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- Herausgeber: IVP Academic
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
What does it mean to be human? What is a person? Where did we come from? Many answers have been offered throughout history in response to these perennial questions, including those from biological, anthropological, sociological, political, and theological approaches. And yet the questions remain. Philosopher Joshua Rasmussen offers his own step-by-step examination into the fundamental nature and ultimate origin of persons. Using accessible language and clear logic, he argues that the answer to the question of what it means to be a person sheds light not only on our own nature but also on the existence of the one who gave us life.
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For seekers of wisdom
Contents
Preface
THIS BOOK IS ABOUT YOU. If anything is true about you, it is this: you are real. But out of this truth springs a great mystery. How could there be anything like you? This question inspires my quest. My purpose in this book is to seek to uncover the deepest possible explanation of the nature and existence of a conscious, personal being like you. I hope that by joining me on this quest, you will gain resources to see a grander picture of who you really are.
My interest in writing on this topic grows out of my research into the fundamental nature of reality. Over my career, I have sought to better understand the fundamental nature of things—such as truth, time, and the foundation of existence. In response to my work, many people have asked me how I think fundamental reality might relate to personal, conscious reality. For example, are there ways to determine whether fundamental reality is itself personal? How might qualities of a personal being arise from the resources of fundamental reality? What resources does it take to make beings like us? In this work, then, I will investigate the connection between the nature of persons and fundamental reality.
The time is ripe for a new look at the nature of conscious, personal beings. Theorists have identified a minefield of problems in analyzing the emergence of conscious beings from ordinary matter. These problems are not conjured up by advocates of a particular worldview. Rather, they are center points of discussion by leading experts with diverse perspectives who are trying to understand how conscious beings could fit into our world by any means.
A challenge in writing a book like this is that clouds of controversy occlude paths to insight. The topic of consciousness and the nature of persons touches on significant, sensitive issues related to ultimate meaning, purpose, and existence. Heated debates arise as we hash out competing explanations of conscious beings. Oftentimes, we are locked into continual sparring as we seek to explain something so universal and familiar as our own conscious experience.
I want to highlight a path that can bridge the insights from many brilliant minds on opposing sides of the debate. Instead of starting and ending with one of the familiar packages of views (materialism, dualism, idealism, etc.), I want to show how we can build a new understanding of persons from basic concepts and observations. By reframing the discussion and digging into fundamental concepts, I believe we can integrate more insights from more perspectives, thereby positioning ourselves to see a greater picture of our existence as personal beings.
Whatever your viewpoint, I hope this book will help you analyze relevant data by your own light. I have encountered evidence that people have power to extend their current sight beyond what they may have realized. A couple years ago, I worked with a student to collect data on people’s beliefs about consciousness. We created a survey with randomized premises in deductions for and against different views about the nature of consciousness. One striking, preliminary result of our study was this: a statistically significant number of participants reported beliefs that entail conclusions that the participants themselves did not previously realize. This result suggests to me that people can see more by further analysis. My hope is that this book will help you extend your own analysis of the nature of persons in view of a wider range of data.
By seeking to display a vision of persons, I also hope to inspire a greater perception of the significance of your existence. This outcome, I suggest, will be achieved through the beholding of a greater picture of personal reality at the most fundamental level. The fullness of this picture will come into view by the end of the book.
I write this book to serve anyone interested in the nature of personal beings. Toward this end, I have worked to write in a style that is both accessible to a wide audience and also deep enough to contribute to the analyses of experts. To increase accessibility, I define all technical terms using ordinary language. You do not need to know any philosophical jargon to follow along.
The ideas in this book spring from my own original reflections, including recent reflections (and some original discoveries) that have led me to change my mind about some previous ideas. The pathway I will mark out is one you will not find anywhere else.
Enjoy the journey.
Acknowledgments
I AM GRATEFUL FOR INVALUABLE FEEDBACK and resources from many friends, colleagues, and peers. Thank you, Andrew Bailey, Michael Bacon, Zach Blaesi, Brianna Bode, Ben Crandall, Dustin Crummett, Ryan Downie, Patrick Flynn, Philip Goff, Tyron Goldschmit, Eli Haitov, Bill McClymonds, Mia Mendoza, John Michael, James Porter Moreland, Nathan Ormond, Adam Redwine, Bell Sarian, Joseph Schmid, Parker Settecase, and Eric Steinhart, for your inspiration and insights, which added great value to this project beyond what you could know. I am also grateful to my children, Micah, Lana, Chloe, Jonah, and Kaleb, for putting up with many questions about whether their toys could become conscious and, if not, how they could know. Finally, big thanks to my wife, Rachel, for helping me process every idea in this book. Any remaining infelicities have their origin in mindless grains of reality, or they are mine.
Introducing the Inquiry
The subject of mind involves certain difficulties.
THE QUESTION
Your existence is familiar, like your breath. But despite your familiarity, your existence is far from insignificant. It is not obvious how something like you could ever exist. What are you? How did you come to be? Could a sandstorm produce a being like you?
You are a peculiar kind of reality. You are a conscious being. You can think. You can feel. You can decide to read this book. But how can there be something that thinks, feels, or decides, anywhere, ever?
When I reflect on the familiar reality of my own existence, I sometimes have the thought that reality is too strange. It would be simpler if there were just nothing at all. But if there is going to be something, surely there would never be conscious beings, like myself. Here is a simple argument for that conclusion:
1. If conscious beings can exist, then there is some possible explanation of their existence.
2. There is not a possible explanation of the existence of conscious beings.
3. Therefore, conscious beings cannot exist.
Ah, simplicity. The mysteries of reality are now solved.
Not convinced?
Well, maybe we could explain conscious beings in terms of conscious-being-makers. A conscious-being-maker is something that has powers to sprinkle into our world thoughts, feelings, desires, hopes, and other contents of consciousness. But the existence of conscious-being-makers would only deepen the mystery. Why and how could reality include any conscious-being-makers? Suppose some clumps of matter can make conscious beings. Still, how does matter like that exist? If conscious beings are mysterious, is the existence of something that can make a conscious being any less mysterious?
Suppose we appeal to a supreme being. We say, “A supreme being made consciousness!” Then we push back the mystery all the way down into the foundation of reality. If the foundational reality is a supreme being, then this being is itself capable of consciousness (at least analogically). So, what explains its consciousness? If we say “nothing,” then there is no explanation of the existence of consciousness—which presents its own mystery. (We will return to the question of what, if anything, could be an ultimate explanation of consciousness as we approach the end of our inquiry.)
So, we have a great mystery. There are conscious beings, like you and me.1 Yet it is not obvious how any such beings can exist. How can any reality—big or small, simple or complex—unfold into real, conscious beings?
To seek insight, I will investigate the nature of a reality that can give rise to conscious beings. My investigation will organize around this question: Who are you? I will divide this question into two big questions. First, what are you? Second, how could you have come to be? For convenience, I shall call the sort of being you (and I) are “a personal being.” My quest, then, is to pursue a greater understanding of the nature and origin of personal beings.
In this quest, I aim to put light on a path leading, step by step, to a greater vision of our existence as personal beings. By highlighting the steps, I hope travelers from a wide range of perspectives will see a greater vision of who they are by their own clearest light.
A thesis that will emerge from this inquiry is that our existence is deeply rooted. I have come to believe that the roots of personal, perspectival reality go deeper than many people imagine. In fact, it is my conviction, forged through my research for this book, that personal reality has its roots all the way down into the fundamental nature of reality. By tracing these roots to their foundation, I hope to bring into greater light the nature of a world in which beings like you and I can exist.2
THE STAKES
I do not believe I can overemphasize the significance of the question at hand. The stakes extend without measure. On some theories of personal beings, you are the sort of being that can live perpetually, without end. On other theories, you are more fragile. For example, some theories analyze personal beings in terms of specific configurations of matter—such as molecules organized into a functioning brain. On these theories, either “you” flicker out of existence as soon as any molecules are replaced, or you are able to persist through a wider range of molecular changes.3 Either way, a time is coming when you will experience your last act of awareness. When the light of your consciousness goes out, you will never be aware of anything again, not ever. The differences between these theories are infinite in their ramifications.
It is not just your future that is at stake. It is also the meaning and value of your life. Does your life have purpose? What is a life? What is “purpose”? If the path of your life reduces to the paths of point particles, can you have any assurance that your future is bright?
These questions point to the value of our quest. We may want certain answers to be true, but only certain answers are actually true. Embarking on the quest to understand the nature and origin of persons will position us to discern answers to these questions for ourselves.
Not only does one’s theory of consciousness have immense practical and philosophical implications, but the inquiry into consciousness is also interesting in its own right; to unravel the mystery of consciousness is to unravel the mystery in all mysteries. After all, to understand consciousness is to understand the realm in which all understanding is possible.
Finally, consciousness connects to everything you could ever care about. Without consciousness, you experience nothing; you see nothing; you know nothing. Without consciousness, nothing matters to you; nothing is significant to you. In consciousness, you experience all your thoughts, your questions, your sensations, your emotions, your intentions, your hopes, your dreams, your fears, your imaginations, your visual images, your pains, your inferences, your memories, your feelings of curiosity, your feelings of doubt, the sense that something is true, the sense that something is wrong, your every feeling of purpose, and every other sense you ever have. Your consciousness is the storehouse of everything significant in your life.
So, why do any conscious beings exist? An answer to this question would be a great reward.
OBSTACLES TO PROGRESS
There are several obstacles that keep people from even beginning to embark on a journey like this. I will point out three obstacles here.
The first obstacle is the mist of uncertainty. The inquiry into consciousness is like entering a dark cave. People don’t see what is ahead. What they do see are shadows of ideas that disappear into the darkness. Is there a way to light the darkness?
One place people turn to get answers is the sciences. Perhaps we can unlock the mysteries of consciousness by studying the inner workings of the physical structure of the brain. However, even as we are able to make significant advancements in our understanding of how brains function, there are questions left unanswered. How can first-person perspectives emerge from third-person brains at all? Why do certain brain states connect to certain conscious experiences and not others? Is it possible to build a machine that consciously thinks? How might conscious intentions translate into bodily motions? Thinking about these questions invariably lead to considerations that lie beyond the scope of a purely quantitative investigation of brain behaviors.
Where, then, might we find answers? If we look to philosophy, the worry is that we will only find endless speculation. Can we tether our theories to clear observations? How? If we can’t see how to test our theories of consciousness, how can we even begin our investigation?
A second obstacle I see is widespread disagreement about the nature of consciousness. Those who dedicate their lives to exploring the nature of consciousness (whether neuroscientists, philosophers of mind, or Buddhist monks) display no consensus. The controversy can leave one feeling disempowered at the start.
Third, perhaps the biggest obstacle is prior paradigms. Prior paradigms filter our vision of the world. The problem here is not that we think answers are impossible. The problem is that we think the answers are already known. If we think we already know the answers, we might be right, but we might also be unaware of our own blind spots.
Sometimes a compelling story can limit our vision by covering over other potential explanations. In academic settings, I sometimes hear stories passed along about what experts have supposedly shown. These stories can become blue skies in the background of our thinking. The blue skies are so familiar that we take them for granted. As a result, we can easily miss new ways of looking at things, even when new information comes along.
These obstacles do not need to stand in our way. I believe it is possible to illuminate a path deep into the cave of consciousness. We just need the right tools. I will next describe the tools that I believe can help us the most on our journey.
TOOLS OF INQUIRY
To illuminate the steps in our journey into the cave of consciousness, we will use tools that anyone can use to see things for themselves. Two tools will be our primary lights: introspection (by which we can collect relevant data firsthand) and reason (by which we can analyze data). I will share how I think these lights can help us on our quest. The third tool is a broadly scientific method of inquiry. I will describe that method and how our primary tools can help illuminate scientific data relevant to our inquiry.
Tool 1: Introspection. The first tool is introspection. Introspection is the tool for collecting “first-person” data about consciousness. For example, if you smell coffee, you can detect your experience of the smell. This experience of a smell is a bit of first-person data. By collecting first-person data, we prepare ourselves to test hypotheses about the nature of consciousness itself.
Immediately, you might wonder: Can introspection actually help us detect things about consciousness? Some theorists have expressed doubts about the utility of introspection to help illuminate consciousness.4 I even met a philosopher who said he wasn’t sure whether he could rely on introspection to reveal his own existence. “How can we trust introspection?” he asked. Fair question.
Since introspection will be one of the primary tools for our journey, I will offer three notes about why I think introspection can illuminate data relevant to our quest. My first two notes are clarifications that follow Bertrand Russell’s response to skeptics of introspection via the precisification of key concepts.5 My third note is about why I think introspection is foundational to other things we know.
So first, to clarify what I mean by “introspection,” I offer a minimal definition: introspection is any power to sense or be aware of something in consciousness by directing one’s attention inward. For example, if you can be aware of your own thoughts, feelings, or your experience of reading these words, then these are examples of things revealed by introspection. On this minimal definition, we can leave open at the outset different theories about the nature of the things revealed via introspection (or even whether introspection reveals anything).
A second clarification: I do not claim that you cannot make mistakes about your own contents of consciousness. On the contrary, I think you can make mistakes—such as if you misremember what you were thinking a moment ago. The possibility of mistakes does not remove the possibility of using introspection to detect anything within your consciousness.
In my view (based on introspection), mistakes from introspection ultimately have their origin in some shaky inference—an inference that leaps beyond what one can witness in the introspective experience itself. To illustrate, suppose you see a gray cube in front of you. One of the faces of the cube is darker than two other faces that you see. You might infer that your visual experience represents a light gray cube with one face in shadow, but this thought could be a mistake. Suppose you adjust the light source and rotate the cube such that your experience of gray changes slightly. This change in your experience could lead you to believe that the cube is actually dark gray instead of light gray. You might now say that you made a mistake in your initial belief that the cube was light gray. The mistake here would not be in your belief that you had a certain experience, but in your inference about what that experience implies.
We intuitively make inferences about the things we are acquainted with. Sometimes the inferences we make are mistaken. Regardless, I believe we can be directly consciously acquainted with contents of consciousness prior to forming a theory-laden, conceptual analysis of what we are acquainted with. If that is correct, then any mistaken belief about our experience (e.g., about whether a certain image matches something else, external or internal) derives from an analysis, based on inference, that goes beyond what we actually know by direct experience.6
Whatever you make of this analysis, my more fundamental thought is this: you don’t need to have perfectly infallible, clear awareness to have some introspective awareness. Some things in consciousness can be clearer to you than others. It may be clearer, for example, that you feel vaguely hungry, even if it is less clear what exactly you feel hungry for. So long as introspection can illuminate something (leaving open what exactly it is), we can use introspection for our inquiry.
Third, and fundamentally, I believe introspection is a foundational source of many things we know. On my definition of “introspection” (as a power to sense something within consciousness), introspection is your source of knowing contents of consciousness, including your feelings, thoughts, and your experience of these words. Without the light of introspection, you would be in the dark about whether you can even question whether introspection is reliable. That’s darker than things are.
Now I want to be careful not to step ahead too quickly. In the next chapter, I will investigate the prospect of eliminating contents of consciousness altogether; maybe there are no feelings, thoughts, or questions at all. I will consider a certain motivation some philosophers have for eliminating contents of consciousness.7
Here I want to draw attention to a more fundamental problem with turning off the light of introspection (or not turning it on). The problem is this: without the light of introspection, all possible reasons to doubt introspection would themselves be in the dark too; you could not even recognize the very reasons in your own mind to be skeptical. Your mind would be completely dark. Call this problem “the darkness problem.”
To further draw out the darkness problem, suppose someone presents an argument against the reliability of introspection. And suppose this argument actually feels quite convincing to you. Should you then believe their conclusion that introspection is unreliable? Well, there is a problem: if introspection is unreliable, then you could not rely on introspection to recognize your very experience with their argument. You could not even tell whether the argument seemed convincing to you, since the feeling that something seems convincing is itself illuminated by introspection. Your feelings would also be in the dark. Without the light of introspection, things are too dark to even recognize you are in the dark.
So, here is my solution to the darkness problem: turn on the light of introspection. Then you can see some thoughts, feelings, and your sense of sight itself.
I would like to complete my consideration of the utility of the tool of introspection by considering how introspection contributes to scientific inquiry. When we conduct a scientific inquiry, we make observations to test hypotheses. Introspection is embedded in even these familiar practices. For to report an observation, someone must at some time be aware of making observations. While one does not need introspection to observe a thermometer, for example, one does need introspection to notice that one is observing a thermometer and to later recognize one’s memory of that experience. Moreover, to test a hypothesis, one must be aware of logical deductions in one’s mind. These acts of awareness (of one’s experience with observations and one’s deductions) depend on awareness of states within one’s consciousness.
To draw out this connection a bit further, suppose you read a scientific report on the reliability of introspection. This report claims that we know, on the basis of many experiments, that introspection is never reliable to any extent. Do you believe the report? Maybe you could. Perhaps you trust the authors. However, logical reflection reveals a problem: the report is self-undermining. If the report were true, then the scientists would not have any access to their own experience of making observations or to the reasons in their minds leading to their conclusions. Experiences and reasons are accessed via introspection. So, without introspection, scientists could not report their observations or analysis; no one would even know what “observation” or “analysis” means. You also could not tell whether or not you are reading a report about introspection if you have no access to your own experience of reading. Without introspection, you cannot tell whether you ever experience anything at all.
There is a fundamental problem, then, with first demonstrating the reliability of introspection by scientific experiments. A scientific demonstration of introspection would run us in a circle, since we would need to use introspection to discern whether we are making observations or thinking through an analysis relevant to our experiments.
Fortunately, there is another way. We can avoid a circular justification of science if introspection is itself a tool for knowledge. If introspection is a tool for knowledge, then you don’t need to first know that you have a brain to know, via introspection, that you have thoughts and feelings. Instead, introspection allows you to know something about your thoughts and feelings in a basic way; you can know them directly. By direct acquaintance with your own consciousness, you can be acquainted with your own experience of making observations and testing hypotheses. Then science can sprout. (I will have more to say about the power of direct acquaintance when we examine the nature of perception in chapter four.)
Again, I do not claim that introspection can never mislead you, such as if you misjudge what you sense by introspection. Rather, I claim that introspection can illuminate some things—thoughts, feelings, sensations, and so on—within your own consciousness. (We will return to the question of whether any consciousness is even real in the next chapter.)
As a final note about introspection, I want to suggest that the best way to see the power of introspection is to test it out. In the course of this book, I will attempt to use introspection to probe many things. You can view this book as an experiment in the use of this tool. The experiment involves seeing what you can see by collecting first-person data via introspection and then analyzing that data.
Tool 2: Reason. Another major tool we will use is reason. By “reason,” I mean the power to see truths by logical analysis. For example, when carefully thinking through the definitions of square and circle, you can see this truth: nothing can be both a square and a circle. Here are some other truths you can see by reason: triangles must have angles, rocks cannot turn into numbers, trees cannot sprout into thoughts, and so on. In general, by reasoning, you can discern universal principles about what must be or what cannot be. The experience of acquaintance with universal truths is the experience of seeing truths by the light of reason.
While reason may be familiar, its applications and powers are far more significant than many people may realize. The applications of reason are comparable to the applications of the internet. When the internet first came out, we only saw a few limited uses for it, such as website searches and email. We associated the internet with these initial applications. Then new applications came to light: social media, video channels, ecommerce, and many others. As the applications of the internet expanded, we expanded the meaning of the term internet. In a similar way, the applications of reason have been expanding. The early application of reason gave us what we call “canonical logic.” This logic includes some simple principles of reason, such as the principle that nothing can be both A and not A (for any instance of A). We associated “reason” with those original principles (so-called analytic truths). Later, we discovered many other applications of reason, which have formed many growing branches of logic. For example, in the twentieth century, we developed the logic of possibility (modal logic), the logic of parts and wholes (mereology), the logic of time (tensed logic), and many other branches illuminated by reason. Reason has continued to reveal more and more, with no end in sight.
As with the tool of introspection, I will offer a few reasons why I think we can use the tool of reason to help us in our inquiry. I begin by addressing a worry. People have sometimes asked me how we can be sure reason can reveal anything about reality. Or, if reason can reveal some things, why think reason can help us with big philosophical questions, like questions about consciousness?
I offer three considerations in reply. First, the worry invites careful testing. I will not assume reason alone will lead our inquiry into truth. Rather than rush ahead with unbridled speculations, I will seek to tether the results of reason to the real world. This project will involve tying reason to reality with the rope of observations in a systematic, scientific way. (I will say more about this scientific approach in the next section.)
Second, I believe it is possible to see, by reason itself, some truths about reality far away. For example, by reason, you can see that everything, whether a pinecone next to your foot or an electron one billion light years away, has the feature of being identical with itself. This principle of self identity is called “the law of identity,” and it appears—by the light of reason—to have no restriction. Similarly, by reason, you can see that square circles don’t emerge anywhere. Another example: objects cannot become both colorless and green simultaneously. These examples may seem minute, but they illustrate that reason can illuminate at least some constraints on the natures of things near and far.
In fact, some truths about far away things are more clearly illuminated by reason than by any other instrument we have. For example, we can see, quite clearly, that turtles with colorless-green shells do not inhabit galaxies far away. We can see this truth by seeing, from here, an incongruence in the nature of a shell that is both colorless and green simultaneously. Later in this book I will show how reason can reveal surprising constraints on theories of consciousness by revealing other incongruencies.
Moreover, reason’s power to reveal universal truths (about things near and far) is foundational to many things we take ourselves to know locally (about things near). For example, by reason, we know that a true statement is not also false. If we did not know that, then we could not distinguish any true scientific hypothesis from any false one, and then all science would crumble.
Third, and finally, if we take skepticism of reason too far, we risk cutting off the very branch on which we stand. Everything goes dark if we turn off the light of reason entirely. After all, it takes reason to provide reasons to doubt reason. The very inferences in an argument against the use of reason are themselves illuminated by reason. The problem is that if we cannot rely on any reasoning, we cannot see the validity of our very reasons to doubt reason. It seems to me, then, that any argument against reason involves the use of reason itself.
The problem of cutting reason short is directly relevant to our inquiry. If we say that reason cannot help reveal any truths about conscious persons, then this very claim also depends on reasoning. How can we trust reason to tell us not to trust reason in this case? Perhaps reason can reveal some of its limits, but I do not see all the limits of what reason might reveal. I want to be careful, then, not to limit the range of reason prematurely.
In the end, I believe the best way to see what we can see is to look. It is difficult to say at the outset what we can discover via the light of reason. To see where the light of reason might shine, I see no other course than to experiment.
Tool 3: The scientific method. We will use a broadly scientific method of analysis. By this, I mean that we will test hypotheses by making relevant observations. Our observations will include data from introspection (e.g., about how certain things seem or feel), from logical analysis, and any other observations from scientific studies relevant to our quest. We will then test certain hypotheses about consciousness in light of those observations. If a hypothesis fails to match the observations we collect, we will push that hypothesis off the table. This observation-based approach will help us build out a theory that is anchored to the clearest observations.
Some readers might wonder how this observation-based approach fits with my work as a philosopher. People sometimes express the worry that philosophers spin webs of ideas that are untethered or untestable. Can work in philosophy contribute anything useful to our inquiry into persons?
My answer is that philosophical work can help clarify key concepts that are fundamental to understanding the data we collect. Consider, for example, data about the relationship between states of consciousness and states of brain matter. Some relatively recent studies indicate inverse correlations between brain activity and the richness of conscious experience in certain contexts.8 What should we make of these studies? Interpretations vary depending on a wide range of considerations, including those not strictly in the domain of brain science. Academic philosophers have fleshed out a body of analytical work—including the logic of parts and wholes, tensed logic (i.e., the logic of time), the analysis of personal identity, the analysis of language, the analysis of rationality, and theories of mind—that are relevant to interpreting scientific results.
Logical analysis can help us tease out unexpected implications of previous observations. Philosophers have developed new theorems about consciousness that are not widely known among scientists who study the brain.9 These theorems, derived by deductions from first-person, introspective data, expose valuable new considerations relevant to our understanding of what the current science is uncovering.
Furthermore, logical analysis can help remove conceptual obstacles to seeing things that have the potential to be quite clear. For example, as I will argue, I think your own existence, thoughts, feelings, and aspects of your field of awareness can be secure items of knowledge. Obstacles to this sight roll in, however, and it can take the instrument of careful analysis to roll them away. We will be using logical analysis to roll away barriers to sight.
As a final note, to help you get the most out of this inquiry, I aim to provide an analysis of data that anyone can independently check. For this reason, while I lean into a broadly scientific method (of testing hypotheses with relevant observations), I will not rest any claim on mere scientific authority. Sometimes authority-driven claims about what science says covers over key premises. To put light on our steps, I will tease out the hidden premises and point to observations and analyses anyone can examine for themselves.
We are now equipped to enter the cave of consciousness. Introspection will help us illuminate aspects of ourselves from the inside. Reason we will help us illuminate the logical implications of our first-person data. The scientific method will help us organize our observations into a testable theory. With these tools in hand, we are ready to illuminate the steps ahead.
Before we continue, I offer a warning: we will go deep. The journey ahead will move into rough and strange places, including places I personally had never seen before my research for this book. We will not take for granted classical ways of thinking about consciousness but will instead work to see things in a new light. This journey is for explorers who want to uncover truths buried in the depths. I do not claim it will be easy at every step. I do predict this journey will be rewarding—and perhaps surprising.
ROAD MAP
Our journey ahead has two parts. Part one is about your nature. Part two is about your origin. The majority of part one is devoted to a close-up examination of elements of you: feelings, thoughts, perception (sight), your power to choose, your value, and your body. This examination divides across seven chapters. In each chapter, I do two things: first, I collect relevant observations (via our tools); second, I use these observations to analyze these elements and remove certain theories about them. My analysis of these elements of you prepares the way for the final chapter of part one. In this chapter, I put the scope directly on you—the subject who has and unifies the elements of you. I provide an account of this unifying subject, the being who is you.
The second part of our journey is devoted to understanding the nature of a world in which something like you can possibly exist. The guiding question is this: How can there be any personal, conscious beings (ever)? The previous part of the book prepares us to appreciate the significance and challenge of this question. Building on previous observations, I describe several “construction” problems with constructing any being like you. These problems provide severe constraints on any theory of your origin. I seek to develop, within these tight constraints, a more complete theory of the nature and origin of personal beings.
As we proceed, I invite you to own this journey. Whether you are a seasoned philosopher or curious soul, I invite you to test each part by the light of your own analysis. Take whatever serves you, and leave behind whatever doesn’t. We will work to illuminate the essential steps to a big thesis by the end. Wherever you rest your beliefs, I hope this inquiry will empower you in your own exploration of who you are.
Let us now enter the cave of consciousness to see what we might see.
Your Feelings
Mind precedes all mental states.
WE WILL BEGIN OUR INQUIRY into personal beings by shining light on the feeling aspect of consciousness. The feeling aspect of consciousness is what it feels like to be conscious of things, such as a desire, an intention, a thought, a hope, the smell of coffee, and so on. By illuminating the feeling aspect of consciousness, we will bring to light the first paint stroke in a larger picture of your nature.
This chapter is a building block chapter. By zooming in on feelings, we will begin to uncover a more general problem of explaining consciousness. One positive outcome of this chapter is this simple thesis: first-person feelings are real. The fuller significance of this thesis will come into greater view in the course of our journey.
WHAT CAN FEEL?
To set a stage for feelings, I begin with a puzzle. This puzzle is about how to demarcate things that have feelings from things that don’t. Presumably some things can feel. For example, you can feel. You can feel happy, sad, afraid, angry, excited, puzzled, loved, and so on. Yet, other things do not have feelings.1 For example, rocks, leaves, and sand presumably do not have feelings. What makes the difference? What could make the difference? In general, what does it take for something to be able to have feelings?
To avoid leaping ahead too quickly, I will not assume at the outset which materials can or cannot make conscious beings. While it may seem obvious that certain things like rocks, leaves, or sand do not have conscious feelings, I will not even assume this at the outset. Instead, I want to take a step back and consider how we might, in principle, demarcate the difference between things that feel and things that do not.
Consider that consciousness could take different forms than we are accustomed to. For example, suppose some grains of sand collectively think, I feel afraid, as you toss them into the air. If some sand did think that, the sand couldn’t let you know about their feeling of fear. The sand couldn’t yell or shout or implant feelings into your mind. So how can we actually be sure that some sand is not experiencing feelings? Maybe sand simply enjoys consciousness in a different way than we do.
In preparing for this book, I asked some friends why they think throwing sand in the air won’t make the sand feel afraid. The most common answer was this: consciousness requires a nervous system. The idea here is that since sand doesn’t have a nervous system, we can infer that sand is (probably) not conscious.
However, this answer cloaks a deeper question: How does a nervous system make the difference? The question here is not whether we have evidence that conscious things have a nervous system. Rather, the question is more fundamental. It is about how, in principle, organizing atoms into a nervous system could, just on its own, suffice to explain the emergence of any conscious beings.
A rising tide of philosophers and scientists have been uncovering reasons to think that at least certain materials, like sand, are insufficient to explain consciousness, no matter how they function.2 Some materials just can’t explain consciousness, they argue. We will explore their reasons in the course of this book.
For now, I will highlight a seed of one reason one might think that some materials lack the means to explain consciousness. Consider that, from a logical standpoint, we cannot derive first-person, perspectival experiences from a mere third-person description of atoms. To illustrate, suppose we dumped loads of sand into a special machine that causes the sand to function like a nervous system. The grains of sand act like a functioning brain. Still, logic alone does not reveal whether the resulting storm of sand would thereby have its own first-person, conscious feelings. Therefore, third-person materials are the wrong materials, one might think, to logically derive first-person conscious reality all on their own.
Moreover, an inability to derive first-person realities from third-person descriptions could explain why sand cannot become conscious. Sand is a third-person material: descriptions of sand reduce to third-person, quantitative descriptions of positions and motions of little grains. None of these descriptions, on their own, add up to a description of first-person feelings. Nor do they suffice to explain how feelings could emerge. So, to avoid multiplying inexplicable states of reality, one might conclude that conscious feelings cannot arise out of unconscious grains of sand.
But if sand cannot become conscious, what can? What difference in material could be relevant to consciousness?
This question is not easy. It is not obvious how to turn things, whether cosmic dust or chains of carbon atoms, into conscious beings. If consciousness can emerge out of certain materials, the deep question remains: which ones? These questions point to what I call “the construction challenge.”
The construction challenge is the challenge of seeing how to construct conscious beings by any means. There are two pieces to this challenge. The first piece is about consciousness. This piece is the premise that some conscious beings exist—for example, we exist, and we are conscious. The second piece is about construction. There are constraints on constructing conscious beings. For example, if some grains of sand in a certain position do not comprise a conscious being, then it may seem that merely changing some positions or motions of those grains will not thereby transform them into a conscious being. The thought here stems from a more general thought about relevant differences: one might think that mere quantitative changes (in size, shape, motion, etc.) cannot, on their own, add up to the relevant categorical difference required to construct a conscious being. In other words, mere quantitative changes in some materials will not thereby transform them into a conscious being. This principle, if true, is an example of a construction constraint. The challenge, then, is to see how these two pieces—the existence of conscious beings, on the one hand, and the construction constraints, on the other—could go together. How can conscious beings be constructed out of any actual materials of reality?
I believe great insight can spring from wrestling with the construction challenge. A large part of my task in this book will be to draw out the challenge, from many angles, and to identify resources that will help us put the pieces together in a satisfying way.
THEORIES OF MIND: A TAXONOMY
To help us think about what is at stake in making conscious beings, it will help to consider some different theories of what consciousness is. Over the last seventy years, philosophers of mind have developed a set of standard options for understanding consciousness. I will survey these options here.
For ease of reference, I shall call something that can include (or contain) contents of consciousness a “mind.” A mind, in this sense, is a realm of consciousness. This minimal definition is a seed for other ideas that will sprout in the course of this book. For now, I note this result: where there are feelings (in consciousness), there is a mind (a realm of consciousness).
We can divide all the theories of mind into two broad types: reductive and nonreductive theories. Reductive theories analyze mental states (of thinking, feeling, intending, etc.) in terms of material states, such as neurological states of a brain. Nonreductive theories, by contrast, say that mental states (at least some of them) do not reduce to material states. On nonreductive theories—a feeling of happiness, for example—is not the same as (say) chemical reactions in a brain.
To elucidate these views, it will help to have a closer look at the terms mental state and material state. While these terms are not easy to define, paradigm examples can orient us to the distinction. Examples of mental states include feelings, thoughts, and intentions. The term material state, on the other hand, picks out states of matter that are analyzable in terms of quantities and spatial aspects, such as shape, size, location, or motion. An example of a material state is an axon firing in a brain, where the axon is analyzable in terms of quantitative and spatial aspects. The analysis of a material state can also include functions or equations that specify changes or relations between quantities and spatial aspects.
One way of distinguishing “mental state” from “material state” is in terms of whether they depend on a first-person perspective. Material states are typically thought to be able to exist—at least in principle—apart from someone’s first-person experience; for example, you don’t need to experience your brain from your first-person perspective for your brain to exist. By contrast, a mental state of feeling love depends on someone’s first-person experience. I will call states that depend on a first-person perspective “first-person states.” I will call states that can (at least conceivably) exist apart from a first-person perspective “third-person” states. I make no assumptions at the outset about whether any particular states are first-person or third-person.
In light of these clarifications, we can sharpen the distinction between reductive and nonreductive theories. Standard reductive theories of mind analyze first-person, experiential states (thoughts, feelings, emotions, and so on) in terms of third-person states, such as spatial or functional states of axons in a brain. Nonreductive theories deny this. They say that a complete third-person description of third-person material states (e.g., chemical reactions) leaves out certain first-person aspects of consciousness.
Here, then, is a bird’s-eye view of all the major reductive and nonreductive theories of mind. Nonreductive theories separate into the following three options: eliminativism (which eliminates consciousness), varieties of idealism (which flips the picture by treating mental states as fundamental to the analysis of everything else), and varieties of dualism (which countenances both mental and material states, while viewing each as irreducible to the other). On the other side are reductive theories. These include behaviorism, type-identity theory, token-identity theory, and reductive functionalism.
In this chapter, I will zoom in on the theories that either eliminate or reduce consciousness. My aim is to draw out what is at stake in eliminating or reducing consciousness. By seeing what is at stake, we will be in better position to see something special about what it takes for something like you to have feelings.
Eliminativism. Let’s start with eliminativism. According to the strongest form of eliminativism, nothing is ever conscious.3 Initially, one might think this idea is crazy talk: How could nothing be conscious? However, eliminativists sometimes refer to ordinary beliefs about consciousness as expressing our “folk ontology.” Folk ontology is just what ordinary folk ordinarily believe to exist, such as rocks, people, and conversations. Eliminativists point out that these ordinary beliefs can be mistaken. In the case of consciousness, they say that many of our ordinary beliefs about consciousness probably are mistaken.
I want to emphasize that eliminativism is not a reductive theory of consciousness. Reductive theories reduce mental states to third-person material states, such as brains states. Eliminativists don’t do that. Instead, eliminativists eliminate mental states altogether. They say there are no beliefs, feelings, thoughts, and so on. So, elimination and reduction are importantly different. (One can also be an eliminativist about certain mental states without eliminating all mental states. For example, one might eliminate feelings without eliminating thoughts.)4
Still, eliminativists and reductionists are allies on a significant point. They agree on this: there are no felt aspects of consciousness that are fundamentally as they appear through the window of introspection. For example, consider a feeling of happiness. You may seem to know some subjective aspects of this feeling—for example, what it feels like to have that feeling. However, a reductionist may analyze this feeling in terms of certain motions and activities of molecules in a brain. Thus, while you may think you know the feeling via introspection, you don’t know what the feeling really is via introspection. For when you introspect a feeling, you do not witness any molecules as molecules. By reductionist lights, then, your feelings reduce to things (brain states) you would not recognize merely via introspective experience. That’s because feelings are not fundamentally characterized in terms of subjective (felt) aspects as they appear in introspective experience. Instead, feelings are fundamentally and exhaustively characterizable in terms of third-person vocabulary (shapes, motions, quantities, etc.). On this point, eliminativists (with respect to feelings) agree: eliminativists say there are no irreducibly subjective aspects of feelings. Third-person descriptions of material systems, like brains, describe all the aspects (of you) there are.
But here is the crucial difference between eliminativists and reductionists. Eliminativists generally say that feelings would actually have the subjective aspects that people ordinarily say they have. For example, a feeling of happiness would have the felt positive aspect it seems to have introspectively. In this respect, eliminativists respect certain ordinary intuitions about consciousness. For example, you might think your feeling of happiness feels to you a certain way. Eliminativists can agree with this much: your happiness would, if it were real, have the subjective aspect of feeling a certain way to you. However, since eliminativists think that nothing has subjective aspects (as they appear via introspection), eliminativists, unlike reductionists, infer that therefore there are no feelings.
In a sense, then, eliminativists take first-person, subjective aspects of consciousness seriously. They take the subjectivity of consciousness so seriously, in fact, that they resist explaining consciousness away in terms of nonsubjective configurations of matter. In this respect, it seems to me that the eliminativist actually does more than the reductionist to take seriously common intuitions about consciousness. Unlike the reductionist, the eliminativist takes seriously the common conviction that a feeling of love is not reducible to (say) a chemical reaction in a brain (or any other state describable in purely nonpsychological terms). Instead of dismissing this conviction as misguided (or as just part of “folk” thinking), the eliminativist says that first-person consciousness does not reduce to third-person brain states.
By taking consciousness seriously, eliminativists also take seriously the “hard problem” of consciousness. The hard problem of consciousness at the most general level is the problem of explaining consciousness in terms of purely third-person material states. Some philosophers have argued that (i) everything must be explicable in terms of more fundamental, third-person material states, but that (ii) consciousness cannot be explicable purely in terms of third-person material states. If one accepts (i) and (ii), then the only option left is to eliminate consciousness. Elimination can be an implicit acknowledgment of the hard problem of explaining consciousness. The problem is so hard, one might think, that it cannot be solved unless we eliminate consciousness altogether.
From my survey of the literature on eliminativism (and from correspondence with eliminativist sympathizers), it appears to me that a root motivation for eliminativism grows out of a certain epistemology (about how to know the nature of reality). Eliminativists tend to approach the question of consciousness with a certain view about how to reliably acquire information about anything. Eliminativists often emphasize the tools of empirical observation, theoretical virtues, and scientific methodology. These tools, they point out, give us information about brains and bodies. Moreover, these tools fail to reveal any clear information about first-person subjective experiences. For this reason, we are unable to use our scientific tools to verify that first-person, subjective experiences actually exist.
To be clear, the thinking here is not that it is impossible in principle to discover consciousness. Many eliminativists suppose that, in principle, there could be reasons to posit consciousness to explain other things we see, just as we posit electrons to explain other things we see. The problem, however, is that we cannot verify consciousness by any direct means. So, if we are to verify the existence of consciousness, we need to make an inference based on other things we observe. The thought, then, is that we have no sufficiently good reason to posit consciousness to explain other things we see. We can explain everything more simply without positing the things people associate with first-person consciousness.
So, is there good reason to think consciousness exists? As you may anticipate, I think so. In particular, I think it is possible to detect at least some contents of consciousness directly using introspection. Before I develop this thought further, I want to briefly walk through a sequence of three objections to eliminativism and possible replies. Walking through these objections and replies will help further illuminate what is at stake. By the end of this walk, I hope to display what I think is the best way to navigate this dialectical landscape.
First, perhaps the most common objection to eliminativism is that the thesis is itself self-defeating. For suppose eliminativism is true. Then there are no mental states. But if there are no mental states, then no one could think that eliminativism is true. To think that there are no mental states is to have a mental state (a thought). Even to question the existence of mental states is to have a mental state (a question). Is that not a contradiction?
Here is a reply. Per eliminativism, no one actually thinks that there are no thoughts. Instead, in the place of thoughts, there are nonmental brain states that function like thoughts would.5 So the eliminativist doesn’t think there are no thoughts. Rather, she thinks* there are no thoughts. Thinks* is like thinks, except there is no subjective feeling or experience involved in having a thought*. The eliminativist’s “thought” here is that we can replace references to mental states, like thoughts, with reference to something else.
Here is a second objection. If we replace talk of thoughts with talk of thoughts*, then what exactly does “thoughts*” mean? William Hasker raises this question in his analysis of Paul Churchland’s arguments for eliminativism. Hasker observes, “Churchland, having reached his negative conclusion about folk psychology, nevertheless continues . . . to make to make assertion after assertion assuming the truth of what eliminativism denies.”6 Hasker’s point is not that eliminativism is flatly self-defeating. Rather, he is concerned with how to interpret claims made in support of eliminativism. The problem here is this: if there are no mental states, then there are no affirmations, and thus there are no affirmations of eliminativism. What, then, could someone mean if they say they “affirm” eliminativism?
In response, an eliminativist could perhaps leave the translation project as an open inquiry. Sure, the translations have not been worked out so far. But perhaps they could be worked out in terms of brain functions. While we don’t (yet) have the actual translations, perhaps an eliminativist could point to our best current theory of human behaviors, which we do understand. Those theories, they may say, are not in terms of mental states. The eliminativist could then offer a promissory note: the cost of the translation problem will be paid, and the cost is worth the theoretical benefits of eliminativism. I think this is sort of response is the best strategy on behalf of eliminativists.
I turn now to a third objection, which I think points to a root problem. The problem is that eliminativism contradicts what I think one can know directly. According to this objection, one does not need to posit consciousness or witness one’s feelings through a microscope. Instead, one can witness one’s consciousness directly—just by noticing it.
For our purposes, I do not take for granted that we have direct access to mental states. In the previous chapter, I suggested that introspection can give us information about inner conscious states. But we may wonder, why think that is true? Some eliminativists I’ve talked with express skepticism that introspection illuminates any reality. Why think we can use introspection to know that we are conscious?
In view of this question, I took some time in the previous chapter to offer some reasons for thinking that introspection can reveal aspects of reality within consciousness. To review, I argued that introspection is a basic tool of knowledge. This tool allows us to know something about our experiences, including the experience of questioning whether introspection is reliable. Without introspection, we fall into a deep pit of skepticism, and I see no possible way out.
Previously, I also argued that introspection is foundational to scientific inquiry itself. The gist of the argument was that we use introspection in the activities of science, such as the activity of recalling observations and analyzing scientific reports. So, without introspection, I believe all of science (including any science that could cast doubts on introspection) would crumble.
My analysis of eliminativism, then, is fundamentally this: by the light of introspection, I think it is possible to know something about your experiences directly. In particular, you can know some thoughts, feelings, and intentions. On this analysis, the subjective aspects of consciousness are not theoretical posits that explain some data; you do not need to posit your feelings to explain other things, like your behavior. Rather, conscious states are part of your data—which I think you can access directly. (I will say more about the power to access things directly in chapter four on perception.)
Suppose instead you are not conscious. Then things aren’t as they seem. But without introspection, you could not even tell whether you seem to be conscious. Even if everything is an illusion, your very experience of an illusion is itself an item of consciousness illuminated by introspection.7
To be clear, I am not saying that introspection illuminates everything perfectly clearly. Rather, I say that introspection allows you to detect at least some aspects of your mental states. For example, when you pay attention to inner states, you can witness thoughts and feelings by direct acquaintance, which I believe is the clearest and most direct way to know that anything is real.8 So, the way out of the eliminativist’s territory, on my analysis, is by the light of introspection, which shines on realities right within you.
We can summarize this analysis in the form of an argument:
1. You can tell, by introspection, that some of your feelings differ from others (e.g., happiness differs from sadness).
2. If some of your feelings differ from others, then you have some feelings.
3. Therefore, you have some feelings.
At this stage in the dialectic, someone could wonder whether my analysis depends on presupposing the things whose very existence is in question—introspection, feelings, seemings, considerations, and so on. Does my analysis presuppose the very thing I am arguing for? If so, isn’t that cheating?
My answer is that my case for consciousness does not fundamentally rest on the edifice of an argument from independent premises. Rather, it rests on a basic act of awareness. Just as your eyes allow you to be aware of shapes and colors within your visual field, introspection allows you to be aware of your experiences. If you can notice something within you by the light of direct, inner awareness, then no argument for its existence is necessary.
There is certainly a longer discussion to be had with eliminativists, and I do not claim to have the last word. Still, I hope the connection between introspection and science may serve eliminativists whose toolkit includes scientific instruments. Perhaps these considerations may encourage some eliminativist sympathizers to take up the instrument of introspection with more confidence.9
As usual, I invite you to test my ideas by your own light. Focus your awareness within. Do you sense anything? Do you sense any thoughts, feelings, or emotions? Do you sense that some feelings differ from others? If you are like me, by focusing inward, you can sense some thinking and feeling right within you; you can even witness your sense of thinking and feeling. Even if you notice yourself feeling unconvinced by my presentation, then you notice some feeling. If so, then that you’ve noticed enough to eliminate eliminativism.
Behaviorism. I turn next to reductive theories. Recall that these theories don’t deny that consciousness exists. Rather, they deny that conscious experiences (happiness, love, hope, etc.) are fundamentally characterizable in terms of experiential aspects (e.g., what it feels like to you to be happy) as they appear in one’s first-person perspective. Instead, according to reductionism, consciousness reduces to things expressible in the vocabulary of third-person physics (“shape,” “size,” “momentum,” etc.). For example, the experience of happiness is fully describable in terms of purely third-person aspects, such as a pattern or function of particles in a brain.
