Raymond Tallis FRCP FMedSci Winchester Why Neuroscience1

Why My Talk Will Be Short(ish) It’s day three of the meeting No-one ever complained of a talk that was too short I want you to give me a hard time Winchester Why Neuroscience2

Clarification Not a critique of neuroscience Neuroscience is the Queen of the Sciences Winchester Why Neuroscience3

My position (1) Neuroscience reveals some of the most important necessary conditions of behaviour and awareness. What it does not do is provide a satisfactory account of the sufficient conditions of awareness and behaviour. The mistaken idea that it does is neuroscientism. Winchester Why Neuroscience4

My position (2) While to live a human life requires a brain in some kind of working order, it does not follow from this that living a human life is to be a brain in some kind of working order. Winchester Why Neuroscience5

The Roots of Neuroscientism Confuse correlation with causation Confuse causation with identify The brain lights up when I feel sad therefore feeling sad is the brain lighting up Winchester Why Neuroscience6

Some Children of Neuro- Scientism Neuro-aesthetics Neuro-law Neuro-economics Neuro-sociology Neuro-politics Neuro-theology U.S.W. Winchester Why Neuroscience7

Socrates Winchester Why Neuroscience8

Socrates (via Plato) “Fancy being unable to distinguish between the cause of a thing and the condition without which it could not be a cause! It is this latter, as it seems to me, that most people, groping in the dark, call a cause-- attaching to it a name to which it has no right”. Phaedo 98b Winchester Why Neuroscience9

Focus on Human Consciousness More calamitous consequences of ‘neuralising’ human as opposed to animal consciousness Avoid empty arguments about the nature and reach of animal consciousness Human consciousness makes the impossibility of fitting mind into matter more obvious Winchester Why Neuroscience10

Consequences of Neuro- scientism Darwinising the mind Reduction of the mind to a way-station in a causal net Winchester Why Neuroscience11

Responses to Critique of Neuroscientism ‘One fine day’ neuroscience will produce an adequate account of consciousness That which neuroscience cannot see doesn’t really exist - the ‘I’, free will etc Winchester Why Neuroscience12

A Serious Inconsistency They don’t doubt that they think they are selves or that they have the illusion that they act freely and yet there is no conceivable neural explanation of these phenomena. How would a nervous system that has no basis for a self have the basis for the illusion of the self? Winchester Why Neuroscience13

Bill of Fare Perception and Intentionality Physical Science, Phenomenal Consciousness and the Disappearance of Appearance Viewpointless matter The Unity of Consciousness, Memory, and the Self Where Now? Winchester Why Neuroscience14

The Problematic Perspective Neuroscientistic Orthodoxy There is only one sort of stuff, namely matter – the physical stuff of physics, chemistry and physiology – and the mind is somehow nothing but a physical phenomenon. In short, the mind is the brain… We can (in principle!) account for every mental phenomenon using the same physical principles, laws and raw materials that suffice to explain radioactivity, continental drift, photosynthesis, reproduction, nutrition and growth. Daniel Dennett Consciousness Explained Winchester Why Neuroscience15

Bill of Fare Perception and Intentionality Physical Science, Phenomenal Consciousness and the Disappearance of Appearance Viewpointless matter The Unity of Consciousness, Memory, and the Self Where Now? Winchester Why Neuroscience16

The Ground Floor: Perception of an Object Winchester Why Neuroscience17

The mystery of intentionality: Perception Winchester Why Neuroscience18 Glass “ Glass” Neural activity Identity Perception Light as Cause Intentionality of gaze

Limitations of the Physiology of Visual Perception The inward causal chain explains how the light gets into my brain but not how this results in a gaze that looks out. Winchester Why Neuroscience19

aping mankind20

The mystery of intentionality Winchester Why Neuroscience21 Glass “ Glass” Neural activity Identity Perception Light as Cause Intentionality of gaze

The Mystery of Intentionality if Neuromania Were True My perception of the glass would require the neural activity in the visual cortex to reach causally upstream to the events that caused them. Winchester Why Neuroscience22

Additional Problems with the Physiology of Perception Why does the counter-causal intentionality stop at a particular point? How does perception assemble a stable object out of transient events? Winchester Why Neuroscience23

A Mystery we Take for Granted The ordinary inference implicit in everyday perception that the events causally upstream of the nerve impulses are manifestations of something that transcends those events – namely an object that is the relatively permanent possibility of endless events – makes intentionality even more mysterious. Winchester Why Neuroscience24

Hermann von Helmholz Winchester Why Neuroscience25

The Bounce-Back of Intentionality Marks the point at which perceptions are received/arrive Without ‘bounce-back’ there would be no demarcation between input and output : the organism would not be a ‘centre’ as matter doesn’t have centres (or peripheries) Nothing distinctive about the neural correlates of consciousness Winchester Why Neuroscience26

Heart of the Trouble The unintelligibility of the claim that the interaction between two material objects (a glass, my brain) will make one appear to the other Causal interaction does not generate appearance Winchester Why Neuroscience27

Bill of Fare Perception and Intentionality Physical Science, Phenomenal Consciousness and the Disappearance of Appearance Viewpointless matter The Unity of Consciousness, Memory, and the Self Where Now? Winchester Why Neuroscience28

Physical Science: The Disappearance of Appearance Replacement of phenomenal appearance by quantitative measurements The description of matter (in-itself) is essentially mathematical: it has only primary qualities which are not qualities at all The elimination of secondary qualities The elimination of all (phenomenal) qualities Winchester Why Neuroscience29

Dennett Again on the Orthodoxy “the same physical principles, laws and raw materials that suffice to explain radioactivity, continental drift, photosynthesis, reproduction, nutrition and growth.” These principles are mathematical: they relate quantities and by-pass qualities – which is why they can be common to all these things. Winchester Why Neuroscience30

The Disappearance of Appearance. The Bottom Line Nothing in physical science (including – or especially - QM!) can explain why a physical object such as a brain should find, uncover, or create, appearances. Matter and energy, as understood scientifically, do not intrinsically have appearances. Material objects require consciousness in order to appear. Winchester Why Neuroscience31

A materialist explanation of consciousness rooted in physical science must fail because matter and energy, as understood scientifically, do not intrinsically have appearances, never mind those corresponding to secondary qualities. Material objects require consciousness in order to appear – and then they will have a particular appearance that will depend upon the viewpoint of the conscious individual observing it. Winchester Why Neuroscience32

View of a Rock from No Viewpoint Winchester Why Neuroscience33

The Gaze of Physics aping mankind34

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Bill of Fare Preliminary comments Perception and Intentionality Physical Science, Phenomenal Consciousness, and the Disappearance of Appearance Viewpointless matter The Unity of Consciousness, Memory, and the Self Where Now? Winchester Why Neuroscience37

Viewpoints: Awkward and Inescapable Intentionality is most evident when the the perceived object is related to an ‘I’ Egocentric space: near, far etc The material brain is ownerless Material world has no centres nor peripheries Winchester Why Neuroscience38

Bill of Fare Preliminary comments Perception and Intentionality Physical Science, Phenomenal Consciousness, and the Disappearance of Appearance Viewpointless matter The Unity of Consciousness, Memory, and the Self Where Now? Winchester Why Neuroscience39

Subjects (Selves, Persons) Unity-in-multiplicity Temporal depth Winchester Why Neuroscience40

Unity-in Multiplicity of Consciousness We are co-conscious of many separate things in a conscious field Models of integration do not deliver unity-in- multiplicity - i.e. merging without mushing Models of binding do not deliver unity never mind unity-in-multiplicity Winchester Why Neuroscience41

Binding Problem: Would-Be Solutions Synchronous activity over the brain Place of convergence of activity: claustrum Electromagnetic fields Quantum coherence Winchester Why Neuroscience42

Subjects (Selves, Persons) Unity-in-multiplicity Temporal depth Winchester Why Neuroscience43

Neurophysiology of Memory Memory as a cerebral deposit ‘Stored’ in the form of the altered reactivity of the brain Winchester Why Neuroscience44

The Haunted Slug Winchester Why Neuroscience45

Sluggish Recall No semantic memory of facts No explicit episodic memories of events, that it locates in the past; No autobiographical memories it locates in its own past. No explicit sense of time, of the past, even less of a collective past where shared history is located. No active recall No nostalgia Winchester Why Neuroscience46

Memory in a Dish? The past states of a material object cannot be retained in the present state of a material object Memories are explicitly of the past Tensed time is not evident in the material world Explicit memories (the only real memories) have double intentionality: reach back to experience which reaches back to object that caused the experience Winchester Why Neuroscience47

Gotcha! Hagar Gelbard-Sagiv, Roy Mukamel, Michal Harel, Rafael Malach, Itzhak Fried ‘Internally Generated Reactivation of Single Neurons in Human Hippocampus During Free Recall’ Science 3 rd October 2008 Vol 322: No 5898 pp Recording from single cells in people being investigated for the source of epileptic discharges Winchester Why Neuroscience48

No Tenses in Matter There is no ‘now’ There is therefore no ‘past’, or ‘future Winchester Why Neuroscience49

Tensed Time and the Material World Once Einstein said that the problem of Now worried him. He explained that the experience of the Now means something special for man, something essentially different from the past and the future but that this difference does not and cannot occur within physics. That this experience cannot be grasped by science seemed to him a matter for painful but inevitable resignation. Rudolf Carnap Winchester Why Neuroscience50

Tensed Time and the Material World People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Albert Einstein, 1952 Winchester Why Neuroscience51

Tensed Time and Neuroscience Neuroscience is ultimately a biophysical or physical science. A consistent materialism should not allow for the possibility of memory, of the sense of the past. It only seems to do so because observers, viewpoint, consciousness are smuggled into the image of the successive states of the brain, making it seem that later states can be about earlier states. In short, neural accounts of memory are a cheat Winchester Why Neuroscience52

References Critique of neuro-determinism: Raymond Tallis ‘Can I possibly be free?’ New Atlantis Summer 2010 (can download from the net) Against naturalisation of knowledge Raymond Tallis The Knowing Animal. A Philosophical Inquiry into Knowledge and Truth (Edinburgh University Press, 2005) Winchester Why Neuroscience53

Bill of Fare Preliminary comments Perception and Intentionality Physical Science, Phenomenal Consciousness, and the Disappearance of Appearance Viewpointless matter The Unity of Consciousness, Memory, and the Self Where Now? Winchester Why Neuroscience54

Urgent Questions (1) Why, if the brain is not the basis of consciousness, is it so intimately bound up with our awareness and our behaviour? What are we to make of the genuine advances of neuroscience? Winchester Why Neuroscience55

Urgent Questions (2) Should we abandon the brain as a starting point for our understanding of consciousness? Where would the brain fit into a metaphysics, an epistemology, an ontology, that denies the brain a place at their centre? How shall we deal with the fact that we are evolved organisms as well as persons? Winchester Why Neuroscience56

The Purpose of this Talk Largely negative Path-clearing – removing ‘some of the rubbish that lies in the way to knowledge’ John Locke Clear the way for a radical re-think and the positive, descriptive and explanatory work that lies ahead Winchester Why Neuroscience57