Body-Mind/Fact-Value: How Do the Two Problems Interrelate?

1. Body-Mind/Fact-Value: How Do the Two Problems Interrelate? E-INTENTIONALITY THURSDAY 15 MARCH 2007 Steve Torrance and Erik Myin

3. Experience and value • In some people’s minds, the two domains are closely associated, in some deep way… • See Sue Blackmore, Conversations on Consciousness OUP, 2005 5 examples…

4. 1. I don’t squish bugs anymore Conversation with Christof Koch (p 134) • SB: How has studying all this changed you as a person? • CK: Well, I can tell you in a very practical way, I don’t squish bugs anymore….unless they attack me. Why? Because I’m a biologist. Most pet owners would agree that cats and dogs are conscious, and the monkey is conscious…. Now, you can ask, how low does it go in the evolutionary ladder?

5. 2. self-transformation;…becoming fully what we might be Conversation with Stephen LaBerge (p 146) • SB: Do you think that a science of consciousness must necessarily entail …questions of self-transformation? • SL: Yes. ….Eastern traditions have been working at this inner knowledge for thousands of years. And I think that we in the West have the unique opportunity of benefiting from an interaction with that Eastern tradition, bringing in the Western scientific perspective. I think the collaboration of these two perspectives is what will give us the potential to understand consciousness in a new way and then make use of the value that it has, in becoming fully what we might be.

6. 3. without consciousness morals evaporate Conversation with Roger Penrose (p 184) • SB: Does [a] moral element come in for you when you’re thinking about the nature of consciousness? • RP: I think it has everything to do with it, because without consciousness somehow morals evaporate. I remember having an argument with a computationalist – I’ve forgotten who it was now – where the question of morality came up, and this person just didn’t understand what consciousness had to do with morality, and I thought, ‘What?!’ I mean, if you bought a computer which is conscious you’d have a responsibility; it’s a moral issue.

7. 4. … the basis of our joys, pleasures, pains, tragedies Conversation with Petra Stoerig (p 213) • SB: I want you to tell me …why consciousness is so interesting and difficult. • PS: Why is it interesting? That is an easy question: of course it’s interesting because it’s the basis of all our joys and pleasures and pains and tragedies and so on.…From my point of view, consciousness is the prerequisite of experience, and experience is what makes us happy or sad or enjoy the sunset or a glass of wine, or a wonderful Belgian meal…

8. 5. The most cherished quality of what it is to be alive Conversation with Francisco Varela (pp 225-6) • FV: …So the question is, why is it that consciousness feels so personal, so intimate, so central to who we are, and of course, that’s why it’s so interesting. The study of consciousness is a kind of singularity in science, because you’re studying precisely the most cherished quality of what it is to be alive.

9. What’s the connection? • it’s seen in rather vague terms; • different people see the connection differently; • Possible themes: (a) C as basis of quality of life (b) To see a being as C is to assume a responsibility (c) Understanding C fully leads to the possibility of self-transformation

10. A Tale of Two Gaps • (a) A gap between properties of brains/bodies and consciousness • (Mind-Body gap) (primarily consciousness) • (b) A gap between facts-in-the-world and ethical commitments • (Fact-Value gap) (primarily ethical value)

11. Questions (a) examine the common structures of these two debates • how far would participants in each debate benefit from comparing their ‘moves’ with corresponding ‘moves’ in the other debate? (b) can an ‘enactively’ inspired approach provide a standpoint from which progress can be made on both issues • in parallel? • in collaboration? • How useful is it to see an interaction or ‘entanglement’ between the two domains?

12. Objective/subjective • Both issues can be put in terms of a question about the relation between objectivity and subjectivity: MIND-BODY: • Can ‘subjective’ (1st-person) properties of mind be explained in terms of ‘objective’ (3rd-person) features (e.g. of our physical make-up)? FACT-VALUE: • Can the ‘subjective’ features of ethical judgments be grounded in ‘objective’ features of the world?

13. Special features of each domain • Traditionally, theorists have identified a key property for each domain that makes it special and problematic… • CONSCIOUSNESS • the qualitative, felt nature of conscious awareness (subjectivity, phenomenality) • ETHICS • the conceptual connection between ethical beliefs and preferences, commitments, springs to action (prescriptivity, practicality)

14. Key dilemmas • CONSCIOUSNESS: • how to get a theory of consciousness which grounds it in ‘objective’ features of the world without obscuring the special feature(s) of consciousness (subjectivity, phenomenality) • ETHICS: • how to get a theory of ethics which grounds it in ‘objective’ features of the world without obscuring the special features of ethics (prescriptivity, practicality)

15. Commonalities between the domains • Different kinds of responses to each problem match up with each other • Examples….

16. Examples of analogies between the two problem areas • SPECIAL ENTITIES OR PROPERTIES: Consciousness as a special property: non-physical but scientifically well-founded (Chalmers). Goodness, rightness, etc. as special properties - non-natural, but objectively knowable (Moore) • REDUCTIONISM / NATURALISM. Consciousness-facts equated with (e.g.) brain-facts or computational facts. Ethical facts equated with (e.g.) facts about maximizing satisfaction or facts about social choices. 3. ELIMINATIVE VIEWS – concepts of consciousness or of ethics seen as based on confusions about mythical facts/properties (as in postulated by theories of type 1.)

17. The legacy of Logical Positivism: ethics • Hilary Putnam, in a recent lecture (The Fact-Value Dichotomy and its Critics, Dublin, March 2007): • Putnam: • Logical Positivism claimed that ethical statements (and value statements generally) were cognitively meaningless, and not amenable to rational discussion • Yet “ethical questions are the ones that most of us think of as the most important in life, and as being the most important to discuss rationally.” • But for much of the 20th century ethical issues were marginalized in philosophy and in science because of the legacy of Logical Positivism

18. The legacy of Logical Positivism: consciousness • Reference to consciousness (and other ‘mental’ entities) was banished from scientific discourse by Logical Positivism • once again because such terms were seen as cognitively meaningless. • Behaviourism (although it predated the Vienna Circle), was perhaps given greater pre-eminence because of the philosophical influence of logical positivism. • Even with the rise of ‘cognitivism’ in the 50s and 60s, consciousness continued to be marginalized

19. Enactivism Certain strands within Enactivism (and Phenomenology) suggest a distinctive approach to BOTH the brain-consciousness gap AND • the fact-value gap. (Cf Varela, Thompson, Noe, O’Regan, Myin – plus key ideas from Merleau-Ponty, etc.)

20. Some relevant ideas of enactivism • Mind as ‘lived embodiment’ • Importance of sensorimotor interaction with environment in characterizing cognition, experience • Intersubjectivity as pivotal • Problematization of traditional ideas of objectivity and subjectivity • ‘Laying down a path in walking’; mind as ‘bringing forth’ a world

21. What follows will also provide an approach to was called (in the Life and Mind talk yesterday) a ‘thick’ conception of phenomenality….

22. Conscious experiences as special kinds of entities in the world The ‘consciousness-brain’ gap: We propose to target an ontological assumption behind the gap – • that conscious states are special kinds of entities (facts, properties, etc.) in the world • and that these entities / facts / properties need to be tied in with the other kinds of entities / facts / properties through logical links of explanation.

23. Difference of Perspectives The Enactive approach suggests a way of rethinking the relation between the phenomenalor subjective and the physical or objective aspects of our nature. • The difference between the phenomenal and the objective should be understood in terms of a difference in perspectives • rather than a difference between kinds of entities, facts, properties, etc.

24. Mind-body gap as incompatibility of perspectives WE PROPOSE: • The ‘gap’ between consciousness and physicality arises from an incompatibility between two perspectives, • rather than as a result of an ontological incompatibility of different kinds of fact • (i.e.) of two subcategories of one generic ontological category of ‘fact’.

25. A similar view can be held about the fact-value gap (to be discussed later) • People often think of ethical judgments as referring to special kinds of facts (or, by contrast, as expressing ‘imperatives’, or ‘prescriptions’) • But we claim: it would be far more fruitful to think of ethics in terms of two perspectives

26. Dreaming of Objectivity • Both gaps arise from a common framework concerning objectivity • This familiar, but misguided, framework is based on equating the universe with a totality of facts (Wittgenstein, Tractatus) • Where these facts are thought as being ideally knowable by an ideally placed observer • And where the goal of science is to try to describe and explain more and more comprehensively .

27. More on ‘objectivity’ as commonly understood • ‘Objective knowledge’ thus consists in trying to get as close as possible to that ideal-observer state • This may be done via systematization of observation and theory, as in science, by ‘pure thought’, etc. • This leads naturally to puzzles like trying to fit CONSCIOUSNESS or ETHICS into this framework

28. Inflationary or deflationary approaches to objectivity The puzzles prompt alternative philosophical solutions – of either an inflationary or a deflationary kind • Inflationary solutions propose special kinds of properties • (e.g. special ‘Cartesian’ or Chalmers-style phenomenal entities or properties; or special Moore-style ethical properties) • Deflationary solutions offer various styles of rejection of such special entities or properties • (reductionism; eliminativism) (Cf. Hilary Putnam, Ethics without Ontology. )

29. All such solutions (both inflationary AND deflationary) are unsatisfactory for all the reasons familiar to students of both debates • E.g. the classical puzzles about colour-blind superscientists; zombies, etc. • Or puzzles about “open questions” in ethics • The way out is to challenge the picture of objectivity which generates the various familiar kinds of solution in both domains…

30. Two perspectives, not two kinds of entities • Instead of seeing the world as populated with (possibly) two different kinds of entities • ‘Objective’ ones (nice, well-behaved); • ‘Subjective’ ones (dodgy)… • …rather see the world, life, experience, as capable of being conceptualized from two perspectives – • ‘subjective’ (or ‘lived’, ‘engaged’, ‘enacted’) • ‘My’ world • ‘objective’ (‘disengaged’, ‘in-itself’, ‘ontic’) • ‘The’ world

31. Two perspectives: experience • This can be applied to the ‘consciousness/body’ gap by saying… • ‘experiences’ are not special kinds of events which have subjective, private, ‘ineffable’ properties • (in this sense of ‘qualia’, eliminativists are right to say that qualia don’t exist) • rather, our experiential awareness provides the way we live our body and the way we engage with the world • See, for example, Evan Thompson Phenomenology of the Cognitive Sciences, 2004.

32. Two perspectives: ethics • In the case of ethics – instead of saying that ethics deals with a domain of special moral facts or features (e.g. goodness as a G.E.Moore-style ‘non-natural property’) • We treat the ethical view of the world as part of how we engage with others in the lived world

33. Two perspectives on the same world • So the special ‘phenomenality’ of consciousness arises from the ‘livedness’ of the ‘lived’ perspective • The ‘objective’ world (conceived as in-itself, as phenomenally inert) IS the world which we live, but conceived outside that living…. • And so too, the special ‘practicality’ or ‘prescriptivity’ of our ethical thought also arises from our ‘living’ our world • Whereas the world conceived objectively is evaluatively inert….

34. The ‘lived’ world as idiosyncratic, open • The ‘lived’ perspective (the perspective of ‘my world’) is essentially idiosyncratic - • there is an essential openness about how I relate myself to the world. • Each of us has to choose their own foundational framework, their own way of placing myself in ‘the’ world. • So there is an essential openness both about how I relate my experience to my embodiment and other physical features of the world, and about my values in action in the world. • [In fact, for many of us, there is a constant vacillation between various different frameworks.] • In order to resolve this choice we can do one of two things: either (1) converse with others to compare and share frameworks (2) try to live with no framework • (Buddhist ‘enlightenment’?)

35. Twin headaches • This obviously creates a big headache for both the fields of consciousness and of ethics !! • In fact these are the twin headaches of the mind-body and fact-value gaps: • If the ‘lived’ perspective is open in this way, then there seems to be no watertight way of explaining • how our experiential properties emerge from certain kinds of neural or bodily processes (rather than others) • how our fundamental ethical convictions (e.g. that slavery or genocide are morally heinous) are more than just idiosyncratic preferences

36. The mind-body headache • the unsettling idea that, without some kind of lawlike explanatory framework, there is no way of demarcating the ‘phenomenological constituency’ • What creatures are conscious and what aren’t? • Why should anyone or anything have a phenomenology? • you, others, slugs, bunches of keys, robots, etc. • Why should you deem me to have a phenomenology? Why I, you?

37. The fact-value headache • the equally unsettling idea that, without some kind of lawlike link between factual statements and moral norms, there is no way of demarcating situations in the world that have a positive or negative moral significance: • there is no way of showing (for example) why it’s morally bad to seek to increase someone’s pain or to diminish their pleasure, • or why it is morally admirable to strive to reduce suffering, etc.

38. No ultimate validations? (a) If my consciousness is essentially linked with – or expressed in – the orienting framework(s) that I adopt, then • there seems to be no way to describe the ‘true nature’ of my consciousness; • and no way to give a ‘true’ story of the relationship between my consciousness and what lies ‘outside’ my consciousness [me and not-me] (b) And similarly for ethics: if my living expresses or embodies my ethical outlook, then • but there seems to be no way to provide an ‘external’ validation for my moral values

39. A possible solution: Sharedness • BUT what each of us can do is reflect on the the sharedness of our condition … • From this reflection we can perhaps extract or reconstruct • A conception of science as universal explanatory laws • A conception of universalistic ethics .  but neither can be given a rationally watertight justification; • everyone is free to adopt any other framework – at cost… • (the cost is: increasing idiosyncracy)

40. Relief from headaches • The solution is to realize that the predicament of idiosyncracy is not just MY predicament, but EVERYONE’S: • It’s a universal predicament • Pessimists might see this as fostering a nightmarish plurality or nihilism • But equally it could engender a move towards unification

41. Convergence in ethics • IN ETHICS: • it can allow for the possibility of a normative convergence between different points of view in ethics. • The ‘lived’ ethical perspective isn’t something that is done by a single person, solipsistically: • In recognizing other beings, I recognize other beings who are each themselves engaging in their lived perspective.

42. Recognizing the lived perspectives of others • So: With recognizing the existence of others’ lived perspectives, come certain coherency constraints on what moral orientations make sense for each of us. • Each actor, on reflection, will come to recognize the lived reality of every other actor, • and by that token certain life-styles or life-definitions become harder to embrace consistently or coherently: • for example: crudely self-serving or tyrannical ethical viewpoints will make little sense on examination.

43. Any such self-serving viewpoint will presuppose an acquiescence by others to one’s self-seeking or power-broking • Such acquiescence will, of course, in all probability not be forthcoming, • or if obtained, it’s likely to be obtained only as a result of some kind of physical or psychological duress.

44. Summarizing how sharedness achieves ethical convergence So • the idea of a ‘lived’ or ‘engaged’ ethical perspective does not contain any explicit restrictions on the content of ethical orientations that may be chosen • But the world we live in is one in which each person potentially affected by any individual’s actions is also enacting their own ethical orientation. • This reduces the coherence of certain ethical orientations (e.g. purely egoistic or self-serving ones) • and tends to encourage a convergence on universalistic moral positions.

45. Thus: • everyone is in the same lived situation with regard to moral choice • so there mustbe a kind of intervalidity constraint on the moral choices one enacts • Our moral choices are not just arbitrary choices in a social vacuum, • rather they have the effect of proposals for commonly shared ways of living together. • Recognition of this makes it more likely that idiosyncratic or self-serving moral choices make little sense • because such choices have no appeal to those who are not the selves served by such choices.

46. Relief from the mind-body headache • There is an analogy here with how our perceptual consciousness relates to the ‘objective’ world. • Within the lived perceptual perspective on the world we encounter many objects in the world as independent from the flow of our experience. • Our sensorimotor encounter with these objects provides us with a set of possible ways in which our own individual experience can vary as what we do varies (sensorimotor contingencies). • But at the same time we experience such objects in terms of possible experiences for many other lived perspectives at the same time. • The world of public objects is thus a world which is not just a source of experiential flow for our own individual history, but a source of experience for an indefinite number of other conscious agents.

47. From Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception • Here M-P. is discussing how we construct ‘objectivity’ in our perceptions • E.g. how we conceive of a house itself over and above the individual experience of the house. • ...la maison elle-même n’est pas la maison vue de nulle part, mais la maison vue de toutes parts. L’object achevé est translucide, il est pénétré de tous côtés par une infinité actuelle de regards qui se recoupent dans sa profondeur et n’y laissent rien de caché

48. …the house itself isn’t a house viewed from nowhere, but from everywhere. The object thus achieved (enacted??) is ‘translucid’, penetrated from all sides by an actual infinity of looks which deeply intersect with one another, and leave nothing hidden.

49. So – although our lived world is idiosyncratic • (I could, in principle, think I see a weasel when you see a cloud) • There are normative constraints upon our how we interpret our experience, • Based not just upon our sensorimotor interactions with the environment • But also upon our interaction with other experiencing agents • This also helps us to resolve questions of what particular features in the world seem to be most closely associated with phenomenality - brains versus rocks… • (the ‘phenomenological constituency’ question)

50. Cross-fertilization: moral concepts as intertwined with phenomenal concepts (1) Moral concepts are deeply intertwined with phenomenological concepts • e.g. Welfare – • a key component of the notion of welfare is to do with states of conscious feeling that have positive or negative polarity • Key terms in moral discourse such as benevolence, sympathy, interests, care, happiness, suffering, etc – all such concepts imply a focus on people’s states of consciousness • There’s an important role for asking ‘what it’s like’ in ethics as well as in the study of consciousness – it plays a key role in ethically evaluating and advocating actions…