The Quest for Consciousness

Consciousness was once the domain of philosophers and poets. But now scientists are trying to study it as a natural phenomenon akin to giving an explanation for electricity or the metabolism.

In this post I’ll exactly explain why I’m skeptical of this project ever succeeding. And it’s not because I believe dualism is true.

There will never be a science of consciousness in the way there’s a science of electricity, heat, or any other natural phenomenon.

My argument hinges on measurement.

The field of consciousness studies will never become a legitimate science until it has tools to measure consciousness accurately.

All mature scientific paradigms involve empirical observation and involve using measurement tools that have been calibrated and validated as measuring what it is the scientists are interested in measuring.

Consciousness researchers need good measurement instruments especially in “test cases” like the vegetative state, infants, sleep, non-human animals, insects, and other cases that test the limits of consciousness.

But in order to measure something you have to know where to look.

If you were trying to measure heat, you wouldn’t go looking for heat in the snow because you have an intuitive, prescientific conception of what heat is and that gives you confidence that if you were to build a measuring device for heat and stuck it in a bank of snow it wouldn’t register MORE heat.

In contrast to the science of heat, consciousness studies doesn’t even know where to look at a prescientific level because researchers cannot agree on what it is they are looking for. They have no idea what would happen if they stuck the thermometer in the snowbank.

Some well-respected theorists believe only fully developed humans are conscious. Some well-respected theorists believe most animals including humans are conscious. Some well-respected theorists believe all life forms, even bacteria, are conscious. Some well-respected theorists believe inorganic matter can be conscious (panpsychism).

Given we have all these different prescientific ideas about the proverbial snowbank, it raises the question: Are they even talking about the same thing?

Most researchers do insist they are all talking about the same thing, namely: the subjective “qualia” of consciousness — what philosophers often call phenomenal consciousness i.e. a sense that there is “something-it-is-like” to be conscious.

To me, all this talk has the feel of verbal shuffling. But trying to operationalize these concepts is elusive.

How would we measure qualia?

Building a C-Meter

Surely a goal of consciousness studies is to build a consciousness-meter or C-Meter.

photo by Thomas Kelley on Unsplash

There are numerous problems in trying to build a C-Meter.

But without a validated C-meter, how can you have a science of consciousness?

What theory do you use to build it?

Different theories of consciousness will instruct you how to build a C-Meter differently. Clearly a panpsychic theory of consciousness will build a C-Meter very differently from a theorist who believes only adult humans are conscious. One will be designed specifically to measure the activity of neurons in some way — the other will measure something else if it believes a speck of dust is ever-so-slightly conscious.

Calibrating the C-meter

Suppose you’ve built your C-Meter. How do you confirm that it’s working properly?

Typically, you would try to find a “fixed point” akin to the boiling and freezing of water. These fixed points provide a reference point to build a quantitative scale to make sense of our measurements of temperature.

But with consciousness we don’t know the fixed points with confidence because different fixed points are predicted by different theories and different theories interpret the existing evidence differently making the data indecisive between competing theories.

For example, one might think that a test case or “fixed point” for having the C-Meter read “0” would be pointing it at an insect.

Suppose it did read “0” for an insect.

Panpsychists would say that they have good reason to think insects are conscious so it must be the C-Meter is not sensitive enough. Other theorists would say the C-meter reading “0” for the insect means the instrument is calibrated properly.

Epistemological Circularity

This calibration problem suggests that the epistemic foundations of consciousness research are based on circular reasoning.

photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash

We’re trying to measure something that is not directly observable. So we have to indirectly measure it by using something else as a proxy. But we don’t know which theory is correct and different theories suggest different proxies.

Furthermore, we can’t test the theories and how well consciousness actually correlates with the proxies because nobody has built a C-Meter that with broad public consensus as valid method of detecting consciousness in the same way mercury thermometers became accepted as valid by the community of people studying heat (though there was a long-standing rivalry with gas thermometers).

There are as many theories of consciousness as there are people who study consciousness.

Everyone has their own pet theory.

Most theorists talk past each other and are engaged in more of a verbal debate than a substantial debate.

In other words, the problem is not the data but how to interpret it.

Terminological inconsistencies are rampant and terms are never operationalized. But if they are operationalized at all there is little justification for why that operational definition is the best one to capture consciousness, whatever that means.

The field of consciousness studies is waiting for a theoretical revolution and there are certainly many clever theories out there. But none have a chance to reach consensus when there are so many competing egos, all with the latest Grand Theory of Consciousness.

The state of consciousness studies is very dire if you ask me.

source: pixabay

The whole edifice is built on a foundation of sand.