• tom111
    20
    Let us assume, for the sake of argument, a form of epiphenomenalist dualism, in which there are two distinct kinds of things: physical processes occurring in the brain and an associated array of conscious experiences. On this view, every physical event in the brain produces a corresponding mental event, a subjective experience, but these mental events have no causal influence on the physical. Consciousness is a passive byproduct, a kind of “ride-along” to the real causal story that takes place in the material world.

    Once we grant this setup, we immediately encounter the problem of psychophysical harmony. Why is it that our conscious experiences are so perfectly aligned with our physical and behavioral states? Why does seeing a red apple correspond to the experience of redness rather than the feeling of pain or a random hallucination? Within epiphenomenalism, there is no causal reason for this mapping to be so orderly. The physical world could just as easily have produced any pattern of conscious experiences, or none at all. The fact that our inner experiences match the external world so precisely seems like an extraordinary coincidence if consciousness has no causal role.

    Perhaps, to rescue dualism, we might turn to interactionist dualism, the idea that mind and matter do interact. Yet this immediately raises another problem: how could such an interaction occur without violating the laws of physics as we understand them? The brain appears to be a closed physical system governed by conservation laws. To allow non-physical causes to influence it would require new physics or a revision of our current understanding of causation, and we have no evidence for either.

    If every mental event must have a corresponding physical event, then mental events cannot exist independently of their physical substrate. But if they are completely determined by physical events, then positing a separate mental substance adds nothing to our explanation. The mental either influences the physical, which would violate physical closure, or it does not, which returns us to the original harmony problem.

    In earlier posts I considered the possibility of top-down causation as a way to resolve this difficulty. Perhaps the mental could emerge from the physical while exerting some kind of global, system-level influence consistent with physics. However, on further reflection, this approach does not truly solve the harmony issue. It simply shifts the problem elsewhere. We still need to explain why the mapping between conscious states and physical brain states is so precise, when any arbitrary mapping would have been logically possible.

    This leaves us with two unsatisfying possibilities. The first is a form of radical dualism that openly violates physics and posits a mysterious causal bridge between mind and matter. The second is monism, which holds that mind and matter are not two separate kinds of things at all, but rather that consciousness is a particular organization or pattern within the physical, not something over and above it.

    Given the implausibility of perfect psychophysical harmony under dualism, monism seems the only coherent position left. Consciousness is not something added onto the physical world. It is the physical world itself, viewed from the inside.
  • Paine
    2.9k
    Let us assume, for the sake of argument, a form of epiphenomenalist dualism, in which there are two distinct kinds of things: physical processes occurring in the brain and an associated array of conscious experiencestom111

    There is a logical problem here. Attempts to reduce everything not evidently physical to the physical is not an argument for two different kinds of being. The "physical alone" argument is "monist" without qualification.
  • T Clark
    15.4k
    Consciousness is a passive byproduct, a kind of “ride-along” to the real causal story that takes place in the material world.

    Once we grant this setup, we immediately encounter the problem of psychophysical harmony. Why is it that our conscious experiences are so perfectly aligned with our physical and behavioral states? Why does seeing a red apple correspond to the experience of redness rather than the feeling of pain or a random hallucination? Within epiphenomenalism, there is no causal reason for this mapping to be so orderly. The physical world could just as easily have produced any pattern of conscious experiences, or none at all. The fact that our inner experiences match the external world so precisely seems like an extraordinary coincidence if consciousness has no causal role.
    tom111

    I don’t think there’s any doubt that our consciousness has an active role to play. This is from “Feeling and Knowing” by Antonio Damasio.

    …consciousness is an enriched state of mind. The enrichment consists in inserting additional elements of mind within the ongoing mind process. These additional mind elements are largely cut from the same cloth as the rest of the mind—they are imagetic—but thanks to their contents they announce firmly that all the mental contents to which I currently have access belong to me, are my thing, are actually unfolding within my organism. The addition is revelatory. Revealing mental ownership is first and foremost accomplished by feeling. When I experience the mental event we call pain, I can actually localize it to some part of my body. In reality, the feeling occurs in both my mind and my body, and for a good reason. I own both, they are located within the same physiological space, and they can interact with each other. The manifest ownership of mental contents by the integrated organism where they arise is the distinctive trait of a conscious mind.
  • Metaphysician Undercover
    14.3k
    Perhaps, to rescue dualism, we might turn to interactionist dualism, the idea that mind and matter do interact. Yet this immediately raises another problem: how could such an interaction occur without violating the laws of physics as we understand them? The brain appears to be a closed physical system governed by conservation laws. To allow non-physical causes to influence it would require new physics or a revision of our current understanding of causation, and we have no evidence for either.tom111

    There is no such thing as a closed physical system, so we can dismiss this as a non-issue.
  • ProtagoranSocratist
    16
    The brain appears to be a closed physical system governed by conservation laws.tom111

    It seems that it's a system designed for the survival of the whole organism, i don't get what you mean by it being "closed".

    There is no such thing as a closed physical system, so we can dismiss this as a non-issue.Metaphysician Undercover

    yes, they can't be closed in the sense that they are shut off. To me, the brain is quite open, quite susceptible to influence.

    What if neither monism or dualism are true? I agree that between the two, monism makes more sense, but it perhaps seems more reasonable to say that reality consists of many things that only appear to be unified.
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