Psychons and Intentyons, Part 2: Zeros and Ones

Suppose that David Chalmers’ soul experiences the thought “Consciousness is the biggest mystery.”  If interactionism is correct, the thought “Consciousness is the biggest mystery” may not, at least initially, be represented by a computational judgment in Chalmers’ brain.  The sentence might originate in Chalmers’ soul.

Chalmers’ soul is not satisfied with thinking this thought; it wants to get the thought in writing, and eventually publish it as the first sentence of a book called “The Conscious Mind”.  But to do that, it needs Chalmers’ fingers to type the sentence on the computer.  And Chalmers’ fingers are controlled by Chalmers’ brain.  So in order to put its thoughts in writing, Chalmers’ soul must find a way to communicate this thought to Chalmers’ brain.

How could this be accomplished?  Could psychons somehow be pressed into service to deliver this message from the soul to the brain?  Text that is stored in a computer, or sent over a computer network, is usually encoded in ASCII or Unicode.  ASCII and Unicode are abstract protocols.  They are conventions for interpreting sequences of bits -- zeros and ones -- as sequences of text characters (that is, letters, numbers, punctuation, etc.)  ASCII doesn’t care what the bits are made of.  They can be made of flip-flops, capacitors, photons, checkers pieces, or psychons.

Of course, we don’t currently have devices that can encode text in psychons, because we don’t have hardware that can generate psychons.  But if the psychophysical interaction mechanism could generate psychons, it could generate a series of psychons that could encode text in the ASCII protocol.  Chalmers’ brain could then detect those psychons, decode the message, and instruct Chalmers’ fingers to type it on the computer.

Is this mechanism -- oversimplified and fanciful as it is -- vulnerable to the psychons objection?  The “story about the causal relations between psychons and physical processes” indeed does not “invoke the fact that psychons have phenomenal properties”.  In fact, the psychons no longer have phenomenal properties; they have intentional properties.  (That is, they have semantics, or meaning.)  At this point, “psychon” is a misnomer; a better term would be “intentyon”.

Could we somehow subtract the intentional properties of the intentyons from this story, “yielding a situation where the causal dynamics are isomorphic”?  Could we subtract the phenomenal facts about Chalmers experiences and obtain a story that is somehow isomorphic or equivalent?

If we subtract the intentional properties from the intentyons, we get a random stream of particles.  We would be two steps away from explanation: we would be oblivious to the pattern that needs to be explained.  If we were to subtract the conscious thought that the intentyons were generated to encode, we would be subtracting the explanation for the pattern.  So both the intentional properties of the intentyon stream and the phenomenal facts about Chalmers’ experiences are “explanatorily relevant”.

The most outlandish element in my story is the suggestion that the message is in ASCII.  So the message is probably not in ASCII or Unicode, but any character encoding will do; A could be 0, B could be 1, and so on.

I am not claiming that this story is true in all its details.  Rather, this story is an example of a class of possible psychophysical mechanisms that are not vulnerable to the psychons argument.  In the following post, I intend to give another such example.

Psychons and Intentyons, Part 1: Chalmers' Challenge

In "The Conscious Mind", David Chalmers presents a fascinating argument against interactionism.  In my next few posts, I want to respond to Chalmers' argument.  Meanwhile, here is the argument for your perusal:

In any case, all forms of interactionist dualism have a conceptual problem that suggests that they are less successful at avoiding epiphenomenalism than might seem; or at least they are no better than the view I have advocated...Imagine (with Eccles) that psychons in the nonphysical mind push around physical processes in the brain, and that psychons are the seat of experience.  We can tell a story about the causal relations between psychons and physical processes, and a story about the causal dynamics among psychons, without ever invoking the fact that psychons have phenomenal properties.  Just as with physical properties, we can imagine subtracting the phenomenal properties of psychons, yielding a situation in which the causal dynamics are isomorphic.

(Page 156)

GOEPs and the Hard Problem of Consciousness

Is consciousness real?  Some philosophers would answer no.  The theory that consciousness does not really exist is usually called eliminativism.

Many philosophers would answer yes.  (The theory that consciousness is real should probably be called “realism”, but it seems to me that the term “realism” is not always used in this context.)

If consciousness is real, it must be ontologically accounted for.  It must be made of something, or made of itself.  Can we account for consciousness with the familiar material categories of physics?

Many philosophers would answer yes.  Consciousness can be reduced to configurations of GOEPs (protons, neutrons, and electrons, the “good old elementary particles” of physics).  This theory is usually called materialism.

Some philosophers would answer no.  No matter how many GOEPs you throw at the problem, you will never get consciousness until you add a new ontological category, the conscious or “phenomenal” category.  The theory that consciousness can’t be realized in GOEPs is usually called dualism.

If consciousness and the GOEPs are members of two different ontological categories, what is their causal relationship?  GOEPs must have a causal influence on consciousness; after all, if I hold an orange in my hand I see an orange, if I hold an apple in my hand I see an apple.  But can my conscious experiences influence the behavior of the GOEPs in my brain?

The theory that the GOEPs have a causal influence on consciousness, but that consciousness has no influence on the GOEPs, is usually called epiphenomenalism.  The opposing theory, that both categories causally influence each other, is called interactionism.

According to epiphenomenalism, the physical properties of the brain are in the driver’s seat.  The brain has phenomenal properties too, but those properties are in the back seat, and cannot influence our behavior, our speech, or even our thoughts.

The Heterophenomenological Fallacy, Part 4: Conclusion

(Sorry, Dear Reader, I couldn't come up with a good title for this post.)

I hope I have shown that Heterophenomenology is not taking us Philosophers of Mind one step closer to the Hard Scientists, but actually one step further away.  What could justify this regression?

I think that the major intuition that makes Heterophenomenology so appealing is that experiences are (supposed to be) Subjective, whereas the objects studied by physics, chemistry and biology are supposed to be Objective.  I did my basketball experiments alone.  No one else was watching, or at least, no one else was paying attention.  But *in principle* others *could have* been watching, and those others would have seen the *very same* basketball that I saw.  The entire Scientific Community could have been watching, in principle if not in practice.

I agree that this is a real difference between physics and phenomenology, a true difference between images of pencils and real basketballs.  However, I do not agree with the conclusions that Dennett and the Heterophenomenologists draw from this difference.

In practice, the entire Scientific Community could not have seen my basketball, and in fact, the Scientific Community has no interest in *my* basketball.  What the scientific community really cares about is the universal basketball.  The universal basketball is intersubjective in exactly the same way that seeing double is intersubjective.  The Law of Falling Basketballs is intersubjective in exactly the same way as The Law of Double Pencils is intersubjective.

The Heterophenomenological Fallacy, Part 3: Are the College Students Really Necessary?

To make my point clear, I will return to the story of the diverging pencils, and retell the story so that it is close as possible to the basketball story.  I will retell the basketball story, keeping all the details constant, swapping in the pencils experiment for the basketball experiment.

One day, I notice that pencils often produce diverging images when I hold them close to my eyes.  I decide to study the phenomenon more carefully.  I stand in front of a wall and hold a pencil vertically against the wall.  I focus on the wall and slowly move the pencil closer to my face, between my eyes.  Sure enough, the two pencil images diverge as the pencil moves closer to my face.

I repeat the experiment ten more times, and each time, the images of the pencil diverge.  I seem to have stumbled on a Law of Nature, “When a person brings a pencil to his nose, he sees two diverging pencil images.”  (This is not a fundamental law, of course, but it is a law.)  I publish a paper with my findings.

Other scientists read my paper and get interested.  But they don’t just take my findings on faith: they either see if they can reproduce my results, or if they are busy and lazy, they hope that others will try to reproduce the results.  Ten scientists repeat my experiment, and they all get the same results: the images diverge every time.  Satisfied, The Scientific Community arrives at Consensus: when a person brings a pencil close to his nose, he really, really sees two diverging images.

Interestingly, in the new story of the diverging images, the college students are nowhere to be found.  This is as it should be.  Real world experiments in hard science do not round up a simple random sample of college students to do the experiment; they simply employ how ever many experimentalists are practically necessary to carry out the experimental procedures and measurements.

As Dennett points out in "Intuition Pumps", when phenomenology was first proposed by Husserl and others, the college students were not part of the deal; the phenomenologists were writing about their own experiences.  In my opinion, this is how it should be.

The Heterophenomenological Fallacy, Part 2: Is Heterophenomenology Scientific?

At first, heterophenomenology sounds very clean and elegant, and most of all, scientific.  But is it really scientific?

For comparison, let's take a toy physics experiment that we can compare with our toy phenomenology experiment.  Let’s say I go outside with a basketball and throw it up in the air.  Before long, the basketball comes down.  Now I want to know: was the basketball’s return to earth some kind of happenstance?  Do basketballs always come back down, or do they sometimes just keep going up?

So I throw the basketball up ten more times, and each time, it comes back down.  I start to get excited; I seem to have stumbled on a Law of Nature, “When a person throws a basketball up, it always comes back down.”  (This is not a fundamental law, of course, but it is a law.)  I publish a paper with my findings.

Other scientists read my paper and get interested.  But they don’t just take my findings on faith: they either see if they can reproduce my results, or if they are busy and lazy, they hope that others will try to reproduce the results.  Ten scientists repeat my experiment, and they all get the same results: the basketball comes down every time.  Satisfied, The Scientific Community arrives at Consensus: when a person throws a basketball up, it really really must come back down.

Let’s look at the basketball story from the point of view of philosophy of science.  What is the explanandum?  Is the explanandum (A) “Ten experimentalists threw basketballs up in the air ten times, and each time the basketball came down” or (B) “Ten experimentalists *reported that* they threw basketballs up in the air ten times, and each time the basketballs came back down”?  I submit, Dear Reader, that it is A, not B.  The explanandum is the event, not the experimentalist’s report of the event.

What is true of basketballs is true of all real experiments in physics, chemistry and biology, those that are being performed today and all those that have been performed since the invention of Real Science.  Theorists try to explain the physical outcomes of experiments, not the reports of the experimentalists.

The Heterophenomenological Fallacy Part 1: Heterophenomenology Explained

I've written a lot about heterophenomenology (also known as "the third person perspective") and I'm going to write some more, so I decided to dedicate a post to explaining heterophenomenology in my own words.

Heterophenomenology is kind of like experimental psychology.  You get a simple random sample of college students (of course a simple random sample of human beings would be better, but more expensive) put them in some well-defined situation, and ask them what they are experiencing.

As a toy example, take the following experiment.  You tell the student to stand in front of a wall and hold a pencil vertically against the wall.  Tell the student to focus on the wall and slowly move the pencil closer to his face, between his eyes.  Ask him to describe what happens to the image of the pencil.  (Hint: in this situation, the student should be seeing double, and the two pencil images should diverge as the pencil moves closer to his face.)

So far this is all very straightforward.  The novelty of heterophenomenology is in how the theorist interprets the data gathered by the experiment.  According to heterophenomenology, the data gathered by the experiment is the report of the experience, not the experience itself.

In the case of the pencil, the data collected by the experiment is the fact that the student *reported* seeing double, not that the student *actually* saw double.  About whether the subject actually experienced what he reported experiencing, the theorist is meant to be agnostic, at least initially.  A successful explanation must account for the fact that the subject reported the experience, but not the fact that the subject actually had the experience.  In theory, the theorist is allowed to conclude that the experience report was accurate, if such a conclusion is warranted; but the theorist is not allowed to assume that the report was accurate.

Dennett compares heterophenomenology to anthropology.  The theorist is like an anthropologist interviewing a tribe of hunter gatherers about their system of mythology.  The anthropologist’s data is not the ghosts and goblins themselves, but rather the reports of the hunter gatherers about those ghosts and goblins.

In philosophical terms, the report of the experience is an explanandum, but the experience itself is not an explanandum.