Except of course that it will be inevitably argued that the supernatural in toto has been explained by self-revelation.

OK, we are talking different things here. The inverted-qualia argument is about the idea that function cannot fully explain consciousness, because consciousness is the intrinsic or subjective quality of experience. It has got not so much with _how_ the brain works but with why some of the activities of the brain have an experiential quality at all instead of being non-experienced. For instance, the pupillary response is an unconscious reflex whereas sneezing is a conscious one. The kind of question that zombies/inverted-quality* arguments touch upon is why sneezing is felt at all instead of being un-felt (and the same with all the conscious experiences we have) and not why the wiring in the brain in each case makes the difference between conscious and unconscious.

The standard response from materialists is double. On the one hand they try to explain why something is conscious using differential brain function, which as explained above misses the point. On the other hand they state that the function _is_ the experience. Now, because its not obvious that that’s the case, they have to do a lot of hard work trying to prove their point. And thats where current philosopy of mind debates are stuck.

On the subject of reductionism, I am, unlike you, convinced that you can reduce mind to brain as long as you stick to function, ie, the ‘easy’ problems. At the end of the day you _can_ reduce C++ to binary, even if no one in their right mind would want to do that for any serious purpose.

* The classic version of the inverted-qualia argument asks you to imagine an alternate world or a parallel world where the same functions are experienced differently.

@ Roy Niles

Im all for an atheist agenda for not a veiled one and certainly not for one in the wrong place. If Dennet wants to argue for atheism he should do so explicitly in the right forums instead of denying universal intuitions afraid that they could lead to some sort of belief in the natural, which they dont anyway.

@ Fifi

You are right when you say “there’s some real resistance to accepting scientific understandings that overturn conventional understandings”. The problem with the mind/brain issue is that _no-one_ can even begin to understand how quality of experience can _be_ brain function because they are not obviously the same. Not even materialists especially of the eliminativism kind who simple deny the problem. Theres nothing in the make-up of atoms, molecules, neurons etc.. that can explain how or why we have conscious experience instead of being automata. Not even indirectly through emergence.

Sure you can. And it doesn’t make philosophy useless either (only those lines of philosophical investigation which greater understanding of neurobiology – and the associated subjective experiences – reveal to be going in a highly unlikely direction). Philosophy and cultural studies of various kinds – and some particular schools of each – seem to be having some difficulty integrating new understandings regarding neurobiology that negate particular dogmas (within feminism the understanding of gender and biology has negated certain theories based on the idea that nurture trumps nature, for instance, and obviously a lot of philosophy has roots in religion and the idea that man is above and separate from nature). Particularly in disciplines that are largely academic, there’s some real resistance to accepting scientific understandings that overturn conventional understandings (particularly ones that are enshrined in other aspects of culture and are so taken for granted that insiders never really see them).

Let’s look at this point by point. What do you mean when you say that it’s a “problem for science” to describe a brain function to “get at the issue of the subjective quality of those functions”? And what do you even mean by this?

Understanding (and therefor having the ability to describe) a particular brain function can indeed reveal all kinds of things about the subjective qualities of those functions (what we experience when the brain functions in a certain way) when looked at in a variety of people. Certain kinds of brain damage create quite predictable effects (which are experienced in quite predictable ways). We know that when the brain functions in a certain manner then there’ll be a certain quality to what someone experiences (taking into consideration our own subjective filters that shape how we describe our experiences to ourselves).

A bit of basic understanding of evolution and biology helps us understand why our neurobiology evolved a certain way. Certainly there’s still plenty of exploring, experimenting and understanding to still do but your objections don’t really hold much water from what I can see.

As for sharing emotions and comparing our subjective experiences and perspectives, that’s one of the reasons we developed various forms of art. Science doesn’t serve the same purposes as art (though the two meet on common ground all the time). Interestingly, science and art get along very well and are very complimentary disciples. I suspect this is because art recognizes and celebrates subjectivity for what it is, subjectivity (and artists also tend to be quite aware of the tricks our senses can play on us and to use this understanding to create their work). Science and religion (and philosophy, and even psychology at times depending on the school of psychology) can sometimes have a more conflicted relationship because religion/philosophy/psychology sometimes directly compete with science to describe the world.

My own sense is we experience brain function, and a little something else. The notion that consciousness is just a biological by-product conjures up philosophies espousing existence is only in your mind.

As for the ‘untestable’ I suggest the continued evolution of science will bring new ways to know what is not knowable now. As it always has.

And if any misdirected agenda were involved, it would have to be one that introduced the supernatural element to begin with, so that humans could be distinguished “in principle” – if not in kind – from “lower” animal forms.

And it turns out that there are differences in identical twins that revolve around the mitochondrial DNA. But even if there weren’t, the
inverted-qualia-argument boils down to a meaningless tautology.

And also I thought I’d provide a little input on the reductionist thing. I think that psychology, culture, etc can be reduced to brain function, but speaking of such things in the language of brain function would be entirely incomprehensible. To indulge in an analogy, a programming language such as C++ or whatever is in principle reducible to machine code (1s and 0s), but nobody would dare to attempt to write a program in machine code in the same way that nobody would talk about culture in the language of brain function – it’s just impossible. My understanding is that the materialist position is just that such a reduction is possible *in principle*, not that we can meaningfully talk about the mind in terms of the brain, which seems fairly innocent to me.

@ Steve

Nice illustrative post, but I think you are misleading your readers in some respects:

>modern philosophers and neuroscientists are increasingly of the opinion that perhaps it’s not such a hard problem after all.

Actually, modern *philosophers* are increasingly of the opinion that it may be a harder problem to crack than previously thought. The heyday of materialism was in the 50′s and 60′s. Since then (1970′s onwards) there has been a series of hard critisims to it, to the point where nowadays (neo-)dualism/monism is viable and respectable.

Denett’s ideas, while very popular within the scientific community and among popular science fans, are a minority in academia, same with other popular (in the sense just explained) materialist philosophers such as Patricia and Paul Churchland that broadly fit the label ‘eliminativist’. In fact they are seen as marginal even by the majority of other materialist philosophers because they seem to ignore the obvious: that there is a phenomenon to explain that you cant just eliminate (hence ‘eliminativist’) by just stating theres nothing to explain. You yourself seem to be inclined that way: “perhaps the real trick is realizing that it’s not even a problem at all”. Most philosophers, again even materialist ones, view eliminativism as either dishonest or confused (or both!) as they suspect its the result of a misdirected atheist agenda or perhaps of not understanding the issue at hand.

>untestable notions have no useful place in science. Chalmers’ untestable law of consciousness cannot lead anywhere.

I agree with you that untestable notions have no useful place *in science*. But I dont think you can infer from that that untestable laws cannot lead anywhere. If youre an honest truth-seeker, you should see the value of knowing that there are real phenomena /aspects of reality that your method of inquiry, science in this case, cannot tackle. But philosophy can and should (and does).

>why do we experience anything? Why aren’t we zombies – carrying out all the >functions we ascribe to consciousness without being conscious. I think the simple answer is – what’s the difference? What if carrying out all the functions of consciousness IS consciousness?

This argument/reply was put forward by materialists several decades ago but got into trouble when people came up with the following counter-argument (called the inverted-qualia-argument and closely linked to the zombies-argument):

Imagine that your twin brother ( if you had one) experiences the colour red with the same quality as you experience the colour green and viceversa, all things being equal. At a certain level of abstraction, you both carry out identical brain functions and yet your conscious experience will be different.

*That* is the difference and thats why your answer doesnt work.

The problem for science as a way to explain consciousness is that it seems that no matter how well you describe brain functions you still cant get at the issue of the subjective quality of those functions. Not just why those qualities are the way they are, but why they exist at all.

I disagree. You are making a tangential argument and therefore it is a non sequitur. The question is – what CAUSES the mind. Philosophy and science, in my opinion, leads to one answer – the functioning of the brain. This is not hyper-reductionist. This is appropriately reductionist.

You are talking about uses to which the mind is put. Your hammer analogy is actually apt – but you miss the true implication. If the question is – how does a hammer work – how does it push nails into wood. You can reduce that question to physics. That absolutely does not mean that you are therefore trying to reduce all cultural history of hammers, the uses to which hammer are put, all the complexities of construction, etc. to the same physics.

Saying that the mind is entirely caused by the brain and is an emergent property of brain function is not a statement about psychology. Psychology, culture, etc., while rooted int he mind, operate at their own level and cannot be reduced to brain function. That would be hyperreductionist.