On Explaining Phenomenal Consciousness

by

Franz-Peter Griesmaier
Department of Philosophy
University of Wyoming

Abstract

One of the central arguments against reductive accounts of phenomenal consciousness revolves around the claim that even if we had an exhaustive and correct list of all correlations that hold between brain states and phenomenal states (or qualia), we still would not understand what qualia are. This is said to come about in one (or both) of two ways. On the one hand, the correlations we discover are going to be contingent instead of necessary. Thus, even if a brain state of type b is strictly correlated with a phenomenal state of type p in humans, it is conceivable, and thus possible, that this very same type of brain state b is not so correlated with a quale of type p in some other being, possibly a zombie. It follows that phenomenal states do not even supervene on, let alone are identical with, brain states and therefore cannot be explained in terms of brain states. Apart from this problem, we face, on the other hand, the task of explaining why just these, as opposed to any other, correlations hold. However, since it is a mystery how brain states could give rise to, or cause, phenomenal states, it is equally mysterious why we discover these, rather than other, correlations.

With respect to the first line of reasoning, much discussion has been devoted to the crucial premise that whatever is conceivable is ipso facto possible. In the present paper, I will instead look at two other presuppositions made by the argument that phenomenal consciousness is inherently mysterious. Both presuppositions have to do with what counts as an acceptable explanation, and both are highly contentious. Together, they amount to an impoverished notion of what constitutes an acceptable explanation. My aim is to show that any plausibility the mystery view of phenomenal consciousness has derives mostly from this impoverished notion of explanation. It is this notion of explanation which people seem to have in mind who declare phenomenal consciousness as in principle beyond human understanding. They just might be giving up too quickly, simply because of an understanding of explanation that is too narrow.

The first presupposition concerning scientific explanations consists in the claim that if an explanation of a phenomenon leaves open the possibility that the phenomenon is absent, even if all explanatory conditions are present, we don’t have a genuine explanation of the phenomenon after all. This claim, I will argue, has to be challenged, as otherwise, every probabilistic explanation we encounter in the empirical sciences would have to be dismissed as a pseudo-explanation.

The second presupposition consists in the view that to explain a correlation is to provide a causal mechanism linking the correlata. This view is expressed in the second line of reasoning outlined above, according to which we have no explanation of why these, rather than other, correlations between brain states and phenomenal states hold, unless we can specify how brain states give rise to, or cause, qualia. This view, however, is inconsistent with an important explanatory strategy ubiquitous in the empirical sciences, namely, the explanation of correlations by unification. In most mature sciences, beginning with Newton, the explanation of correlations between various parameters (as, for example, between the period T of an ideal pendulum and the length l of its string) consists in deriving it from more fundamental, underlying laws, and not in specifying some sort of causal mechanism.  Of course, having said all this, I am not anywhere near providing a solution to the problem of qualia. However, I hope to provide some reason for optimism by drawing attention to the fact that some form of explanation other than causal necessitation might bring phenomenal consciousness within the range of perfectly understandable phenomena.