or less valid non-reductionist  meta-paradigm in science = a non-reductionist naturalist one maybe , as Nagel proposes at least ...........

Both questions have been asked more than once and ignored so far.

Both questions were  previously  answered : your own failure to see just that is your problem, not mine .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

I did not say that God is relevant to science ,did i ?

I thought so; 'Not irrelevant', says 'relevant' to me. If this isn't what you meant, you only had to say so.

You would have noticed just that , if you read carefully what i said .
God is ,once again, neither irrelevent nor relevant to science , i said ; can't you read ? : ...God ...
What might not  be  irrelevant to something might  also be not relevant to it as well,and at the same time  .

why didn't you quote the whole sentense  ?

What, "God is irrelevant to reductionism in science"? It appeared to confirm my interpretation - by implying that God might somehow be relevant to non-reductionist science (whatever that might be). The rest of it was fluff.

Read Nagel above .
You're really exasperating and extremely irritating : the word here is "naturalism " for natural science :
If God is irrelevant to reductionist naturalism, then is God  logically also so regarding non-reductionist naturalism ...

And while you're at it, can you explain the methods by which science will make progress when all reductionist approaches have been expunged as you advocate?

Science has its own effective unparalleled method thanks to and through which science has been able to achieve all those "miracles " :<...blah...>

If you mean the scientific method, that's the framework within which an approach (e.g. reductionism) is used. As I'm sure you're aware.

Reductionism is just a conception , or rather misconception of nature in science ,via its reductionist meta-paradigm mainly in science ...
Do not try to integrate reductionism in that sense within the frame work of the scientific method , as you put it at least,it has nthing to do with : reductionism  was/is  just crippling science in its capability to explain nature ,the universe , man , life , consciousness ... .

Both questions were  previously  answered : your own failure to see just that is your problem, not mine .

Ah; such subtle answers they just appeared to be ignoring the questions altogether...

OK; I suppose that's that then

.

What had you in mind then ?

<... tl;dr ...>

The normal way to discuss on forums is to post your own thoughts about what you've read, not copy-paste reams of someone else's work.

It did obviously not help to post my own thoughts about what i have read : what do you think i was doing then ?,So, i resorted to posting what the guy had to say on the subject , partly .
You remind me of an experience i had  when i was in Amsterdam , i was making love to a lovely  English girl : during that , she could not stop shouting " f...me, f...me, f...me " : i shouted back : " f...what do you think i am doing ? , missing her cultural  point that she was just trying to arose me some more , and herself in the process ...due to the passion and heat of the live love making "debate" ...
Are you doing just that ,or something Freudian similar , your own different way ?, even though Freud's psychology was  largely refuted and discredited for and as having been largely ...unscientific ...

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

You started this discussion by asking what on Earth human consciousness was. You explained your reasons for asking and opened the conversation. In your initial reasoning you asserted that Science alone cannot explain it. You backed this up during the conversation by frequent – and lengthy – extracts from T. Nagel. Most of the other participants, myself included, oppose your assertion and believes Science adequately explains human consciousness. Most of the other participants, myself included, have debunked Nagels work as a piece of pseudo-scientific speculation with little basis in fact. Your responses to opposition have been dismissive, evasive and often downright rude, from the point of view of this Mr. Eagle Has Landed at least; you do not like opposition.

To believe that anything other than Science is responsible for something as mundane as my consciousness would be the hight of arrogance.  But here, of course, you combine all the facets of the Mind – the Human Condition, if you like – and call it “human consciousness”. It has clearly not occurred to you that, even if there is some element of the Mind/human consciousness that cannot be observed and explained by Science, there is definitely a large portion that can. So, by your definition, human consciousness is composed of “a part that science can explain” and “a part that science cannot explain”. Of course you get nowhere holding such a position up to scrutiny; it is a ridiculously circular argument.

It is, however, a definition of the Mind – Existence even - that I would be happy with, but what place does that have on a science forum? I cannot defend my “spirituality” from “scientific scrutiny” - my spirituality is not scientific. Basta! To attempt to do so would be preaching, not discussion. Do you see the difference?

That's what I'm talking about.

I really did hesitate some time before responding to this surreal i do not know what to make of it post of yours : simply absurd ;

I do react now to that absurd non-sense of yours , only out of courtesy and politeness, i must admit , to be honest , because , seriously: what kindda gibberish is this then .

In short :

you did not understand a single thing of what i was saying ,or of what this discussion is all about .
............
Who did debunk Nagel ? You ?
One cannot debunk facts , such as the fact that the reductionist exclusively biological physical neo-Darwinian materialist conception of nature is ...false = a misconception of nature ...

As for the rest of your above displayed silly talk:  i cannot make any sense of it, the more when i see how you do not only not understand my views, but you also distort them beyond any recognition as well : you are much worse than dlorde in that regard = you are making no sense whatsoever , sorry to say that .
I suggest you try to read carefully what i was saying all along , if you wanna see my point , because , honestly ,this is total non-sense of yours , turning the discussion upside down beyond any recognition :
Please , do try to read and understand what i say, before reacting , thanks , appreciate indeed: just compare what i was saying to what you made of it haha ...= 

[David Cooper]

My dear fellow, Don Q,

You are casting your pearls before swine. I think you should write all this stuff up as a proper book and make it available on the Kindle where it can be read more comfortably and without being derailed repeatedly by other people with their ludicrous objections.

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

My dear fellow, Don Q,

You are casting your pearls before swine. I think you should write all this stuff up as a proper book and make it available on the Kindle where it can be read more comfortably and without being derailed repeatedly by other people with their ludicrous objections.

Nice subtle irony of yours haha , that does have some elements of truth , ironically enough : "DonQ" ? haha , come on .
Hi , buddy : nice to have you back, i mean it  : Philosopher Thomas Nagel is more qualified than i could ever be in that regard .
Well, despite my repeated extensive attempts to clarify my main core point concerning the facts discussed by philosopher Thomas Nagel 's " Mind and cosmos : why the materialist reductionist neo-Darwinian conception of nature is almost certainly false " book , these people do not seem to be able to get it yet , so, they just distort my views ,or do not understand them properly as i meant them to be at least : maybe  i was not clear enough , who knows : i did my best though , in that regard at least .
I did even post the introduction, the conclusion , chapter 3 cognition, and chapter 4 consciousness of that book here on this thread for them, in vain .
Not to mention that i also did provide a free download link to most books of Nagel on line , including to that above mentioned book of his .
I really would love to see you forget about our previous little insignificant and meaningless conflict , it was nothing in fact really ,and enrich us with your eventual insights on the subject , seriously .
I would really appreciate it , if you would tell us  your own opinions about Thomas Nagel's book ,or about the main core issue here,as follows  : 

The exclusively biological physical reductionist naturalist materialist neo_Darwinian conception of nature is false = a misconception of nature , that gotta be replaced by a more or less valid conception of nature in science = a non-reductionist naturalist one , as Nagel proposes in fact ...
Thanks , appreciate .
I really missed your significant presence -personality here and views as well , even though i do not agree with most of your world views ,regarding reductionism in science at least,and its implications for the reductionist approaches of the emergence evolution and origins of life ,the emergence evolution and origins of consciousness ... its implications for the reductionist version of evolution ...  .
Kind regards .

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Metaphorically and amusingly speaking :
I hope that you,guys , do have some sense of humor though :
"Rats " are the first to leave the sinking ship, that of reductionism in science , in this case haha
So, why have you left the reductionist "unsinkable  Titanic "sinking ship .....then, you should try to rescue or defend ?
So much for your  "unshakable "  faith in ...reductionism....Disappointing . 

[DonQuichotte (OP)]

Rupert Sheldrake at EU 2013—"Science Set Free" (Part 1)