Background
Our scientific paradigm is so consolidated that it in many camps functions as a whirlpool that drags everything into it. This leaves the door open for exploitation of the cracks between the paradigmatic world view and the reality. This creates tension that cannot be monitored from within the paradigm.
Plan B
Michael Cain’s character Professor John Brand in the movie Interstellar has a Plan A for the survival of mankind. If that doesn’t work he has a backup Plan B. Plan A is the wanted one whereas Plan B saves some astronauts and a lot of fertilized eggs.
Today we have a scientific culture that functions as our Plan A. That culture states that everything in one way or the other is physical. A recent shift in our language is the move from “my thoughts are in my mind” to “my thoughts are in my brain”. If we have thoughts and everything in the end is physical it is natural to think that one’s thoughts are in one’s brain.
In preparation for the defense of my master thesis (Gamper 2019) I played with an application of it and found that it provided an ontologically neutral view of the scientific object. I had introduced the concept of causal objects and it applied for any kind of object (with a causal background). In my preparation I saw that separate ontological fields could be joined by something I called interfaces (2017). Accordingly, everything in the end may be physical – or not. I thought this eventuality was very interesting.
Plan B is to investigate this possibility and see where it may lead. One thing is established, though, and that is that the mind can be a substance of its own. Provided that there can be interfaces between ontological domains.
Variation 3
“When it comes to science and the explanatory system explaining focuses epistemological atoms; the things that are to be explained are measurable entities. Modern science is simply based on concepts that are defined by how they are measured. These operational definitions have the advantage that you always know what you are talking about. It is not for the scientist to understand the concepts.
Concerning consciousness it is interesting to see the operational definition for what it is, an operational definition (sic!). An operational definition is what it is. If you operationally define consciousness you do not define something else operationally. Consciousness would be defined according to the operational definition. It would neither be right, nor wrong. If consciousness is defined operationally the definition is what you are working with. Your own conception of what consciousness is, is bypassed. In the explanatory setting based on operational definitions, the intuitive understanding of consciousness and the experienced consciousness are omitted.
While this permits the machinery of the natural sciences to work with consciousness there is a a flaw in the fundamental approach. The flaw does not directly concern consciousness in itself. If we define consciousness operationally with the definition X, we work with the premise that a certain subject in the experimental setting is conscious if X. This “either/or” scenario, though, becomes interesting only when we pair X with some contents. The subject, e.g., is conscious about this or that visual stimulus. Or, the subjects is conscious about this or that tactile stimulus. In the experimental setting we do not ask the subject if it sees or feels this or that. We expose the stimulus operationally, for example by putting the light on or by stroking the subjects arm. Whether or not the subject is conscious about the light or the stroking we determine via X. Without X, we conclude that the subject was not conscious about the stimulus.
The flaw is identified when we consider self-consciousness. We cannot present the self to the subject. Accordingly, if the subject is self-conscious or not we cannot determine via X. We could ask the subject but then we have already missed the target. For one thing we then must assume that subjects that do not answer are not self-conscious. Another thing is that we then miss the difference between consciousness and self-consciousness. The subject logically cannot report that it is conscious about something without being self-conscious about it. In conclusion a reasonable valid operational definition X of consciousness would not cover self-consciousness.” (Revised excerpt from Gamper (2021.)
The variation is that the empirical science is dependent upon operational definitions why it cannot account for self-consciousness. Our understanding of self-consciousness needs to be based on something else.
References
Gamper, J (2021). Rebooting Science 1.0. BoD. Stockholm, Sweden. https://philpapers.org/rec/GAMRS-2 (Link to the ebook on Amazon and Apple).
Gamper, J. Blocking the Vagueness Block – A New Restricted Answer to the Special Composition Question. Philosophia 47, 425–428 (2019).
Gamper, J. On a Loophole in Causal Closure. Philosophia 45, 631–636 (2017).
