0.1
The Conscious Mind is a stimulating, provocative
and agenda-setting demolition-job on the ideology of
scientific materialism. It is also an erudite, urbane
and surprisingly readable plea for a non-reductive
functionalist account of mind. It poses some formidable
challenges to the tenets of mainstream materialism and
its cognitivist offshoots. I can't see how they can
be met. The psycho-physical co-habitation arrangement that
Chalmers proposes will accurately but misleadingly be
described as speculative. The term is unfortunate because
it contrives to suggest that one's own theories of
consciousness, whatever their nature, are well-confirmed,
which they aren't. As a bonus, Chalmers even offers one
of the best non-technical accounts of the relative state
interpretation of quantum mechanics to date. The omens
for debunking Everett, and the terrible googolplexes of
hell-branches the RSI entails, are looking bleaker than
ever.
0.2 Chalmers, like some of the philosophers' zombies he
writes about, promises to take the task of reconciling
science and consciousness with the utmost intellectual
seriousness. This he does. Yet I'm going to argue that
ultimately he doesn't treat consciousness itself
seriously enough. Only a strategic but presently taboo
extension of the empirical method, namely the use of consciousness-altering psychedelics, even ruffles the surface
of its mysteries. Observation alone, whether auto- or
[delusively] hetero-, even allied to deep reflective musing, can
scarcely hint at the disparate aspects of the phenomenon
at issue. The orchestrated exploration of (I'll argue) a
defining feature of the world via the
experimental manipulation of variant modes of its only
accessible instance is a daunting task. It demands a methodological
sophistication way beyond anything its subjects - you and me - have even begun to
contemplate. Of course, it's easy to allege a priori that extending the empirical methods of science to the varieties of subjectivity itself simply can't be done.
0.3 Perhaps it can't; but that's too lazy and facile a response as it stands. In the
physical sciences one can typically abdicate
intellectual responsibility and defer to the authority of specialists.
Experts can do most of the dirty work on one's
behalf. Life is short and the cognitive division of
labour exceedingly large. Yet if the quite incredible
phenomenon of subjectivity is to be naturalised,
scientised and mathematically described - and one's
theories about it tested - then a priori
rumination and third-person shadow-chasing can only take us so far. A twin-track experimentalism embracing the first- as well as third- person perspective is indispensable. Without both, one is simply shuffling the cognitive
tickles of a closed, hunter-gatherer psyche in a single shallow
search-space of options. On this front, no breakthrough is presently in sight.
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