What’s your Mind-Body Problem Anyway?

Avshalom C. Elitzur

Outline

1. The Heart of the Mystery: Qualia

2. Consequent Problems: “Other Minds” and the “I”

3. Extreme Measure: Direct Mind-Matter Interaction

4. Extreme Measure: Quantum Mechanics Reconsidered

5. Time: A Related Mystery?

6. Summary

© Everyone 2009Permission is granted to everyone to copy and/or use this work or any part of it.

“In science, the qualitative is only a poor form of the quantitative” (Rutherford)

Red is different from blue

Sweet is different from salty

Love is different from hate

qualitativelyquantitatively

quantitativelyqualitatively

qualitativelyquantitatively

Same waves, different wavelength

Same electrons, different numbers

Same neurons, different configurations

Leibniz (1646-1716)

No essential difference between a windmill and a brain:Seeing all its inner mechanisms says nothing about the

associated subjective experience!

The Heart of the Mystery: Qualia

The Heart of the Mystery: Qualia

Despite years of research, the process of seeing a certain color remains unrelated to the subjective experience of seeing that color

The Heart of the Mystery: Qualia

1. The Problem of Inverted Qualia

The Heart of the Mystery: Qualia

1. The Problem of Inverted Qualia

The Heart of the Mystery: Qualia

2. The Problem of Absent Qualia

BLUE RED

Consciousness = the totality of qualia

Chalmers: the Hard vs. the Easy Problem

The Mind-Body Problem

Qualia

Other Minds

Who am I?

‘ismsMonism: “Everything is basically

one”Dualism: “There are two kinds of

entities, matter and mind”

Idealism: Only mind is real, matter is secondary

Physicalism (Materialism): Only matter is real, mind is secondary

Interactionist Dualism: “Mind interacts with matter”

Non-Interactionist Dualism: “Mind does not interact with matter”

Epiphenomenalism: “Matter affects mind, never vice versa”

Parallelism: “Matter and mind run parallel without ever affecting one another”

Identity Theory: “Matter, somehow, is mind.”

Pan-Psychism: “Mind potentially exists within matter.”

The Argument for Inessentialism:The Closure of the Physical World

Balls “repel” one another

Plant cell “drinks” water

Muscle “responds” to stimulus

Romeo adores Juliet(no quotes?!)

IF the laws of mechanics completely explain the motions of billiard balls,plants’ water absorption,and reflex movements

(no subjective experience needed),THEN the same holds for Romeo and Juliet’s behavior!

The Conceptual Price of granting efficacy to Consciousness

Conservation of energy and/or momentum violated

Second Law violated

Worse: no Real Solution is Offered!(inverted qualia?)

(other minds?)

(who am I?)

"phototropic animals "

Machina speculatrix

Machina docilis

When does Consciousness Emerge?

William Grey Walter (1910-1977),inventor of the “electronic turtle”

At what stage of the turtle’s complexity would you file a lawsuit against Gray-Walter on animal abuse?

Where, along the Evolutionary Ladder, does Consciousness Emerge?

“Hydrophobic” molecule

“Photophobic” bacterium

Cockroach under threat

Frightened human

Complexity?

What do we need to knowin order to prove a “resolution” wrong?

Alpha-mindo-encephaline

Loveliness

Qualia

Qualia

Can Dualism be Avoided?

René Descartes (1596-1650)

The penalty: Energy & momentum conservation laws violated!

"Non, je ne regrette rien"

The Penrose-Hameroff Hypothesis: The brain performs quantum computation within the neuron’s microtubules

Sir Roger Penrose Stuart Hameroff

Time: The Common ViewEvents Become and Go, One by One

Time: The Relativistic ViewAll Events Coexist along Time

Time’s Passage and Conscious Experience: Two Riddles – or One?

subjective experience * time’s passage

* Governor Bush & Dad giving a good cry duet

Indeed, Elitzur (1989) argues directly from the existence of claims about consciousness to the conclusion that the laws of physics cannot be complete, and that consciousness plays an active role in directing physical processes (he suggests that the second law of thermodynamics might be false). But I have already argued that interactionist dualism is of little help in avoiding the problem of explanatory irrelevance (p. 183).

1. A presumably conscious human (henceforth Chalmers) states there is a difference between his percept (P) and its corresponding quale (Q).

2. Chalmers further argues that a zombie duplicate of him (henceforth Charmless) is possible, which is similar to him in all aspects, save that he has only P without Q.

3. Chalmers asserts, however, that, by physical law, Charmless must notice a difference between what he knows about the physical process underlying his percept and the unmediated percept itself, which, within Charmless, presumably plays the role of Q.

4. Chalmers then argues that this difference must produce in Charmless the same behavioral consequences as the difference between P and Q.

5. Ask now Chalmers: Can you conceive of a Charmless who will be identical to you but lack Q? His answer, by (2), is “Yes.”

6. Next ask Charmless: Can you conceive of a duplicate of you (henceforth Harmless) who will be identical to you but will lack Q? His answer, by (3), must be “No; unmediated percepts, regardless of what is known about them, must occur.”

7. As Chalmers can conceive of Charmless but Charmless cannot conceive of Harmless, [1] the two kinds of bafflement, associated with (1) and (3), are essentially different. Which is why we don’t need to worry about Armless and so on.

8. Hence, the physical explanation for (3) does not hold for (1).

[1] which is why we don’t have to worry about Armless and so on.

The Asymmetry Proof:Chalmers’ Epiphenomenalism leads to Contradiction

(Elitzur 2009 http://www.a-c-elitzur.co.il/site/siteArticle.asp?ar=67 )