Is Consciousness a Brain Process

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Is Consciousness a Brain Process?

• U. T. Place
• With some reflections on Dennett

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Am I my brain?
Your brain on philosophy
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This isnt a scientific question

• We can agree that every mental state is
  correlated with some brain state
• Philosophy doesnt deal with this issue--its a
  matter for empirical science
• The philosophical question is whether, given the
  results of empirical research, the relation
  between mental states and brain states is
  identity.

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Why the answer isnt a no-brainer

• My brain and I dont have all the same properties
• E.g. I weigh (a lot) more than my brain
• Its not clear that I am wherever my brain is
• Could I be a brain in a vat?
• If my brain were in a vat, would I be there?

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Hamlet contemplating Yorick
It had been decided that the person sent to
recover the device should leave his brain behind.
It would be kept in a safe place as there it
could execute its normal control functions by
elaborate radio links.
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Where Hamlet goes there goes Dennett?
In some sense I, and not merely most of me, was
descending into the earth under Tulsa
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Where Yorick goes there goes Dennett?
Whereas an instant before I had been buried
alive in Oklahoma,now I was disembodied in Houston
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Where Fortinbras goes there goes Dennett?
I woke to find myself fully restored to my
senses. When I looked in the the mirror though I
was a bit startled
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Is it an illusion?
As Dennett suggests, our intuitions on these
matters can be inconsistent--and so
unreliable. Thought experiments are merely
intuition pumps
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Are mental states brain states?

• Indiscernibility problems
• Spatial location of experiences
• Privileged access
• Qualia
• Necessity of identity problems
• Multiple realizability
• Physicalism, if true, is contingent

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The Identity Theory pre-history

• Rylean behaviorism
• Mental state talk is talk about behavioral
  dispositions
• Motivation were in the business of analyzing
  ordinary language
• Problem
• Works for, e.g. believing, wanting, etc.
• But not for feely mental states

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Missing Qualia
Zombies have the same behavioral dispositions we
do but no qualia
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Reversed Qualia
Same behavioral dispositions but different qualia
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Privileged Access
How am I?
Youre fine
Behaviorists greeting one another
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Inner States

• Behaviorism cant account for psychological talk
  that seems to refer to inner states.
• An acceptance of inner processes does not entail
  dualism
• The thesis that consciousness is a process in the
  brain cannot be dismissed on logical grounds

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Are mental states brain states?

• Mental state talk cant be analyzed as brain
  state talk because
• The relation between mental states and brain
  states is contingent
• But there are other models

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His table is an old packing case

• This statement is contingent
• The senses of table and packing case are
  different
• But in this case they refer to the same thing

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But theres a difference

• Most tables arent old packing cases and most old
  packing cases arent tables
• Consciousness is a process in the brain is a
  general or universal proposition applying to all
  states of consciousness

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Logical and ontological independence

• Typically, were justified in arguing from the
  logical independence of two expressions to the
  ontological independence of the states of affairs
  to which they refer.
• Since when two characteristics invariably go
  together their linkage becomes embodied in a
  rule of language
• But there are exceptions

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A cloud is a mass of droplets

• Clouds are always masses of droplets
• But this hasnt become a rule of language
  because
• We never make the observations necessary to
  verify the statement this is a cloud, and those
  necessary to verify the statement This is a mass
  of tiny particles in suspension, at one and the
  same time

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When are two sets of observations observations of
the same event?

• We treat the two sets of observations as
  observations of the same event, in those cases
  where the technical scientific observations
  setprovide an immediate explanation of the
  observations made by the man in the street.
• In the case of the cloud we could in principle
  make the connection by moving toward or away from
  the cloud.
• The brain state/mental state case is different,
  so lets try another analogy

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Lightening is a motion of electric charges
As in the case of consciousness, however closely
we scrutinize the lightening we shall never be
able to observe the electric charges.
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Mental states are brain states

• If this account is correct it should follow that
  in order to establish the identity of
  consciousness and certain processes in the brain,
  it would be necessary to show that the
  introspective observations reported by the
  subject can be accounted for in terms of
  processes that are known to have occurred in his
  brain.

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But what about qualia?!!?!

• Feely mental states seem to have a character
  that the underlying brain states which account
  for them dont have.
• E.g. the firing of C-fibers doesnt feel like
  anything but
• Pain hurts!
• My mental imagery has a character that brain
  states dont have.

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The Phenomenological Fallacy

• The mistake of supposing that when the subject
  describes his experiencehe is describing the
  literal properties of objects and events on a
  peculiar sort of internal cinema
• The phenomenological fallacydepends on the
  mistaken assumption that because our ability to
  describe things in our environment depends on our
  consciousness of them, our ability to describe
  things in our environment our descriptions of
  things are primarily descriptions of our
  conscious experiences.

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Seeing a green afterimage
Theres nothing green outside so there must be
something green inside and theres nothing
green in my brain
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Seeing a green afterimagetopic-neutral
description
Im in a state like the state Im typically in
when Im looking at a green object
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Does this solve the qualia problem?

• Not if zombies are naturally possible.
• If reversed spectra are naturally possible we
  have a dilemma
• If same mental state only if same brain state
  then multiple realizability is a problem
• If not then it seems we can have same brain
  state, same sincere reports, but different mental
  states
• Is that possible?

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Spectrum Reversal
Suppose I get colored contact lenses that
reverse colors. Theyre glued in so Im wearing
them all the time.
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You just forget youre wearing them

• These contacts dont do anything to brain states
  presumably.
• Years later, having forgotten that Im wearing
  them, all of my behavioral dispositions are back
  to normal.
• Does it make sense to say that even so I may
  still be seeing things differently from the way I
  used to?

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Contingent Identity

• Every thing is necessarily identical to itself.
• But some true identity statements are contingent.
  How can that be?
• If a mental state in some sense is a brain
  states, is that the is of identity?
• Correlation in and of itself is not identity.

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The Moral

• Science does not answer philosophical questions.
• Philosophy does not contradict science.
• When the scientific questions are answered, the
  conceptual (philosophical) questions begin.