A Place for Consciousness: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World Gregg Rosenberg OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS A Place for Consciousness Self Expressions Minds, Morals, and the Meaning of Life Owen Flanagan The Conscious Mind In Search of a Fundamental Theory David J. Chalmers Deconstructing the Mind Stephen P. Stich The Human Animal Personal Identity without Psychology Eric Olson Minds and Bodies Philosophers and Their Ideas Colin McGinn What’s Within? Nativism Reconsidered Fiona Cowie Purple Haze The Puzzle of Consciousness Joseph Levine Consciousness and Cognition A Unified Account Michael Thau Thinking without Words José Luis Bermúdez Identifying the Mind Selected Papers of U. T. Place Edited by George Graham and Elizabeth R. Valentine Three Faces of Desire Timothy Schroeder Gut Reactions A Perceptual Theory of Emotion Jesse J. Prinz A Place for Consciousness Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World Gregg Rosenberg PHILOSOPHY OF MIND SERIES Series Editor David J. Chalmers, University of Arizona A Place for Consciousness Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World Gregg Rosenberg 1 2004 3 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York, 10016 www.oup.usa.org Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rosenberg, Gregg. A place for consciousness : probing the deep structure of the natural world / Gregg Rosenberg. p. cm.—(Philosophy of mind series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-516814-3 1. Consciousness 2. Philosophy of nature. I. Title. II. Series. B808.9.R67 2004 126—dc22 2003063988 13579108642 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Do you believe that absolutely everything can be expressed scientifically? —Hedwig Born to Albert Einstein Yes, it would be possible, but it would make no sense. It would be description without meaning, as if you described a Beethoven symphony as a variation of wave pressure. —Einstein’s reply This page intentionally left blank This book is dedicated to the memories of my father, Donald Rosenberg, and my good friend David Han. I loved you both. Rest in peace. This page intentionally left blank Preface My intention in writing this book was to create something whose importance lies beyond the details of its arguments. I myself consider this primarily a book of ideas. Of all my hopes, my dearest is this: that A Place for Consciousness should provide inspiration to those like me who were raised with the physicalist ortho- doxy, accepting it but not fully comfortably, whose disquiet always has been si- lenced at the end by the baffling question: How could it be otherwise? I believe this book points to a place in the space of philosophical ideas where something truly new and interesting exists. I am, above all, trying to lead readers to that place so that they can return without me to explore it on their own. The space of ideas is a public space, after all, and these particular hidden woods can surely be mapped better than I have been able to map them. We all know that in some sense there is a ghost in the machine. The question that grips us is, why? Why does consciousness even exist? What use has nature for an experience machine? This book proposes a place for consciousness in na- ture. The framework developed here is ambitious in its scope and detail: It ties experience into a theory of the categorical foundations of causation. Scholars should see it as an attempt to make a substantial advance in the development of Bertrand Russell’s Structural Realism by borrowing some inspiration from Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy. General readers can simply see it as an attempt to explain the mystery of the soul. Liberal Naturalism is my name for views of this type. Both Russell and Whitehead argued that physical science reveals only a struc- tural aspect to nature. If physics is all structure, it is natural to suppose that in- trinsic properties related to the intrinsic properties we experience in conscious- ness are the intrinsic content of the physical. This suggestion raises several questions: (1) Why should the intrinsic properties of a physical system be expe- riential? (2) Why do they exist above the level of the microphysical, where large- scale cognitive systems might experience macrolevel intrinsic content? (3) Why should they form a unity of the kind we are acquainted with in consciousness? and (4) Why should phenomenal content, as the intrinsic content of the physical, correspond so closely to the information structure within the brain? By consti- tutively linking experience and causation, I answer these questions from first principles. [...]... “Liberal Naturalism,” I first argue that physicalism cannot adequately account for consciousness To establish physicalism’s failure, I analyze what it means to be a physical fact by establishing an analogy with an artificial kind of world The analysis shows, in a concrete way, why no physicalistic theory will entail the facts of consciousness and defends the importance of entailment to the truth of physicalism... automata names a certain class of artificial, digital worlds A cellular automaton consists of points, or “cells,” located in an abstract space, all of which can have kinds of “causal” properties Computer modelers define various physics for these worlds and study the behaviors they exhibit To start an automaton, one assigns an initial distribution of causal properties to the cells, perhaps at random The automaton... devote part II of the book, “Faces of Causation,” to a direct analysis of causation and the conditions on the possibility of causal interaction As a first point, I build a case that the explanation of causation also requires nature to have multiple aspects: its effective aspect, its intrinsic connectivity, and the intrinsic carriers of the causal dispositions I build a speculative metaphysics for causation,... a fundamental element of nature It has a natural place in the implementation of causation, and phenomenal qualities implement nature’s effective constraints In the terminology I introduce later, experiencing acts as an intrinsic carrier for causation itself The phenomenal qualities carry the effective properties of individuals within a causal nexus, and the experiencing of these qualities carries the. .. Physicalism 31 4 The Boundary Problem for Experiencing Subjects 5 On the Possibility of Panexperientialism 6 On the Probability of Panexperientialism 7 Paradoxes for Liberal Naturalism II 3 13 91 104 114 FACES OF CAUSATION 8 Against Hume 9 The Theory of Causal Significance 129 141 10 A Tutorial on Causal Significance 11 Is Connectivity Entailed by the Physical? 12 The Carrier Theory of Causation 13 The Consciousness. .. Are phenomenal facts ordinary physical facts? Are they A Place for Consciousness 5 Figure 1.1 A Necker cube When we stare at the Necker cube, our phenomenal experience changes depending on whether we perceive it as facing upward or downward the kinds of facts that ordinary physical facts can form a basis for? And, if so, in what way can physical facts provide a basis for them? We do not have good answers... naturalizing the mind 1.3 Liberal Naturalism Even though I argue against physicalism, I am a naturalist The view I favor is Liberal Naturalism I view naturalism as a methodological requirement to place human beings in the world without making special, ad hoc assumptions that are discontinuous with everything else we have good reason to believe about nature A fundamental message of this book is that we... star are different stars and thinking that they present different aspects of the same thing, the planet Venus Like physicalism, Liberal Naturalism holds that the world is probably composed from a single fundamental kind of thing This fundamental kind of thing, if it exists, probably has a set of fundamental properties that are mutually related in a coherent and natural way by a single set of fundamental... against entailment in a different and more general way, using an analogy to an artificial world with a toylike physics This analogy allows us to diagnose exactly why no kind of entailment, either a priori or a posteriori, can hold in the real world The result is a direct argument against entailment that does not rely on a conceivability claim or the knowledge argument 2.3 The Game of Life Cellular automata... within a world that is richer both naturally and metaphysically than the one previously available The resulting view avoids the interaction of Descartes’s substance dualism without slipping into the brute and inexplicable identities of physicalism, and so provides the foundations for a possible Liberal Naturalism 1.4 The Structure of the Book The main body of the book is divided into two parts In part . Place for Consciousness Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World Gregg Rosenberg 1 2004 3 Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala. On the Possibility of Panexperientialism 91 6 On the Probability of Panexperientialism 104 7 Paradoxes for Liberal Naturalism 114 II FACES OF CAUSATION 8 Against Hume 129 9 The Theory of Causal. A Place for Consciousness: Probing the Deep Structure of the Natural World Gregg Rosenberg OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS A Place for Consciousness Self Expressions Minds, Morals, and the Meaning of