Well, it looks as though you’ve tried to elaborate on your theory in separate threads up above, which is just as well, since my contribution was a bit messy and rushed. I’ll comment in due course. Just a quick one about Libet for now..

Ironically, Dennett [that arch eliminativist, whom you critique elsewhere on this site] also charges Libet with making a simple mistake. From Dennett’s Consciousness Explained: “…since cognition and control – and hence consciousness – is distributed around in the brain, no moment can count as the precise moment at which each conscious
event happens”. Nearly a whole early chapter is devoted to showing how the spectre of Cartesian materialism informs Libet’s conclusions. There can be no fixed temporal and/or spacial “location” for a conscious decision.

When observing simple organisms behaving in apparently purposive ways, those ignorant of biochemistry often posit some additional motive force, “over an above” all the biochemical activity. More sophisticated observers look at brains, and imagine that our our own actions must be under centralised, executive control. They reify the “self” and everything that goes with it, and when they look inside the brain and find nothing corresponding to this phantasm – or perform experiments in which decisions seem to precede the magic moment of conscious volition – they conclude that “we” are little more than epiphenomena [which you discuss elsewhere]. “Decisions” can have no causal heft, and “control” is a subjective illusion.

I think eliminativism, understood this way, is really just another kind of Cartesian materialism. I could hardly disagree with it more. Consciousness is a distributed phenomena, an emergent net effect of everything else going on: the need to isolate it in some fixed time or location is a relic of dualism.

Returning to Libet, did the action of his subjects really only consist of flexing their wrists? What about getting up in the morning to visit Libet’s lab, or listening to and agreeing to his instructions? What about the thousands of complex behaviours sustained over a prolonged period of time – getting on and off buses or driving, looking for the laboratory, cancelling other appointments etc. etc. etc.? What about the fact that the general intention to make a wrist movement had been there before the experiment even began?

You mention the popular software/hardware distinction, and challenge me to try wiping my disk drive. But I agree with your point. Software really does control how computers behave, and the “self” (including your beliefs and intentions) really does control what your body does! A perspective trick can make it seem otherwise. Every mental state has neural correlates. There is one-to-one mapping between the software, and hardware configurations. *Both* levels of analysis are valid, and compliment each other. Furthermore, it is actually impossible to explain much of the behaviour of a computer without the semantic, software intepretation! A favourite example is of those nasty pseudo-agents we call software viruses. Whole industries depend on understanding how they work, tracking new varieties and mutations of old ones, and yet the virus, strictly speaking (from a reductionist point of view) has no fixed material composition at all!

“Computational” paradigms, standard throughout the brain sciences, have little problem explaining how non-material entities such as viruses can re-configure matter in ways that benefit them (*without* reifying those entities to create Cartesian spooks). The information-processing view of cognition provides an intermediate, non-reductive approach which, properly understood, *solves* the mind/body problem once and for all.

More next time.

Regards,
Paul.

I don’t know if you really mean it’s a very pretty theory, of if you’re just making a gesture of dismissal, but I’ll assume the former and say ‘thank you.’

As for the brain scientists, though, I’m not sure they have any conception of the scale of the problem they are dealing with. Let me give you an example:
Benjamin Libet, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet
recipient of many awards and prestigious honors, apparently doesn’t recognize the simple mistake he’s making.

Mr. Libet could, by the same method, examine a computer and decide that software doesn’t exist and has no function, because, in fact, and quite demonstrably, everything happening in a computer is electronics.

That’s true, but the electronics neither explains the behavior of the computer nor causes it. The computer is nothing without its software, and if you’re not sure whether that’s true, I suggest you try — just as an experiment — wiping your disk drive. Remember, it will still contain just as many bit positions before and after the wipe: a 250Mb drive always contains 250Mb, it’s just a question of the values isn’t it.

So, despite Mr. Libet, we still write software for computers and use it, and it seems to have tons of effect.

(Which is not to say the brain is a computer, but the relationship of software to hardware is analogous to the relationship of mind to brain.)

This is a very pretty theory, but I don’t think it goes far enough. The reigning assumption within the brain sciences is that “qualia”, far from being mysterious events that take place “in between” the dots, are actually (viewed from the right perspective) dots themselves! Another way to put this, is that all the purely physical judgements, discriminations and micro-discriminations of our sensory organs, brains and nervous systems, actually *constitute* mental content…including “qualia”.

We’ve seen this before. Not so long ago, life itself was seen as an impenetrably mysterious phenomenon, an additional extra something, the “elan vital” which animated ordinary matter, and gave it the special powers which living organisms seem to have. But then along came chemistry and biology, and science convincingly showed us how the appearance of “life” was actually millions and millions of smaller, individually lifeless events. That vitalistic essence became a spook, a conceptual illusion resulting from our inability to *imagine* just how all these wondrous biochemical processes, working in concert within large ensembles of cells, *together* amount to the dance we call life.

I think something similar will happen with our beloved qualia. Neuroscience doesn’t deny that mental content exists, any more than it denies that life exists. It just denies it any independent reality. The bridge between experience and physical description seems to be an impasse, yes. But only because of our puny imaginations.

Imagination can only be enriched by knowledge, and imagination enriched by knowledge *can* make (and is even now making) that journey.

Regards,
Paul.