Confusions about Consciousness Richmond Journal of Philosophy 5 (Autumn 2003)

David Papineau

Confusions about Consciousness

David Papineau

Introduction

Consciousness has suddenly become an extremely fashionable topic in certain

scientific circles. Many thinkers are now touting consciousness as the last
unconquered region of science, and theorists from many different disciplines are
racing to find a ‘theory of consciousness’ which will unlock this final secret of nature.
I am suspicious about all this enthusiasm. I think that much of the brouhaha is
generated by philosophical confusion. In the end, I fear, there is no special secret of
consciousness, and no special key needed to unlock it.

Dualism and Materialism

Much of the confusion about consciousness is generated by lack of clarity on the issue
of dualism. The majority of scientists who are caught up in the current excitement
about consciousness studies would probably deny that they are dualists, if the
question were put to them explicitly. But at the same time I think that many of them
are closet dualists. They strive to resist the temptations of dualist thinking, but as soon
as their guard drops they slip back into the old dualist ways. The very language in
which they normally pose the problem of consciousness gives the game away. ‘How
can brain states “give rise” to conscious feelings?’ ‘How are conscious states
“generated” by neural activity?’ The way these questions are phrased makes it clear
that consciousness is being viewed as something extra to the material brain, even if
the official doctrine is to deny this.

To help make the point clear, let me move away from the mental realm for a moment,
and consider two contrasting analogies from purely physical science, the theory of
electromagnetism, and the theory of heat. These two theories work rather differently.
Think of how they relate heat and electromagnetism to other physical processes. The
theory of the electromagnetic field is a theory of an extra physical entity, of
something additional to other physical goings-on, such as the movement of charged
particles. The charged particles are one thing, and the field they produce something
further. But the theory of heat does not explain heat in a similar way. Heat is not
something extra to the kinetic energy of moving particles. Rather, talk of the heat in a
body is just another way of referring to the kinetic energy of the particles in it. There
aren't two entities here, the moving particles and the heat. It's not as if a ‘heat field’
arises when the particles move. Heat is nothing but the movement of the particles,
described in other terms.

Now, which of these is the better model for the relation between conscious feelings
and brain activity? That is, should we expect a successful ‘theory of consciousness’ to
show us how certain brain activities generate certain extra entities, the conscious
feelings, on the model of the electromagnetic field? Or should we rather expect such a
theory to show us how conscious feelings are nothing but certain brain activities,
described in other terms, on the model of heat. When Francis Crick, for example, says
that consciousness is associated with 40-Hertz neuronal oscillations in the visual
cortex, or indeed when any scientist equates consciousness with any feature of brain

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activity, are we to understand them as saying that some extra conscious field is
generated by the brain activity, or rather that consciousness is nothing but that brain
activity, described in other terms?

We can call a theory of the former kind a dualist theory, and a theory of the latter kind
a materialist theory. I suspect that much work in ‘consciousness studies’ simply hasn't
decided whether it is aiming at a dualist theory or a materialist theory. The indecision
matters because it can lend such work an air of spurious excitement. This is because a
dualist theory of consciousness, while it would certainly be exciting, is a highly
implausible prospect. A materialist theory, by contrast, while it is plausible enough, is
not going to yield any exciting secrets. So, by fudging the issue between these two
kinds of hypothesis, theorists of consciousness can have their cake and eat it. They
can present their work as sharing the excitement of a dualist breakthrough, yet at the
same time denying that its claims are any more surprising than a materialist
hypothesis. If we are seriously to assess their theories, however, we need to be told
whether they are intended in the dualist or materialist mode.

Consciousness and Life

To further clarify this issue, let me turn to another analogy, this time with the ‘theory
of life’. About a hundred and fifty years ago, scientists used to be excited about life in
roughly the way that they are now excited about consciousness. While they were of
course clear enough about which living systems are alive and which not, they were
much perturbed by further questions. Why are those systems alive? What mysterious
power animates them? And why is this power present in certain cases, such as trees
and oysters, and not in others, like volcanoes and clouds?

These questions have now disappeared from active debate. Biology textbooks
sometimes begin with a few perfunctory paragraphs about the distinguishing
characteristics of their subject matter. But the nature of life is no longer a topic of
serious theoretical controversy. Everybody now agrees that the difference between
living and non-living systems is simply having a certain kind of physical organisation
(roughly, we would now say, the kind of physical organisation which fosters survival
and reproduction).

The reason for the nineteenth-century debate, and its subsequent disappearance, is that
scientists used to be dualists about life, and aren't any longer. That is, they used to
think that living systems are animated by the presence of a special substance, a vital
spirit, or élan vital, which was postulated to account for those features of living
systems, such as generation and development, which were thought to be beyond
physical explanation. And of course, when they did believe in these vital forces, they
then faced any number of exciting questions, such as why they arise in certain
circumstances and not others, and what laws govern their operation.

But nobody is a dualist about life any longer. Nobody believes in vital spirits
nowadays. A century and more of physiological research have persuaded scientists
that the characteristic features of living systems can all in principle be accounted for
in terms of normal physical forces, without bringing in any extra forces operating only
in living bodies. With this realisation all the excitement about the nature of life has
dissolved. To be alive is just to be a physical system of a certain general physical

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kind. There isn't any extra property present in living systems, over and above their
physical features, which distinguishes them from non-living systems. So there are no
pressing questions about the mysterious nature of this extra property.

I think that this story about life carries a direct moral for the study of consciousness. If
you think that there are special mental forces, over and above the familiar physical
forces, then you will think that there are exciting questions that must be answered,
such as why these forces arise in certain circumstances and not others, and what laws
govern their operation. On the other hand, if you think that the cognitive workings of
intelligent beings depend on nothing but the operation of normal physical forces,
without any extra forces operating only in brains, then you will see things differently.
You may begin your textbooks with a few remarks about the distinguishing
characteristics of conscious systems, but once this essentially classificatory question
is out of the way, you won't want to spend any more time agonising about the nature
of consciousness.

As my remarks so far will no doubt have intimated, I prefer the latter, materialist view
of consciousness to the former, dualist story. And the reason is the same as in the case
of life. All the physiological evidence indicates that no special mental forces are
needed to account for the operation of intelligent organisms. Of course the evidence
isn't conclusive, and doesn't absolutely prove that there are no such forces. But it
weighs strongly against them. If you are unpersuaded, then ask yourself this question.
Are any parts of matter in your brain ever caused to accelerate by mental causes, in
the absence of any other forces? That is, do we need to include purely mental causes
alongside gravity, the electroweak force, and so on, in the category of fundamental
forces? As I said, there is no conclusive disproof of this thought, and it has its
defenders, like Sir John Eccles (1989). But I take it that it would run counter to a large
body of empirical evidence. (physicists would certainly be very interested if such a
force could be shown to exist.)

Epiphenomenalism

No doubt some of you will be feeling uneasy about the analogy with life. Don't we
have immediate access to the nature of conscious activity, via our introspective
knowledge of our own minds, in a way that we don't have access to the nature of life?
And doesn't this show us directly that conscious goings-on are distinct from any
physical goings-on? When we are aware of a pain, say, or of seeing something red,
don't we know directly that there is something going on in us which is quite different
from any neuronal activity in our brains? I agree that we all have strong intuitions to
this effect. But they need to be handled with care. My own view is that they are
illusory, and I will come to this in the next section. Still, some thinkers take these
intuitions at face value, as showing that conscious feelings really are distinct from
brain activity. However, if you take this line, then you face the argument from two
paragraphs back, that physicists are going to be flabbergasted if it turns out that these
extra conscious states sometimes cause bits of matter to accelerate in your brain.
There is one way of endorsing the intuition of distinctness without flouting physical
orthodoxy and committing yourself to matter-accelerating conscious forces. You can
insist that conscious goings-on are genuinely extra to brain processes, but deny them
any causal powers. On this view, brain activity causes an extra conscious ‘field’, but
this field then has no effect on brain activity. What happens in the brain itself is

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entirely accounted for by standard physical forces. The extra conscious field ‘hovers’
above the brain, but the brain runs along its own tracks, as directed by the standard
laws of physics.

This position is known as epiphenomenalism. It too has its defenders. David Chalmers
takes it seriously in his recent book, The Conscious Mind (1996). Chalmers attaches
great weight to the intuition that conscious states must be distinct from physical states.
Yet he is enough of a scientist to realise that it would fly counter to well-evidenced
physical theory to credit these extra conscious states with powers to influence
neuronal activity. So he suggests that perhaps they are just epiphenomenal ‘danglers’,
caused by certain kinds of brain activity, but with no power to cause anything
themselves. Epiphenomenalism is a cogent position. But it has an obvious drawback.
It forces us to deny that our conscious decisions are the causes of our bodily
movements. It seems obvious that when I decide to raise my arm, or to go to the pub,
my conscious decision is the cause of my limbs moving. But epiphenomenalists must
deny this. On the epiphenomenalist view, our conscious mental life ‘hovers above’ the
chains of physical causation that lead from my brain to my bodily movements,
without playing any part in them. According to epiphenomenalism, we are like a child
in a car with a toy steering wheel, happily twisting it this way and that, blissfully
unaware that the actual movements of the car are quite independent of our attempts to
steer it.

If we want to avoid this unhappy epiphenomenalist picture, without positing Eccles-

style extra mental forces, then we need to return to materialism. That is, we need to
deny the intuition that the conscious states are separate from brain states, and insist
that decisions and other conscious occurrences are nothing but brain activity, just as
heat is nothing but molecular motion. Then, of course, we will have no difficulty
understanding how decisions affect behaviour. For if conscious states are brain states,
then all we need are the normal physical processes by which brain states cause
behaviour. The puzzle about the causal role of conscious states dissolves. It is like the
puzzle of how temperature changes manage to influence pressure, given that changes
in mean kinetic energy already determine pressure changes. The answer, of course is
that temperature is mean kinetic energy. Similarly, once we stop thinking in terms of
two different states, conscious states and brain states, we don't need to tell any special
story to find the conscious states some role in the causal processes. They already have
one, in virtue of being one and the same as the brain states that cause behaviour.

Could conscious experiences really be one and the same as brain states? This seems
perfectly coherent to me. This materialist position doesn't of course deny that it feels
like something to be in some conscious state. It simply identifies this with what it
feels like to be in some brain state. That is what it is like, for beings who are in that
kind of brain state. (What would you expect it to be like to be in that brain state? To
be like nothing? Why?)

The Antipathetic Fallacy

What about the direct intuition that brain states and feelings are quite different in
kind? As I said above, I think this is an illusion. We are so close to our own feelings
that it is easy to get confused about them. The trouble is that we are able to think
about our feelings in a special way—by having them. And this special way of

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thinking about feelings makes it difficult for us to see that the things we are thinking
about—namely, the feelings—are just the same things as we can think about in other
ways— namely, brain states.

It will worth analysing this illusion of distinctness in a bit more detail, for I think that
it is responsible for much confusion about consciousness. Let me assume at this stage
that materialism is true. This doesn't beg the question. We have already in effect given
a strong argument for materialism, by showing that the only alternatives are
epiphenomenalism or Eccles-style extra mental forces. The task still facing us is to
explain why materialism should seem false, even if it is true. If we can explain this
impression, on the assumption that materialism is true, then we will be home.

As a materialist, I maintain that conscious states are identical to brain states, just as
heat is identical to molecular motion. But at the same time I recognise that we have
two different ways of thinking about these states, two different kinds of concepts that
refer to these states. By way of analogy, note how the everyday concept of
temperature and scientific concept of mean kinetic energy both refer to the same
quantity. Similarly, I say, with the everyday concept pain, say, and the physiological
concept nociceptive-specific neuronal activity. These are two concepts that refer to the
same thing.

There is something special about the mind-brain case, however, that makes it very
difficult to accept that an everyday concept like pain can actually refer to the same
thing as a brain state concept like nociceptive-specific neuronal activity. Note how
mind-brain identity claims contrast with ordinary identity claims in this respect. Once
we are shown the evidence, we have no special problem believing ordinary identity
claims like temperature = mean kinetic energy. Not so with mind-brain identities.
Even after we are shown the arguments for mind-brain identity, we still find it hard to
accept that a conscious state can be one and the same as a brain state.

If you ask me, this is because concepts of conscious states pick out their references in
a special way. In general, concepts refer to their objects by invoking some description.
So when two concepts refer to one thing, this is normally because the two associated
descriptions pick out the same thing. For example, The Evening Star and The
Morning Star both pick out the same planet, Venus. Similarly temperature and mean
kinetic energy can be regarded as two different description of the same quantity, one
identifying it in terms of its macroscopic effects, the other in terms of its microscopic
constitution. But mind-brain identities work differently. We have special ways of
thinking about mental states—we refer to conscious states by using imagination or
attention rather than description. That is, we imaginatively recreate the state in our
mind, and then think of it as that kind of state (the kind I am recreating now).
Alternatively, we focus attentively on the state while we are actually undergoing it,
and again think of it as that kind of state (the kind I am attending to now).

When somebody refers to conscious states in these special ways, I shall say that they
are exercising ‘phenomenal concepts’. Such exercises require either that you are
actually undergoing the experience referred to, or at least that you are recreating it in
your imagination. Note how this means that uses of phenomenal concepts will share
their ‘what-it’s-likeness’ with the experiences they refer to. People who deploy
phenomenal concepts—that is, think directly about ‘that experience’—will therewith

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have the feelings involved in the experience. This is obvious in the case where they
refer by attending to an experience while they are having it. But it also holds, to some
extent, in the case where they refer to an experience by recreating it imaginatively.
Visually imagining a red square is somewhat like actually seeing a red square. It isn't
exactly like seeing, of course, but there is an obvious sense in which imagining and
seeing are phenomenally similar from the subject's point of view. Similarly, an
imagined pain shares some of the phenomenal unpleasantness of a real pain. It doesn't
hurt as much, of course, or in the same way, but it can still make you feel queasy, or
make you twitch, or make the hairs in your neck stand on end. In Hume's phrase, the
imagining is ‘a faint copy’ of the original impression.

We are now in a position to explain why conscious states should seem intuitively so
distinct from brain states, even if they are not. We are misled by the subjective
commonality between uses of phenomenal concepts and the experiences thereby
referred to. This subjective commonality can easily confuse us when we contemplate
identities like pains = nociceptive-specific neuronal activity. We focus on the left-
hand side, deploy our phenomenal concept of pain (that feeling), and therewith feel
something akin to pain. Then we focus on the right-hand side, deploy our concept of
nociceptive-specific neurons, and feel nothing (or at least nothing in the pain
dimension—we may visually imagine axons and dendrites and so on). And so we
conclude that the right hand side leaves out the feeling of pain itself, the unpleasant
what-it’s-likeness, and refers only to the distinct physical correlates of pain.

This line of thought is extremely common, both within philosophy and without. When
we use our phenomenal concepts, we bring to mind, in a literal sense, something that
feels like the experiential state we are thinking about. When we use non-phenomenal
concepts, this does not occur. And this makes it seem to us that non- phenomenal
concepts cannot possibly refer to the same experiential properties that are picked out
by our phenomenal concepts. (Thus consider Colin McGinn's question, on the first
page of his The Problem of Consciousness (1991), ‘How can technicolour
phenomenology arise from soggy grey matter?’)

However, once we stop to examine it, we can see that this line of thought involves a
simple fallacy, indeed a species of Quine’s famous use-mention fallacy. There is
indeed a sense in which non-phenomenal concepts (like nociceptive-specific neuronal
activity) do ‘leave out’ the conscious experiences themselves. They do not use such
experiences. But it does not follow that they do not mention such experiences. After
all, most referring terms succeed in denoting their referents without using those
referents in the process. There is no reason to suppose that non-phenomenal concepts
of experience do not do this too.

Non- phenomenal concepts differ from phenomenal ones in not using the experiences
they refer to. This is the sense in which they ‘leave out’ the experiences. But it does
not follow that non-phenomenal concepts differ from phenomenal ones in what they
mention. In this referential aspect, which is the one that matters, they need not ‘leave
out’ any element of the experience, not even the ‘whatit’s- likeness’. There is no
reason why we shouldn't be able to refer to this ‘what-it’s-likeness’ using concepts
which don't actually give us the feeling. It is only the peculiar fact that some special
concepts, our phenomenal concepts, do refer by giving us the feelings which confuses
us here.

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In my Thinking about Consciousness (2002) I dubbed this confusion the ‘antipathetic

fallacy’. Ruskin coined the phrase ‘pathetic fallacy’ for the poetic figure of speech
that attributes human feelings to nature (‘the deep and gloomy wood’, ‘the shady
sadness of a vale’). It seems to me that in the mind-brain case we commit a converse
fallacy, and refuse to recognise that conscious feelings inhere in certain parts of
nature, namely, the brains of conscious beings.

Conclusion

Let me sum up. If we want to avoid epiphenomenalism and Eccles-style dualism, we

need to accept that conscious states are nothing but brain states, just as heat is nothing
but molecular motion. Admittedly, this flies in the face of intuition (‘How could
technicolour phenomenology arise from soggy grey matter?’) But intuition should not
be trusted here. Even if materialism is true, we are easily seduced into thinking it
false. This is because concepts of brain states (‘soggy grey matter’), unlike
phenomenal concepts (‘technicolour phenomenology’), don't involve actual
experiences. Still, this is no reason for thinking that the brain states themselves don't
involve actual experiences.

Once we expose the antipathetic fallacy, then nothing remains in the way of accepting
materialism. This will be good for the study of consciousness. But it will be bad for
‘consciousness studies’. If we accept materialism, we will recognise that there are not
going to be any breakthroughs, any crucial discoveries about what ‘causes’
consciousness. That would be like discovering what ‘causes’ life.

Of course there is no such thing to discover. All we can do is classify the different
kinds of life, and try better to understand their mechanisms. Similarly with
consciousness. We should stop getting excited about the spurious question of what
‘causes’ consciousness. Instead we should settle down to the serious business of
classifying kinds of consciousness and exploring their mechanisms.

David Papineau
King’s College London

References
David Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. (Oxford:
Oxford University Press 1996)

John Eccles, Evolution of the Brain: Creation of the Self. (London: Routledge 1989.)

Colin McGinn, The Problem of Consciousness. (Oxford: Blackwell 1991.)

David Papineau, Thinking about Consciousness. (Oxford: Oxford University Press

2002)

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