# Do we even know what consciousness is at all?

**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-even-know-what-consciousness-is-at-all/1011812
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [December 18, 2024, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-even-know-what-consciousness-is-at-all/1011812 "2024-12-18T08:42:41Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 309

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### Author: ![Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/half_man_half_wit/32/21766_2.png) [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Half_Man_Half_Wit)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2025, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-even-know-what-consciousness-is-at-all/1011812/309 "2025-01-06T06:44:50Z")

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> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#):
> >
> > you claim that knowing what happens at a given interaction point does _not_ suffice to know what happens in the whole network.
> 
> Not unless we understand the whole network, it doesn’t.

Then you’re saying that the physical description is insufficient for the description of the behavior of the whole network, because knowing what happens locally is sufficient for knowing the full _physics_ of the network.

> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> So no, knowing what happens at a given interaction point does not suffice for us to know what happens in the whole network. But I’m not saying that theoretically it can’t; I’m saying that in practice it doesn’t.

But the whole argument turns on what’s _in principle_, i.e. theoretically, possible. If it’s theoretically possible to describe the behavior of the whole brain using only the local physics, and if those don’t necessitate consciousness, then the complete description doesn’t necessitate consciousness. But then, we can consistently do without, and zombies are possible, meaning the physical description alone is insufficient.

As noted, nothing but the causal closure of the physical is needed for this argument:

> [@Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy](#):
>
> Given [physicalists] accepted the causal closure of the physical, they were forced to conclude that consciousness has no effects on the physical world. On this view human beings are ‘conscious automata’, as T. H. Huxley put it: all physical events, human behavior included, are explicable in terms of physical processes; and the phenomena of consciousness are causally inert by-products — epiphenomena (see James 1890, Chapter 5). It eventually became clear that this view entailed there could be purely physical organisms exactly like us except for lacking consciousness. [[link](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zombies/)]

> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> What’s need, in that sense, got to do with it?

‘Need’ here only means that consciousness isn’t necessary for all of the physical processes involved to occur, and hence, it is consistent to imagine them occurring without it.

> [@thorny\_locust](#):
>
> It doesn’t get cross if you just mention the number of the posts.

You’re right, but the link was right in the [post you quoted](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-even-know-what-consciousness-is-at-all/1011812/300) from before (this also includes a link to the published version, or see [this post](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-we-even-know-what-consciousness-is-at-all/1011812/263)). It eventually gets rather wearying to post the same things over and over.

> [@MrDibble](#):
>
> > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#):
> >
> > as long as those functions are reducible to the action of the parts
> 
> How do you do this with a human brain, please?

No clue, obviously. But I don’t need to know _how_, I only need to know _that_ it is possible, and the brain being an ordinary physical object is sufficient for that.

> [@Irishman](#):
>
> They are not inconsistent. You said the thought experiment shows consciousness is not _required_. You agree consciousness exists.

Sure, and if consciousness is not required, then the physical processes can consistently occur without it, hence, they fail to entail conscious experience—they’re not _sufficient_ to produce that experience, something besides is needed. Hence, ‘the logic of the zombie experiment is sound’ and ‘consciousness is a manifestation of the physical interactions’ are indeed inconsistent.

> [@Irishman](#):
>
> That seems inconsistent with your claim that the physical interactions are insufficient.

That is the conclusion of the zombie argument, but as noted, I believe the argument fails. But even if one holds the argument to succeed, that doesn’t mean that the brain is irrelevant: for instance, on the popular [integrated information theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_information_theory) of consciousness, consciousness arises once information is ‘integrated’ enough in a certain way. The theory is essentially panpsychist, meaning that _some_ consciousness is associated with information everywhere, but it’s only in certain systems that its integration is sufficient for conscious subjects, and conscious experience, to arise—so that a brain might be conscious where a stone (or indeed, the cerebellum, despite containing most of the brain’s neurons) is not.

> [@Irishman](#):
>
> I appreciate your sharing that link, but appreciate more your posting some description in this thread.

I’d be happy to discuss the details of the model, but there’s [already a thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conscious-experience-is-self-representational-access-to-intrinsic-properties/954814) that might be more suited to that.

> [@Irishman](#):
>
> You chide us for strong emergence and “ ‘Something unknown might be doing we don’t know what’ isn’t really an argument."
> 
> Yet you are doing precisely the same thing. You are saying that physical science is incapable of providing understanding of a completely physical world. Talk about self- contradiction.

That would only be contradictory if what falls under the physical description were all we could know about the world, but rather the opposite is the case: we know about the physical description only by proxy, via mediation of our conscious experience, which is what we most intimately and primarily know. So it’s not that the intrinsic properties and what they do are in any way unknown, they are what we know first and foremost.

> [@Irishman](#):
>
> You speak of “intrinsic properties” that we directly experience as if that explains how we have experiences. It doesn’t, it just gives it a new name. How do we experience intrinsic properties?

This is exactly what I claim happens by means of the von Neumann process: by essentially having access to its own properties, it can represent the world (via the modal fixed-point theorem) in terms of its intrinsic properties. If you want an analogy, then consider the case of painting by numbers: without a code of how to color in the different areas, what the picture shows is underspecified; but filling it in then gives a concrete picture. In the analogy, the intrinsic properties provide the colors to fill in and make the picture, the representation, definite. Mere structure, relations without relata, is indeterminate, and the intrinsic properties provide the relata to single out a concrete realization of that structure.

> [@Irishman](#):
>
> What are they? How does the brain go from atoms to neurological processes? We know hormones affect mood, but not why we have moods.
> 
> What are memories? How are they stored and accessed? Where does language come from in the NAND gates?

All interesting questions, but rather beside the point—these are part of the ‘easy problems’ of consciousness.

> [@Irishman](#):
>
> Yet that has no more meaning than calling them qualia. What are they, where do they come from, are they the same for all people? How does the brain create/access them? Do they exist outside our brains? Are they like Platonic forms? Or are they purely internal manifestations of experience itself?

In the end, they’re just the concrete properties that bear the relations that figure in our abstract descriptions. As an analogy, consider the difference between a system of axioms and the models of those axioms: typically, say the group axioms provide a certain structure, which can be differently realized in the form of different concrete groups. This group might be differently realized, say by means of matrices and their product yielding the group operation. These matrices give a concrete realization of the group structure: they’re in that sense intrinsic objects, and their properties the intrinsic properties.

Note that different realizations of that group are possible: then, one could use the representation based on matrices to form a model of another realization, but that doesn’t mean that the matrices themselves become identical to the objects they model (in fact, that’s how elementary particles are modeled in quantum field theory). They just realize the same _structure_.

Where this becomes relevant is that _any_ system of axioms admits of different concrete realizations, and (for sufficiently powerful systems) those axioms can’t fix all the properties of those realizations. Meaning that, from the axioms, there are properties P such that both P and not-P are consistent with the axioms—meaning, in turn, that using a model, we can create both models having property P, and models not having that property. That’s where things become relevant for the zombie problem: we can consistently build models with and without P(henomenal experience), but that doesn’t mean that the system we’re modeling can have either: it’s just an inherent limitation of using models to understand the external world.

So you might think about the axioms intended to provide a theory of the natural numbers as a structure, or a theory, the natural numbers as the physical universe, and our attempt to grasp the world as building models that possess that structure; then, the properties the natural numbers, the ‘real’ ones, have, are the intrinsic properties. That is, suppose the natural numbers have P: since the axioms don’t fix that they do, we can build consistent models of these axioms that both have and not have P. No theory will ever decide the matter, but of course, to the natural numbers themselves, could they introspect, it would be perfectly obvious. But that’s the situation we’re in: we can introspect and see that we, intrinsically, have the property P (i.e. conscious experience), but our theories can never fix the matter.

> [@Irishman](#):
>
> You were saying that measuring all the interactions doesn’t leave room for consciousness.

No; the zombie argument claims that the physical processes don’t necessitate any consciousness. There may be conscious experience when those physical processes occur, but if the physical processes can be imagined without it, then they don’t necessitate consciousness, so there needs to be something _extra_ that does, given that we actually are conscious.

> [@Irishman](#):
>
> If there is room for incompleteness in our understanding of weather, there’s a lot more room in our understanding of the brain.

And plenty about the brain is not understood in detail, but that’s entirely irrelevant: if we have grounds to believe that a full physical description of the brain exists (and if we hadn’t, we’d already have abandoned physicalism), then we can run the zombie argument.

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