Editor’s introduction
as-consciousness; chemical properties are more complex forms of matter-as-consciousness derived from the basic forms; brain processes are even more complex forms of matter-as-consciousness derived from the more basic forms of chemistry and physics. The non-dualistic nature of the theory has some attractions for both dualists and confirmed materialists. For the former, subjective experience is finally included in a scientific understanding of consciousness. For the latter – and I am referring to philosophers such as David Papineau – consciousness is introduced into the material world as nothing special, as something identified with common physical processes. 17 Panpsychism – the view that consciousness is everywhere – will intuitively strike many as crazy, partly we because we so strongly equate consciousness with the ability to feel pain. (Is the pavement wincing as I walk on it? Do the keys on my computer keyboard feel stress because of the constant drumming?) But there might be something in the science of consciousness programme Goff proposes: 18 a. Realism about consciousness: the reality of subjective experience is a basic datum, equal in status to other observed data. b. Empiricism: quantitative data are equal in status to qualitative data. c. Anti-dualism: consciousness should not be seen as separate from the physical world but as part of its intrinsic nature. d. Methodology: start with the basic forms of consciousness. Goff is aware of the problems his proposal faces, even in principle. Arguably the most important of those problems is the relationship between basic and complex forms of consciousness, or how a combination of basic forms of consciousness creates more complex forms. 19 I would add that Goff’s keenness to embrace subjective experience as part of the physical world leads to a sort of hyperbole, such as when he claims that ‘far from being a mystery, consciousness is the only bit of physical reality we really understand. It is the rest of the physical world that is a mystery .’ 20 Or when he says: ‘Nonetheless, in having the experience [of pain] and thereby grasping its character, you have a complete [my italics] understanding of what it involves .’ 21
I leave it to the reader to judge whether my analysis of the possible ways out of the hard problem is correct, and also whether we should give any credit to the non-dualistic panpsychist programme
17 Indeed, insofar as I understand Papineau, he believes that those neuroscientists looking, say, for neural correlates of subjective experiences are thinking dualistically, still holding consciousness as something special to (human) animals. Papineau 2002: 22-3 also says that, when David Chalmers (1996: 134-6) argues that phenomenal properties can be identified with intrinsic properties of the physical realm, he, though a famous dualist, is giving the ‘optimal formulation of materialism’. Sea rle 2004 makes the case for what he terms ‘biological naturalism’, as follows: a. conscious states are real: they are a subjective ontology. It is impossible to show that they are an illusion (hard materialism); they cannot be reduced to neurobiological causes (supervenience); b. but conscious states are entirely caused by neurobiological processes; c. conscious states are realized in the brain system, i.e. at a higher level than that of individual neurons (which are not conscious); d. conscious states – real themselves – cause things in the world (contra epiphenomelists) ; e. therefore, we can make a causal but not an ontological reduction. 18 Goff 2019: 174. 19 Ibid.: 144ff. discusses the ‘combination problem’.
20 Ibid.: 131. 21 Ibid.: 180.
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