I should have written the options differently, but I can't edit them now. For option two, read "all causes are physical" as basically equivalent to "epiphenomenalism is true". For options three and four, "not all causes are physical" can be also be taken as "epiphenomenalism is not true".

None of the above.

No idea, really. None of those. Any reason why you left out idealism? Or Integrated Information Theory (IIT)? And I guess you could also add emergence theory.

Obviously there's lots of things the poll could have been but wasn't. The point is it's a perfectly good poll. For example, it didn't capture my position, which is that no causes are physical. But the framing of the question is interesting on its own terms and I picked the closest option.

"Talk of consciousness is nonsense" (mostly) – folk psychology. "First-person subjective experience" is an intermittent, metacognitive illusion of sufficiently complex physical systems.

After all the observable physical determinism, the speculative metaphysical reductionism, all the chatter and nonsense, the otherwise unexceptional human brain ends up being a conniving mass of wetware.
(Sigh)

Idealism is compatible with option 4. "Not all" does not exclude "none".

As for IIT, I guess you would say we are conscious and consciousness did not evolve. I am not sure whether IIT proponents would argue that consciousness is epiphenomenal or not. Either it is or it isn't. What third option would there be?

Emergentists could select any of the first four options.

What is your position that doesn't fit any of the options? It seems to me that these five options should cover all positions. There are only four possible combinations of answers for two yes/no questions. I have three yes/no questions, but if you say no to consciousness, the other two questions are pointless. I don't see how there could be any other options.

Consciousness?
If yes:
Causally efficacious?
Evolved?

Genuinely surprised that "no first-person experience" is leading.

Heh. I voted for that as the closest option, but more because of annoying meta-beliefs. I have a perspective on the world, I experience the world, maybe we could call this first-person experience -- but relating the problem of consciousness to the theory of evolution is such a large question that I'd rather judge "no relationship exists" than take on the other four on option. I'd have voted "I don't know", if that option existed.

Mitchell and Webb: Does God Exist?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUbjpwyesk0

We are conscious, not all causes are physical, and consciousness evolved by natural selection.

Which I’m surprised is currently leading.


What about you?

It seems to me like the problem for the eliminitivist comes up in defining what metacognitive is supposed to mean here. For to say, "consciousness is an illusion cast by the processes of thinking about thinking," is not very helpful unless one already has clear idea of what "thinking is," and how to identify itin nature. Further, if we accept computational theories of mind, we'd have to ask when computation becomes thinking, since it seems clear that not all computation is thinking.

Perhaps elimination would be easier if theorists actually backed off "computation," as an explanatory model? The philosophical problems of defining what computation is vis-a-vis physical systems are myriad and daunting.

I like eliminative works for a few reasons. They do a good job cataloging the myriad ways in which "consciousness" is not what it seems to be, to us. Global workspace theories seem like they are on to something. But even if "to explain is to explain away," you still need to adequately explain first.

Where they fail is in being able to tell me why I shouldn't think then that an ant hive experiences consciousness, and more consciousness than the ants that make it up. Or why the FBI isn't more conscious than its individual members. Maybe it's prejudice, but these things don't seem like they should be conscious. And yet, if thinking emerges from really complex, really recursive, computation, markets, etc. seem like prime candidates for consciousness, Keyne's "animal spirits" vindicated.

This problem has made integrated information theory more palatable to me. It might seem to lead us towards panpsychism, but it also explains why you can't just replicate a brain scan with paper towels and get a "consciousness." Down to the very basic level, quantum effects and all, the paper towel brain is simply not a true replica of the brain. It is just a model of the course grained structure of the real brain, but the real brain itself is a very different process.

IDK, do any eliminitivists do IIT? All the one's I've read are CMT guys. IIT seems to attract pancomputationalists and pansemiosis folks, and these ideas, while they have some interesting things to say, seem to leave open the fact that everything is conscious.

BTW: to answer the question.

1. We are conscious, although what we mean by that term and the reality of consciousness might be quite different (Dennett, Bakker, etc.). It is unclear to me if "higher level" group entities made up of conscious entities can also be, in some ways, conscious.

In support of this unpopular opinion, I would point out that it seems to be the case that distinct "brain areas" can generate experiences in (relative) isolation. This being the case, the idea of "composite consciousness" doesn't seem completely far-fetched. But if consciousness is grounded in "computation" or a more amorphous "information processing," then this seems to leave open the door that the universe itself would possess a form of consciousness.

This seems like it might be a problem (or a perk). But it also doesn't seem equivalent with panpsychism, since information and computation are processes, and so we wouldn't say "fundamental units of stuff have experience," but that experience emerges to the extent that the entire process shows this sort of recursive, "metacognitive" computational structure.

IDK, maybe this is a perk. It would seem to make panENtheism make more sense.

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2. Epiphenomenalism is probably false, but it's a hard question to answer definitively. Consciousness seems to play a role in decision making, and it's obvious how a capability for self-reflection would be useful for survival and reproduction.It seems like a mistake to me to presuppose, as epiphenomenalism does, that you can get the same "input/output" behavior without the experiences, that the two are separable. If the two are inseparable, than they are causally inseparable and experience has a causal function.

3. "A full explanation of behavior can be given by a purely physical, third-person description of the objective situation without any appeal to subjective experience." By definition, an explanation of behavior that doesn't include the experiences is not a complete explanation.

4. I am increasingly thinking that saying the world is made up of "physical" versus "mental" stuff is irrelevant distinction. If there is only one substance, then process does all explanatory lifting. Positing some sort of hard line between the physical and the mental seems to be a misstep born of Kantian (crypto)-dualism and positivist misconceptions about what "objectivity" is.

I will allow that some things are "more real" than others, but I think this holds in the sense that Hegel and Plato meant it. Things are more real to the extent that they are less simply effects, i.e. to the degree they are more necessary, self-determining.

What is your position that doesn't fit any of the options? It seems to me that these five options should cover all positions. There are only four possible combinations of answers for two yes/no questions. I have three yes/no questions, but if you say no to consciousness, the other two questions are pointless. I don't see how there could be any other options.

Consciousness?
If yes:
Causally efficacious?
Evolved? — petrichor

I would have voted for the first option:

We are conscious, epiphenomenalism is true, and consciousness evolved by natural selection. — petrichor

...except that I see epiphenomenalism as based on simplistic thinking. My view is similar to the view Peter Tse expresses in this abstract. (unfortunately a wall of text)

Idealism is compatible with option 4. "Not all" does not exclude "none". — petrichor

I guess I don't understand what you're trying to do. I was just curious why you settled on those options.

Your understanding of consciousness is a mess.
One thing is consciousness, another one is the self-consciousness. Read a bit more about the topic...

My position is not "eliminationist" as the two embedded links indicate.

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/847760

In order to say consciousness has evolved, you would have to define what it is for, what purpose it serves. And that is what can’t be done. That is why there are many (to my mind, pointless) arguments nowadays about what ‘function’ consciousness serves or why it evolved. To try and frame the question in scientific terms is to misunderstand it, as science begins with the objective, the measurable, and consciousness is not an object for itself. (This doesn’t rule out cognitive science as that is the objective measurement of specific functions of consciousness.)

What about you? — Patterner

I am genuinely puzzled about the matter of consciousness and mental causation. I tend to think that it is obvious that I am conscious. I have a hard time with eliminativism or illusionism. I can't imagine how, if there is actually no experience, there could be a situation where it nevertheless seems that there is an experience. Who is fooled? All seeming, it seems to me, presupposes experience and an experiencer.

I also tend to think it's obvious that my consciousness somehow has an effect on my behavior. After all, I talk about it! I even tend to think it is obvious that I have free will. However, when I try to understand and analyze these matters rationally, I find myself confronted with all kinds of interesting and seemingly insoluble problems and puzzles no matter what position I consider.

It seems far easier to disprove free will than to support it rationally or scientifically. But my intuition strongly conflicts with what my reasoning urges me to believe. I often wonder if all the options we humans have thus far imagined are far from the mark. I am not sure we even clearly understand what we are talking about.

I lean toward taking consciousness and free will seriously. However, I am honestly baffled. I think a good dose of epistemic humility is warranted here. I am a dumb primate after all! But I vote, provisionally, for option four. I believe there is something to the claim that I am conscious. And I think that my ability to even think about it means that it somehow influences the evolution of my brain state, and thus isn't epiphenomenal. If epiphenomenalism were true, it seems to me, our talking about it would be inexplicable.

I also tend to think that consciousness, or some kind of proto-consciousness, is as deeply situated in the ontological strata as matter, and exists in some sense prior to biology, and so didn't evolve. Perhaps the subjective and objective are two sides of a coin and arise together as a relation between two parts of reality. Maybe they are not different substances, but rather two aspects of an internal relation in something that itself is prior to relations at all. Neutral monism?

Complex forms of cognition that have adaptive advantage are another matter. Those surely evolved. Perhaps the having of a sense of self, or self-reference, or a self-model is something that evolved. But I have a hard time seeing how basic experientiality, first-person-ness, that there is something it is like to be, could have evolved in a world that prior to such a magical event, was completely objective only and altogether lacking in subjectivity and perspective, a world completely "there" but never "here".

What many people, probably many cognitive scientists included, seem to mean when they use the word consciousness is likely mostly a kind of responsiveness to stimuli, a kind of modeling of world and self, a high level of information integration, a characteristically agentic form of behavior. I don't believe anything like that exists prior to biology. But I take seriously the idea that there there might well be a kind of experiential aspect or interiority to everything. The evolutionary process shaped what was there already. It didn't create anything fundamentally new. I don't find arguments for strong emergence compelling. And I think it is a hard case to make that the first-person perspective is an example of a weakly emergent phenomena. If it is somehow "produced" by arranging otherwise completely "dead" matter in a special way, this is very surprising and seems like a miracle.

I would have voted for the first option:

We are conscious, epiphenomenalism is true, and consciousness evolved by natural selection.
— petrichor

...except that I see epiphenomenalism as based on simplistic thinking. My view is similar to the view Peter Tse expresses in this abstract. (unfortunately a wall of text) — wonderer1

Thanks for the link! When I saw that, I recognized Tse's ideas as something I encountered some years ago but forgot about. I'll have read it again soon. Perhaps the answer to my following question is in the linked material. What are your thoughts on the compatibility of epiphenomenalism and the evolution of consciousness by natural selection? It seems obvious, at least on the surface, that if consciousness were not somehow causally efficacious, it couldn't possibly make any difference to behavior, and therefore could not be selected for. Isn't that the basic claim of epiphenomenalism, that consciousness makes no difference to behavior? How then could it be advantageous to an organism?

I have often gotten the impression, which is maybe mistaken, that many in the scientific community basically take this position, that consciousness is real, that everything that happens in the brain is fully accounted for by low-level pre-conscious physical causes (and therefore epiphenomenalism must be true), and yet that consciousness evolved by natural selection. This has always seemed to me to be a problematic combination of incompatible beliefs. It makes me suspect that people haven't thought it all through sufficiently. But maybe I am missing something. Maybe, for one thing, they just don't even have in mind the same thing I do when talking about consciousness.

What do you think? Is epiphenomenalism compatible with the idea that subjectivity evolved?

I guess I don't understand what you're trying to do. I was just curious why you settled on those options. — Tom Storm

Among other things, I wanted to see if anyone here believes in the evolution of epiphenomenal consciousness. I am curious to hear what thoughts such person might have about how these positions can be compatible, since it doesn't make sense to me. I get the feeling from much popular science-oriented journalism that my poll option one is a common position among academics. But I am not sure if it really is.

The sort of hard materialists that deny consciousness at all seem to escape this problem, at the cost of denying what seems obvious and immediately verifiable, namely that there is experience.

Naturalists in general are usually committed to the full causal closure of the physical, with full reduction usually being assumed to be possible. If someone with such commitments nevertheless believes in consciousness, this would seem to force them to accept epiphenomenalism. And yet talk in such circles is common about how consciousness evolved, how brains "produce" it, and so on. This seems problematic and I am curious about it. I wonder how much they have thought about the compatibility of these positions.

And beyond the problem of the evolution by natural selection of a trait that makes no difference, there is the problem of our talking about it. How does a reference to it come to be present in our behavior? If X contains information about Y, it usually seems necessary that Y has had some kind of causal role in influencing the state of X.

I honestly find myself deeply puzzled about the seeming fact that I am conscious and that I am able to form thoughts about my subjectivity and qualitative experience, and talk about it. And I don't think I am talking nonsense when I claim that I have experience. But it seems like this should be impossible!

Your understanding of consciousness is a mess.
One thing is consciousness, another one is the self-consciousness. Read a bit more about the topic... — Raul

Is this directed at me? This comes across as rather hostile. If I am not misreading your tone, why do feel that way?

I am very much aware of the difference between consciousness as I've chosen to define it for the purposes of the poll, and self-consciousness. I defined it explicitly in the way I did specifically because I think many people have in mind some kind of self-representation when they use the word consciousness, or even just a behavioral disposition. I wanted to avoid confusion and the talking past one another that often happens in discussions of consciousness.

Thanks for clarifying. It's an interesting subject but I doubt philosophy or science will solve it any time soon. I have no expertise in the subject so I don't speculate much, except that we have never documented any instances of consciousness exisiting outside of brains. That does seem to be a clue. Of course idealism solves or dissolves our dualistic dilemmas, I just don't find the model convincing so far.

I have a hard time with eliminativism or illusionism. I can't imagine how, if there is actually no experience, there could be a situation where it nevertheless seems that there is an experience. — petrichor

Experience is undeniable, yes. But unconscious billiard balls can experience impacts, and unconscious computers can experience changes in state or configuration, analogous to our messier brain shivers.

What is deniable is that a shiver experienced by the brain is ever actually accompanied by a corresponding picture in the brain, or world in the brain.

Phenomenal consciousness as traditionally depicted obviously cannot have evolved because evolution is a physical process involving things like DNA. If consciousness cannot be reduced to that stuff then the idea of its evolution is just incoherent.

I have often gotten the impression, which is maybe mistaken, that many in the scientific community basically take this position, that consciousness is real, that everything that happens in the brain is fully accounted for by low-level pre-conscious physical causes (and therefore epiphenomenalism must be true), and yet that consciousness evolved by natural selection. This has always seemed to me to be a problematic combination of incompatible beliefs. It makes me suspect that people haven't thought it all through sufficiently. But maybe I am missing something. Maybe, for one thing, they just don't even have in mind the same thing I do when talking about consciousness. — petrichor

A couple of things you may be missing. First, evolution is more than natural selection. A neutral trait may go to fixation in a population by genetic drift. If you say that consciousness has no effect on behaviour, it must be selectively neutral.

Second, and I suspect this is the real issue, are emergent properties (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/) and your use of `cause'. You can say that fluid dynamics caused a tornado, and that a tornado caused some damage. Or you could say the fluid dynamics caused the damage. People won't mind if you're talking about tornados. I think that many of the scientists you're criticising would say that consciousness is emergent like a tornado.

What are your thoughts on the compatibility of epiphenomenalism and the evolution of consciousness by natural selection? It seems obvious, at least on the surface, that if consciousness were not somehow causally efficacious, it couldn't possibly make any difference to behavior, and therefore could not be selected for. — petrichor

Right. Brain tissue is metabolically expensive and it doesn't make sense in evolutionary terms that neurology supporting non-causal consciousness would evolve.

That said, I don't think we have any other option than to settle for simplistic intuitions about the causal role of consciousness. Brains are simply much too complex for the minds they instantiate to form a detailed picture of what's going on. So the way consciousness is causal is necessarily different (much more complicated) than our intuitive sense of the causality.

I think psychologist Jon Haidt's image of the rider and the elephant conveys important aspects of the situation we find ourselves in.

It makes me suspect that people haven't thought it all through sufficiently. — petrichor

Well, to be fair, I'd say that it's not within human capability to think it through *sufficiently*. (Depending of course on what "sufficiently" is taken to mean.) Without substantially better technology than is available now, the best we have is partially informed conjectures.

Even if we had a complete 'schematic' of the brain, what would we do with it? I'm an electrical engineer who has worked with brilliant engineers and scientists, and I know that that sort of complexity is beyond the ability of humans to grasp in a comprehensive way. Of course modern AI is becoming a necessary tool in neuroscientific experiments, but maybe there is a limit to the extent to which we want AI's to understand us better than we understand ourselves?

Of course modern AI is becoming a necessary tool in neuroscientific experiments, but maybe there is a limit to the extent to which we want AI's to understand us better than we understand ourselves? — wonderer1

Maybe not. Why would we rationally want that?