JCS, 5 ( 4 ), 1998 ,pp. 389-404
Calvin W.H. University of Washington, Department of Psychiatry and
Behavioral Sciences, Seattle WA 98195-1800 USA WCalvin@U.Washington.edu
Treating consciousness as awareness or attention greatly underestimates
it, ignoring the temporary levels of organization associated with higher
intellectual function (syntax, planning, logic, music). The tasks that
require consciousness tend to be the ones that demand a lot of resources.
Routine tasks can be handled on the back burner but dealing with ambiguity,
groping around offline, generating creative choices, and performing precision
movements may temporarily require substantial allocations of neocortex.
Here I will attempt to clarify the appropriate levels of explanation (ranging
from quantum aspects to association cortex dynamics) and then propose a
specific mechanism (consciousness as the current winner of Darwinian copying
competitions in cerebral cortex) that seems capable of encompassing the
higher intellectual function aspects of consciousness as well as some of
the attentional aspects. It includes features such as a coding space appropriate
for analogies and a supervisory Darwinian process that can bias the operation
of other Darwinian processes.
JCS, 5 ( 4 ), 1998 ,pp. 405-414
Feser E. Department of Philosophy, University of California, Santa
Barbara, CA 93106, USA feser@humanitas.ucsb.edu
Michael Lockwood has in recent years revived and defended a unique
approach to the mind/body problem most famously associated with Bertrand
Russell. This approach has a number of surprising and counterintuitive
features, not the least of which is that it involves the claim that phenomenal
qualities (sense-data or qualia) can exist independently of any mind, unperceived
by any conscious subject. In this paper I first provide a summary of the
Russell/Lockwood theory of mind so as to make evident the importance of
this claim to it. I then argue that Lockwood has failed to show either
that there are such things as unperceived phenomenal qualities, or that
it makes sense to suppose that there could be. The importance of the issue
lies in the light consideration of it may shed on the concept of a phenomenal
quality or quale, in its relevance to the mind/body problem, and in its
bearing on the more general metaphysical issue of what are the fundamental
constituents of reality.
JCS, 5 ( 4 ), 1998 ,pp. 415-18
Lockwood M. Oxford University Department for Continuing Education,
Rewley House, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2JA, UK michael.lockwood@conted.ox.ac.uk
In Lockwood (1989), I defended a conception of phenomenal qualities
(sense-data or qualia), according to which they can exist unsensed. Edward
Feser (1998) points out that a key argument to which I appealed, in support
of my claim that phenomenal qualities can 'outrun awareness', fails to
show that there are phenomenal qualities of which we are unaware; rather,
it shows only that phenomenal qualities have attributes of which we are
unaware. This may be granted. But I argue that we can certainly imagine
experimental data which would provide support for my thesis. Moreover,
the conception of unsensed phenomenal qualities is, so I claim, a perfectly
meaningful one, and anyone who is prepared (as Feser apparently is) to
entertain the idea of phenomenal qualities having attributes of which the
subject is unaware, can have no principled objection to the idea of there
being phenomenal qualities of which the subject is unaware.
JCS, 5 ( 4 ), 1998 ,pp. 419-42
Ellis R.D. Clark Atlanta University ralphellis@mindspring.comv
Newton N. nnewton@suffolk.lib.ny.us
Any physical explanation of consciousness seems to leave unresolved
the 'explanatory gap': Isn't it conceivable that all the elements in that
explanation could occur, with the same information processing outcomes
as in a conscious process, but in the absence of consciousness? E.g. any
digital computational process could occur in the absence of consciousness.
To resolve this dilemma, we propose a biological-process-oriented physiological-
phenomenological characterization of consciousness that addresses three
'paradoxical' qualities seemingly incompatible with the empirical realm:
(1) The dual location of phenomenal properties 'out there' yet 'in here'
in consciousness; (2) the mysterious 'thickness' of the specious present;
(3) the feeling of 'free agency', that we can voluntarily direct our actions,
including the act of conscious attention, while at the same time attention
and the emotions that direct it seem responsive to physiological substrates
with physical causes. These paradoxes are then resolved by relating three
elements of consciousness: (1) organismically interested anticipation;
(2) sensory and proprioceptive imagery generated by the interested anticipation
rather than by sensory input; (3) resonating of these activities with activity
stimulated by sensory data, where the interested anticipation precedes
the processing of the input. Each of these elements is bridged to physiological
processes such that, if they occur in a certain relation to each other,
we can understand why they would inevitably be accompanied by the corresponding
elements of conscious experience.
JCS, 5 ( 4 ), 1998 ,pp. 443-53
Rossler O.E. Division of Theoretical Chemistry, University of Tubingen,
72076 Tubingen, F.R.G
Rossler R. Weibel P.
If objective physics is dependent on observer properties as Einstein
showed, physical reality becomes an 'interface reality'. Einstein's principle
of observer-relativity is extended to micro motions in the observer. The
resulting 'micro relativity' can be studied using model universes. In a
classical billiard universe, the interface is (under certain conditions)
characterized by 'micro time reversals'. These time reversals cannot be
'edited out'. They perturb (in conjunction with the observer temperature)
every small-mass object to be observed. And (in conjunction with the observer
diameter) they perturb every fast-moving object to be observed. The implied
'action noise' and a 'velocity limit', respectively, are reminiscent of
Planck's constant (h) and the speed of light (c), in the real world. To
check whether there exists a connection with the real world, the observer
temperature can be inserted into the two fundamental constants h and c.
This leads to a specific value for the 'observer diameter' (7.39 micrometers).
Search for a cell class clustered around this size in the brain would amount
to a 'Privacy-of-Physics test'. Four such 'PoP tests' can be indicated
so far. The idea that certain relational properties of the world may be
as observer-private as consciousness, is therefore falsifiable.
JCS, 5 ( 4 ), 1998 ,pp. 454-63
Rudd A.J. Dept. of Philosophy, Bristol University, Bristol BS8 1TB,
UK
Full Text
It is often argued that the existence of qualia -- private mental objects
-- shows that physicalism is false. In this paper, I argue that to think
in terms of qualia is a misleading way to develop what is in itself a valid
intuition about the inability of physicalism to do justice to our conscious
experience. I consider arguments by Dennett and Wittgenstein which indicate
what is wrong with the notion of qualia, but which by so doing, help us
to locate the real problem for physicalism. This is not that there may
be mental as well as physical objects of which we are aware, but that the
very notion of awareness is itself resistant to physicalist treatment.
In the concluding sections, I draw on Wittgenstein's positive account of
sensations, to suggest a way in which the apparent chasm separating objective
and subjective viewpoints might be bridged in a non-reductive fashion.
JCS, 5 ( 4 ), 1998 ,pp. 464-82
Silberstein M. Department of Philosophy, Elizabethtown College,
Elizabethtown, PA 17022, USA Silbermd@acad.etown.edu
In the first part of the paper I argue that neither physicalism (whether
its reductive or non-reductive form) nor standard forms of dualism (as
well as Chalmers' fundamentalism) can provide an explanatory framework
for consciousness or cognition - neither account can existence of conscious
experience nor its relationship to cognition and the brain. Physicalism
and fundamentalism fail to provide an explanatory framework for consciousness
because they both share, at least with respect to the physical universe,
the same misguided commitment to part/whole reductionism and microreductive
accounts of explanation. In addition to their lack of explanatory power,
both physicalism and fundamentalism have well known absurd and troubling
metaphysical consequences such as eliminativism and epiphenomenalism. In
the second section of the paper I advocate a position I call radical emergence,
arguing that microphysics (especially quantum mechanics) provides strong
empirical evidence for emergence. I show that emergence provides a viable
alternative for explaining consciousness and cognition - an alternative
that has none of the awkward metaphysical consequences of either physicalism
or fundamentalism.
JCS, 5 ( 4 ), 1998 ,pp. 483-496
Baruss I. Department of Psychology, King's College, University of
Western Ontario, 266 Epworth Avenue, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 2M3
Moore R.J.
In previous studies we had found correlations between the material-transcendent
dimension underlying the Western intellectual tradition and the diversity
of ideas concerning consciousness. In the course of our work we developed
the Beliefs About Consciousness and Reality Questionnaire that could be
used for measuring fundamental beliefs about consciousness and reality.
A survey of participants at the scientific meeting Toward a Science of
Consciousness 1996 'Tucson II' was conducted using this questionnaire.
Results from 212 respondents indicated scores substantially in the transcendent
direction, both for scales underlying the questionnaire as well as for
some of its individual items, relative to a 1986 standardization sample.
Having religious beliefs (traditional or one's own), interest in phenomenology
and culture, lack of interest in neural correlates and age were also all
correlated with scale scores in the transcendent direction. Given the diversity
of fundamental beliefs about consciousness and reality of listeners at
a meeting such as Tucson II, speakers need to find ways to communicate
across the spectrum of the material-transcendent dimension.
JCS, 5 ( 4 ), 1998 ,pp. 497-503
Sutherland J.K.B. Imprint Academic, PO Box 1, Thorverton EX5 5YX,
UK keith@imprint.co.uk
Full Text
Conference report: 'Towards a Science of Consciousness 1998: Tucson
III, held at the Tucson Convention Center and Music Hall, Tucson AZ, 27
April-2 May, 1998.
JCS, 5 ( 4 ), 1998 ,pp. 504-7
Murinbata T. 19 Rydal Road, London SW16 1QF, UK ucsacbw@ucl.ac.uk
Whitehead C.
There is more than one 'hard problem'. Just as it is hard for consciousness
to grasp itself, it is also hard to examine your own society from the 'outside'.
The same problem applies to scientific paradigms (Kuhn, 1962), our taken-for-granted
assumptions generally, and the collective representations that sustain
them -- such as soup spoons and scientific conferences (Durkheim, 1912;
Bourdieu, 1977). To get an 'outside' view of 'Tucson III', I asked my friend
Tjiniman, who is a stone-age hunter, to help me out. He is studying anthropology
part-time, though he does not believe everything he is told, and prefers
to retain his traditional world-view. The following account is mainly his,
with a few suggestions from me (CW).