Searle, Chalmers, and the Causal Power of Consciousness.(REVISED)

Dear Jeff.                                                 Aug 6, 1999

I have looked over, as I promised, Searle's "The Mystery of Consciousness",
and his attack therein on Chalmers. They come to a similar main conclusion,
which, in accordance with our own position, is that consciousness is not 
logically or ontologically reducible to the objective aspects of nature.

But then why does Searle attack Chalmers?

Searle bases his position on the common sense judgements that "we know", 
first of all, that consciousness exists, and is different from the 
objective aspects of nature, such as our bodies and brains, 
which persist when we're asleep; and, secondly, that "brains cause 
consciousness" and, reciprocally, that consciousness can cause bodily actions:
felt pain can cause the verbal report `ouch'. 

The point here is not that we absolutely "know" these things with 100% 
certainty: no such certainty exists. For scientists the point is rather 
that we must start our theorizing somewhere, and these premises are so 
reasonable, a priori, as to cast very serious doubt upon any premises that 
lead to conclusions that contradict them.  

Eventually the different alternative possible sets of premises that we
use to guide our research must be judged a posteriori, on the basis of 
their practical success. But in the present embryonic state of the theory 
of the mind-brain connection we must rely on a priori criteria to guide 
our research. 

Chalmers says that Searle's mantra, `brains cause consciousness',
"is entirely compatible with my views", "settles almost nothing", and 
"is simply a statement of the problem, not a solution". 

The first point here is that the causal connection FROM brain TO
consciousness is not really in question: none of the principal
positions deny it. The problem is the action of brain upon consciousness.
Here Searle is clear: the pain cause the person to say `ouch', or to report
" my continuing introspection of my feelings allow me to report,
truthfully, that an experience of a painful finger exists `now' ".

Similarly, Chalmers claims that his position is NOT epiphenomenalism.

Yet both philosophers SEEM to want to remain within classical physical
theory, and this theory SEEMS to entail epiphenomenalism.

So the key questions to be asked of them are:
 
(1) Do you accept the adequacy of classical physical theory for 
    understanding the relationship between brain and consciousness?

(2) Do you accept that consciousness can CAUSE behaviour, such as a verbal
    report of the continuing presence of the feeling of a painful finger?

(3) If your answers to these two questions are YES, then how do you reconcile
    your affirmative answer to question (2) with a core idea of 
    classical physical theory. which is that the objective world described
    by classical physical theory is, by itself, causally complete.

I would insist that some cogent answer to this third question must be part 
of any adequate theory of the mind-brain connection that answers the first
two questions affirmatively. 

Chalmers, in his section on "Strategies for avoiding epiphenonenalism"
throws out some suggestions, but they all effectively reject the precepts 
of classical physical theory, as that theory is normally understood. 
The two core ideas of contemporary classical physical theory are:

(1) Causal Explanation, with causation propagated by physical contact 
    between locally defined objectively existing parts.

(2) The dynamical completeness of this objective causal structure. 

Chalmers' suggestions for how to avoid epiphenomenalism seem 
    violate these classical precepts, and move in the direction of 
    orthodox quantum theory by making consciousness primary.

Searle faces this key issue of how one can avoid epiphenomenalism, by 
simply asserting that consciousness is connected to the objective aspects 
by causal connections in both  directions.

But if one accepts both the causal efficacy of our thoughts and the main
precept of classical physics, namely dynamical completeness within
the domain of local objective properties, then:

There would be two kinds of causal chains connecting certain physical 
properties, the first kind of chain confined wholly to the objective domain, 
in accordance with the principles of classical physics, and the other 
acting through consciousness via the claimed two-way causal connections.

This situation is NOT analogous to the causal efficacy of hurricanes
and of heat, where, due to the *reducibility* of all the pertinent 
macroproperties to microproperties, the macroscopically and microscopically
described causal chains are basically the same causal connection, expressed 
in two different ways. But the *irreduciblity* of consciousness to the  
physical---proved by Chalmers for the case that "the physical" is essentially
like what classical physical theory says it is---
blocks such a reduction in the case of consciousness. Barring some `mystical'
connection that somehow makes these two logically and ontologically
different causal chains equivalent, when applied to chains that connect 
physical facts to physical facts, we have a basic incompatility between 
contemporary classical physical theory, with its basic idea of causation
only via contact between localized neighbors, and the assertion that there 
is a two-way causal connection between ideas and actions. 

This conclusion boils down to the fact that classical physical theory 
makes consciousness epiphenomenal, in the sense that the precepts of 
classical physical theory render any causal effect of consciousness
on the physical world completely superfluous and ineffectual, because
the effect is already caused by purely objective aspects acting alone.

This problem was recognized already in the seventeenth century, and is the 
core of the mind-brain problem. But strenuous efforts have been made by
philosophers during this century to get around this problem by reducing
mind to matter: i.e., by trying to pass to some form of materialism
or physicalism, which denies the idea that the facts of consciousness
are EXTRA FACT, not entailed by the physical facts. 

Chalmers shows that IF ONE ACCEPTS THE NOTION OF "THE PHYSICAL"
THAT IS EXEMPLIFIED BY CLASSICAL PHYSICAL THEORY, then the facts about 
conscious are not LOGICALLY/CONCEPTUALLY entailed by the physical: 
the facts of consciousness are, conceptually, EXTRA FACTS. Some extra 
"natural laws" must be added to fix the linkage: the connection between 
these two logically/conceptually separate worlds is not fixed by their
defining concepts alone.

On the other hand, if one accepts the idea of "THE PHYSICAL"
that arises from orthodox quantum theory (i.e., von Neumann/Wigner
quantum theory) where the "THE PHYSICAL" aspect of nature is the
objective evolving state of knowledge represented in quantum theory
by the evolving quantum state of the universe, then the subjective
experiences DO supervene on "THE PHYSICAL". So the ideas of
"physicalism", but not "materialism", turn out to be OK, within
orthodox quantum theory.

Searle's way of addressing the problem of epiphenomenalism is to down play
the lack of an appropriate LOGICAL connection between consciousness
and brain, and stress rather the presence of the CAUSAL connections,
which Chalmers separates out in terms of psycho-physical laws.

But I do not think that this solves the epiphenomenalism problem: if, as
claimed by the precepts of classical physical theory, the objective
world is already causally complete, then the causal chains via 
the subjective aspect of nature are superfluous and ineffectual.

Searle stressed at the beginning of his book the need to abandon
the obsolete traditional categories. But he did not emphasize that
abandoning these obsolete categories means abandoning the classical 
physical theory that embodies them. 

I suspect that Searle's failure to emphasize this point is a key reason
why his critics fail to understand him: they continue tacitly to think in 
terms of a classical-physics conception of physical reality that embodies 
the obsolete concepts that Searle has abandoned.

So both Chalmers and Searle are actually rejecting the precepts of 
classical physical theory, although neither seems able to recognize
or admit this fact, as did Wm. James before them:

"...understand how great is the darkness in which we grope, and never 
forget that the the natural-science assumptions with which we started
are provisional and revisable things." 

Does abandoning classical physics mean abandoning contemporary physics? 
Not at all! Searle's two premises are: 

(1) ontologically subjectively consciousness is ontologically different
from the ontologically objective aspect of nature, and 

(2) there is a two-way causal connection
between the ontologically subjective (i.e., experiential) aspects of
nature and the ontologically objective aspects 

These premises are completely in line with 
(orthodox vN/W) quantum theory, where each conscious experience is 
an increment in knowledge that is connected to some particular
individual physical system, and the physical state of the universe
is an objective compendium of all these individual increments. This state is 
represented (in relativistic quantum field theory) by a structure
consisting of a assembly of microscopically localized elements.  
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