Sunday 1 July 2012

Beyond Belief: Could Consciousness be Beyond our Ken?

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(by Jonny)

Consciousness is odd, I'll give you that. I tend to favour what you might call a deflationary account of Chalmers' “hard problem of consciousness”, that is the so-called problem of explaining the relationship between physical events like brain processes and the conscious experience of the world, the phenomenal “quality” of experience. I tend to favour the notion that the apparent incapability between a description of physical processes a description of first person “qualia” is only that, an apparent incapability. Given sufficient conceptual models, and sufficient knowledge of the processes at work, we will begin to see that consciousness is as an explicable natural phenomena as any other. Like other supporters of a deflationary account, I think we will explain away the hard problem by solving the easy ones,problems like how we discriminate, integrate information, report mental states etc.

Yet consciousness is nonetheless odd. Whether we like it or not, the phenomena is so special that has continued to persuade philosophers that it is is unique among perhaps all other phenomena, beyond physical or otherwise objective explanation. For this alone we have to give consciousness the respect of being marvellously teasing.

One philosopher for whom consciousness is especially mysterious is Colin McGinn. Via a position ominously labled “new mysterianism”, McGinn famously argues that consciousness may well be simply beyond our understanding. Human beings just do not have the capacity to solve the hard problem, the answers are beyond us.

Colin McGinn. Looking Mysterious.

I've always had a certain sympathy for this position. It has always struck me that, in principle, McGinn could be right. Though we might be motivated by different reason, I agree that it is possible that an understanding of consciousness is beyond human understanding. From my perspective, it seems to be right that there is a limit to human brain power, and that there could be, in principle, phenomena which to understand would take an amount of information processing beyond at least our current limit.

Where I disagree with this position is where it draws the line. It is tempting to say “we might not be able to explain consciousness” and confuse it with “we certainty cannot explain consciousness” and from there draw the conclusion “there's not point trying to explain consciousness”. I rather believe that this pessimistic line is too quick to jump the gun. Whilst it could be that consciousness is beyond us, there is no real reason to conclude it is in actual fact. I agree with Dennett's tone when says about this sort of view, “...just like Leibniz, they have offered nothing, really, in the way of arguments for their pessimistic conclusions, beyond a compelling image.” (2006:5).

Leibniz believed that when looking into our organic selves we would find only parts, like the machinery of a mill, and the mysteries of the mind would remain unexplained.


New Mysterianism does well to raise the possibility of human limitation and our possible arrogance of thinking we may, as a matter of principle, solve every theoretical problem. But it fails in lacking the reflection that it could be that we can. And that even if there are some unsolvable mysteries, consciousness isn't looking to such a specimen. It looks again like philosophers are too quick to grant consciousness a special status, too quick to exaggerate it's near supernatural nature.

In actual fact I believe we have come some way to explaining consciousness, and long may it continue. I for one am optimistic about the easy problems of the future.


Dennett, D (2006) Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness. MIT Press: Masachusetts

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