When, in 1995, David Chalmers outlined what he believed to be a distinction between the “easy” problems of consciousness and the “hard” problem of consciousness, Daniel Dennett was quick to point out a fundamental flaw in his reasoning. I suggest that this same flaw exists in the logic of a whole range of philosophical positions concerning philosophy of mind.
Chalmers and Dennett
The philosopher David Chalmers has argued that the problem of explaining why human beings possess subjective experiences (which he terms the hard problem of consciousness) is distinct from other problems of conscious (e.g., how the brain focuses attention or reacts to environmental stimuli), in that these second kinds of problems can be solved by elucidating the neural mechanisms by which they take place, whilst the hard problem cannot be solved by invoking a mechanism.
The philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett published a response to David Chalmers, in which he argued that a complete understanding of all of the “easy” problems of consciousness would provide an explanation of the hard problem.
Dennett further elaborates on his position with the following analogy, taken directly from his paper “Facing Backwards on the Problem of Consciousness”:
“Imagine some vitalist who says to the molecular biologists: The easy problems of life include those of explaining the following phenomena: reproduction, development, growth, metabolism, self-repair, immunological self-defence… These are not all that easy, of course, and it may take another century or so to work out the fine points, but they are easy compared to the really hard problem: life itself. We can imagine something that was capable of reproduction, development, growth, metabolism, self-repair and immunological self-defence, but that wasn’t, you know, alive. The residual mystery of life would be untouched by solutions to all the easy problems.”
Dennett’s point is obvious: that “life” is merely the sum total of all the biological processes he lists. It is not some mystical, transcendent property of matter which exists above and beyond the physical processes which life demonstrates. By analogy, consciousness is not some mystical, transcendent property of the brain, existing above and beyond the physical processes of firing neurons.
I believe that this same fallacy exists in many philosophical positions, and is the root cause of much disagreement among philosophers, scientists and other commentators.
Free Will
I have previously outlined my stance on free will in my article “Free Will: Libet and the Readiness Potential”. I cannot see any logical reason why either determinism or neuroscience should invalidate the idea that humans have free will. Essentially, I am a compatibilist.
This position has perhaps best been expressed by Jack Copeland in his book “Artificial Intelligence: A Philosophical Introduction”. Copeland’s writing is too long to quote here in full, but to summarise:
The idea that free will does not stand up to modern scientific analysis has become an orthodox opinion in AI. It is widely believed that neurophysiological determinism means free will is an illusion. Since each of your decisions is the inevitable outcome of preceding causes, you can never choose contrary to the way you are caused to choose. How then can you be free?
To demonstrate the fallaciousness of this position, Copeland describes two kinds of choices: “nil preference” choices and “outstanding-candidate” choices.
Imagine you are torn between two options: whether to order a chocolate cake or a blueberry cheesecake. After a moment, you suddenly and for no apparent reason choose to order the cheesecake.
This is a nil preference situation. Free choice, in this situation, consists of making a random selection between two equally preferable alternatives. Determinism (in the form of your personal tastes, past experience, emotional state, etc.) narrows down your choice to two options, while the final selection is made randomly.
In a nil preference situation, and only in a nil preference situation, choosing randomly is choosing freely.
It could be argued that if decisions arise spontaneously and randomly, then the agent is helpless to control his own behaviour. However, in a nil preference situation, behaviour is still under the control of the agent. The chooser’s deliberations produce a number of alternative schemes of action, all of which are equally preferable to the agent. The random “coin flip” of choosing is merely a tiebreaker.
However, random selection only constitutes free will in a nil preference situation. In all other circumstances, conscious deliberation leads us to pick one particular course of action. This is an outstanding-candidate situation.
There is no room for randomness here. The agent’s choice is determined by their emotions, their reasoning, their memories, etc. They choose the best possible choice given their current knowledge. It would be possible for the agent to choose a course of action which they did not consider the best option, but not without some reason.
In this situation, given the laws of physics, determinism rules. Since it is impossible to violate the laws of nature, it would be impossible for the agent to decide on an option without that choice being the result of a causal chain. In fact, if some exterior force were to cause the agent to randomly pick an option against their own reasoning, then this would be the opposite of free will.
Say that after some deliberation, I choose to learn to play an instrument. Since this choice is caused by my emotions, reasoning, and so on, it is the inevitable result of the physical processes of my brain.
Some might argue that, since I cannot violate the laws of physics, I cannot choose other than to learn the instrument. But this is fallacious. It is within my power to choose otherwise, if I have some reason for doing so. I myself am a deterministic process, and my reasoning determines the choices that I make. This, in essence, is free will.
I am able to deliberate about my future and make decisions on the basis of that deliberation. If this is not freedom, then what is?
The Incompatibilist Fallacy
I suggest that incompatibilists – those who believe that free will is incompatible with determinism, and is therefore illusory – are labouring under the same fallacy that Daniel Dennett accuses David Chalmers of falling prey to.
When I think about my options, assess my emotions, recollect past experiences, follow a chain of reasoning and then make a choice, the feeling that I have that I am consciously choosing my own actions is not an illusion. That deterministic process is itself the process of volition.
Free will or volition is merely the sum total of all the psychological processes involved in making a choice. It is not some mystical, transcendent thing which exists above and beyond the deterministic processes of brain function.
Admittedly, the waters are muddied by the philosophical position of libertarianism, according to which it would be possible to make a different choice given the exact same set of causes: something which is clearly impossible. This false libertarian conception of free will is in the same category as Chalmers’ conception of consciousness and the hypothetical vitalist’s conception of life.
However, incompatibilists take this transcendent, libertarian idea of free will, and use it to argue that there is something delusional about the idea that we are freely choosing our own actions when we deliberate and make choices. This is a fallacy.
The Self
Numerous philosophers have argued that the concept of the self is intrinsically fallacious, while many modern psychologists and neuroscientists have argued that there is no room for the self in theories of mind and brain function.
Some arguments are based on a conception of the self as a homunculus – an inner being, living within the mind, who perceives the objects of consciousness and in doing so facilitates experience. This conception is fallacious, since postulating an inner being to explain perception leads to an infinite regress (what component inside the inner being leads that being to perceive?).
Other arguments against the self focus on the fact that the self is not reducible to its constituent parts. The Brahmin and Buddhist sage Nagasena, who lived around 150 BC, compared the self to a chariot. Nagasena reasoned that a chariot is built from a number of separate components, none of which is the essence of the chariot.
Similarly, he reasoned that the self does not exist, since there is no part of a person which can be pointed to as the essence of that individual. However, we can only accept that this implies there is no self if we also agree that there is no such thing as a chariot; in fact, we know that the word “chariot” is the name for a certain structure which is irreducible to its parts.
I could lose my legs and still be myself. Similarly, I could lose my arms and still be myself. I am still myself when I am not thinking, or when I have no emotion, or when I am asleep and possess no consciousness at all.
The fact that any one aspect of myself could be removed and yet still leave my self as the whole of what remains does not disprove my existence, it merely demonstrates that a whole cannot be reduced to its parts. Nagasena’s example is a critique of reductionism, not a critique of the self; the self is merely the sum total of an individual’s attributes.
More recently, Susan Blackmore has argued against the existence of the self, using arguments much like those above. We feel as if we are conscious beings experiencing a stream of thoughts, perceptions, emotions, etc., but when we attempt to look at the “self” experiencing these things, we can only find the stream of experience itself. Hence the self is an illusion.
Others have argued that the feeling we have of being an observer of experience comes from our memories (i.e., the fact that we remember our past actions and exhibit consistent behaviour), and thus the self is illusory.
The Non-Self Fallacy
I hold that these arguments are based on the same fallacy as incompatibilism. Just as determinist arguments against free will begin with the libertarian, physics-defying, transcendent conception of free will, arguments against the self begin with the idea that “I” am somehow distinct from my brain function: either an independent observer who does the actual experiencing, or some other transcendent part of the whole.
The fact that my sense of being a singular entity from one moment to the next is derived from my memories and the fact that I am a single, physical body does not somehow mean that sense is illusory. An individual’s self is the sum total of their physical and psychological attributes, in the same way that life is the sum total of biological processes, or free will is the sum total of all the psychological processes involved in making a choice.
Conclusions
I suggest that in all of the examples above, the illusory, transcendent concepts of life, consciousness, free will and the self are all primitive relics of our historical belief in souls. The soul was believed to be the animating force that separated live things from dead things. It was also believed to be the source of consciousness.
The soul was tied up with the belief that free will was a gift from god, setting man apart from the deterministic laws of the universe, and it was also true self of a person, merely housed in their physical body until the time of death.
In explaining the physical processes behind these various phenomena, science has demonstrated that they are not the result of a soul. But we have retained an aspect of this false belief system in the idea that this phenomena are in some way transcendent. In doing so, we are forced to falsely conclude that these phenomena are illusions.
This single fallacy underlies a great deal of misconceptions in philosophy of mind, and must be abandoned if we are to genuinely understand things like consciousness, free will and the existence of the self and appreciate them for what they are: integral parts of what it means to be a human being.
Copyright © Dan Haycock 2011. For similar articles and information about Dan’s book, Being and Perceiving, visit http://www.DanHaycock.co.uk or http://being-and-perceiving.weebly.com/