I entirely agree, although I expect our interpretations will differ somewhat. — Punshhh

:up:

Thoughts? — Esse Quam Videri

That's an interesting way to frame the antinomy. However, I feel like it divorces the 'epistemological' and the 'ontological' aspects in a too radical way. Let me explain why.

The dilemma consists of two 'horns':

1) The analysis of the empirical world (and here I include the inner experience of sentient beings) strongly suggests that the consciousness of individual sentient beings is not fundamental. It even suggests that these individual consciousnesses arose in time via an evolutionary process.
2) However, the above 'insight' assumes that the 'world' is intelligible. Assuming that this intelligibility is not a deception, it makes us wonder why it is there in the first place. Does it make sense to think of 'intelligibility' without any reference to a cognizing consciousness?

So (1) suggests that individual consciousnesses of sentient beings are contingent and perhaps derived from something that isn't conscious. (2) however seems to suggest that this 'not conscious ground' is somehow understandable by consciousness.

So, let's say one wants to take seriously both insights. Sentient beings are not 'fundamental entities' per (1). Ok, but (2) suggests that the 'external world' is intelligible. If it is true, then we have an ontological claim about the 'external world' that is 'outside' the consciousnesses of sentient beings.

If it is true, as I believe, that it can't be that 'intelligibility' makes any sense without reference to a cognizing consciousness, the most reasonable alternative that I believe we have is to posit a 'Consciousness' that is, in fact, fundamental. The apparent intelligibility of the 'external world' isn't a 'happy accident' that is unexplainable and that somehow by pure coincidence gives us the possibility to navigate into the world. Rather, intelligibility would be an essential property of both the 'sentient' and 'insentient' entities.

I am not @Wayfarer and I don't speak for him but as I see Nagarjuna goes beyond phenomenologists. Remember that most Buddhist schools IIRC say that the 'self' is illusion-like, a mere appearance. Various Buddhist schools affirmed that while the 'self' was such a 'mere appearance', there was a set of ultimate, irreducible 'entities' (dharmas) that were either 'conditioned' or 'unconditioned' (like Nirvana).
Nagarjuna went further and claimed, as I understand him, that even these purpoted 'ultimate entities' are in fact illusion-like, just like the self*. So, all conceptual models that we can imagine about 'reality as it is' (i.e. ultimate reality) inevitably fail. And, in fact, by analysing the claims of his both non-Buddhist and Buddhist opponents he concluded that all ontological theories about 'ultimate reality' are inconsistent. For instance, there is no coherent way, according to him, to explain the arising and ceasing of a 'truly existing' entity. This leads to the conclusion that the 'entities' that supposedly arise and cease in fact do not arise at all*. So, Nagarjuna claimed that in order to avoid inconsistencies, one should avoid to have any 'thesis', i.e. any metaphysical theory*.

However, Nagarjuna was also wary to point out that at a provisional level, there is an appearance that entities arise, cease, display regularities (e.g. 'dependent origination')*, there are selves that are subject to 'karmic' laws and so on.

The objection that I would personally give to Nagarjuna is how these two 'truths' can be reconciled. That is, how if there are is no indeed an intelligible ultimate reality we can even make sense of the appearance of an intelligible world of selves, 'dharmas' and so on, especially when we are told by Nagarjuna himself that we should take this 'apparently intelligible world' very, very seriously.

* I quote some citations from a work attributed to Nagarjuna, the 'Sixty Stanzas of Reasoning':

21

Since there is nothing that arises,

There is nothing that disintegrates;

Yet the paths of arising and disintegration

Were taught [by the Buddha] for a purpose.

22

By understanding arising, disintegration is understood;

By understanding disintegration, impermanence is understood;

By understanding how to engage with impermanence,

The sublime dharma is understood as well.
...

33

Just as the Buddhas have spoken of

“I” and “mine” for a practical purpose;

Likewise they spoke too of “aggregates,”

“Elements” and “sense-fields” for practical reasons.
...
48

“Who understands this?” one might wonder;

It’s those who see dependent origination.

The supreme knower of reality has taught

That dependent arising is unborn.
...
50

Those who are great beings,

They have neither thesis nor contention;

For those who have no thesis,

How can there be opposing thesis? — Nagarjuna, Sixty Stanzas of Reasoning

although interestingly your view is compatible with the kind of mind-primacy that Wayfarer has been talking about in this thread. — bert1

I don’t think so. The primacy of consciousness claims that consciousness has metaphysical primacy over existence. I take the opposite point-of-view, that existence comes first. A brain must structurally develop before any consciousness can arise from it.

And there’s extensive clinical and experimental data to support the correlation of structure (brain) and function (mind/consciousness). We may not understand exactly how consciousness is generated, but it’s an “incontrovertible premise that consciousness comes about from the action of the brain.”

And -

Therefore, the question “What is it that we are ‘being’?” has an answer in the standard model: “We are ‘being’ EM fields from the atomic level up.”

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8907974/

Knowing what we are still leaves lots of room for philosophical questions, especially centered on “How should we be?”

And – knowing the foundation of consciousness does not subtract from its grandeur and wonder – its ability to be both provocative and evocative - no more than knowing the Mona Lisa is paint on canvas subtracts from the infectiousness of art.

I don’t think so. The primacy of consciousness claims that consciousness has metaphysical primacy over existence. I take the opposite point-of-view, that existence comes first. A brain must structurally develop before any consciousness can arise from it. — Questioner

That's indeed arguable, but that does not address @Wayfarer's point. The point is that there is nothing pre-existing the first experience according to his view - time does not exist yet, there can be no prior (temporal) conditions. Once the first experience happens, that creates time and all the temporal preconditions (development of a brain etc) for that experience. It's all done in a one-er, if you see what I mean. The experience depends on the brain, but the brain depends on the experience, but temporal order isn't an issue because time doesn't exist before the experience. So the appallingly offensive bootstrapping is perhaps permissible. I don't buy it, but you need to grasp the argument before dismissing it.

If the issue is ontological dependence rather than temporal, that's not as problematic. That can be circular, as one does not need to precede the other, they can be mutually helpful. I'll give you a foot up at the same (non-)time that you give me a foot up, and then we both find we have climbed the wall.

“incontrovertible premise that consciousness comes about from the action of the brain.” — Questioner

It's not though. Correlation is, famously, not causation. It might be evidence of causation, but you need an argument.

Ok. But, again, if there is no a priori intelligible order, why our conceptual maps work? — boundless

Think of an intelligible order as a scheme or system of rationality. Within that order or map, things work a certain way, according to certain criteria. We can determine correctness or incorrectness on the basis of the criteria that are dictated by the qualitative organization of the scheme of rationality. Think of a theoretical approach within physics, for instance. Not only does its scheme generate predictions which can be verified , but these predictions can be articulated mathematically to a remarkable precision.

This precision of prediction is what a rational
scheme buys us. But is there not also a downside to this precision? The quantitative accuracy of the map applies to the relations among its founding concepts, but those concepts themselves are qualities, not quantities, and cannot be derived quantitatively. As a result, the mathematical precision of the predicted relations sits along side aspects of the model which are arbitrary, such as the features of the world which are considered random in their behavior. Thus, the scheme works, but it works in a particular way, combining the precisely predictable with the arbitrary and random in a certain way. According to philosophers of science like Thomas Kuhn, as theories change, the way in which the random or arbitrary relates to the precisely predictable is reconceptualized.

, in my opinion, even this kind of perspective can't given an account to explain why the empirical world - which I agree 'arises' from the interaction between the subject and the 'world' - appears to be intelligible. Are we merely going to say that it is a 'happy coincidence' that we can make conceptual models that work? Or is there a deeper reason that explain why they work — boundless

The challenge for these thinkers isnt just to explain why the world is intelligible, but why the meaning of its intelligibility (the qualitative organization of our schemes of rationality) changes continuously over long periods of time. The world is always intelligible to us i. some way or other, because we interact directly with it according to pattens of activity which have a certain stability to them. That is the definition of a living system. The world is intelligible ina certain sense to an amoeba in that the amoeba constitutes an organism-world ecosystem that maintains consistency through change.

Our human models of our world express constructed ecosystems of interactions. Each modification in our scientific knowledge constitutes a change in that built ecosystem. The point is there is no one correct map, model or scheme of rationality that mirrors the way the world is. Our knowledge is not a mirror of the world. It is an activity that continually modifies the nature of the world in ways that
are meaningful and recognizable to us. There is no intelligibility without a pragmatic refreshing of the sense of meaning of what is intelligible.

Think of an intelligible order as a scheme or system of rationality. Within that order or map, things work a certain way, according to certain criteria. — Joshs

:up: Yes, "an intelligible order" more or less is a grammar for discursive practices (or like language games within a particular form of life).

@Wayfarer

but you need to grasp the argument before dismissing it. — bert1

I took this as an invitation to go back and read the OP once again (there was no mention of the time dimension) – and I thank you for that. And so, I will reply to some of the specific claims made in the OP (quotes from the OP are in bolded italics)

… the reality of first-person consciousness is ineliminable, and any account of the world must ultimately be grounded in the structures of experience as they appear to the subject.

Of course, consciousness is subjective. All neuroscientists understand this. But this statement makes an erroneous assumption – that any one neurological investigation tries to solve the problem of hard consciousness all at once. That’s not how science works. It’s one bit of information at a time. Specific functions of the brain can be investigated without access to the entirety of the subject’s consciousness.

As Earl Miller, the Picower Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT says, “You can’t study the complexities of executive [brain] function and not get to consciousness.”

https://bcs.mit.edu/news/science-consciousness

If we know what consciousness is, it is because we ourselves are conscious beings

Science does not dispute this.

Pure experience is beyond the level of being and has no essence… It permeates the show without showing itself— Michel Bitbol

Well, it has essence as far as we would consider that the function of a structure has essence. But in all cases, and especially with consciousness, “existence precedes essence.”

Bitbol considers consciousness to be “self-evidentially absolute”: the one domain of existence that is given fully and indubitably whenever it is present. By contrast, natural objects are always incompletely present, appearing only as partial profiles or “adumbrations,” forever subject to correction by further experience.

Bitbol’s “consideration” is not a substantiated claim. I can just as easily say that – "no, consciousness is not absolute – it depends on the functions of the brain" – and my claim would be backed up by scientific investigation.

Bitbol’s central claim: the attempt to derive consciousness from material processes reverses the real order of priority. Whatever is presumed to exist in the physical world already presupposes consciousness as the field in which such ascriptions occur.

Is he saying the world can’t exist unless it is being detected?

the materialist project of locating consciousness in the brain or in neural processes is not just incomplete; it is conceptually incoherent. Like any empirical analysis, it rests on the presumption that what is real is what can be objectively measured and assessed.

No such claim is made by neuroscience investigating into the source of consciousness. Bitbol is conflating “locating consciousness” with “determining what is real” – two wholly different aims – and different branches of investigation.

Also - while science may measure certain structural features associated with consciousness (brain scanning, blood flow, etc) – this is often done in conjunction with self-reporting of the subjective experience. Scientists not only measure the system, but investigate the effects of the system.

However, the very notion of the objective world described by the empirical sciences is itself a product of selective abstraction — what Bitbol calls the end-product of the procedure of objectification. Why? Because science methodically brackets out the subjective pole of observation so as to arrive at an intersubjective consensus about the observer-independent attributes of the object. But when this methodology is applied to the question of the nature of consciousness, it turns around and tries to explain conscious experience in terms of that consensus.

Okay, trying to parse this – he’s saying that science can never explain the conscious experience because it focuses on the object rather than the subject? But scientists are subjects themselves?

Someone help me out here. What’s he saying?

(I am reminded of Einstein’s famous quote - “If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, you don't understand it yourself.”)

The result is not only circular but, he says, will always culminate in the notorious “hard problem”: consciousness treated as if it were something that emerges from structural relations in objectively–existing matter, when in reality it is the precondition for identifying those relations in the first place. In that sense, it is prior to the emergence of both objective and subjective, which themselves rely on distinctions that arise within consciousness.

So, he’s saying, consciousness can’t know consciousness because consciousness came before consciousness.

On the one hand, consciousness cannot be treated as an object — something manipulable, measurable, or existing independently of the subject. This is because objects are by definition other to us, and are given only through the sense-data profiles which, as we have seen, are open to correction by further experience.

Neuroscientists do not treat consciousness as an “object” – but rather as a function of the brain.

Bitbol seems entirely lacking in the “structure-function” concept.

And no, scientists do not treat consciousness as something existing independent of the subject.

Yes, consciousness may change depending on further experience.

… consciousness … is neither a useful fiction, nor a byproduct of neural processes, nor a ghostly residue awaiting physical explanation. Instead, says Bitbol, it is the self-evidential medium within which all knowledge about objects, laws, and physical reality arise … Any attempt to treat consciousness as derivative — as some thing that “comes from” matter — therefore reverses the real order of dependence. The world of objects may be doubted, corrected, or revised; but the presence of experience itself, here and now, cannot be disconfirmed. In this sense, consciousness is “absolute,” not as a metaphysical substance (which phenomenology rejects) but as the unavoidable ground of meaning, evidence, and world-hood.

He recognizes what consciousness is, but errs in thinking that neuroscience does not. He goes to pains to explain what, in his view, it is not, but his argument seems more like pronouncements – like wishes – than a rebuttal.

Who’s disconfirming the presence of experience? If that is the criterion for determining that consciousness is absolute, then he has made an error in his understanding of the present state of neuroscience, thus nullifying his conclusion.

Indeed, he makes no attempt to refute any of the large body of scientific evidence supporting the idea that consciousness is a function of brain electrochemistry.

Physics, biology, and neuroscience describe the structural, relational, and functional aspects of the world-as-object; they do not, and need not, account for the presence of the world-as-experienced. As such, consciousness is not something over and above the world, nor something inside it. It is the condition for there being a world at all.

Neuroscience does not substitute the “world-as-experienced” for the “world-as-object.”

That we can only experience the world through our consciousness is not an argument that opposes the idea that consciousness arises from the neurological functioning in our brains.

Thanks for the thoughtful clarification. I think this helps me better locate where we’re really diverging.

I agree with you that the epistemological and ontological dimensions can’t be simply sealed off from one another. My worry, though, is that the antinomy only arises if we assume that intelligibility itself must be grounded in a conscious subject, rather than being intrinsic to being as such.

Following a more Aristotelian line, I would want to say that intelligibility is not something projected onto the world by consciousness, nor is it a mere coincidence. Rather, being itself is intelligible: it is structured, law-governed, and dynamically ordered in ways that can be grasped by intelligence. Consciousness is required for the act of understanding, but not for intelligibility to be operative in reality in the first place.

On this view, the fact that the empirical world is intelligible does make a genuine ontological claim, but it is a claim about the nature of being, not about the presence of a fundamental cognizing consciousness underwriting it. Intelligibility belongs to things insofar as they are, while understanding belongs to subjects insofar as they inquire and grasp.

This is why I’m still inclined to think the force of the antinomy depends on collapsing two distinct explanatory orders. Questions about how consciousness arises in the world concern the order of efficient causality. Questions about knowing concern the structure and operations of consciousness as oriented toward grasping the intelligible order of being in-itself. The latter does not, I'd argue, require that consciousness be ontologically fundamental.

That is a penetrating critique of Nagarjuna's philosophy, and I think it exposes a major instability in his thought. I get the impression that this instability is by design, though, in the sense that Nagajuna's aim is not to produce a philosophical system, but to force the mind out of any such system. As such, his critique causes the mind to cycle endlessly between affirming and denying both conventional and ultimate reality, never finding a stable resting point between the two. On this interpretation, the generation of aporia is intended to work as a therapeutic device, kicking the mind out of it's attachment to representation and into...well, that's the question. Enlightenment?

Like you, though, I think this approach works "too" well, as it undercuts any stable ground from which Nagarjuna can assert the "reality" of emptiness, nirvana, samsara, karma, or anything else. In other words, his (non)-doctrine of emptiness seems to be left teetering precariously on a precipice with nihilism on one side and naive realism on the other. Some might see this as a boon, but I'm not so sure.

One could say then that without the subject there is no time to produce the glue which makes the objectively real possible. — Joshs

And what if everything is the subject?

And there’s extensive clinical and experimental data to support the correlation of structure (brain) and function (mind/consciousness). We may not understand exactly how consciousness is generated, but it’s an “incontrovertible premise that consciousness comes about from the action of the brain.” — Questioner

It isn't an incontrovertible premise. Thinking the things a brain thinks comes from the action of the brain. Brains also do things that don't involve thinking, like making the heart beat.

Consciousness is another matter. The descriptions of the physical events that explain thinking and autonomic functions are not describing subjective experiences. For example, you can list any and all steps that begin with photons hitting the retina, including molecules of retinal changing shape, ion channels, sodium ions, axons and dendrites and neurotransmitters, and everything else, and you will never tell us where red is found. We'll understand how the system can discriminate different wavelengths of the spectrum, which some mechanical/electronic devices can do. But how our experience of colors also happens will not be revealed.

Also, if there is consciousness in things without brains, then, obviously, it doesn't come about from the action of the brain.

One could say then that without the subject there is no time to produce the glue which makes the objectively real possible. — Joshs

And what if everything is the subject?

Our human models of our world express constructed ecosystems of interactions. Each modification in our scientific knowledge constitutes a change in that built ecosystem. The point is there is no one correct map, model or scheme of rationality that mirrors the way the world is. Our knowledge is not a mirror of the world. It is an activity that continually modifies the nature of the world in ways that
are meaningful and recognizable to us. There is no intelligibility without a pragmatic refreshing of the sense of meaning of what is intelligible. — Joshs

If the order of the world is infinite and our models finite then there would be infinitely many ways to model its order truthfully, but also infinitely many ways to model it erroneously.

Brains also do things that don't involve thinking, like making the heart beat. — Patterner

That my brain controls my heartbeat is not an argument against it producing my consciousness. My brain does many things.

The descriptions of the physical events that explain thinking and autonomic functions are not describing subjective experiences. — Patterner

Right. One is structure, one is function.

For example, you can list any and all steps that begin with photons hitting the retina, including molecules of retinal changing shape, ion channels, sodium ions, axons and dendrites and neurotransmitters, and everything else, and you will never tell us where red is found. We'll understand how the system can discriminate different wavelengths of the spectrum, which some mechanical/electronic devices can do. But how our experience of colors also happens will not be revealed. — Patterner

Good example of structure and function.

Also, if there is consciousness in things without brains, then, obviously, it doesn't come about from the action of the brain. — Patterner

Where else is consciousness found?

I’m going to say something controversial, another conclusion to the one in bold is that they didn’t co-arise, but that consciousness was introduced, to a pre-existing world. It makes more sense to me than the idea that consciousness was always present, even in the Big Bang. — Punshhh

Yes, we just don't know. It begs the question as to whether the laws of nature were present from the start or whether they are, as Peirce suggested, evolutionarily acquired habits. If the laws, even if only as potentia, came into being with being then they cannot be separated from it and that would suggests the presence of a kind of instinctive intelligence inseparable from being.

What I’m saying is that there is a way of stepping out of this dualistic thought process. To develop a sense of things which can become like an alternative approach, or perspective on an issue. Over time, it becomes like a reference system, but not dualistically based, but intuitive/feeling based. — Punshhh

I agree with that and I think we are always already not in that dualistic mode most of the time; we just may not have learnt how to attend to that intuitive mode, because the analytic dualistic mind demands a kind of spolighted precision which doesn't belong to that intuitive mode, and confusion and aporia follow.

1) The analysis of the empirical world (and here I include the inner experience of sentient beings) strongly suggests that the consciousness of individual sentient beings is not fundamental. It even suggests that these individual consciousnesses arose in time via an evolutionary process. — boundless

I don't agree that it suggests those things. If consciousness is not there from the beginning, then physical arrangements are evolving for purely physical reasons. If physical arrangements were evolving for purely physical reasons, then it seems rather bizarre that they one day found themselves in just the right configuration to produce consciousness. I mean, holy cow! :gasp:

I can't help but remind myself that the 'puzzlement/wonder' it creates is a motivator for trying to go beyond that. So, as a way to solve the antinomy, I propose that we need to accept both stories and reconcile them. Yes, our consciousness is contingent, is ontologically dependent etc and it can't be the ground of 'intelligibility' of ourselves and the 'external world' (and also the 'empirical world', at the end of the day). But at the same time, I take seriously the other 'side' of the antinomy and I also affirm that intelligibility seems to be grounded in consciousness. However, in order to get a 'coherent story' that includes both insights, I acknowledge that I have to posit a consciousness of some sort that can truly be regarded as the ground of intelligibility. — boundless

I hear you! Obviously this is a deep and difficult question, but again, my orientation is shaped by my reading of Buddhist philosophy. You will recall that there is an unequivocal statement in the Pali texts, to wit, 'there is, monks, an unborn, unmade, unfabricated', and that if there were not, there would be no possibility of escape from the born, the made, the fabricated (reference). 'There is!' Of course, what that means - what precisely is the unborn, unconditioned - is beyond discursive reason. Probably also out of scope of naturalism, which puts it out-of-bounds for most here.

Nagarjuna goes beyond phenomenologists. — boundless

He does indeed. I'm also reading some of Bitbol's essays on Buddhism and he acknowledges this. That will be the subject of the third essay (if the next two are accepted by Philosophy Today.)

It invites the question: are these claims about the way things really are? I think this is a tender point for Bitbol. He wants to gatekeep the bounds of reason, but in order to do this he needs to grant reason a level of authority that he also seemingly wants to deny to it. If reason has the power to say what is unconditionally the case when engaging in critique, then how can we deny it that same power when it comes to ontology?...Does my critique of Bitbol hit the mark? — Esse Quam Videri

What exactly is he discerning in this essay? Bitbol is not claiming that he can determine what reality is like independently of experience. Notice at the outset, he says 'no alternative metaphysical view is advanced.' He is claiming that reason can notice when it has overstepped its bounds by mistaking the conditions of experience for objects within experience. That critique does not establish an alternative ontology - it is ameliorative rather than constructive. The aim is only to show the mistake inherent in trying to treat the issue of the nature of consciousness in objective terms, as the subject matter is categorically different. I don't think he's challenging naturalism when it comes to its legitimate subjects of interest, but its missapplication in philosophy of mind. All of which was anticipated by Husserl in his transcendentalist phase.

Nāgārjuna isn't really proposing a philosophy in the modern sense of the word, but rather something more like a path of liberation from philosophy (in the modern sense of the word). — Esse Quam Videri

There's a Buddhist metaphor that comes to mind. This is that the Buddha's teaching is like the stick used to stir a fire to help get it burning. But when the fire is burning, the stick is tossed in. There's another simile, the 'simile of the raft'. This compares the dharma to a raft 'bound together from fragments of sticks and grasses' (hence, nothing high-falutin') which is used to 'cross over the river' but which is discarded when the crossing is accomplished (Alagaddupama Sutta.) This has been compared to Wittgenstein's 'ladder' metaphor, that philosophy is like a ladder that is discarded after having been climbed.

But what is that rock, really? Objectively, it does not appear as you see it. In reality, it, and all of reality, outside of human perception, it is a conglomeration of colourless particles and waves, a haze and maze of uncertainty that turns into certainty only when you observe it. (I have heard it described as wavelength collapse, but I don't know enough about it to comment.) — Questioner

I read your posts, generally, as common-sense realism. We're evolved hominids, the universe is governed by the laws of physics, mind arises from brain, in line with the principles of evolutionary biology, and so on. Things that everyone knows, or thinks they do. But it is just that common-sense realism which is being challenged here. Granted, it takes some background reading to get the drift of these challenges, but suffice to say, many popular claims about what science has established and understands in respect to the nature of consciousness are subject to criticism - not on empirical grounds, but on philosophical grounds, i.e. what they mean.

Reductive materialism is the view that the mind is 'nothing but' the activities of neural matter and that as knowledge of neuroscience develops, so too will the grasp of this correlation. That neural reductionist view is propounded by a group of influential scholars and academics and is also associated with the 'new atheist' writings of popular intellectuals such as Richard Dawkins. By this means, it is hoped to reduce the understanding of consciousness or mind, to the network of physical causation by which other natural phenomena are explained.

The phenomenological critique is not that neuroscientific or evolutionary accounts are factually mistaken, but that the reduction of the nature of mind to physical causation is an extra step that is not warranted by the evidence. But those arguments are lengthy and difficult to summarise in a forum post. Perhaps a good starting point would be this essay Minding Matter, Adam Frank, who is a professor of astronomy. It actually discusses in some detail, but in a reader-friendly way, the philosophical challenges that 'wavelength collapse' pose for reductionist materialism. But there are many other such arguments, including those discussed by Michel Bitbol in the essay that this OP is based on.

The experience depends on the brain, but the brain depends on the experience, but temporal order isn't an issue because time doesn't exist before the experience. So the appallingly offensive bootstrapping is perhaps permissible. I don't buy it, but you need to grasp the argument before dismissing it. — bert1

It has some support in physics.

The notion of evolution is not applicable to the universe as a whole since there is no external observer with respect to the universe, and there is no external clock that does not belong to the universe. However, we do not actually ask why the universe as a whole is evolving. We are just trying to understand our own experimental data. Thus, a more precisely formulated question is why do we see the universe evolving in time in a given way. In order to answer this question one should first divide the universe into two main pieces: i) an observer with his clock and other measuring devices and ii) the rest of the universe. Then it can be shown that the wave function of the rest of the universe does depend on the state of the clock of the observer, i.e. on his ‘time’. This time dependence in some sense is ‘objective’: the results obtained by different (macroscopic) observers living in the same quantum state of the universe and using sufficiently good (macroscopic) measuring apparatus agree with each other.

Thus we see that without introducing an observer, we have a dead universe, which does not evolve in time. This example demonstrates an unusually important role played by the concept of an observer in quantum cosmology. John Wheeler underscored the complexity of the situation, replacing the word observer by the word participant, and introducing such terms as a ‘self-observing universe’. — Andrei Linde, Inflation, Quantum Cosmology and the Anthropic Principle

If consciousness is not there from the beginning — Patterner

The problem is that 'there' is implicitly objectifying. It is locative. You're already orienting the discussion in terms of space-time by using it.

Right. One is structure, one is function.
------
Good example of structure and function. — Questioner

Neither is an explanation for consciousness. We can describe the structure of a windmill. It's height. The blades extending out at the top, position to certain way in relation to the tower and to the ground.

We can describe the function of the windmill, also. whether an old one with the mechanism inside the ground wheat, or modern one that produces electricity.

The brain's structure and function turn not explain the presence of consciousness. Any activity noted is function, such as discriminating wavelengths of visible light. there is no explanation for why we subjectively experience color when those physical events, and the discrimination of wavelengths, take place.

Where else is consciousness found? — Questioner

Any living thing.

If the order of the world is infinite and our models finite then there would be infinitely many ways to model its order truthfully, but also infinitely many ways to model it erroneously — Janus

Exactly. But not all at the same time. For long stretches of time, during normatively stable periods within a science or a culture, there is but one or a handful of related accepted ways to model truth and error. Since we always inhabit one of or another of these normative epochs, the world always makes sense to us in some way, according to some accepted scheme of rationality.

Where else is consciousness found? — Questioner

Rubber bands and rocks

If consciousness is not there from the beginning
— Patterner

The problem is that 'there' is implicitly objectifying. It is locative. You're already orienting the discussion in terms of space-time by using it. — Wayfarer

Using boundless' words, I do not think consciousnesses arose in time via an evolutionary process. I believe it was always a part of the evolutionary process. I find no logic in the idea that physical considerations caused a particular physical arrangement to come into being, and this physical arrangement just happens to produce consciousness. If consciousness is not a factor in the evolution of the physical arrangements, and it is not a goal of evolution, then there is no reason it would suddenly appear.

I may as well be building a mountain scene with tunnels on a big table in the garage for my train set, and the whole thing suddenly takes flight. Well, I put that motorized spinning thing in the front to create wind to blow the miniature trees and wheat fields. And those two long thin projections going to either side were supposed to be fishing piers. And the...

Oh fer crissakes! It does look like an airplane, now that I think about it!

Of course, the analogy doesn't work, because there's no explanation of how the physical arrangements and activities of the brain can produce consciousness, unlike the physical arrangements and activities of things like wings and a propellor can make something fly.

Rubber bands and rocks — bert1

I like to stretch rubber bands until they snap. You can hear them scream! :halo:

For long stretches of time, during normatively stable periods within a science or a culture, there is but one or a handful of related accepted ways to model truth and error. — Joshs

There’s an anecdote I sometimes re-tell that bears on this point. It concerns the arrival of the Endeavour in Botany Bay during James Cook’s voyage in 1770. Joseph Banks noted in his journal that a group of Indigenous people camped on the shoreline, roughly a mile away, showed no reaction at all to the ship’s presence. It was only some hours later, when a small boat was launched and rowed toward the shore, that they began to respond.

The point is not that the ship was misinterpreted. It seems not to have been interpreted at all — until the small boat entered the space of possible interaction. Only then did it cross the threshold from ignored anomaly to meaningful presence, presumably because its scale and form bore at least some resemblance to a canoe. (That part is conjectural, of course, but the lack of any initial reaction was a recorded fact.)

There’s another anecdote, often attributed to the anthropologist Colin Turnbull, concerning a chieftain from a forest-dwelling group in central Africa who was taken by car to a mountain lookout. After some time, he knelt down and began pawing at the ground in front of him. According to the translator, this was because distant herds of savanna animals were being interpreted as small creatures nearby — the result of a lifetime spent in dense forest, where visual depth rarely extends beyond a few metres.

Taken together, these strike me as illustrations of what one might call cognitive relativity: the way an underlying cognitive framework conditions how visual phenomena are interpreted — or, in the first case, ignored altogether. On a far more sophisticated level, Einstein was making essentially the same point when he insisted that theory determines what can be observed — something Manjit Kumar discusses in Quantum, and which influenced Heisenberg early on. The claim isn’t that observation is subjective, but that intelligibility comes first: a framework has to be in place before anything can count as “what is observed.”

I’m not endorsing out-and-out relativism here — I think there are real constraints and non-negotiable elements in experience. But these examples are a useful reminder to keep an open mind about the limits imposed by our own frameworks. It is especially relevant in discussions of phenomenology, which is very sensitive to the way that the implicit metaphysics of day-to-day culture shape our attitudes to experience.

You can hear them scream! — Patterner

Unless yours is the hand holding one end, in which case the shriek will be yours.

We have no chance of getting to it if we continue to understand naturalism in terms of objectively causal processes which treat subjectivity as something added onto an objective world. — Joshs

I mean, in truth, it was. There was once a time when consciousness didn't exist. Time passed. At some point, reality started experiencing itself. If "added" is not the right term (after all, who or what added it?), consciousness at least arose from an unconscious world.

And so, if consciousness arose from unconscious processes, we can in principle describe how this happened. The trouble is, unconscious reality only has a third person perspective, while consciousness only has a first person perspective. We simply lack the cognitive tools to cross this perspectival gap, as we have never crossed it before.

I mean, in truth, it was. There was once a time when consciousness didn't exist. Time passed. At some point, reality started perceiving itself. If "added" is not the right term (after all, who or what added it?), consciousness at least arose from an unconscious world.

And so, if consciousness arose from unconscious processes, we can in principle describe how this happened. — hypericin

Unless there wasn't a time when consciousness didn't exist. If it is fundamental, a property of things, as, for example, mass and charge are, then it was always there. There was always experiencing. Yes, reality started perceiving itself when structures of perception evolved. At which point, there was the experience of perception.

unconscious reality only has a third person perspective, — hypericin

From whence do the pre-sentient denizens of the cosmos derive 'a perspective'? Unlike our various panpsychist friends, I'm loath to admit they have any: consciousness is required for there to be any kind of perspective.

From phenomenology of biology, in particular Hans Jonas' book on that - the most rudimentary of organisms distinguishes 'self from other' in a way that no non-organic matter does. It is the very first thing that an organism must do to maintain itself against the relentless onslaught of entropy. That, I see, as the fundamental emergence of consciousness, on a very rudimentary level, although not of sentience, which comes later.

Unless there wasn't a time when consciousness didn't exist. If it is fundamental, a property of things, as, for example, mass and charge are, then it was always there — Patterner

My hesitation with this line of panpsychism is that it extends the concept of matter so as to include consciousness as an attribute, rather than questioning the object-centred metaphysics that made consciousness invisible in the first place. From a phenomenological standpoint, consciousness isn’t something that can be injected retrospectively into an already third-person model of reality. Any framework that begins by screening out subjectivity — as the physicalist model has done — will inevitably fail when it later tries to reintroduce it as a fundamental property alongside mass or charge.

That is why thinkers like Michel Bitbol press the need for a change of stance or attitude. This form of panpsychism still retains the self–other, subject–object paradigm that underlies naturalism; it simply enriches the inventory of properties without questioning the framing itself.

In that sense, even the question “what is consciousness?” is improper if it is posed within that same objectifying register. (It's what don't like about Anikka Harris and Galen Strawson, who are trying to rehabilitate physicalism, rather than seeing through it, mainly, I suspect, out of the fear of religion.)

↪Joshs
We have no chance of getting to it if we continue to understand naturalism in terms of objectively causal processes which treat subjectivity as something added onto an objective world.
— Joshs

I mean, in truth, it was. There was once a time when consciousness didn't exist. Time passed. At some point, reality started experiencing itself. If "added" is not the right term (after all, who or what added it?), consciousness at least arose from an unconscious world. — hypericin

Let’s say we go with the idea that there was a time when consciousness didn’t exist. Is the only conceptual vocabulary available to us to describe the world prior to the appearance of conscious beings one which treats the natural in terms of objective causality? Let me start by suggesting that consciousness is not a matter of reality experiencing itself, as though to perceive is simply to stare at. Consciousness constructs, creates, becomes. To be aware of something is to produce it. Not in the sense of fabricating a world out of whole cloth, but in the sense that perceiving is acting upon, making a change in the world we are already a part of. So with consciousness, reality doesn’t experience itself, reality alters itself. Phenomenologists hold this view of the nature of consciousness, which is radically different from the conventional dualistic view of it implied by panpsychisms (that for a material thing to have consciousness is to be aware of itself).

Poststructuralists reject the idea that consciousness was always present in the world, but they agree with the phenomenologists that reality exists by altering itself, that no entity pre-exists its interactions within a configuration of elements. In other words, they reject a view of naturalism or materialism as objectively causal processes.

If consciousness arose from unconscious processes, we can in principle describe how this happened. The trouble is, unconscious reality only has a third person perspective, while consciousness only has a first person perspective. We simply lack the cognitive tools to cross this perspectival gap, as we have never crossed it before — hypericin

Both the phenomenologists and the poststructuralists argue that a third person perspective is a derived abstraction generated via intersubjective processes (and which was developed contingently at a certain point in cultural history), Reality prior to the advent of human consciousness has neither a third personal nor a first personal perspective. It has the multiple, continually changing perspectives of all of its interacting aspects. When conscious entities like ourselves study any of these aspects, we contribute to the alteration of the shifting patterns we interact with through our observations. As scientists, philosophers and poets we are a part of the cosmic dance, not passive onlookers.

generally, as common-sense realism. — Wayfarer

I don't think the scientific consensus can be reduced to common sense, but anyway....

Reductive materialism is the view that the mind is 'nothing but' the activities of neural matter and that as knowledge of neuroscience develops, so too will the grasp of this correlation. That neural reductionist view is propounded by a group of influential scholars and academics and is also associated with the 'new atheist' writings of popular intellectuals such as Richard Dawkins. By this means, it is hoped to reduce the understanding of consciousness or mind, to the network of physical causation by which other natural phenomena are explained. — Wayfarer

I wonder why this is so threatening to some people?

Perhaps a good starting point would be this essay Minding Matter, Adam Frank, who is a professor of astronomy. It actually discusses in some detail, but in a reader-friendly way, the philosophical challenges that 'wavelength collapse' pose for reductionist materialism. — Wayfarer

A very interesting article. Thanks so much for sharing it.

I didn’t see that the article spoke of philosophical challenges, but rather the problem of reconciling the materialist view of consciousness with quantum mechanics – which was not touched on at all in the OP.

And whereas the OP specifically is written as an argument for “the primacy of consciousness” – that was not the gist of the article I just read. (I suppose Bitbol made his own conclusion about that.)

The main thrust of the article seems to be:

How can there be one mathematical rule for the external objective world before a measurement is made, and another that jumps in after the measurement occurs?

And

The measurement problem highlights this barrier between epistemology and ontology by making explicit the role of the observer (that is: us) in gaining knowledge.

So, two opposing strategies for explaining subjective consciousness have taken shape:

Psi-ontologists – who see consciousness as a fundamental feature of reality, like mass or charge

Psi-epistemologists – who say that subjective experience arises from how information is processed and made available, not from a new ontological ingredient

(Bitbol is a psi-ontologist, I am a psi-epistomologist)

But then the article makes an illogical conclusion -

This arbitrariness of deciding which interpretation to hold completely undermines the strict materialist position.

Science is awash with contradictory positions, but somehow it marches forward. (I was a little surprised to read at the beginning of the article that the author was shocked to find uncertainty in science. Science runs on uncertainty.)

Consider the controversies surrounding dark matter and dark energy. One theory is formed, it shows cracks, and a new theory comes along, based on new evidence. This is the way science works. Pieces of the puzzle are put together.

No, science has not yet put together the entire puzzle that will answer the question of consciousness, but all the pieces of the puzzle so far point to consciousness being a function of neurological processes. Any other theory is just a matter of wishful thinking.

The article goes on to say that physics from the psi-epistemologist is no longer a description of the world in-and-of itself. Instead, it’s a description of the rules for our interaction with the world.

Rules? What rules?

Yeah, consciousness is built on interaction with the world. But it is built in a functioning brain.

Rubber bands and rocks — bert1

Not in all of us. ;)

A side note - something I read in the Aeon article linked by Wayfarer -

‘I refute it thus,’ said the 18th-century writer Samuel Johnson kicking a large rock as refutation to arguments against materialism he’d just endured.

Here’s a poem by Richard Wilbur:

Epistemology
I.
Kick at the rock, Sam Johnson, break your bones:
But cloudy, cloudy is the stuff of stones.

II.
We milk the cow of the world, and as we do
We whisper in her ear, ‘You are not true.’

which is radically different from the conventional dualistic view of it implied by panpsychisms (that for a material thing to have consciousness is to be aware of itself). — Joshs

Subjective experience doesn't mean self-awareness.

This form of panpsychism still retains the self–other, subject–object paradigm that underlies naturalism; — Wayfarer

Do you think there is ever going to be a paradigm that does not have self and other? What does it mean to not have self-other? Will all minds and consciousnesses merge into one? What is your vision off the future? Will we no longer use the sciences that developed by ignoring consciousness? Will we not live in houses, not use electricity, not use propulsion systems and math to launch ships to Mars and beyond?

However, the very notion of the objective world described by the empirical sciences is itself a product of selective abstraction — what Bitbol calls the end-product of the procedure of objectification. Why? Because science methodically brackets out the subjective pole of observation so as to arrive at an intersubjective consensus about the observer-independent attributes of the object. But when this methodology is applied to the question of the nature of consciousness, it turns around and tries to explain conscious experience in terms of that consensus.

Okay, trying to parse this – he’s saying that science can never explain the conscious experience because it focuses on the object rather than the subject? But scientists are subjects themselves?

Someone help me out here. What’s he saying? — Questioner

I've only just now noticed this earlier comment of yours, and I commend you for it.

The idea is that modern science assumes a strict division between the scientist/experimenter/subject and the object of analysis, such that the object exists the same for any and all observers, and the role and/or presence of the observer can be disregarded.

Yes, scientists are subjects themselves, but in the typically modern view of science, their presence is 'bracketed out' so as to derive an observation which will be the same for all observers. So the subjectivity of the scientist is ruled irrelevant.

The paradigmatic example is, of course, modern physics, which is where this whole approach got started, in the work of Galileo, who also introduced the idea of 'primary qualities'. These are those qualities which are amenable to precise qualitative measurement - mass, velocity, momentum, and so on. How the object appears is said to be explained in terms of 'secondary qualities' - color, taste, scent, and so on. This was then combined with the dualism of René Descartes with the distinction between matter (res extensa) and mind (res cogitans), to produce the characteristic paradigm of early modern science:

The modern mind-body problem arose out of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, as a direct result of the concept of objective physical reality that drove that revolution. Galileo and Descartes made the crucial conceptual division by proposing that physical science should provide a mathematically precise quantitative description of an external reality extended in space and time, a description limited to spatiotemporal primary qualities such as shape, size, and motion, and to laws governing the relations among them. Subjective appearances, on the other hand -- how this physical world appears to human perception -- were assigned to the mind, and the secondary qualities like color, sound, and smell were to be analyzed relationally, in terms of the power of physical things, acting on the senses, to produce those appearances in the minds of observers. It was essential to leave out or subtract subjective appearances and the human mind -- as well as human intentions and purposes -- from the physical world in order to permit this powerful but austere spatiotemporal conception of objective physical reality to develop. — Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos, Pp 35-36

Who’s disconfirming the presence of experience? If that is the criterion for determining that consciousness is absolute, then he has made an error in his understanding of the present state of neuroscience, thus nullifying his conclusion. — Questioner

According to whom does the 'present state of neuroscience' accomodate the foundational role of first-person experience?

Reductive materialism is the view that the mind is 'nothing but' the activities of neural matter and that as knowledge of neuroscience develops, so too will the grasp of this correlation..Wayfarer

I wonder why this is so threatening to some people? — "

Because it's not true, yet a very large number of intelligent people seem to accept that it is. And because ideas have consequences.

I didn’t see that the article spoke of philosophical challenges, but rather the problem of reconciling the materialist view of consciousness with quantum mechanics – which was not touched on at all in the OP. — Questioner

Actually, in the Michel Bitbol paper that the article draws on, the last of the 'six arguments' is that from modern physics. He says that the context-dependent nature of the findings of quantum physics mitigates against the idea of a 'material substrate' which can be used as an explanation for consciousness.

Some philosophers who defend a “physicalist” view may be...saying something like this: “Consciousness is matter-based in a very general sense : it emerges from whatever physics describes as fundamental, be it a quantized field”. But the problem is not solved by this further flexibility. For, as I mentioned previously about the interpretation of quantum mechanics, modern physics cannot even be said to “describe” anything completely independently of the experimental and intellectual tools of investigation: it just affords a way of systematic prediction of what occurs if this investigation is carried out; and it establishes reproducible relations between these predictions. What is taken as objective by modern physics is no longer a conception of the ultimate stuff of which the world is made, but the very network of mathematical tools by which we can collectively anticipate the outcome of our most refined actions. — Michel Bitbol

This is implicit in 'the observer problem' in quantum physics, which undercuts the strict subject-object distinction which Galileo had introduced. Which is why strict scientific realists, like Sir Roger Penrose, say that quantum theory must be wrong or incomplete.

The (Adam Frank) article goes on to say that physics from the psi-epistemologist is no longer a description of the world in-and-of itself. Instead, it’s a description of the rules for our interaction with the world.

Rules? What rules? — Questioner

The Born Rule is a principle one.

------

Do you think there is ever going to be a paradigm that does not have self and other? What does it mean to not have self-other? Will all minds and consciousnesses merge into one? — Patterner

I can only say that 'transcending the self-other distinction' is a recurring motif in mysticism and the perennial philosophies, generally. That is why 'Nirvāṇa without remainder' is said to be only possible on the far side of death.

What is your vision off the future? Will we no longer use the sciences that developed by ignoring consciousness? Will we not live in houses, not use electricity, not use propulsion systems and math to launch ships to Mars and beyond? — Patterner

I don't believe interstellar travel is at all feasible for terrestrial creatures such as ourselves. We might be able to send ultrasmall computers via laser energy, but we'll never send large metal and composite material vessels with living organisms in them. Mars is a possibility, but the idea of colonizing Mars is a Musk fever dream. (I'm writing a 'psi-phi' novel on this very theme at the moment, although constantly sidetracking myself with forum posts.)