bachelorarbeit 'toward a theory of consciousness' (ws2008)

8/14/2019 Bachelorarbeit 'Toward a Theory of Consciousness' (WS2008)

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Bachelorarbeit I

Toward a Theory of Consciousness

Juni 2009

Institut fr Bildungswissenschaft und Philosophie

Eingereicht von: Mario Spassov

Matrikelnummer: a0309830

Studienkennzahl: A 296

Betreuer: Dr. Wolfgang Fasching

Seminar: SE 180186 Das Problem des Bewusstseins - David Chalmers

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Table of Contents

Introduction..........................................................................................................................................3

I. The Hard Problem of Consciousness................................................................................................4

I. We know consciousness, and yet we know almost nothing about it............................................4

II. Consciousness has a qualitative feel to it....................................................................................5

III. The hard problem of consciousness...........................................................................................6

IV. Why would we care about consciousness?................................................................................8

II. The Irreducibility of Consciousness..............................................................................................10

I. The basic argument against the reducibility of consciousness...................................................10

II. Logical and natural supervenience on the physical...................................................................11

III. The zombie-argument..............................................................................................................12

IV. There is no objection in physicalist terms against the conceivability of zombies...................14

V. Other arguments against the reducibility of consciousness to the physical. ............................15

VI. Summary..................................................................................................................................16

III. Taking Consciousness as Fundamental: Naturalistic Dualism.....................................................19

I. Consciousness is naturally supervenient on the physical...........................................................19II. Taking consciousness as fundamental.......................................................................................20

III. Naturalistic dualism.................................................................................................................21

IV. Basic Laws of Consciousness.......................................................................................................23

I. The principle of structural coherence.........................................................................................23

II. The principle of organizational invariance................................................................................24

III. The double-aspect theory of information.................................................................................26

IV. Pan-psychism as logical consequence of principle II and III...................................................26

V. A Critique of Functionalism...........................................................................................................29

I. Where Searle and Chalmers would agree...................................................................................29

II. Consciousness to Searle necessarily has causal functions........................................................29

III. The Chinese-room-argument: syntax is not sufficient for semantics......................................31IV. The Chinese-room-argument: syntax is not intrinsic to matter................................................32

V. Searle's naturalistic conception of consciousness.....................................................................35

VI. Summary and conclusion.........................................................................................................37

VI. A first-personal approach to the development of consciousness..................................................39

I. A basic outline of Wilbers early conception of development of consciousness.......................39

II. Development of consciousness as process of differentiation and integration...........................40

III. Development of matter as a process of differentiation and integration...................................42

IV. Pan-interiorism.........................................................................................................................45

Conclusion..........................................................................................................................................49

Bibliography.......................................................................................................................................52

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Introduction

The following paper attempts to draw a general outline of a scientific framework that

investigates consciousness. Herefore we will in large part follow up David Chalmers' attempts to

formulate a scientific and yet non-reductive approach to consciousness.

In chapter I we will present the hard problem of consciousness, i.e. why a scientific

approach to consciousness conceived of in terms of qualitative feel - is so particularly difficult to

formulate. In chapter II we will further agree with Chalmers that consciousness is irreducible to

matter. Chapter III will beyond that suggest that as consciousness does not seem to logically follow

from the physical, we might treat it as fundamental entity, inexplicable in terms of something else.

Yet again following Chalmers will will argue that although consciousness itself is basic, there might

be psychophysical laws, according to which consciousness is correlated with matter. These we will

present in chapter IV and hereby conclude our outline of how Chalmers conceives of a theory of

consciousness as a search for basic psychophysical laws.

In chapter V we will draw from Searle to indicate a first criticism of this overall approach.

With Searle we will argue that from postulating the irreducibility of consciousness (chapter II and

III) to postulating his basic laws of how consciousness arises from matter (chapter IV), Chalmers

makes use of a functional conception of ontology that carries certain difficulties with it. With Searle

on the other hand will argue that purely functional approaches to reality are counter-intuitive as they

cannot distinguish intrinsic from extrinsic facts. And yet Searle gives no more differentiated

ontological account but ratherassumes a physicalist counter-position.

In following Ken Wilber we will in chapter VI make even more explicit, that both, Searle

and Chalmers, avoid systematic discussions of how they conceive ofontology before starting with

their attempts to formulate a theory of consciousness. Starting from different unquestioned

assumptions about ontology they almost necessarily have to come to different conclusions about the

nature of consciousness. Furthermore they also avoid a second important question which is about

the first-personal developmental structure of consciousness. Not only do Searle and Chalmers avoid

clarifying their ontologies, they also avoid clarifying their first-personal conceptions of

consciousness. Following Wilber we will attempt to show that giving a more systematic account on

these two questions ispossible and might be necessary condition for developing an overall theory of

consciousness. As we will show, remaining silent about these two questions results in many

impasses between Chalmers and Searle, where their actual theories of consciousness are concerned.

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I. The Hard Problem of Consciousness

I. We know consciousness, and yet we know almost nothing about it

In his article Facing up to the Problem of Consciousness Chalmers makes a stunning

observation: There is nothing that we know more intimately than conscious experience, but there is

nothing that is harder to explain.1 As - following Chalmers - we will show, there is nothing as

near to us as our experience of consciousness. And yet consciousness seems at the same time to

be the mostincomprehensive phenomenon we are aware of, as we cannot fit it into the natural order

of things.

Even today, after centuries of scientific progress in explaining nature, consciousness still

remains as perplexing as ever. Not because our theories of how consciousness arises from matter are

not differentiated enough, but simply because we dont even know how to conceive of the

phenomenon as something yet to be explained in physicalist terms. As Chalmers puts it, when it

comes to questions about consciousness such as: Why does it exist? What does it do? How could it

possibly arise from lumpy gray matter?2 or questions such as How could a physical system such

as a brain also be an experiencer? Why should there be something it is like to be such a system?

[...] he answers: We do not just lack a detailed theory; we are entirely in the dark about how

consciousness fits into the natural order.3

And yet, we cannot make the move of simply denying the existence of consciousness. We

know consciousness is real, although we cannot point to some empirical fact, which would

inadvertently prove its existence.4 But in case of consciousness we dont need proof, as it rather

seems to be something that comes before all attempts to prove something: We know about

consciousness more | directly than we know about anything else, so proof is inappropriate.5 Proof

is appropriate only in cases in which conceptions of the phenomenon to be proven could be wrong.

But in a very specific sense, as we will show, our knowledge of consciousness is infallible.

Chalmers summarizes the stunning epistemic asymmetry ofknowingconsciousness, and yet

knowingalmost nothing aboutit, as follows: We know consciousness far more intimately than we

know the rest of the world, but we understand the rest of the world far better than we understand

1Chalmers 1995, 1

2Chalmers 1996, 3

3Chalmers 1996, xi

4Chalmers 1996, xii

5Chalmers 1996, xii-xiii

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consciousness.6

II. Consciousness has a qualitative feel to it

Chalmers shows himself deeply fascinated by the fact that consciousness comes in qualitative

feel, i.e. is experienced and information processing in the brain is accompanied by some

qualitative feel and does not go on in the dark: There is also an internal aspect; there is something

it feels like [ital. M.S.] to be a cognitive agent. This internal aspect is conscious experience.

Conscious experiences range from vivid color sensations to experiences of the faintest background

aromas; from hard-edged pains to the elusive experience of thoughts on the tip of ones tongue;

from mundane sounds and smells to the encompassing grandeur of musical experience; from the

triviality of a nagging itch to the weight of a deep existential angst; from the specificity of the taste

of peppermint to the generality of ones experience of selfhood. All these have a distinct

experienced quality. All are prominent parts of the inner life of the mind.7

The existence of experience, of a qualitative feel, or, as Thomas Nagel puts it, of what it is

like to be conscious or that conscious being,8seems baffling, as it is not something we would have

predictedfrom other features, such as memory, language, learning or from anything we know about

matter.9In case of living organisms we usually immediately intuit that there is more to being that

organism, than it merely being a pile of functionally organized parts. Being a bat we usually

conceive not only of as being a flying mechanism, using sonar for orientation, but we assume there

is something it is like to be a bat. I.e. we assume that being a bat is accompanied by some specific

experience, that is unique and different from that of, say, being human. To machines on the other

hand we usually dont ascribe such forms of experience. We dont assume there issomething it is

like to be, say, a computer, a calculator or a piston.

With Searle we could further add, that even conscious experience of objects, i.e. conceptual orintentional consciousness, as found in humans, has a qualitative feel to it. As Searle points out:

When you see a car, it is not simply a matter of an object being registered by your perceptual

apparatus; rather, you actually have a conscious experience of the object from a certain point of

view and with certain features. You see the car as having a certain shape, as having a certain color,

6Chalmers 1996, 3

7Chalmers 1996, 4

8 Nagel 19749Chalmers 1996, 4

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etc.10 Because of the aspectual shape of consciousness we can conceive of the same object in

different conceptions. Thus the object Venus can at the same time be conceived of as in the

aspectual shape of The Morning Star or in the aspectual shape of the Evening Star. While Searle is

using the concept of aspectual shape primarily in relation to the notion of intentionality,11 it

enriches our discussion at this point, insofar as we can hereby point out that not only sensory

modalities such as sight, touch, smell asf. and emotional states, but even concepts are suffused with

a qualitative feel. Conceiving of the Venus as Morning Star comes in an aspectual shape that has a

qualitative feel to it: there is something it is like to conceive of the Morning Star. This can be taken

as first indication that even thought cannot be thought of as something purified from experience

or subjective feel. Not only is there something it is like to be a bat, there is something it is like to

conceive of something, i.e. to think. Chalmers does not insist on this point, and yet it seems fully

compatible with his overall definition of consciousness.

III. The hard problem of consciousness

While there is a series of easy problems of consciousness, Chalmers argues that there is

only one hard problem of consciousness. It is the problem of explaining why experience necessarily

had to come into existence, once the basic laws of physics were in place.12 Explaining

consciousness would amount to explaining the qualitative feel of to put it in Searlian language -

aspectual shapes, why e.g. you experience drinking water under an aspectual shape that differs

qualitatively from that of drinking soda. This hard problem of consciousness is traditionally

regarded as the hard part of the mind-body problem.13 When I open my eyes and look around my

office, why do I have this sort of complex experience? At a more basic level, why is seeing red like

this, rather than like that? It seems conceivable that when looking at red things, such as roses, one

might have had the sort of color experiences that one in fact has when looking at blue things. Why

is the experience one way rather than the other? Why, for that matter, do we experience the reddish

sensation that we do, rather than some entirely different kind of sensation, like the sound of a

trumpet?14 Why should the chain of events in my ear, triggered by air vibrations, be accompanied

by conscious experiences? Does it follow from the mere physical facts that, say, an octave sounds

10Searle 1992, 157

11Searle 1992, 131

12Chalmers 1996, 5

13Chalmers 1996, 4

14Chalmers 1996, 5

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harmonic, while, say, a tritonus does not?

Chalmers distinguishes between a phenomenal concept of mind and a psychological concept

of mind. While for the first the qualitative feel of mental states is definitive,15in case of the latter it

is its functional role. Many mental concepts have a psychological and phenomenological meaning at

the same time. Pain is such a mental concept: The term is often used to name a particular sort of

unpleasant phenomenal quality, in which case a phenomenal notion is central. But there is also a

psychological notion associated with the term: roughly, the concept of the sort of state that tends to

be produced by damage to the organism, tends to lead to aversion reactions, and so on. Both of

these aspects are central to the commonsense notion of pain.16

According to Chalmers the psychological notion of consciousness makes up the easy

problems of consciousness and concerns cognitive functions and abilities such as:

the ability to discriminate, categorize, and react to environmental stimuli;

the integration of information by a cognitive system;

the reportability of mental states;

the ability of a system to access its own internal states;

the focus of attention;

the deliberate control of behavior;

the difference between wakefulness and sleep.17

All these phenomena are straightforwardly vulnerable to scientific explanation in terms of

computational or neural mechanisms, Chalmers would argue.18 But the hard problem of phenomenal

consciousness resists these explanations.19 The really hard problem of consciousness is the

problem of experience. When we think and perceive, there is a whir of information-processing, but

there is also a subjective aspect.20 While we usually would tend to assume that consciousness

15Chalmers 1996, 12

16Chalmers 1996, 17

17Chalmers 1995, 2

18Chalmers 1995, 2

19Chalmers 1996, 29

20Chalmers 1995, 3

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arises from physics, we dont have an explanation for how and why it arises.21Even after we have

explained the physical and computational functioning of a conscious system, we still need to

explain why the system has conscious experiences.22 While we need not agree with Chalmers

distinction between psychological and phenomenal consciousness - in all the above given examples

of psychological consciousness it is very difficult to conceive of it without already having a notion

of phenomenological consciousness -, yet we can agree that there is a hard problem of deriving

experience from physical facts.

From our first approximation to the problem, consciousness - as qualitative feel - does not

seem to be explicable in more basic or simple physicalist terms and Chalmers conclusion seems

plausible: Trying to define conscious experience in terms of more primitive notions is fruitless.

One might as well try to define matterorspace in terms of something more fundamental.23 Before

turning to argue this in more detail, we will make a brief remark on why subjectivity would be an

important phenomenon of scientific investigation at all. In the end, even though subjectivity might

turn out to be irreducible to physics, why would we want to explain something that - according to

what has been said so far - is merely subjective andprivate anyway?

IV. Why would we care about consciousness?

It could be objected that consciousness is not that much of an important thing. So far we have

merely argued that the very fact that water tastes different from soda, the very fact that water has

an aspectual shape and an experienced taste at all, baffles us, because it does not seem to

necessarily follow from anything we know about water or soda as physical objects. Who cares,

the objection might go, why experience has the aspectual shape to it? It is merely subjective

anyway. Why would we care about consciousness at all? Does it not seem a relatively minor

problem? Although I have never encountered this objection so far, it seems the logical

consequence of defining consciousness as qualitative feel.

But, as Searle points out, consciousness is the very essence of our meaningful existence. One

of the weird features of recent intellectual life was the idea that consciousness - in the literal sense

of qualitative, subjective states and processes - was not important, that somehow it did not matter.

One reason this is so preposterous is that consciousness is itself the condition of anything having

21Chalmers 1995, 3

22Chalmers 1996, 29

23Chalmers 1996, 4

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importance. Only to a conscious being can there be any such thing as importance.24

Consciousness is not only the most intimate thing we know, it is the most important thing

we know, or, rather, the only thing of intrinsic25 importance at all, as everything else derives its

importance from its relation to consciousness: [...] consciousness is not just an important feature of

reality. There is a sense in which it is the most important feature of reality because all other things

have value, importance, merit, or worth only in relation to consciousness. If we value life, justice,

beauty, survival, reproduction, it is only as conscious beings that we value them. In public

discussions, I am frequently challenged to say why I think consciousness is important; any answer

one can give is always pathetically inadequate because everything that is important is important in

relation to consciousness.26

24Searle 2004a, 110

25For a definition of intrinsic vs. extrinsic facts see e.g. Searle 1992, xiii

26Searle 1998, 83

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II. The Irreducibility of Consciousness

I. The basic argument against the reducibility of consciousness

So far we assumed that consciousness as qualitative feel or subjective experience does

somehow arise from the physical. The notion of arising implies some kind of priority of matter

over consciousness, of matter existing first and then consciousness being added to it. However, it is

also conceivable that consciousness is not an own phenomenon and consequence of physical

processes, but rather an immediate inherent aspect of matter. In order not to eradicate this

possibility, we will instead of arise merely claim, that we can observe a correlation between

consciousness and matter. However we conceive of consciousness, as phenomenon standing on its

own or as an aspect, we have argued that there seems to be no immediate way of getting from

matter to the structure of consciousness.

We have not been able to give any coherent answer to the question why performance of

psychological functions if they are conceivable without experience at all - is accompanied by

experience.27 One could argue, that experience might have functions that we are not aware of yet,

thus neurological processes could be envisaged as needing consciousness and being impossible

without it.28 Yet we cannot even imagine what such a function would look like. What kind of

function could ever explain the necessity of consciousness? As we will see, our inability to even

imagine a function to necessitate consciousness will be the basic argument against the reducibility

of consciousness to physics. Chalmers summarizes the argument as follows: For any physical

process we specify there will be an unanswered question: Why should this process give rise to

experience? Given any such process, it is conceptually coherent that it could be instantiated in the

absence of experience. It follows that no mere account of the physical process will tell us why

experience arises. The emergence of experience goes beyond what can be derived from physical

theory.29

Contrary to, say, the question of why air expands under heat, we could not even conceive of

any physical process necessitating the existence of consciousness, while on the other hand we can

easily conceive of physical facts to be conceptually coherent without experience. The mere

possiblity to logically conceive of matter as causally coherent without consciousness, is the basic

27Chalmers 1995, 5

28Chalmers 1995, 6

29Chalmers 1995, 12

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argument against the reducibility of consciousness we are yet to develop in more detail.

II. Logical and natural supervenience on the physical

Chalmers uses the notion of supervenience to conceive of causality and explanation.

Supervenience to Chalmers is a relation between two sets of properties: B-properties - intuitively,

the high-levelproperties - and A-properties, which are the more basic low-levelproperties.30 In case

ofsupervenience, there are no two worlds identical in respect to their A-, but differing in their B-

properties.31 When we fix all the physical facts about the world - including the facts about the

distribution of every last particle across space and time - we will in effect also fix the macroscopic

shape of all the objects in the world, the way they move and function, the way they physically

interact. If there is a living kangaroo in this world, then any world that is physically identical to this

world will contain a physically identical kangaroo, and that kangaroo will automatically be alive.32

According to Chalmers, we further need to distinguish logical from natural supervenience.

B-properties supervene logically on A-properties if no two logically possible situations are

identical with respect to their A-properties but distinct with respect to their B-properties.33 What

Chalmers means by logical supervenience seems to be conceptual inclusion. In many cases the

definition of concepts is performed by reference to other concepts. It therefore becomes logically

incoherent to ascribe different features to the same concept. Given we know the features of

hydrogen and oxygen, it is logically impossible that these features change - i.e. the features of the

components - as soon as H and O form a H2O molecule. In such cases we assume logical

supervenience between hydrogen and oxygen and H2O. Given everything we know about hydrogen

and oxygen, we cannot even conceive of H2O behaving in contradiction to what we know about its

low-level properties.

As we will attempt to argue, consciousness is not logically supervenient on matter. But ifconsciousness is not logically supervenient, it cannot be reductively explained, i.e. it cannot be

explained in terms of something else, something more fundamental.34 It has been argued that not

only consciousness but tablehood, life, and economic prosperity,35 or, as Searle puts it, split-level

30Chalmers 1996, 33

31Chalmers 1996, 34

32Chalmers 1996, 35

33Chalmers 1996, 35

34Chalmers 1996, 50

35Chalmers 1996, 71

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ranch houses, cocktail parties, interest rates and football games have no logical relationship to facts

about atoms.36 But Chalmers does not agree. All these phenomena he believes to be one day

explicable in terms of what we know about their low-level physical properties. Only in case of

consciousness he argues the relationship between consciousness and physical facts not to be that

between high- and low-level facts.37

It might indeed be questioned however, whether such

phenomena as economy can be explained in physical terms, as one could argue that social facts are

in part constituted by subjective attitudes.38 Facts such as economy or cocktail parties seem

intrinsically connected to consciousness: it is difficult to conceive of something called economy

or cocktail party, if no conscious agents were involved in it. If in other words, we were not

allowed to use subjectivistic terms such as motives for accumulation of goods or motives to

visit a cocktail party asf. If we take such motives to be constitutive of economy and cocktail parties,

it is questionable how they could be reductively explained in terms of physics.

Yet even if consciousness is not logically supervenient on matter, according to Chalmers it

seems likely - and yet fallible - that consciousness is natuarlly supervenient on the physical. Our

task however, in order to show that consciousness is not explicable in terms of physics, will be to

show that consciousness is not logically supervenient on the physical. Chalmers himself believes

that [...] almost all facts supervene logically on the physical facts [...], with possible exceptions for

conscious experience, indexicality, and negative existential facts.39 In the next sections we will

show why he believes so. We ought to keep in mind however, that the following arguments are

merely examples illustratingthe conceivability of the physical realm being causally closed without

consciousness making any difference to it, they are nothing but variations on the argument from

conceivability.

III. The zombie-argument

Chalmers asks us to conceive of physically identical beings to us. They are not only to behave

exactly the way we do, but also to be physiologically identical to us, being a molecule-to-molecule

replica of us. The only difference we ought to imagine between such beings and us is that they lack

experience or what we have so far called consciousness.40 Neither do our replica experience any

36Searle 1992, 62

37Chalmers 1996, 71

38Searle 1998, 113

39Chalmers 1996, 87

40Chalmers 1996, 94

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qualitative aspects of pain, i.e. they dont know the experience of burning against itchy or

stinging pain, nor do they know what it is like to experience a dissonant chord being resolved

into an harmonic. They dont know what it is like to experience hunger or lust, nor do they know

what it is like to think. I.e. they know no such thing as craving to know, shame when they fail, pride

when they succeed in understanding. Such beings we could call zombies. They, Chalmers insists,

would be functionally identical to us, but have no experience: It is just that none of this

functioning will be accompanied by any real conscious experience. There will be no phenomenal

feel. There is nothing it is like to be a zombie.41 In addition to physiological identity we would

have to assume historical identity, i.e. these beings having had the same past as us and further being

surrounded by the same environment.42

The crucial question for our discussion is whether such beings are logicallyconceivable. If

they are, from conceivability it would follow, that consciousness is not logically supervenient on the

physical. And Chalmers argues they are conceivable. We agree.

Can we coherently imagine such a being? At first sight it seems implausible, as it would be

difficult to imagine what might cause such beings to make music, if not the conscious qualitative

experience. And it would seem as mysterious, why such beings would stand up and strive for

knowledge, if we were no more allowed to postulate curiosity as possible reason. Or why would

such beings react to failure as ifthey were ashamed, as ifthey consciously caredwhether they had

succeeded in something or simply failed? Or why would such beings attempt to console their

zombie-children, if not for the reason that they assumed the kids were in annoying conscious states?

Or why would such beings insist to be right about something, why would they act as ifthey cared

about being right? And why would such beings keep their promises, if not for the conscious

experience of duty, of being responsible for someones well-being and interests? Or why would

such beings laugh about something, if not for the conscious experience of something being funny?

IV. There is no objection in physicalist terms against the conceivability of zombies

But as implausible as such a picture of a zombie-twin might seem, we claim implausibility for

the wrongreasons. All the above given implausibilities are given from our own pre-understanding

of consciousness and what it is like to be a conscious agent. Yet none of those reasons derives from

logicalimpossibility. We find zombies to be impossible, because we know we are conscious and in

41Chalmers 1996, 95

42Chalmers 1996, 94

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many cases simply cannot imagine why certain behavioral patterns should occur, if not for reasons

of conscious experience. But we have so far given no physicalist objection to why zombies are

impossible - and this would be required to show that zombies are logically inconceivable in relation

to what we know about the physical universe. In all the above mentioned cases, where to explain

certain behavior without reference to experience seems very difficult, it is at least conceivable that

one day we are to find merely physicalist explanations, but we have no single physicalist objection

against the possibility of zombies, such as we would have in the case of conceiving of flying pigs.

According to Chalmers, from everything we know about the low-level features of physical particles,

we can logically exclude the possibility of flying pigs.43

But if zombie-twins are logically conceivable, i.e. not contradicting anything we know about

the laws of physics, we must conclude that consciousness - if it exists - is not logically supervenient

on the physical. We could even imagine functional isomorphs to us, which instead of a brain used

silicon chips in a functionally identical way to our neurological structure and lacked all conscious

experience.44 The only burden on such a conception is whether one can duplicate the causal powers

of neurons or compute them with silicon chips, but this is not a logical incoherence of functional

isomorphs. From these cases [of being able to imagine functional isomorphs, M.S.] it follows that

the existence of my conscious experience is not logically entailed[ital. M.S.] by the facts about my

functional organization.45 But given that it is conceptually coherent that the [...] my silicon

isomorph could lack conscious experience, it follows that my zombie twin is an equally coherent

possibility. For it is clear that there is no more of a conceptualentailment from biochemistry to

consciousness than there is from silicon [...].46

Although we cannotprove the conceivability and coherence of functionally identical zombies,

we can only claim that we know of no physicalist objection against it. And Chalmers argues that the

opponent would have to support us with some argument why such a picture is logically

inconceivable: In general, a certain burden of proof lies on those who claim that a given

description is logically impossible. If someone truly believes that a mile-high unicycle is logically

impossible, she must give us some idea of where a contradiction lies, whether explicit or implicit. If

she cannot point out something about the intensions of the concepts mile-high and unicycle that

might lead to a contradiction, then her case will not be convincing.47

43Chalmers in Searle 1997, 164

44Chalmers 1996, 97

45Chalmers 1996, 97

46Chalmers 1996, 97

47Chalmers 1996, 96

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We should further note that adding layers of complexity to the functional isomorph does not

do away with the problem that at no point we can deduce the necessity of consciousness to arise

from functional organization.48

V. Other arguments against the reducibility of consciousness to the physical.

All arguments against the logical supervenience of consciousness on the physical follow the

same structure: from the mere conceivability of a world physically identical to ours in which the

facts about conscious experience are merely different from the facts in our world,49 we can deduce

that consciousness is not logically entailedin physiology. Thus we could also imagine our spectrumto be inverted, i.e. that we experienced green where so far we experienced red, without there being

any logicalnecessity that the functional organization of our brain would have to change too. The

idea is that ones color experiences could in principle be inverted while ones functional

organization stays constant.50 I.e. there is no physicalist explanation why we experience a specific

wavelength as the qualitative feel of red and not as the qualitative feel of blue. While inverting

our spectrum is impossible for practical reasons (because we also associate the qualitative feel of

warmth to color and inverting our spectrum would result in us experiencing e.g. the qualitative

color-experience of orange as cold, which would evidently contradict the colour experiences of

others.) it is not impossible forphysicalistreasons.

From all that has been said so far we can conclude that our belief in consciousness is derived

only from our experience of consciousness and not from anything we know about the physical

world. And the impossibility of showing that a functional isomorph would have to be conscious for

physical reasons on the other hand means that we cannot deduce facts about consciousness from

facts about physics: Even if we knew every last detail about the physics of the universe - theconfiguration, causation, and evolution among all the fields and particles in the spatiotemporal

manifold - thatinformation would not lead us to postulate the existence of conscious experience. 51

This is what Chalmers calls epistemic asymmetry; i.e. we know of consciousness immediately but

cannot on the other hand deduce it from facts about physics.52 The epistemic asymmetry associated

48Chalmers 1996, 98

49Chalmers 1996, 99

50Chalmers 1996, 101



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with consciousness [...] us that no | collection of facts about complex causation in physical systems

adds up to a fact about consciousness.53

To further illustrate the epistemic asymmetry associated with consciousness Chalmers follows

Jackson in conceiving of a brain scientist called Mary, who - living in a future of advanced

scientific knowledge - has discovered everything there is to know about color-vision. Yet she has

never experienced color-vision herself, as she lives in a room emptied of colors altogether. The

crucial question in this thought-experiment is whether Mary in the state ofknowledge aboutcolor

experience could have anticipated anything about what it is like to experience color. Chalmers

argues that in her state of never having known color from experience, Mary could never deduce the

quality of color-experience from propositional knowledge about the brain alone. It follows that the

facts about the subjective experience of color vision are not entailed by the physical facts. [ital.

M.S.] If they were, Mary could in principle come to know what it is like to see red on the basis of

her knowledge of the physical facts. But she cannot.54 Indeed the example is less far fetched than it

seems at first sight: no amount of knowledge aboutcolor vision would ever make a blind person

anticipate what it is like to experience orknow color, just as no amount ofknowledge aboutanimals

having modalities foreign to our physiology such as bats, dogs or doves, would tell us anything

about what it is like to be such a creature.55

VI. Summary

So far we have argued that physical facts do not logically entail facts about experience56 and

we therefore have to assume that consciousness is irreducible, [...] being characterizable only in

terms of concepts that themselves involve consciousness.57There is an explanatory gap between

physical properties and consciousness.58 That consciousness accompanies a given physical process

is a further factnot explainable simply by telling the story about the physical facts.59 The form of

the basic argument behind this claim was: One can imagine allthe physical holding without the

facts about consciousness holding, so the physical facts do not exhaust all the facts.60

53Chalmers 1996, 102-103








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The argument applies to all forms of consciousness, from sensory experience to conceptual

experience. We could continue the game and beyond sensory experience apply it to symbols and

further even concepts and judgments, which also can be treated as manifestation of consciousness.

What we have been claiming so far is that from mere observation of physiology we cannot

immediately deduce whether someone is thinking correctly, i.e. whether he is deducing correctly,

or whether his thought is meaningful at all.

What Chalmers has expressed with his thought-experiments is what we might take for granted

intuitively anyway, that there is no immediate way of deducing the character of conscious

experience from physiology. We can put it the other way round: we can never observe a logically

necessary connection between consciousness and matter, as we on the other hand can observe a

logically necessary connection between say mass and the properties of molecules. If so, materialism

- the claim that everythingand thus consciousness too is logically supervenient on the physical - is

false. Chalmers himself summarizes the arguments against the reducibility of consciousness to

matter given so far as follows:

1. In our world, there are conscious experiences.

2. There is a logically possible world physically identical to ours, in which the positive facts

about consciousness in our world do not hold.

3. Therefore, facts about consciousness are further facts about our world, over and above the

physical facts.

4. So materialism is false.61

Or, as Chalmers puts it, after god made sure the physical facts, he had more work to do and

ensure that facts about consciousness held too.62 Chalmers admits he himself once had the hope that

consciousness could be explained through reference to something more basic and physical.

Unfortunately, there are systematic reasons why these methods must fail. Reductive methods are

successful in most domains because what needs explaining in those domains are structures and

functions, and these are the kind of thing that a physical account can entail. When it comes to a



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problem over and above the explanation of structures and functions, these methods are impotent.63

This is why the problem of how consciousness fits into the physical universe cannot be compared to

such of, say, the problem of life, which was once solved by reference to a vital spirit. The vital

spirit was put forward as an explanatory posit, in order to explain the relevant functions, and could

therefore be discarded when those functions were explained without it. Experience is not an

explanatory posit but an explanandum in its own right, and so is not a candidate for this sort of

elimination.64

63Chalmers 1995, 12

64Chalmers 1995, 13

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III. Taking Consciousness as Fundamental: Naturalistic Dualism

I. Consciousness is naturally supervenient on the physical

One way of dealing with the problems raised by consciousness so far would be to simply deny

its existence. But to Chalmers this seems an implausible solution, as it seems immediately evident

thatwe experience. It is not a matter of believing that we have consciousness, rather even before a

creature is able of complex acts of consciousness such as beliefs, it appears to be immediately

immersed in states qualitative experience. A dog might have no beliefs about its consciousness

whatsoever, still, it remains a conscious entity. Claiming that the concept of consciousness is merely

the result of bad intellectual habits, stemming from, say, a Cartesian tradition, seems to miss the

point developed so far, that consciousness is not something you could believe or not believe in,

deny or assert, but rather something that accompanies all beliefs and assertions and exists onto- and

phylogenetically prior to all conceptual or propositional abilities of human beings.

Yet what has been argued so far according to Chalmers does not say that physical facts are

irrelevant to consciousness.65 So far we have said nothing about identity of consciousness and

matter: The zombie world only shows that it is conceivable that one might have a physical state

without consciousness; it does not show that a physical state and consciousness are not identical. 66

We were only concerned with superveneince and not with identity.67

Avoiding to talk about identity allows Chalmers to claim without contradiction, that from

everything we know about consciousness and the physical world, we must conclude that

consciousness supervenes on the physical. It simply is no logical but natural supervenience.68 On

this view consciousness arises from a physical basis, even though it is not entailedby that basis.69

As consciousness cannot be logically reduced to physics, it cannot be treated as physical

phenomenon. Yet it arises from physics in a lawful way.70







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II. Taking consciousness as fundamental

Instead of denying consciousness, Chalmers suggests to take it as fundamental, as being

irreducible to other, more fundamental. facts: We can give up on the project of trying to explain the

existence of consciousness wholly in terms of something more basic, and instead admit it as

fundamental, giving an account of how it relates to everything else in the world.71 This step is far

less mystifying than it might seem at first sight. In physics we have become very accustomed to the

idea that there are fundamental facts which are not explicable in terms of others. Whatever these

most fundamental, indivisible, i.e. conceptually irreducible facts or atoms are conceived to be, we

dont feel awkward in the face of assuming that they are inexplicable. Although a remarkable

number of phenomena have turned out to be explicable wholly in terms of entities simpler than

themselves, this is not universal. In physics, it occasionally happens that an entity has to be taken as

fundamental.72 One example might be Maxwells move to take electromagnetism as fundamental

and describe it in terms of equations, instead of attempting to explain it in terms of more

fundamental facts.73 And other such fundamental features of physics are of course mass, charge or

space-time.74 No attempt is made to explain these features in terms of anything simpler. 75

Why after all oughtwe to insist that consciousness mustbe reducible to more basic physical

entities? With us lacking a coherent picture of how consciousness in principle could logically

supervene on the physical, Chalmers sees no reason for the assumption that consciousness

supervenes logically on the physical and instead suggests to treat consciousness as fundamental,

similarly to the way Maxwell treated magnetism. This approach Chalmers does not believe to be in

any sense more mystifying than science in regard to its basic laws. On these grounds an explanation

of consciousness is of course being reduced to a proper description of the basic principles of its

occurrence. Of course, by taking experience as fundamental, there is a sense in which this

approach does not tell us why [ital. M.S.] there is experience in the first place. But this is the same

for any fundamental theory.76


72Chalmers 1995, 13

73Chalmers 1995, 14


75Chalmers 1995, 14

76Chalmers 1995, 15

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III. Naturalistic dualism

The suggestion to postulate consciousness as fundamental fact amounts to some version of

dualism. But it is an innocent version of dualism, entirely compatible with the scientific view of

the world,77 Chalmers explains. He hereby merely expands ontology, as Maxwell did. Indeed, the

overall structure of this position is entirely naturalistic, allowing that ultimately the universe comes

down to a network of basic entities obeying simple laws, and allowing that there may ultimately be

a theory of consciousness cast in terms of such laws. If the position is to have a name, a good

choice might be naturalistic dualism.78 This version ofproperty dualism ought not to be confused

with Cartesian substance-dualism.79 There is nothing unscientific about such a dualism, as it does

not claim a dualism of mental and material substances but rather of physical and non-physical

properties.80

When it comes to explanation in such a conception of ontology, Chalmers suggests to search

for certainpsychophysicallaws [...] specifying how phenomenal [...] properties depend on physical

properties. These laws will not interfere with physical laws; physical laws already form a closed

system. Instead, they will be supervenience laws, telling us how experience arises from physical

processes.81 It is the lawful connection between consciousness and its material basis that forms a

new field of investigation. Thus a theory of consciousness becomes conceivable as theory of the

laws according to which consciousness arises from the physical. These laws will not explain

consciousness through reference to some more fundamental entity, but rather capture the regularity

ofhow consciousness arises from matter.

The major premises so far have been:

1. Conscious experience exists.

2. Conscious experience is not logically supervenient on the physical.

3. If there are phenomena that are not logically supervenient on the physical facts, then

materialism is false.

77Chalmers 1995, 15

78Chalmers 1995, 15




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4. The physical domain is causally closed.82

Premise four, together with Chalmers insisting that consciousness arises from matter or

supervenes naturally on matter, suggests that Chalmers will have to embrace some form of

epiphenomenalism. If the physical domain is causally closed, on which Chalmers insists, physics

forms a closed and consistent theory even without experience.83 I.e. whatever appears in the domain

of consciousness is always pre-determined and necessarily follows on whatever happens on the

material domain. Chalmers indeed embraces epiphenomenalism as potential option, that cannot be

ruled out a priori. Interactionist dualism on the other hand, the view assuming that consciousness is

non-physical, but at the same opening up the possibility of consciousness interacting with physical

facts, by assuming that the physical is not causally closed, seems untenable to him.84 This view

would not only have to deny that the physical is causally closed but further show how some form of

interaction between consciousness and matter could take place. This comes very near to Cartesian

substance-dualism, a view Chalmers already rejected for its difficulty to conceive of a causal

interaction between different substances.

Now we will turn to the as he admits - most speculative part of Chalmers approach to

consciousness, an attempt do formulate first basic psychophysical laws, describing how

consciousness arises from matter.




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IV. Basic Laws of Consciousness

I. The principle of structural coherence

As already said, Chalmers distinguishes two aspects of mind: the experientially conscious

part, which he names phenomenal consciousness and opposed to it what he calls awareness, the

part performing different cognitive functions. However, according to his first psychophysical law,

there is structural coherence between phenomenal consciousness and awareness.85 As Chalmers

explains: Awareness is a purely functional notion, but it is nevertheless intimately linked to

conscious experience. In familiar cases, wherever we find consciousness, we find awareness.

Wherever there is conscious experience, there is some corresponding information in the cognitive

system that is available in the control of behavior, and available for verbal report. Conversely, it

seems that whenever information is available for report and for global control, there is a

corresponding conscious experience. Thus, there is a direct correspondence between consciousness

and awareness.86

An example for structural coherence between phenomenal consciousness and awareness

might be color experience. For every distinction between color experiences, there is a

corresponding distinction in [functional, M.S.] processing.87Further: My visual experience of a

red book upon my table is accompanied by a functional perception of the book.88 Chalmers

generalizes this claim to say that wherever there is conscious experience or phenomenal

consciousness, it is necessarily cognitively represented.89 The structural coherence between

consciousness and awareness is not a logical necessity, as one could imagine consciousness to exist

without embodiment and vice versa, however it is an empirical fact.90This principle reflects the

central fact that even though cognitive processes do not conceptually entail facts about conscious

experience, consciousness and cognition do not float free of one another but cohere in an intimate

way.91

85Chalmers 1995, 17

86Chalmers 1995, 18

87Chalmers 1995, 18


89Chalmers 1995, 19; 1996, 220

90Chalmers 1995, 19

91Chalmers 1995, 19

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II. The principle of organizational invariance

Once he has established a structural coherence between consciousness and awareness,

Chalmers can make the next move of claiming the crucial link between both to the functional

organization of the physical. I.e. structural coherence between experience and awareness is due to

the functional organization of the brain and not due to it being a specific and unique kind of

substance. Consciousness arises in virtue of the functional organization of the brain and is even

determined by it.92 On this view, the chemical and indeed the quantum substrate of the brain is

irrelevant to the production of consciousness. What counts is the brains abstract causal

organization, an organization that might be realized in many different physical substrates.93 To me

it remains unclear from what kind of reasoning Chalmers draws this conclusion from. However, let

us further follow up this idea.

It is crucial that to Chalmers functional organization can be realized in various physical

systems.94 One just needs to specify the number of abstract components, their possible different

states and the relations between these states. Whether these components are neurons or transistors

does in fact not matter.95 According to this principle, consciousness is an organizational invariant:

a property that remains constant over all functional isomorphs of a given system. Whether the

organization is realized in silicon chips, in the population of China, or in beer cans and ping-pong

balls does not matter. As long as the functional organization is right, conscious experience will be

determined.96 I.e. functionally identical systems have the same consciousness, independently of

what they are made of.97 On this view consciousness could at least in principle be embodied in

silicon chips. There is no logical argument against the possibility of reproducing the functional

organization of neurons by using chips. However, there is an empirical possibility for this to fail. It

could in fact turn out that neurons can in principle not be computed by using silicon chips.

This view, endorsing structural coherence between consciousness and awareness, Chalmers

calls nonreductive functionalism. It is a combination of functionalism and property dualism.98

Many have argued that for something to be conscious, it must be made of the right biological








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makeup. One usually argues that it is implausible to assume that if the population of China was to

duplicate the functional organization of brains via telephone, consciousness would arise.99 But

Chalmers holds against this Chinese-nation argument: [T]here is only an intuitive force. This

certainly falls far short of a knockdown argument. Many have pointed out that while it may be

intuitively implausible that such a system [i.e. the Chinese-nation duplicating the functional

organization of the brain, M.S.] should give rise to experience, it is equally intuitively implausible

that a brain should give rise to experience! Whoever would have thought that this hunk of gray

matter would be the sort of thing that could produce vivid subjective experiences? And yet it does.

Of course this does not show that a nations population could produce a mind, but it is a strong

counter to the intuitive argument that it would not.100

Size and speed matter in regard to functional organization. Thus [i]f we take our image of the

population, speed it up by a factor of a million or so, and shrink it into an are the size of a head, we

are left with something that looks a lot like a brain, except that it has homunculi - tiny people -

where a brain would have neurons. On the face of it, there is not much reason to suppose that

neurons should do any better a job than homunculi in supporting experience.101 If silicon chips

could duplicate the functional organization of neurons and if single neurons were replaced by

silicon chips, for Chalmers the most plausible hypothesis is that the replacement would preserve the

conscious experience of the specific functional system.102

III. The double-aspect theory of information.

His functionalist approach leads Chalmers to conceive of ontology in terms of information.

An information space is an abstract space consisting of a number of states, which I will call

information states, and a basic structure ofdifference relationsbetween those states. The simplest

nontrivial information space is the space consisting of two states with a primitive difference

between them. We can think of these states as the two bits, 0 and 1. The fact that these two states

are different from each other exhausts their nature. That is, this information space is fully

characterized by its difference structure.103Information states can be realized in substances. Thus a

light switch can be conceived of as realizing a two-state information space [...] with its states up


100Chalmers 1996, 251

101Chalmers 1996, 252

102Chalmers 1996, 270

103Chalmers 1996, 278

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and down realizing the two states. Or we can see a compact disk as realizing a combinatorial

information state, consisting in a complex structure of bits. One can see information realized in a

thermostat, a book, or a telephone line in similar ways.104

If we conceive of information in terms of difference, we need to further differentiate in which

regard we are to treat difference. Chalmers follows Bateson in defining information as a difference

that makes a difference.105 In case of a light switch there can be many positions between what we

call up and down. But merely one of these differences makes a difference to the light that is

then either switched on or off. The difference between these two states is the only difference that

makes a difference to the light. So we can see the switch as realizing a two-state information space,

with some physical states of the switch corresponding to one information state and with some

corresponding to the other.106

In the notion of information space Chalmers sees the link between the physical and

phenomenal: [...] whenever we find an information space realized phenomenally, we find the same

information space realized physically. And when an experience realizes an information state, the

same information state is realized in the experiences physical substrate.107

IV. Pan-psychism as logical consequence of principle II and III

But as practically everything realizes information, are we then to conclude that everything is

conscious, even very simple systems, insofar as they represent information-spaces? This idea is

often regarded as outrageous, or even crazy. But I think it deserves a close examination. It is not

obvious to me that the idea is misguided, and in some ways it has a certain appeal.108 If we go

down the phylogenetic chain we see consciousness not to disappear suddenly but rather to diminish

ingrades. Thus for Chalmers it is evident that [m]ice may not have much of a sense of self, and

may not be given to introspection, but it seems entirely plausible that there issomethingit is like tobe a mouse. Mice perceive their environment via patterns of information flow not unlike those in

our own brains, though considerably less complex.109 And if we move down the scale down to fish

and slugs there is still no reason to suggest that phenomenology disappears all of a sudden, and we

104Chalmers 1996, 281

105Chalmers 1996, 281

106Chalmers 1996, 281

107Chalmers 1996, 284

108Chalmers 1996, 293

109Chalmers 1996, 294

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are left with organisms, or, rather, information states, purely deprived of all experience. There does

not seem to be much reason to suppose that phenomenology should wink out while a reasonably

complex perceptual psychology persists. If it does, then either there is a radical discontinuity from

complex experiences to none at all, or somewhere along the line phenomenology begins to fall out

of synchrony with perception, so that for a while, there is a relatively rich perceptual manifold

accompanied by a much more impoverished phenomenal manifold.110

Following this chain of reasoning, Chalmers speculates, that the most simple phenomenology

should cohere with the most primitive system of perceptual psychology, such as a thermostat.111 If

there is experience associated with thermostats, there is probably experience everywhere: wherever

there is a causal interaction, there is information, and wherever there is information, there is

experience. One can find information states in a rock - when it expands and contracts, for example -

or even in the different states of an electron. So if the unrestricted double aspect principle is correct,

there will be experience associated with a rock or an electron.112

While this view might at first sight seem counter-intuitive, it makes consciousness fit into the

natural world in a more integrated way. If the view is correct, consciousness does not come in

sudden jagged spikes, with isolated complex systems arbitrarily producing rich conscious

experiences. Rather, it is a more uniform property of the universe, with very simple systems having

very simple phenomenology, and complex systems having complex phenomenology. This makes

consciousness less special in some ways, and so more reasonable.113 However, Chalmers is

reluctant to call this view pan-psychism, as he does not intend to imply that self-consciousness goes

all the way down to snakes, nor that simple systems have complex phenomenology such as

animals.114 Further it might be the case that not all informational states are conscious. A thermostat

contrarily to neurons is not active. So maybe further refinements as to what kind of information

state could count as conscious are to be made, and one would have to rather say that rocks contain

conscious systems, instead of being conscious themselves.115 One further problem remaining

unsolved for this view is how microphysics adds up to high-level phenomenology. Why is not that

every single neuron in the brain is conscious but rather that there is one unified complex

phenomenology?116

110Chalmers 1996, 294

111Chalmers 1996, 295

112Chalmers 1996, 297

113Chalmers 1996, 298

114Chalmers 1996, 298-299

115Chalmers 1996, 297-298

116Chalmers 1996, 307

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But with these problems unsolved we still gain a more comprehensive picture of how

consciousness could be causally relevant. We closed the last section with noting that in insisting that

the physical realm is causally closed Chalmers is forced to defend a version of epiphenomenalism

or to specify his version of materialism. However, if information intrinsically has a phenomenal

aspect to it, we might thus get a better understanding of how consciousness as a necessary internal

aspect accompanying information could have causal relevance.117

In the next section we will - in following Searle - point out some difficulties with Chalmers

functionalist approach to consciousness. Searle however, as we will show, himself has no

suggestions on how to overcome the difficulties he himself diagnoses in Chalmers theory of

consciousness.


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V. A Critique of Functionalism

I. Where Searle and Chalmers would agree

Searle and Chalmers seem to agree on many basic assumptions about consciousness. Both

conceive of consciousness in terms of experience. I.e. to both consciousness is accompanied by

something it is like to be conscious and insist that if we were to leave out the first-personal aspect

of consciousness, the view from within, we would leave out the phenomenon altogether. In case of

consciousness we cannot make the distinction between reality and appearance as the appearance in

this case is the reality to be explained.118 Subjectivity or appearance in Searle and in Chalmers

becomes the actual reality and object of investigation. And both agree that subjectivity does not

come into existence in a sudden leap. Searle insists that e.g. dogs are conscious, that there is

something it is like to be a dog, although this is not to be equated with self-consciousness.119

Both authors reject attempts to reductively explain consciousness, i.e. attempts to show that

consciousness is in fact something else. However, here disagreement sets in. How can we think of

consciousness being related to matter? Chalmers suggested consciousness to arise from the

informational space realized by the brain. Searle on the other hand rejects such forms of

functionalism, as to him they reduce ontology to features of the world that are mind-dependent. Let

us take a look at why he believes so.

II. Consciousness to Searle necessarily has causal functions

Searle too dismisses substance dualism. He rather conceives of consciousness to be a natural

feature or higher order function of the brain. Thus to him there are no two separate ontological

realms, matter and mind, but rather there is only matter with consciousness being a feature or

property of matter.

At this point both authors views begin to diverge. Searle not only dismisses substance

dualism, but even property dualism, as found in Chalmers, for the very reason that it leads to

epiphenomenalism and therefore cannot explain how consciousness could evercause something.120

But to Searle it is an indisputable fact that we can consciously cause events. Without the notion of

118Searle 1992, 146

119Searle 1992, 74

120Searle 2004a, 31

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free will, collective intentionality - which for Searle is constitutive of social facts121 - cannot be

conceived of. I.e. if we could not consciously guide our actions and decide to follow obligations and

perform status-functions, society as a system of mutual recognition of rights and duties would be

inconceivable, because it assumes that we are able to give reasons to our actions, even reasons, that

are not necessarily in our own interests.122

But as society evidently exists, as there evidently are

status-functions, as to Searle there evidently is collective intentionality of, say, using the same

object as money,123 and thus consciousness necessarily must have causal functions.

As Searle explains, we cannot even conceive of ourselves as being not causally responsible

for our actions. He argues that we cannot get rid of the conviction of being free. If a waiter waits for

us to decide what to eat and we were to say that we cant tell, because we were waiting for our

brains to decide and nothing so far happened, this would be missing the point, as even this

statement itself is expression of free will.124 If we were to consciously give up the idea of free will

and initiative, it would still be us consciously attempting to deny free will in an act of free will.

As Chalmers is not as interested in social reality as Searle is, he seems to have overlooked the

necessity to develop a notion of free will, autonomy and mental causation. But as for Searle social

reality is a crucial field of investigation, he prefers to avoid epiphenomenalism altogether and this is

one reason why he rejects functionalism altogether.

121Searle 2002, 90ff.

122Searle 2004b, 84

123Searle 1998, 112

124Searle 2004a, 153

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III. The Chinese-room-argument: syntax is not sufficient for semantics

Searles second major argument against functionalism can be illustrated in the Chinese-room-

argument. In The Consious MindChalmers addresses this argument. There are many variations of it,

but the basic structure of the argument goes as follows: Searle invites us to imagine a room full of

dictionaries and rules of grammar, and a person translating incoming chinese signs by merely

following the rules and producing a proper output of English translation. It is crucial to assume that

the person does not understand what she is doing. And indeed we could conceive of the person

neither understanding Chinese nor English, as the dictionaries and grammar could be written in, say,

Spanish. Such a system might produce a perfectly valid translation, but, Searle argues, no

understanding would have occurred. Evidently the person would have not understood what she had

translated, nor could one argue that in any part of the room there was understanding taking place.

The basic structure of the argument is as follows:

1. Programs are entirely syntactical.

2. Minds have a semantics.

3. Syntax is not the same as, nor by itself semantics.

Therefore programs are not minds.125

The room represents a purely syntactical structure.126 But Searle insists that words further

have semantic content which cannot be immediately deduced from syntax. All language has

semantics or meaning.127 If programs are by definition merely syntactical, and in the Chinese-room

the role of a program is being substituted by the person performing - to her - meaningless tasks,

then they necessarily are not able of semantics. The argument appeals to our intuition, that it just

makes no sense to assume, that in purely syntactical space semantics could arise. We know what

semantics feels like, we know what it is like to understand something, but in such a room there does

not seem the appropriate thing of which we could say it knows what it feels like to understand the

meaning of the Chinese symbols.

125Searle 1997, 11

126Searle 2004a, 63

127Searle 2004a, 70

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For Chalmers of course this argument is not convincing, as looked from the outside, brains are

not that different from what is going on in the Chinese-room. If we were to imagine our brains to be

magnified to the size of a room, we would find all kinds of chemical processes, but would we ever

find something resembling a conscious thought? No, thus is seems equally implausible that brains

could produce consciousness. As Chalmers insists, there is an impasse on the question of whether

the room is conscious as whole or not, with no side having anything more than plausibility at hand,

because while brains and the Chinese-room are not in principle different systems, we know that

brains are conscious.128 Chalmers however simply choses to side with the position that it is not

implausible that a system such as the Chinese room gives rise to experience.129

And as to Searles argument from semantics: [...] the main problem is that the argument does

not respect the curcial role of implementation.Programs are abstract computational objects and are

purely syntactic. Certainly, no mere program is a candidate for possession of a mind.

Implementations of programs, on the other hand, are concrete systems with causal dynamics, and

are not purely syntactic. An implementation has causal heft in the real world, and it is in virtue of

this causal heft that consciousness and intentionality arise. It is the program that is syntactic; it is the

implementation that has semantic content.130

IV. The Chinese-room-argument: syntax is not intrinsic to matter

But so far we have gone only through half of the Chinese-room-argument. In his late works

Searle changed his argument in part from merely claiming that computers, being purely syntactical,

could never implement semantics, to the argument, that further nothing is intrinsically a computer.

I.e. syntax itself is not an intrinsic feature of reality, such as mass, but merely ascribed by conscious

agents.131 Thus the very question whether computers will one day develop consciousness is

misguided from the start, does not come up to the level of falsehood, as being a computer is nothing

independent of consciousness but computers exist only when there is a conscious agent using

something as a computer. On this view even calculators dont compute but rather are to be

conceived as circuits, which we use to compute with.132 According to Searle even a pen or window -

as they have at least two states, e.g. a window can be treated as either open or closed - can

128Chalmers 1996, 324

129Chalmers 1996, 325

130Chalmers 1996, 327

131Searle 1997, 14

132Searle 2004a, 64

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serve as a computer, as it they can representsymbols through the different states they are in.133

However, representation is nothing intrinsic to the states themselves, but merely ascribed. In other

words, syntax is not intrinsic to reality but merely ascribed by consciousness and thus observer

dependent.134

Chalmers does not address this part of the Chinese-room-argument and yet it seems to be one

crucial argument against his functional approach to consciousness. Chalmers avoids the question of

whether function and information is something intrinsic to reality or something ascribed to reality.

Searle insists it is extrinsic and ascribed. He backs this position by claiming that you could use the

same token to represent differentfunctions and therefore function is not intrinsic to matter. If for

example, we say the function of the heart was to pump blood, in such a case it is evident that we

treat this as function of the heart only because we value life. If we were to be in high regard of

death, to us the heart would be dysfunctional.135 In other words, we can regard the same object at

the same time to be functional and dysfunctional. Or, as language use demonstrates, just as we can

use the same symbol, say bark, in different contexts to either mean a tree or the noise made by

dogs, physical states are never intrinsically functional states but rather does functionality lie in the

eye of the observer.

Beyond Searle we could even argue that we could add layers of functionality to the same

system ad infinitum. I.e. we could take the same token to be part of different systems. Of course it is

not purely up to us to ascribe functional states and this is why we cannot use everything as a

computer but instead need to build things that are particularly apt to the ascription of functions and

symbols. However, function itself still remains ascribed, and this remains unchanged in a definition

of information states as differences that make a difference, as the reference point of the difference

itself is ascribed. I.e. in the example given above, with the light-switch making a difference to the

light, it is us, because we value light and teleologically construe light-switches to make a difference

to the light, who ascribe the reference point to which the position of the light-switch makes a

difference. It is only because a light-switch is a man-made tool with inherent teleology, that there

seems to be only one intrinsic reference point namely the light - to which the position of the light-

switch makes a difference. But if we conceive of nature as being free of teleology, we also must

admit that there are many different reference points of what we define as difference.

The intuitive force of the second part of the Chinese-room-argument does not lie as the first

133Searle 1997, 16

134Searle 2004a, 64

135Searle 1998, 122

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part did - in pointing out that systems alone cannot produce meaning and understanding, but that

being a system is something that is observer-dependent. On the other hand Searle assumes that there

are intrinsic unities in the world, such as brains. Brains can be treatedas systems, but still, they are

more than that, they are intrinsic biological things. The Chinese-room-argument is to point us to

our intuition that there in fact is at least one crucial ontological difference between brains and a

room full of dictionaries and grammar-instructions: while brains are biological unities - that, when

divided, die rooms are no intrinsic unities, as it is up to us to ascribe the limits of where a

room begins and where it ends, just as it is up to ascribe the limits of what we call nation. We

could easily imagine one of the dictionaries to be replaced in the room and this making no

difference to the overall functioning of the room. However, it remains an open (empirical) question,

whether if parts of the brain were replaced it would not simply lose its structural organization and

dissolve into dust.

Searle insists that we simply know, that the brain consists of neurons and being a neuron

simply is not identical to performing functions one can ascribe to neurons.136 The Chinese-nation

-argument according to Searle is directed toward functionalism and makes even more pressing the

issue already raised in the Chinese-room-argument. It illustrates that you can reproduce the causal

activities of neurons using the Chinese-nation and telephones and hereby shows, that functionalism

must assume unity wherever one can assign information.137 Consequently, you cannot distinguish

systems that are conscious from those that are not. All inappropriate systems become conscious.138

This Searle argues is because information - just as syntax - lies in the eye of the beholder. It is not a

real thing like neuron firings, which are not relative to an observer.139 The population of China is

not conscious for the reason that there is no intrinsic unity of that phenomenon.140 As functionality

is extrinsic, Chalmers cannot argue with complexity to be a crucial characteristic difference

between nations and brains: complexity too is extrinsic and one could always askin what regardthe

brain is more complex than, say, the Milky Way.141

But as already said, Searle believes in intrinsic biological unities that are mirrors of

phenomenal unity. Pan-psychism on the other hand, according to Searle, is facing the binding

problem and cannot deal with the problem of unity of consciousness.142 He on the other hand holds

136Searle 1997, 205

137Searle 2004a, 61

138Searle 1997, 144

139Searle 1997, 205

140Searle 1997, 144

141Searle 1997, 207

142Searle 2004a, 104-105

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that [c]onsciousness is not spread out like jam on a piece of bread, but rather, it comes in discrete

units. and then he asks: If the thermostat is conscious, how about the parts of the thermostat? Is

there a separate consciousness to each screw?143The brain, contrarily to a thermostat, to Searle is

an intrinsic unity.

Searle would agree with Chalmers that the zombie-argument actually shows that

consciousness is not eliminatively reducible to matter.144 But this not only disproves materialism (at

least eliminative materialism) but functionalism as well.145 Chalmers cannot show that

consciousness is functionally supervenient on information for the same reason he cannot show that

consciousness is supervenient on matter.

V. Searle's naturalistic conception of consciousness

Although his criticism of functionalism raises important questions, such as what to treat as

intrinsic unity, Searles own overall theory of consciousness seems much less satisfactory than

Chalmers' suggestion of pan-psychism. To Searle consciousness is a natural phenomenon like

digestion.146 He conceives of consciousness to be a feature of the real world,147 a property of the

brain the way density is of the wheel.148 What at first sight seems to be a form of property dualism

Searle insists not to be a dualism at all. Consciousness to Searle is the biological, described at a

higher level.149 I.e. one phenomenon can have top- and low-level features, which are top- or low-

level descriptions. And just as we can describe causal processes going on in combustion engines

either on a top-level (in terms of pistons and explosions) or in terms of low-level descriptions (in

terms of molecules), we can describe the brain at top-level, in terms of conscious experiences, or at

low-levels such as neurons. Yet the top-level description is not epiphenomenal to the low-level

description, i.e. the macro level of pistons is not epiphenomenal to that of molecular activities.150

Similarly consciousness to Searle is not epiphenomenal to neuronal activity but rather the top-level

description of neurons.

Consciousness being a feature of the brain is fully determined by the causal powers of the

143Searle 2004a, 105

144Searle 1997, 148

145Searle 1997, 151

146Searle 2004a, 79

147Searle 2004a, 80

148Searle 2004b, 26

149Searle 2004a, 159

150Searle 2002, 27

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brain.151 Yet these causal powers can be described in either low- or high-level terms, i.e.

consciousness is not a separate entity or property, it is just the state that the brain is in, described at

a certain level.152 According to Searle from the laws of nature consciousness follows as a logical

consequence, just as does the existence of any other biological phenomenon, such as growth,

digestion, or reproduction.153

Yet consciousness is not exactly like digestion and explosions in car-engines. Searle

distinguishes between third-personal features, describable in third-personal terms, such as digestion,

and fi

bachelorarbeit 'toward a theory of consciousness' (ws2008)

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