Russellian Physicalism

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Russellian Physicalism

• Online Consciousness Conference
• Februaru 2009
• Barbara Montero
• City University of New York

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• According to David Chalmers, the central
  antiphysicalist arguments show we must reject
  physicalism.
• 1) We can conceive of a world, that although
  just like ours at the level of fundamental
  physics, lacks consciousness.
• 2) A world matching this conception is possible
• ---------------------------------------------
  -----------
• 3) Consciousness is not physical.

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• Or rather, they show physicalism must almost be
  rejected.
• Russellian monism, the view that
  consciousness is constituted by the intrinsic
  properties of fundamental physical entities,
  falls through a loophole.
• It may be that when we conceive of the
  fundamental physical world we fail to conceive of
  its intrinsic properties.
• The real conclusion either physicalism is false
  or Russellian monism is true.

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Is this good news for the physicalist?
Although Chalmers says Russellian Monism may
ultimately provide the best integration of the
physical and the phenomenal within the natural
world and there appears to be no strong reasons
to reject the view, he argues that it has much
in common with property dualism, and that many
physicalists will want to reject it.While
the view arguably fits the letter of materialism,
it shares the spirit of antimaterialism.
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• The goal of this paper is to show that the gap
  in the current antiphysicalist arguments is more
  significant than Chalmers has made it out to be.
  Chalmers, as I shall argue, fails to take into
  account a variation of Russellian monism, what I
  refer to as Russellian physicalism, that falls
  through the loophole, yet is fully physicalistic.
  

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• Some physicalists never saw conceivability
  arguments as bad news in the first place. But,
  still, they should take heed of Russellian
  physicalism since even if the conceivability of
  zombie worlds, is not a guide to their
  possibility, such worlds may be possible
  nonetheless. Russellian physicalism can be
  consistently maintained, even if some of the
  physicalists worst zombie-riddled nightmares
  depict a possibility.

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• I. What is Russellian Monism?
• It takes its inspirations from Bertrand
  Russells view that fundamental physics tells us
  only about the structure of the world, about the
  abstract relations between things but not about
  the things themselves.
• Russell puts the view thus All that physics
  gives us is certain equations giving abstract
  properties of their changes. But as to what it
  is that changes, and what it changes from and
  toas to this, physics is silent.
• Or in Galileos famous words, the book of
  nature is written in the language of mathematics.

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• According to the Russellian monist, nature
  consists of more than abstract relations
  described mathematically.
• In addition to the relations, there are the
  things that stand in relation to each other.
• Besides laws there is something for the laws to
  describe.

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• It is difficult to say much about these first
  order properties, the properties of nature itself
  since we explain things in terms of their
  relations to other things what things do, how
  they affect us, how they are related to other
  things, and so forth.
• . Think of how, e.g. we explain what a
  cantilever bridge is.
• But although the properties that concern the
  Russellian do somethingthey form the
  determination base for consciousness there is
  more to them than what they do. They not only do
  something, they also are something.
•  

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But what are they? Intrinsic properties?
Lewis An intrinsic property of a is a
property a would have whether or not anything
else besides a existed. But physics tells us
about intrinsic properties The property of
being a positively charged particle is such that
if it were in a world with physical laws x, y,
and z, (where x, y, and z describe the laws of
our world) and with entities and properties u, v,
w (where u, v and w describe the other entities
and properties of our world), it would be
attracted to a negatively charged particle.
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Are they the the categorical bases of
fundamental physical dispositions
(Chalmers)? In due deference to Quine, who
thought that dispositional terms are not part of
a mature science, it may be, as Simon Blackburn
puts it, that science finds only dispositions
all the way down. Categorical properties are
supposed to be the properties that ground
dispositional properties. But consciousness
is, according to the Russellian,
nondispositional.
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The Russellian monist holds that there are
fundamental properties unbeknownst to physics
that ground consciousness. I will call them
Inscrutables. Chalmers accepts the Russellian
picture of physics and the idea that inscrutables
(at least in part) determine consciousness. Yet
to do so, as I will go on to argue, is to accept
that physicalism, both letter and spirit, might
be true.
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• II How Russellian Monism Slips Through
• It depends on how we understand the argument.
• Recall the conceivability argument moves from
  the conceivability of worlds that duplicate our
  physics yet lack consciousness to the possibility
  of such worlds and then concludes that because
  such worlds are possible, physicalism is false.
• But what are to count as the fundamental
  properties physics?

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• A) The structural properties given to us by
  microphysics
• B) Such properties as well as the inscrutables.
• We must hold A), if Russellian monism is to be
  consistent with the failure of upward
  determination.
• If B), The Russellian explains away the
  intuition that the failure of upward
  determination seems possible it seems to us that
  we can conceive of a world duplicating our
  physics yet lacking consciousness, but this is
  merely because we do not imagine the full story
  of fundamental physics.

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• It also depends on how we understand the
  position.
• All Russellian monists think that structure
  alone does not suffice for consciousness. And all
  accept that consciousness exists and its
  existence is determined, at least in part, by
  what I am calling inscrutables.
• But Russellians can differ as to how they
  understand the relation between inscrutables and
  the structural properties of physics.

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• Do the fundamental properties of physics
  require inscrutables?
• If they do not, then position is consistent with
  the possibility of worlds that duplicate our
  physics (as thought of as duplicating only the
  structural properties) yet lack consciousness.
• If they do, then the Russellian explains away
  the intuition when we think we can conceive of
  world duplicating our physics without
  consciousness, we are not imagining everything
  that follows from duplicating our physics.

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• Since in each case the Russellian has a
  response to the conceivability argument, nothing
  of much substance turns on these distinctions.
• For simplicity then, by the fundamental
  physical properties, I shall mean just the
  structural properties of fundamental physics, and
  I shall assume that these properties do not
  require consciousness-generating inscrutables.

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• III From Monism to Physicalism
• We have a position that Chalmers admits avoids
  antiphysicalist conceivability arguments. Yet,
  why does Chalmers remain undaunted?
• The reason is that Russellian monism, as
  Chalmers sees it, isnt really physicalism,
  because it acknowledges phenomenal or
  protophenomenal properties as ontologically
  basic.
• The phenomenal form results in panpsychism.
• But what about the protophenomenal form?

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• Even in its protophenomenal form the view, can
  be seen as a sort of dualism since it
  acknowledges protophenomenal properties as
  ontologically fundamental, and it retains an
  underlying duality between structural-dispositiona
  l properties (those directly characterized in
  physical theory) and intrinsic protophenomenal
  properties (those responsible for consciousness.
  Moreover, it retains some of the strangeness
  of the phenomenal version of the view since it
  seems that any properties responsible for
  constituting consciousness must be strange and
  unusual properties, of a sort that we might not
  expect to find in microphysical reality.
•  

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• So the view is antiphysicalistic since,
• It posits fundamental protophenomenal properties
• 2) It is a form of dualism
• 3) Protophenomenal properties are strange and
  unusual we would not expect to find them in
  microphysical reality.
• The possibility of dark matter being composed of
  something utterly different from ordinary matter
  casts doubt on the idea that dualism as
  necessarily antiphysicalistic. And each new
  revolution in physics brings strange and unusual
  properties.
• The fist point, however, is rather more vexing.

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• Does Russellian monism posit protophenomenal
  properties?
• If the protophenomenal is just whatever it is
  that serves as a dependence base for the
  phenomenal, then certainly the view does posit
  such properties. But all forms of non-reductive
  physicalism hold this.
• On the other hand if the protophenomenal is
  supposed to be tainted with the phenomenal, then
  such a position is more panpsychist than
  protophenomenal.

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• What if the Russellian holds that inscrutables
  have no other role than that of determining
  consciousness.
• They are protophenomenal because they
  specifically ground the phenomenal.
• The fundamental properties of physics form the
  dependence base for everything except for
  consciousness.
• Does this make the view physicalistically
  suspect?

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• As I see it, the basic schism between
  physicalists and antiphysicalist concerns whether
  human beings (and perhaps other animals) have a
  special place in the world. If mental phenomena
  were fundamental, God had us in mind when she
  created the world.
• When we understand the fundamental physical as
  excluding mentality, we go some way towards
  capturing this schism. Yet perhaps physicalism
  also requires that the fundamental properties are
  not for the sole purpose of grounding
  consciousness.
• Is Russellian monism, physicalism manqué after
  all?

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• Russellian monism, understood as such, may best
  thought of as a borderline case of physicalism.
• But Russellian monism need not be understood as
  positing specifically consciousness grounding
  inscrutables (i.e. as protopsychic.)
• Rather, the Russellian can posit that
  inscrutables form the dependence base for the
  entire concrete world, only a very small portion
  of which is mental.

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• The Russellian view of physics leaves us with a
  highly abstract picture of the world Our
  knowledge of the physical world i.e. the world
  described by physics Russell tells us, is only
  abstract and mathematical. Yet, arguably, the
  world is more than equations arguably, God is
  not only a pure mathematician, but an applied one
  as well. And on this way of understanding the
  Russellian view, inscrutables ground the
  applications.

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• If inscrutables are in this way the substance of
  the world, if they are, to use Stephen Hawkings
  words, what breathes fire into the equations of
  any possible grad unified theory of physics and
  makes a universe for them to describe," there is
  nothing particularly protopsychic about them and
  a world with them should be perfectly acceptable
  to a physicalist. This is the view that I think
  is appropriately deemed Russellian physicalism.

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• So it seems that Chalmers reasons for why we
  should think that Russellian monism is
  antimaterialistic in spirit are either not
  forceful, as with the accusation that the view is
  a form of dualism and is strange or do not apply
  to Russellian physicalism, as with the accusation
  of it positing protophenomenal properties.
• As such, the view is not only in name, but also
  in spirit physicalistic.

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• IV But what of the Hard Problem?
• But the question of how inscrutables ground
  consciousness remains.
• In its panpsychist form, the Russellian view is
  thought to solve, or at least go a long way
  toward solving what Chalmers refers to as the
  hard problem of consciousness, that problem, as
  Colin McGinn once put it, of how Technicolor
  phenomenology arises out of soggy grey matter.
  If panpsychism is true, this soggy gray matter
  is, at bottom, itself Technicolor.

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• Some think that not even panpsychism would help
  alleviate the hard problem.
• Blocks argument.
• Its like arguing that carbon dioxide emissions
  are irrelevant to the greenhouse effect because
  you can imagine a world whose protons were
  actually miniscule earth-like structures creating
  carbon dioxide emissions, yet such emissions
  would not be relevant to the explanation.

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• Russellian physicalism does not alleviate the
  hard problem.
• Rather, it claims that the world is such that we
  cannot see the solution, for inscrutables are
  fundamental properties yet physics, which is our
  only insight into the fundamental nature of the
  world, is blind to them.
• Nonetheless, it has the advantage of not needing
  to posit consciousness at the ground level.

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• But why should we accept the view at all?
• My aim has been, not to convince you that
  Russellian physicalism is true, but rather to
  show that there is a version of physicalism that
  is consistent with the antiphysicalist intuition
  that the failure of upward determination is
  possible.
• But, in fact, if you accept the antiphysicalist
  intuition yet also think that physicalism of one
  sort or another must be true, I have also
  presented an argument for the view since
  Russellian physicalism is, among the current
  panoply of solutions to the mind-body problem,
  the only view that allows you to do both.