Real Naturalism

In his book Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, the Self Etc. Galen Strawson gives some of his fellow naturalists a hard time. The book is a collection of essays and two of them deal with consciousness is some shape or form. The interesting thing is in the second of the two essays Strawson argues for panpsychism, the position that everything is conscious. Now before I precis Strawson’s position, I’ll give my take on it.

Debating free will on various forums over the years, one comes across the argument for free will and indeed consciousness from complexity; ie when some structure becomes complex enough it gains free will and perhaps consciousness. At first sight this does not seem a bad argument. It is tough to visualize simple protons, neutrons, electrons and moving up the scale, atoms molecules etc having consciousness. I suppose, one could imagine a sufficiently complex and large enough arrangement of molecules having consciousness come into existence similar to a pile of oily rags spontaneously combusting.

There is an interesting question, do large structures composed of people have consciousness? For example, is a family or community conscious? Cities, nations, the world. Now the connectivity between people within a community might not be as fast as between neurons it is there. Psychologists argue that our conscious now is a blend of the last two or three seconds. So, up to a point a human being’s “now” is in the past. So, a for a community its conscious now might be a blend of days or weeks. We have no way of telling whether our greater structure is conscious or the parts that make up our structure are conscious. Nor do we have a way of assessing the richness or quality of one another’s consciousness, nevermind that of a community or a brick for that matter.

Some argue consciousness is all around us and our bodies are like antennas that can pick up on this consciousness. Other structures (like bricks) might not be as attuned to picking up this consciousness.

While I am not convinced by these arguments for universal or even partial consciousness, I cannot help but think I am conscious. This does not mean I take my experience of consciousness hook, line and sinker. Note the tautology of experience of consciousness … there is a certain Cartesian dualism about this experience. Having said that I am aware of a certain autopilot-ishness about my consciousness, you could almost call it cruise control consciousness. When I am out of this cruise control mode it is very difficult to focus on the consciousness itself and the job at hand at the same time … typing at this moment. I would point readers to Susan Blackmore’s Am I Conscious Now? one more time. While I am not sure I agree with Blackmore’s conclusion … I do feel that awakening, I do think this is part of the illusory landscape of consciousness. The experience of consciousness is real; it’s just not what it seems to be.

Moving on to Strawson’s position. The two Strawson essays are available for you perusal here: The Consciousness Deniers and Real Naturalism. I’ll let readers read it for themselves, but I’ll pick up a few snippets that I thought of humour or of interest.

Strawson describes the claim that consciousness does not exist “the Denial” as the silliest claim, and has this quote to emphasize the point:

Next to this denial—I’ll call it “the Denial”—every known religious belief is only a little less sensible than the belief that grass is green.

Daniel Dennett is one of the prominent deniers of consciousness. While Strawson describes him as the generally admirable Dennett, Strawson then finds a quote from Ned Block.

Ned Block once remarked that Dennett’s attempt to fit consciousness or “qualia” into his theory of reality “has the relation to qualia that the US Air Force had to so many Vietnamese villages: he destroys qualia in order to save them.”

Strawson briefly describes that consciousness denial in modern times had origins in Behaviorism, even though behaviorists themselves were not denying consciousness but thought it not easily reachable and unreliable when it could be accessed.

I think these two sentences summarize the problem naturalists denying consciousness and insisting on materialism without consciousness quite succinctly:

The problem is not that they take naturalism to entail materialism—they’re right to do so. The problem is that they endorse the claim that conscious experience can’t possibly be wholly physical.

Modern Deniers seem to be denying consciousness as a physical phenomenon. Quite often in discussions with those religiously inclined we get a similar denial … conscious is real but not physical. While Strawson does not mention panpsychism in The Consciousness Deniers, we can see where it is leading.

Strawson highlights, what is for me, a Dennett-esque jump in logic.

Dennett agrees, at least this: that it seems as if one is having a phenomenally rich experience of (in his examples) green-gold sunlight, Vivaldi’s violin music and so on. And in this case, what seems, is.

Seeming is the experience, the experience that Dennett is denying.

Here Strawson suggests that materialists should be accepting of consciousness to some degree in the fundamental nature of the physical:

Genuine naturalists, then, are outright realists about consciousness, who accept that they are, in many ways, profoundly ignorant of the fundamental nature of the physical.

This of course is a fundamentally agnostic stance.

While all this is interesting … the question remains and Strawson did not really address this: does consciousness actually do anything or is it like the hum of an electric motor, a by-product of chemical machinery?

While one definition of illusion is not as it seems; but it can also be used as a synonym for delusion. We need to be clear how we understand the word illusion.

For me everything being conscious and nothing being conscious are two sides of the same coin. The universe is unfolding.