MAX This is MAX. He is a brain in a vat. (and this is a new take on an old thought experiment) Unlike other envatted brains however, the Physical Reality Generator is not working on MAX, and thus he is not being tricked into believing that he has a physical body, or that he is a being in a the physical world. Thus, MAX has no sensory data coming in, he does not have the ability to control behavior, the ability to react to environmental stimuli, the ability to respond to bodily sensations, nor the ability to report his internal states, and none of the other cognitive abilities associated with the physical system. While although the reality trick is not being played on MAX, the mad scientist did upload some preliminary data, including a knowledge and memory of colors and shapes, as well as a full semantic library and a syntactic use of language,1 which he can ‘use’ internally (as stream of consciousness). He also has been programmed with a basic knowledge of cognitive science and neurobiology, as the mad scientist was planning on making MAX a student of the philosophy of mind. MAX is a healthy brain and neurally functional however, and thus he does have the ability to access his internal states, the ability to reason, the ability to discriminate, and the ability to focus his attention.2 MAX can thus ‘call up’ mental images of colors, shapes, and so forth, and just as a blind person often has heightened auditory senses, let’s assume that MAX has heightened mental imagery abilities, and so his ‘red’ is very, very vivid.3 Isolating Phenomenal Experience from the Physical System Matthew Houdek University of Wisconsin-Stout MAX’s reality is limited to his conceptual referents (shape and color knowledge, understanding of cognitive science and neurobiology), so while he can know the difference between a big red square and a little red square, and between one circle and five million circles, he would not be able to understand what a ‘dog’ is, for example, even though he would have a semantic understanding of ‘dog’ (a four-legged mammal covered in hair, man’s best friend), he would have no conceptual referent for “legged”, “mammal”, “hair”, “man” or “friend”. He would also have an understanding of his own cognitive abilities through introspective observation and knowledge of the cognitive system. For example, when he calls up a red-square image he would understand that he is calling it up on his own volition, that his cognitive volition involves neural processes, that the red-square image was something that he ‘knew’ and had access to, that both knowledge contents and access also have neural correlates, and so forth. MAX, aware that it is he who is calling up the images, has also realized that he exists.4 With not much else to focus on, MAX begins to notice the different feelings that accompany different mental images. Clearly, he deduces, the difference in the experience that accompanies a bright red image against the experience that accompanies a bright green image is causally linked to the content of my mental imagery, and thus it is not the image itself that constitutes the difference in experience. What is the content of these accompanying phenomenal experiences? He wonders. In other words, if the experience that accompanies a red image is indeed something extra, and if the red image is something that Max called up through his own volition, then the experience of red must be something extra from what he called up. His argument might look something like this: 1. If experience X only occurs when I call up a red image A 2. And if experience X is not itself the red image A but something extra P Then experience X must be something extra P From that, he continues: 1. If I call a red image A up from my own cognitive volition V 2. And if experience X is not itself the red image A but something extra P Then experience X must not have come from my cognitive volition V Furthermore: 1. If my cognitive volition V is a feature of my neural processes N 2. And if experience X is something extra P and did not come from my cognitive volition V Then this something extra P must not be a feature of my neural processes N While this conclusion doesn’t seem logical to MAX (his cognitive science background makes him think that everything that happens in the mind necessarily arises from the mind), he can’t seem to shake his introspective observation, and so he decides to test it. While it takes a lot of focus in order to stop his mind from thinking and creating mental images (the mind has a propensity to wander), eventually he focuses hard enough on the phenomenal quality itself that he achieves an imageless and wordless mental state (which is akin to what we might refer to as meditative state) where, for the first time, there ceases to be a subject-object (i.e. a MAX-mental image) distinction.5 6 Sure enough, the phenomenal quality is still present. Implications & Further Questions While this conclusion may seem to be premature, and while it relies heavily on first-person observations, there has recently been suggestions that to approach the hard problem of consciousness, we must adapt and integrate first-person and third-person data.7 Even the great William James asserted that we must take those who make mystic proclamations seriously,8 and that it does not seem likely that so many individuals throughout history would report on such strikingly similar experiences.9 And, if in the limit we find a NNC for the phenomenal quality of consciousness, and it turns out that the hard problem is really just a very difficult easy problem, those who break down the subject- object distinction, and who have the psychic depth to receive the content appropriately,10 there still seems to be something extra present that, for those who have proclaimed the mystic experience, or whatever we want to call it, such experiences tend to play a supra-functional role, and the experiencer undergoes dramatic functional changes that have had profound affects.11 I am suggesting that phenomenal consciousness plays a supra-functional role.