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Thomas Nagel
Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialistic Neo-Darwinian Conception
of Nature is Almost Certainly Wrong
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012, 130 pp.
ISBN 978 0 19 991975 8
Reviewed by Eva Jablonka1 and Simona Ginsburg2
The Major Teleological Transitions in Evolution:
Why the Materialistic Evolutionary Conception
of Nature is Almost Certainly Right
In his recent book, Thomas Nagel argues that our ideas about the
entities that constitute the world, and our notions of the evolution of
biological entities, are inadequate. Nagel regards himself as a diagnostician, not a healer: he diagnoses what he regards as the deep problems of the current scientific world-view and leaves the healing — the
solutions — to future scientists. This position allows him to be very
vague about what the future solutions may entail. Nevertheless, if his
analysis is valid, it can still be an important contribution to our scientific world-view. In this review-essay we argue that although Nagel
points to great challenges that evolutionary biologists must (and do)
address, his diagnosis is faulty and the validity of his conclusions is
therefore doubtful. Before we present our critique, a short summary of
Nagel’s principal arguments is necessary.
Nagel starts from the constitutive problem, the nature of reality. He
argues that ample phenomena point to an explanatory gap between the
mental and the physical. Since the reduction of the mental to the physical is, he argues, impossible, and since the stuff of which brains are
[1]
Tel Aviv University, Israel.
[2]
The Open University, Israel.
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 20, No. 9–10, 2013, pp. 177–205
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made is no different from other cosmic stuff, we must change our
notion of ultimate reality and adopt neutral monism. In Nagel’s version, neutral monism means ‘…a form of understanding that enables
us to see ourselves and other conscious organisms as specific expressions simultaneously of the physical and the mental character of the
universe’ (Nagel, 2012, p. 69). Nagel rejects emergence from the
physical as an option that may explain life, phenomenal experiencing,
logical reasoning, and moral evaluations, favouring instead the
greater theoretical elegance of reductive neutral monism.
The second big problem for Nagel is that evolutionary theory as he
understands it cannot explain the emergence of life, consciousness,
logic, and human values, and is also inadequate with regard to the evolution of complex adaptations such as the genetic code and translation. Even if we accept the existence of inherently proto-mental basic
stuff, the riddle of evolution, Nagel claims, is not solved, because it is
still a mystery how life, consciousness, reason, and values evolved
from the proto-mental precursors which were not living, not conscious, not reasoning, and not value-laden. Not only does Nagel find
the above features of the cosmos inadequately explained by a naturalistic evolutionary theory based on selection, but he also believes that
they can never be adequately explained by such materialistic theories.
Hence he suggests that some teleological value-driven law of nature is
at work in the cosmos. We focus on this second line of argumentation,
which, as it turns out, has repercussions on the first, constitutive problem. We highlight two problematic issues: Nagel’s general view of
modern evolutionary theory, and his difficulties in understanding
those major transitions in the history of life that have led to the emergence of new teleological systems. His presentation of both issues, we
argue, is simplistic and impoverished and leads him to unwarranted
conclusions.
The Evolution of the Educated Guess
Nagel’s complaint about evolutionary theory is that he just cannot
imagine how random mutation and natural selection could lead to the
wonderful complex adaptations we see, such as the genetic code, phenomenal consciousness, reasoning, and moral values. An early representative quotation reads: ‘…with regard to evolution, the process of
natural selection cannot account for the actual history without an adequate supply of viable mutations, and I believe it remains an open
question whether this could have been provided in geological time
merely as a result of chemical accident, without the operation of some
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other factors determining and restricting the forms of genetic variation’ (Nagel, 2012, p. 9).
Somewhat apologetically Nagel explains two pages earlier that he
is just a well-read layman, and acknowledges, in a footnote to the
above quotation, some biological and cybernetic considerations that
complicate the simple picture expounded in Dawkins’ The Blind
Watchmaker (1986), which, together with some books on Intelligent
Design (ID), seem to be his major sources of knowledge of evolutionary biology. This is a strange attitude from someone who purports to
diagnose the problems of modern evolutionary science. The present
version of naturalistic and materialistic evolutionary theory is not to
be found in Dawkins’ popular writings a quarter of a century ago, and
ID books are not the best source for learning about twenty-first-century evolutionary biology. The huge progress in molecular and developmental biology has led to new insights that impinge on evolutionary
theory without introducing new laws of nature. For example, every
twenty-first-century evolutionary biologist acknowledges that
aspects of development, such as modular organization, have led to
increased evolvability, and that the systems generating hereditary
variations have themselves evolved, becoming increasingly sophisticated, thereby increasing evolvability. One of the greatest sources of
variation in sexually reproducing organisms is meiotic recombination. A large body of data shows that the site and rate of meiotic
recombination can be altered in response to environmental conditions,
and that these properties were most probably moulded by natural
selection. Moreover, it has been shown that mutational changes in
DNA base sequence can span a spectrum from totally blind, to spatially targeted, to directed and adaptive; mutation rates are under environmental and developmental control with specific and evolved
internal genetic engineering systems carrying out genomic changes in
response to challenges. James Shapiro’s book Evolution: A View from
the 21st Century marshals a lot of old and new evidence pertaining to
these issues. The evidence leads Shapiro to argue that the genome
should be regarded not as a ‘read only memory (ROM) system’, subject only to accidental changes, but as a ‘read–write (RW) memory
organelle’, a system that dynamically modifies existing information
both during individual development and during evolution (Shapiro,
2011). It should be stressed that even if we were not aware of the supporting data that Shapiro and others present, Darwinian evolutionary
logic would compel us to assume that such variational systems should
have appeared during evolutionary history. There is nothing magical
about variation-generating systems that shield them from being
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shaped by natural selection. There are adaptive mutational hot spots,
genomic regions that are sensitive to specific stresses, and adaptive
biases in the mutation rate, and the sites of integration of transposed or
externally acquired DNA sequences (Jablonka and Lamb, 2005/2014;
Shapiro, 2011). As the geneticist Lynn Caporale wrote, ‘Chance
favors the prepared genome’ (Caporale, 1999). The ability to be so
prepared is moulded by natural selection.
In addition to the responsiveness of the genomic system, additional
information-transmitting systems, which play a role both in the regulation of development and in the transmission of information within
and between generations, have evolved during the history of life.
Such evolved systems enable the transmission of targeted and induced
developmental variation. In other words, they enable ‘soft inheritance’, the inheritance of environmentally directed and developmentally filtered variations. These include: the epigenetic inheritance
systems (EISs), which allow gene expression patterns to be transmitted both within and between generations; the behavioural inheritance
systems that enable the transmission of non-symbolic, socially
learned information within and between generations; and the symbolic systems (such as language, art, and music) that are specific to
humans. All these enable the transmission of developmentally
acquired — induced and learned — information. Moreover, these
inheritance systems interact and can influence the direction and rate of
evolution of the genetic system (Jablonka and Lamb, 2005/2014).
Although there is always a stochastic element in the generation of
variation, the variation that is eventually transmitted is in no sense the
result of purely random accidents: dedicated evolved systems ensure
that hereditary variations — evolutionary guesses — are educated and
informed, rather than blind shots in the dark. These evolved systems
are intrinsic teleological systems, presenting no special mystery for
evolutionary biologists. They are the outcomes of selection rather
than being the consequence of a special, additional, law of nature as
Nagel proposes. Nagel’s portrayal of modern evolutionary theory as
one based on ‘random mutation and natural selection’ is crude, dated,
and misleading. The existence of sophisticated information-generating and transmitting systems means that the blind watchmaker has
evolved some residual vision (Avital and Jablonka, 2000). The rules
of evolution have been themselves evolving.
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The Major Teleological Evolutionary Transitions in
Evolution: Some Lessons from the Origin of Life Research
Nagel’s focus on life and living, on consciousness or phenomenal
experiencing, and on human abstract reasoning and moral evaluation
— all phenomena and processes that presuppose values and goals —
has deep roots in western philosophy: Aristotle carved the living
world at these very same teleological joints in On the Soul. From an
evolutionary point of view, the understanding of the evolutionary
transitions that led to these Aristotelian goal-directed systems is,
indeed, the greatest challenge of twenty-first-century evolutionary
biology. The first challenge is the transition to the first living system/s,
to Aristotle’s nutritive soul, a very difficult and intensely researched
topic, which most scientists would agree does not present a conceptual
mystery. The second is the understanding of the transition to consciousness, the evolutionary origin of Aristotle’s sensitive soul, where
we are still largely in the dark (not for long, we believe), and the third
is the transition to rationalizing-symbolizing animals, to Aristotle’s
rational (human) soul, one of the hottest topics in present-day evolutionary-cognitive biology, going all the way back to Darwin (1871).
Although all these goal-directed systems are the products of chemical
and biological evolution, how they evolved are major questions for
evolutionary biologists and for philosophers, because with all these
teleological transitions a new way of being emerged. Since Nagel
regards the origin of life as a process that cannot be explained by current naturalistic approaches, we briefly outline the approaches that led
to breakthroughs in the study of the origin of life and transformed it
from a metaphysical mystery to a tough scientific problem. We suggest that similar approaches can lead to progress in understanding the
transition to consciousness, and that these are already employed in
studying the transition to human rationality and values.
Before matter was viewed as inherently active, before Darwin’s
evolutionary theory, and before the appreciation of biochemical
cycles in the early twentieth century, the dynamic goal-directed organization that is the hallmark of living organisms could not be comprehended. The phenomenon of life was seen, quite rightly, as a deep
mystery by biologically well-informed philosophers and naturalists.
In the first third of the twentieth century, after these insights were
gained, Alexander Oparin in the Soviet Union and J.B.S. Haldane in
the United Kingdom suggested scenarios for the origin of life. Their
suggestions were anchored in two related convictions and three
empirical insights. The two convictions, which were shared by all
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evolutionary biologists since the beginning of the nineteenth century
when Lamarck first proposed them, were that life is to be understood
as a certain type of dynamic organization, and that no life-specific
vitalist principles and assumptions were needed: the dynamical organization we call life is constituted by coupled chemical reactions the
components of which can be identified in as yet non-living complex
chemical systems. The three empirical insights were an understanding
of cell metabolism in biochemical terms, an understanding of heredity
in terms of replication, and an understanding of the kind of geochemical settings that may have prevailed on the ancient earth that could
have generated the first living entities. The scenarios and the attempts
to simulate them formally, in the lab, and later in silico, made the
nature of life a hugely difficult scientific question. As Iris Fry’s
detailed analysis shows, decisive experimental support for alternative
‘paradigms’ of the emergence of life are still lacking, but the problem
is, in principle, answerable through scientific research (Fry, 2000;
2011).
Although different scientists and philosophers emphasize different
characteristics of life, most researchers agree about a list of features
that are jointly sufficient for a system to be characterized as living:
self-organization, closure/individuality, metabolism and development, responsiveness/plasticity, reproduction/multiplication, heredity
and hereditary variation, and evolution by natural selection (which
implies that hereditary variations affect the chances of reproduction).
The simplest organizational dynamics that instantiate these properties
are then sought. The ambition is not just to simulate a self-reproducing system such as a self-replicating RNA molecule, but to simulate
the minimal living systems which instantiate all the above properties.
In the early 1970s, Maturana and Varela suggested that a living system must have an organization that allows closure and dynamic selfconstruction and outlined the general organizational principles of
such systems, which they called autopoietic systems (summarized in
Maturan and Varela, 1987). At the same time, Tibor Gánti developed a
more concrete theoretical-chemical model of minimal life, the chemoton, consisting of a membrane, an autocatalytic metabolic cycle, and
an informational molecule regulating the rate of reproduction. The
chemoton’s dynamics exhibited the basic life-characteristics mentioned above, and the chemical, cyclical-stoichiometric perspective
has been useful as a guide for further theoretical and empirical
approaches to the origin of life (Gánti, 1971/1987; 2003). One contemporary approach, starting from the attempt to synthesize a protocell in the laboratory, has been analysed by Mark Bedau, who explores
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chemoton-like CMP models. The C in CMP stands for ‘Container’
that keeps the system together, M for ‘Metabolism’ that extracts
usable resources and energy from the environment, and P for ‘Program’, which controls the protocell’s process and carries replicable
and inheritable combinatorial information (Bedau, 2012). As in
Gánti’s chemoton, the three component systems are coupled, so that
each is supporting the operation of the other components. Bedau
analyses different representations of such a system which makes it
possible to envisage different evolutionary routes leading to a cohesive and fully-coupled CMP, a protocell. Although the contributions
of Bedau and his predecessors are conceptual, and a full-blown
chemoton or CMP system has not yet been synthesized in the lab,
there are intense and imaginative efforts to simulate different geochemical conditions conducive to the formation of the simplest living
entities that may have existed on Earth 3.8 billion years ago. As J.D.
Bernal suggested over half a century ago, once the geochemical conditions on ancient Earth are simulated, the next three stages are: (i) the
emergence of biological monomers (e.g. amino acids and pyrimidines); (ii) the emergence from those monomers of more complex and
more stable biological polymers and systems of interactions; (iii) the
emergence from these latter systems of the first bona fide biological
organisms (Bernal, 1949). Today, as many different possible geochemical conditions are simulated in labs all over the world, the first
two stages have successfully been achieved. There is little doubt in the
origin of life community that in spite of the great complexities
involved, the generation of a bona fide protocell by the end of the
twenty-first century is highly feasible. Nagel’s assertion that the origin of life is a scientific mystery requiring the aid of a new teleological
law of nature that goes beyond the intrinsic teleology of self-reproducing evolving entities is not shared by the scientists working on the
problem.
We wish to highlight three issues related to the life-transition,
which are also relevant to the other teleological evolutionary transitions. The first is that rather than a single, and inevitably highly contentious, line between life and non-life (or consciousness/nonconsciousness), a transition is likely to be gradual. A grey zone, a
spectrum rather than a single transition point, marks the road to the
mature new system. Nevertheless, a complexity threshold marking a
state of a mature new system can be and should be suggested, for it is
the recognition of this complexity threshold that enables us to reconstruct the transition and the grey area. Maynard Smith and Szathmáry
(1995) suggested that with the transition to life, the threshold is
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marked by the system manifesting unlimited heredity. Systems that
can have only very few hereditary variants are limited heredity systems, and are not fully living; they reside in the grey area between the
living and non-living phases. They are on the evolutionary route to
life if they evolve further and the number of their hereditary variations
becomes practically unlimited. According to Maynard Smith and
Szathmáry, the transition to open-ended evolution marks the complexity threshold for living. As we see it, such heredity systems had to
be part of something like an autopoietic chemoton system to carry out
the complex processes that enable unlimited heredity and open-ended
evolution. We suggest that similar criteria can be employed when
identifying the other teleological transitions: the transition to consciousness is marked by unlimited associative learning (Ginsburg and
Jablonka, 2010), and the transition to rationality and human values by
unlimited symbolic representation.
The second issue is closely related to the previous one, and
addresses one of the concerns Nagel voiced, the supposed statistical
implausibility of the emergence of life from ‘mere’ chemistry, especially since rare events cannot be amplified by natural selection. However, some reactions (e.g. cyclical reaction on two-dimensional
surfaces) can be more stable than others, and these reactions can scaffold further reactions which are even more stable, and so on (see, for
example, the scenario suggested by Wächtershäuser, 2006). Evolution by differential stabilization rather than by conventional natural
selection can be the result. Moreover, as the origin of life research has
shown, there is nothing out of the ordinary about the chemical reactions leading to the first stages in the process, although it did take a lot
of ingenuity to simulate Bernal’s first two stages. The third stage, the
generation of a protocell by combining several complex chemical
cycles, is very demanding and as yet difficult for scientists to simulate; however, in a planet rich in complex organic molecules and
chemical cycles, and with a variety of conditions, the chances that in
several hundred million years selective stabilization processes will
lead to the emergence of protocells seems plausible if not inevitable;
hence — in the words of one scientist — life would be a ‘cosmic
imperative’ (de Duve, 1995). De Duve offered a detailed scenario that
may serve as an example of the type of physical and chemical constraints that would drive the formation and stabilization of organic
molecules such as different amino acids and the resulting multimers.
He argued that the chemical constraints ensured that the proto-metabolic reactions were reproduced as long as environmental conditions
did not change, and enabled the later effectiveness and selective
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advantage of the first metabolic enzymes and ribozymes. He concluded that ‘life arose through the succession of an enormous number
of small steps, almost each of which, given the condition at the time,
had a very high probability of happening’ (de Duve, 1991, p. 112).
A third issue is the unaided emergence of novel entities with new
goals. Nagel regards such emergence as unsatisfactory: he feels that
life, consciousness, reason, moral values cannot be just ‘spandrels’, or
by-products of lower level processes. In a sense he is right: although
like any genuine novelty when it first originates the above processes
are not products of selection for that novelty, their nature is not
exhausted by this assertion and by saying that new functions are
enabled when they appear. Once teleological transitions occur they
present a new way of being. The emergent entity requires new categories for describing it. With the emergence of life, mere chemical processes and mechanisms became organized into systems to which a
goal can be ascribed (the goal is self-maintenance), and it is with this
transition that the parts and processes of such systems could be said to
have functions. Function is not a new high-level chemical process or
trait: in Aristotelian terms, it is a facet of the teleological cause, ‘that
for the sake of which’; it is something that only parts or processes in
goal-directed systems can have. Biological function (also known
among philosophers as teleo-function) is defined as the role that a
part, a process, or a mechanism plays within an encompassing system,
a role that contributes to the goal-directed behaviour of that system.
As we have already noted, the most basic goal-directed behaviour of
living organisms is self-maintenance (survival), and in the long-term,
reproduction. Functional information is any difference that makes a
difference to the goal-directed behaviour of a system, and in the case
of simple living forms, to the system’s self-sustaining dynamics. Preliving chemical processes do not have functional information, since
they are not part of a self-maintaining complex system. Functions and
functional information define the way of being of living organisms,
and are therefore irreducible to descriptions in terms of simple chemistry. And once functions can be ascribed to parts and processes within
a system and there are hereditary variations that affect functionality,
the system can evolve by natural or artificial selection. In this context,
the views of another philosopher, David Chalmers, should be mentioned: like Nagel, Chalmers thinks that consciousness poses an insurmountable problem to present-day science (‘the hard problem’); but,
unlike Nagel, he regards the issue of the origin of life as merely that of
understanding complex and adaptive mechanisms (that are, of course
teleo-functions; Chalmers, 1997); from our perspective, this claim is
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beside the point, because only with the emergence of life did the
notion of function become meaningful in the first place.
The result of the century-long experimenting, theorizing, and philosophizing about the origin of life is that the nature of life and the naturalistic origins of living entities lost their aura of metaphysical
mystery for most scientists and biologically informed philosophers.
We have acquired an improved understanding of the dynamic nature
of matter, we have good ideas as to how certain types of autopoieticdynamics can instantiate it (chemoton dynamics is one example), we
can describe aspects of such systems mathematically (see, for example, Bailly and Longo, 2011), and we can figure out how functions
arise. We have yet to accomplish the third and most difficult stage in
Bernal’s scheme, and this may take much time and much ingenuity,
but we do not see the need for Nagel’s new teleological law of nature.
Teleology is naturalistically intrinsic to life.
The transition to consciousness is the greatest mystery in Nagel’s
list of teleological transitions. How are we to approach it? The evolutionary transition to consciousness did not enjoy the intense and systematic exploration that we see with respect to the study of the
transition to life, and this research direction is necessary if we are to
get rid of the metaphysical fog surrounding the topic. In order to
understand how first-person experiences arose during evolution, we
suggest that a similar heuristic to that successfully used in the origin of
life research is necessary: a list of broadly accepted characteristics of
subjective experiencing must be compiled, and the dynamics that constitutes the enlisted characteristics must be sought. Identifying a complexity threshold can greatly help in discovering important aspects of
this dynamics, and the exploration of evolutionary building blocks
and scenarios can lead to new insights. Finally, just as functioning is
not a new high-level chemical process or trait but rather a facet of the
newly evolved reproductive telos, so consciousness should be seen as
a facet of a new telos. Conscious states are emergent, dynamic, system-wide sensory categories (what we call felt-needs and motives),
that had evolved as an aspect of complex associative learning and that
had opened up a whole new functional realm (Ginsburg and Jablonka,
2010). Like every emergent property, the origin of such primary consciousness was not the result of selection for it, but calling it a
spandrel rather than an emergent organizational property is in this
case an unhelpful rephrasing of its emergent nature. The same evolutionary heuristic is applicable to the evolutionarily related issues of
human reasoning and human values.
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There are many additional issues that we did not address in this
review, some of which were discussed in depth by other reviewers of
Nagel’s book. The notions of reductionism and emergence that Nagel
endorses are highly problematic, a point which was discussed by
Dupré (2012). Another point we did not discuss here is Nagel’s notion
of physical matter, which is far from being ‘inert’, but is seen by physicists as a complicated flux of dynamic elementary particles held
dynamically by various forces. We did not discuss the problem of the
evolution of the genetic code and translation, which is, indeed, one of
the most difficult and as yet unresolved problems in evolutionary biology. There are three major theoretical approaches which when combined can — in principle — provide a solution to this problem,
although there is no experimental research programme at present that
can reconstruct the actual stages in the evolution of the code (Koonin
and Novozhilov, 2009). Lastly, we barely touched the weakest arguments in Nagel’s complaint — the evolution of reason and human values, which are intimately related to the evolution of human linguistic
representation and social communication, a central topic in the study
of human evolution (Dunbar, 1996; Larson, Déprez and Yamakido,
2010), which is hardly mentioned by Nagel.
In summary, we believe that Nagel is right in arguing that the teleological transitions posit special philosophical and evolutionary challenges. However, we believe that all these transitions are explicable
within a sophisticated evolutionary framework, which once understood seeps down (or up?) and reframes the philosophical problems.
We think that Nagel’s problem may be the well-recognized problem of
the failure of evolutionary imagination. As Darwin confessed, the
evolution of the eye made him shudder, but as he explained, this was
the problem of a failure of his imagination rather than a failure of his
evolutionary theory (Darwin, 1859/1872). Once the major teleological transitions are studied from an evolutionary-transition perspective, Nagel’s constitutive problem is likely to dissolve and with it his
demand for a special and general teleological law of nature. New teloi
do appear during the history of life and they do begin to drive the evolution of the lineages in which they emerge, but physical emergence
and a sophisticated version of naturalistic evolutionary theory provide
a sufficient explanation.
Acknowledgment
We thank Iris Fry for her helpful comments on this review-essay.
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References
Avital, E. & Jablonka, E. (2000) Animal Traditions: Behavioural Inheritance in
Evolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bailly, F. & Longo, G. (2011) Mathematics and the Natural Sciences: The Physical
Singularity of Life, London: Imperial College Press.
Bedau, M.A. (2012) A functional account of degrees of minimal chemical life,
Synthese, 185 (1), pp. 73–88.
Bernal, J.D. (1949) The physical basis of life, Proceedings of the Physical Society
A, 62, pp. 537–538.
Caporale, L.H. (1999) Chance favors the prepared genome, Annals of the New
York Academy of Sciences, 18 (870), pp. 1–21.
Chalmers, D.J. (1997) Moving forward on the problem of consciousness, Journal
of Consciousness Studies, 4 (1), pp. 3–46.
Darwin, C. (1859/1872) The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or
the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th ed., London:
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Darwin, C. (1871) The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 1st ed.,
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Dawkins, R. (1986) The Blind Watchmaker, New York: W.W. Norton.
de Duve, C. (1991) Blueprint for a Cell: The Nature and Origin of Life,
Burlington, NC: Neil Patterson Publishers.
de Duve, C. (1995) Vital Dust: Life as a Cosmic Imperative, New York: Harper
Collins Publishers.
Dunbar, R. (1996) Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language, Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Dupré, J. (2012) Book review of Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, Notre
Dame Philosophical Reviews, 29 October.
Fry, I. (2000) The Emergence of Life on Earth — a Historical and Scientific Overview, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Fry, I. (2011) The role of natural selection in the origin of life, Origins of Life and
Evolution of Biospheres, 41 (1), pp. 3–16.
Gánti, T. (1971, Eng. trans. 1987) The Principle of Life, Budapest: Omikk.
Gánti, T. (2003) The Principles of Life, with a Commentary by James Griesemer
and Eörs Szathmáry, New York: Oxford University Press.
Ginsburg, S. & Jablonka, E. (2010) Experiencing: A Jamesian approach, Journal
of Consciousness Studies, 17 (5–6), pp. 102–124.
Jablonka, E. & Lamb, M.J. (2005/2014) Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic,
Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Koonin, E. & Novozhilov, A.S. (2009) Origin and evolution of the genetic code:
The universal enigma, Life, 61 (2), pp. 99–111.
Larson, R.K., Déprez,V. & Yamakido, H. (2010) The Evolution of Human Language: Biolinguistic Perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Maturana, H.R. & Varela, F.J. (1987) The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological
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Maynard Smith, J. & Szathmáry, E. (1995) The Major Transitions in Evolution,
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Nagel, T. (2012) Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialistic Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly Wrong, Oxford: Oxford university Press.
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Wächtershäuser, G. (2006) From volcanic origins of chemoautotrophic life to Bacteria, Archaea and Eukarya, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
London, B, 361, pp. 1787–1806.
Giulio Tononi
PHI F: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul
New York: Pantheon Books, 2012, 364 pp.
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Review by Richard A. Buck
California Institute of Integral Studies
Galileo awakes and finds his soul hovering above his sleeping body,
and suddenly it is swept through his nostrils into his skull. His soul
floats through his brain, and sees a universe within his skull. He
thinks, ‘What is, is what can be perceived. Reality is only made of
pure experience. The brain can hold the sky because it can beget the
soul, and when a soul is born, a universe is delivered’(Tononi, 2012,
p. 8). Thus begins Galileo’s journey in search of the nature of the soul,
and his dialogues with great minds of the various centuries. Through
the device of Galileo’s dialogues, Tononi in PHI F explains the current neurological research into consciousness for the general reader,
culminating in a description of his own theory of consciousness. PHI
F is a work of art. The sentences and paragraphs flow easily in a conversational tone; it is after all a dialogue between Galileo and other
great minds. It reads like a detective story, uncovering the secrets of
consciousness step by step, and Tononi succeeds in creating suspense
about what Galileo is going to find next. It is organized into 33 short
chapters. Most chapters begin with a one-sentence statement of what
will be demonstrated in the chapter. Each chapter ends with notes,
where Tononi explains some of the scientific history behind the dialogue in the chapter, and sometimes alerts us to slight inaccuracies in
the dialogue from a scientific point of view. The notes also describe
the art in the chapter. The text is richly illustrated, often with images
of great works of art — almost one on every page. The only criticism I
have of the pictures is that they are not captioned, and you have to consult the notes to view their pedigree. While captions might have
detracted from the aesthetics of the pages, they would have improved
the reading experience.
Why does Tononi resurrect Galileo to be our tour guide to consciousness? Tononi wrote a book on Galileo, which has not yet been
translated into English, so we can presume that he knows quite a bit
about the man. Galileo is actually the perfect guide. With his keen scientific intellect, he asks the right questions, yet at the beginning
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knows no more than us. Like Socrates, Galileo does not rest until he
achieves a clear understanding of what he sees and hears. While Galileo is our main guide, he converses with a number of pseudonymous
characters created by Tononi, but modelled after great philosophers
and scientists in history. Among the models for his characters are:
Francis Crick, Descartes, Alan Turing, Claude Shannon (father of
information theory), Kant, William James, Thomas Nagel (philosopher), Spinoza, Leibniz, and Darwin. Galileo even has a talk with the
devil.
Giulio Tononi, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, is the David P.
White Professor of Sleep Medicine at the University of Wisconsin. He
has developed a theory of consciousness, which he calls the integrated
information theory of consciousness. While PHI F was written to
explain his theory to non-scientists, readers can find a technical explanation of his theory in Tononi (2008). The underlying neurological
processes of his theory are explained in A Universe of Consciousness:
How Matter Becomes Imagination (Edelman and Tononi, 2000), written with Nobel prize winner Gerald M. Edelman. Tononi and Edelman
classify their work as the ‘neural correlates of consciousnesses’ (ibid.,
p. 8), and they distance themselves from cognitive psychologists, who
use metaphors from artificial intelligence and computer science to
explain consciousness.
While Tononi’s theory employs mathematics extensively (Tononi,
2008), PHI F stays clear of mathematics — except for one mathematical expression (in the notes on p. 145). Tononi’s hypothesis is that
consciousness is integrated information and that the level of consciousness depends on how much information is integrated. He names
this integration of information F (Phi). Here is Galileo’s summary of
what he has learned about F:
F may be low for individual neurons, each one too feeble to effect much
change by itself, though they be multitudes. And giant crowds of neurons are far too rough to make the fine distinctions that consciousness
requires. But small groups of neurons will speak together loudly, be
better heard by other groups, and together form a large and varied complex of surpassing F. (Tononi, 2012, p. 344)
In other words, integrated information is ‘the information generated
by a system above its parts, where the parts are those that, taken independently, generated the most information’ (ibid., p. 164). There is no
difference relative to F, in Tononi’s view, between a human or animal
brain and another type of complex system, such as wires and integrated circuits. If we could build a system of integrated circuits
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complex enough, it could integrate information to the degree that it
would be conscious.
Having established consciousness as integrated information of a
complex system, Tononi, through Galileo, unveils its implications.
While consciousness does not reduce to matter, it relies on matter; if
the brain is destroyed, the ‘soul too would collapse’ (ibid., p. 239).
Animals have consciousness, just not as much as humans. Also, at
some point, a fetus has consciousness. Yet, contemplates Galileo:
‘There is less soul in a slumbering human embryo than in a poor old
donkey… Early on, an embryo’s consciousness — the value of its F
— may be less than a fly’s’ (ibid., p. 281).
The possibility of quantifying F raises some intriguing questions
regarding the various states of consciousness discussed by Wilber,
Combs, and others. For instance, the Wilber-Combs Lattice has developmental stages of consciousness on one axis and realms of conscious
experience on the other (Combs, 2009, p. 101). If a person’s consciousness is at the intersection of non-dual on the realm of experience axis and rational on the developmental axis, what would we
expect the quantity of F to be? Would F increase as one moved up the
lattice from archaic to integral and across the lattice from gross to
non-dual? Or perhaps F would not increase at all, but different areas
of the brain would be activated in different states of consciousness.
Tononi asserts that F would increase as brains become more complex
and the activity of integration increases. Thus, we could confidently
assert that a human would have a higher F than a fish. But, would I
have less F than the Dalai Lama? PHI F does not enlighten us on
these questions, but if Tononi’s work progresses to the point where F
can be measured, many avenues for research would be opened. The F
level of practising Buddhists and Hindus could be measured and correlated with their subjective states of consciousness, which of course
would present additional problems of measurement. If we were able to
do this, would it enhance our understanding of states of consciousness? We do not know, but even the Dalai Lama has said on many
occasions that all knowledge, including advances in science, should
be used to improve our understanding of ourselves and the universe.
My supposition is that to actually compare the neural integration of
information with the various ideas of states of consciousness that
more than a single value of F would be needed. We would have to
have a way of measuring which areas of the brain were most prominent in the integration.
Tononi’s F theory has some critics in the neuroscience field.
Christof Koch identifies challenging aspects of the theory (Koch,
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2009, p. 19). First, to calculate the value of F, even for an earthworm,
would take all of Google’s more than 100,000 computers. Second, it
does not answer why nature evolved creatures with a high F. Third, it
does not explain why so much of our brain processing and behaviour
is unconscious. Michael Cerullo praises Tononi’s theory for ‘being
one of the first theories to link consciousness with empirically testable
concepts of information’ (Cerullo, 2011, p. 46). Yet, Cerullo points
out that the theory has flaws as an information theory. One of the flaws
is that the theory does not have a way of assigning meaning to the integrated information. This thinking is in line with the point I make
above that we probably need more than a single value of F to correlate
with a state of consciousness.
PHI F is a fun and informative read. It is a pleasurable way for the
general reader to get up to speed on the neuroscience of consciousness. The book would be worth buying just for the pictures. For those
of us who believe that there is something transcendent about consciousness, Tononi gives no support. Yet, it is hard to deny a neurological relationship with consciousness, whether you believe that the
brain causes consciousness or not. Tononi finds no evidence of a transcendent consciousness, but he does not disprove its existence either.
However, if the idea of F leads to a better understanding of the brain,
it is a worthwhile endeavour.
References
Cerullo, M.A. (2011) Integrated information theory: A promising but ultimately
incomplete theory of consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 18
(11–12), pp. 45–58.
Combs, A. (2009) Consciousness Explained Better: Towards an Integral
Understanding of the Multifaceted Nature of Consciousness, St. Paul, MN: Paragon House.
Edelman, G.M. & Tononi, G. (2000) A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter
Becomes Imagination, New York: Basic Books.
Koch, C. (2009) A theory of consciousness: Is complexity the secret of sentience,
to a panpsychic view of consciousness?, Scientific American Mind, pp. 16–19.
Tononi, G. (2008) Consciousness as integrated information: A provisional manifesto, The Biological Bulletin, 215, pp. 216–242.
Tononi, G. (2012) PHI F: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul, New York: Pantheon Books.
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Derk Pereboom
Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, 197 pp.
ISBN: 978-0-19-976403-7
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Reviewed by Tom McClelland
Lecturer, University of Glasgow
Email: [email protected]
In his latest book, Derk Pereboom explores the prospects of a
physicalist metaphysics of consciousness. His overall position is that
‘…there are several physicalist options that are serious possibilities,
and although we do not now know that any one of them is true, knowledge of this general sort is not ruled out’ (p. 8). He argues that any
progress for physicalism will depend on questions about the nature of
consciousness, the nature of the physical, or the nature of the metaphysical relation between them. Interestingly, Pereboom offers proposals in all three categories over the three sections of his book.
Chapters 1–4 challenge our grasp of our own conscious states by
developing the qualitative inaccuracy hypothesis. The idea is that
‘…introspection represents phenomenal properties as having certain
characteristic qualitative natures, and it may be that these properties
actually lack such features’ (p. 3). The possibility of this systematic
misrepresentation of our own phenomenal properties is claimed to
undermine the knowledge and conceivability arguments against
physicalism.
Chapters 5–6 focus on the physical side of the equation by exploring Russellian monism. This is ‘…any view that combines (1) categorical ignorance, the claim that physics, or at least current physics,
leaves us ignorant of certain categorical bases of physical dispositional properties, with (2) consciousness- or experience-relevance,
the proposal that these categorical properties have a significant role in
explaining consciousness or experience’ (p. 89). Some versions of
Russellian monism can be construed as physicalist.
Chapters 7–8 present a non-reductive physicalism. Against reductionism, Pereboom argues that ‘[n]atural kinds in psychology are
not identical to natural kinds in physics because psychological causal
powers are not identical to microphysical causal powers’ (p. 5). To
square this robust psychological realism with physicalism, he proposes that ‘[t]he deepest relation between the psychological and the
microphysical is constitution, where this relation is not to be explicated by the notion of identity’ (p. 5). All mental properties are composed of physical properties, but not reducible to them.
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These three themes are unified, as Pereboom explains (p. 3), by a
Kantian influence (it is no coincidence that the author is a scholar of
Kant in his own right). Other figures in the history of philosophy also
crop up in Pereboom’s arguments. Ideas from Descartes, Locke, and
Leibniz are presented with great clarity and applied effortlessly to the
contemporary debate on consciousness. This unusual attention to historical figures proves to be productive and illuminating on several
occasions. The book’s three themes are also unified by their each
being somewhat unconventional. Though they are all off-piste versions of physicalism, Pereboom consistently shows why they should
be taken seriously. The take-home message of the book is that if
physicalism turns out to be true, it will be in some non-standard form.
Rather than attempting to salvage failed physicalist proposals,
Pereboom carefully points the way to new and exciting alternatives.
I have mentioned some threads that unify the book, but I should also
mention its deeply disjunctive nature. We are presented with three
quite distinct physicalist positions, and within the three corresponding
sections we are often presented with a range of alternative options. As
a reader, one should not look for ‘the Pereboom account of consciousness’. There is none. This makes critical evaluation tricky. Challenging his arguments is less like attacking the soft underbelly of a dragon,
and more like battling a hydra: for every position you reject, two more
seem to grow in its place! Those searching for definitive proposals
will also be frustrated by the heavily qualified character of
Pereboom’s conclusions. One important analysis of a thought experiment is merely deemed ‘not implausible’ (p. 23) and one position is
only favoured ‘tentatively’ (p. 42). This tone is ubiquitous, and many
claims are not asserted outright.
The disjunctive and tentative nature of Pereboom’s proposals
should by no means be regarded as weaknesses. They reflect his stated
aim of identifying ‘serious possibilities’ for physicalism rather than
advocating a definitive stance (p. 8). Where others are guilty of ignoring the shortcomings of their accounts, Pereboom is consistently sensitive to an idea’s limitations and to alternative possibilities. He is
aware not just of philosophical considerations that could count
against his proposals, but of the important role of empirical developments in deciding the issue of physicalism (p. 172). For instance, he
states that the accuracy of his non-reductive account ‘…is a matter for
empirical investigation, which is currently incomplete, and so confidence that this position is true would need to be moderated’ (p. 169).
The last sentence of the book captures his humility: ‘…my arguments
don’t come close to showing that these physicalist proposals are true,
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but only that they are reasonable options in the ongoing debate’ (p.
172). This modest conclusion clearly reflects a deep appreciation for
the subtleties of the question at hand, and does nothing to diminish the
significance of the book’s many achievements. To give an idea of
those achievements, it will be worth considering each of Pereboom’s
three main proposals in turn.
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The Qualitative Inaccuracy Hypothesis
This is, as far as I can tell, a genuinely original strategy for the defence
of physicalism. It is the most intriguing proposal of the book and is
worthy of particular attention. Conscious states have phenomenal
properties, and our introspection of those properties represents them
as having a certain qualitative nature. Despite the best efforts of existing physicalist proposals, it appears that a phenomenal property cannot at once have that qualitative nature and be physical. However,
Pereboom suggests it is a possibility that phenomenal properties
‘…do not in fact have these qualitative natures, and that introspective
representation is in this sense inaccurate’ (p. 14). This is not to say the
phenomenal properties do not exist, but rather that we get the nature of
those properties wrong. The real nature of phenomenal properties is
physical, while the characteristics that preclude them from being
physical are misattributed to them. More boldly, Pereboom suggests
that the relevant misrepresentation could involve introspection presenting phenomenal properties as primitive when they are not (p. 17).
Phenomenal properties appear to be metaphysically simple properties
whose entire qualitative essence is revealed in introspection, but it is
an open possibility that this does not reflect the true nature of those
properties.
Chapter 1 introduces the hypothesis in the context of the knowledge
argument. The suggestion is that even though Mary ‘…does not represent phenomenal states in the characteristic introspective way…’, it
could still be the case that ‘…the natures of these properties might
accurately be represented by way of Mary’s physical knowledge’ (p.
24). On leaving her monochromatic room, Mary does acquire a new
belief that the phenomenal property characteristic of seeing red has
that mysterious qualitative nature ‘R’. However, ‘[o]n our open possibility, phenomenal redness has no such qualitative nature, so this
belief will be false’ (p. 25). The true nature of phenomenal redness
was already captured by her physical knowledge. Mary’s putative discovery is actually just a misrepresentation of a phenomenal property
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with which she was already familiar. Since Mary does not learn any
new truth about red perception, the threat to physicalism disappears.
Chapter 3 explains the application of the qualitative inaccuracy
hypothesis to the conceivability argument — specifically Chalmers’
zombie argument. We can indeed conceive of a ‘…scenario exactly
like ours microphysically but without phenomenal properties whose
qualitative natures are accurately represented introspectively…’ (p.
59). However, the hypothesis of misrepresentation suggests that phenomenal properties are not in fact accurately represented by introspection. As such, when we take ourselves to be imagining a zombie
scenario, we are not imagining a scenario that lacks phenomenal properties as they really are. We can imagine microphysical duplicates of
our world that are stripped of the phenomenal properties that appear
to be instantiated in our world. However, the claim is that a world like
ours microphysically but without the phenomenal properties that they
really have is not ideally conceivable. As is well known, only ideal
conceivability plausibly entails metaphysical possibility. If the inaccuracy hypothesis is true, an agent in ideal conditions would know
that phenomenal properties do not have the nature that they introspectively appear to have: the nature that floats free of the physical facts.
Genuine zombie scenarios would then be inconceivable to such an
agent.
Pereboom illuminates his proposal by way of an analogy with secondary properties. Our tactile sensation of warm air might accurately
represent its temperature, but we misrepresent the air as having a quality that, as Locke would put it, ‘resembles’ our sensation of it (p. 16).
The heat-sensation is a feature of how heat appears to us when it
affects us, but not a feature of how it really is. The Kantian insight is
that this kind of distinction also applies to our knowledge of mental
states. Our awareness of mental states is causally mediated, so mental
states may not appear as they really are (p. 9). Pereboom’s suggestion
is that introspective representations of phenomenal states systematically misrepresent them as having a qualitative nature that does not
correspond to their actual qualitative nature.
This is a fascinating strategy, but is not without its problems. When
science banished qualities such as redness from external objects,
those qualities were rehoused in the perceptual experiences of observers to whom those objects appear. However, as science attempts to
grapple with the nature of conscious experiences, there again seems to
be no place for such qualities. Pereboom’s strategy is to rehouse those
qualities once more. Conscious states do not really have that qualitative nature, but merely appear to from the perspective of introspective
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states. Put like this, it seems that Pereboom is merely shifting the
problem to a new location. To his credit, he pre-empts this criticism
and attempts to rebut it (pp. 26–8). He argues that there is no commitment to introspective states themselves having the problematic qualitative nature. They might appear to, but this would just be yet another
level of misrepresentation (p. 27). For Pereboom, it is misrepresentation all the way up! However, for his analogy with secondary properties to hold, the buck must surely stop with something that really does
have the qualitative nature in question.
Pereboom goes to great lengths (especially in chapter 4) to map out
how the hypothesis relates to existing physicalist positions, and how it
avoids the objections raised against them. His perceptive and succinct
summaries of the literature are greatly illuminating and helpfully
locate his proposal within the debate. Pereboom’s project requires him
to perform something of a tight-rope walk: on the one hand, he risks
being too generous towards existing physicalist accounts, rendering
his alternative view redundant. On the other, he risks conceding too
much to the anti-physicalist critics of those accounts, and failing to
evade their objections. Since the correct account of consciousness
will surely be found between the extremes, this balancing act is well
motivated, and for the most part it is performed successfully. For
instance, Pereboom shows how his proposal maintains something of
the spirit of the phenomenal concept strategy whilst avoiding its propensity to ‘…predict seeming possibilities where there are none’ (p.
83).
That said, other explorations of pre-existing positions are less successful. An extended examination of Stoljar’s Epistemic Strategy
paints the qualitative inaccuracy hypothesis as a much-needed supplement to Stoljar’s account (pp. 69–75). Stoljar proposes that the apparent irreducibility of conscious experiences is symptomatic of our
limited conception of the non-experiential world. One plausible line
of criticism suggests that ‘…Stoljar’s case would benefit from a partially specified hypothesis about the nonexperiential that could really
be true’ (p. 74). Pereboom’s suggestion is that the fact of which we are
ignorant is that introspection misrepresents the qualitative nature of
phenomenal properties. This suggestion gets Stoljar’s strategy wrong
in at least two ways. First, Stoljar is concerned with the possibility of
our having an impoverished conception of the non-experiential: we
are missing a concept required for the explanation of consciousness.
Learning that the qualitative inaccuracy hypothesis is true does not
involve acquiring a richer conception of the non-experiential, so is not
the kind of possibility with which Stoljar is concerned. Second, the
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real appeal of Stoljar’s proposal is that it leaves consciousness precisely as it is. Our experiences can be exactly as they appear to be, yet
have a non-experiential explanation, even though that explanation is
presently beyond our comprehension. Pereboom’s position, however,
leaves our conception of the non-experiential as it is, and instead
demands a radical shift in our understanding of consciousness. Ironically, the Russellian monism that Pereboom considers next is the kind
of proposal countenanced by Stoljar’s strategy.
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Russellian Monism
In chapters 5–6 Pereboom proposes Russellian monism as an alternative possibility for physicalists. Our current physical concepts refer to
properties via their causal role, but do not characterize the categorical
bases that explain them. Thus, ‘…we are at this point ignorant of the
nature of these categorical properties. This ignorance creates epistemic space for speculative proposals about the nature of these categorical bases that might at the same time explain phenomenal
consciousness’ (p. 89). If those unknown properties qualify as physical, then physicalism would be vindicated. With a conception of the
physical that included those categorical properties, zombies would be
rendered inconceivable.
In this section, Pereboom is not developing a new physicalist proposal but rather expounding and assessing a pre-existing position. His
examination of this perplexing strategy is outstanding. The current
debate contains confusion about the nature of the properties of which
we are thought to be ignorant. Pereboom cuts through this confusion
in an exposition that synthesizes ideas from Leibniz and Kant to
Stoljar and Blackburn and which navigates the tricky ‘dispositional/
categorical’, ‘extrinsic/intrinsic’, and ‘absolute/relative’ conceptual
dichotomies. Issues surrounding the nature of our ignorance —
whether it is a failure of deduction, acquaintance, or abduction — are
also explored in a succinct and critical manner (pp. 103–9). The antiphysicalist ‘micropsychist’ proposal that the categorical properties
are experiential receives a balanced evaluation (pp. 114–5), but
Pereboom ultimately encourages the ‘protophenomenal’ view that
those properties are non-experiential physical properties that ground
both microphysical properties and phenomenal properties (pp.
115–6).
There are some ideas in this section that may have benefited from
further attention. For instance, a key issue is what it would take for
categorical properties to qualify as physical. Pereboom states that
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‘these properties might… be similar enough to those over which current physics quantifies to count as physical’ (p. 89). But it is not clear
what standard of similarity is in place here, why that similarity would
guarantee physicality, or whether it is plausible that categorical properties could resemble the dispositions characterized by physics. In
Pereboom’s defence, the admirable efficiency of this section would
perhaps have been compromised if every such issue was considered in
detail. Overall, Pereboom’s examination of Russellian monism provides a valuable springboard for future discussion of this important
strategy.
Compositional Non-reductive Physicalism
Chapters 7–8 offer a compelling picture of the metaphysical status of
psychological states. Pereboom explains that ‘[t]o qualify as robust, a
nonreductive physicalism must satisfy two requirements. First, neither types nor tokens of mental causal powers can be identical to types
or tokens of causal powers at a more basic level. Second, the mental
must be causally efficacious qua mental’ (p. 148). His motivation for
the first condition concerns the multiple realizability of the mental,
which he carefully argues is incompatible with mental states being
identical to physical states. The motivation for the second condition is
that if a psychological state is efficacious only in virtue of its physical
properties, this would not be a genuine case of mental causation (pp.
157–8).
Pereboom’s proposal is that mental properties are compositional,
meaning that they are exhaustively constituted by physical properties.
‘The mental is physical… because each mental entity is constituted by
— that is, made up of, materially coincident with, and necessitated by,
but not identical with — some microphysical entity’ (p. 171). The proposed relation with the physical is tight enough to avoid Kim’s accusation that non-reductivism leads to overdetermination (pp. 141–4)
and emergentism (pp. 144–7). Pereboom explains that his account
offers a robust psychological realism. Interestingly, he shows how the
functionalist model according to which mental states are causal structures implemented by a physical base is effectively anti-realist about
mental causal powers (pp. 148–56). Pereboom’s defence of his
compositional account is comprehensive and encompasses a wide
range of issues and potential objections. As with his other key proposals, we are offered a sensible compromise between standard physicalist and dualist positions.
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Consciousness and the Prospects of Physicalism is a well-executed
book that comes highly recommended. Ideas are explored with notable precision and efficiency and presented with great sensitivity to the
contemporary and historical literature. A variety of original contributions are offered and, though many claims require further support,
Pereboom successfully shows that the prospects for physicalism are
hopeful.
Shaun Gallagher
Phenomenology
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, 237 pp.
ISBN 9780230272491
Reviewed by Magnus Englander
Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden
Saybrook University, San Francisco, CA, USA
Email: [email protected] or [email protected]
Husserl referred to most of his published works as introductions to
phenomenology, modelling for his followers the importance of
repeatedly returning to phenomenology’s point of departure and
rearticulating its aims. For those writing introductions to phenomenology today, the task entails an added responsibility: serving as a point
of access to a complex philosophical tradition. To accomplish this in a
concise manner is an even greater challenge. A high degree of pedagogical skill is required in order for the material to be accessible for
novice students without neglecting or oversimplifying essential philosophical ideas. In other words, the task of writing a good introduction
is to-make-the-essential-accessible-to-the-beginner.
Two recent and popular introductions to phenomenology are
already available: one by Dermot Moran (2000), the other by Robert
Sokolowski (2000), both entitled Introduction to Phenomenology.
Moran takes the reader chronologically through some of the major
contributors to the tradition, whereas Sokolowski tackles the main
concepts of phenomenology more directly. Gallagher and Zahavi’s
(2012) The Phenomenological Mind ought also to be mentioned: a
long-anticipated text, it made phenomenology accessible at an introductory level while fostering dialogue with empirical cognitive science research.
Gallagher’s (2012) Phenomenology parallels The Phenomenological Mind both in terms of its structure and its content. Nevertheless, there is also an important difference: Gallagher’s new book is
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broader in its scope, offering an introduction that is even more accessible to those who are encountering phenomenology for the first time.
Having used the three earlier texts mentioned above in introductory
phenomenology courses, I would say that Phenomenology (2012) is
not a substitute for the other three but, rather, the first text I would propose students read.
Gallagher grounds each chapter in classical phenomenological
thought and then dialogues with contemporary phenomenology and
empirical cognitive science research. Each chapter is in a sense
‘front-loaded’ with Husserl or Merleau-Ponty’s ideas, which are then
explored in the contemporary context. Following the structure of
Gallagher’s book, I will explore the text in three sections: Part 1 of
Phenomenology discusses the nature of phenomenology and its methods, Part 2 concerns its basic concepts, and Part 3 addresses existential and interpersonal issues.
Part 1
Merleau-Ponty’s (1962, p. vii) preface to the Phenomenology of Perception is his famous effort to answer to the question ‘What is Phenomenology?’. Thus it does not come as a surprise that Gallagher uses
the same title for his first chapter. Gallagher reviews some of the definitions of phenomenology, including those of Sokolowski and Moran,
and provides an historical account of the movement. This is a challenging task; however, Gallagher addresses it by focusing on the differences between Husserl and Heidegger, a helpful approach for
students. A history of phenomenological philosophy makes up the
main part of the chapter, including the ups and downs of the movement in the twentieth century and its revival in relation to the cognitive sciences in the 1990s. Gallagher does not discuss phenomenological philosophy’s impacts on clinical or research psychology (see,
for example, Spiegelberg, 1972; Cloonan, 1995; Giorgi, 2009); as
interesting as it would have been to the psychologist, addressing the
phenomenological psychological movement in Europe or the United
States is beyond the scope of this book.
In introducing phenomenological philosophy it is customary to first
distinguish it from naturalism and then proceed to describe Husserl’s
philosophical method. Gallagher does just that in chapters 2 and 3.
Chapter 2, ‘Naturalism, Transcendentalism and a New Naturalizing’,
addresses the dispute regarding whether phenomenology can be naturalized or not. Gallagher introduces Husserl’s important argument
against naturalism and his proposal of a phenomenological psycho-
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logy. The chapter appropriately includes an introduction to the work
of Marbach and of Varela, and finally of Gallagher’s own work with
‘front-loading’. Front-loaded phenomenology builds on the idea that
phenomenological insights can be integrated into the process of
experimental design, providing for a collaborative view (between the
empirical scientist and the phenomenological philosopher) of how to
naturalize phenomenology (pp. 37–9). Naturalization is still the first
issue for phenomenology and Gallagher shows its relation to contemporary cognitive neuroscience.
In chapter 3, ‘Phenomenological Methods and Some Retooling’,
Gallagher introduces central methodological concepts such as the
epoché, the phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation. Having addressed these fundamentals Gallagher turns to the importance
for philosophers of challenging purely philosophical findings through
an exploration of the fruits of empirical psychological research. He
writes, ‘Most real-world phenomena, and living bodies in particular,
especially those with highly developed brains, are often too complex,
unpredictable, non-linear, and so forth, for us to imaginatively vary
them in an exhaustive and adequate manner’ (p. 51). After acknowledging the empirical sciences, Gallagher returns to a focus on Husserl
with the cautionary note that ‘It is never certain that experimental controls introduced for good scientific reasons don’t change the phenomenon under observation. This is, once again, the problem of factual
contingency, which Husserl tried to avoid by having recourse to pure
imagination’ (p. 51).
Gallagher then discusses how simulation methods (as employed in,
for example, evolutionary robotics) might supplement the method of
eidetic variation. He closes the chapter with an introduction to the
first-person approach to knowledge (and how this is different from
first-person as subject matter). By the end of chapter 3 the careful
reader will have acquired a clear sense of the phenomenological position regarding naturalism as well as a sense of the phenomenological
philosophical method.
Part 2
Chapters 4, 5, and 6 address the classic topics in phenomenology such
as intentionality, embodiment, and time. In the chapter on intentionality (chapter 4), Gallagher reviews Brentano’s work, and the wellknown passages in Husserl’s Logical Investigation, and summarizes the
differences between the American West Coast and East Coast phenomenological camps regarding the meaning of the noema. Gallagher
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203
also offers an alternative interpretation of intentionality, drawing
upon research into embodied cognition, and presents the enactive
approach, anticipating the transition to chapter 5 on embodiment.
In chapter 5, Gallagher takes on the meaning of hyletic data in
Husserl and the contemporary rejection of qualia from functionalist
and extended mind theorists. Gallagher describes the position of
enactive theorists and the anti-representational view. He concludes,
‘What it is like for me, the embodied agent engaged in the world, to
experience X — this is surely something that calls for further phenomenological investigation’ (p. 99, italics in original).
In chapter 6, Gallagher highlights a favourite phenomenological
topic, the concept of lived-time. Appropriately he front-loads
Husserl’s analysis, including the irreplaceable example of listening to
a melody. As in previous chapters, Gallagher relates the topic to an
enactive approach. In one particular passage Gallagher makes a distinction in regard to action that could help a beginning student understand the difference between objective time (in terms of its relation to
causality) and lived-time. Gallagher states, ‘If… we reframe the question in terms of the intrinsic temporality of action, it is not something
in the past that causes or determines my action; it is some anticipated
possibility of the future, some goal that draws me out of my past and
present circumstances and allows me to transcend, and perhaps to
change, all such determinations’ (p. 113).
Part 3
The last part of Gallagher’s text is concerned with existential topics
such as the self, narratives, the lifeworld, and intersubjectivity. In
chapter 7 Gallagher examines persistent inconsistencies regarding of
the notion of the Self in the phenomenological literature. Gallagher
guides his reader through the complex disagreements between the
movement’s founders, arriving finally at the phenomenon of the minimal self. As in his recent work with Zahavi (in The Phenomenologial
Mind), the distinction between agency and ownership becomes the
main focus of attention. The chapter ends with a discussion of the
embodied self, including a contemporary discussion on robotics. This
chapter effectively ties together themes introduced earlier in the book
such as the first-person perspective and embodiment.
Chapter 8 introduces the reader to the foundational concept of the
lifeworld (that was briefly mentioned in the book’s opening passages). Gallagher provides a cogent introduction to the phenomenological conception of the lifeworld, drawing upon both Husserl and
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Heidegger: ‘The scientific world is a theory about the world — in the
same way that metaphysics offers theories about the world. But before
we try to explain the world in any kind of theoretical fashion, we are
living in the world’ (p. 160). He returns to the exploration of selfagency but now in the context of action, all to set the stage for an introduction to the idea of the narrative self. In chapters 7 and 8 Gallagher
is able to successfully integrate the book’s primary themes while saving the ‘big issue’ for last, the greatest a priori of all: intersubjectivity.
Chapter 9 opens with a discussion of transcendental intersubjectivity in Husserl’s work. The question of the possibility of knowing the
other merges with more fundamental question of how we are capable
of knowing anything at all. By working through Husserl’s concepts of
apperception and pairing, in the context of the phenomenology of
empathy, Gallagher addresses the misconception that Husserlian phenomenology is guilty of solipsism. Although solipsism was already
raised and negated in the introduction, in light of the eight preceding
chapters, the reader will have arrived at a fuller, more integral grasp of
this critical issue. Gallagher draws from Husserl, Heidegger,
Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre in his discussion of intersubjectivity; however, he also integrates the important, contemporary work of Dan
Zahavi. And of course, the chapter would not be complete without a
section on social cognition and the arguments against theory-theorists
and simulation theorists.
Conclusion
For those seeking an introductory text to phenomenological philosophy that reviews the major concepts in philosophy, includes the words
of the phenomenological movement’s founders, and integrates
research in cognitive science with contemporary phenomenological
philosophy, Gallagher’s text is an excellent resource. For those seeking an historical review of the movement, Gallagher (see p. 205) recommends Moran’s introduction. Gallagher’s Phenomenology, in
contrast, provides students with a stimulating introduction to contemporary phenomenological philosophizing, clearly demonstrating the
way in which this path of enquiry is rooted in Husserl’s work.
References
Cloonan, T.F. (1995) The early history of phenomenological psychological
research in America, Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 26, pp. 46–126.
Gallagher, S. (2012) Phenomenology, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
BOOK REVIEWS
205
Gallagher, S. & Zahavi, D. (2012) The Phenomenological Mind, 2nd ed., London:
Routledge.
Giorgi, A. (2009) The Descriptive Phenomenological Method in Psychology: A
Modified Husserlian Approach, Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1962) The Phenomenology of Perception, London:
Routledge.
Moran, D. (2000) Introduction to Phenomenology, London: Routledge.
Sokolowski, R. (2000) Introduction to Phenomenology, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Spiegelberg, H. (1972) Phenomenology in Psychology and Psychiatry, Evanston,
IL: Northwestern University Press.
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Cappelen, Herman, Philosophy Without Intuitions (OUP 2012)
Clark, Steve, Power, Russell, and Savulescu, Julian (eds.), Religion, Intolerance and Conflict (OUP 2013)
Combs, Allan, and Holland, Mark, Synchronicity: Through the Eyes of
Science, Myth and Trickster (Marlowe and Company 1996/2001)
Fuster, Joaquin M., The Neuroscience of Freedom and Creativity: Our Predictive Brain (CUP 2013)
Goldman, Alvin I., Joint Ventures: Mindreading, Mirroring, and Embodied
Cognition (OUP 2013)
Goodman, David M., The Demanded Self: Levinasian Ethics and Identity in
Psychology (Duquesne University Press 2012)
Howell, Robert, Consciousness and the Limits of Objectivity (OUP 2013)
MacFarlane, Elizabeth, Reading Coetzee (Rodopi 2013)
Miller, Christian, Moral Character: An Empirical Theory (OUP 2013)
Roald, Tone, and Lang, Johannes (eds.), Art and Identity: Essays on the Aesthetic Creation of Mind (Rodopi 2013)
Ross, Andy, Philosopher (Rover 2012)
Schulkin, Jay, Reflections on the Musical Mind: An Evolutionary Perspective
(Princeton University Press 2013)
Seager, William, Natural Fabrications: Science, Emergence and Consciousness (Springer 2012)
Simchen, Ori, Necessary Intentionality: A Study in the Metaphysics of
Aboutness (OUP 2012)
Swinburne, Richard, Mind, Brain, and Free Will (OUP 2013)
Thubten, Anam, The Magic of Awareness (Snow Lion 2012)
Wedemeyer, Christian, Making Sense of Tantric Buddhism: History, Semiology and Transgression in the Indian Traditions (Columbia University
Press 2013)
Williams Kelly, Emily (ed.), Science, the Self and Survival After Death:
Selected Writings of Ian Stevenson (Rowman and Littlefield 2012)
Yanay, Niza, The Ideology of Hatred: The Psychic Power of Discourse
(Fordham University Press 2013)
Zawidzki, Tad, Mindshaping: A New Framework for Understanding Social
Cognition (MIT Press 2013)
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[email protected] if you wish to review one of the above mentioned titles for JCS.