CINDERELLA EXTENSION

WE ARE LITERALLY JUST HERE

NITA EDI

PHILOSOPHY OF MIND: 2270

Melanie Rosen

Trent University

December 7, 2023.
 What is consciousness? I would say the experience of life, the Merriam-Webster says it is

being characterized with sensation, perception, volition and thought (Merriam-Webster, 2023).

Philosophical schools are notoriously ambiguous when attempting to define this concept, my

inability to provide a scientifically testable answer is why consciousness is a hard problem in

philosophy. A hard problem in philosophy is a problem regarding the explanation of a concept,

they create the unanswered question of why there is an experience from a set of functions when

the functions, dynamics and structures can be explained but not the experience itself (Weisberg,

accessed 2023). The hard problem of consciousness is in distinguishing between why any

physical state is conscious rather non-conscious, the problem of explaining what consciousness

is like beyond the usual scientific methods.

I believe that consciousness is a hard problem for multiple reasons: its subjectivity, qualia

of consciousness, and variability. I will be expanding on these reasons over the course of this

paper using reductionist and consciousness theories. A common theme amongst all these factors

points us to one truth; consciousness is an experience and is immediately dismantled when it is

reduced.

Subjectivity. Part of this reason is the mind-body problem, which I will be addressing

from a reductionist perspective. The way our minds paint experiences differ from person to

person, when you read this there might be a voice in your head or an unconscious processing of

the words on the screen (Chalmers, 1995). Being alive might feel like a music video, a collection

of memes, a movie, or an unconscious inevitable experience. The way consciousness is

experienced if scientifically operationalized would result in varying results, our understanding of

consciousness is subjective, revolving around what it feels like to us which does not fit our

physicalist ontology (Weisberg, accessed 2023).

The reductionist views of consciousness use neuroscience, physics, psychology,

computationalism to make sense of consciousness. I will evaluate consciousness from the

reductionist view of the identity theory.

The identity theory proposes that consciousness occurs in the brain (Place, 1956). This

proposal by the identity theory uses neuroscience to explain how neural activities give rise to

consciousness, however it is important to know that when U.T Place proposed this thesis it was

not to say that conscious experiences like dreams, fantasies, etc are reducible to cognitive

statements but rather that consciousness happens in the brain as an identity of composition rather

than one of identity (Place, 1956). This means that the brain is not consciousness but rather there

is a systematic correlation between the brain and consciousness, evidence for this is from our

own development, we are conscious of things we learn about, it is not a mythological experience

on a different field but rather a physical phenomenon that gives rise to this abstract experience of

consciousness, the theory hence states that conscious experiences can be explained by brain

processes (Place, 1956).

This is a consistent issue with reductionist views aiming to make sense of consciousness,

they deal with the easy problems of consciousness rather than the hard problem (Chalmers,

1995). However, the way we experience things as mentioned earlier is not the same and in fact is

too grande to be explained by brain processes, it is also one directional in the sense that with a

conscious person there can be an explanation for the brain processes however if given a brain

map or evaluating the brain processes of an unconscious person there is no way to explain the

conscious experience of the person. Another issue lies in multiple realizability, that is, the
emergence of the same mental state from different physical experiences, using the brain map

example, if people had similar brain maps there would be no way to realize that they emerged

from different experiences which is problematic long term especially for situations like

determining if people are lying, if they do not believe they are lying, their brain states will be

similar to those who are telling the truth.

There is a nature of subjectivity to consciousness and reductionist views threaten to eliminate the

concept of consciousness as a whole when attempting to create a simple understanding of

consciousness, in fact, it produces a philosophical zombie, a concept we will continue to explore

over the course of this paper.

Qualia of consciousness. To expand on this point, I will use Descartes dualism. The

Cogito, “I think therefore I am” coined by Descartes gives a clue into consciousness that is; it is

self-evident in that which is conscious (Descartes, 1996). With the cogito, Descartes separates

the soul from the body, given this dualist view, it is this non-physical substance; the soul that is

responsible for or is consciousness itself.

The reductionist identity theory does not propose that consciousness can be observed by

the brain and acknowledges the lack of continuity between consciousness and electric charges in

the brain yet it says that consciousness and the brain are of the same event (Place, 1956). The

reductionist theory, computationalism can give more insight on why that is.

The computationalism theory believes that the brain computes consciousness, in this

theory, the brain acts as a form of CPU, creating schemas, structures and predictions about how

the earth works and how we can relate to the world around us, this includes behaviours, thought
patterns, interpretations of sight, sound, taste, scents, etc (Turing & Alan, 2007), I agree with this

on a on a strictly biological level, not including the subjective ways we experience these

sensations. Given this explanation it makes sense how consciousness and brain activity though

not linked are related, however like other reductionist theories, the computationalist theory uses

the development of artificial intelligence to suggest that these systems can generate cognitive

function similar to consciousness (Turing & Alan, 2007), I disagree with this point because it

takes us back to the philosophical zombie, to say that consciousness can emerge from purely

physical processes negates the philosophical agreement that we are not zombies. If we are

intelligent machines as the computational theory suggests we would have no qualia, no spark for

lack of better language, the qualia of consciousness is a substance that cannot be defined, it just

is.

The qualia of consciousness and its meaning which is beyond articulation has made me

over the course of this paper entertain the thought that the perfect God Descartes said exists

outside of us is just pure consciousness (Descartes, 1996), and as life came to be in the universe,

this pure consciousness that has always been is present through the stretch of the universe, I am

being persuaded to believe it is the substance that makes us conscious.

The question of animal consciousness is important to our conversation because if animals are

conscious it will change the way we view the structure of consciousness and the nature of

consciousness as a whole. National geographic interviewed Carl Safina on his book beyond

words, in the book he dives into the consciousness of animals (Worrall, 2015). Philosophers like

Descartes have removed animals from having access to consciousness given that they do not

speak or think, the cogito reveals a flaw in his thinking, if I think therefore I am, and there is no
way to know of anyone else’s existence but mine because it is my experience why do we as

humans get to decide that animals are not conscious when we do not know if they think therefore

they are. Carl Safina’s book reveals that animals have their own individual personalities which is

obvious to anyone who would observe them rather than observation through manipulation via

experiments (Worrall, 2015). Empathy is another example of animal consciousness, while it is

not a prerequisite for consciousness given that there are humans who are conscious but do not

experience empathy, it is just another extension of consciousness. Animals mourn for their lost

loved ones, they are vengeful, wolf packs disband if their alpha dies sometimes, indicating a

social awareness beyond survival instincts as this disband reduces the survival rate of their young

(Worrall, 2015). Reductionists would be inclined to say that the expression of these emotions in

animals are the result of neural activity, to this I say, the same way we have subjective

experiences which make it hard to define consciousness is the same way animals do, the

variation in personalities means that there are different experiences which means there is a

consciousness that is inaccessible to us as humans given the language barrier that would have

otherwise given us insight into how they think and what they think. If animals are conscious, our

understanding of consciousness is really limited and consciousness is a harder problem than we

might have thought.

Though given a hard time I believe that reductionist theories true to their intention, which

is to bring about a unification and coherence of broad concepts are beneficial in explaining the

functions and structures of consciousness (Churchland, 1982), as a result I believe reductionist

theories should direct their attention in explaining why we as humans are conscious of our

consciousness and not try to explain consciousness as a whole.

Variability and qualia of consciousness may seem synonymous at first but in this paper, I define

qualia as the intrinsic nature of consciousness and variability as the varying experiences of

consciousness.

Variability of consciousness. There is little skepticism regarding the consciousness of

humanity, despite this common experience of consciousness, its nature and quality varies. The

Fred example of Frank Jackson shows that even our perceptions of things in the world like

colour differ, though seemingly minuscule this changes the individual's consciousness as a whole

(Jackson, 1982). A more feasible example is my thought process, when I wake up from sleep I

am immediately already aware of multiple thoughts in my head, sometimes even before I wake

up I am already conscious of my thoughts, when I spoke to my partner of this she looked at me

sympathetically shocked that I had to experience ask that was going on in my mind yet I was

sympathetic towards her because I couldn’t imagine not being constantly conscious of what was

going on in my mind, this anecdotal example is just one of the many ways in which we differ in

the quality of consciousness, another example is my two friends who are able to identify the

smell of people’s pheromones yet I do not experience this and have no idea what my family

‘smells’ like. The varying experiences of consciousness makes it hard to define consciousness.

Factors like education, social development and economic brackets also affect the nature

of an individual’s consciousness. Experience shapes consciousness, this is a dynamic of

consciousness that is available for testing. The different worldviews that we have as individuals

give us all unique consciousness informed by our own personal experience. The hard problem of

consciousness lies in experience.

The hard problem of consciousness challenges physicalism. To conclude, I agree with Chalmers

that consciousness is fundamental and should not be reduced but instead accepted as a universal

reality similar to gravity, and other laws of physics that guide our understanding of the universe

(Chalmers, 1995).
 Citation

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Chalmers, D. J. (1995). The puzzle of conscious experience. Scientific American, 273(6), 80–86.
https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican1295-80

Churchland, P. S. (1982). Mind-brain reduction: New light from the Philosophy of

Science. Neuroscience, 7(5), 1041–1047. https://doi.org/10.1016/0306-4522(82)91117-4

Descartes , R. (1996). Meditations on first philosophy. Descartes: Meditations on First

Philosophy, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511805028.006

Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Consciousness definition & meaning. Merriam-Webster.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/consciousness#:~:text=con
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Place, U. T. (1956). Is consciousness a brain process? The Mind-Brain Identity Theory, 42–51.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-15364-0_2

Weisberg, J. h. (n.d.). The hard problem of consciousness . Internet encyclopedia of philosophy.

https://iep.utm.edu/hard-problem-of-conciousness/#SH1a

Worrall, S. (2021, May 4). Yes, animals think and feel. here’s how we know. Animals.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/150714-animal-dog-thinking-
feelings-brain-science