The following argument is still in development and may be adjusted if or re-stated it if necessary.
The stated goal is to describe a conscious state in physical terms. Here are the parameters and definitions:
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We assume that a scientific observer can, in principle at least, locate various conscious states among the various objects of nature. That is, specific, locatable, conscious states ‘exist’ in nature, separate from the observer’s mind in the same way that a tree is separate from an observer’s mind. In general, we assume that conscious states are located in the brains of other humans and animals.
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To begin with, we will assume that a physical description of a conscious state entails a causal description of events and entails at least two separate observations. The scientific observer must make at least two observations: (…) and (…)
(parentheses indicate a placeholder for an assumed future observation)
- The scientist must, in principle, be able to make the observation himself.
This specific parameter means that if the scientific observer observes a subject who says “I feel pain,” then the utterance “I feel pain” (the utterance itself) counts as an observation of the scientist, but the referred to pain which the scientific observer does not himself observe, does not count as an observation. That is, with respect to a subject who reports his subjective experience to an observer, the report itself counts as a valid observation (the utterance or written object), but not the subjective experience of the subject.
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We assume that the observing scientist has all the physical knowledge he requires. Any knowledge regarding physical processes requested by the scientific observer will be provided.
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We will agree beforehand that in principle, an observation of a mechanical regularity does not count as an observation of a conscious state.
For example, when the scientific observer taps the knee of the subject with a rubber hammer and the knee of the subject twitches, this counts as an observation of a mechanical regularity and not as an observation of a conscious state.
Similarly, if the scientific observer were able to arrange a chain of causal physical processes, such that every time a button were pushed the subject uttered “I feel pain,” with mechanical regularity (the same kind of mechanical regularity we observe between switching a light switch and the lights going on), then this would count as an observation of a mechanical regularity and not an observation of a conscious state.
Given these parameters and definitions, here are the questions:
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If the goal is to describe conscious states in physical terms, does this require that the scientific observer be able to observe a conscious state? If he/she is going to correlate specific physical processes X with specific conscious states Y, does this require that the specific conscious states Y be observable, in order to verify or falsify that physical process X corresponds to or causes conscious state Y?
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Given the parameters and definitions above, can a conscious state be observed by the observing scientist?
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If conscious states must, in principle, be observable, in order to provide a description of conscious states in physical terms, and if the parameters and definitions above prevent, in principle, the observation of a conscious state, then, do the parameters and definitions above constitute a fair natural scientific standard?
I.e., is the standard imposed by the parameters and definitions above overly strict in comparison to the standards of observation generally required in natural science? Or is the observational standard a fair one and within the norms of what is required for natural scientific observation?
Explanation:
The question is whether it is possible to provide a physical (natural-scientific) account of conscious states if it is not possible to observe conscious states.
This question owes to a close reading of an account of conscious states in physical terms given by John Searle. The article is “Biological Naturalism” and can be found here:
http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~jsearle/
I believe Searle’s short 14 page essay is must-reading for those who are seriously interested in praxeology. Searle is trying to show that it is in principle possible to provide a physical description of conscious states. On page 3 he provides the following definition of a conscious state:
“Some things such as pains, tickles and itches, only exist when experienced by a human or animal subject, and they have a subjective or first person ontology.”
On page 11, Searle then provides a descriptive account of a physical account of a conscious state wherein he assumes that we had the required knowledge of physical processes:
“We could then say, “This guy is in pain, even though he does not feel it yet. The thalamocortical system definitely shows the presence of pain, though it is unfelt.”
(emphasis added)
On page 3, Searle defines the subjective conscious state pain as only existing when felt or experienced by a subject, and on page 11 when Searle assumes we have all the physical knowledge we need, he describes the state pain as “present” though unfelt by the subject. We can see immediately that there is an egregious inconsistency in Searle’s account, and this has nothing to do with the state of physical knowledge, because Searle assumes for the purpose of his example that we have the requisite physical knowledge.
At first I tried to understand Searle’s contradiction by assuming that it may have been intentional on his part, and that by intentionally maintaining this theoretical contradiction Searle solves some epistemological/structural problem. From this assumption I tried to figure out the specific problem he may have been trying to solve by defining pain in one instance as a subjective experience, and in another instance as objectively present and not subjectively experienced.
I’ve recently come to the realization that perhaps this contradiction was unintentional on Searle’s part. Perhaps this mistake is not the result of a clever attempt to mend a broken theory. Perhaps the contradiction is inadvertent, and due to the unobservability of conscious states. If this latter interpretation is correct then the reason why Searle commits this serious error may be something like the following:
Searle has imagined that conscious states “exist” out in extended nature, inside the heads of other humans and animals. But he has not actually observed them in these locations. He then attempts to describe how these conscious states—which he himself has mentally projected to a specific location in nature—can be described in physical terms. In his eventual physical description of conscious states (page 11 in his essay) he again mentally projects a conscious state to a specific location, this time, to the thalamocortical system of the subject in front of him. In his written theoretical account, Searle inadvertently provides two conflicting accounts of subjective states: 1) they only exist when subjectively experienced, and 2) they are objectively observable by the observer but not yet experienced by the subject. And this happens not because Searle is intentionally trying to reconcile an irreconcilable theory, but because the conscious state in question was never observed by Searle in any location, but was instead mentally projected by him.
In other words, Searle “locates” conscious states in contradictory places within his own theoretical framework inadvertently, because he confuses his own projection or imagination of conscious states with their ontological existence in various locations in nature. Stated differently, the ontological existence of conscious state X at location Y in nature was, strictly speaking, never observed by Searle, but supplied by him. Given that the location of the conscious state in question is not observed but supplied, it is natural that Searle locates conscious states at various places in nature, even in places where they should not be according to his written theoretical framework. Searle’s actual method of locating conscious states in nature—by mentally projecting them—is at odds with his theoretical framework in which he purports to demonstrate that they are physically produced.
The idea that social entities can be conceived as a categorial aspect of the one who apprehends them is not a new idea. When praxeology was being taught and explored in the first half of the twentieth century these insights were made and understood by Mises, Schutz, Hayek and others.
Human knowledge is conditioned by the structure of the human mind. If it chooses human action as the subject matter of its inquiries, it cannot mean anything else than the categories of action which are proper to the human mind and are its projections into the external world of becoming and change. (Human Action, 3rd rev. p. 36)
Not our senses, but understanding, a mental process, makes us recognize social entities. (p. 43)
We thus always supplement what we actually see of another person’s action by projecting into that person a system of classification of objects which we know, not from observing other people, but because it is in terms of these classes that we think ourselves. (Hayek, “The Facts of the Social Sciences”)
…in discussing what we regard as other people’s conscious actions, we invariably interpret their action on the analogy of our own mind: that is, that we group their actions, and the objects of their actions, into classes or categories which we know solely from the knowledge of our own mind. (Hayek, “The Facts of the Social Sciences”)
Ironically, Searle himself made similar insights in his short classic Minds, Brains and Science:
For a large number of social and psychological phenomena the concept that names the phenomenon is itself a constituent of the phenomenon. In order for something to count as a marriage ceremony or a trade union, or property or money or even a war or revolution people involved in these activities have to have certain appropriate thoughts. In general they have to think that’s what it is. So, for example, in order to get married or buy property you and other people have to think that that is what you’re doing. Now this feature is crucial to social phenomena.
…many of the terms that describe social phenomena have to enter into their constitution. And this has the further result that such terms have a peculiar kind of self-referentiality. ‘Money’ refers to whatever people use and think of as money. ‘Promise’ refers to whatever people intend and regard as promises. I am not saying that in order to have the institution of money people have to have that very word or exact synonym in their vocabulary. Rather, they must have certain thoughts and attitudes about something in order that it counts as money and those thoughts and attitudes are part of the very definition of money. (Searle, Minds, Brains and Science, p. 78)
Thus, Searle has at some point in his thinking recognized the mental constitution of social entities. The thought (or “attitude” or intention) that a person has is part of the constitution of the social object he apprehends. For some reason Searle has simply forgotten to apply these same insights to the social phenomena which are conscious states.
As those familiar with Mises’s writings know, the concept of “categories” is central to Mises’s social thinking. Categories are essentially classifications by which we organize our conscious experience. We can refer to such categories as “categories of action” or as “categories of consciousness.” With regard to the consciousness of an observed subject, we can apply the notion of ‘categories’ in the following way.
We can conceive that aspect of the person in front of me which I perceptually observe as belonging to the ‘category’ of perceptible things or objects. By contrast, we can conceive that aspect of the person in front of me which I do not perceptually observe, but which I assume is “there” (i.e., his mind, consciousness, purpose, intention, etc.), as belonging to the ‘category’ of nonperceptible things. This latter category is a category of “unobservables whose unobservability is a matter of epistemological principle.”(Human Action, 3rd rev. p. 57)
It is important to state clearly and explicitly that when we refer to “categories” we mean categories of ourselves as observers. The category of perceptible objects and the category of the nonperceptible are categories of my consciousness, and they apply to every object of my apprehension. As Mises writes:
For man every cognition is conditioned by the logical structure of his mind and implied in this structure. (Human Action, 3rd rev. p. 86)
The logical structure of my mind, and the logical structure of those things I apprehend, are the same thing. When I apprehend the person in front of me, the perceptible aspect of this person is a perception of mine. Likewise, the unperceptible aspect of that person is a category of mine; a category of my consciousness. In other words, the person in front of me is “constituted,” as it were, of my conscious categories. His body “belongs” to my category of perceptible objects, while his mind “belongs” to my category of unperceptibility.
We are thus able to provide a solution to the important unsolved problem of social science noted by Alfred Schutz:
We must, then, leave unsolved the notoriously difficult problems which surround the constitution of the Thou within the subjectivity of private experience. We are not going to be asking, therefore, how the Thou is constituted in an Ego…As important as these questions may be for epistemology and, therefore, for the social sciences, we may safely leave them aside in the present work.(The Phenomenology of the Social World, 1972, p. 98)
The question is how to conceive the subjective experience of another mind. The proposed solution is to conceive ‘other minds’ as belonging to a category of nonperceptibles.
In principle, we can apply this categorial approach to every object of our apprehension. Take for example the wall in front of me. I may assign the perceptible part of the wall (what I refer to as the front of it) to the category of perceptible objects. And I may assign the unperceptible part of the wall (what I refer to as the back of it) to the category of nonperceptibility. In general, I will assign to the category of nonperceptibility those things Y which I assume “exist” as I observe or perceive X. This includes such things as minds, consciousnesses, intentions, purposes, concepts, time, the future, tomorrow, the past, the other side of things, and perhaps many other things yet to be considered. These are all examples of things that I assume exist, in relation to something else that I observer or perceive. When perceivable or observable objects appear in my action (appear to my consciousness) I attribute to these objects, in addition, attributes which I do not perceive or observe. Paraphrasing the quote from Hayek above:
We thus always supplement what we actually see….. by projecting…. a system of classification ….. which we know, not from observing…..but because it is in terms of these classes that we think ourselves.
In this way, any object that appears in my action may be conceived as constituted of the various categories of my action.
Conclusion
Due to the past success of the natural sciences, it is commonly assumed that if we had more knowledge of physical processes we could explain consciousness—and thus social phenomena—entirely in physical terms. The belief that natural science will one day provide answers to social questions implies that we have a choice between two different ways to understand social phenomena; we may choose science or discursive philosophy. However, for epistemological reasons, it may be impossible to provide a physical explanation of social phenomena. Can a science that relies on observation provide a satisfactory explanation of phenomena comprised of unobservable aspects? This is a question that has important implications for praxeology.