Zombie

Very interesting Editorial on the Signs of the Times:

Zombie or not Zombie, that is the question Signs of the Times Editorial

In an essay entitled "Eyes wide shut?" published in the April 30, 2005 issue of The New Scientist, Patricia Churchland tackles the ever-thorny problem of consciousness. In brief, she argues that neuroscience will provide the key to understanding consciousness as it elaborates four conditions:

1. We understand how macro events emerge from the properties and organisations of the micro events;
2. novel phenomena can be predicted;
3. the system can be manipulated;
4. and it is clear at what level of brain organisation the phenomenon resides.

In the coded language of neuroscience, the term "macro events" refers to consciousness, which, according to Churchland and many, many others, "emerges" from the "properties and organisations of the micro events, that is, the workings of the brain". In other words, consciousness emerges from evolution when the appropriate level of complexity is reached in the nervous system. It is neither the cause, the foundation, nor the prime mover of that evolution.

Churchland admits that "science is moving forward on the problem, but has not yet nailed down the answers - and no one really knows what the answers will look like." She admits, as well, that "neuroscience is a very young science, still in search of its own exoskeleton - the fundamental principles that explain how nervous systems work. Although an enormous amount is known about the structure and function of individual neurons, how macro effects emerge from populations of neurons remains poorly understood."

Fine so far. She sets out her ideas and her belief that consciousness will ultimately be explained through work on neuroscience: "a theory of consciousness will co-evolve with an understanding of the fundamentals of brain function."

But as she admits, we aren't there yet, so she cannot know this to be the case. It is, one might suggest, an intuition.

The trouble is that Ms Churchland spends a large portion of her essay criticising intuition in the domain of consciousness research, as long as these intuitions do not agree with her own. One in particular receives a severe dose of ridicule:

Among these intuitions is the idea that there could be a zombie like me in all respects - all, save that it lacks qualia. A lack of qualia means it doesn't have the "experience" of redness when it sees a London bus, but like me would say: "Look! There is a red London bus." Incredibly (I'm not making this up) zombie-me would have exactly the same conversations about conscious experience that I do. For example, we both say: "When I dream, I am aware of actions, such as flying, but not aware of how bizarre those actions are." The difference is that zombie-me has neither experiences nor qualia to talk about.

Could there be such a zombie? "Perhaps not," says the purveyor of zombies. "It is a thought-experiment-zombie." Fine. But so what? "Well, the mere imagining of such a thing entails that consciousness cannot be a property of the brain..." Good grief. As a colleague once muttered in despair, this argument is not even wrong.

Dennett is right about most of the philosophically pampered intuitions, especially those bravely predicting that "science can never, ever explain consciousness". These intuitions and the arguments they spawn have been repeatedly exposed as confusions, fallacies, circularities, failures of imagination, arguments from ignorance and just plain bunk.

Ouch! Unfortunately, Ms Churchland's belief that the answers will come from neuroscience is as much an intuition as her zombie example. Moreover, there is an awful lot of evidence that supports the existence of such zombies. It has been gathered through observation, it is repeatable, and it allows one to make predictions. This evidence would also be dismissed without a thought by Ms Churchland because it is not "scientific" according to her unfortunately limited idea of what constitutes, or could constitute, science.

Could her limited view of science be related to the question of the existence of zombies?

First, let us do a thought experiment. Imagine a philosopher and neuroscientist who is herself a zombie. Her standards of what constitutes experience and an inner life would be limited to zombie experiences. When a non-zombie described his or her experiences to her, she would interpret them according to her own experiences. Those aspects that were foreign to her would either be reduced to fit her own experiences or would be rejected as impossible.

Isn't this what we see over and over again in the split between the materialists and the idealists in philosophy, in the split between science and mysticism, in the split between those who believe that there is nothing after death and those who have a deep conviction that there is? One would think that, if we really are all just 'one race', and after thousands of years of argument from both sides, the question would be resolved one way or another. Can we take the lack of resolution as evidence that the question goes to the heart of human experience?

Interestingly, many of those who would argue there is something more to consciousness than can be explained by neuroscience have the conviction that a scientific answer could be found if science was to open up its horizons, while those who hold the opposing view completely dismiss the need for science to incorporate lessons from other domains. This suggests to us that the experience or consciousness of the hard-science proponents is more restricted than that of those who are more open. The hard-science proponents' experience might be a subset of the experience of the others. This implies that while the "zombie" scientists could never understand the other group, the other group could understand the limits of the zombies.

The distinction between zombies and others is the distinction that we draw between 'organic portals' and 'potentially souled individuals'. What is missing from the scientific and philosophical debate in academia is the understanding that the difference in experience between the two types of people has to do with their ability to perceive what the esoteric Tradition calls the 'A' and 'B' influences, not their different experiences of the colour red. The zombies, or 'organic portals', are only equipped to perceive the 'A' influences. These are the trappings of the material world, the influences that are related to our basic desires for sex, food, and security. Grand and elaborate scientific and philosophical theories can be formulated based only upon those influences. These theories can be complex and accurately describe the world from the point of view of the 'A' influences, but they are missing a part of the world that the organic portal does not experience and therefore does not even recognise is missing. For them, these theories do take in all the available data because the rest of the data is not available to them because the data falls outside of their range of perceptions.

Unfortunately, as we have discussed elsewhere, the very capacities that form the basis for a belief in the afterlife or in the reality of there being "something more" to life can often be hindrances in getting ahead in our world. In this case, those who hold the reigns of power and decision-making, including within the sciences, would tend to be those of one persuasion, the 'zombie' or 'organic portal' persuasion. Their standards would be the standards of society, and therefore those who have a larger experience would be continually forced to reduce their knowledge to conform to the standards of those who set the rules, or who hand out the science grants.

And that is, in fact, what we see around us. Scientists who wish to investigate data that fall outside of the realm of experience of the zombie, or organic portal, are ridiculed, their grants are denied, and if they push hard enough, their careers can be ruined. The dominant scientific paradigm is as entrenched as the belief of Bush's supporters that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and that he was involved in 9/11.

Churchland ends her essay with the following:

But the unglamorous truth is that science will come to understand the components of consciousness in pretty much the same way it has come to understand the nature of life.

And that is precisely what worries us.

In the following round up of recent news with commentary, notice your reaction to the various stories and when you find yourself asking the question: "how can a section of humanity engage so apparently carelessly in such inhuman acts?", realise that this question goes to the very heart of the reality of human life on earth and leads us to perhaps the "secret of secrets" that has been the sole purview of certain secret societies and groups over the millennia.

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