Science and the Riddle of Consciousness: A Solution

233 Pages·2000·14.789 MB·English

by  Jeffrey Foss (auth.)

SCIENCE AND THE RIDDLE OF
CONSCIOUSNESS
A Solution
SCIENCE AND THE RIDDLE OF
CONSCIOUSNESS
A Solution
by
Jeffrey Foss
University of Victoria, Canada
SPRINGER SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, LLC
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Foss, Jeffrey.
Science and the riddle of consciousness I by Jeffrey Foss.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4419-4994-3 ISBN 978-1-4757-6478-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-4757-6478-9
I.Consciousness. I. Title.
QP411 . F67 2000
153' .01-dc21 00-57825
Copyright Cl 2000 by Springer Science+Business Media New York
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2000
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photo
copying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher,
Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.
Printed on acid-free paper.
For Christina, Pili, and Sylvie
Two worlds: this means two truths.
Or no truth at all.
This is the tragedy oft he modern mind which
"solved the riddle oft he universe, "
but only to replace it by another riddle:
the riddle of itself
Newtonian Studies, Alexandre Koyre
Contents
Preface ......................................................................................... xi
CHAPTER 1 The Place of Consciousness in Science. ..... ....... ... .... .... .... 1
1.1 The Invisibility Barrier .................................................................. 2
1.2 A Solution to the Inverted Spectrum Riddle ............................. 11
1.3 Qualia and Complementarity ...................................................... 15
1.4 Method Before Metaphysics ........................................................ 28
1.5 The Completeness Thesis ............................................................. 31
Notes to Chapter 1 ........................................................................ 31
CHAPTER 2 The Scientific Model and the Genesis of the Riddle ..... 35
2.1 Science and Geometry .................................................................. 36
2.2 Science, Maps, and Models .......................................................... 40
2.3 Physics and the Ontology of Science ........................................... 55
2.4 Weaving the Riddle: Ex Geometria Solum Geometria ................ 58
Notes to Chapter 2 ........................................................................ 67
CHAPTER 3 The Manifest Model and the Pythagorean Intuition ..... 69
3.1 The Complementarity Hypothesis ............................................... 70
3.2 The Manifest Model ...................................................................... 75
3.3 Science as the Escape from Self-Centeredness ............................ 82
3.4 The Counter-Intuitiveness ofthe Riddle ..................................... 94
Notes to Chapter 3 ........................................................................ 96
CHAPTER 4 Explaining Qualia ............................................................ 97
4.1 Questions and Explanations ........................................................ 98
4.2 Keys and the Manifest Model .................................................... 105
4.3 What Mary - and Ray - Didn't Know .................................. 110
4.4 The Riddle Principle ................................................................... 115
4.5 Explaining the Color Purple ...................................................... 117
Notes to Chapter 4 ...................................................................... 127
x
CHAPTER 5 Methodological Foundations of the
Science of Consciousness .............. 129
5.1 Disinfecting Introspection .......................................................... 131
5.2 Pain, Pleasure, Fear, and Anger ............................................... 144
5.3 Complementarity and Method .................................................. 155
Notes to Chapter 5 ...................................................................... 156
CHAPTER 6 The Primacy of Method ................................................. 159
6.1 What We Say In Our Hearts ..................................................... 161
6.2 Seven Methodological Implications.......................................... 166
6.3 The Bottom Line........................................................................ 178
Notes to Chapter 6 ..................................................................... 183
CHAPTER 7 Solving the Riddle ofIntentionality .............................. 185
7.1 Brentano: A Scholastic Excursion ............................................. 187
7.2 Self-Keying and Self-Centered Coordinates ............................. 188
7.3 Pain .............................................................................................. 192
7.4 Escaping the Cartesian Theater ................................................ 202
7.5 Complementary Last Words ..................................................... 209
Notes to Chapter 7 ..................................................................... 211
References ......................................................................................... 213
Index of Names ................................................................................. 219
Index of Subjects .............................................................................. 221
PREFACE
Consciousness is the riddle of our time. It is the last major
phenomenon still waiting to be explained, the one remaining territory which
has not yielded to scientific exploration. It is also the mystery which is closest
to our hearts, for consciousness makes us what we are. Without
consciousness, what would our life be? It is everything that we see, or say, or
feel, or think, or do. Could the universe itself have any point if there were no
consciousness within it? Consciousness is also a prerequisite of science. The
conscious scientist is an essential element of the scientific process, from the
collection of data to the evaluation of theory. Most importantly, scientific
understanding is achieved within consciousness, and that makes the riddle of
consciousness especially important. For if consciousness remains a riddle, so
too does scientific understanding. And so our understanding of the rest of the
world is itself called into question if we cannot solve the mystery of
consciousness. Unless we know ourselves, how can we know anything else at
all? So the riddle of consciousness pervades everything. It is not just another
problem - it is the great world-knot of our age.
I do not recall the moment when I first realized that consciousness no
longer seemed a mystery to me. After a lifetime of working on a problem as
difficult as consciousness, I had gotten used to the idea that the riddle would
not be solved. I had gotten used to the idea that the numerous essays and
books I had read on the subject, many of which were works of great
intelligence and skill, had left the essential core of the problem untouched.
None could explain, or even begin to explain, it seemed, how the light went
on inside someone's brain to illuminate the world within as well as the world
outside. When it came to consciousness, no one felt the deep tug of mystery
- and the humbling sense of ignorance - more than I did.
So a couple of decades ago I shelved the riddle of consciousness as
such, and devoted my energies to what seemed a more manageable problem:
the place ofc onsciousness in science. Perhaps I could come to understand the
twofold role of consciousness in science. On one hand there was the
consciousness of the scientists themselves, the agents of the scientific
enterprise. On the other hand, there was consciousness as an object of
scientific research. After a while I began to see how the two might come
together to yield a science of consciousness - and as I did, the mystery of
consciousness began melting away.
In my investigation of science I focused on the work of scientists
themselves, talked to them in their labs about their research, and read their
publications. Among other things, I learned that most scientists believe that
their goal is to model the the things they study. I found that this view helped
resolve some traditional issues in the philosophy of science, particularly the
problems of scientific progress and scientific unity. With this view of science,
Xli
I found that the problem of consciousness did not seem quite so opaque. In
fact, it began to appear to me that consciousness itself was a fOlm of
modeling, and that many of the problems that confront any possible science
of consciousness arose from the confusing reflexivity of modeling a model
- as if the hand were trying to draw itself drawing.
I finally became convinced that we have two main ways of seeing
and understanding the world: the man~fest model and the scientific model.
The manifest model is the original representation of the world generated for
each of us by our untutored and unaided senses, the product of innate systems
we inherit from our evolutionary history. The scientific model is a more
sophisticated representation of the world generated for people in general
employing instruments and inference, the product of acquired systems we
inherit from our cultural history. The difficult relationship between the
manifest and scientific models gives life to the riddle of consciousness.
On one hand there is the privilege of the manifest model, as the
ultimate interface with reality for both us and our scientific models. On the
other hand there is the power of the scientific model, which has vastly
increased the scope and depth of our knowledge of the world. When the
relationship between the two is functioning well, it achieves complementarity.
Once this is understood and assimilated, the possibility and prospects of the
science of consciousness are clear: science can explain consciousness just as
effectively as any other natural phenomenon. And this is to transform the
riddle of consciousness into the science of consciousness.
Though this book is a philosophical work, it is intended for a broader
audience than professional philosophers alone. I am convinced that the
subject itself, consciousness, is intriguing to a very wide spectrum of thinkers.
Hopefully the many scientists who are working in the field now called
cognitive science, broadly construed, will find the book useful. It is,
admittedly, scholarly, but it is not, for all that, written in professional
academic jargon. In part, this is due to the fact that it does not fall squarely
into anyone academic field. It is informed as much by science, and the
history of science, as by philosophy - indeed, there are as many references
to the works of scientists as to those by philosophers. The more technical
discussions have been included in the notes and in the later sections of
chapters, where they may be skipped over by those not moved by
technicalities.
In the end, I hope this book may not only help philosophers
understand consciousness, but provide some methodological guidance in the
research of cognitive scientists as well. A major theme is that research
methods should have primacy over metaphysics.
To get the ball rolling, I will offer a solution to the well-known
inverted spectrum problem in Chapter 1. The problem is this: how do you
X111
know whether other people see colors the same was as you do? Suppose, for
a moment, that some persons see red where you see green, orange where you
see purple, and so on. Because they have seen colors this way all of their
lives, they have become perfectly comfortable with their color consciousness.
They have learned to identifY colors, paint pictures, and coordinate the colors
of their clothes just as well as anyone else. In fact, there would be no
behavioral difference between them and anyone else. Is there any scientific
method for determining whether or not people's color spectra are inverted
relative to your own? If there is not, then the whole idea of a science of
consciousness is futile. If such a fundamental difference in the quality of
consciousness cannot be detected scientifically, then consciousness as such
lies behind an inVisibility barrier, completely beyond the reach of science. I
offer a scientific method whereby we can detect spectrum inversions, or any
other difference in the quality of people's experience. This provides a good
sense of the approach I take to the problems of consciousness, an approach
which will be applied to a variety of problems and conscious phenomena,
including the explanation of the quality (or qualia) and the meaningfulness
(or intentionality) of consciousness.
Though I have, in the end, chosen a direction which is, so far as I can
tell, quite distinct, it is nevertheless the direct result of instruction about
consciousness from scores of scientists and other philosophers. My debts to
all of you are obvious and numerous, more numerous and obvious than the
references alone may indicate. Certainly there are so many individuals to
thank that an exhaustive list would not be feasible. To everyone in this most
esteemed group I am thoroughly grateful. To my wife, Christina, for her
support and advice, I am especially thankful. If this essay should amuse you, I
will be pleased. If it should lead you to muse about consciousness and science
along new lines, I will be gratified.