Consciousness is mystical, attempts to de-mystify it fail
The rise of the Demystifiers
There is a new attempt underway to de-mystify consciousness, and specifically, the mystical experience. I will call them, unimaginatively, the Demystifiers. The Demystiers argue that consciousness is identical with, or the result of, brain chemistry, and that the mystical experience is not an experience of real transcendence but is an experience of something like pure consciousness, where that consciousness is not transcendent, but the result of brain chemistry.
Consciousness, they claim, is a coherence-forming mechanism, that is always in the ‘here’ of space and the ‘now’ of time. Consciousness makes the world coherent to us – our consciousness can never contradict itself, as Joscha Bach put it, meaning, as far as I can tell, that we can never have an experience in which we both see a chair and don’t see the same chair. Furthermore, consciousness gives us a world-model, a world representation, in which we can act based on this model’s coherency.
The Demystifiers also argue consciousness is also always here and now… the world represented is always the world ‘here’ and the world ‘now’, because that’s where we need the coherence consciousness provides to survive in the world. Survival of the past is already taken care of, survival of the future can come later. Survival in any place other than ‘here’ isn’t necessary.
This viewpoint attempts to solve two classical problems for physicalists about consciousness.
The first problem it attempts to solve is that it provides an evolutionary function for consciousness. By saying consciousness is a coherence mechanism, it provides an evolutionary role for consciousness that has been famously difficult to find. We have consciousness, figures like John Vervaeke argue, in order to perceive anomalies in experience. If we are driving, we need to be conscious to see the deer in the road. So, consciousness under this Demystification gains a function.
The second problem for physicalist theories of consciousness that the Demystifiers claim to solve is the problem of transcendence. The mystical experience is an experience of apparent transcendence. The mystical experience is defined by the following qualities: Unity, Noetic Quality (objective insight or mystical truth is felt to be revealed), Transcendence of Space and Time, Sense of Sacredness, Deeply Felt Positive Mood, Paradoxicality and Ineffability. The mystical experience is described by people who have had it as one of “Ultimate Reality”, “Cosmic Consciousness”, one of ‘union with God’, or nirvana, depending on their culture and preferred terminology, yet the phenomenology of the experience, as listed above, is the same. The problem for physicalists is, if consciousness can ‘transcend space and time’ or provide an experience of some kind of ‘ground of Being’, then this seems to be an experience of consciousness transcending the physical world and the physical brain, and therefore it appears that consciousness is not just the result of brain chemistry.
The Demystifiers have a really interesting new worldview. They don’t ignore the reality of the mystical experience, as classical physicalism often does. They attempt to bring together physicalism and mystical experience. Interestingly, studies show that people who have psychedelic experiences (which can include the mystical experience) often move towards non-physicalist theories of consciousness following their experience. Clearly suggesting that something about having a mystical experience gives one reason to believe consciousness is not just the result of brain chemistry. Indeed, my own mystical experience woke me out of a scientific materialist worldview. I have not been tempted to return to that worldview since… but the Demystifiers, again to their credit, have me back questioning.
If there is a physicalist worldview that can explain the apparently transcendent mystical experience, then maybe that worldview really will one day explain consciousness itself. Maybe that worldview will be shown to be ‘true’. The Demystifiers argue that they can explain the qualities of the mystical experience in a naturalist framework. For example, the transcendence of space and time felt as part of the mystical experience is not some actual transcendence of space and time, rather it is a pure, phenomenological representation of the always here-ness and always now-ness of consciousness. The experience of paradoxicality, Joscha Bach would likely say, is a pure, phenomenological representation of the impossible to contradict, coherence forming mechanism that is consciousness. We see the nice link between the qualities of the mystical experience and the qualities of an experience of what ‘pure consciousness’ might be like: here, now, beyond paradox.
Some neuroscientists have also attempted to explain the sense of mystical insight (noetic quality) by reference to a “dysfunctional anterior insula”, the part of the brain that deals with feelings of certainty. Other philosophers have attempted to naturalise the ineffability feature of the mystical experience.
These attempts to naturalise the qualities of the mystical experience are variably engaging. Yet, I think, they invariably fail. Not because they don’t explain the mystical experience, but because they don’t explain the arena in which the mystical experience takes place, and that is consciousness. Consciousness is prior to the mystical experience, because the mystical experience is exactly that, an experience, and experiences take place within consciousness. So, if the Demystifiers still cannot explain consciousness, then they can’t explain the mystical experience within it either. And, it turns out, the Demystifiers still can’t explain consciousness.
In a recent interview at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival with Joscha Bach, that will be released soon, he was attempting to convince me that consciousness is software, on the hardware of the brain. I admittedly didn’t understand the analogy. I still don’t. Bach said it wasn’t even an analogy.
Speaking of analogies, one that does work and demonstrates a point well is the comparison of consciousness’ relationship to the brain as akin to a Radio 4 show’s relationship with a radio. A radio can play a Radio 4 show. But the radio doesn’t cause and isn’t identical with the Radio 4 show. Even though if the radio gets damaged in some way the Radio 4 show might crackle or turn off.
Rather, the radio is a receiver for the Radio 4 show. It could be the same with the brain and consciousness – where the brain is the radio, and consciousness is the Radio 4 show. The brain may be a receiver for consciousness. Consciousness is correlated with brain chemistry, if our brain gets damaged our consciousness may change, but we cannot say brain chemistry causes or is identical with consciousness. To bring this analogy up to date, and make it more to Bach’s liking, maybe we should start saying the brain is the data centre, and consciousness is the AI. (Of course the analogy, being an analogy, still ultimately fails.)
I think Bach, and Vervakae, are some of the most brilliant and creative thinkers around at the moment. But I still think they are wrong.
I think the Demystifiers including Bach are wrong for a few reasons. To run through a few quickly… For starters, if the brain and consciousness are evolved purely for survival, then there is no reason they can get at the truth of reality. Donald Hoffman’s work shows this, as does Plantinga's evolutionary argument against naturalism. So, the idea that ‘consciousness evolved for survival is true’ is self-reflexively untrue, because that idea itself arose in that same consciousness which evolved for survival, and not truth. This does away quickly the argument that consciousness’s function is some coherence mechanism.
There is another reason Bach is wrong to argue that consciousness is software, or an abstraction, or pattern of some kind – I am still struggling to pin down his (non)analogy. Patterns are only seen in consciousness, so they cannot form consciousness. Consciousness is that by which we can be aware of patterns, there are no patterns without consciousness, therefore consciousness itself cannot be a pattern. Consciousness is within which abstractions can be made, therefore, consciousness itself cannot be an abstraction. Too many people continue to confuse appearances in consciousness – patterns, emotions, meta-cognition – with consciousness itself. Consciousness is a blank screen on which phenomena appear. If consciousness itself were a pattern we would not be able to perceive patterns, as there would be no distinction between the thing perceiving and the thing perceived. Consciousness itself is not a phenomenal thing. It is the noumenal. It is the empty space in which phenomena appear. Furthermore, to argue that consciousness is software or a pattern is to argue that some formula written on a page or as computer code or a drawing, would be able to spit out consciousness on the other end. Even if this were possible, how would we know if we’d succeeded? Consciousness cannot be perceived from the outside! – I have written about this elsewhere.
But, the central reason they are wrong is, and I’m going to say something that I might one day regret, and I hope that I do… is that we will never understand consciousness.
Consciousness is the epistemological starting point for everything. Epistemology is the study of what it is possible to know. So, that is to say, consciousness is the fundamental condition for the knowing of anything. Therefore, we cannot ‘get behind’ consciousness in order to know it. Therefore, we will never understand consciousness. (Maybe we can know consciousness by being consciousness, but this is a different form of knowledge than presently being discussed).
Imagine you were put under permanent anaesthetic; would you be able to know anything? Under anaesthetic, do you know about the physical world, do you know about brains, about mathematics, about physicalist theories of consciousness? Under anaesthetic you don’t know anything. There is just a blankness. Consciousness is a fundamental condition for all and any knowledge, including knowledge about consciousness itself. (As an aside, I also interviewed Stuart Hameroff at this year’s HowTheLightGetsIn festival, which will also be released shortly of the IAI, who’s work focuses on using anaesthetic to study what physically goes away when consciousness goes away. Another notion that has me thinking… but that is another article.)
People often confuse consciousness for not only the epistemological starting point for everything, but also the ontological starting point. That is, people like panpsychists or idealists or Advaita Vedantists, argue something close to, consciousness is fundamental in reality, not just fundamental to the knowing of reality. To be clear, I am not making that claim. To make such a claim, would to be to claim that we knew for certain the relationship between the epistemological starting point that is consciousness and the ontological nature of fundamental reality. That link cannot be made. As theoretical physicist Priya Natarajan argued repeatedly at the HowTheLightGetsIn festival, there is simply no reason why an evolved ape on a floating rock should have access to the ultimate truth about the nature of reality.
The human condition is one in which we will never fully know either the nature of reality or the nature of our own consciousness. We must live in and with the mystery. It is fun and incredibly useful to speculate. Speculation should be supported and celebrated. Every new idea and new technology has begun as wild speculation. And partly for this reason, I can’t wait to see where Bach and Vervaeke’s work goes. But, at the same time, accepting and enjoying life, I think partly, requires us to let go of the obsession with knowing. ‘I do not know, and I will never know’ is a door through which we can walk and be united with the mystery; for the mystery doesn’t know itself either.