The way we think about consciousness is just wrong, it seems.

First, says Markus Gabriel, we posit this bizarre entity the Universe, consisting of everything, and then ask whether consciousness is part of it; this is no way to proceed. In fact ‘consciousness’ covers many different things; once correctly analysed many of them are unproblematic (The multilingual Gabriel suggests in passing that there is no satisfactory German word equivalent to ‘mind’, and for that matter, no good English equivalent of ‘geist’.) He believes there is more mystery about how, for example, the brain deals with truth.

Ray Brassier draws a distinction between knowing what consciousness is and knowing what it means. A long tradition suggests that because we have direct acquaintance with consciousness our impressions are authoritative and we know its nature. In fact the claims about phenomenal experience made by Chalmers and others are hard to justify. I can see, he says, that there are phenomenal qualities – being brown, or square – attached to a table, but the idea that phenomenal things are going on in my mind separate from the table seems to make no sense.

Eva Jablonka takes a biological and evolutionary view. Biological stuff is vastly more complex than non-biological stuff and requires different explanations. She defends Chalmers’s formulation of the problem, but not his answers; she is optimistic that scientific exploration can yield enlightenment. She cites the interesting case of Daniel Kish whose eyes were removed in early infancy but who has developed echolocation skills to the point where he can ride a bike and find golf balls – it seems his visual cortex has been recruited for the purpose. Surely, says Jablonka, he must have a somewhat better idea of what it is like to be a bat?

There’s a general agreement that simplistic materialism is outdated and that a richer naturalism is required (not, of course, anything like traditional dualism).

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