045 - Zombies, Bats, & Chinese Rooms: The Hard Problem of Consciousness and Hegel

Philosophers and scientists speak of the "hard problem of consciousness." But what exactly is the problem?  The issue seems to be more with the narrow view of naturalistic materialism, that excludes "everything mental - consciousness, meaning, intent or purpose" (Nagel). 

At the center of the disagreement is what is now termed "qualia" (a variation of this term was first used by Charles Peirce). This is the experience of seeing the color red, hearing a robin sing, or tasting a glass of wine. This actual quality is difficult for the pure physicalist to explain, when they have removed "mind" from their paradigm.

But some contemporary philosophers beg to differ with the materialistic conception, including Thomas Nagel, David Chalmers, and John Searle. And of course, before them there was Hegel, who puts subjectivity right at the core of being, with his famous expression, "substance is subject." This episode explores.  

Transcript

Gregory Novak 0:01

Hello, this is Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist episode 45. Welcome back. The purpose of this podcast is to advocate that we have minds, that our minds are free and purposeful to plan activities that will benefit oneself. One's family one's community and the evolution of humanity itself. Please like, and follow the podcast. Facebook page at cunning of Geist. And as well, please follow me on Twitter also at Cunningham Geist. And I should mention if you're not already a member of the Hagle study group on Facebook, you may want to consider joining. We just passed the 26,000 member mark. So that's quite an accomplishment for the group. Anyway. In this episode, I'll be exploring the so-called hard problem of consciousness and showing that. When one takes a closer look, perhaps it is not such a hard problem. at all. In fact, It's probably not even a problem at all. If you look at it correctly. The real problem is naturalistic materialism with its purposeless view of humanity. And we'll be getting into this in detail. We'll also be discussing the work of contemporary philosophers, David Chalmers, Thomas Nagel, and John Searle. And of course, hail.. Now, let me sort of summarize where I'm going here. I believe. There's a core problem that this topic addresses and it's a very deep one. And it's perhaps the deepest scientific problem of the mall. And the question is this. Are we just sophisticated machines with no inherent mind or purpose? Are we more than it thinking creatures that have experiences, consciousness, et cetera. Yes. I know much of consciousness can be explained mechanically. We know how our eyes have evolved to allow us to see we understand wavelengths, et cetera, the retina. But w what is going on when we actually perceive a color red, for example, What is the mechanism that gives way to this impression? And it seems that many in the scientific and philosophical community want to neglect this consciousness of color. It's pretty fundamental. But yet it's neglected. You know, we soon may have self-driving cars that can drive down the road. They can sense that the cars, traffic, lights, and get you where you need to go, but do these self-driving cars, will they see. The way we do. No, I don't, I don't believe so. are we just like these self-driving cars, but more complicated? No, I don't believe so. I don't believe that we are holy machines. And, The actual problem with the hard problem of consciousness is that there really is no problem at all. As I said, the emperor has no clothes. As we know there's not a problem with the emperor's new clothes, because he does not have any clothes on. Now. Here's what I mean, we all have experiences, conscious experiences. I can see colors here, music. But the mechanical explanation of these experiences only go so far. Eventually there's a line that has to be crossed. It's very much like the line between left-brain understanding for stunt and right. Brain reasoning for none. Which we've covered in so many previous episodes. The left brain common understanding is always breaking things down into smaller components and categorizing things. It's not building things up into a greater gestalt impression. And in many ways, this is exactly what Hegel's philosophy is about the primacy of reason over common understanding. We are alive. We have conscious experiences. We can reflect on these. We can think. And those scientists and philosophers that refuse to accept us are pretending the elephant in the room is not there. And take my word. Consciousness is even bigger than an elephant in the room. It's central. So that's, that's an overview now let's get onto specifics. The hard problem of consciousness was a phrase coined by cognitive scientist and philosopher David Chalmers and his 1995 paper. Instead of facing up to the problem of consciousness. Um, and the problem is this. It is reconciling our conscious experiences with brain and bodily processes. It's the old mind, body problem. Now I contend that it is a hard problem for the naturalistic materialist only who stumbles to figure out ways to explain consciousness through chemistry and physics along. The chemistry part is the easy problem of consciousness. Well, not easy, but it's what occurs from a physical standpoint and much of a can be explained in terms of physics and chemistry, how the eye works, how the ear works, et cetera. However, when the issue comes to. How we experienced the seeing or hearing then it's, it's a different story. nowadays philosophers and scientists often refer to these experiences as quality qualities. The experience of the color, red, the sound of a violin, the taste of wine, et cetera, et cetera. These are termed quality. It's interesting. It was one Charles pier. So he talked about an episode 43, that first used the term quoll referring to this. And it was actually philosopher C I Lewis that first used the term quality in 1929. And it's current meaning. Let me quote him. Quote. There are recognizable qualitative characters of the given, which may be repeated in different experiences and are thus a sort of universals. I call these quality of. But although co. Such quality are universals in the sense of being recognized from one to another experience. They must be distinguished from the properties of the object. Confusion of these two is characteristic of many historical conceptions, as well. As of current essence theories, the quoll is directly intuited given, and it is not the subject of any possible air because it's purely subjective. And quote. Now. There are still many philosophers and scientists alike, probably the big majority that hold on to the materialistic view and they dismiss the notion of quality as somehow being separated from the biological processes for the brain and body. Daniel Dennett, one of the four horsemen of atheism. Is perhaps the most well-known advocate for this materialistic position. He wrote a book in 1991 entitled. Consciousness explained. Which presents his argument showing how, what we call consciousness is derived from mechanical processes. Now I've read summaries of his theories and I find them unconvincing. Some have even said that the book should be called consciousness unexplained and I agree. Um, these critics believe Dennis never quite gets to the final explanation of how we do. In fact, perceive qualities of things are quality. Philosopher, John Searle sums this up. This objection. Uh, nicely, let me quote him, quote. To put it as clearly as I can in his book, consciousness explained. Then that denies the existence of consciousness. He continues to use the word, but he means something different by it. For him, it refers only to third person phenomenon, not to the first person, conscious feelings and experiences we all have for Dennett. There is no difference between us humans and complex zombies who let any inner feelings because we are all just complex zombies. I regard his view is self-refuting because it denies the existence of the data, which a theory of consciousness is supposed to explain. Here is the paradox of this exchange. I am a conscious reviewer consciously answering the objections of an author who gives every indication to being consciously. And puzzlingly angry. I do this for a readership that I assume is conscious. How can I take seriously? His claim that consciousness does not really exist. And quote. Now back to David Chalmer. So I said actually coined the phrase, the hard problem of consciousness. Chalmers is in Australian philosophers currently at New York university. It was a road scholar at Oxford. He received his PhD at Indiana university. The United States under Douglas Hofstetter. Standler who you may know as the author of Godel, Escher Bach. Very popular book. His doctoral thesis was entitled towards a theory of consciousness. as an aside, he looks more like a middle-age rock star than a Tweed jacket wearing professor. W we won't hold that for him or against him. In addition to coining the phrase, the hard problem of consciousness. Is also well known for popularizing the philosophical zombie term or PS zombie for short. Although the phrase had been used before, it was Chalmers who popularized it. And just what is a philosophical zombie and how does it relate to the question at hand? Well, a philosophical zombie is just like a regular person, except they do not experience any quality. And there are many forms of this argument, but essentially it goes like this. If it is physically possible to construct a zombie like a robot that would be indistinguishable, but for me, human. Uh, they would be like the Terminator robot in the movie, the Terminator. It's a perfect example. When Arnold Schwartzenegger walks into the bar, he was the Terminator and that movie he's undistinguishable from other patrons other than the fact that it looks meaner and as much stronger. Now if one can imagine such a thing, which is popular movie certainly does. Does not that show that life consciousness experience is something on top of that. That's basically the PS zombie argument. Now there there's some other good. Thought experiments along this line, we'll cover a couple of them. There's a good one called Mary's room, which was first presented by Frank Jackson. Um, it goes something like this. Mary is a brilliant neuroscientists. That's the world leading expert in the perception of color envision. And here's the catch. She lives in a black and white room and it has never left it. She has a black and white television and studied black and white textbooks to earn a PhD. In color, vision and become the leading world expert. Mary knows every fact about the retina, how it works, how lightweights produce different sensations of color, et cetera. And one day Mary leaves her room and walks down the street. And sees an apple or a red apple. She is quote, seeing in red for the first time. It's very learned something new. Well, I believe she certainly has. She now has an experience of color that she did not have before. So this is something more than just pure physicalism. The experience of colors more than the physical processes, which produced it. Now. I wonder if you've any of you have seen some of those YouTube videos of children that get cochlear implants and here for the first time. You see that you. Tell me that's not real. The quality is not real. There's even one I saw. Uh, of a child who, could only see black and white. And special glasses were created the put on, and then they could see color. And the look on his face and his parents was just incredible. It would bring a tear to your eye if. If you were to see that. This is what I'm talking about. There's another thought experiment called the Chinese room, which is vented by philosopher. John Searle. We quoted earlier. And the story goes like this. Say you build a computer that specializes in the Chinese language. It is programmed to take Chinese words as input and then produce appropriate responses back in Chinese. The computer is put in a closed room. Now Chinese speakers placed outside the room with a computer terminal. That person types in some Chinese sentences. And the computer is programmed to provide a response as if it were a human. And in this thought experiment, the computers program so well that the Chinese speaker can not tell if it was a real person in the room or a computer. And, you know, if they can program a computer to beat the world champion Grandmaster in chess, they could probably do this. But anyway. Now, the next part of the story is what happens when you substitute a real person inside that room. And the person has all the formulas as to what Chinese character has to type back. It doesn't understand the Chinese characters, but he knows when you see X you type back, why et cetera. now it's got a rule book. As to what the feedback. And here's the key that the person could learn all the formulas without ever actually learning the Chinese language. If they were smart enough, they could duplicate exactly what the computer was doing. Would that knowing any Chinese. So. This shows that there's more to the experience of a language than just to computerize response mechanism. One knows the language when it can freely think in language one can hear the language. The computer can not. And again, as we've said, there's more going on here than physical cause and effect it's quality experience. Now. Before moving on to Hagle, we need to speak about philosopher Thomas Nagel, who has done real breakthrough work in this area. Nagel was born in Yugoslavia and immigrated to the United States as a baby in 1939. He attended undergrad at Cornell university than studied at Oxford. And philosophy. He came back and got his PhD in philosophy and Harvard. He has taught at UC Berkeley Princeton, and lastly, at New York university. And all those universities, I should say Cornell, Oxford, Harvard are real, um, analytic, Places for, for philosophy. so he really went against his, his, his training and what you're about to hear. he's. Best known for a paper that he wrote entitled. What is it like to be a bet? You wrote that in 1974. Daniel Dennett has called it the most widely cited and influential thought experiment about consciousness and quote. Essentially Nagel. Argues that we can study a bat, learn how they see, learn, how they fly, how they use their sonar, et cetera. But we can never know what it feels like to be a bat. What the bat actually experiences. Uh, bad has this unconscious experience that we can not experience the live bad is more than a robot. The live bad is experiencing itself as a bat. I read an extensive quote by Nagel and episode 26. That really sums up nicely. What's going on here? I'm going to read this quote again now, but I'm going to break it up and provide commentary between each short section. So let's begin. Quote, the scientific revolution of the 17th century dependent on a crucial limiting step at the start. It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything, mental consciousness, meaning intention or purpose. The physical sciences is they have developed since then describe the elements of which the material universe is composed and the laws governing their behavior and quote. Okay. This is a very essential thing that he brings up. And this has been a theme in many episodes of the cutting of Geist. Essentially with the scientific revolution, the world became much more left brain. The understanding of the world. And it ignored the holistic reasoning. It took the life out of the universe and dissected it. Like it was a machine. Now, moving on. Cool. We ourselves as physical organisms are part of that universe composed of the same basic elements as everything else. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms. It seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects. Of reality as well. And quote. Now. Yes, we need to include life in mind as part of the universe. That is what the left brain thinking misses and the right brain does not. Moving at quote. However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning and quote. And this is the key that physical sciences are designed to exclude consciousness in life. That's the simple fact of the matter. That is why it's called the hard problem of consciousness. Life and consciousness, are not there from the get-go. So it's hard to fit them back in after the fact. Moving on. Quote. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as part of the objective spacing of temporal order, but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to the different particular points of view. That can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience. And also the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however, complete. We'll leave out the subjective essence of the experience. How it is from the point of view of its subject, without which you would not be a conscious experience at all. So the physical sciences necessarily leave an important aspect of nature, unexplained and quote. So in other words, We can describe the physicality of a bat. We can understand how its body functions. We can never experience just what it is like to be a bat. And this is what science is not recognizing today. It's it's unexplained. Moving on. Quote further since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of these organisms can not be understood through the physical sciences alone and quote. So we cannot understand the consciousness of organisms from physical sciences alone. Since the physical sciences have excluded consciousness. From spatial temporal materialistic descriptions. Anyway, moving on. Quote, finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms. And since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence. It follows it. Biological evolution must be more than just a physical process and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life. Must become more than just a physical theory and quote. Here Nagel is raising the stakes have been taking a hit of Darwinism as it is currently understood the problem with Darwinism as it now stands is just a physical theory does not account for consciousness. Or the formation of life itself. It explains what it does explain very well. But it's not yet the whole story. Moving on. This means that the scientific outlook, if it aspires to a more complete understanding of nature, must expand to include theories, capable of explaining the impairments in the universe of mental phenomenon and the subjective points of view in which they occur. Theories of a different type from what we have seen so far and quote. That's the end of them. Entire quote. So, as they said in the movie jaws, we are going to need a bigger boat. We need to expand the theories of evolution to explain consciousness. Now. Let's move on to, uh, to Hagle. Now what I'm about to cover can get very complicated and perhaps I'll do a whole nother episode just on this part, but I'm going to try now to keep it as simple as possible. The hard problem of consciousness is not a problem at all. For Henkel consciousness is fundamental to the universe substance. Is subject, as he famously said, We did an entire episode on Haydel's famous claim here in the phenomenology of spirit. That substance is subject in episode 24. Now here's the quote. The direct quote from, uh, from haggle on this, in, in the phenomenology quote, in my view, a view which the developed exposition of the system itself can alone justify. Everything depends on grasping and expressing the ultimate truth, not as substance, but as subject as well. And quote. So Hagle is clear. Everything depends on grasping this ultimate truth. And I'm not going to go into as much detail here as I did in episode 24. But. I do believe that this notion that substance is subject does explain what's going on with quality. And it has to do with negativity. And here's how it goes again. I'm going to keep this simple. First, there is a negation. Uh, difference noted between the eye, the subject and its object. Then this first negation is negated by a second negation. And the identity is then realized between the two. And I believe this is exactly what consciousness is. It's a double negation, and I believe this is the experience. When this happens, this is our experience of consciousness and provides us a qualitative experience. Quality. Uh, it's a sublimation of the difference at which provides this experience. hago makes this clear. I'll quote him again. Quote. Hence consciousness is the contradiction between the independence of the two sides of their identity and which they are so bladed in quote. This double negation also takes place with our own notion of ourselves of self-consciousness. We've known it before that there's no consciousness of ourselves. And until we are confronted with another consciousness, Hey. Gets into this in the phenomenology and detail. Let me quote halal here. The eye is therefore being, or has being as a moment within it. When I posited this being as another confronting me and at the same time as identical with me. I am awareness and have the absolute certainty of my being. And quote. There's another quote. quote, the dis similarity, which obtains in consciousness between the ego and the substance substituting it's object is their inner distinction. The factor of negativity in general, we may regard it as a defective, both opposites, but it is a very, so they're moving spirit and quote. This moving spirit is in fact Geist. Mine. And it is within both subject and object. And it's what links them. It makes them inseparable. And this provides the experience of being. So. It is the movement of consciousness and itself that gives rise to experience through this process that Hagle describes. And as I said, I believe it's this very sublimation that gives rise to the experience of quality, the experiences of life. This is what's going on. This is the answer to the hard problem of consciousness. This is why we are not Sotheby's. But living conscious beings. So in summary. Hopefully I've given enough examples to show the consciousness. Our experiences not arrived from purely space. Geo temporal material means. We've got several examples that show that this is not. So we reviewed thought experiments at the philosophical zombie Mary's room, the Chinese room, and what a bad experiences. And these all go to show that there's more going on than pure physicality. We are different from the Terminator. The reason for this is that enlightenment science has focused solely on the external world, leaving us out of the picture and we can ever be put back in because we are not recognized there in the first place. So it becomes a mystery. Hagle understood this and, life and consciousness is there with him from the get-go. and that's why he understands that the conscious perceiver is built into the perceived substance as one unity. So that's a wrap for this episode. Thank you so much for listening. Please like rate and share this podcast and tell your like-minded friends about it. I really appreciate it. As always I will be posting the references cited in this episode, in the cunning of Geist, Facebook page. And also I'm going to try a new thing with this episode. I'm going to attempt to publish a transcript of this episode as well. On Buzzsprout we'll see how the software works and transcribing what I'm saying here. I can't guarantee that it'll work, but I'll let you know, in the Facebook page, as well as in the, in the next episode. So this is Gregory Nowak. This is the cunning of Geist. See you next Time.