Neo-Naturalism, Conciliatory Explanations, and Spatiotemporal Surprises

Uziel Awret

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02506

Abstract

Some materialists believe that physics is rich enough to bridge Levine's Explanatory Gap1, while others believe that it is not. Here I promote an intermediate position holding that physics is rich enough to explain why this gap seems more intractable than similar inter-theoretic explanatory gaps, without providing a full-blown “physical” explanation of consciousness. At a minimum, such an approach needs to explore the prospects of empirical discoveries that can diminish the power of anti-physicalist arguments like Chalmers's “conceivability argument”2 and Jackson's “knowledge argument.” While this is not an easy task, recent advances in the physics of spacetime and information convince us that these prospects are not poor. The empirical bent of this approach suggests framing it as a naturalist theory of mind seeking to situate or make room for consciousness within our great naturalist system, but the reliance of this approach on recent (re)conceptions of time and information pulls the carpet out from under essential concepts like concreteness and causation, thus demanding a radically reconfigured naturalism, or neo-naturalism. The question that will frame this discussion is, “What could possibly count as an empirical fact that can help naturalize consciousness?”

Highlights

In the first five sections, I seek to present the ingredients of the aforementioned approach, while in the sixth section, I will apply this approach to three specific examples.Sec. 1
Cat on Oppenheimer and Putnam naturalism states: In an important sense, the evolution of science recapitulates, in the reverse [my emphasis], the evolution of matter, from aggregates of elementary particles to the formation of complex organisms and species
One can think of X in XC-type theories as a mechanism that has two aspects, a structural one that is enough to solve the meta problem and a non-structural aspect, perhaps an inaccessible “radical interiority” (Plotnitsky, 2002), composed of physically realized information, that is not accessible to ordinary measuring devices. What makes such XC-type theories different from dual aspect theories of mind is that the non-structural phenomenal aspect of X is necessitated by its structural aspect, perhaps in the same way that the non-structural inner properties of a physical singularity are necessitated by its structural outer description. Another way to combine Pragmatic NM (PNM) with XC-type theories is to identify the neutral base with the intermediate notion X so that truths about X are discovered by physics and hold in virtue of structural-dynamic descriptions, while truths about consciousness hold in virtue of X; the challenge is still to establish some kind of necessary connection between the two sets of truths

Summary

Introduction

In the first five sections, I seek to present the ingredients of the aforementioned approach, while in the sixth section, I will apply this approach to three specific examples.Sec. 1. When it comes to the meta-problem of consciousness, type-F theories seem to fail to explain problem reports.14 Chalmers suggests that the meta-process can be realized by the phenomenal process, but this approach too is burdened by unnecessary metaphysical commitments and is harder to naturalize than what I will call type-XC materialism, which brings us to the section.

Results

Conclusion