Baby You Can Drive My Car, Part 1: Whatever Doesn't Kill You

Epiphenomenalism comes with a standard objection, one that is straightforward and almost obvious.  If consciousness really has no effect on the physical world, how can we talk and write about consciousness?  Chalmers refers to this objection as “the paradox of phenomenal judgment”.  He writes:

It is one thing to accept that consciousness is irrelevant to explaining how I walk around the room; it is another to accept that it is irrelevant to explaining why I talk about consciousness. One would surely be inclined to think that the fact that I am conscious will be part of the explanation of why I say that I am conscious, or why I judge that I am conscious; and yet it seems that this is not so...If phenomenal judgments arise for reasons independent of consciousness itself, does this not mean that they are unjustified?

(Page 180)

Chalmers responds by conceding that phenomenal judgments arise for reasons independent of phenomenology itself, but argues that this is not a sufficient reason to reject epiphenomenalism.  He writes: “Epiphenomenalism may be counterintuitive, but it is not obviously false, so if a sound argument forces it on us, we should accept it.”  (Page 157)  And later: “This paradoxical situation is at once delightful and disturbing.  It is not obviously fatal to the nonreductive position, but it is at least something to come to grips with...If we can cope with this paradox, we may be led to valuable insights about the relationship between consciousness and cognition.” (Page 178)

If consciousness did not exist, Chalmers argues, people might still think that it exists.  The same factors that would lead to such a delusion lead, in our case, to the correct conclusion, that we are conscious.  He writes:

To get some feel for the situation, imagine that we have created computational intelligence in the form of an autonomous agent that perceives its environment and has the capacity to reflect rationally on what it perceives...Would it have any concept of consciousness, or any related notions? ...If such a system were reflective, it might start wondering how it is that things look red, and why it is that red just is a particular way, and blue another.

(Page 183)

The robot that Chalmers describes might think that it is conscious even if it is actually not conscious.  An analogous process, he argues, is going on in our brains (except for the brains of the eliminativists, of course; they come to the opposite conclusion).  The fact that (some of) our brains get the right answer here is a kind of coincidence, but sometimes coincidences do happen.  Chalmers writes:

Nietzsche said, “What does not kill us, makes us stronger.” If we can cope with this paradox, we may be led to valuable insights about the relationship between consciousness and cognition.

(Page 179)

In my next few blog posts, I intend to kill David Chalmers.  I mean, I intend to kill Chalmers’ theory.