From an exchange in the NYRB (Thomas Nagel):
Still, on the whole, I do not see why it is a "difficulty" that "conscious experience experience has an essentially subjective character," or that consciousness is not characteristic of how the world "is in itself." I find in my own case, really it is the very structure of what it is for me to find anything at all, that the world has these two sides -- what I am aware of and that I am aware of it. If a light flashed every time I decided to move my finger, I could just as well say that the light corresponded to the physical process that made my finger move, my mind to move it, to the psychological process. What seems mysterious is why there should be such a link. But if after reflection we find that no possible explanation could satisfy us as to why this link exists, we should not find it mysterious anymore and accept it as a brute fact.
Sometimes I think of philosophical problems as coming in two flavors -- the big and the small. The small problems end up being variants of, or are only possible because of, the big problems -- but the big problems are a kind of condition in which we find ourselves, not something we can resolve. This is the way I think it is with consciousness: the real question is why consciousness exists at all, why in addition to the things we find, there exists also our awareness of finding them.
On one level, of course, this awareness has to exist, otherwise we wouldn't be aware of anything. But I could still ask why I am aware of these things in this body, or why the things couldn't exist (and perhaps my body, too) without any awareness at all. This seems possible, given that the awareness and its object are not, in the case of physical reality, at least, the same.
But asking why something exists, especially if it doesn't have to exist, does not, again, seem like a very fruitful line of inquiry. In the end, you'll derive existence from some necessary being, which must exist, simply because we cannot conceive that it would not, or you'll keep chasing contingencies. Why not rest satisfied that consciousness exists, that we can distinguish in it fundamental parts out of which any given sensibility is built, and that we observe it to be efficacious? Whatever problems remain are unsolvable. They arise from a disposition to wonder, rather than the real existence of something to wonder about.
The mind-body problem ... is a problem about what experience is, not how it is caused. The difficulty is that conscious experience has an essentially subjective character—what it is like for its subject, from the inside—that purely physical processes do not share. Physical concepts describe the world as it is in itself, and not for any conscious subject. ... But if subjective experience is not an illusion, the real world includes more than can be described in this way.In a previous post I said that motion has an objective as well as a subjective side -- objective as well as subjective causes. I was thinking in the same way as Nagel thinks: objectively, in the world as it exists independently of us, physical processes make me move (neurons fire). Subjectively, in the world "as I find it," psychological processes make me move (I will it). There then arises a question how the objective and subjective side of the phenomenon are coordinated -- how my will and my neurons interact. And doesn't the physical side of things make the psychological side of things redundant? It seems strange and inefficient that my brain somehow creates my consciousness, by which limbs are caused to move, all while going through the work of moving them itself. (The very idea that the brain causes or creates consciousness is itself the interaction problem "writ large".) Wouldn't it be simpler to say that my will somehow just is the firing of those neurons -- an aspect of it, a side of it accessible only to me -- so that there's doubling or interruption?
Still, on the whole, I do not see why it is a "difficulty" that "conscious experience experience has an essentially subjective character," or that consciousness is not characteristic of how the world "is in itself." I find in my own case, really it is the very structure of what it is for me to find anything at all, that the world has these two sides -- what I am aware of and that I am aware of it. If a light flashed every time I decided to move my finger, I could just as well say that the light corresponded to the physical process that made my finger move, my mind to move it, to the psychological process. What seems mysterious is why there should be such a link. But if after reflection we find that no possible explanation could satisfy us as to why this link exists, we should not find it mysterious anymore and accept it as a brute fact.
Sometimes I think of philosophical problems as coming in two flavors -- the big and the small. The small problems end up being variants of, or are only possible because of, the big problems -- but the big problems are a kind of condition in which we find ourselves, not something we can resolve. This is the way I think it is with consciousness: the real question is why consciousness exists at all, why in addition to the things we find, there exists also our awareness of finding them.
On one level, of course, this awareness has to exist, otherwise we wouldn't be aware of anything. But I could still ask why I am aware of these things in this body, or why the things couldn't exist (and perhaps my body, too) without any awareness at all. This seems possible, given that the awareness and its object are not, in the case of physical reality, at least, the same.
But asking why something exists, especially if it doesn't have to exist, does not, again, seem like a very fruitful line of inquiry. In the end, you'll derive existence from some necessary being, which must exist, simply because we cannot conceive that it would not, or you'll keep chasing contingencies. Why not rest satisfied that consciousness exists, that we can distinguish in it fundamental parts out of which any given sensibility is built, and that we observe it to be efficacious? Whatever problems remain are unsolvable. They arise from a disposition to wonder, rather than the real existence of something to wonder about.
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