Consciousness is not physical.
That is almost a truism, but I want people to understand what that means. Consciousness is not material. The conscious world does not share an ontology with material objects—atoms “bouncing around” against each other. We can say the brain is physical: it is a physical thing with physical properties that can be pointed out in the physical universe. The brain can be measured in size or weighed, we can determine its vector and speed of movement as it is ontologically matter. Consciousness is not like this.
Consciousness is also not an emergent property of matter. This is significantly more difficult for people to acknowledge, but is ultimately no more trivial.
Many people will assert that consciousness must be an emerget property of matter, but that is not because there is any reason to think so, in fact, there are intractable reasons to think that is not so. People still assert this because they implicitly rigid material monists who must either believe that consciousness is—in some unspecifiable way—an emergent property or that it doesn’t actually exist at all.
Of course consciousness constantly interacts with matter and is affected by it: You can lose consciousness with a knock on a head or your consciousness might change after consuming caffeine. You can also follow behaviors based on what appears in your consciousness.
But this, as we’ll see is not the same thing as saying that consciousness is something that has its origin in mere matter.
How is consciousness not emergent of mere matter?
Because it is out of the range of material phenomena. I mean range in a very formal, almost mathematical sense, like a given function has a range. An explanation:
Think about any mathematical function. A function is a is an equation into which we can input a value for x and receive a y value. An input and an output. Duh.
Middle-school students will learn that each mathematical function has a range, and that range is all of the numbers that can be outputted by any possible input into the function. Some functions, for example f(x) = x2 have a range that is only in the positive numbers (positive squares, in fact, also zero). All negative numbers are outside of the possibility of outputs for the function—Out of its range.
It’s important to note that there is a universal range of all mathematical functions: they can only output…. well, numbers. They might be either integers or irrational numbers, but no mathematical function can output something can be devised to be so complex as to output something that is non-numerical.
You can easily concoct a complex function that graphs on a Cartesian plane an exotic shape, but at each point, the output of the function, if defined at all, must be a number.
You will never see a calculator give you the word “buttercup” or the symbol “🥩” be the output of a function, nor will a sufficiently complex function arise that outputs not just a non-numerical character, but say, a living animal or a distinct smell. You could devise a machine that outputs non-mathematical things when a function takes a certain input, but that is something built outside of this formal system which is the pure realm and ontology of math. Math has a certain ontology which cannot create from itself something of a new or different ontology. This is obvious.
This is obvious, but when we realize that the physical universe, that unconscious and unspiritual cosmos of matter is precisely a massive material calculator, we should also realize that it as well cannot create a new distinct ontology out of itself alone—it cannot generate from itself something that is not a physical force of some type or complexity. But consciousness itself is indeed a separate onotology than physical reactions.
Even supposing you want to feel cozy about yourself by calling consciousness “physical” in some way, the real root of the issue is that consciousness as to be something fundamental which is not produced by complex vector movement or the same atoms “bouncing against each other.”
Complex physical systems, be that the solar system supposed to be governed by gravitational forces, or living cells chemically governed or even the incremental mechanism of Darwinian selection all are loosely analogous to highly complex mathematical functions. They have physical inputs, complex forces and transformations performed on those inputs, and then might yield a highly surprising physical output. Planets might whirl in space, life might continue itself, the brain might process complex physical input and respond in a seemingly creative way resulting in new behavior. Ultimately, the highly complex functions of the physical universe meld matter in surprising ways, but still their “range” in the mathematical sense is still the same: they cannot produce from themselves a different ontology itself, of which consciousness is an example. They can merely present highly complex outputs.
You might say while these formal systems can indeed only “output” something of their own ontology: math gives math, physical reactions give physical reactions etc., but consciousness might appear when a formal system gains a complexity such that it interacts with something outside of that system. You might say that, and you would be right. That is precisely what I am saying.
Consciousness must be something outside of the physical system of the universe, even though we always see it interacting with it.
What I am saying is that consciousness must be something distinct and separable from matter and not derived from it. A true pan-physicalist universe is one entirely populated by philosophical zombies: an impressively complex and interactive cosmos without a single conscious being to perceive it. A world of true darkness. It’s almost as if it wouldn’t even exist. If such a universe could exist, it is not ours.
Only Pseudo-Theories
This is to say that the reason modern cognitive science has no coherent theory of consciousness is not because it just hasn’t run across one in the recesses of the physical reactions of the brain, but it is that the way we look at material science as it is necessarily precludes any jump from the syntactic realm of matter interactions to the “semantic” world of perception and qualia. “Science” is built absolutely unable to account for consciousness.
At best, an intellectually-honest modern science fan will logically go to deny the existence of consciousness itself as it is something which if it exists (which it obviously does) the epistemological system of modern science cannot admit it. This has been the notorious theories of the now late Daniel Dennett, who has even justified this theory on the grounds that there can be no objective, scientific proof of something alleged to be entirely subjective.
This is an absurd anti-reality argument in which an arguer has to deny the existence of the very vehicle by which he observes the outside world, but in the worldview of modern science, it is absurdly ironclad as no one will ever produce public “scientific” evidence of something inherently subjective.
The most a person like this can do is look at paradoxes in consciousness or the formal traits of cognition and guess about how why we think what we do about consciousness. Dennett focuses a lot on paradoxes as a way to “disprove” the existence of consciousness. A common co-author of his Douglass Hofstadter wrote a very cute book GÅ‘del, Escher, Bach which lightly talks about the many apparent formal properties of consciousness, like its apparent recursion, related it to recursive circuits in the brain or even in computing programs and gives good appetizers for a feast of explanation that can never come.
Consciousness as another substance. The brain as a receiver.
Whatever consciousness is—and no one has a very clear theory of it—it has to be something that is simply a different substance than matter itself. It has to exist apart from it. It might not be actuated unless via matter.
For example, instead of the brain being a physical machine like a computer that produces consciousness ex nihil, it is a physical machine more like a radio or T.V. receiver with certain properties that make it resonate with, receive and enthrone a pre-existent consciousness independently existent.
Of course, the physical brain still might function like a computer in that it performs some computation of sensory input (which is not the same as what we perceived in our consciousness), but the important thing is that the realm of consciousness, the cognitive theater is something that while might be seated “within” or “conjoined” to a physical brain, it is not a creation of it.
The Fear of Dualism
The naive materialists of the world believe that consciousness, although nothing much about its origin being known, must be an emergent property of the physical brain and nothing more.
They don’t believe this because there is some good reason to believe that, but because the nominalism and pan-physicalism universal in pop-science simply cannot let one entertain anything else that does not come from some very, very complex and unknown interaction of matter, because the goal is to believe that everything is based in one simple substance. My point above is that this idea is not possible.
Now normies out there probably intuitively believe in a kind of naive dualism: there’s matter, and then there’s something like a soul or consciousness. Smart people (like us of course) generally grow out of this intuitition because we are given the very tempting and still very explanatory idea that everything in the universe resolves to just material/physical interactions. That is fair, but I am simply saying that the first idea—the intuitive idea is probably closer to the truth, even though it has the illusion of not being parsimonious.
For those who fear the dreaded “dualism,” I’ve said elsewhere that although the worldview of modern science purports to be monistic—believing in only one material ontology, it is already dualistic… or trialistic… or much more because to truly explain even the actions of matter as mainstream science understands it, you must believe in many different kinds of forces and substances, all of which could only be unified in the optimistic fantasies of theoreticians.
In short, we are not classical atomists who believe there are just atoms which have a very simple physics universal to everything, instead, we believe in matter, energy, gravity, nuclear forces, quantum phenomena, etc. all of which cannot be reduced into another. We should acknowledge that consciousness is like this, with the added exception that I’ve argued above that consciousness cannot eventually be determined to be based in mere matter (although gravity, quantum physics, or something else may eventually be accounted for as a property of another force mentioned).
The theory I’m endorsing here might be called a kind of “dualism,” but I don’t really believe the name is accurate, especially because it assumes mainstream science is truly in monism. It might be better to say that modern science might believe in 10 different substances and forces, and perhaps here all I’m arguing for an 11th.
Binding
One of the enduring neuroscientific issues with merely material explanations of consciousness is that it is not apparently localized anywhere in the brain.
Descartes famously had a very simplified guess about how the mind and soul/consciousness interact. The brain “does its thing” in neural processing, and the soul interacts with the brain and the physical world in the Pineal Gland, behind one’s forehead. This, based on pre-existent theories of the gland, was the seat of the soul, the nexus of the spiritual and physical for him.
In this theory, all neuronal action (based on sight, smell, sense, etc.) is “bound” all together at the same time in the pineal gland, and at this point the soul perceives it and can act freely upon the information.
The truth however is that from all neuroscience has manage to uncover, consciousness is not seated in one single location in the brain, as if the brain were some kind of mere computer. Your consciousness does not merely “possess” or touch one single place in the brain—in fact it’s not localized or localizable at all in the brain. It seems to be variously aware of various computations althroughout the brain (and dare I say the whole body).
Now modern people are too cool to believe in a individual “soul,”—that’s scary and religious—but there is some sense that consciousness is truly unitary in one person’s body, but again it is not some kind of single localized cognitive module.
Consciousness is not a Superstrate
One important idea or misunderstanding I want to dispell is that I am not arguing that consciousness, the realm of the nous is something other the realm of matter, watching it, but not really participating.
Nowadays that the default scientastic explanation of consciousness must be that it is an emergent property of matter, there is a tendency to view consciousness as a “free-rider” or sometimes just a passive observer. Combine this with me saying that matter and consciousness are two separate onotologies and one might very falsely assume that I am saying that consciousness does not touch the world of matter.
Let me be clear in saying the following three things, which I consider trivially true:
- Consciousness is not made of matter. But…
- Matter affects consciousness.
- Consciousness affects matter.
(1) is what I have argued here, but it does not lead to (2) or (3). I will not be so bold as to suggest exactly how consciousness interacts with matter, but I will simply state, as a matter of fact, it must in some way.
Matter affects consciousness.
(2) is true for the obvious fact that chemicals, traumas and other physical stimuli obvious affect our consciousness: we perceive the world. Our consciousness is affected by certain things we consume (teas or psychoactive pharmaceuticals). Our consciousness seems to turn off as we are asleep.
Consciousness affects matter.
(3) must be true because we can even make statements like “I feel hungry.” In our behavior, realized in the world of matter, two friends can sit down and talk about their mental states—how they perceive things, their enjoyment of colors, perhaps growing fuzziness of their vision from too much digital screen exposure, etc. They can compare flashes of memories. All of this indicates that at least some point, the world of consciousness affects the physical brain allowing it to move the lips to communicate all of this.
A philosophical zombie might be able to talk and even make statements about itself—it might be able to say, “I’m hungry,” but only if this is caused by a narrow physical and behavioral reaction that comes from a part of the brain unconscious.
While I certainly believe in the logical possibility of philosophical zombies, I view it as equally undeniable that philosophical zombies cannot have all the behavior we think as being human because so much of it is indeed reliant on our conscious world.
A philosophical zombie might act in a simplied and unreflective way like someone who is say—“black-out drunk”—in fact, I think it is a possibility that such people are indeed temporarily zombified. Perhaps their lack of memory formation is partially based in a lack of consciousness to commit to memory, and their diminished reasoning falls out from in inability to adjudicate choices in the consciousness as we often do.
In the same way a T.V. or radio receiver might receive an analog signal less and less perfectly with interferrence, so might an impaired brain interact less perfectly with a person’s nous until the reception of nous is temporarily (or in the case of death, longer) lost.
Pan-psychism
I leave open the logical possibility that matter is “made of” consciousness. There are indeed ways of holding that, pan-psychism, without falling into some kind of radical subjectivism.
What is ultimately untenable is material monism. You can believe that there are many substances to the universe, or you could try to say that conscious experience is all there is. But we know that matter is not all there is, as the very we ourselves, including our consciousness disproves that.