I saw the original of Caspar David Friedrich’s painting, Der Wanderer über dem Nebelmeer‘, (’The wanderer above the sea of fog’), or a painting very like it, several years ago, in a travelling exhibition in Edinburgh titled, ‘The Romantic Spirit in German Art’ (which I’d misread as, ‘The Romantic Shirt in German Art”).
This particular Romantic Shirt painting by Friedrich is used on the front cover of my battered old copy of ‘Ecce Homo‘, Nietzsche’s collection of engagingly barmy essays published shortly before his permanent breakdown and the final 10 or 11 years of silence from him, which I bought and tried to read long ago in a bout of moody teenage autodidacticism. I understood … not very much of Nietzsche’s excited ranting but I was quite taken with his little aphorisms and strange snippets of advice. I very much concur with his recommendation about walking in the open air, in the mountains:
Remain seated as little as possible … put no trust in any thought that is not born in the open to the accompaniment of free bodily movement..all truly great thoughts are conceived by walking
A few weeks ago, for example, walking on the fells (the hills) of the Cumbrian Lake District, Helen and I got into a conversation about the Mind and Brain, during which she produced the best knock-down case against epiphenomenalism I’ve ever heard.
Every year, Helen teaches a new intake of more-or-less interested pupils a little about the philosophy of consciousness and the Mind, taking them on a quick tour of dualism, monism, eliminative materialism, qualia and the other members of the exotic bestiary. Although the course module, Freewill and Determinism, contributes relatively little to the final grade, the cleverer students, who will almost never have come across the debates and ideas before, find it fascinating.
One of the supposed explanations of Mind, mental states, and mental events is Epiphenomenalism, the position that mental events are not causal. Although this is a rather improbable claim on the face of it, it has attracted some support because it tries to get around the problem of dualism by denying mental events the capacity to effect behaviour. The commonest brief analogy to help people think about the idea is to liken mental events’ relationship with behavior to the froth on waves. The notion has received a little fillip in recent years following the experiments by Libet which have been taken by some to imply that unconscious neuronal activity precedes apparently volitional acts that experimental subjects believed had been consciously inititiated.
Helen’s objection points out, quite simply, that we are the products of evolution and although there might well exist several, or many, human characteristics that are spandrels, in the accidental, circumstantial, contingent sense that Stephen Jay Gould argued for, and against which Dan Dennet took issue, it would be nonsensical to suggest that consciousness could be such a non-adaptation, needing no explanation. Yet if consciousness - Mind - the sense of volition - is purely epiphenomenal then it could never have been selected for through Natural Selection because its existence or otherwise would have no phenotypic effect which could be operated upon by the forces of evolution.
I haven’t read anyone else make this point although it seems very clear and irrefutable.
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If ‘mind’ is defined as ‘the activity of the brain’ (which is mainly unconscious), then the mind is therefore a product of evolution because the brain is. Helen is right that evolution cannot work on consciousness directly (if it is an epiphenomenon of the brain, as I believe it to be)bu evolution can work on the neural correlates of consciousness, Thus epiphenomenalism is not refuted.
Norman,
I think you’re missing the full force of Helen’s argument.
If mind events just are brain events, and those brain events provoke behavioural effects, then of course evolution can operate on them. But Helen’s point goes further than that: why should supposedly epiphenomenal mental states match the physical world at all? Why is it not the case that we wander around as dazed psychotics with the mental experience of living in a world of, for example, friendly marshmallows? As our mental life, if it was truly epiphenomenal, would have no effect and would not be subject to selection pressures, why should it be the case that our mental life ssems to follow a fairly representational narrative of the real world?
I have formulated two axioms for epiphenomenalism:
1. Every conscious state is produced by a simultaneous brain state,
2. Brain states evolve in accordance with physical law (ie laws of physics etc.).
Qualia don’t “match” the physical world - grass is not green, it’s colourless; birds and violins don’t emit sound, merely cause the air to vibrate our eardrums. Our brains generate the sound as an epiphenomenon of neural activity.
Norman, if mind is epiphenomenal, what had caused mental events to consistently match the physical world (and they do match, as in ‘consistently correlate to). Why isn’t grass green one moment, purple the next?
By Axiom 1, the colour experienced is determined by its neural correlate so it cannot change arbitrarily. When a traffic light changes from green to amber (ie, when it begins emitting colourless photons of a lower energy than before), one’s retina transmits a different signal to one’s visual cortex. This then gives rise to the new colour experience.
Norman, all your first axiom claims (and note it’s an axiom, not an argument) is that every mental state is produced by a brain state. Your axiom most certainly does not suggest that each brain state must always and forever produce the same mental state.
The first Axiom is intended to imply precisely that - that each ‘conscious’ state (I don’t use the ambiguous term ‘mental’ because most mental states are unconscious)is determined in detail by the brain state. At this point, philosophers start tying themselves up in knots, talking of ‘bridging laws’, ’supervenience’ etc. They then lose sight of the simplicity of Axiom 1, which I believe is being confirmed experimentally every day by neuroscience.
Norman, your Axiom may ‘imply’ such a thing to you but as stated certainly doesn’t say anything of the sort, does it? And it’s exactly that thing that’s at question: why should there be a necessarily consistent mapping from brain states to conscious states, or qualia?
Of course there doesn’t have to be. We’re all familiar with psychotic states, drug-induced states, etc. So I’d bring you back to Helen’s insight: the regularity and consistency of the conscious experience of the physical word requires an explanation, and if consciousness is epiphenomenal the only possible explanation - that the effective conscious representation is an adaptation - is unavailable because it cannot have been selected for.
Put your finger 1 cm in front of an ant and it will stop and change direction - a perfect eg of ‘adaptation’ to its environment, avoiding danger. Even a one-celled amoeba will reverse if it encounters a drop of acid. Evolution does not seem to need consciousness (unless you think all animals are conscious).
I suppose you mean to say that consciousness is not a necessary consequence of evolution?
Agreed, no more than an elephant’s trunk is a necessary consequence. Given, though, the undeniable presence of elephant trunks I would expect a responsible zoologist to be able to venture a plausible evolutionary explanation for its existence and additionally I think we can safely say that such a feature was an adaptation that conferred an advantage and was selected for by the usual evolutionary processes.
You seem too close now to presuming that consciousness, the most remarkable thing, is non-adaptive?
Nature and evolution cannot plan ahead, so the first appearance of consciousness, whenever that was, must have been a fortuitous event - repeated whenever a baby first becomes conscious. Nature doesn’t care about its “most remarkable” product, which doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t.
Neanderthals, with similar brains to ours, became extinct, and we nearly did. Dolphins may experience qualia unknown to us and have surplus IQ which they cannot exploit, being effectively limbless. Consciousness may be a feature of brains which just appears when a certain complexity is reached. Lucky for some, unless you’re trapped in a collapsed building or a cyclone.
Of course the first appearance would have been fortuitous; that’s how evolution works.
Again, why should it be, if consciousness is epiphenomenal with no causal powers, that our conscious experience of the world should be so consistent?
Achieving consistency is hard work. If isolated in a dark, sound-proof room for a week, some derangement may result. We need to interact with the world to remain sane. As sleep deprivation causes mental problems, the brain needs 6 hours in every 24 to reorganise itself. Most of humanity has had quite false ideas about the world and its denizens, filling it with spirits, demons, gods etc
Achieving consistency, contra your claim, is perfectly easy. I do it effortlessly all day long.