 Hello my friends and welcome to the 21st episode of Patterson in Pursuit. This is another very special episode for three distinct reasons. First of all, we're talking about consciousness and the philosophy of mind again today, which is one of my perennial favorite topics. The second reason is because of my guest. To join me in talking about the philosophy of mind is Dr. John Searle, who is a world famous philosopher, author of at least 25 different books translated into at least 20 different languages, the author of countless professional articles over many decades, and entertaining philosopher who tries to be clearly understood, which is something of a rarity in the world of philosophy. Dr. Searle is known for his own unique answer to the mind-body problem. His theory is called biological naturalism, and that is what we're talking about today. But before we get to the interview, I want to tell you the third reason why I'm super excited about this particular episode. 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But like I said earlier, not all academics are wasting their time in academia. And for this interview, we plunge right back into Thick of Things with Dr. John Searle of the University of California Berkeley. We're talking about the philosophy of mind and his own unique resolution to the mind-body problem. He says scientific materialism is wrong, dualism is wrong, and he tries to find a middle ground. So first of all, Dr. Searle, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with me today. Well, happy to know it. I have lots of questions for you. You have been in the philosophy world for many decades now. And what you're known for is some work you did in the philosophy of language and some work you do in the philosophy of mind. And I'd like to talk to you about the philosophy of mind. Okay. Specifically, what I do in my own thinking and in these interviews is I always want to start with the basics. I think people get too wrapped up talking about advanced concepts before they even established the basics. So if we could, can you talk a little bit just about why we should care about consciousness at all? We have a very powerful scientific worldview that everything appears to be reducible to physics. Well, of course. Anything, yeah? Well, the interesting thing is consciousness is, roughly speaking, co-extensive with our life. The parts of our life that matter to us are either those that are conscious like you and I are now having, or those that create consciousness like our health and the state of our body and the state of our brain. So it isn't just that consciousness is important. It's the condition of anything having any importance is it's important to consciousness. So if you think the political election is important, it's because you think it's going to affect the lives of a whole lot of conscious people. If everybody was a zombie totally without consciousness, there'd be no importance. So it isn't just that consciousness is important. It's the condition of anything being important. I see. Now, is there anything that is going on that we should pay special attention to? So we see all kinds of physical phenomena in the world. We have a theory of the physical world works a certain way. We think it operates under certain principles. But it doesn't have this feature of consciousness. Well, it does. I mean, this is a big mistake in our culture is to suppose that somehow consciousness is not a part of the physical world. It is. It's a physical part of the physical world going on in our brains. And we have a tradition that says, no, no, there are two parts of the world. There's a physical part and there's a conscious part. That's wrong. Consciousness is part of the biological reality. And that is to say, it's part of the physical reality. However, since this vocabulary of physical and mental was designed to oppose each other, let's just get rid of the word physical and just say, consciousness is part of the real world. It's part of our biology. It's caused by brain processes and goes on in our brain. And it's a crucial part of our biology. And you said earlier that you thought it's left out of physics, not really. Now, physics properly understood, if you think of physics as a totality of the natural sciences, then that includes biology. And biology includes consciousness. OK, so the reason I think a lot of people like myself get tripped up by this is when we're trying to explain physical phenomena, we have no reason to interject anything like awareness or feeling. Yeah, well, it depends on how thorough you're going to be. If you're just going to explain the structure of the molecule, you don't have to talk about awareness. If you're going to talk about the totality of reality, the totality of reality includes biology. And that means it includes life. It includes photosynthesis. It includes digestion. All of those are parts of reality. And along with photosynthesis and digestion is another biological phenomena, namely human and animal consciousness. It goes on in human and animal brains. And as I was pointing out earlier, desperately important. Civilization is created by consciousness. Now, you said earlier that you think it's a big mistake that philosophers have kind of divided the world into the total disaster. There are two twin mistakes, and they pretend to be opposed to each other, but in fact, they're the same mistake. One is the tradition of God, the soul, and immortality. And the other is the tradition of scientific materialism. They both make the same mistake. They both say, consciousness is not an ordinary part of the physical world. So God, the soul, and immortality says there's a separate realm, the conscious realm. And scientific materialism says, well, either there is no such thing as consciousness, or if it is, it's not really a part of the real world. It's not part of the world of molecules, electrons, and photosynthesis. And I'm saying it's obvious that it's part of the real world. It's a biological part. And all consciousness, known consciousness, at least exists in human and animal brains, and it's caused by brain processes. So we've got these twin idiotic traditions, and they both make the same mistake of refusing to recognize consciousness as a real part of the real world. OK, yeah. I think if we're using real world in that way, I think that makes a great deal of sense. However. There's no other way to use it. The real world includes everything that really exists, and consciousness exists. OK, I agree with that. So a question that I have for you, because I've not been able to sort this out, I have for many years called myself a reluctant dualist because I wish I weren't, because I think it implies some things that I wish it didn't. So I hope that you can help me sort through this. Yeah, but dualism is so idiotic, it's hardly worth stating. But anyway, a lot of our dualists would go ahead. OK, OK. So let's talk about the actual status of conscious state. So you say, is it the case that consciousness is fundamentally something that is spatially located somewhere in space? And with MRI, you can actually see the spatial location of conscious processes in your brain. The brain lights up certain parts of the brain light up when you think about certain questions. So consciousness is spatially located. It has spatial dimensions. And furthermore, it's like all machine processes. It's defined by energy transfers at electrochemical level. And we don't know what they are. But there's a lot of good work going on on brain processing right now. OK, so is it something, when you say that it has some kind of spatial location, does that mean it's something like a liquid, something physical actual? It's a level feature of the brain. Well, it's like liquid in the sense that liquidity is not a separate substance secreted by molecules. So consciousness is not a separate juice secreted by the brain. It's a condition that the brain is in. OK, so when you say that it's a higher level. Yeah, it means it's a level of neurons and synapses. There are some features of the whole system. The same way you can't say of any water molecule that this one is liquid. Nonetheless, liquidity is a feature of the whole system. A molecule, so consciousness, a feature of the whole brain. So in your metaphysical worldview, you have different states of ontological status. You have base level. And then on top of that, you have something that's kind of categorically higher. And then you have like a striation of different types. Areas of dependence. Life depends on big carbon-based molecules, for example. Consciousness depends on neuronal structures. So you do have dependency relations. But these are all real features. Life is a real feature of the world. So what do you think about this way of thinking? This is kind of my own personal way of thinking about different levels of ontology. And I think it would disagree with yours, but I wonder what your response would be. When we're talking about things in the universe, it may be true that you see different phenomena that is dependent on lower level phenomena, base phenomena. But fundamentally, what exists, all that exists, is just the base level phenomena. It's just as bad. Base level phenomena are organized into systems when the systems have higher level features, like solidity and liquidity, that are not features of the base level phenomena. So for solidity and liquidity, I would say something like, those are words that we use to describe some higher level status. But it's fundamentally, its existence is something that's conceptual. Solidity isn't actually a feature of the physical world. It is a feature of the physical world. If it weren't, I wouldn't be leaning against this desk right now. Solidity is a real feature of the real world. It's causally explained by the behavior of lower level elements, and it is a feature of whole systems made up of those elements. So the table is solid. Why does it behave in a solid fashion? Well, roughly speaking, when I lean on it, the electrons push back, and the system of electrons adds up to solidity. In the same way, the system of neuron firings adds up to consciousness. But solidity itself isn't some independent thing that's in the universe. There's consciousness in that sense of independent. You can't carve your consciousness off your brain and put it in your pocket. It's a feature of the brain the same way as solidity is a feature of the system of molecules. Okay, so fundamentally, would you say that the base level constituent parts of the universe have in their nature the potential for conscious awareness? Absolutely, no question. I mean, that's trivially true. We know that's true because it happened. So when I say something like that, it makes me think of like a panpsychism. No, no, no, no, no panpsychism. There's so many idiotic things out there said about consciousness, but panpsychism is one of the most idiotic. Panpsychism says everything is conscious. Well, no, how could it be? Consciousness requires very specific mechanisms, and you might do it without neurons, but you've got to duplicate the causal powers of neurons, and I don't know how you do that. Yes, okay. So not panpsychism as understood as everything is literally conscious. I think my understanding was every bit of the universe has whatever constituent prerequisites that are required to elicit consciousness. Well, that seems to me not only implausible, but really preposterous because consciousness, as far as we know it, is created by very specific kinds of neurobiological phenomena, namely big systems of neurons, and those are very special kind of cells, and the electrons in a jar of water just don't have anything like it. Yes, but if you were to break all of those objects down into the constituent parts and rearrange those constituent parts, you could still create something like conscious awareness. So on earth, would you do that? That's like saying, you know, if I destroy all the buildings on the Berkeley campus, I can see the buildings in the pile of rubble. Well, no, none of you destroy the system. That's the conscious feature of systems. It's not a feature of electrons. So the consciousness is not actually a feature of electrons. It's something. There's no conscious electron. There is no conscious electron. Okay, so one thing that I think we'll come back to this a little bit. I'd like to talk about one other feature of consciousness which is subjectivity. It appears to be that. A feature, that's the essence. The essence of consciousness is there's something that it feels like to be in any conscious state. And for that reason, any conscious state is only exists insofar as there's some subject that has it as a feature of its awareness. So subjectivity is an essential feature of consciousness because it is what it's like feature, what it feels like. Okay, so would you say that there are two different types of ontological status? You have things which are ontologically objective and things which are ontologically subjective. Is that fair to say? Well, okay, but I don't reluctant to put it that way because that makes it look like we're getting on the verge of dualism. I don't want to say that. My existing conscious state has all sorts of features that are ontologically objective. But nonetheless, there are some that are ontologically subjective because that's the definition of consciousness. So those which are ontologically subjective, can we talk a little bit about those? Sure, yeah, processes that have this feature, there's something that feels like to be in those processes. So right now I'm thinking about a philosophical question and there's a certain subjective qualitative feel to that and that's the subjectivity we've been talking about. That's going on in the brain and it's essentially tied to a whole lot of brain processes and those are ontologically objective in the sense that you can observe them on a FMRI, you can measure their electrochemical processes. So you would say it would be inaccurate to claim that all phenomena in the universe are fundamentally can be understood as being ontologically objective? Well, obviously there's some features that are ontologically subjective, that's why we're having this conversation. So can you explain a bit how that doesn't result in something like a dualism? Because if I were to take it. What happens is there is a existing higher level feature of the brain, there are existing features of the brain that cause and sustain certain forms of subjectivity in the brain. Where's the dualism? So it implies there are two separate realms and that's not right. There's one realm that has a level of description where it is conscious and has another level of description where it's a neurobiological process. Those two levels of description are one and the same event. So are you saying then the ontological distinction between subjective and objective is purely descriptive? Well, of course it describes a fact and it describes an actual fact, but it doesn't describe two different ontological realms. See, look, when I raise my arm, there's a description of the event where it's subjective. I'm trying to raise my arm. The very same event has a description where it consists of a whole lot of neuron firings and the secretion of acetylcholine at the axon end plates of the motor neurons. And there are not two different events there. There's one event with different levels of description. However, the description describes real features. I see. So when talking about ontology, you would say that ontological distinctions fundamentally are about description, that it's a valid description to say. No, they're not about description. They're about the world described by the descriptions. Well, if that's the case though, it seems like you have some type of existence which is ontologically subjective. Oh, that's right. You do have features of this event that are electrochemical and features that are subjective. One event. One event, but two description, not two ontological. No, no, the description described different ontological features. Well, as I said, when I raise my arm, there's a secretion of acetylcholine and there's a subjective feel, okay? Now, those are not two separate events. They're one and the same event described at different levels. In the same way when I drive my car, one and the same event that can be described as the oxidization of hydrocarbons or as an explosion in the cylinder. One event, two different levels of description. The description described real features. Okay, so if we take this perspective, this one event, two descriptions, two features, can we talk a little bit about what it actually feels like to be in a subjective state? A example that you like to give a lot I've heard in your talks is when I decide I want to raise my arm, then you see the phenomena of my arm going up. And that's a conscious event. Raising my arm is something I consciously do. Exactly, so something that seems, I think, inescapably presupposed when talking about how it feels to be in a particular state is what it means to be a being, like a person or a subject that is experiencing a particular phenomenon. So does this theory, how do you explain what a being or a person or a subject itself is? Well, now there's a separate question here. The question is, does the existence of a conscious state presuppose a self? Yeah, right. And that's a separate question. Conscious states no doubt exist. In order to have a conscious state, you have to have a self. And there it depends on what you mean by the self. You do have to have a minimal self if a self consists of a unified conscious field. And I think you do have to have that much otherwise. I couldn't have the present experience of raising my arm. However, a lot of people want much more than that and that's contentious. We haven't got to that yet. That's a separate question. Okay, could we talk a little bit about the self being understood as a unified subject? There has to be, the conscious field that I have when I raise my arm that comes as part of a unified conscious field that consists, for example, the intention I had prior and the experience I'm having and the memory of the experience that occurs afterwards. And without an organized conscious field, I doubt very much that you could have what we think of as normal conscious experiences. You'd get a kind of pathology where motor behavior would break down. You wouldn't be able to raise your arm. So you do have to have a unified conscious field. Having a unified conscious field, would you say that is a satisfactory definition of what the self is at least for these purposes? No, so many different definitions of the self. I wouldn't know where to start. I'm not sure that the self is a useful notion in this discussion because it means two to many different things to too many different people. But let's just talk about the unified conscious field which is unified both laterally and horizontally that goes both forward and backwards in time. So you need some kind of a notion of a present experience and some sort of projection and memory to organize it. And that's all we need for this. Now, whether or not you, to what extent you have to have a self and what's the sense the self is unified? Those are hard questions and we don't need to answer them just to get up the nature of consciousness. Okay. Why is the reason that so many scientists and intellectuals kind of recoil at the idea that when we're talking about mental states and consciousness, they think that immediately you're getting into the woo-woo and the spiritual and the mystical. Is this just a tradition? And the tradition, as I said there, these two idiotic traditions and they think they're opposed but they're the same tradition. One is the tradition of God, the soul and immortality and these guys think if you grant that consciousness is a part of a real part of the real world, you're in bed with God, the soul and immortality. And that's what I'm challenging. I'm saying, no, consciousness is a part of the real world but it's a biological part like digestion or photosynthesis. Of course it's a real part. We couldn't live our lives without it but it doesn't follow from that that it's in a separate realm. If we didn't have these idiotic traditions of God, the soul and immortality on one hand and scientific materialism on the other, then we would just recognize the obvious facts of consciousness and the feature of our biology. Okay, and I think maybe one of the hesitations that people have has to do with the role of observation in trying to explain phenomena. So would you say that these mental states or the actual state of awareness is something that is an externally observable phenomena? What you externally observe are both the neurobiological substrates and the physical behavior but the actual experience itself is not a subject of observation because it has this essentially first person ontology. I can see that you're awake but I cannot see your inner feelings. I can't see the feeling, the wakefulness that you have. So, and then we're talking about that. We're talking about those particular feelings or those particular states that are non-observable. The idea that science is about the observable is of course absolutely crazy because most of the things that we interested in science like quarks, leopards, muons are not observable but we have very good reasons as opposed to exist because they function causally. Right. And you can't observe consciousness in this sense of observe. You can't observe it. You can observe its effects but you can't observe consciousness. The same way you can't observe subatomic particles which you can observe their effects. Okay, so if you can't observe the mental states then I thought that the idea was fundamentally they are spatially located. So, if they are spatially located wouldn't we in principle be able to observe them? Well, you can observe the effects that they have on nervous systems or rather form of their realization. So, with a FMRI you can see this is where the guy's thinking about the Tower of Hanoi problem. There's you give a guy a problem and you got him in your MRI machine and you can see which parts of the brain light up when he's thinking about it. That's where the thought process is going on. You can observe the location of the thought process but the actual subjective experience is not itself an object of observation not even for the guy having. But the subjective experience is something which is certainly existent but. That's right. Is it, does it have a spatial representation the actual experience? Of course. I mean, you can see it where exactly it's spatial location in the brain. That's one of the beauty of the current events. It doesn't that mean. I'm sorry, doesn't that mean it's observable though? I mean, if you can see. Okay, what counts is observing it. Yes, you can observe it. You can see, look, I mean, the experimenter's gonna say, look, right there in the brain that's where the guy's thinking about the Tower of Hanoi problem. That's all right. I don't know just by saying that. But you're not seeing the actual. The actual subjective experience is not itself an object of vision by some third person. But it is located. Of course. I mean, we actually now have enough evidence to tell you exactly where it's located. So would you say that there are some objectively existent things which have spatial location and yet cannot be located by an external observer. You can locate there. Yes, you can see the spatial location. What you're asking though is a category mistake that is you see the subjective experience. No, you don't. What you see is the spatial location of the subjective experience. You can see its dimensions. You can see how wide it is and where it occurs in the brain, but you don't see the experience itself. I agree. I definitely agree with that, but. So how does anybody disagree? This is just something that's the end. Yes, but for me, it's that pulls me into something like a dualism because what I would say is there are some real. Suppose we didn't have this whole idiotic tradition. Suppose we just had sort of contemporary scientific knowledge, then we would recognize the following. Consciousness is a normal biological phenomenon like digestion. You can locate it in the brain. We're getting more and better accounts of its neurobiological explanation, and you can see its extension in the brain. You can see exactly where thought process is recorded. What's that? Now, all of that seems to be totally uncontroversial. Forget about dualism and all that stuff. That's all ancient history. Okay, okay. So if we don't use the terminology dualism, what I'd say is that leads me to believe something like the following. That parts of existence are essentially personal. They are essentially subjective. And what that means is there are two types of, at least two types of mutually exclusive phenomena which exist. Well, no, they're not mutually exclusive. You cannot have the experience of raising your arm without all of the neurobiology. And there's one event, as you're showing by the fact, you can't have one part without the other. You cannot have the experience of raising your arm without the separation of acetylcholine and you can't have that particular neurobiological process without the consciousness. Okay, so maybe mutually exclusive is in the term. It would be something like, they are descriptively mutually exclusive in the sense that just by explaining one in more and more detail, you are certainly not explaining the other. So just by explaining more and more brain processes. The fact that you're not talking about doesn't mean it doesn't exist. There's a single event. It has two different sets of features in a single event, but it's not two separate events. So for me, it would be something like if this is true, it implies that the conceptual toolbox we have to reference things which exist in the world has to expand bigger than what the traditional scientific materials and physical toolbox is. It's too idiotic to be worth even discussing, but the traditions, I told you, the two idiotic traditions are called God, the soul and immortality on the one hand and scientific materialism on the other. And both idiotic in exactly the same way. They both fail to see that qualitative, subjective states of conscious awareness are an ordinary part of the biological world. Okay. Yes, I don't know if I'd be comfortable saying that they're idiotic, but I would say they're definitely unsatisfactory if you're trying to explain everything. That's not, idiotic is a shorter way of saying unsatisfactory. Okay, I'll just ask you one more question. And this is actually gonna be a question coming from the philosophy of mind and I'm gonna be dragging you into epistemology because part of the questions that I've been asking people as I'm traveling around has to do with certainties or anything, any proposition you can be absolutely certain to and if so, how's that even possible? So the question I would ask for you, I think I know your answer, but can you be absolutely 100% certain that consciousness is in existence, that there is such a thing as conscious experience? Of course, yes. The point is, the way you have doubts is you have doubts about whether or not your conscious experiences actually represent something independent, is there really a person over there in the bushes or is it just the shadows? That's a real doubt, but the conscious experience doesn't admit doubts about its existence. So your worldview includes absolute 100% infallible certainty. It's not worth using these traditional epistemic notions at all. Of course, am I absolutely certain that I'm now conscious? How could I be mistaken? Okay, well, on that note, I really wanna thank you for talking with me, this has been a great conversation. Okay, good, thanks a lot, fun talking. Thanks, Dr. Searle. Okay, bye-bye. So that was my interview with Dr. John Searle. I hope you guys enjoyed it. There's a lot more to say of this particular topic. I have a lot more to say on this particular interview, actually, I'll make sure at some point in the future to do a interview breakdown specific to this conversation I have with Dr. Searle. And I intend to do many more interviews on this topic to get a bunch of different perspectives. 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