Are there consciousness zombies?
One argues in consciousness circles about David Chalmers’ distinction between the “easy problem” and the “hard problem”. According to Chalmers, one is the observable behavior, the other the subjective experience. Since Chalmers threw this dichotomy into the field in 1994, there has been excitement. There was none, Chalmers had only found a new label for an old problem. For centuries it has been disputed how the two spheres of subjective content of experience and objective observation of mental states are connected.
Chalmers now wants to finally (re)establish consciousness as a fundamental principle of the universe. “As irreducible as time and space.” A path towards idealism on which other scientist want to follow him only conditionally. While his eternal adversary Daniel Dennett negates the existence of the “difficult problem” altogether, researchers like Max Velmans see Chalmers slipping into an “omnipresent psychofunctionalism” because he would no longer grant matter a place next to consciousness.
The Australian philosopher also sets the pace of the book in another question, namely whether something like consciousness zombies can exist. From his point of view, these would be people who, seen from the outside, appear intelligent and emotional, but in reality are only well-wired boxes: Zombies. Chalmers wants to know whether an existence would be possible, which claims to act consciously, but does not do this in reality. Theoretically, yes, but not in the real world, says Chalmers. From his point of view consciousness is a basic constant of the universe. With this play of ideas Chalmers at the same time attacks physicalism, which claims that everything that exists is physically tangible.
Most scientist are not happy with the very premise that such a world is even conceivable. Francisco Varela speaks of a “typical argumentation design of Anglo-American philosophy”: the discussion is an artificial one, one would have invented the problem by creating it in the first place. At some point, as in “good science fiction”, people would be able to judge the state of consciousness of a robot.
A solid materialism is advocated by Pat and Paul Churchland. Their opinion on consciousness: Interpretation of the neural correlates of consciousness is superfluous, they argue. In the end, the phenomenon of consciousness would fare just as the phenomenon of light did in the 19th century. Because electromagnetic waves do not correlate with light, they are light. In the same way, the feeling of a warm coffee cup in the hand is not correlated with the kinetic energy of the molecules of the cup, but is identical with it. It is nice to read how the Churchlands explain their identity theory through the interview.
Today, neurological experiments show the two sides of the coin: mind and body are inseparable, every mental activity has its neural correlate. It becomes interesting, but also confusing, when it comes to conscious non-thinking.
As new as all this may sound due to the vocabulary of brain science, the related tasks are not new. One already stood at a similar place when existentialism was still en vogue. It left little hopefulness, only a cold world of causal connections and if-then-configurations. Today it looks similar again: No soul, the human body-mind-unit a highly complex machine, but basically based on mechanistic principles. Even love is only a game of neurons.
Two things are too short here: First, it would be fatal to speak here of an “are only”. There are at least two, maybe four truths, the personal truth is different from the objective one of natural science, the intersubjective one of cultural science or the interobjective one of system theory. The subjectively experienced feeling of love will never and should never be explained only by the means of objective science.
In the science of the study of consciousness, especially in the English-speaking world, functionalism prevails until today. According to this it is basically possible to build a system which imitates the different functions of the brain. Would this create a conscious being? Not if one tries to show like Roger Penrose with the help of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem that we are not and cannot be a machine-calculating being. His view: our cognitive process is ultimately not based on electrochemically driven computations, but on as yet misunderstood processes at the quantum level. Penrose, together with Stuart Hameroff, currently sees the solution in the study of microtubules, which until now have only been regarded as a kind of skeleton of cells.
The philosopher Ned Block tries to refute functionalism with a thought experiment. His “Chinese Brain” consists of billions of people, each carrying a radio and acting like a neuron in a giant brain. Block’s question: would this Chinese brain have consciousness? He assumes: No.
Second, the discussion of the mind is not at an end at this point. It is also only hinted by Penrose and Hameroff what implications the modern physics of quantum theory has on the philosophy of mind. The influence of Far Eastern philosophy is also only beginning to be realized. There is still much room for the many, undiscovered interweavings between man and things and the experience that on ultimate ground this difference does not exist.
Scientists are by necessity mostly materialists and orientate on the tangible. After that, everything is based on physics, no matter how small the involved particles are. Idealism reappears today as a kind of pan-psychism, also according to it there is only one relevant substance in the universe — and that is mind.
The distinction between mind and brain is famously popularized by Rene Descartes. This substance dualism is to be distinguished from a property dualism, which allows things to have both physical and mental properties. A bridging approach is taken by Max Velmans with his reflexive monism.
Of course, most of the scientists want to have overcome Cartesian dualism, but through the back door it creeps in again. Because often “the brain” still generates consciousness, and thus the two spheres are again on the verge of their separation.
What remains is an explanatory gap, a philosophical wound, into which Susan Blackmore skillfully puts her finger again and again. What is the connection between subjective experience and objective knowledge? And can the facts from the world ever explain the facts from the inner perspective? The Churchlands, Daniel Dennett and Francis Crick are sure that the supposed contradictions will be overcome in the course of neuroscientific progress. Scientists like Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff want to see a revolutionized physical world view established for this purpose. It is the “magical enigma”, as Daniel Wegner puts it, that an “I seems to observe the stream of impressions”.
This leads to another dividing line that can be located. This divides scholars into those who have an authoritative interest in exploring the first-person perspective and those who attach no importance to this approach. Others want to take the subjective perspective seriously only if the data can be objectively verified. The most fruitful approach to this, and thus perhaps to the whole subject of practical research on consciousness, is offered by Francisco Varela with his neuro-phenomenology. He wants to combine the data from the first-person view (“How does it feel?”) with those of the comparatively hard facts of neuroscience. He has meditation-experienced people in mind as test subjects, who focus their attention better than other test subjects and can therefore deliver comparable results. In a later step, he would also like to investigate non-thinking. The “problem” of splitting the world into a state that sees and a state that is seen, which is built into the essence of man (George Spencer Brown), is anyway regarded by spiritually inclined researchers as the linchpin for explaining consciousness.
It will be interesting to observe whether humans will come to terms with their degradation into well-oiled machines. This “disenchantment of the world” (Max Weber) always causes psychological problems for the individual, and the counter-movements have always been strong: romantics, modern mystics. Thomas Metzinger recently hoped in Die Zeit for a third way, a “radically individualistic spirituality, beyond the reactionary irrationalism of organized religion, which decidedly believes nothing and is open to empirical knowledge, but which knows that there are things we cannot talk about for reasons of principle.”
From a cultural-historical point of view, the current considerations of some brain researchers fall into the time of thought schemes that want to break down the human being to as streamlined a format as possible. This is already known from the history of the late 19th century and has been repeated ever since. The motto is once again, “Man is nothing more than…” Away from such reductionist materialism, the question nevertheless arises as to whether nature and man will allow their last trade secrets to be elicited. Or will man remain blind to himself to a certain extent, because he will not be able to see what he is.
