Skip to main content
Loading Explore guides…
Dualism and Consciousness · Acedra
Home
Explore
Philosophy
Dualism and Consciousness
Sign in to save
Chat
If YouTube asks you to sign in, open the video on YouTube.
Watch on YouTube
Reload player
Transcript
51 segments
Copy
Hide video
0:28
ROBERT LAWRENCE KUHN: Two mysteries possess me-- existence and consciousness. Existence is the totality of all there is. Consciousness is our inner awareness. I'd like existence to be more than the physical world. I'd like consciousness to continue after death. That's why dualism appeals.
0:51
Dualism is the claim that the mental and the physical are both real. In the past, almost everyone was a dualist-- body and soul, a physical body and an immortal soul. No more. Today, dualism is rejected by most scientists. Even most philosophers won't defend dualism. Me? I'm not so sure. Can dualism explain consciousness? I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn, and Closer to Truth is my journey to find out.
1:35
I was educated in brain science, but I've flirted with dualism. I'd like dualism to be true-- life beyond death, existence beyond the physical. Dualism is heresy among neuroscientists. Mental capacities are clearly related to brain functions. Trauma to the brain means trouble for the mind. But I just cannot imagine how physical facts of the brain can explain mental feelings of the mind. That's why some call consciousness an ultimate fact, meaning "not derived from the physical world."
2:13
I begin in England, at the University of Birmingham, with a philosopher of religion who focuses on consciousness, Yujin Nagasawa. Yujin, when I explore all the different approaches to consciousness-- neuroscience, talking to people who believe in ESP, or religious people, physicists-- at the end of the day, there's one question and one way to ask it, and that is, is consciousness something that is relatively accidental, the product of some evolutionary development that has been layered on top
2:51
of the development of the physical world, or is consciousness some ultimate fact of reality that religions tap into or parapsychology can see? That's the big question. Is consciousness an ultimate fact? YUJIN NAGASAWA: So there are various philosophical views that regard consciousness as an ultimate fact. One is idealism. Idealism says that everything is ultimately nonphysical or mental. So consciousness is the fundamental feature of this world.
3:27
Panpsychism also says that consciousness is ultimate. So, if you look at all the ultimate physical properties and entities, they are conscious. ROBERT: Now, the difference between idealism and panpsychism is what? YUJIN: Is that idealists don't allow anything physical. They think that everything is purely mental, so they deny that there are physical objects like tables and chairs. They are only mental properties or mental entities. And there's another view that regards consciousness ultimate,
3:59
which might be called cosmic panpsychism. This is the view that consciousness is most fundamental because the whole universe is conscious. ROBERT: So, what would be the implications of each one of these ways that consciousness could be an ultimate fact? They're radically different from each other. I feel more confused than ever. YUJIN: I want to think that ultimately some form of monism is true because monism is such an elegant view. ROBERT: Monism being there is just one thing?
4:30
YUJIN: That's right, or at least one type of thing. But if you accept dualism, then there are two different types of thing, and they are somehow related and interact with each other, and that's not a very pretty view. ROBERT: So, what you're saying is that physicalism, which says only the physical is real, and idealism, which says only the mental is real, although they seem to be absolutely 180 degrees opposite from each other in content, are, in style, a little similar
4:59
because they each have only one thing. YUJIN: Yes, they are equally simple and elegant, but I reject idealism because it's just too implausible to say that everything is purely nonphysical or mental, so I'm naturally attracted to physicalism because, for me, it seems obvious that there are a lot of physical things, but, at the same time, I agree with nonphysicalists that there is something very special about consciousness. ROBERT: So, it sounds like you're in trouble.
5:27
YUJIN: Yes, I am in trouble. So, one way of solving this problem is to accept a form of monism. So, ultimately there is nothing beyond this universe, but, at the same time, the universe is not purely physical. ROBERT: It sounds like you're drifting into a kind of dualism whether you like it or not. YUJIN: It's just a form of dualism with respect to theory. So, maybe there are things that can be captured by physical, physical theories, and there are things that cannot be captured
5:58
by physical theories, but they are not ontologically distinct. They still exist within the monistic universe. ROBERT: To me, it's radically simple. Can science, in principle, discover it all? If the answer is yes, it's physicalist. If the answer is no, everything changes. You can't have it both ways. YUJIN: That's right, so that's why I reject physicalism. Physical sciences cannot explain everything. There is something that is beyond the physical.
6:27
However, that doesn't mean that the universe is dualistic.
6:34
ROBERT: Elegance drives Yujin to monism, meaning everything that exists is one kind of stuff. He wants to be a physicalist, meaning everything is physical or material, but he sees realities beyond the physical. I wonder, can the definition of physical be enlarged? Sure, but enlarge it too much, and it starts to look like dualism. I wonder, is elegance a good test of what's real? Possibly. Is the unity of monism-- one kind of stuff-- more elegant than the duality of dualism-- two kinds of stuff?
7:09
Again possibly.
7:13
I do not accept dualism, nor do I renounce it. I seek dualism's strongest arguments, see if they hold. There are few dualists whose arguments I respect. A favorite is the Oxford philosopher of religion, Richard Swinburne. I know Richard's religious beliefs include a soul. What I don't know are his arguments. Richard, as an old brain scientist, the question of whether we need a nonphysical component to make consciousness out of brain has been something that's obsessed me my whole life.
7:47
As the decades have gone on, more and more neuroscientists, even some theologians are saying we do not need such nonphysical component. What is your view? RICHARD SWINBURNE: I certainly think we do. If you were to describe the whole history of the world, you must describe not merely what happened to the bits of this body, but what me, I'm aware of. It's one truth that this, that certain things are happening to neurons in my brain, but it's another truth that I am aware of certain things
8:19
and these are connected with each other. So, there is this whole world of thought, feeling, color, sound, and so on, which is, I have privileged access to. It's, to some extent, private to myself, and this is the world of consciousness. Indeed, it's the thing we know about most certainly in the world. ROBERT: But yet some people say it's an illusion. RICHARD: That is just crazy. I mean, to say my pain is an illusion. Of course it isn't. It's more certain that your pain is there
8:48
than that the physical world is there because the physical world might be an illusion, and you could still have pains and thoughts and feelings. That's more certain than anything else. Suppose some mad surgeon gets hold of me and cuts open my skull and takes out of it my brain, and my brain is made of two parts, the left hemisphere and the right hemisphere, and there's largely some overlap between the two hemispheres in the sense that each of them are, to some extent, responsible for quite a lot
9:17
of my thoughts, feelings, and so on. And so the surgeon takes out my brain, divides it into two, and he's got hold of two other victims, and he's taken their brains out of their skull, and he puts the left hemisphere into one of these victim's empty skulls and the right hemisphere into another of these victim's empty skulls and starts them up. Now they, since they have most of my hemispheres, will, each of them, think, or think it quite likely, that they are the previous Richard Swinburne.
9:48
But, of course, they can't both be me. On the other hand, there's a good case for supposing that either of them are. But my crucial point is whatever we knew about the neural goings-on, we wouldn't know which is me. That is to say, the mere knowledge of what has happened to my brain won't say what has happened to me, and that suggests that me is something other than my brain because if I am just a matter of my brain and whatever body is connected with me, you'd know the answer
10:16
if you knew what had happened to the brain, and so there's a truth, a further truth, and there can only be a further truth if being me is not a matter of the brain. So, thoughts and feelings, et cetera, belong to the me. Let's call it my soul, the essential part of me. And it's that that's in interaction with my brain. So, there is a life of thought and feeling which belongs to an immaterial soul in connection with the body. ROBERT: Richard is a dualist, unabashedly so.
10:47
He argues for a nonphysical substance which some call an immortal soul. Although his line of reasoning does not include God directly, his belief in God may motivate his conclusion. Can dualism be defended without God at all?
11:07
I visit the technology philosopher and seer Jaron Lanier. No topic intimidates Jaron. Jaron, let's just say we accept the reality of consciousness. Is it the product of the brain that somehow comes out, or is there something irreducible? JARON LANIER: I'm in a bit of a tight spot here because of, I do believe in consciousness, and consciousness is the one thing that isn't reduced if it's an illusion, so saying it's an illusion reduces nothing for me. At the same time,
11:44
I am very clear that I know nothing beyond that. I really don't know what it is, and I think it would be overreaching to present these theories that everything has a little bit of consciousness, and it's something global. And so, I think the art of this is to be a dualist because it's honest, but to be an honest dualist, which means saying almost nothing at all. You've got two choices. Either you know everything, or you organize your ignorance in some intelligent and honest manner.
12:16
Dualism is the most honest manner of organizing your ignorance. ROBERT: I would ask you to defend that because I would say to start, that there might be three separate ways. You've got to say, okay, we don't know much, but it's all physical. You can say in some form or another there's a dualism, we don't know, or you can take the mysterian approach. Say we don't know, we can't know-- JARON: No, no, no, no, I'm not a mysterian at all.
12:39
I'm not making any claims about what ultimately cannot be known. All I'm making a claim about is what I do not know. ROBERT: Okay, but I'm fascinated by the perch that you sit on... JARON: Yes, it's a very fine, fine line. ROBERT: ...while you wait for developments or while you appreciate your own ignorance, your perch, you use a kind of your own kind of dualism. JARON: Well, you know, I sometimes think of it as, as being like a tightrope walker,
13:03
where if you fall to the left, you succumb to superstitions, and if you fall to the right, you succumb to unjustified reductionism. So, I think the only thing that might distinguish me from various other people who might unfashionably allow themselves to be called dualists is that I'm very, very insistent on not having anything else put in my mouth about, you know, whether consciousness-- what happens when you die or whether dogs have it or any other stuff. I truly don't want to go there.
13:32
I just want to hang on to the data I have, which is the sense of experience. This notion that we're just a smidgen away from a complete description of reality, that all we have to do is get the relativity guys and the quantum field theory guys together, and then we fix up physics, then all we have to do is a little bit more computer modeling of the brain and some data gathering, and we have the brain, and then we're done. I would point out that the universe has consistently surprised us,
13:58
and that every time we think we have it all wrapped up, there's another surprise waiting. We happen to be in an era where it's fashionable to think that we have things wrapped up. My bet is that we don't. If an empirical result would change my mind about dualism, it will be of a nature that I can't imagine right now, and it would make me very sad to think that science doesn't have results in the future that I can't imagine.
14:24
ROBERT: I'm something of a skeptic. While correlations between mind states and brain states will continue to be made, such correlations will yield no deep progress explaining inner awareness.
14:39
I doubt that science can ever fully account for consciousness in purely physical terms. Why our perpetual ignorance? I think because consciousness is so special. However, I may think wrong. The real reason for our ignorance may be quite the reverse because consciousness is so exaggerated. I go to Oxford to visit the atheistic philosopher Bede Rundle. BEDE RUNDLE: People often think that this is the last great problem to solve, what is the nature of consciousness?
15:13
And it appears to them as a problem because they implicitly take consciousness to be like some kind of stuff, but not this cool stuff that our arms and legs are made of, some more ethereal, subtle substance. And the question is, how does that substance relate to the brain, say, and the physical more generally? I think it's worth looking at the term consciousness in the category of different kinds of noun, and here you say, well, it's an abstract noun,
15:44
it's like kindness, for example, or carelessness. And you note with them that when you use one of them, you could equally use just the adjective. So, if you say, her kindness was overwhelming, you can equally say, she was overwhelmingly kind. It's just a stylistic variant, and you wouldn't think of kindness as some kind of stuff. You'd say there's no more implication of that than there is with the one using just the adjective. Now, take consciousness.
16:15
To lose consciousness is just to cease to be conscious. That's not some stuff that's suddenly vanished. It's in the same category of terms such as being aware, being attentive, being alert, and whether or not a creature is conscious, it's pretty easy to determine. So, you know that the lion chasing you is conscious... unfortunately. He shows his awareness of his environment by modifying what he does in pursuit of you. And you didn't have to speculate about some strange substance.
16:49
The consciousness is manifested in a certain kind of purposeful behavior. All right, now, that's my way of indicating that it is a natural phenomenon. Some people would say there's something missing there because in the sense of conscious I've been using, an animal can be conscious. The opposite of that is being unconscious and fast asleep or something like that. But can't we be conscious in a much higher way? So, usually what is meant is something like,
17:18
not only can I see, but I can be aware that I see. I can reflect on my seeing. ROBERT: Self-awareness. BEDE: Self-awareness. Again, it's not going to be pretty well purely philosophical, I suspect, because you've got to try and tease out just what is peculiar to that form of consciousness, and one way of going about that is by saying, "Well, could an animal be self-conscious?" And that leads you on to saying, well, you need thought because you're thinking about what you're seeing, say.
17:48
Can you have thought without language? ROBERT: Some would just have consciousness be something fundamental in the universe. BEDE: Yes. ROBERT: Others would use consciousness as an inference to God. So, so, there's all different uses of it now. BEDE: And I come back to the, the first point that it's easy to make more of a problem than there is if you think of consciousness as some kind of stuff with a location. See, so, you probably remember neuroscientists saying things like,
18:19
"I've looked into many brains, but I've never found a thought. I've never found consciousness." But the brain isn't conscious. It's the person who's conscious, and the person shows his being conscious in a variety of very familiar ways, and what you've got to do is to try and spell out in greater detail what it is you go by in reaching that conclusion and then ask yourself, well, does this make any demands on anything outside the natural world? And I just don't see that it does,
18:51
and it's terribly important. It's still mysterious, but then we've had lots of mysteries to cope with, and, by and large, we, they give way to a combination of thought and experiment. ROBERT: Bede demystifies consciousness, or so he tries. He focuses on what consciousness does, not on what consciousness is. But his arguments downplay inner awareness. To me, our first-person-felt experience erupting in the universe seems shocking, yet I don't want to fool myself. Am I inflating consciousness?
19:31
Perhaps hoping for realities beyond the physical?
19:37
But consciousness remains a problem, and dualism remains a solution. Are there more novel explanations? I ask an Australian philosopher who offers rigorous arguments for radical ideas, Peter Forrest. Peter, I did doctoral work in brain science. My head has always told me yes, that there's nothing beyond the brain, but my intuition says because of what it feels like, consciousness, there's got to be something beyond what I study. PETER FORREST: Well, I'm inclined to agree, Robert,
20:13
that what the study of the brain tells you is how consciousness is structured. It doesn't tell us what the substance of consciousness is. The fact of consciousness is likely to be a horrible mystery. I incline towards the position that the stuff of which reality is composed can be thought of both physically as entering into causal relations with each other as governed by laws of nature and can be thought of psychologically as appearing a certain way. I also incline towards the view
20:53
that we don't need to posit a separate being who, or thing, that is conscious of ideas. ROBERT: So, you're not a dualist. You don't believe in anything independent of the one substance that we know. PETER: No, I'm not a dualist. I don't really think it helps explain a consciousness to talk about a thing which is aware. I think the best we can do is say that these brain processes, which we partially understand in terms of the causal relations between them, appear a certain way.
21:27
It's not as if we have to shine the light of consciousness on them for them to appear. They just do appear. ROBERT: You say they. What's they? PETER: The brain states. ROBERT: The billions of neurons firing little... PETER: Complicated patterns. ROBERT: Complicated patterns of electrical impulses. PETER: Yes. ROBERT: What are you saying about them? PETER: I'm saying that it's their nature to appear and that appearing constitutes the mind, which we ordinarily think of as being aware of them,
22:00
so the basic mystery is that things appear, not that there is something which is aware. ROBERT: But the mystery is still there. PETER: The mystery is still there. ROBERT: Is this identity theory where those brain states are the consciousness? PETER: I think they can be the conscious experience of the feeling. ROBERT: How can you do that? They are just electrical impulses, patterns. PETER: Okay, the most I can say here is that everything is like that. Everything appears somehow or other.
22:31
Now, to say that everything appears somehow or other doesn't remove the mystery, but what it does is it removes another mystery, and the mystery that it removes is why should brain processes appear when, say, other processes don't, so the kind of view that I hold, it's like panpsychism, except there's this active-passive switch, so everything appears, whereas the panpsychic says that everything is conscious. I'm not saying everything is conscious. I'm saying everything appears.
23:11
ROBERT: Doesn't there have to be a subject of that appearance? PETER: There is a subject, but the subject is constituted by the appearing. The subject doesn't exist prior to and independently of the appearing. ROBERT: And this only happens in brain states? PETER: No, I'd say it happens in everything in different ways. ROBERT: So, there's nothing special about brain states? PETER: What's special about brain states is that they result in a certain kind of conscious states, ones that are capable
23:39
of representing the world around them. ROBERT: Why do you call yourself a moderate materialist? PETER: 'Cause I reject dualism, and a materialist typically means someone who thinks that not merely is the ultimate stuff material-- I have no objection to that-- but it's purely material. Whereas I want to say the ultimate stuff is material or physical, but it's not purely physical because it appears. The technical phrase for this is neutral monism, but if you say to someone,
24:13
you know, at a party or something, well I'm a neutral monist-- ROBERT: They go talk to someone else. PETER: Or they think you've got some sort of weird condition and wonder whether it's infectious, yes. Materialism is the best I can do. The point is, I'm not a dualist, and I'm not an idealist, either. In fact, in a way, I'm nearer to being an idealist, but I'm not a dualist, no. ROBERT: Though dualism is dismissed by most philosophers, it does have defenders, those who believe in God,
24:43
those who cannot make physicalism work. Some say that human consciousness comes from cosmic consciousness, which is the foundation of all existence, but mysteries solved by mysticism seem too neat. Those who reject dualism come in three varieties. One--physicalists, who argue that consciousness is exaggerated or an illusion, and that mind will be explained entirely by brain. Two--idealists, who argue that only consciousness really exists. Three--monists, who argue
25:22
that consciousness and the physical world are both manifestations of a single thing. To me, mind takes more than brain, so I'm not a physicalist. I'm intrigued by idealism, but the world is too real. Monism offers the elegance of a single stuff, but its physical and mental manifestations look, well, rather like dualism. So, does dualism explain consciousness? Not impossible. And does consciousness explain existence? That's a longer leap, getting closer to truth.
Here to help you learn
Sign in to keep a private conversation with your course tutor.
Ask me anything about the material…
Sign in to chat