ROBERT LAWRENCE KUHN:
Two mysteries possess me--
existence and consciousness.
Existence is the totality
of all there is.
Consciousness
is our inner awareness.
I'd like existence to be
more than the physical world.
I'd like consciousness
to continue after death.
That's why dualism appeals.
Dualism is the claim
that the mental and the physical
are both real.
In the past,
almost everyone was a dualist--
body and soul, a physical body
and an immortal soul.
No more.
Today, dualism is rejected
by most scientists.
Even most philosophers
won't defend dualism.
Me? I'm not so sure.
Can dualism
explain consciousness?
I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn,
and Closer to Truth
is my journey to find out.
I was educated in brain science,
but I've flirted with dualism.
I'd like dualism to be true--
life beyond death,
existence beyond the physical.
Dualism is heresy
among neuroscientists.
Mental capacities are clearly
related to brain functions.
Trauma to the brain
means trouble for the mind.
But I just cannot imagine
how physical facts of the brain
can explain
mental feelings of the mind.
That's why some call
consciousness an ultimate fact,
meaning "not derived
from the physical world."
I begin in England,
at the University of Birmingham,
with a philosopher of religion
who focuses on consciousness,
Yujin Nagasawa.
Yujin, when I explore
all the different approaches
to consciousness--
neuroscience,
talking to people
who believe in ESP,
or religious people,
physicists--
at the end of the day,
there's one question
and one way to ask it,
and that is,
is consciousness something
that is relatively accidental,
the product
of some evolutionary development
that has been layered on top
of the development
of the physical world,
or is consciousness
some ultimate fact of reality
that religions tap into
or parapsychology can see?
That's the big question.
Is consciousness
an ultimate fact?
YUJIN NAGASAWA: So there are
various philosophical views
that regard consciousness
as an ultimate fact.
One is idealism.
Idealism says that everything
is ultimately nonphysical
or mental.
So consciousness is
the fundamental
feature of this world.
Panpsychism also says
that consciousness is ultimate.
So, if you look at all
the ultimate physical properties
and entities,
they are conscious.
ROBERT: Now, the difference
between idealism
and panpsychism is what?
YUJIN: Is that idealists
don't allow anything physical.
They think that everything
is purely mental,
so they deny
that there are physical objects
like tables and chairs.
They are only mental properties
or mental entities.
And there's another view
that regards consciousness
ultimate,
which might be called
cosmic panpsychism.
This is the view
that consciousness
is most fundamental because
the whole universe is conscious.
ROBERT: So, what would be
the implications
of each one of these ways
that consciousness
could be an ultimate fact?
They're radically different
from each other.
I feel more confused than ever.
YUJIN: I want to think
that ultimately
some form of monism is true
because monism
is such an elegant view.
ROBERT: Monism being
there is just one thing?
YUJIN: That's right,
or at least one type of thing.
But if you accept dualism,
then there are two different
types of thing,
and they are somehow related
and interact with each other,
and that's not
a very pretty view.
ROBERT: So, what you're saying
is that physicalism,
which says
only the physical is real,
and idealism, which says
only the mental is real,
although they seem to be
absolutely 180 degrees opposite
from each other in content,
are, in style, a little similar
because they each
have only one thing.
YUJIN: Yes, they are equally
simple and elegant,
but I reject idealism because
it's just too implausible to say
that everything is
purely nonphysical or mental,
so I'm naturally attracted
to physicalism because, for me,
it seems obvious that there
are a lot of physical things,
but, at the same time,
I agree with nonphysicalists
that there is something very
special about consciousness.
ROBERT: So, it sounds
like you're in trouble.
YUJIN: Yes, I am in trouble.
So, one way
of solving this problem
is to accept a form of monism.
So, ultimately there is
nothing beyond this universe,
but, at the same time,
the universe
is not purely physical.
ROBERT: It sounds like you're
drifting into a kind of dualism
whether you like it or not.
YUJIN: It's just a form of
dualism with respect to theory.
So, maybe there are things that
can be captured by physical,
physical theories, and there are
things that cannot be captured
by physical theories,
but they are
not ontologically distinct.
They still exist
within the monistic universe.
ROBERT: To me,
it's radically simple.
Can science, in principle,
discover it all?
If the answer is yes,
it's physicalist.
If the answer is no,
everything changes.
You can't have it both ways.
YUJIN: That's right, so that's
why I reject physicalism.
Physical sciences
cannot explain everything.
There is something
that is beyond the physical.
However, that doesn't mean
that the universe is dualistic.
ROBERT: Elegance drives Yujin
to monism,
meaning everything that exists
is one kind of stuff.
He wants to be a physicalist,
meaning everything
is physical or material,
but he sees realities
beyond the physical.
I wonder, can the definition
of physical be enlarged?
Sure, but enlarge it too much,
and it starts
to look like dualism.
I wonder, is elegance
a good test of what's real?
Possibly.
Is the unity of monism--
one kind of stuff--
more elegant
than the duality of dualism--
two kinds of stuff?
Again, possibly.
I do not accept dualism,
nor do I renounce it.
I seek dualism's strongest
arguments, see if they hold.
There are few dualists
whose arguments I respect.
A favorite is the Oxford
philosopher of religion,
Richard Swinburne.
I know Richard's religious
beliefs include a soul.
What I don't know
are his arguments.
Richard,
as an old brain scientist,
the question of whether
we need a nonphysical component
to make consciousness
out of brain
has been something that's
obsessed me my whole life.
As the decades have gone on,
more and more neuroscientists,
even some theologians are saying
we do not need
such nonphysical component.
What is your view?
RICHARD SWINBURNE:
I certainly think we do.
If you were to describe
the whole history of the world,
you must describe not merely
what happened
to the bits of this body,
but what me, I'm aware of.
It's one truth that this,
that certain things
are happening
to neurons in my brain,
but it's another truth
that I am aware
of certain things
and these are connected
with each other.
So, there is this whole world
of thought, feeling, color,
sound, and so on,
which is, I have
privileged access to.
It's, to some extent,
private to myself,
and this is the world
of consciousness.
Indeed, it's the thing
we know about
most certainly
in the world.
ROBERT: But yet some
people say it's an illusion.
RICHARD: That is just crazy.
I mean, to say my pain
is an illusion.
Of course it isn't.
It's more certain
that your pain is there
than that
the physical world is there
because the physical world
might be an illusion,
and you could still have pains
and thoughts and feelings.
That's more certain
than anything else.
Suppose some mad surgeon
gets hold of me
and cuts open my skull
and takes out of it my brain,
and my brain
is made of two parts,
the left hemisphere
and the right hemisphere,
and there's largely some overlap
between the two hemispheres
in the sense that each of them
are, to some extent,
responsible for quite a lot
of my thoughts, feelings,
and so on.
And so the surgeon
takes out my brain,
divides it into two,
and he's got hold
of two other victims,
and he's taken their brains
out of their skull,
and he puts
the left hemisphere
into one
of these victim's empty skulls
and the right hemisphere
into another of these victim's
empty skulls and starts them up.
Now they, since they
have most of my hemispheres,
will, each of them, think,
or think it quite likely,
that they are the previous
Richard Swinburne.
But, of course,
they can't both be me.
On the other hand,
there's a good case
for supposing
that either of them are.
But my crucial point is
whatever we knew
about the neural goings-on,
we wouldn't know which is me.
That is to say,
the mere knowledge
of what has happened to my brain
won't say
what has happened to me,
and that suggests that me is
something other than my brain
because if I am
just a matter of my brain
and whatever body
is connected with me,
you'd know the answer
if you knew
what had happened to the brain,
and so there's a truth,
a further truth,
and there can
only be a further truth
if being me is not
a matter of the brain.
So, thoughts and feelings,
et cetera, belong to the me.
Let's call it my soul,
the essential part of me.
And it's that that's
in interaction with my brain.
So, there is a life
of thought and feeling
which belongs
to an immaterial soul
in connection with the body.
ROBERT: Richard is a dualist,
unabashedly so.
He argues
for a nonphysical substance
which some call
an immortal soul.
Although his line of reasoning
does not include God directly,
his belief in God
may motivate his conclusion.
Can dualism be defended
without God at all?
I visit the technology
philosopher and seer
Jaron Lanier.
No topic intimidates Jaron.
Jaron, let's just say
we accept the reality
of consciousness.
Is it the product of the brain
that somehow comes out,
or is there
something irreducible?
JARON LANIER: I'm in a bit
of a tight spot here
because of,
I do believe in consciousness,
and consciousness
is the one thing
that isn't reduced
if it's an illusion,
so saying it's an illusion
reduces nothing for me.
At the same time,
I am very clear
that I know nothing beyond that.
I really don't know what it is,
and I think
it would be overreaching
to present these theories
that everything has
a little bit of consciousness,
and it's something global.
And so, I think the art of this
is to be a dualist
because it's honest,
but to be an honest dualist,
which means saying
almost nothing at all.
You've got two choices.
Either you know everything,
or you organize your ignorance
in some intelligent
and honest manner.
Dualism is
the most honest manner
of organizing your ignorance.
ROBERT: I would ask you
to defend that
because I would say to start,
that there might be
three separate ways.
You've got to say,
okay, we don't know much,
but it's all physical.
You can say
in some form or another
there's a dualism,
we don't know,
or you can take
the mysterian approach.
Say we don't know,
we can't know--
JARON: No, no, no, no,
I'm not a mysterian at all.
I'm not making any claims about
what ultimately cannot be known.
All I'm making a claim about
is what I do not know.
ROBERT: Okay, but I'm fascinated
by the perch that you sit on...
JARON: Yes, it's
a very fine, fine line.
ROBERT: ...while you wait
for developments
or while you appreciate
your own ignorance,
your perch, you use a kind
of your own kind of dualism.
JARON: Well, you know,
I sometimes think of it
as, as being
like a tightrope walker,
where if you fall to the left,
you succumb to superstitions,
and if you fall to the right,
you succumb
to unjustified reductionism.
So, I think the only thing
that might distinguish me
from various other people
who might unfashionably
allow themselves
to be called dualists
is that I'm very, very insistent
on not having anything else
put in my mouth
about, you know,
whether consciousness--
what happens when you die
or whether dogs have it
or any other stuff.
I truly don't want to go there.
I just want to hang on
to the data I have,
which is
the sense of experience.
This notion that we're
just a smidgen away
from a complete description
of reality,
that all we have to do
is get the relativity guys
and the quantum field
theory guys together,
and then we fix up physics,
then all we have to do
is a little bit more
computer modeling of the brain
and some data gathering,
and we have the brain,
and then we're done.
I would point out
that the universe
has consistently surprised us,
and that every time we think
we have it all wrapped up,
there's another
surprise waiting.
We happen to be in an era
where it's fashionable
to think that
we have things wrapped up.
My bet is that we don't.
If an empirical result would
change my mind about dualism,
it will be of a nature
that I can't imagine right now,
and it would make me very sad
to think that science doesn't
have results in the future
that I can't imagine.
ROBERT:
I'm something of a skeptic.
While correlations between
mind states and brain states
will continue to be made,
such correlations will yield
no deep progress
explaining inner awareness.
I doubt that science can ever
fully account for consciousness
in purely physical terms.
Why our perpetual ignorance?
I think because consciousness
is so special.
However, I may think wrong.
The real reason
for our ignorance
may be quite the reverse
because consciousness
is so exaggerated.
I go to Oxford to visit
the atheistic philosopher
Bede Rundle.
BEDE RUNDLE: People often
think that this is
the last great problem
to solve,
what is the nature
of consciousness?
And it appears to them
as a problem
because they implicitly
take consciousness
to be like some kind of stuff,
but not this cool stuff that
our arms and legs are made of,
some more ethereal,
subtle substance.
And the question is,
how does that substance relate
to the brain, say,
and the physical more generally?
I think it's worth looking
at the term consciousness
in the category
of different kinds of noun,
and here you say,
well, it's an abstract noun,
it's like kindness, for example,
or carelessness.
And you note with them
that when you use one of them,
you could equally use
just the adjective.
So, if you say,
her kindness was overwhelming,
you can equally say,
she was overwhelmingly kind.
It's just a stylistic variant,
and you wouldn't think of
kindness as some kind of stuff.
You'd say there's
no more implication of that
than there is with the one
using just the adjective.
Now, take consciousness.
To lose consciousness is just
to cease to be conscious.
That's not some stuff
that's suddenly vanished.
It's in the same category
of terms such as being aware,
being attentive, being alert,
and whether or not
a creature is conscious,
it's pretty easy to determine.
So, you know that the lion
chasing you is conscious...
unfortunately.
He shows his awareness
of his environment
by modifying what he does
in pursuit of you.
And you didn't have to speculate
about some strange substance.
The consciousness is manifested
in a certain kind
of purposeful behavior.
All right, now,
that's my way of indicating
that it is a natural phenomenon.
Some people would say
there's something missing there
because in the sense
of conscious I've been using,
an animal can be conscious.
The opposite of that is being
unconscious and fast asleep
or something like that.
But can't we be conscious
in a much higher way?
So, usually what
is meant is something like,
not only can I see,
but I can be aware that I see.
I can reflect on my seeing.
ROBERT: Self-awareness.
BEDE: Self-awareness.
Again, it's not going to be
pretty well purely
philosophical, I suspect,
because you've got to try
and tease out
just what is peculiar
to that form of consciousness,
and one way of going about that
is by saying,
"Well, could an animal
be self-conscious?"
And that leads you on to saying,
well, you need thought
because you're thinking
about what you're seeing, say.
Can you have thought
without language?
ROBERT: Some would
just have consciousness
be something fundamental
in the universe.
BEDE: Yes.
ROBERT: Others
would use consciousness
as an inference to God.
So, so, there's
all different uses of it now.
BEDE: And I come back
to the, the first point
that it's easy to make
more of a problem than there is
if you think of consciousness
as some kind of stuff
with a location.
See, so, you probably
remember neuroscientists
saying things like,
"I've looked into many brains,
but I've never found a thought.
I've never found consciousness."
But the brain isn't conscious.
It's the person who's conscious,
and the person
shows his being conscious
in a variety
of very familiar ways,
and what you've got to do
is to try and spell out
in greater detail
what it is you go by
in reaching that conclusion
and then ask yourself, well,
does this make any demands
on anything outside
the natural world?
And I just don't see
that it does,
and it's terribly important.
It's still mysterious,
but then we've had
lots of mysteries to cope with,
and, by and large,
we, they give way
to a combination
of thought and experiment.
ROBERT: Bede demystifies
consciousness, or so he tries.
He focuses
on what consciousness does,
not on what consciousness is.
But his arguments
downplay inner awareness.
To me, our first-person-felt
experience
erupting in the universe
seems shocking,
yet I don't want to fool myself.
Am I inflating consciousness?
Perhaps hoping for realities
beyond the physical?
But consciousness
remains a problem,
and dualism remains a solution.
Are there
more novel explanations?
I ask an Australian philosopher
who offers rigorous arguments
for radical ideas,
Peter Forrest.
Peter, I did doctoral work
in brain science.
My head has always told me
yes, that there's nothing
beyond the brain,
but my intuition says
because of what it feels like,
consciousness,
there's got to be something
beyond what I study.
PETER FORREST: Well, I'm
inclined to agree, Robert,
that what the study
of the brain tells you
is how consciousness
is structured.
It doesn't tell us what the
substance of consciousness is.
The fact of consciousness is
likely to be a horrible mystery.
I incline towards the position
that the stuff
of which reality is composed
can be thought of
both physically
as entering into
causal relations with each other
as governed by laws of nature
and can be thought of
psychologically
as appearing a certain way.
I also incline
towards the view
that we don't need to posit
a separate being who, or thing,
that is conscious of ideas.
ROBERT:
So, you're not a dualist.
You don't believe
in anything independent
of the one substance
that we know.
PETER: No, I'm not a dualist.
I don't really think it helps
explain a consciousness
to talk about a thing
which is aware.
I think the best we can do is
say that these brain processes,
which we partially understand
in terms of the causal relations
between them,
appear a certain way.
It's not as if we have to shine
the light of consciousness
on them for them to appear.
They just do appear.
ROBERT: You say they.
What's they?
PETER: The brain states.
ROBERT: The billions of neurons
firing little...
PETER: Complicated patterns.
ROBERT: Complicated patterns
of electrical impulses.
PETER: Yes.
ROBERT: What are you
saying about them?
PETER: I'm saying
that it's their nature to appear
and that appearing
constitutes the mind,
which we ordinarily think of
as being aware of them,
so the basic mystery
is that things appear,
not that there is
something which is aware.
ROBERT:
But the mystery is still there.
PETER:
The mystery is still there.
ROBERT: Is this identity theory
where those brain states
are the consciousness?
PETER: I think they can be
the conscious experience
of the feeling.
ROBERT: How can you do that?
They are just electrical
impulses, patterns.
PETER:
Okay, the most I can say here
is that everything is like that.
Everything appears
somehow or other.
Now, to say that everything
appears somehow or other
doesn't remove the mystery,
but what it does
is it removes another mystery,
and the mystery that it removes
is why should
brain processes appear
when, say,
other processes don't,
so the kind of view that I hold,
it's like panpsychism,
except there's
this active-passive switch,
so everything appears,
whereas the panpsychic says
that everything is conscious.
I'm not saying
everything is conscious.
I'm saying everything appears.
ROBERT: Doesn't there have to be
a subject of that appearance?
PETER: There is a subject,
but the subject is constituted
by the appearing.
The subject
doesn't exist prior to
and independently
of the appearing.
ROBERT: And this only happens
in brain states?
PETER: No, I'd say it happens
in everything in different ways.
ROBERT: So, there's nothing
special about brain states?
PETER: What's special
about brain states
is that they result in a certain
kind of conscious states,
ones that are capable
of representing
the world around them.
ROBERT: Why do you call yourself
a moderate materialist?
PETER: 'Cause I reject dualism,
and a materialist typically
means someone who thinks
that not merely is
the ultimate stuff material--
I have no objection to that--
but it's purely material.
Whereas I want to say
the ultimate stuff
is material or physical,
but it's not purely physical
because it appears.
The technical phrase for this
is neutral monism,
but if you say to someone,
you know,
at a party or something,
well I'm a neutral monist--
ROBERT:
They go talk to someone else.
PETER: Or they think you've got
some sort of weird condition
and wonder
whether it's infectious, yes.
Materialism
is the best I can do.
The point is, I'm not a dualist,
and I'm not an idealist, either.
In fact, in a way,
I'm nearer to being an idealist,
but I'm not a dualist, no.
ROBERT: Though dualism is
dismissed by most philosophers,
it does have defenders,
those who believe in God,
those who cannot
make physicalism work.
Some say
that human consciousness
comes from cosmic consciousness,
which is the foundation
of all existence,
but mysteries solved
by mysticism seem too neat.
Those who reject dualism
come in three varieties.
One--physicalists,
who argue that consciousness
is exaggerated
or an illusion,
and that mind will be explained
entirely by brain.
Two--idealists, who argue
that only consciousness
really exists.
Three--monists, who argue
that consciousness
and the physical world
are both manifestations
of a single thing.
To me, mind takes
more than brain,
so I'm not a physicalist.
I'm intrigued by idealism,
but the world is too real.
Monism offers the elegance
of a single stuff,
but its physical
and mental manifestations
look, well, rather like dualism.
So, does dualism
explain consciousness?
Not impossible.
And does consciousness
explain existence?
That's a longer leap,
getting closer to truth.
