This is the thread devoted to the debate that Ian and Mark have agreed to undertake after much discussion in this thread. The resolution to this debate is: "The nature of consciousness - is it material or immaterial?"

Ian will be arguing for material consciousness while Mark will be arguing for immaterial consciousness.

The rules to the debate are as follows:

1. This is a civil debate - there will be no insult hurling.
2. This debate will last five rounds. Ian will provide the opening post and Mark will rebut.
3. Unfamiliar terms will be defined upon request.
4. All sources will be cited properly.

First of all I would like to thank my opponent James for agreeing to do this debate. I would also like to apologize for the delayed response, I have been working on my music full-time and travelling. I look forward to having an enjoyable and informative discussion with you, James.

My esteemed opponent has posted some interesting scientific data about the effects of drugs on the human brain. While I appreciate the material, I have to say that neuroscientific data, especially of such a specific nature, can not get us too far in this debate. No respectable contemporary philosopher of mind is going to debate the findings of neuroscience, or the fact that the brain is crucial to understanding consciousness. The subject of the debate cannot be covered by a discussion of neuroscientific facts because the issue at hand is of a metaphysical nature. The question is: is consciousness material or immaterial? The question would actually be better put: is consciousness physical or non-physical? This question is metaphysical because it asks a very, very basic question about the ontology of consciousness. Those who would attempt to answer this question should not merely assume and assert the physical without showing how consciousness actually is physical (and neither should they assume and assert the non-physical.) We decide what category we are going to place consciousness in: the physical or the (strictly) mental? James' opening seems to bypass the consideration of the two possibilities and simply assert the one. At the very least, some essential account of consciousness should be given which describes how it must be one or the other.

Physicalism is the belief that all things are physical. Of course, the mind is a member of the set of all things, and therefore to the physicalist the mind must be physical. This view states that consciousness is an ordinary feature of the world, made up of only the same stuff as rocks and trees, pure matter. Take a deep breath and appreciate the fairly stunning implications of this proposed reality. Clearly, humans are naturally inclined to believe that their consciousness is something other than mere matter. After all, physicalism is a newcomer in the grand scheme of ideas, and for thousands of years souls, spirits, Plato, immaterial minds have been all the rage. Probably ever since humans began to develop larger belief systems, vis a vis religion, humans have upheld some belief in magic, the supernatural, God, the soul, something not material. Therefore the physicalist says that our intuition is false. There are no souls, spirits, or Platonic realms. And there is no mind as distinct from the brain. Perhaps the physicalists might consider erasing the word "mind" from their vocabulary as it can be misleading.

A lot of people these days might say, "Oh yeah, consciousness is physical." Then when pressed, they would reveal, "The mind arises from brain." This latter statement opens the door to a whole slew of possible positions. Some form of dualism is already at work in this statement. Dualism postulates either that there are two kinds of substances, the mental and the physical, or two kinds of properties. The first is known as substance dualism, the second as property dualism. I am some sort of property dualist. I believe that there might be other kinds of "substances" that are not physical, but as far as consciousness goes, the brain is the substance, which is physical. The matter of the brain just fits best the meaning of the word "substance". It's even difficult to imagine a "substance" that is not physical. But it is much easier to imagine properties which are not physical. Imagine for a moment that the universe is truly finite and will one day cease to exist. In that case, infinitude and eternality would be properties of possible things which are not physical. Now I must admit it seems quite clear to me that the brain posseses some properties that cannot be well-described as "physical". The essential mode of operation of consciousness seems rather intuitively abstracted from the world of matter. It clearly must have some basis in matter, since the brain is causing it (that is not to say that the causal chain would absolutely have to begin with matter, but the physical is in some way prior to the mental). But there is an aspect of consciousness that is not like anything observable in the world of matter. It is actually the thing observing the matter. Matter is objective, but consciousness requires the subjective. This fundamental distinction in ontology is what leads me to believe that consciousness is in fact something rather different than matter. For it must be either something other than matter or the subject/object distinction is dubious, and I am not convinced that it is. Let me explain why.

First of all, consciousness is concievable as apart from the body. I think this should be uncontroversial, but it actually is, and only because it makes physicalism a little weaker. I'll get into just exactly what this means for the nature of our mind, but for now I will show how imagining the consciousness seperate from the body is possible. The existence of out-of-body experiences proves that the mind can be concieved of as apart from the body. I am not saying that these experiences are necessarily genuine in the sense that the mind literally leaves the body, but rather that they show how a conception of the mind apart from the body is possible. I have had a particularly lucid experience of this sort myself, and it is a very important and interesting phenomenon. If scientists, philosophers, or anyone could understand how out-of-body experiences worked, if they could give a complete account of the phenomenon, I would be surprised if they didn't unlock some key to understanding consciousness. Another famed argument which demonstrates that the mind can be concieved of as apart from is the logical possiblity of zombies.

A zombie is a creature that talks like me, eats like me, looks just like me, is exactly the same as me molecule for molecule. The only difference is he is not conscious. He simply has no experiences. The lights are off upstairs. Zombies are logically possible, but not naturally possible. In the real world, anytime you saw your zombie you'd know he was conscious. But in the world of whatever is possible, the zombie does belong. At a very basic level, it sounds possible, it sounds coherent, this shell of a person. Now if zombies truly are logically possible, then physicalism is not as well-off as it could be. That's because given zombies, the physicalist cannot appeal to the logical necessity of consciousness being physical. They can't tell us, "Hey, consciousness is physical, nothing else makes any sense, nothing else is possible." Something else is possible. In fact we all have everyday the experience of something else. We are drifters through mental space, the place physically located between our ears, but not by nature restricted to it. Our thoughts, our dreams, our whole picture of reality forms a world unto itself, even as it is in the world of which it is a part. Consciousness is not unnatural, or even supernatural. It is evidently a naturally occuring phenomenon. But there are mental events that are not like the events of the push/crash/pull world of spacetime and gravity. They are on another level, so it is confusing when the physicalist just identifies consciousness as like those other events, it seems a rather undeveloped view of the mind. But I digress. ;)

Science will most likely never be able to fully understand consciousness. I know it sounds grim, and depressing, but it is unfortunately probably true. Any account of consciousness will obviously include an account of physical brain states. But those states can only be understood by correlating the first-hand reports of consicous experience with the physical data of brain states. We may know Mary is dreaming, but at this point we won't know what dream she's having until she tells us. One day we might be able to tell what dream she's having, but probably only through correlating numerous reliable descriptions of dreams with actual brain states. A mechanistic account of conscious experience just seems impossible. Subjective conscious experiencing is far too private, it is pretty well sealed off from the microscope and the journal. Know all the physical facts about the brain, down to the last nitpicky detail about the location of every quark in every atom in every neuron interacting in every way and structured however concievable, and the experience itself does not somehow become available to you, you still have to have the experience. I really don't see where anyone gets off saying they're the same. The experience is caused by the brain, it is in the brain, but it is not the brain itself. In fact an experience is a conjoining of the external and the internal world, and cannot be said to fully one or the other. Now let me be clear that I am in no way anti-science, and I don't believe dualism is anti-scientific. On dualism, consciousness can still be a natural feature of the world, all it requires is that there be natural properties of things which are not physical properties. I really think, though that mental "events" are a better way to describe it than mental "properties". So I'll probably stick with "events" the rest of the debate.

I think this is enough for now, maybe? Certainly we can continue this lively discussion, James, but I must let you know that I'm very busy with my music and all. It could take me a while to respond.

Suggested bumper stickers for physicalist philosophers of mind:


l ----------------------------------------l
l THE BRAIN--there is nothing else. l
l ----------------------------------------l

l------------------------------------------l
l Dualists: Hey, at least they're l
l not scientologists! l
l------------------------------------------l

jamesWrote:

from studying the various effects from altering physiological states in regards to the conscious experience we may be led to believe that the relationship (regardless of whether consciousness is material or immaterial) is reciprocal in the effect that what occurs in one influences the other, and vice versa...i.e. if i choose to walk across the room, my 'mind' will inform my 'brain' of my will to do so and subsequent chemical actions will ensue...and if i smoke a little ganj and my brain is flooded with THC, my 'mind' will also be affected in several ways.

Actually it makes a huge difference whether or not consciousness is material or immaterial in your decision to walk across the room. Physicalists assert that the physical is causally closed, at least as far as we can observe on a regular basis. Given this, it is impossible for the decision to be the result of a personal causal agent. Rather, your decision is the result of a determined system of particles and forces interacting with each other under the laws of physics. We might label that system as "personal", but that is just a verbal convenience, the "person" cannot be used as the basis of a causal explanation. If consciousness is not physical, then the person might become the ultimate cause of the physical events of you walking across the room.

I don't believe that personal causal explanation can be replaced by physical explanation. Science will likely not be able to do it, for reasons I mentioned earlier. An understanding of consciousness from a scientific perspective will always involve associating first-hand, personal reports of mental states with brain states. In order to explain consciousness in terms of the purely physical, a comprehensive causal explanation of conscious states would need to be given that works from the bottom up, explaining how particles in fields interact to form brain cells and networks, and going on to show how all that activity must give rise to a certain experience. Furthermore, the experience would have to be shown to be nothing other than these physical workings. But this is not possible--because it would leave out the event of the person actually having the experience. The science couldn't show you what it was like to have that experience. Therefore, physical explanation could never supercede personal explanation, or render it unnecessary. This also renders a definition of the person difficult for science, and it is not suprising that some like Dennett have taken to making consciousness out to be an illusion.



perhaps not 'observing' in the sense you imply, rather the biochemical constituents of the brain are altered due to the influence that the environment has in a physical and chemical sense. such is the basis of any chemical reaction, or physical for that matter.

True, I hope I didn't imply that observation is not rooted in physical processes in the brain. My point, though, was that observation requires a subject, and for the reasons given above the subject can never be replaced by or equivocated with an object or a set of objects.



being logically possible is much less credible than being naturally possible. (see any reference to zangs and quarks in any logic textbook)

You should address my argument more here. I stated that logically possible zombies and OBE's show that consciousness is concievable apart from the body, which weakens the position of physicalism by rendering it impossible for the physicalist to assert the logical necessity of consciousness being physical (which has frequently been the position taken by them).



if I were to look at my dog and every molecule in my brain was recorded (from the physics of neural network formation to the proteomic dynamics of neurotransmitter communication), and then this same state of brain was recreated in your head with the use of chemicals alone, the only differing factor behind our experiences would be the genes expressed...otherwise the same physiological makeup would result...since the relationship between 'brain' and your concept of 'mind' is reciprocal...we can assert that a physical manipulation of brain would necessarily result in a reasonably predictable conscious experience.

Sure. But none of that poses a problem for my view of the mind.




I hope not to appear rude...but i must say that, in my opinion, the only philosophy which belongs in the realms of science is that of hard logic. as such...it would be difficult to assert that anything immaterial is capable of having any form of interaction or influence with that which is material.

You don't appear rude, you are simply incorrect. Science requires philosophy. Scientists are always guided by philosophy, whether they realize it or not. The scientific method is rooted in epistemology. How do we know what we know (epistemology)? By forming a hypothesis and testing it. Philosophy serves to clarify concepts so that scientists can know how to go about thinking about just what the entities to be studied are before they do real research. For example, the concept of 'species' has been widely discussed by philosophers wondering if the species is a discrete, real entity, or if it is just a construct, as Darwin believed. Deciding which it is makes a difference in how we understand the phenomenon of speciation. Philosophers can provide scientists with an ontology of the entities they study. Philosophers can also ensure that language is used properly, and terms and concepts are properly applied in science.

The second issue you raised is called the problem of "interactionism". How can the non-physical interact with the physical? In other words, some mechanism is being asked for. This is question-begging, because on dualism the non-physical would presumably be non-mechanistic. However, I don't think interactionism is an entirely invalid line of criticism. As unkosher as it may seem, the best solution to the interaction between mind and body, on dualism, may well be an appeal to God working to make it so. Some philosophers have adopted epiphenomenalism to try and get around the problem of interaction, but it may only represent a partial solution. On epiphenomenalism, the brain causes non-physical conscious experiences but consciousness itself does no work in return. Experiences are the end result of brain functioning. All the information-processing, decision-making, and action-taking occurs in the physical brain and is handed up to the conscious mind, which feels what it is like to do those things. As demonized as this view gets, I find it to be not that bad. Maybe consciousness really doesn't do any work. Maybe we "the people" just feel what our brains and bodies are doing, and those decisions we make are brain processing, we just hear our brains working. But the solution to interactionism is only partial. There is still the problem of how the information produced by the physical brain could be handed up to the non-physical mind, even if the problem of the mind causally interacting with the world is solved. But this way, a causally closed physical world can still be maintained. So yes, interactionism is a problem, but there is are possible solutions. If dualism is true, it only makes sense that we wouldn't be able to understand interaction at this point given how much we have yet to learn about consciousness and the brain.

James, I don't see how you can think that philosophy doesn't belong in this discussion. Aren't the points I am making and the questions I am raising important ones, regardless of whether or not they are true?

jamesWrote:

i believe that to ultimately determine the true causality behind any neural reaction to a stimulus one must take into account that we exist in a system of Chaos and indeterminancy, and that while one may believe that he/she is 'choosing' to walk across the room, there is ultimately a set of complex variables that initiated the decision.

For a moment let's take our mind off the miasma of complex variables that purportedly initiate the decision to walk across the room and think about the experience of walking across the room itself. There is a certain way it feels to walk across the room. I consciously experience the motion of my body. Now, the literal motion of my body could be described completely in physical terms. Clearly, an object in motion needs no undergirding other than physical explanation. But what of the experience? Can the physical facts about my velocity, the dimensions of the room, even the neurological activity going on in my brain fully describe what it feels like to walk across the room? This reminds me of another argument, in which "Mary" knows all the physical facts about seeing the color red. She knows everything about how the brain causes one to see red. Yet she has never seen red, she has grown up in a black-and-white room. One day she ventures forth and sees a rose. She experiences seeing the color red. Even though she had all the physical facts about how the brain sees red, she did not know what it was like to see red. It would seem that the physical facts about consciousness are not the only facts. It's a famous argument in philosophy of mind.

As far as the cause of walking across the room goes, I really don't see why the default personal explanation shouldn't be considered valid. It will always be used in everyday situations anyway. It seems difficult (and maybe pointless) to believe that I didn't decide to walk across the room, but my decision was forced upon me by a complex whirlpool of chaotic forces unbeknownst to me.



hold this thought...i'm reading Roger Penrose and when i'm finished i will be able to adequately address this. (i'll copy and paste it to my computer)

Cool! I read some Penrose a long time ago. Though I probably understood little, at the time I thought it was pretty speculative. But I'm not one to scoff at speculation by reasonable men.





you misunderstood me, i realize how important philosophical reasoning is...but believe that metaphysical dissertations are thoughts that anyone can construct.

Well, maybe it's like raquetball. Anyone can play after a little effort, but it takes dedication and talent to be really good. Not that I'm really good, but at least I care strongly about ideas. (Awww)


once an idea leaves the realm of falsifiability it no longer is science, but simply an abstract concept.

An unfalsifiable proposition wouldn't necessarily be abstract, or unscientific. Take this one: "Yehudhim was a man who lived 1, 400 years ago in Judea. We have naught but one oblique reference to him in a scroll uncovered at Qumran." We can't falsify the first statement--actually it could be difficult to falsify all but the soundest facts of history--yet these assertions are not abstract, they refer to (possible) real referents.

to assert that consciousness is immaterial takes consciousness out of the realms of science, but for science to progress to the point where it can adequately treat disturbances in the conscious experience (schizophrenia, psychosis, etc.) the fact that consciousness is material must be assumed.

Well it takes it out of the realm of currently available science. I know it is depressing, but I've been making the case that our science can't tell you what it is like to have a certain experience. You just have to have the experience. The experience-event is not completely physically describable.


i don't know if that fully resolves the issue of decision making [epiphenomenalism], if experience is the end product, how can we 'choose' to respond to a stimulus?

Epiphenomenalism is an attempted solution to the problem of interaction, not to the problem of free will. But no, there would be no choosing to respond to stimuli on epiphenomenalism. It would seem difficult to maintain free will and epiphenomenalism, unless one was going to argue against determinism and the hard fixing of physical facts through physical cause and effect relationships. I think it's safe to say that is outside the scope of the present debate!



I don't quite understand the applicability of the zombie issue you raised.

It's a variation on Decartes' old argument that the mind can be concieved of apart from the body. If zombies are logically possible, consciousness is not necessarily solely physical. If we can truly concieve of the mind apart from the body, and it is a good conception, then consciousness is not necessarily wholely bodily. It doesn't prove consciousness is not physical, it just shows that dualism is possible. Sometimes we need to show something is possible before we can dip our toes into the water.

Cheers!