Philosophy 4610
Philosophy of Mind
Week 13:
The Mystery of Consciousness
and Review
The problem of consciousness
 We
have asked whether
consciousness or qualia might be
explainable in physical terms.
 “Qualia friends” like Nagel and
Jackson assert that qualia are real
and that they pose a big problem for
physicalist explanation
 “Qulia foes” like Dennett argue that
there is no big problem for physicalist
explanation, because qualia don’t
exist.
Explaining consciousness: the
dilemma
 The
debate between qualia friends
and foes seems to yield a difficult
dilemma:
– On the ONE hand, it seems as if some
version of physicalism must be true.
Everything we have ever discovered or
explained scientifically has been
explainable in scientific terms.
– On the OTHER hand, it seems as if
consciousness is real, and resists
explanation in physical terms.
McGinn: The New Mysterianism


McGinn thinks that
physicalism is almost
certain to be true. It is
almost certain there is
some physical explanation
of consciousness
But the fact that
physicalism is true does not
at all guarantee that we can
understand or have
access to the true
explanation of
consciousness.
Consciousness might
remain a mystery to us,
even if it is ultimately
physical in nature.
Cognitive Closure
Not all concepts are
accessible to all
thinkers. For instance,
a monkey may have
access to the concepts
“ball” and “banana”;
but the concept
“electron” or “black
hole” is elusive.
 We can say that the
monkey is cognitively
closed to these
concepts: given its form
of intelligence, there is
no way for it to
understand them.

Consciousness and cognitive
closure



McGinn suggests that we may, similarly, be
cognitively closed to the true explanation of
consciousness. That is, we may simply be closed
to the concepts we would need in order to
understand it.
To see this, consider what would be required to
find the property P that explains consciousness.
Since we perceive the world in spatial and
temporal forms, it seems as if such a property
would have to be spatial for us to discover it.
But no spatial property (color, shape, size, etc.)
seems to do the trick. For any such property,
there is still a question: why should that property
P underlie consciousness? ?

“I hereby invite you to try to conceive of a
perceptible property of the brain that
might allay the feeling of mystery that
attends our contemplation of the brainmind link: I do not think you will be able
to do it. It is like trying to conceive of a
perceptible property of a rock that would
render it perspicuous that the rock was
conscious. In fact, I think it is the very
impossibility of this that lies at the root of
the felt mind-body problem.” (pp. 39899).
McGinn: Summary
 If
McGinn is right, physicalism might
still be true, even though we have no
explanation (and no real hope of an
explanation) of consciousness in
physical terms.
 Nevertheless, we don’t have to deny
that consciousness, or first person
experience, actually exists.
Philosophical History and the
Problem of Consciousness (2004)
The problem of
consciousness, as we
discuss it today, is the
outcome of a much longer
historical discussion.
 In this discussion, there is
a constant dialectic
between
structuralist/functionalist
explanations and the
claim that something
important resists these
explanations.

The problem of consciousness:
Diagnosing the problem
 To
get a better understanding of
consciousness, we ought to ask not
only whether we can give a
physicalist explanation, but also what
we want out of any explanation.
 The problem of consciousness is, in
part, the problem of understanding
what we, ourselves, are: the place of
human beings within the world
described by objective science.
The problem of consciousness:
Diagnosing common assumptions
Physicalists assume that the conscious
mind is a physical thing, existing in the
physical world.
 Dualists assume that the conscious mind
is a non-physical thing, existing outside
the physical world.
 BUT BOTH assume that consciousness
is in some sense a “thing,” – whether
physical or nonphysical – that has to be
understood as part of science’s accounting
for the world.

Both physicalism and dualism are thus
totalizing in their assumption of a unified,
total explanation of the physical world (in
terms of which consciousness is either
‘inside’ or ‘outside’).
 If consciousness is not a “thing,” what else
might it be?
 How might thinking of consciousness
differently transform the question about the
“explanation” of consciousness into one
about the nature of human beings, our real
needs in talking about our own experience,
and our relationship to the objective world
as described by science??

Finis: Incipit Philosophia
 “And
so we must go
back again, and start
from the beginning to
find out what
[consciousness] is…”
(Plato, Euthyphro 185c-d)