Les, I think you misread the poster. I would recommend rereading it after you read my reply to your post. Perhaps the material is a little obtuse if you haven't read the book yet-- I can't tell for certain, having already read the book. Also, I think you may have been thrown off a bit when I spoke so strongly of studying the brain as (in some partial sense) literally studying consciousness, but trust me that this theory comes to that sort of statement in a way much more interesting and motivated (and modest!) than your average physicalism or functionalism.
Les Sleeth said:
But how can that which is absolutely essential to matter be only a concept? If nothing definitive can be said about that which supposedly constitutes matter other than it’s just an explanatory convenience, then in a sense physics is pure functionalism. We describe how things happen, but we don’t know what it is that is driving it, or that which the physical is made up of. It behaves but it has no “is-ness”? To me, this is a crucial aspect of the problem Hawking addresses when he asks, “What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?"
This is more or less exactly what Rosenberg says. He argues that
* schematic systems built on contrastive circularity posit a kind of barren ontology consisting of 'bare differences' (an 'is-related-to' without an 'is');
* modern physics is just such a system consisting ultimately of bare differences;
* such bare differences necessarily require 'carriers,' phenomena which can coherently instantiate bare differences in virtue of their own, internal contrasts that outrun the categories defined by the system (such as how the bare difference 'on' and 'off' of Life can be carried by red and black checkers-- redness and blackness outrun the categories specified by Life, and in virtue of their own internal contrasts (red is distinct from black) they can carry or instantiate the bare difference relations stipulated by Life);
* physical theory is in conceptual need of carriers, of an 'is' to be doing the 'relating,' or a 'fire' to be doing the 'breathing';
* carriers for physics would need to have a kind of bottom line intrinsic nature; they would need to be such that, if a difference obtains between carrier A and B, then it is not a bare or stipulative difference, but rather a difference that must directly follow from their intrinsic natures;
* something like phenomenal consciousness appears to be just the sort of thing that could play the role of intrinsic carrier for physics.
So the first problem is that if we are going to use the physical as the starting place for consciousness, then I say we are right back to functionalism; true, we’ve managed to move it quite a few steps more fundamental, but we still don’t reach the nature of what’s causing it all.
The physical is not the starting place here; it is not fundamental in Rosenberg's analysis. The carriers are what is fundamental. Insofar as physics is a schematic system of bare differences, at most it describes the functional relationships that its carriers engage in. Physics is a kind of functionalism, in the way you're using the word, but physics cum carriers is not.
I think Rosenberg gives us clues he is opting for functionalism with his “life world” analogy, and when he distinguishes between human and animal consciousness. The on-off basis of life world sounds like the functionalist consciousness-as-computer model, and distinguishing the human from animal seems to be elevating the human intellect to what consciousness is, rather than something it can do. To me Rosenberg’s model is like getting around the “hard problem” of abiogenesis by saying life arrived here on an asteroid.
Rosenberg never differentiates between animal consciousness and human consciousness. When he says animal consciousness, he is referring to the kind of rich, higher-order consciousness that exists in humans and, presumably, other animals. He uses this term to distinguish this kind of 'macroscopic' consciousness from the kind of
protophenomenal carriers that his hypothesis posits-- he wants to emphasize that such things would be like human consciousness only insofar as they would be phenomenal/experiential, and that their exact qualities would probably be really alien to us.
As for the Life world, Rosenberg uses it to
illustrate problems that exist with physical theory: the lack of carriers, and the seeming impossibility to account for consciousness. He doesn't use it as a model of how his framework actually explains consciousness, as you seem to imply; quite the contrary, he uses as a model of how traditional physicalist / functionalist explanations are counterintuitive, conceptually problematic, and ultimately wrong.
The second problem I have with Rosenberg’s model is that he assumes that consciousness can be studied; and you can see from how he is talking about it that by “study” he means the ability to objectify it for scrutiny. Built into his assumption is another assumption, reductionist in nature, which is that consciousness has “parts” which cause it. But what if consciousness has no parts, is instead homogeneous, and so can’t be studied in a reductionist way?
Rosenberg identifies experience with the 'receptive face' of causation, and claims that both are strongly emergent phenomena, i.e. completely novel and irreducible aspects of nature. He also argues (in his book, at least) that this receptive side is, of necessity, beyond objective, empirical investigation. Only the structure and function of the 'effective face' of causation is amenable to empirical study, and this is precisely the domain of physics: studying the structure and function of effective properties. There is a pretty simple reasoning behind this: you can only empirically study something that will make its effects felt on your measuring instruments, and only effective properties will fit the bill here, by definition of what it means to be effective vs. receptive.
Also in his book, he gives an argument that different phenomenal properties may also be strongly emergent, in the sense that the higher order phenomenal properties of human consciousness may not be reducible to / explicable in terms of some literal compositional combination of protophenomenal properties.
The impression I have is that consciousness is “compressed” by the physical processes of the brain. By disassociating from the brain, expansion happens and consciousness “brightens” somewhat. In some of the more powerful expansion experiences, not only does one become aware of being expanded from a formerly compressed state, one also becomes aware that one has expanded into a much more expanded (and brighter) environment, as Diagram 2 represents:
I don't think this is all that much incompatible with Rosenberg's framework. The metaphysical explanation is a little different, insofar as Rosenberg might picture a tighter relationship between brain and mind. He wouldn't speak of dissociation from the brain, but rather, different effective and receptive relationships between the phenomenal/experiential carriers. This different relationship would manifest itself as a different physical brain process, since
ex hypothesi physical phenomena are just the structural and functional relationships obtaining among effective properties.
In terms of duality, my sense is that the physicalness of the brain is not in essence different from my consciousness, but rather the brain is a structured form of what my consciousness is also. In other words, neither consciousness nor the physical is most basic; both are “forms” of something even more basic. That’s the reason my consciousness can be part of the physicality of the brain . . . because they share a common essence, with the brain being in a far more compressed and structured condition than consciousness.
This, too, might not be all that far off from what Rosenberg proposes. For him, physical phenomena are certainly not the most basic kinds of phenomena, but neither is human consciousness. The most basic phenomena would be protophenomenal/protoexperiential properties, which is proposed to be analagous to human phenemonal experience in only the a very general and basic sense; if we could experience such things ourselves, we might not even recognize them as forms of consciousness.
"The brain is a structured form of what my consciousness is also": this is also similar to what Rosenberg is proposing, except he would say that the brain, qua physical object, literally is the raw, 'bare difference' structure of consciousness as it is seen from the outside.
In a rough analogy, suppose we think of Jane's consciousness as a house. Jane is free to move around inside her house and observe both its intrinsic properties, which we'll represent with its various colors, and its structural properties, which we'll say is the framework of the house (walls, floors, ceilings, the angles at which they meet, etc). Now when Bob looks at Jane's house, he has no access to its intrinsic properties, nor can he see it from the inside; all he can see is a line-drawing of the structure of its facade. Bob calls this line-drawing of the structure of its facade Jane's brain.
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), can assess the merits of the ardent words from these individuals (or groups)? How could our lady from Venus conclude anything other than that there's only science, the 'hard problem of consciousness' and intricate relationships among subjective experiences?
