© Michael Lacewing

Consciousness and biological

naturalismMichael Lacewing

enquiries@alevelphilosophy.co.uk

Searle on consciousness

• Creature consciousness: some organisms are conscious, some aren’t

• State consciousness: conscious creatures have conscious mental states, in which the creature is conscious of something

• Consciousness as a ‘field’, states as ‘flux’ in the field

A functional account

• Searle must say what creature consciousness is.

• An alternative is this: – A creature is conscious if it has conscious

mental states.– A mental state is conscious just in case it

has certain other (causal-functional) relations to other states and behaviour.

• But functionalism faces the objection from qualia.

The ‘first-personal’ nature of

consciousness• Searle: the phenomena and reality of

consciousness is irreducibly ‘first-personal’, known from the ‘inside’

• Conscious states are only available (as conscious) to the person whose states they are

• Functional analysis is ‘third-personal’, from the ‘outside’, which is why it misses the subjective perspective

Biological naturalism

• Consciousness is a biological property, a ‘systemic’ property of the (working) brain

• Systemic properties are properties of a whole system not possessed by its parts, e.g. liquidity, transparency– In these two cases, we can

explain the systemic property in terms of molecular arrangements

Biological naturalism

• Neurones aren’t conscious, but some brain processes, as a whole, are conscious– Consciousness is

caused by neuronal processes

• So consciousness is a natural, biological property

Objection

• We can give scientific questions of why liquids are liquid, why glass is transparent

• But the first-personal nature of consciousness prevents us giving a scientific (third-personal) explanation; so consciousness is not a physical property (an argument for property dualism)

Searle on reduction

• With the molecular explanation of liquidity, we redefine liquidity as a particular arrangement of molecules (ontological reduction)

• We could do the same with consciousness, but we don’t, because it would miss out the first-personal aspect of consciousness

• But this doesn’t show consciousness isn’t physical - we have already explained that it is a systemic property of the brain

• The unwillingness to reduce is pragmatic, not metaphysical

When are two things really one thing?

• With liquidity, the explanation also shows why, given how molecules interact, the substance must be liquid; so we can’t think of the two as separate

• Nagel: we can’t imagine an explanation that would show why neuronal activity has to produce consciousness; so it is natural to suppose that consciousness is something more than just neuronal activity

Searle’s response

• Neuroscience might yet produce such an explanation– But how can any third-personal

explanation account for first-personal phenomena?

• Scientific theories don’t always show why something must be the case, e.g. e=mc2

Naturalism?

• Is Searle a property dualist? He says ‘no’

• But if consciousness is irreducibly first-personal, then if it is a biological property, it is unique, not like any other biological property