Brain-Sign
or
The End of
Consciousness
Philip Clapson, May
2004
© Philip Clapson
2004
The right of Philip
Clapson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988
There is no question
that something goes on in the head, which has been called consciousness. But is
it consciousness? Over the last fifty years, there has been a concerted attempt
to show how consciousness can be physical, of the brain. The diversity of views
is characteristic of a Kuhnian pre- normal science revolution: but the
revolution has not arrived. This is because the assumption that
consciousness exists is wrong. In this paper consciousness (with e.g. its
subjective/objective distinction) is characterized as a pre-scientific theory.
The biological ontology of the phenomenon is revealed, and its placement in
organismic biology explained. The phenomenon will be termed brain-sign,
as appropriate to its biological function. The nature of this function
completely reconstructs our view of ourselves, and other creatures in which it
is manifest. The detail and ramifications cannot be addressed at length in a
paper, but a research program is outlined briefly.
1. Introduction
Over the last fifty
years, urgent attention has been given to showing how consciousness can be of
the brain. No account has universal assent. Thus the situation has not the
hallmark of a science. So cognitive science and neuroscience,
indeed psychology itself, which depend explanatorily upon consciousness,
face an unanswered question: How is consciousness to be drawn from the brain’s
fabric: cells, axons, dendrites, neurotransmitters, peptides, etc.? Indeed,
given that the workings of the brain appear organic and knowledgeless, how can
it generate the knowledge properties associated with consciousness?
This paper will
propose that the topic be recast. It will propose that there is no such thing
as consciousness, as historically understood, and no experience, as
historically understood. It will say there is a phenomenon of the brain that
has been mistaken as consciousness, and while humans (and probably more
creatures) appear to experience, this does not entail consciousness.
Why would such a
proposal be made? The answer is straightforward. To gain a science of the
phenomenon (mis-)understood as consciousness, and so identify how humans can be
of the physical world, an account is required that satisfies our understanding
both of science and scientific method. Otherwise we are left with the situation
that nature created an amazing sport: a creature who could experientially know,
a causal property entirely different from any other physical property so far
encountered.[1] The answer here is
that we are physical, and this means that consciousness does not exist. What is
required to explain the brain’s activity is a new science (now at its origins),
and more radically, a new approach to our understanding of experience as of
the brain. This will involve a change of biological paradigm (Kuhn 1970),
and an entirely new view of ourselves.
2. Clearing the
ground
Before proceeding
to the proposal (commencing at section 3.5), we must put aside our preconceptions.
This is no small task. Firstly our cultural history and language is built on
the assumption that consciousness does exist. Secondly, our own experience is
so comprehensive and compelling, it seems absurd to suppose that it is not
doing what we think it is doing.
The ambition to
prove that consciousness exists and is scientifically tractable is widespread;
but some will reject science if it proves impossible to solve the problem (e.g.
proponents of the so-called hard problem). Remarkably, even
epiphenomenalism seems better than no consciousness at all.[2]
2.1 The theory of
consciousness
When Descartes
established the modern idea of the mind, he pointed to hypothetical states
of human being which were subsequently termed consciousness. They are
perceptions, thoughts, feelings and sensations. And he “invented” the subject
of those states. “I think, therefore I am” identifies the think with the
am, plus the existence fact of the I. It is these states that
seem not the same as the physical brain. But let us consider the logic of our
current assumption here.
1. There is an
ontological state termed consciousness. Therefore humans experience.
This is the
situation post-Descartes. But proposition 1. is not the same as:
2. Human beings
experience. Therefore there must be an ontological state called consciousness,
which entails all kinds of properties that are incommensurate with the physical
brain—i.e. those of our knowing experience.
The placement of
experience in our cultural understanding as consciousness resulted in the
legacy that, for experience, there must be consciousness. But there is no
scientific justification for this. Descartes’ theory, and its heritage, is
exactly that: a theory. What Putnam refers to as, unfortunately, “after
Berkeley and Hume...the only way to think” (1999, p23). Descartes’ theory did
not arrive sui generis. He theorized a notion already burgeoning in
philosophical history. (So Descartes’ hypothetical states effectively had the
theory built into them.) But for science, we do not have to associate
experiencing with the theory of consciousness. Indeed, we must prize the
two apart.
This prizing apart
is difficult precisely because we appear to experience, and this in two ways.
The first is that it is, now, almost impossible for us to visualize our
experiential existence in any other way than consciousness. Secondly, what
experience seems to give us is knowledge. Right there in front of us. What we
see. What we can describe, and think about. Thus we have the indelibility of
the experiencing situation.
2.2 Consciousness
as knowledge
The idea of
knowledge is crucial. Before the theory of consciousness there was the mind.
This mind related to the world in a particular way. As Robert Tarnas says: “The
belief that the universe possesses and is governed according to a comprehensive
regulating intelligence [Nous, Logos], and that this same
intelligence is reflected in the human mind [nous, logos], rendering it
capable of knowing the cosmic order, was one of the most characteristic and
recurring principles in the central tradition of Hellenic thought” (1991, p47).
Descartes (1985) endorsed this. And he considered feelings and sensations to be
confused thinking. We could know about injured feet and decide what to do about
them by a rational assessment based upon the real sensation of
pain.
For Descartes, what
we see (for example)—mountains, trees, houses, people—we see because God has
placed them (in representational form) in our minds, because he created us so.
And we can reach beyond mere seeing by our understanding (“natural light”),
which is not bound merely by what we see. This understanding, too, of mountains
and mountainness, arrives by God’s grace.
Both the Greek
notion, and Descartes’ variation, resulted from prevailing views. Since God
created the universe, he knew its contents and operation in essence. To finite
creatures like humans, knowledge of the world must be sub-divine. But knowledge
per se gave humans their distinct property of being made in God’s image. As
subjects, we exist in a luminous mental relation to the world and
its objects, including ourselves.
With Hume (1739,
1740) and Kant (1781, 1787) (Enlightenment characters), the rationale
for how mountains and mountainness could be of the human mind lost its divine
inception. Hume’s impressions and Kant’s sensible intuition simply placed
mountains there, to be worked over by other features of the mind like Hume’s
association, or Kant’s categories of the understanding by which mountainness
arrives, and thence reason by which it can be thought. Hume said that how
this could be was inexplicable by human reason (indeed, he saw it as
irrelevant), and Kant proposed transcendental features of the mental machinery
that enabled its happening.
But neither of these
accounts was satisfactory as a physical account, because they simply
ignored the issue of the mind as part of the physical universe. And
unfortunately, whilst history then gave us perception as if it involved direct
sense information (as e.g. sense data), the capacity of the mind to have these
(potentially) true portrayals of the world with which the mind can operate was
simply ignored. God could not be given the task because Hume and Kant
(mistakenly) thought they were doing science on the senses.
2.3 Intentionality
as the mark of the mental
What did happen,
with Brentano (1874), was that the notion of intentionality came into fashion
again. This gave a way of talking about aboutness. As Husserl said in 1913: “The
spatial physical thing which we see is...perceived, given ‘in person’ in the
manner peculiar to consciousness” (1982, p92).[3] For some
philosophers, this aboutness cannot be reconciled with the brain in any more
definite sense than can supposed phenomenal states (or qualia). For others, for
a time, the computer model altered this view, at least concerning language,
because computers appeared to process propositional meaning (semantics) by
syntax and rules, leaving subjective (i.e. of the I) phenomenal states
(the hard problem) adrift. But the brain, in processing terms, does not seem to
be like a computer.[4] And besides,
whilst the computer can process information, it still requires some knowing person
to devise the input and understand the output.
2.4 Consciousness
theory under scientific assessment
But what the
history of science has shown is that what our ancestors took as evident about
the universe could turn out not to be what was required for a scientific
understanding of the universe. Descartes’ theory, and its legacy, are
pre-scientific. While what we know about the world and ourselves appears to
result from our being experiencers, it is likely that we are completely
mistaken about this, as we were about an earth-centered cosmology. For while we
seem to know as a result of experience, we cannot reconcile this with a science
that requires all properties to be physical, operating under mass/energy
space-time.
Neuroscientists dealing with pure
physicality might ask: Why should a brain need to make experience as a knowing
anyway? What added benefit can there be over the neural processing of physical
information? True, one brain is not another brain. In that sense, they are
individual brains. But why should a brain manufacture a subject for experience
rendering knowledge for a person?[5] Humans could be
just robotic devices with adaptational skills as part of their bio-neural
make-up. But alas, neuroscientists themselves experience, and they have
no other theory than consciousness.
2.5 Proposed models
for consciousness as physicality
There are attempts
to resolve this impasse. Daniel Dennett (e.g. 1991, 1996), and Ryle (1947)
before him, claim that experience just is physical, with, in Dennett’s case, an
argument as to why this is so by altering our notion of consciousness’s
functional properties—function without phenomena. Paul Churchland (1995) claims
a future science will explain the identity of the neural processing with
consciousness (“epistemic access”). Antonio Damasio’s version (1999) is that
the brain effects consciousness by higher order representation. And John Searle
(1992; 2002) says that the brain has emergent causal properties which do mental
work in a (“higher” brain state) phenomenal field. These are well known. They
attempt to solve “How”, in Michael Gazzaniga’s words, “the brain enables the
mind [which] is the question of the twenty first century—no doubt about it.”
(1998, pxii). But the multiplicity of “solutions” (and of course there are
more) is an indicator that no one has come up with a version that convinces,
one with scientific credibility.[6] For they all have
well known problems. Dennett, without explanation, merges two ontological
realms, neurophysiology and consciousness. (Why is assembled (from sub-personal)
neurophysiology not still neurophysiology?) Churchland’s future science is a
dubious promissory note, not an explanation; and why (not least) is it consciousness
(functionally) that is reducible (Churchland & Churchland 1991)? Damasio
does not engage the problem of knowledge as physicality at all. And Searle
supposes a science of the brain involves unknown, one might say miraculous,
properties.
The key question
is: Are these “solutions” attempts to solve the theory of consciousness (i.e.
our cultural history), or a problem in the physical universe? Did evolution
really generate experience as knowledge?
3. The question of
model
Section 2. was
scandalously brief, but issues necessary to the argument of this paper have
been exposed. We have a duality of explanatory and ontological domains. On one
side there is the mind with its perception/thought/feeling/sense features. On
the other is the brain which is pure neurophysiology of enormous complexity,
operating by electro-chemical means. (Neuroscience has yielded results in terms
of structure and function in the brain, but it has not identified mentality.)[7]
But suppose that
what is necessary to resolve the problem is not a wrenching of one side into
the other (reduction or emergence), or an explanatorily deficient conjunction
of the two (e.g. higher order representation), but the introduction of a third
factor. This third factor would not be a phlogiston-like enabler, but a
functional property that recasts our understanding of the two sides. What could
it be? To locate that third factor, we must go back over the material already
covered. For our current duality, from a biological stance, has both missing
and mistaken content.
3.1 The primacy of
a neural account
A scientific
approach will not do what Descartes, and his descendants, did. It will not
assume, from a religio-philosophical pre-scientific heritage, that
consciousness exists. Nor will it, as Dennett says, look for “A physical
structure that could be seen to accomplish the puzzling legerdemain of the
mind” (1994, p237), which echoes Gazzaniga’s words above. The physical brain
(qua physicality) must be regarded as wholly adequate to perform its biological
role. We will call this bio-physical adequacy. There are then two
questions:
1. What is
the brain’s biological role?
2. Why does the
brain create experience? I.e. What, for the brain, is experience?
These are the
central questions. Before addressing them directly, let us continue to review
the material.
3.2 What mind-body
problem?
The mind-body problem
is founded upon the extraordinary idea that, having received all the
requisite physical information from the sensory receptors, the brain, instead
of acting upon it directly, turns it into intentional content and
feeling/sensation as subjectively available. These kinds of states are
understood to be per se causal. Yet they then have to be recast as pure
physicality again to render them causal by having physical properties.
This recasting is the mind-body problem. However, and quite obviously,
the intervening experiential state, in causal terms, appears redundant.
There are
essentially two (non-divine) justifications for the interposed experiential
state. Though linked, they do not always both occur. The first is that the
complexity of the brain’s assessment of its incoming information requires the
creation of the complexity of consciousness. Since we assume that the knowing
we have as consciousness is causal, and is complex—so complex indeed, that much
of it, in terms of an immediate task, seems redundant—it is proposed that
consciousness must be the result of what the brain does to manage its
complexity (e.g. Edelman & Tonini 2000). The second reason is that it is
assumed that we must know: for we cannot imagine (viz. indelibility) how
the brain, in terms of its bio-physical adequacy, could do what it does without
a knowing state (viz. our experience). How can we deal with mountains and
mountainness if we do not know about them (e.g. Damasio 1999)? (Reference is to
neuroscientists because philosophers, by and large, presuppose consciousness.
But these justifications are universal in all disciplines. That the origin of
knowledge is from the God concept has been long forgotten.)
To support the
knowing thesis (the second reason), certain conditions, as blindsight, are
nominated. As Anthony Marcel (1988) has said, although a blindsighted person
might be able to guess (for example) from a pregiven list with above average
success what is being shown in their blind field (indicating unconscious
information), they would not act voluntarily upon that information, so
demonstrating, for action, the necessity of our experiencing-perception, or
awareness. Allen and Reber (1998, p322) well illustrate the role of awareness,
that alternative word for consciousness. “Consciousness is a limited channel
processor.... It is difficult to see how a connectionist model could operate if
the organism must be aware of all processes at all times.... There is ample
evidence that unconscious processes [i.e. the connectionist model] are involved
in adaptation and intelligent functioning.” But if our notion of consciousness
(or awareness) is wrong, we will have misinterpreted what happens with
blindsight. Awareness will therefore not be a causal factor, and the
justification that the brain creates consciousness for our voluntary action in
the world will be lost.
Allen and Reber, in
the above quote, are assuming, not justifying, that the brain needs to
create consciousness to be causal. For if the brain functions to cause
organismic action to fulfill biological “aims”—by what we have called
bio-physical adequacy, with neurophysiological states (i.e. Allen and Reber’s
“connectionist model”) associated with adaptational effect—we might suppose
that action causes result from neural-state integration by neural firing across
the brain as a pure physical assembly. There is a term for this, viz. binding.
The debate as to whether binding needs generate psychological properties
(i.e. consciousness) can be seen in such papers as Hardcastle (1998) pro, and
Prinz (2001) con. Support for the psychology option may be driven by our sense
of conscious causality, with the profound significance that has had for human
self-understanding. But in terms of brain explanation, the creation of
psychology by the brain as a (complex) causal function has no biological
justification. That is, the organism, of Allen and Reber, is not “aware”
of anything. This category mistake bedevils the literature, as we shall see.
3.3
Counter-positions in mentalism, that still lack physical explanation
In recent years,
various writers, including John McDowell and Hilary Putnam (influenced by
Wilfrid Sellars’ Myth of the Given (1997)), have questioned the model that
derives from Descartes. They do not accept that perception is effected by
sensory input (as e.g. sense data, non-conceptual content, bare appearances) to
the cognitive functions of the mind. They take perception to be of the world,
in which cognitive effects (i.e. conceptualizing) are already extant in the
perceptual state. As McDowell puts it in one of many variations: “Conceptual
capacities are already operative in the deliverences of sensibility themselves”
(1994, p39).
This might appear
relevant to the position to be developed here. For we have proposed, from
bio-physical adequacy, that causal processing in the brain takes place as
neurophysiology. Thus, in McDowell’s account, when so-called perception arises,
there is no mental pre-conceptual experiential state then to be worked
over by other mental properties (what McDowell calls “spontaneity”, in
Kant-speak): perception is, in Putnam’s words, an “unmediated contact with the
environment” (1999, p44). For Putnam claims (in commentary somewhat as here)
that “early modern epistemology and metaphysics saddled us with an interface
conception of conception as well as an interface conception of perception”
(ibid. p45). Rather, he wishes us to see directly the pot of jam as a pot of
jam.[8]
However, whilst
this approach attempts to undermine the notion of the mental as our interface
to the world (the true real, but courtesy of God, with its problematic
subjective variation), it does not solve the mind-body problem. For according
to McDowell, although there is to be biologically stable sensory input (i.e.
a God + evolution conspiracy has happened, which removes problematic subjective
variation),[9] our freedom in
making judgments in perception still results from our (conceptual)
spontaneity. But how can he justify the notion of freedom as
neurophysiology (blind, thoughtless physicality)? While McDowell aims to show
that conceptualizing is constrained by sensory input, thus to be
genuinely of the world, at what stage does he suppose that sensory input exists
as a mental (i.e. intentional) pre-conceptual content, thence to be
integrated for our perception with the concepts of e.g. pot and
jam? Because his claim is that it isn’t. An adequate account, by contrast,
would specify whether we are talking wholly in mentalist terms (non-conceptual
input + conception) or neurophysiological terms (physical sensory states +
neurophysiological reactive processing), and, if the two are to be linked, exactly
when and how.
Kant fails to
explain physically the presence of the sensible intuition as sensory
input. McDowell, too, gives no such explanation.[10] So we can no more
assert grounds for freedom in judging (actively) that actually there is
a pot of jam (as a result of our conceptualizing capacities—as McDowell
proposes—and not e.g. a pot marmalade or a can of paint) as to suppose that we
might unfreely first see (passively) an unarticulated, or unintelligible
bounded locus of space (whatever that might be).
For what we
experience at each moment in perception is perception as it happens, even if it
may alter in relation to some particular object.[11] So when McDowell
says (ibid. p43) “The faculty of spontaneity is the idea of something that
empowers us to take charge of our lives”, we ask: What us? The Cartesian
subject? Our brain? Some other notion? This us (to which Putnam also
wants to give direct access to the world) is utterly obscure, except that it
occurs in the domain of giving reasons (which arise from our conceptual
capacities).[12] But a physical account
will ask more fundamental questions. They are: What kind of thing gives
reasons? And what are reasons anyway?
Putnam’s take is no
more satisfactory. He rightly criticizes Fodor’s (consciousness-ignoring) idea
of “perception modules” in the brain as input to conceptual functions (ibid.
p36), because we would still need to understand how actual perception is
reducible to neurophysiology as we would irreducible propositional attitudes to
neurophysiology. (I.e. Fodor simply mixes up ontological terminologies.)[13] But a Putnam-type
account of direct perceptual (sensory + conceptual) grasp of a pot of jam as still
(as he proposes) irreducible to neurophysiology, does not solve the problem of
how or why the brain makes the, apparently redundant, perceptual state
of a pot of jam in the first place.[14] For a genuinely
explanatory account of what is going on in the brain, this is what we must
get a grasp of. Why is there any kind of experience at all?
To comment on
Putnam’s own comment about Dennett (ibid. p157): There is no point in having a
philosophy about a topic that is itself outside the physical universe (e.g.
direct perception that is physically inexplicable). Even so, talk of the
physical universe (science) still requires a philosophy since we do not
(God-wise) know what the ultimate grounds of the physical universe are, or indeed
much of its operation—including ourselves as experiencers. Thus our philosophy
will be of a newly established region of biology (what our experience really
is), not a philosophy of an invented mind.
Perception, in the
accounts of McDowell and Putnam, is not irrelevant to what will be proposed
here. Reasons, or explanation, will feature, but will be given a cogent
physical account. Thus Putnam’s wish can be fulfilled: By “giving up th[e]
picture of perception as a set of ‘representations’ in an inner theater...we
will...escape from the endless recycling of positions that do not work in the
philosophy of mind” (ibid. p102).[15] But it will not be
by Putnam’s irreducible direct perception route.
3.4 The
physical/functional incoherence of mind
Cognitive science,
psychology, much philosophy of mind, depend upon an inexplicable assumption
that the Allen and Reber quote above (consciousness vs. connectionist model)
demonstrates. To illustrate with another quote, from William Seager:
“Descartes’ vision of the mind is the foundation of modern cognitive science.
The linchpin idea of this upstart science is that the mind is in essence a
field of representations—encompassing perception and action and everything in
between—some conscious, most unconscious, upon which a great variety of
cognitive processes operate” (1999, p4).
But how can
consciousness, i.e. states of experiential aboutness, operate with unconscious,
i.e. connectionist, states? If the informational content of the pot of
jam is as we see it, how can it cause a connectionist neural state to
operate, e.g. that we pick it up?[16] We must suppose
that, for the perceptual pot of jam, the neural brain has made of itself a kind
of state which is not the physical neural synaptic weighting of the (causally
active) connectionist model. Yet somehow that different kind of state must, via
its content, cause a purely neural activity for action to take place (otherwise
why is it there?). But we have no explanation for this.[17]
Putnam rightly
criticizes Fodor’s brain “perceptual modules”. But the whole explanatory
modus of the mind/brain depends upon an unfathomable causal connection between
experiential intentionality and causal neurophysiology—two entirely different
ontological realms (though apparently both of the brain). Without such
explanation, Seager’s cognitive science has not elevated itself to the status
of a science at all; and the very notion of mind is undermined. For saying that
we are conscious or unconscious is not the same as saying the brain
is conscious or unconscious. For the latter (whilst actually a category
mistake) would require a functional explanation as to how the two kinds
of states causally interact to effect, not only action, but thought itself, the
very source of McDowell’s/Kant’s freedom.[18]
3.5 Commencement of
the new model
To sum up the
position now reached. Rather than beginning with the theory of consciousness
and trying to reconcile that with the physical brain, we should start with the
physical brain and try and work out why what has been termed experience came
into being. Because of the intractable difficulties with pre-scientific
consciousness, we assert that a new model is required of the function of
experiencing. This should be founded upon a theory of function under evolutionary
principles.
We will now answer
the first central question. What is the brain’s biological role? The
brain, as an organ of the body, causes bodily action (including internal
organic regulation) to fulfill the biological “aims” of the organism (given
entirely as organic states), and has developed over millions of years by, in
more complex creatures, evolving through other species. In other words, there
is an evolutionary continuity from the most primitive species to man. There is
no evolutionary discontinuity, though there is evolution. Whatever is
accomplished by the brain to effect the biologically adequate operation of the
organism in the world (given ultimately by its survival and reproduction) is
accomplished by its neurophysiology, and effected by the central and peripheral
nervous systems, and other organs and processes of the body. Thus the ontology
and function of the brain’s causal neural status is now defined.
As a statement in
biology, this role-specification appears entirely uncontroversial. Solipsistically,
there is no reason for the brain to have any other operative mechanism than its
physiological features. But organisms are not solipsistic. So without
elevating the brain’s neurophysiology beyond the physical (i.e. with consciousness),
we must identify what the brain does to communicate, for the purposes of
common action, with the brains of the organism’s conspecifics, and others.
This will answer the second question: why is there experience?
4. Brain-to-brain
communication
To read the
following, one must constantly “see through” one’s familiar state, so to
identify one’s existence as a purely biological organism without
self-ascriptive knowledge powers. There is neither consciousness, nor
unconsciousness. The brain’s control of the organism is maintained by
neurophysiological programs, where this word implies largely
pre-established (i.e. “learned” through time) series of activation (cf.
Edelman’s remembered present, in e.g. Edelman & Tonini 2000) which
cause the organism to act, from the smallest gesture to the most complex and
“future-projected” plan.
Now consider this
quote from Heidegger:
“The bee is simply given over to the
sun and to the period of flight without being able to grasp either of these
as such.... The bee can only be given over to things in this way because it is
driven by the fundamental drive of foraging.... The fact that the bee is driven
in a particular direction is and remains embedded within the context of the
fundamental drive for going out and foraging” (1995, p247).
The notion of
embeddedness has come into recent philosophical discussion in cognitive science
(e.g.
Indeed, a
proto-model that accounts for how we can operate in the world without
consciousness is already available. It is the neural net, connectionist model.
However it seems to us—e.g. that the pot of jam appears before us, and we
respond to the actual pot because we see its real image—rather we should
understand that the brain grasps the pot of jam as a physiological structure
in electro-chemical terms. Indeed, not as a unitary structure, but as a
dispersed set of characteristics represented purely in neural net (i.e.
brain-synaptic) weightings which have no structural equivalence to the pot of jam
as perceived. Indeed, not as a set, but as many different groupings,
overlapping (superpositional) with features of numerous other represented
entities. These other entities may bear no obvious (i.e. intentional) relation
to the object pot of jam. But in brain function terms, it is the
operative neural structure that facilitates our (hugely complicated) action.[20]
In practice, this
is an early-stage hypothesis, since the actual working of the brain is vastly
elaborate and will involve other factors than synaptic weightings.[21] But the
connectionist model demonstrates the plausibility of purely physiological
processes (processes apparently in the brain) achieving the action-causing
functions of mental powers: e.g. recognition, comparison, logical steps, etc. The
connectionist model is representational: but, as William Bechtel argues
(2001, p332), it is a minimal representational notion which “is viable” (i.e.
is neuroscientifically extant). It does not pose the problems of
(Descartes’/Seager’s) representational mentality in the brain, a point Bechtel
hints at but does not really engage.
If we accept the
brain’s bio-physical adequacy along connectionist lines, what is left over?
What is the missing third factor that we proposed at the beginning of section 3?
The answer is: Physical brains must communicate with each other to effect
common action. There must be a means by which an assembly of pure
neurophysiology can engage with other assemblies of neurophysiology in the
physical world. For cooperative action (as in individual brains) will
result from pre-established programs, but across individual organisms.
Collective action is not a result of the conscious decision of two (mental)
subjects on the basis of their individual representations of the world. For the
assumed objective world of that collective action of minds with subjects results
from the definition of mind, not from how adaptational organs, viz. brains,
grasp their environment for the purpose of action.
The requirement
for brain communication is invisible in the tradition because the assumption is
that we see and understand the same things because we process the same
information as minds. Kant formalized this with his a priori space/time
concepts for perception, and the categories of the understanding (sourced by
Aristotle). Perception as appearances, while not of things in themselves, is
nonetheless objective: i.e. available to all per se for a
universally possible understanding. Essentially this simply tinkered with Greek
foundationalism, and has nothing to do with evolved brains.[22]
But causal brains
are an incommunicable scramble of causal neurophysiology. Their causal
properties are deeply obscured (though not, in principle, undiscoverable). For
solipsistic brains, the nature of that causality is irrelevant, since they
operate under adaptational development, and their success is judged
biologically according to the (action-effected) fulfillment of their biological
aims, about which they have no idea, for they have no idea about anything. But
for brains to communicate on their collective programs supra-organismically,
the situation is quite different.
Let us hold on this
position for a moment. The knowledge ontology that drove the theory of
consciousness, with its need to identify what can be truly known, arises from a
view of the universe in which there are knowable and known things because the
universe was created by a knower. Indeed, in Hegel’s Aristotle of the Metaphysics
(1961) (thence to Hegel’s (1807) Absolute Subject, and “domestication” by
Sellars and McDowell) divine thinking (Spirit) was the universe (the fall-out
is still apparent in Fodor, see below). But if the universe is entirely other,
i.e. is purposeless and requires no knowing but conforms “merely” to lawful
regularities—which applies to organisms as much as anything else (including
ourselves)—then we see that the brain does not know at all. Its
evolutionarily derived operation is founded upon its ability to fulfill its
biological aims (adapted organic states). What person A “knows”, i.e. what
occurs as their (supposed) consciousness, is not what person B “knows”. There
is no objectivity as Kant specified it. For the source of the apparent knowing
is the brain, and the brain knows nothing. Nor does the brain see anything,
feel anything, or sense anything.[23] The brain reacts
to the world by its neurophysiological states in purely electro-chemical terms
which, between us, will not be (exactly) the same.[24] Thus the proposal
for identity between brain states and causal psychological states is a
red-herring, though evidently whatever seeing, feeling, sensing and knowing
actually are, are brain states—what else could they be?
But brains must
communicate for survival which, in a biological account à la Richard Dawkins
(1976), results in a perpetuation of the genes (as the unit of selection). For
that communication, brains must create communicative states. To be effective,
these states must be able to communicate: in other words, they must be
adequately interpretable by other brains.[25]
We are now going to
make a fundamental biological distinction. This is a distinction in the
literature, but not as it appears here. We distinguish between closed
(or fixed) organismic cooperative patterns of behavior, and those which
we term open patterns of behavior. (In biology, reference is made to
closed and open instincts, the latter being modifiable. We will not
address the notion of instinct.) An example is the bee dance (Von Frisch 1966).
With the bee dance, signaling is carried out from one group to another to
locate the presence of honey (as the biological aim) at a specific position in
relation to the sun. This dance may take place in the dark of the hive;
nonetheless the receiver bees can, within some degrees, detect the direction,
which will be refined near the target by scent (receptor molecular
impingement!). This kind of activity can be put down to a primitive
consciousness, and associated with a symbol manipulating capacity (e.g.
The structure of
the dance, and the structures of fixed communication generally, is to trigger
from one organism to another a complete cooperative task, either jointly
or, as with the bee, to effect a beneficial-to-the-group consequent altered
state of behavior in a conspecific. But even if symbolism is involved (the
dance), the point is: How does the alteration of a conspecific’s behavior come
about? (Obviously bees do not sign honey or sun or direction,
because they cannot propositionally specify them.) The answer is: By the modification
of the receiver organism’s neural states for a prestructured program of the
(fixed) pattern of behavior. In other words, even as a behavioral
signal/symbolism in the world, the neural structure and operation of the
organism is adequate for behavior alteration without the presence of
consciousness. The behavior may be relatively complex, but it is not
open-ended. It is mapped to the world-domain of the organism’s (neurally
defined) fixed behavior capacity.
Now this fixed
behavioral structure is to be contrasted with open-ended behavior. And it must
be said that where, in evolutionary development, this occurs is as yet
unspecifiable. The difference between the bee-type behavior and open-ended
behavior is not, as the Heidegger quote above proposes, one in which a mental
grasping takes place. It is one in which the behavioral characteristics are
dynamically modified within the program as a result of the progress of the
program itself. This kind of modification is not predictable; yet adaptation has
taken place which allows conspecific brain communication to effect the
completion of the program (to target neural states) through an unpredictable
form of cooperation within the program itself. The idea is that open-ended
behavior demands an in-program brain communicative status to be conveyed.
Brains contain no (problematic) conscious subjects perceiving, thinking,
feeling, sensing, willing. So how is in-program brain status signification to
take place?
The illustrative
example is two lions hunting a gazelle on the grasslands. They will be called A
and B. The program of the hunt is the pursuit of the gazelle to the kill. The
gazelle may run, change direction, employ aspects of the environment to its
advantage. But these two lions can cooperatively pursue it to a result. How?
If lion A moves to
the right in line with the program as they stalk the gazelle, lion B must grasp
the significance of lion A’s move. As in the bee case, we might suppose that
the mere fact of A’s move, modifying B’s neural structure by sensory input, is
sufficient. But there is a further requirement here. It is that lion A, to
continue with the hunt program, must be able to assume that lion B has grasped
its move as appropriate within the program. It cannot yell, “Have you got it?” since
it has no language or vocal capacity so to do—and besides which, that would be
the end of the gazelle hunt. The assumption of appropriateness needs a means of
reciprocal signification which is sustained remotely between the (purely
physical) states of their brains.
There is a way this
can understood. It is that the image in B’s brain of A’s move (previously
called conscious perception) is a sign indicating to A’s brain B’s grasp
of A’s move. That is, when A moves, B’s brain grasps A’s move physically causally
by its neural-state modification; then it signs to A that it has grasped
the move by creating the image of A moving in the environment, which A’s brain
can take as the sign of B’s grasp. The image is a signifying analogy of
A’s move in the world.
Considering B’s
brain, therefore, we see it in these two parts, biologically. In and of its own
causal activity it is purely the electro-chemical modification of its physical
states. But since it is involved in collective action, in this case with a conspecific
for the purpose of obtaining body-fuel (the gazelle), it needs to signify the
progress of the program in the world until the fulfillment of it. This
signification is what the brain interprets of its own causal physical
states. This phenomenon is not operating causally for the organism, but is
purely a sign. As a sign (or signifier of the brain’s causal status) it is
unproblematically physical, i.e. can be understood in terms of its sustaining
medium, the neural base. Since it is a sign, it will be referred to henceforth
as the brain-sign. Thus the causality of the brain-sign phenomenon is
directed outwards.
In normal
discussion this sounds peculiar, because the obvious question is: If the
analogical image is a brain-sign, how can A’s brain see it since it cannot look
into B’s head? But this is a (mentalist) misconstrual of the physicality. The
program of the hunt is genetically endowed, and exposure realized in each of
the lions. They have no knowing capacity to grasp the idea of the hunt, and
then cooperate. The program can only be effected, as two (or more) lions, by
two (or more) lions. So the brain capacity for the hunt takes for granted
that other lions can participate. The hunt structure “assumes”, in the brains
of the lions, that a signifying status of the physical program is extant. Put
more scientifically: The supra-organismic structure of the hunt is, as it were,
imposed upon the single organic entity of each lion by the construction of all
their brains in genetic inheritance. Insofar as they perform the hunt, they are
collective organisms, and are so “designed”. Thus the function of the
brain-sign itself is supra-organismic, i.e. nothing to do with individual minds
or souls.
To continue with
the hunt program. Since B’s brain has grasped A’s move (in its physical
modification), it then can move B’s organism in an appropriate and reciprocal
way. A’s brain will grasp B’s move and sign to B, reciprocally, its grasp by
the analogical image in its head of B’s move.
But now we note that the image in B’s head is not only a sign to A of its
(brain’s) causal grasp of A’s move, but an explanation of B’s move,
since the causal grasp of A’s move results both in the analogical image in B’s
head and its reciprocating move. Again, A’s brain cannot see that B’s image is
this explanation, but it does not need to since this explanation is assumed in
their collective action. The complementary nature of the image, and
underlying neural causality, will be termed complementary resonance.
To enhance this point,
consider the situation in which lion A spies a small tree that it can take as
cover. There is no (mentalist) understanding in A resulting from its
conscious perception of the tree to be worked over by reason precipitating
its move. We must see this as a purely physical grasp of the
hunt-program/terrain-structure by A’s neural states from electro-magnetic
radiation input, thence steering it toward the tree (i.e. the neural grasp is
simply behavior determining). But, on the other hand, there will be in A’s head
an image of the tree on the terrain, in whatever representational capacity
lions have. What, then, is the point of the image? Its significance lies in the
fact that B’s neural states will grasp A’s move and the tree and
their relation in causal (electro-chemical) terms, and will produce an
(analogical) image of this. Specifically, under appropriate circumstances, the
fact that A moves toward the tree for cover must be an establishable part of
the hunt program. Thus the tree itself attains what we call meaning for
both of the lions in the hunt. Its meaning lies firstly in the causal status of
the neural states of both the lions, and then as a common signifier in
both brains. In A it means “the object for cover in the program” and for B it
means “the object in the program that A is using for cover”. Of course, neither
lion could propositionally specify it is a tree nor what cover is. But that is
not the point, for the analogical image is already the physical expression of
the meaning of the tree.[26] And, moreover,
since it is, in this context, a common signifier, it is the way both brains, as
just physical objects, communicate the commonality of their states for the
purpose of common action. Meaning, however, is entirely a physical state
now, both causally and communicatively. It functions purely to enable
action and has no transcendent status.
To grasp the point
here requires a complete appreciation that humans (minds) do not operate with
meanings (as words or images) that somehow exist outside themselves (in
God’s head, other organisms’ heads or the ether) because they are intrinsically
attached to external objects or qualities (a mentalist foundationalism, or
“mirror of nature” in Rorty’s (1980) phrase).[27] As long as
biologically adequate action is enabled, whatever is brain-signed has
achieved its role.
Indeed, the answer
to why there is a brain-sign is precisely so that states can be signified to
establish communicative reciprocation or commonality.[28] By contrast with
the complementary resonance of reciprocation, common neural
casual/signification states will be termed congruent resonance. If
creatures were solipsistic (i.e. the solipsistic brain already referred
to), there would be no need for meaning or brain-sign at all. So, for example,
just as A sets out toward the small tree as an action in the world, so the
small-tree sign is the output projection of its causal status. And as B regards
A and the tree, so it has them as output, linked by their analogical
relation—and will itself act accordingly. Analogical picturing, therefore, is
not some means of (conscious perceptual) causal grasping of the world, but
neural portrayal as the world. (But not, of course, the real world,
nor the physical world.)
Without going into
greater detail, it must be added that brain-sign, as e.g. so-called perception,
is not a series of still shots pieced together so that we see continuously
(cf. Damasio’s (1999) characterization as a “movie in the brain”). Both Husserl
in 1913 (1982, p174 and below) and William James (1950) in 1890 had observed
that our experience retains somewhat the past (Husserl called it retention)
and anticipates the future (protention). Thus a perceptual state,
whilst appearing as a sequence of instantaneous events (how else could it?), is
experienced as a continuum. Husserl took this to be an intentional feature of
mentality. But the biological interpretation is far more cogent. The feature
illustrates the pre-established nature of (so-called) perception as of a brain
program, fitting the structure of Edelman’s “remembered present”.[29],[30] Indeed, brain-sign
generally, as a signifying physiological state, is to be understood as
essentially discursive. The temporal, sequential nature of language is
evolutionarily preceded by other aspects of the brain-sign function, to which
it is integrally related.[31]
By the time humans
arrive, the situation is more complicated but is founded on the same
evolutionary principles. Three characteristics seem to differentiate humans
from other creatures, but some other creatures show elements of them. The first
is a sense of self. The second is language. The third, associated with both the
preceding, is the apparent reflectiveness/reflexivity of consciousness.
The detail cannot
be explored here, but the significance, in the context of the approach, can be
stated. With a sense of self there is an explicit demarcation between the world
and the experiencer. This has been identified in chimpanzees and dolphins (e.g.
These brain-sign
features are still, of course, portrayals of causal neural status, not evidence
of a more developed mentality. When a chimp appears to recognize itself in a
mirror, this is a neural accomplishment which presumably results in a
brain-sign state of the chimp that it can project to its conspecifics (and us!)
because, in principle, they can reciprocate. Similarly, when we suppose we are
considering our own thoughts by some mental means, these reflective acts are no
more than analogical projections of our causal neural states which could
be conveyed to others. We cannot literally be reflective by conscious decision.
There are no conscious decisions; and there is no enduring causal I for
reflection/reflexion, as in consciousness theory.
To see the function
of language, consider two humans discussing their view of a ship on the sea.
They do not constantly point out to each other: “There is the ship, there is
the sea, there is the sky.” Their (brain) communication takes place on the implicit
supposition of an adequately common view. But not only are they not
conscious in grasping the world and discussing it, their communication is caused
by their neural states. These two people have no idea what they are
going to say until they say it. And when they hear what the other says, no
subsequent mental processing on what they hear results. What they hear
(content, tone, sound) is already output to the other person (brain),
for their neural states have already determined what their response will be, founded
upon the informational content in the compression waves received into their
ears, and the electro-magnetic radiation to their eyes (i.e. a causal
functioning of pure physicality). Hearing what the other says is “merely” an
explanation of whatever results as the hearer’s explicit reciprocal
words (content and tone) and/or actions. I.e., we do not decide how to
respond to another’s words by what we hear. We (as experiencers)
communicate our brain’s (neural) causality by being its sign.
This addresses,
functionally, McDowell’s and Putnam’s “concepts in perception”. For humans,
what occurs as the brain-sign in terms of our seeing occurs as a construct with
the communicable status apposite to the current neurophysiology (e.g. mountains
and mountainness). There is no mentalist sense-input worked over for
conceptual addition. Thus Kant’s/McDowell’s spontaneity/freedom is resolved, as
are Putnam’s irreducible direct perceptions. (Cf. e.g. McDowell’s account in
chapter IV, 1994.)[32]
But the problematic
“logical space of reasons” is revealed as the signification of the logic of (embedded) neurophysiology,
and is the (oftentimes) adequate communicative modus that is brain-interpreted,
brain-selected, to enable collective action. Reasons, as spoken, are not a manifestation
of rational minds operating via consciousness. The world, and its
intelligibility, are not (dualistically) opened up to a subject contemplating
its (God-endowed) luminous condition. (Reasons are minuscule local fragments of
the potential analogical read-out of a brain’s status. That is why we can think
different things (even opposite things) at different times about apparently the
same topic. For different action neural programs are involved in the
signification, which have no regard for knowledge. The determining
characteristic of our statements is not a coherent network of beliefs (no
beliefs exist in the brain), but a time-given law-observing action-determined
signification of a neural status, which itself is identified as an (often only
potential) program of action.[33] We speak, not from
the unconscious, but from a type of source that is inaccessible directly. The
causal power of our writings or utterances is not the words (by which concepts
are deemed to exist), but as brain-input as electro-magnetic radiation or
compression waves. The truth of what we say does not (for example) result from
the truth of what we see, for in that sense there is no truth. The
nearest to what we might call truth (which per se depends upon a pre-scientific
God-dependent knowledge ontology) is the adequate communicative modus
(neurophysiological resonance) for effective collective action in the
world. (A link to pragmatism is evident.) That is how, together, we get
space vehicles to Jupiter, and beyond.[34]
In the wake of any
collective project, there is (usually) a trail of information and reason. But
the causal history, for each solipsistic brain which did the work, is not that
documented brain-sign history. It is the operative neurophysiologies, to which
we have no access. The information and reasons are signifiers which both are
approximate, since they are brain-interpretations of the causal
neurophysiologies, and can function to re-engage more neurophysiologies, e.g.
historians of the project and us. We cannot replicate the project, because it
was a time-dependent, neurophysiological-dependent trajectory in the world in
mass/energy space-time terms. But we can gain some approximation to the project
by the programming of our neurophysiology by the communicative medium of
brain-sign features: written words, spoken commentary, visual images. That is
how history works. What is then causal in us (but inaccessible to us as
experiencers) is our neurophysiology, by which our brain-sign statuses
communicate to others. I.e. brains communicate themselves by us, for we
are their signs. (Little wonder there are no fixed texts nor authoritative
authors.)[35]
Now consider the
self and the reflective/reflexive capacity. Continental philosophy identified
(in Sartre’s terms, 1943) the pre-reflective cogito, or as Heidegger
designated it (from the neo-Kantians, initially Fichte), facticity (see
Kisiel, 1993). The state was consciousness (or lived experience) before the
reflective/reflexive acts take place.[36] These philosophers
did not attempt a biological interpretation of this state, nor indeed that of
the reflective/reflexive states. But a biological view can be understood which
endorses the phenomenon (though not its interpretation). We might well suppose
that, for our lions, there are no reflective/reflexive states, for there is no
neural function that projects the self of the lions or gives them language to
express it and its concepts. But we might well suppose that lions function
pre-reflectively, in that their brain images (broadly meant) do allow
sufficient brain communication for their collective acts without a designated
self.
By the time of
chimps and dolphins, then humans, expressive possibility has evolved. The self,
reflective/reflexive states, and language in which they are couched, as
brain-sign features, have evolved, exploding communicative power, and resulting
in the vastly complicated world humans, in particular, create. Our experience
as a self with world represented to it is not eliminated, but our
interpretation of this state is now entirely different (from e.g. Kant), as we
comprehend its biological function.
Indeed, it is the
reflective/reflexive states that make it so difficult for us to see what the
brain does by our being experiencers. For the reflective/reflexive states
appear to grant us a relationship to the content of our own mind, either to
interrogate it (reflectiveness) or alter it (reflexivity). They appear to allow
in the capacity to judge, which for McDowell, and the history before him, is
key to our freedom in spontaneity (as what McDowell refers to as “second
nature”).[37] But this is an
illusion, which can be understood by seeing (as we have said) that an
occurrence of a reflective/reflexive state is still physically determined. We
have no capacity to decide or judge, in a mentalist sense, since we
are bound (at the instant) to the content of our occurrence.[38]
Of course we can
analyze language. But analysis is of a sign of something else. Language is
an interpretation, in organisms, of (embedded) neurophysiology, of which it is
a sign. The apparent logic in language is evolutionary preceded by other
brain-sign features. Fodor’s requirement for e.g. productivity and
systematicity in language is preceded by pre-reflective/reflexive image
states. (John loves Mary, for Fodor, can
be replaced by Mary loves John only if the speaker understands language. What
this understands means, beyond speaking the thinking, is unspecified.)[39]
The image of tree A
falling against tree B indicates for communicating lions an event in the world
commonly projected by their neurophysiologies as their brain-signs. Tree B
falling against tree A would indicate an inverse event. The lions have no
language to say: Tree A fell against tree B, or then: Tree B fell against tree
A. But what evolves as language is the explicit over the implicit.
This is not because of an understanding humans have and lions don’t. It
is neurophysiology communicating its status by a new powerful medium. Fodor
says: “Linguistic capacities are systematic, and that’s because sentences have
systematic structure. But cognitive capacities are systematic too, and that
must be because thoughts have constituent structure. But if thoughts have
constituent structure, then
“Cognition” is an embedded neural structure responsive
to the world both: without language, symbols or thought, and with other
kinds of causal properties. But aspects of the environmental domain (including
the organism’s body) in which action programs operate are represented by brains
as adequate signs. Symbols do not exist in the head. Brain-signs arise
afresh each moment. The brain may sign a version “cow” or “horse”,
depending upon its neural grasp of the environment. (And if nothing is actable,
nothing is signed, or there is inapposite signing.)[40] That does not mean
that cow or horse exist in the head to be matched by cow or horse
in the world. Signs are about causal neural status, not (knowable) world
features. Intentionality, as a casual property (Husserl’s perceptual
image in the head, or the word tree), is not biological.[41]
Is there evidence
that the neural brain is causal before the brain-sign occurs? In our common
experience we withdraw our hand from the iron before we feel it burned, and we
hunch our shoulders before hearing the thunder overhead. The experiments of
Benjamin Libet et al. have been a confirmation (1983).[42] Libet demonstrated
a delay, in voluntary(!) action, between the readiness
potential, signifying the commencement of brain activity, and the
experience. The delay is between 350 and 500 milliseconds. This finding prompts
the question: Why should there be a delay between the brain initiation of
neural activity and our experienced acts of will, when the latter supposedly
depend upon consciousness? How can we act voluntarily (i.e. on a conscious
decision) if the brain has already begun the act without us? The reason is
clear in the model here proposed. The brain-sign is the brain’s (bio-physical)
explanation of its acts, and has no causal property for the organism in which
it occurs.[43] Our will is not
positioned in consciousness as was supposed. Our actions result from
statistically expressible modalities of physical structures to which we (as
brain-signs) have no access.
5. Brain-Sign vs.
Mentality
The detail and
ramifications of the model proposed, while crucial to the interpretation of our
selves and our being in the world, are way beyond the scope of one paper. The
aim of this section is to help grasp brain-sign functioning by contrasting it,
in a few cases, with the mentalist model, and thus (I hope) exorcising the
notion of the mental (the ghost in the machine). First a list of advantages of
the brain-sign model over consciousness/mentality, before a brief expansion
upon some of them.
i. Brain-sign makes biological sense. Brain-sign facilitates
communication between organisms, which enhances gene survival, and is
continuous with the general organismic rise in complexity. We resist the
inexplicability of mentality, with its religious and moral (con-science)
heritage, and its dependence on causal intentionality.
ii. The ontology of the brain-sign is physically feasible, and does not
require the identification of new physical causal properties by consciousness
emergentists, or the “willing suspension of disbelief” demanded by
reductionists. We may suppose the phenomenon, as a sign, has some
characteristic of physicality like the skin reflectance/patterning of the
chameleon, and occurs at neuronal level. We now have a characteristic to look
for, since we are not hijacked by mentalist subjectivity.
iii. Brain-sign explains how we (as experiencers) are an aspect
of brains, how we fit into the natural world tout à fait. We can lay aside
the red herrings of values, beliefs, sensibilities, etc. (They are communicative
biological modalities.) The account is directly susceptible to
naturalistic explanation.
iv. That we are this phenomenon can be separated from the
information this phenomenon conveys (indelibility is overcome). What we “know”
of the world and ourselves in brain-sign terms is for communication between
organisms. No knowledge property reveals the world to us. The world
remains unknowable directly. We aim at that knowledge indirectly by our
theoretical constructs (e.g. physics, chemistry and biology—including
this one) and our devices for detection and measurement.
v. Our own causality remains where it always was: in the
electro-chemical processes of our neural structure. Causality is not explained
by folk psychology, nor is there an equivalence of folk psychology in the
brain. This does not prevent our communication in folk psychological terms,
although the experienced terms (i.e. verbal expression) are not what is causally
transacted within us.
vi. We now understand ourselves as fundamentally collective organisms. Biologically<