The Problem of Conciousness

Midterm Paper for Philosophy of Mind (PHIL 212) taught by Ting Fung Ho

October 2024 

What does it mean to be conscious? Is it the state of being aware of and able to think about one’s existence, thoughts and surroundings? Or is it sentience? What about the ability to navigate and respond to one’s environment? We’ve likely pondered this question for as long as we've been capable of pondering- and we likely will continue to do so for as long as we roam this earth. Humans have long assumed themselves the pinnacle of conscious awareness, defining the concept based on the human subjective experience and deciding the extent to which it may or may not exist in all other beings in our world. There is constantly shifting philosophical and scientific discord on consciousness and how subjective experience may arise from physical processes in the brain. Philosopher David Chalmers famously coined “the hard problem of consciousness”, describing the explanatory gap between the physical and the mental. 

For hundreds of years, the hungriest of minds have considered the problem and have developed several distinct theories that attempt to solve it. Physicalism posits that consciousness arises solely from physical processes, suggesting that mental states are reducible to brain states. It is a philosophy that prioritizes observable phenomena, and believes they alone can account for subjective experience. Similarly, materialism asserts that everything, including consciousness, is composed of matter and that consciousness emerges from complex arrangements of material substances. In contrast, dualism argues that consciousness exists as a separate entity from the physical body, and cannot be fully explained by physical processes alone. Panpsychism offers a more holistic view, proposing that consciousness is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of all matter and is not restricted to humans. Alternatively, Idealism emphasizes the primacy of the mind or consciousness in shaping our reality. It proposes that our world is fundamentally mental, and the material world is only a manifestation of mental processes or ideas. These philosophies and other related and continuously emerging schools of thought, are often cycled through, integrated or modified in an attempt to reach consensus. Despite the effort, humans still don’t have a clear understanding of the mind and its manifestations throughout the universe. 

Humans are inherently curious beings, and as a species, we often regard ourselves as exceptional in our ability to understand and explain the world through science, reason, philosophy, and technology. We’ve spent hundreds of years accumulating masses of knowledge to explain complex phenomena like gravity, evolution and quantum mechanics, and carefully setting a standard of human knowledge and ability. We are also an ambitious species, and we crave certainty and control. We always strive for the next discovery, advancement, or invention and the praise and respect that accompany it. Humans conquered our planet by being the ones capable of understanding and shaping it, and all else is simply a means to our human ends. We’ve crafted the world we live in to best suit our needs and our lifestyles, and complex systems enforce this anthropocentrism.

Our inquisitive nature and exceptionalist view of our species make it inherently difficult when we encounter a phenomenon that resists easy explanation. We’ve defined ourselves based on what we know, and this is precisely why we find ourselves so lost when our knowledge fails. With humans at the center of existence, everything in our universe should be within our reach and comprehension, right? As a species, we’ve never taken well to the idea of not knowing. When we don’t understand something, or when we cannot prove something, our well-crafted, all-knowing image of the human race starts to crumble. Despite our undeniable cognitive power, consciousness continues to escape our comprehension. This lack of knowledge introduces discomfort and vulnerability, and is exactly what makes the “hard problem of consciousness” so hard. It confronts a deeply ingrained aspect of human nature: the belief in our own uniqueness and intellectual mastery. 

 If we can’t understand our own consciousness, how can we dictate its existence or absence in beings of which we have no understanding of their subjective experiences? The attribution of consciousness to non-human beings and entities will always be a precarious subject for our species. Historically, humans have argued ourselves as the sole possessors of consciousness and self-awareness. The hard problem not only questions our understanding of our own cognition, but forces us to contend with the possibility that an “uniquely human” ability may not be unique to humans after all. Therefore, far-out-there theories such as panpsychism, receive significant scrutiny in these philosophical conversations. Conceding to ubiquitous consciousness, means relinquishing some of the control, superiority and power that our perceived knowledge provides us. If consciousness is present in other beings, and these other beings are made to exist in our human-shaped world, our ethical responsibilities extend far wider than many may want to consider. Would our human society be prepared to shift to accommodate this expansion? The limits we’ve set on who or what can be conscious is what drives the division between human and animal, soul and object, respect and exploitation. Redefining consciousness could question the validity of these divisions, impacting legal rights and protections, attitudes and perceptions, and would likely have significant social and economic repercussions. However progressive the human species may be, we are simply not ready to take that chance. 

As a graduate student, David Chalmers was famously told “one starts as a materialist, then one becomes a dualist, then a panpsychist, and one ends up as an idealist.” While this may be correct in that there exists a natural progression through known philosophies, it fails to address what happens when we ultimately, and inevitably, reach a wall. Many are still not pleased with the idealist approach to the hard problem. So where do we turn when confronted, once again, with valid oppositions that unravel what may have seemed like a viable and satisfying understanding?

Philosophy and science simply may not currently be capable of explaining the complexity of our minds, and until we confront this possibility, we will continue to create and disprove approaches, trapping us in a tired cycle that only exposes our species’ dependence on knowledge. Our innate anthropocentrism and purely human fear of the unknown places restraints on philosophical dialogue about consciousness. Our fear stems from a deep-seated desire for control and certainty, which we’ve always found in knowledge and discovery. However, the human tendency to cling to such comforts may hinder philosophical progress and restrict our capacity for growth. Embracing uncertainty and challenging our assumptions could be the key to deepening our understanding of our minds, and of our species as a whole.