That the Cartesian idea of mind-body dualism still holds so much sway goes some way towards explaining that apparently no one picked up on the incoherence of LaMDA claiming to sometimes *feel* sad or happy. Sadness and happiness are deeply embodied states--in order to feel an emotion, one needs a body. Sadness typically manifests as a physical heaviness ("a heavy heart"), accompanied by sensations in and around the eyes, and happiness often as a feeling of physical uplift and radiance from/within the facial regions.
So there's no sense and meaning present when a digital machine whose sole function is to spit out words and sentences claims to feel these emotions. Rather, a human operator or reader is reading AI-produced words on a screen and then (unconsciously) assigns the feelings these words evoke in him or her back to the machine.
Thanks to an incessant drive for abstraction and conceptual analysis in an effort to carve up the world into freeze-framed "this" and "that" constructs in hopes to understand it (a process Iain McGilchrist masterfully exposes in "The Master and His Emissary"), we've largely become James Joyce's Mr Duffy who "lived at a little distance from his body." We've made ourselves into (partially) disembodied beings that are more and more taken in by abstractions like "intelligence" and "consciousness" that lose all meaning in the process because they're no longer grounded anywhere (besides a huge pile of additional concepts).
There's nothing useful to figure out about "consciousness" conceptually; what's very useful is to step out of conceptual framing and just dip into direct sensory experience--into what's really and immediately there. Beats trying to live life solely with second-hand knowledge (AI being one example of trying to elevate purely conceptual knowledge and discount direct experience in vain hopes to transcend the mundane and undesirable).
Jun 15, 2022·edited Jun 15, 2022Liked by Robert Wright
Yeah, there are so many theories of consciousness. Or rather hypotheses. Actually, probably only conjectures. Oh them qualia.
Scientific theories consist of explanations that are hard to vary. Are there any such hard to vary explanations about consciousness? And does that explanation make any prediction? Can the theory be falsified? Does it solve any problem?
The problem of consciousness is also connected to the problem of free will. I think there are good argument against the existence of free will. Any theory of consciousness would have to address that issue.
Having said that, what makes really sense to investigate is the phenomenology of consciousness, the direct experience as Martin put it. Unlike modern science, people in the east have done such investigations for hundreds of years. Very useful insights. Unfortunately many of them made an unjustified step from the subjective experience to a claim about the ontology of the world. On the whole, a great puzzle, and often a pretty confused field, starting with a lack of a proper definition.
P.S.
"One reason I paid so much attention to epiphenomenalism is that I consider it science’s unofficial view of consciousness"
Well, eminent scientists believed, and it was taught as fact, that consciousness *causes* the breakdown of the wave function.
P.P.S.
Since you mention Wittgenstein. How about his assertion at the end of the Tractatus 😉
Lovely article. Only ever so slightly miffed there was no tip of the hat to Idealism and your recent podcast guest Bernardo Kastrup? You missed a great plug.
Bob ties himself in knots by assuming that consciousness is epiphenomenal. If in fact consciousness didn't do anything then it would be very weird to explain why we have it. But consciousness very obviously is not epiphenomenal, it is what allows us to navigate the world, achieve our needs and desires and helps us decide what we want and how to get it. There is no mystery, here. Consciousness evolved because we need it to survive. And that's why as far as we know all animals are conscious. Without consciousness animals and humans would not know what do do or even how to find a restaurant. This is so obviously the case that it is almost perverse to insist in the face of all the conscious decisions we make every minute of every day that consciousness doesn't do anything. If people could operate without consciousness then we could all be mindless zombies an inconceivable possibility. Because Bob starts out with epiphenomenalism he can't explain consciousness except as something that is evolutionarily superfluous. The reason he gets into this bind is because Bob is a determinist who doesn't believe in free will but instead thinks everything happens based on some primitive notion of cause and effect that denies us the choice of whether to go to McDonalds or Burger King. In Bob's view we don't have those choices. So Bob says no free will and consciousness doesn't do anything. But he concedes that the only way people who think "meaning" is something important can give their lives meaning is consciousness. Well yes obviously people decide on their own what meaning they think their lives have, if any. So having twisted himself in knots to avoid free will, Bob then comes back and claims that life has a universal purpose and we have to live out this purpose whether we like it or not. To summarize Bob believes that consciousness does nothing, there's no free will, life is teleological and is moving and evolving with some grand design and finally this teleology gives life its meaning. You cannot make this stuff up because Bob already did. But it's certainly a confusing muddle. The much more straightforward scientific view that consciousness evolved for the very good reason that we need it to survive dopes not appear to have occurred to him. Go figure.
read The Hidden Springs--Journey to the source of consciousness --2021--by Mark Solms for best and most recent review of consciousness and its source in the brainstem!
According to the epiphenominal theory of consciousness your conscious experiences are not causing you to believe you are having conscious experiences! A scientific theory that explains how people believe they are experiencing the color red or pain or whatever must be really interesting! I would insist that it is a theory of consciousness. Epiphenominalism is a useless distraction that literally according to its biggest supporters explains no observations at all.
Imagine the following scenario. Aliens make it to earth. They are technologically advanced. We can't see them, but they can observe us. The alien president orders the alien scientists to report to him everything that they can find on earth. What is there? They go to work and a few days later report everything they could find. The president watches the show. On one of his monitors he sees a being that the scientists called a homo sapiens sitting on a coach. Suddenly that being gets up from the coach and heads to the fridge. The alien president wants to know from his scientists, why did he did that?
The scientists go to work and after a few days report their findings. That person got up, they explain, because some muscles contracted. That was the cause of getting up. And the muscles contracted because they received a nerve signal from the motor cortex. Why did that signal come from the motor cortex. Well, because, they explain, a neuron fired and send the signal on its way. Why did that neuron fire? Well, the signal was forwarded from another neuron, and so forth. No mystery there. (And if you are interested to follow up the prior history of physical causes beyond the first 5 seconds, or milliseconds, check out Robert Sapolsky's story in his book on behaviour)
So, there is a complete solid causal chain explaining why that man got up. Nowhere in that causal chain appears a spirit that made any decision. Nor do we need one for an explanation.
And yet, there are people who still want to hold on to the possibility of a mind making decisions. Well, in case the mind would have to intervene somewhere in the causal chain and push the right neuron. But that would mean we have two causes, a mental cause for getting up from the coach and a physical cause. Is that possible? Well yes, sometimes events are over determined as it is called, like when someone is shot and struck by lightning at the same time. One cause would have been enough to kill him.
But over determination looks like the wrong model for what is going on in the mind/brain case. Do I want to say that if my motor cortex was not firing, my arm would still go up because I decided so? The physical effects are not over determined, i.e. they don’t have two independent causes like in the lightning case. So, if you still want to play the *mind has effects* language game, you could say that when I decided to get up or I wanted to reach for a beer, i.e. talk in terms like decisions and wanting, etc., I am in fact referring to physical processes giving rise to the behaviour.
However, there is another consideration. If there is a mind that intervenes somewhere in the causal chain to push the right neuron, it would need some energy from somewhere, otherwise it would violate the law of conservation of energy. It is also not clear how something imagined as immaterial could interact with something material. But anyway, scientists have searched that mysterious source of energy, but couldn't find any. Nowhere in the brain was any sign of any such influence or extra source of energy.
Actually, I imagined those aliens to be far advanced. But we are pretty much there today. And therefore, many theories about the mind that seemed plausible in the past, are not tenable any more. It may also look plausible now where the idea of epiphenomenalism comes from. A famous analogy stems from Huxley in Darwin's time. He compared mental events to a steam whistle that contributes nothing to the work of a locomotive 🙂
P.S.
Another fascinating finding in neuroscience is the following. You can cut the physical physical into two halves, and you get two consciousnesses with separate perceptions and separate memories. Now, square that one 🤔
I recall you discussing a "press agent" theory of consciousness in one of your books (I think it was The Moral Animal, but don't have a searchable copy, so I'm not sure). If I remember the idea correctly, it posits that the reason only some things are conscious is that they are the things that are advantageous to communicate to others. Did I get the basics right, and if so how does that idea fit in with the framework you've discussed here?
2. No evolutionary purpose doesn't necessarily mean defying evolutionary explanation:
It seems to me that there's a difference between saying something doesn't serve a purpose, and saying it defies explanation. In your shadow play example, the shadows don't serve a purpose, but they also don't defy scientific/material explanation.
If an epiphenomenal consciousness wasn't selectively deleterious (if it wasn't energetically costly, or had only negligible costs, etc), I don't think there would be a reason that it must serve an evolutionary purpose via having its own selective advantage. In the "antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis" of senescence, certain old-age phenotypes don't have an evolutionary "purpose" - but the genes that cause them do (via an evolutionary "purpose" in early life). So I could imagine a scenario where the genes that lead to truly epiphenomenal consciousness evolved because they were advantageous for the other effects they have (on brain information processing, etc) - and the "shadow" of consciousness they cause is irrelevant enough from an evolutionary standpoint that it wasn't selected against. To be clear, this scenario wouldn't explain why consciousness does exist (and I'm not sure whether this scenario is even scientifically testable) - but it at least seems a plausible scenario where consciousness itself doesn't defy scientific explanation.
Anyway, thanks for reading. I absolutely love your books and the newsletter! Thanks for what you're doing for the world.
This is fascinating. I always enjoy when you delve back into evolutionary biology. Would you also touch on how this might intersect with the Buddhist view of non-self?
That the Cartesian idea of mind-body dualism still holds so much sway goes some way towards explaining that apparently no one picked up on the incoherence of LaMDA claiming to sometimes *feel* sad or happy. Sadness and happiness are deeply embodied states--in order to feel an emotion, one needs a body. Sadness typically manifests as a physical heaviness ("a heavy heart"), accompanied by sensations in and around the eyes, and happiness often as a feeling of physical uplift and radiance from/within the facial regions.
So there's no sense and meaning present when a digital machine whose sole function is to spit out words and sentences claims to feel these emotions. Rather, a human operator or reader is reading AI-produced words on a screen and then (unconsciously) assigns the feelings these words evoke in him or her back to the machine.
Thanks to an incessant drive for abstraction and conceptual analysis in an effort to carve up the world into freeze-framed "this" and "that" constructs in hopes to understand it (a process Iain McGilchrist masterfully exposes in "The Master and His Emissary"), we've largely become James Joyce's Mr Duffy who "lived at a little distance from his body." We've made ourselves into (partially) disembodied beings that are more and more taken in by abstractions like "intelligence" and "consciousness" that lose all meaning in the process because they're no longer grounded anywhere (besides a huge pile of additional concepts).
There's nothing useful to figure out about "consciousness" conceptually; what's very useful is to step out of conceptual framing and just dip into direct sensory experience--into what's really and immediately there. Beats trying to live life solely with second-hand knowledge (AI being one example of trying to elevate purely conceptual knowledge and discount direct experience in vain hopes to transcend the mundane and undesirable).
Yeah, there are so many theories of consciousness. Or rather hypotheses. Actually, probably only conjectures. Oh them qualia.
Scientific theories consist of explanations that are hard to vary. Are there any such hard to vary explanations about consciousness? And does that explanation make any prediction? Can the theory be falsified? Does it solve any problem?
The problem of consciousness is also connected to the problem of free will. I think there are good argument against the existence of free will. Any theory of consciousness would have to address that issue.
Having said that, what makes really sense to investigate is the phenomenology of consciousness, the direct experience as Martin put it. Unlike modern science, people in the east have done such investigations for hundreds of years. Very useful insights. Unfortunately many of them made an unjustified step from the subjective experience to a claim about the ontology of the world. On the whole, a great puzzle, and often a pretty confused field, starting with a lack of a proper definition.
P.S.
"One reason I paid so much attention to epiphenomenalism is that I consider it science’s unofficial view of consciousness"
Well, eminent scientists believed, and it was taught as fact, that consciousness *causes* the breakdown of the wave function.
P.P.S.
Since you mention Wittgenstein. How about his assertion at the end of the Tractatus 😉
Thank you so much Robert. I am eternally grateful for your insight
I’ve listened to you address this issue on many podcasts, but after reading this newsletter I think I finally understand what you were talking about.
Why does life have to have a meaning?
Lovely article. Only ever so slightly miffed there was no tip of the hat to Idealism and your recent podcast guest Bernardo Kastrup? You missed a great plug.
Bob ties himself in knots by assuming that consciousness is epiphenomenal. If in fact consciousness didn't do anything then it would be very weird to explain why we have it. But consciousness very obviously is not epiphenomenal, it is what allows us to navigate the world, achieve our needs and desires and helps us decide what we want and how to get it. There is no mystery, here. Consciousness evolved because we need it to survive. And that's why as far as we know all animals are conscious. Without consciousness animals and humans would not know what do do or even how to find a restaurant. This is so obviously the case that it is almost perverse to insist in the face of all the conscious decisions we make every minute of every day that consciousness doesn't do anything. If people could operate without consciousness then we could all be mindless zombies an inconceivable possibility. Because Bob starts out with epiphenomenalism he can't explain consciousness except as something that is evolutionarily superfluous. The reason he gets into this bind is because Bob is a determinist who doesn't believe in free will but instead thinks everything happens based on some primitive notion of cause and effect that denies us the choice of whether to go to McDonalds or Burger King. In Bob's view we don't have those choices. So Bob says no free will and consciousness doesn't do anything. But he concedes that the only way people who think "meaning" is something important can give their lives meaning is consciousness. Well yes obviously people decide on their own what meaning they think their lives have, if any. So having twisted himself in knots to avoid free will, Bob then comes back and claims that life has a universal purpose and we have to live out this purpose whether we like it or not. To summarize Bob believes that consciousness does nothing, there's no free will, life is teleological and is moving and evolving with some grand design and finally this teleology gives life its meaning. You cannot make this stuff up because Bob already did. But it's certainly a confusing muddle. The much more straightforward scientific view that consciousness evolved for the very good reason that we need it to survive dopes not appear to have occurred to him. Go figure.
read The Hidden Springs--Journey to the source of consciousness --2021--by Mark Solms for best and most recent review of consciousness and its source in the brainstem!
According to the epiphenominal theory of consciousness your conscious experiences are not causing you to believe you are having conscious experiences! A scientific theory that explains how people believe they are experiencing the color red or pain or whatever must be really interesting! I would insist that it is a theory of consciousness. Epiphenominalism is a useless distraction that literally according to its biggest supporters explains no observations at all.
Imagine the following scenario. Aliens make it to earth. They are technologically advanced. We can't see them, but they can observe us. The alien president orders the alien scientists to report to him everything that they can find on earth. What is there? They go to work and a few days later report everything they could find. The president watches the show. On one of his monitors he sees a being that the scientists called a homo sapiens sitting on a coach. Suddenly that being gets up from the coach and heads to the fridge. The alien president wants to know from his scientists, why did he did that?
The scientists go to work and after a few days report their findings. That person got up, they explain, because some muscles contracted. That was the cause of getting up. And the muscles contracted because they received a nerve signal from the motor cortex. Why did that signal come from the motor cortex. Well, because, they explain, a neuron fired and send the signal on its way. Why did that neuron fire? Well, the signal was forwarded from another neuron, and so forth. No mystery there. (And if you are interested to follow up the prior history of physical causes beyond the first 5 seconds, or milliseconds, check out Robert Sapolsky's story in his book on behaviour)
So, there is a complete solid causal chain explaining why that man got up. Nowhere in that causal chain appears a spirit that made any decision. Nor do we need one for an explanation.
And yet, there are people who still want to hold on to the possibility of a mind making decisions. Well, in case the mind would have to intervene somewhere in the causal chain and push the right neuron. But that would mean we have two causes, a mental cause for getting up from the coach and a physical cause. Is that possible? Well yes, sometimes events are over determined as it is called, like when someone is shot and struck by lightning at the same time. One cause would have been enough to kill him.
But over determination looks like the wrong model for what is going on in the mind/brain case. Do I want to say that if my motor cortex was not firing, my arm would still go up because I decided so? The physical effects are not over determined, i.e. they don’t have two independent causes like in the lightning case. So, if you still want to play the *mind has effects* language game, you could say that when I decided to get up or I wanted to reach for a beer, i.e. talk in terms like decisions and wanting, etc., I am in fact referring to physical processes giving rise to the behaviour.
However, there is another consideration. If there is a mind that intervenes somewhere in the causal chain to push the right neuron, it would need some energy from somewhere, otherwise it would violate the law of conservation of energy. It is also not clear how something imagined as immaterial could interact with something material. But anyway, scientists have searched that mysterious source of energy, but couldn't find any. Nowhere in the brain was any sign of any such influence or extra source of energy.
Actually, I imagined those aliens to be far advanced. But we are pretty much there today. And therefore, many theories about the mind that seemed plausible in the past, are not tenable any more. It may also look plausible now where the idea of epiphenomenalism comes from. A famous analogy stems from Huxley in Darwin's time. He compared mental events to a steam whistle that contributes nothing to the work of a locomotive 🙂
P.S.
Another fascinating finding in neuroscience is the following. You can cut the physical physical into two halves, and you get two consciousnesses with separate perceptions and separate memories. Now, square that one 🤔
This was a great article!! I have two thoughts:
1. Press agent theory:
I recall you discussing a "press agent" theory of consciousness in one of your books (I think it was The Moral Animal, but don't have a searchable copy, so I'm not sure). If I remember the idea correctly, it posits that the reason only some things are conscious is that they are the things that are advantageous to communicate to others. Did I get the basics right, and if so how does that idea fit in with the framework you've discussed here?
2. No evolutionary purpose doesn't necessarily mean defying evolutionary explanation:
It seems to me that there's a difference between saying something doesn't serve a purpose, and saying it defies explanation. In your shadow play example, the shadows don't serve a purpose, but they also don't defy scientific/material explanation.
If an epiphenomenal consciousness wasn't selectively deleterious (if it wasn't energetically costly, or had only negligible costs, etc), I don't think there would be a reason that it must serve an evolutionary purpose via having its own selective advantage. In the "antagonistic pleiotropy hypothesis" of senescence, certain old-age phenotypes don't have an evolutionary "purpose" - but the genes that cause them do (via an evolutionary "purpose" in early life). So I could imagine a scenario where the genes that lead to truly epiphenomenal consciousness evolved because they were advantageous for the other effects they have (on brain information processing, etc) - and the "shadow" of consciousness they cause is irrelevant enough from an evolutionary standpoint that it wasn't selected against. To be clear, this scenario wouldn't explain why consciousness does exist (and I'm not sure whether this scenario is even scientifically testable) - but it at least seems a plausible scenario where consciousness itself doesn't defy scientific explanation.
Anyway, thanks for reading. I absolutely love your books and the newsletter! Thanks for what you're doing for the world.
If your book is out of print, can't you get back the rights and distribute it yourself?
This is fascinating. I always enjoy when you delve back into evolutionary biology. Would you also touch on how this might intersect with the Buddhist view of non-self?