Questions of Consciousness

1. On a material mind.
You argue against "the strictly material
approach" to the origin of mind being physical
on, what seem to me, to be flawed grounds. You
seem to have a number of such grounds, one of
which is that you can't understand how it might
work. You ask about the brain's electrochemical
activity and ask how it can account for the no
doubt millions of processes it needs to account
for on a constant basis. You say that a brain
would likely burn out if asked to carry out this
workload alone. I find this response a little
puzzling. Let me give you an example of why.
Imagine I have a large amount of water and a
pipe. I see the water and the pipe. The pipe
seems too small. I have no conception of how
the water could possibly fit through that pipe all
at once. But am I to rule out the possibility of a
bigger pipe? Am I to say that a bigger pipe is
impossible? Am I to say that no combination of
water and pipes would be able to carry out the
physical task I have in mind? Or am I to say that
because I cannot see how this would work that I
should, instead, conceive of a non-material pipe
which could do the work of transmitting water for
me? It seems to me that, especially since you
say you have no idea how the brain's
electrochemical activity might work, that you

simply have no basis to make the claim that

because you don't understand how it happens
that you must therefore refute the possibility. As
I read your answers, you don't understand
completely how the nonmaterial option might
work either. And yet this fact does not stop you
choosing that. So I think that, to be consistent,
not understanding how something works is not a
sufficient reason to completely close off that
possible solution.
This same issue affects the question "what
determines the content of thought?" Now
"determines" is one of those words that as a
thinker I don't like. It sounds very like
determinism and that's not something I'm a fan
of. Again, you seem at a loss to give a material
response to this question because you don't
understand how physical or material processes
could achieve it. Now neither do I. But I know
that material processes are happening. So I find
it entirely plausible, in line with Occam's Razor
(the simplest answer is to be preferred), to start
there. And, by the way, I don't think I have to
say that electrochemical processes are
"determinative" for anything either. I am open to
the option they are a means for thought to occur
with some other, unknown factor or process the
originating point instead. I'm also open to the
option that, as you say, thinking of blue monkeys
is caused by some electrochemical process itself.

And I ask "Why can't it be?" It seems to me that

you don't answer why it can't be. You just throw
your hands up and say it doesn't make sense and
you can't understand how it might work. My
point is that in order to posit the kind of mind
you have chosen to prefer (something I think is
an unfounded deus ex machina) I think you need
to give some evidence for it and some evidence
for why simpler options are not taken up first
and, if necessary, dismissed on better grounds
than "I don't understand it". It could be argued, I
think, that you have simply chosen to prefer a
more obscure alternative when you have
established no reasonable basis to do so. You
start off by suggesting that the mind could be
some type of energy or state and these can be
conceived of materially. I myself rule neither
option out. And I wish you had stuck with that
line of thinking.
2. Meat Machines
I must admit that there are some words you use
that operate somewhat as red flags to me in the
intellectual environment in which I have found
myself. You talk of minds as "nonphysical" and
"independent" and I take this to mean that you
conceive of minds as incorporeal things which
can, if I may put it this way, "float free" of
human beings. Perhaps they are, for you, some
kind of independent rationality? Human beings

themselves, it seems to me, operate then as

handy interfaces for these noncorporeal entities
in your conception. I infer that, for you, minds
are more primary than bodies. This troubles me
and sounds more than a little gnostic. It seems
to me to be heading in the direction of spirit
being privileged over matter. In a past life when I
was a student of matters biblical this would lead
me towards the once held belief that Jesus Christ
was not really a man but only seemed to be one,
so-called "docetism". But that's another
discussion. Let me end this point by saying that
it seems to me that your views about the
physical limiting the mind (what I might call in
another context "the spiritual") are a step on the
way to the belief that, in some senses, we are
"embodied spirits in the material world". I further
note your closeness to Ray Kurzweil in this
respect as those who, in some sense, privilege
the mind but need somewhere physical to keep
it.
I must admit that my conception of the human
being is not so easy to split apart. It is, in fact,
holistic. I conceive of the human being as a
unity. Minds need bodies and bodies need minds
and that without question. This unity is a person,
a human being. It is in this sense that I work on
the basis that physical, biological and
evolutionary processes can account entirely for
the origination and fact of mind and

consciousness. Consider, for example, the person

in a constant vegetative state. Their body suffers
even as their mind disappears. Consider, also, a
person physically tortured whose mind becomes
just as, if not more, scarred than their physical
body does. There is a reason we regard a person
as more than an inert body or a "meat machine"
and that is because a person is conceived of as
more than physical capabilities. And I note that,
when you begin to think about it, our faculties
are not nearly so discrete as some might like to
think. The way you have conceived things in your
first answers to me doesn't seem to take account
of the unity I perceive a person to be. Is there a
sense in which, for you, bodies are disposable
and minds are more essential? In the robotic
context in which we have discussed some of
these issues that becomes an even more moot
point.
For me, I would ask the question "Does the mind
even need to be nonphysical?" I'm not sure that
it does, at least not until physical explanations
have been confounded or demonstrated to be
unworkable. Human understanding of these
matters is sketchy at best. So why disavow a
whole slew of answers without investigating
them to the limit of our powers to leave for the
world of obscure ephemera?
3. Whose mind? Who am I?

At a number of points in your previous answers

you seem to give voice to a particular conception
of reality. In this reality minds exist and they, as
you say, have a "great attachment to the
physical world". I would like to ask you
something about this to help my understanding
of your position.
For you these minds seem to find physical
interfacing a limiting business. You ask, for
example, "Why would a mind, with perceptions
far beyond our own, limit itself by inhabiting a
physical body?" Well, why indeed. But you don't
substantiate that minds do have "perceptions far
beyond our own" nor show how we might be able
to see that. Your view, however, definitely chops
the human being up into discrete parts. For me,
a mind would be made for and suited to a
particular person. It would be "their mind". Its
limitations would be the limitations of the person
concerned as it was stimulated by them, their
interests and their experience. It would be
organic, part of a whole.
But this is not the most distressing part for me,
although it does cause some concern. The
question that more urgently forces its way to the
front of my mind is the question of identity.
These free floating minds of yours, who are they?
How are they to be identified? On my conception

minds come along with bodies. They are

biological, physical and evolutionary in origin.
Yes, the details get sketchy after that but that is
the angle I am coming from. But what this
means is that minds are unique and personal.
They exist because a person exists. But where do
your free floating, nonphysical, super perceptive
minds come from? Are they "pure consciousness"
in some sense and how would that work? And,
most importantly, how can there be a mind that
is not someone's mind?
4. Is there a way things are?
It seems to me in your answers that you think
there is "a way things are". You wouldn't be
alone in this of course. Many so-called "hard
scientists" and others think this too. But not
everyone thinks this. Some, myself numbered
amongst them, think that human descriptions for
things line up with human purposes and that
some descriptions are better suited to certain
tasks than others are. Some, equally, think that
human minds (there are other types of minds, I
think, but not "pure minds") are always active
and creative in the process of our understanding.
They think that a world "out there" that is given
to us is a fantasy ("the myth of the given"), one
that was naively believed in many centuries ago
but that is now, thankfully, increasingly difficult
to substantiate as a belief. Such people do not

think that kicking rocks and saying that the rock

is there and I didn't "create" it proves anything
very much in the way of "the way things are".
These people remember reading Thomas S
Kuhn's 1962 book "The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions" and learning that there is no special
kind of method or insight that gets us "closer to
the nature of reality" and that there is no way
you need to see in order to get things right. They
further learned that there is no ad-hoc way to
divide sensory experience up into what is given
to the mind and what is added by the mind. It is,
may we say, a holistic process.
Of course, the way we see the world will have a
very great influence over what we see and, if I
may so, and as I have said a number of times
before, it seems to be that our universe is very
plastic to the touch of our useful fictions. If we
add this insight to Wittgensteinian notions of
future beliefs needing to adhere with our current
ones, we can see that all our thoughts operate
within a system of thought which acts as arbiter
on reasonable and unreasonable beliefs. As
Wittgenstein himself notes in "On Certainty"
(section #344) - "My life consists in being
prepared to accept many things." So these are
not for anyone trivial matters. They are lifecreating ones, world-creating ones.
However, the issue here is that we should beware

of beliefs ossifying and becoming for us

incontrovertible truths. (It is certainty that sends
us mad not doubt - Nietzsche, Ecce Homo.) The
universe may allow us to see things a certain
way but that is very far from them being
incontrovertibly a certain way and only that way.
If I may say so, it seems to me that there are
certain ways of doing things and certain other
ways of doing similar things - and each will have
their own utility for the purposes to which they
are put. In your previous answers you suggested
that you took the approach you did because, for
you, it answered more questions than it left
unanswered. I praise this approach for I take it
to be mine as well. But what you didn't do is give
an outline of what the questions were that you
had need of answering. It seems to me that they
might be somewhat different to mine and this
then becomes a material difference in our joint
inquiry. This might then help us to judge the
relative utility of our different approaches as
opposed to their epistemic status. So I suppose
my question in this case would be "What
questions do you need answering that your
conception of minds, consciousness and human
beings answers?"
5. The human being
I want to take up, if I may, your conception of
the person, the human being. If we are talking

about intelligent, self-aware robots I have no

trouble agreeing with you that such entities
would be beings. I do not, however, think that
they would be people. Neither, by the way, do I
think that a future uploaded consciousness of
Ray Kurzweil into a metal chassis would be a
human being either. For me, a human being is a
very vulnerable, physical thing made of skin and
hair and blood, etc. If you change those
circumstances you create something else,
something hybrid-like and artificial. This is noncontroversial, however, in the sense that it
wouldn't matter in one way if they were people
or not. As autonomous, self-aware beings of high
intelligence they would nevertheless be worthy of
the respect that deserves.
But it seems to me that your conception of a
human being is different to mine. Where I see an
evolved being that has mind as a part of its ongoing development, you seem to see something
more metaphysical. As I have said above, your
view of how things are seems different to mine.
So my question to you is this: What is a human
being? Is it a unique individual? Where does your
idea of "independent minds" that change bodies
fit into this? If there were no bodies what would
the minds be doing? Where would they be? The
issue here is that my approach has accounted for
minds by matching them up to people. How does
your theory of minds account for human beings

and humanity?