Rothiemurchus said:
I read the paper about the explanatory gap previously.
It should be relatively clear, then, that no theory with the flavor of conventional physics will provide the explanatory traction needed to explain phenomenal consciousness. Any theory that starts with talk of particles, waves, or whatever and their interactions and winds up at phenomenal consciousness will have the feel of a sleight of hand. By way of analogy, no way of describing the mechanics of rubbing a lamp would seem to entail the emergence of a genie-- there appears to be no conceptual link, or bridge principle, between the former and the latter.
We can couch this dichotomy in terms of extrinsic and intrinsic properties. Extrinsic properties are properties that are defined functionally and structurally, and thus ultimately in terms of systems of relationships. All of physics deals with extrinsic properties. For instance, a complete description of an electron in physics tells us about its mass, charge, and the like-- that is, how it tends to attract and repel other particles-- and its location in space and time, both of which themselves are relational concepts. Thus an electron in physical theory is characterized entirely as a conglomeration of relational, extrinsic properties.
Intrinsic properties are properties that are defined not with respect to other properties, but (in a sense) with respect to themselves. Thus, while extrinsic properties presuppose the existence of other extrinsic properties, intrinsic properties seem to enjoy a kind of 'bottom line' existence. It appears that the elements of phenomenal consciousness are just such kinds of properties. For instance, take the color red: this[/color]. Phenomenologically, what defines redness? Nothing but itself. A visual field composed entirely of a uniform red surface appears to be just as red as an apple in a diversely colored visual field, even in the absence of other colors with which to compare it. (Compare this to an electron's charge in a perfect vacuum, which would be undetectable in the absence of other charges with which it could functionally relate.)
The explanitory tension between objective physics and subjective experience, then, seems to hinge on the kinds of relationships that could obtain between extrinsic and intrinsic properties. It's not at all clear that any combination of extrinsic properties could account for intrinsic properties. How can we derive the existence of an entirely self-contained entity (phenomenal consciousness) in a system that speaks only of relationships between entities (physics)? It appears to be a logical impossibility.
If anything, it appears that extrinsic properties presuppose the existence of intrinsic properties-- it's not clear that a system of relationships that lacks fundamental 'things' to be related is even conceptually coherent. If so, it makes more sense to derive relationships from fundamentally self-contained units than the other way around-- thus, perhaps we should not try to derive phenomenal consciousness from physical processes, but rather place some form of phenomenal consciousness into our fundamental conceptual framework and then use this intrinsic basis to firmly support the heretofore free-hanging system of relationships described by physics.
This is the fundamental idea put forth by Gregg Rosenberg in his newly released book,
A Place for Consciousness. I strongly suggest you read this work if you are interested in the philosophy of consciousness as it pertains to physical reality.
I think it would help if you can define for me what is meant
by the "qualitative aspect of consciousness."
The qualitative aspect of consciousness is what makes the world look, sound, feel, and generally seem a certain way to you. We know that red and green light have different physical structures in an objective sense (green has a higher frequency), but there is also a sense in which we distinguish them based on their qualitative aspects. The qualitative aspect of red is this[/color], as opposed to this[/color]. From the standpoint of your phenomenal consciousness, you know that the first instance of the word "this" in the previous sentence is distinct from the second not because you know the exact wavelengths of the light that has struck your retina, and not because you have performed a brain scan on yourself-- you know they are distinct because they have distinct qualitative appearances to you.
Make no mistake: your ability to discriminate these colors is underlied by physical brain processes. I am not refuting that. I am just illustrating an example of phenomenal consciousness in action. Suppose a clever alien scientist who has no visual sense faculty decides to scan your brain as it processes two visual inputs, A[/color] and A[/color]. The alien should in principle be able to deduce that you have distinguished these two inputs just by analyzing how they differentially stimulate your brain. However, what our blind alien scientist will
not be able to deduce is precisely the qualitative aspect of your experience of the inputs. He knows that you have decided that they are different on the basis of their different frequencies, but he does not know what it is like to qualitatively experience this[/color] or this[/color].
