Consciousness without [the majority of] a brain?

[Consul]

QUOTE>
"A middle-way approach: toward the mind-body problem via neither duality nor identity

Both John Searle and Gilbert Ryle object to Cartesian dualism, arguing that there is nothing existing over and above the brain or behaviour. Searle sees dualism as a ‘conceptual confusion’, while Gilbert Ryle instead considers the mind-body distinction a ‘categorical mistake’. Buddhism does side with both Searle and Ryle in their rejection of Cartesian dualism, yet this does notmean that the Buddhist outlook accords with the theory of mind and body propounded by either Searle or Ryle.

The Buddhist position with regard to the mind-body problem can be described as ‘neither same nor other’. Although it would be wrong to say that the mental state is merely a brain state and that there is nothing over and above the brain processes, it would also be incorrect to hold that there is something decidedly separate from the biological brain process. Just as a reference and its referent are neither identical to nor different from one another—e.g. the designation ‘book’ is neither identical nor different to an actual book—so mind and body/brain are neither identical to nor different from one another. For this reason, within the Buddhist scheme of things neither an absent-minded body (such as a zombie) nor a disembodied mind (such as a soul) would be a reasonable hypothesis. Put differently, Cartesian dualism admits to a soul or self (atman) apart from the physical body, thus tending towards the extreme of eternalism rejected by the Buddha. Material monism on the other hand, holds that the mental and the physical are of the same nature, so that nothing remains once the physical body has ceased to exist. This view would again lead to the other extreme of nihilism.
…
From the perspective of dualism, minds can continue to exist apart from bodies even after the ‘conscious entity’ has left the body. From a Buddhist viewpoint this causes one to fall into the trap of eternalism, where one mistakenly believes that either the mind or body can exist independently from its own side. Monism, on the other hand, claims that mental states are simply brain states, a view which again causes one to fall into the trap of nihilism, where one mistakenly believes that the reality of mind and consciousness can be disregarded altogether. In matters related to the mind-body problem therefore, the Buddhist position takes a middle way approach in assuming neither the views of dualism nor monism."

(Lin, Chien-Te. "Rethinking Mind-Body Dualism: A Buddhist Take on the Mind-Body Problem." Contemporary Buddhism 14/2 (2013): 239–264. p. 250)
<QUOTE

First of all, the author confuses non-separateness with non-difference, because two things which aren't separate in the sense of being disconnected or independent from each other are still two (numerically) different things.
Words such as "book" are clearly different and even separate from their referents. The word "book" would survive the destruction of all books in the world.

As for the alleged "middle way" between difference and non-difference, identity and non-identity, or dualism and monism: The only logically consistent interpretation of

"x is neither identical with nor non-identical with (different from) y"
is
"x is neither totally identical with nor totally non-identical with (different from) y".

When two things overlap mereologically by sharing some part(s), they are partially identical and also partially non-identical (different). Two numerically different things can be non-distinct or non-separate by overlapping mereologically.

"[T]he real opposite of identity is distinctness; not distinctness in the sense of non-identity, but rather distinctness in the sense of non-overlap (what is called 'disjointness' in the jargon of those who reserve 'distinct' to mean 'non-identical')."

(Lewis, David. "Many, but Almost One." 1993. Reprinted in Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology, 164-182. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. p. 17)

The statement that experiences are neither identical with nor non-identical with (different from) neural processes isn't logically contradictory only if it is interpreted as meaning that experiences are neither totally identical with nor totally non-identical with (different from) neural processes.

But then it's unclear how an experience can be partially identical with a neural process by overlapping with it, i.e. by sharing some parts with it. It seems this can only mean that some experiential parts of an experience are (totally) identical with some neural parts of the neural process with which the experience overlaps. So what we have here is an unusual partial-identity theory of mind and brain: Experiences and neural processes overlap (incompletely) and are thus both partially identical with and partially different from one another.

However, the partial-identity theory doesn't explain how those experiential parts of an experience come into being which are (totally) non-identical with any neural parts of the neural process with which the experience overlaps. Those experiential parts are irreducible by not being identifiable with any neural parts, so the partial-identity theory turns out to be partly monistic and partly dualistic: Some (but not all) experiential parts of experiences are also neural parts, and some other experiential parts of them are non-neural parts.

A basic question: Do all experiences have experiential parts? Are all experiences mereologically nonsimple?

The partial-identity theory presupposes an affirmative answer!
For a simple, partless experience is either (totally) identical with some neural part of some neural process or it is (totally) different from any neural part of any neural process. In the case of simple experiences we no longer have a mind-brain theory which is partly monistic and partly dualistic, but one which is either totally monistic (and reductionistic) or totally dualistic (and non-reductionistic), i.e. either a total-identity theory or a total-difference theory.

By the way, I don't know any philosopher who endorses the partial-identity theory.

[Gertie]

Can you explain this more? Because my understanding (could be wrong) is that if something is reducible, then it's emerged from something more fundamental.
I'm not sure if this is just us using language differently, so if you could explain your position in clear simple terms that would help.

The ontological concept of emergence presupposes that an emergent thing and the (lower-level) things it emerges from are different from one another, such that the former is not ontologically reducible to, i.e. identifiable with, the latter. The reason is that an emergent thing is a basic higher-level thing which isn't composed of or constituted by the lower-level things from which it emerges. An emergent thing is ontologically something over and above, and in addition to its emergence base; and that's why it's ontologically reducible. Ontological emergence and ontological reduction are mutually exclusive!

Thanks. So when you say conscious experience is 'ontologically emergent' from material brain processes, you're saying conscious experience's constituents are different, and can't be broken down into something more fundamental, including the things (physical brain stuff in motion) it emerged from?

Would conscious experience therefore have to be a substance (non-identical with brains in motion), in order to have different irreducible constituents? Or if not, in what other aspect is it irreducible?

[Consul]

Reductive materialism is nondualistic too!

Nope, all Western philosophy is dualistic.

You're wrong!
Monism, dualism, and pluralism are always relative to what they are about and how they count. For example, reductive materialism (and eliminative materialism too) attributes oneness to the basic kinds of entities: There is only one basic kind of entities, viz. material/physical entities. So reductive/eliminative materialism is monistic in this sense.

[Consul]

Thanks. So when you say conscious experience is 'ontologically emergent' from material brain processes, you're saying conscious experience's constituents are different, and can't be broken down into something more fundamental, including the things (physical brain stuff in motion) it emerged from?

Yes, an ontologically emergent property or occurrence (fact/state/event/process) is a fundamental higher-level entity occurring in a physical system such as a brain; so it cannot be broken down or decomposed into the lower-level entities which constitute its emergence base, simply because it isn't composed of any of them.

Would conscious experience therefore have to be a substance (non-identical with brains in motion), in order to have different irreducible constituents? Or if not, in what other aspect is it irreducible?

Experiences emerging from neural processes are nonsubstantial occurrences (facts/states/events/processes) rather than substances. The substrates of emergent experiential occurrences are material substances such as brains. Emergent occurrences or properties are higher-level entities in a complex or system which depend on, but aren't composed of or constructed from any lower-level entities; and that's why they are irreducible.

[Consul]

Experiences emerging from neural processes are nonsubstantial occurrences (facts/states/events/processes) rather than substances. The substrates of emergent experiential occurrences are material substances such as brains. Emergent occurrences or properties are higher-level entities in a complex or system which depend on, but aren't composed of or constructed from any lower-level entities; and that's why they are irreducible.

As I already said in a previous post, I think—especially given that "to emerge" is a dynamic verb rather than a static one—the relation of (ontological, strong) emergence is no different from the relation of causation or production—or, to be more precise, upward or vertical causation or production in and by a system. By "vertical" (as opposed to "horizontal") I mean that the causation/production is "level-transcending", i.e. inter-level rather than intra-level. In this case, the cause and the effect aren't, don't occur on the same level of being, the cause being lower-level and the effect being higher-level. (Horizontal causation is same-level or intra-level causation.)

If emergence is causal emergence = causation, then the irreducibility of emergent entities is explained easily: Effects are different from and not composed of/constituted by their causes. (Likewise, products are different from and not composed of/constituted by their producers.)

[Consul]

By "vertical" (as opposed to "horizontal") I mean that the causation/production is "level-transcending", i.e. inter-level rather than intra-level. In this case, the cause and the effect aren't, don't occur on the same level of being, the cause being lower-level and the effect being higher-level.

To be more precise, there are two conceivable forms of vertical causation in a system: upward causation (lower-level cause & higher-level effect) and downward causation (higher-level cause & lower-level effect). Causal emergence would be upward causation; and if emergent mental events influence neural events, that's downward causation.

Levels of Organization in Biology > Downward Causation: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/leve ... /#DownCaus

[Consul]

Experiences emerging from neural processes are nonsubstantial occurrences (facts/states/events/processes) rather than substances.

I should mention that there is not only an occurrence emergentism (or property emergentism) but also a substance emergentism as endorsed by William Hasker, who believes that minds are mental substances emerging from physical substances (bodies):

QUOTE>
"[C]onsider the following possibility: an animal or human brain consists of ordinary atoms and molecules, which are subject to the ordinary laws of physics and chemistry. But suppose that, given the particular arrangements of these atoms and molecules of the brain, new laws, new systems of interaction between the atoms, etc., come into play. These new laws, furthermore, play an essential role in such characteristic mental activities as rational thought and decision-making. The new laws, however, are not detectable in any simpler configuration; in such configurations the behavior of the atoms and molecules is adequately explained by the ordinary laws of physics and chemistry. These, then, are emergent laws, and the powers that the brain has in virtue of the emergent laws may be termed emergent causal powers. Given this much, it is clear that to postulate the existence of emergent causal powers is to make a dramatic, and in fact extremely controversial, metaphysical claim. Many philosophers and scientists strongly resist such a claim, pointing to the immense explanatory success of standard physico-chemical explanations in accounting for a broad range of phenomena. Nevertheless, a number of philosophers have felt compelled to assert the existence of emergent causal powers; they hold that crucially important facts about our mental lives cannot be explained in any other way.

Suppose, finally, that as a result of the structure and functioning of the brain, there appear not merely new modes of behavior of the fundamental constituents (as in the case of emergent causal powers), but also a new entity, the mind, which does not consist of atoms and molecules, or of any other physical constituents. If this were the case, we would have an emergent individual, an individual that comes into existence as the result of a certain configuration of the brain and nervous system, but which is not composed of the matter which makes up that physical system. This, clearly enough, represents yet a further stage of emergence, one that is resisted even by some of those philosophers who acknowledge emergent causal powers. Such an emergence theory would be, in fact, a variety of dualism, in that the emergent mind is an entity not composed of physical stuff. But it would be an emergent dualism, unlike traditional dualisms which postulate a special divine act of creation as the origin of the soul. …

Having set the stage by this account of emergence, it is time to present the resulting view of the person. The fundamental idea is actually rather simple. As a consequence of a certain configuration and function of the brain and nervous system, a new entity comes into being—namely, the mind or soul. This new thing is not merely a 'configurational state' of the cells of the brain (as, for example, a crystal is a configurational state of the molecules that make it up). The mind, in this view, is a 'thing in itself'; it is what some philosophers call a 'substance.' It isn't made of the chemical stuff of which the brain is composed, though it crucially depends on that chemical stuff for both its origin and continuance. It is this mind—the conscious self—that thinks, and reasons, and feels emotions, and makes decisions; it is the central core of what we mean by a 'person.'"

(Hasker, William. "Souls Beastly and Human." In The Soul Hypothesis: Investigations into the Existence of the Soul, edited by Mark C. Baker and Stewart Goetz, 202-217. New York: Continuum, 2011. pp. 213-15)
<QUOTE

[Gertie]

Thanks. So when you say conscious experience is 'ontologically emergent' from material brain processes, you're saying conscious experience's constituents are different, and can't be broken down into something more fundamental, including the things (physical brain stuff in motion) it emerged from?

Yes, an ontologically emergent property or occurrence (fact/state/event/process) is a fundamental higher-level entity occurring in a physical system such as a brain; so it cannot be broken down or decomposed into the lower-level entities which constitute its emergence base, simply because it isn't composed of any of them.

Would conscious experience therefore have to be a substance (non-identical with brains in motion), in order to have different irreducible constituents? Or if not, in what other aspect is it irreducible?

Experiences emerging from neural processes are nonsubstantial occurrences (facts/states/events/processes) rather than substances. The substrates of emergent experiential occurrences are material substances such as brains. Emergent occurrences or properties are higher-level entities in a complex or system which depend on, but aren't composed of or constructed from any lower-level entities; and that's why they are irreducible.

This is where it gets difficult for me. If the substance constituents of experience are physical brains in motion, what is the irreducible part of the ontology of experience? I suppose I'm asking what does it mean to be an ontological occurence or property, which isn't ontologically reducible to the constituents in motion it causally emerged from?

We can construct a rational sentence describing it, but in what way can it exist?

Are there other examples unrelated to mind (including how we experience things, like the ''wetness'' of water)?

[Consul]

Experiences emerging from neural processes are nonsubstantial occurrences (facts/states/events/processes) rather than substances. The substrates of emergent experiential occurrences are material substances such as brains. Emergent occurrences or properties are higher-level entities in a complex or system which depend on, but aren't composed of or constructed from any lower-level entities; and that's why they are irreducible.

This is where it gets difficult for me. If the substance constituents of experience are physical brains in motion, what is the irreducible part of the ontology of experience? I suppose I'm asking what does it mean to be an ontological occurence or property, which isn't ontologically reducible to the constituents in motion it causally emerged from?

I'm using "occurrence" (or "occurrent") as an umbrella term covering all those nonsubstantial entities which are facts, states, events, or processes.
In my ontological understanding, an occurrence is ontologically complex by having one part which is a thing, an object or substance functioning as the occurrence's substrate and another part which is a property functioning as the occurrence's content. So an occurrence has both a substantive component and an attributive component, which is an attribute of the substantive component. That is, the content is a property of the substrate, so an occurrence consists in the having of a property by an object/substance.
(Actually, the situation is more complicated, because the substrate of an occurrence can include two or more objects/substances, and the content can be a relation between them. For example, two people playing tennis together is such a relational occurrence.)

Now, to answer your question, if experiences are emergent occurrences, then their irreducible part is their attributive component, their qualitative content, i.e. the quality or property they contain, and which is a quality or property of the substrate or subject of experience that isn't composed of any other qualities or properties of the subject, or the subject's body or brain.

If the emergence of mental occurrences takes place without the co-emergence of mental substances, then there is nothing physically irreducible about the substrates of mental occurrences, since their substrates are physical substances such as bodies and brains.

We can construct a rational sentence describing it, but in what way can it exist?
Are there other examples unrelated to mind (including how we experience things, like the ''wetness'' of water)?

Are you asking for real examples of strong emergence in nature?
Well, there is no consensus among philosophers and scientists as to whether strong emergence occurs in nature at all, or if it does, which phenomena are strongly emergent.

See: Emergent Properties > Weak vs. Strong Emergence: Contested Phenomena: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/prop ... erContPhen

As for the wetness of water, water isn't really wet. Liquidity is a real quality of water; but it's not strongly emergent, because it's (reductively identifiable with) a structural chemical property of water molecules (at certain temperatures).

QUOTE>
"Many philosophers have used ‘Water is wet’ as an example of an obvious truth about water. When I first encountered the example, I thought it was part of a joke the punch line of which I missed. I have since become used to seeing it in the philosophical literature but am still unable to shake a semantically uneasy feeling toward it. Liquid water is what makes other things wet, but it itself is not wet. A shirt soaked in water is wet, but the water in which it is soaked is not wet. A wet shirt can be dried, but liquid water cannot be dried. Even solid water, ice, is not wet when not melting. When it is melting and sits in a pool of liquid water, it may be said to be wet. But even then, it is the ice that is said to be wet, not the liquid water surrounding it. It is never true literally to call liquid water wet."

(Yagisawa, Takashi. Worlds and Individuals, Possible and Otherwise. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. p. 52n8)
<QUOTE

[Consul]

As for the wetness of water, water isn't really wet. Liquidity is a real quality of water; but it's not strongly emergent, because it's (reductively identifiable with) a structural chemical property of water molecules (at certain temperatures)

Generally speaking, a structural (and thus non-emergent) property of a system is a set or sum of properties or/and relations instantiated by elements of the system.

[Atla]

Reductive materialism is nondualistic too!

Nope, all Western philosophy is dualistic.

You're wrong!
Monism, dualism, and pluralism are always relative to what they are about and how they count. For example, reductive materialism (and eliminative materialism too) attributes oneness to the basic kinds of entities: There is only one basic kind of entities, viz. material/physical entities. So reductive/eliminative materialism is monistic in this sense.

No I'm NOT wrong ffs, you're justout of your depth here. Western monism is also a form of dualistic thinking, from the (Eastern) nondual perspective. Nondualism is not-one as well as it is not-two or not-many.

And on top of that, materialism in particular is a subtle form of dualism, where we originally made the fundamental mental-material split, and then discarded the mental, so yes it's based on dualism. And then we bring back the mental again, saying that it's fundamentally material. The deeply incompetent Western philosophers and philosophizing scientists then call this a "monism", and then run into an insoluble Hard problem, and can only scratch their heads.

[Consul]

No I'm NOT wrong ffs, you're justout of your depth here. Western monism is also a form of dualistic thinking, from the (Eastern) nondual perspective. Nondualism is not-one as well as it is not-two or not-many.

If Eastern nondualism embraces contradictions, it's necessarily false.

And on top of that, materialism in particular is a subtle form of dualism, where we originally made the fundamental mental-material split, and then discarded the mental, so yes it's based on dualism. And then we bring back the mental again, saying that it's fundamentally material. The deeply incompetent Western philosophers and philosophizing scientists then call this a "monism", and then run into an insoluble Hard problem, and can only scratch their heads.

No, eliminative/reductive materialism is not "a subtle form of dualism", since it's definitely a genuine form of monism with regard to the number of basic/fundamental/ultimate kinds of entities.

[Atla]

If Eastern nondualism embraces contradictions, it's necessarily false.

There was no contradiction, monistic and dualistic mean something else in the nondual paradigm than what they mean in the dualistic paradigm. Nondualism is a different, wider form of human thinking altogether, or rather: dualistic thinking is a special case of nondual thinking.

No, eliminative/reductive materialism is not "a subtle form of dualism", since it's definitely a genuine form of monism with regard to the number of basic/fundamental/ultimate kinds of entities.

Wrong, read again:

And on top of that, materialism in particular is a subtle form of dualism, where we originally made the fundamental mental-material split, and then discarded the mental, so yes it's based on dualism. And then we bring back the mental again, saying that it's fundamentally material. The deeply incompetent Western philosophers and philosophizing scientists then call this a "monism", and then run into an insoluble Hard problem, and can only scratch their heads.

[Consul]

If Eastern nondualism embraces contradictions, it's necessarily false.

There was no contradiction, monistic and dualistic mean something else in the nondual paradigm than what they mean in the dualistic paradigm. Nondualism is a different, wider form of human thinking altogether, or rather: dualistic thinking is a special case of nondual thinking.

That's what these terms mean: Nihilism, monism, dualism, and pluralism are about Xs, kinds of Xs, or basic kinds of Xs; and they respectively say that the number of Xs/kinds of Xs/basic kinds of Xs is 0, 1, 2, or >2 (or ≥2 if dualism is minimal pluralism).

Nondualism is either nihilism, monism, or (>2) pluralism.

Eliminative/reductive materialism is a form of basic-kind monism (like eliminative/reductive spiritualism and eliminative/reductive neutralism), which is compatible with entity pluralism and even entity infinitism, the view that there are infinitely many entities. For to say that there is only one basic kind of entity is not to say that there is only one entity.

[Atla]

There was no contradiction, monistic and dualistic mean something else in the nondual paradigm than what they mean in the dualistic paradigm. Nondualism is a different, wider form of human thinking altogether, or rather: dualistic thinking is a special case of nondual thinking.

That's what these terms mean within the scope of dualistic human thinking. There is a deeper, wider form of human thinking on the planet that you haven't heard of yet, an extra dimension of thought if you will.
0, 1, 2, >2 are countable, dualistic. Nondualism is primarily beyond (or rather: before) countability.

Eliminative/reductive materialism is a form of basic-kind monism
...

Wrong, that's just the shared belief of the incompetent Western philosophers and philosophizing scientists. Read again:

And on top of that, materialism in particular is a subtle form of dualism, where we originally made the fundamental mental-material split, and then discarded the mental, so yes it's based on dualism. And then we bring back the mental again, saying that it's fundamentally material. The deeply incompetent Western philosophers and philosophizing scientists then call this a "monism", and then run into an insoluble Hard problem, and can only scratch their heads.