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The Naturalisation of Phenomenology

Phenomenology Meets Philosophy of Biology

Mr Steffen Staalesen

November 2015

Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of a

Master of Arts in Philosophy

by Advanced Seminars and Shorter Thesis

This Thesis was Researched Wholly

Within the Department of Philosophy

and The Master of Arts in Philosophy

by Advanced Seminars and Shorter Thesis

is Not Being Completed Under a Jointly

Awarded Degree

(Produced on Archival Quality Paper)

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Abstract

The project of naturalising phenomenology faces a seemingly insurmountable hurdle.

If, as is commonly held, phenomenology consists of the search for the transcendental

structures of consciousness, and naturalism consists in the reductionistic explanation

of consciousness in terms of psychology, biology and ultimately physics, then one

simply can't have a naturalised phenomenology because it is a contradiction in terms.

The simple answer to this is yes, when speaking in these terms a naturalised

phenomenology is a contradiction in terms; but that doesn't mean we should continue

speaking in such terms. There is more to phenomenology than that which Husserl had

to say, and moreover, naturalism is not invariably reductionism. One could say that

these two positions represent two poles of a continuum, with transcendental

phenomenology at one end and reductive physicalism at the other. There are,

evidently, a swathe of positions in between these two extremes.

This has not gone unnoticed. In a review of this research program Shaun

Gallagher notes that there is more than one fruitful, not to mention justified,

interpretation of phenomenology, and moreover that naturalism need not be

thoroughly reductionistic. Indeed in finishing he (tentatively) suggests that the

unification of phenomenology and naturalism might come after we have redefined

both. In pursuit of this point I have set out to identify a brand of naturalism that can

accommodate a brand of phenomenological psychology. By way of results, I have

found that a position known as pragmatic naturalism can be the naturalistic

framework within which the phenomenologico-psychological posits of

neurophenomenology are perfectly legitimate scientific artefacts. In summary, this

view of nature, which is championed by the prominent philosopher of science Philip

Kitcher, and which draws on Quine's radical empiricism and John Dupré’s

promiscuous realism, begins by denying that there is a privileged way of investigating

the world. Taking the failure of reductionism in biology as his point of departure,

Kitcher argues that there are a number of legitimate ways in which the world can be

structured and that physics is only one of them. From this it follows that the

ontological structures posited by the higher order sciences, such as biology and

psychology, do not need to be corroborated by physics; all that matters is that they are

empirically verifiable. And all this, he argues, is entirely consistent with a perfectly

reasonable brand of realism about scientific knowledge. I want to propose that in this

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context the structures posited by phenomenological psychologists could count as

legitimate scientific artefacts, and therefore that pragmatic naturalism could serve as

an overarching naturalistic framework for neurophenomenology.

To this end my paper will proceed as follows. I will begin by characterising

neurophenomenology as a brand of phenomenological psychology, after which I will

establish the need for a novel naturalistic framework. With this motivation in place I

will outline and briefly motivate Kitcher’s pragmatic naturalism, and then finish by

clarifying how neurophenomenology could count as a legitimate scientific activity

within such a framework. Neurophenomenology being a rather attenuated instance of

phenomenological philosophy (at least insofar as I define it), what I aim to achieve

evidently falls short of naturalising phenomenology; however, I would like to think

that, if successful, my project might gesture toward future avenues to the kind of

naturalism that would be consistent with a broader cross section of phenomenological

philosophy.

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Declaration

I, Mr Steffen Staalesen, hereby declare that,

This Thesis comprises only original work by the author named on the Title Page, is

submitted towards the Master of Arts in Philosophy by Advanced Seminars and

Shorter Thesis, is fewer than the maximum word limit in length (excepting the

Bibliography and Appendix), and due acknowledgement has been made to all other

materials used.

Signed,

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Contents

Introduction 9

Chapter 1 13

Chapter 2 33

Chapter 3 53

Conclusion 73

Appendix 79

Bibliography 85

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Introduction

It was just under twenty years ago that Francisco Varela first suggested that the hard

problem of consciousness could be resolved by naturalising phenomenology, thereby

inaugurating a research program that continues to draw the attention of

phenomenologists, analytic philosophers, cognitive scientists, psychologist and

neuroscientists alike. This research program first attracted attention thanks to Varela’s

article, ‘Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy to the Hard Problem’,

which was published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies. However it was with the

publication of the formidable collection of essays, Naturalizing Phenomenology:

Contemporary Issues in Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, which contained

papers written by phenomenologists, cognitive scientists and neuroscientists, that it

truly rose to prominence.1 Since then numerous books have been published, a journal

founded, and conferences organised all around the topic of naturalising

phenomenology. That this topic continues to draw interest is evidenced by the recent

reprint of Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi's The Phenomenological Mind, the

publication of Julian Kiverstein and Michael Wheeler's Heidegger and Cognitive

Science, which not only testifies to ongoing interest in the field but its evolution as

well, and the organisation of a conference dedicated to 'Phenomenology and

Naturalism' in 2014 which was attended by, among others, the two prominent analytic

philosophers of mind Tyler Burge and David Papineau.2

The point of departure for this thesis can be traced to a point recently reiterated

by Shaun Gallagher.3 Recalling the final note of Merleau-Ponty's The Structure of

Behaviour—the injunction to redefine "transcendental philosophy anew so as to

integrate with it the very phenomenon of the real"—Gallagher concludes his review by

suggesting that phenomenology and naturalism might only be unified after we have

redefined both.4 The problems facing the naturalisation of phenomenology are well

known.5 Taken individually, naturalism and phenomenology represent two completely

divergent, indeed opposing, paradigms. At least conventionally, each purports to

1 F Varela, ‘Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy for the Hard Problem’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 3, no. 4, 1996; J Petitot, Varela, F., Pachoud, B., & Roy, J-M. ed. Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1999. 2 S Gallagher, & Zahavi, D., The Phenomenological Mind, 2 edn., Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, 2012; J Kiverstein, & Wheeler, M. ed. Heidegger and Cognitive Science, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2012. 3 S Gallagher, ‘On the Possibility of Naturalizing Phenomenology’, in D. Zahavi (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012, p. 89. 4 M Merleau-Ponty, The Structure of Behaviour, Beacon Press, Boston, 1963. p. 224. 5 D Zahavi, ‘Phenomenology and the project of naturalisation’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, vol. 3, 2004.

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explain the other: naturalism entailing that the first-person experience upon which

phenomenology is premised is but the product of the structures of nature, and

phenomenology entailing that the worldly phenomena upon which naturalism is

premised owe their identity to the structures of consciousness. Thus the logic behind

redefining one or both of phenomenology and naturalism. Those hoping to capitalise

on the respective advantages of phenomenology and naturalism, and/or avoid their

disadvantages, have little choice but to explore the space between these two

historically divergent philosophical positions.

In pursuit of this strategy I would like to put forward a novel account of

naturalism that promises to be broadly consistent with one approach to naturalising

phenomenology. In the first instance, the view of nature I have in mind is championed

by the prominent philosophers of science John Dupré and Philip Kitcher (among

others). Recalling Quine's radical empiricism, they begin by denying that there is a

privileged way of investigating the world. Taking the failure of reductionism in

biology as their point of departure, Dupré and Kitcher variously argue that there are a

number of legitimate ways in which the world can be structured and that physics is

only one of them. From this it follows that the ontological structures posited by the

higher order sciences, such as biology and psychology, do not need to be corroborated

by physics; all that matters is that they are empirically verifiable. The approach to

naturalising phenomenology that I have in mind is neurophenomenology, and it is due

(primarily) to Francisco Varela and Evan Thompson. In short, Varela and Thompson

argue that phenomenological and neurological models of conscious experience can be

unified by situating both within a further explanatory framework, namely that of

dynamic systems theory. This requires translating both approaches into the language

of dynamic systems theory, which in turn requires conceptualising both the brain and

the mind as emergent self-organising systems. Though they have emerged from

dialectically opposed traditions, and though they use divergent language, I will argue

that this means pragmatic naturalism and neurophenomenology share enough core

commitments for the former to serve as a broader framework for the latter—but more

on that later.

This thesis has two conspicuous limitations. Firstly, though I will present

pragmatic naturalism as a potential framework for neurophenomenology, I will not be

able to provide a detailed defence of it. Not only would it have been impractical to

attempt to do so within the space constraints of this thesis, it would have represented a

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difficult task in itself, one best left separate from the equally difficult one at hand.

Accordingly, the task at hand can be considered an investigation into the

presuppositions of neurophenomenology in the sense that it will reveal, in an exercise

akin to reverse engineering, what it would take for it to succeed in naturalising

phenomenology. That said, in case it doesn’t go without saying, it would be pointless

to put forward an outlandish brand of naturalism that is certain to fail at the next step.

As such, I have taken as part of the task of identifying a brand of naturalism that is

friendly to neurophenomenology the need to render it at the very least plausible, for

otherwise the whole exercise of identifying a framework in the first place would be

futile. Secondly, neurophenomenology being just one naturalisation strategy among

many, this undertaking, even if successful, will quite obviously fall short of

identifying a framework that will work for every attempt to naturalise phenomenology.

Unfortunately I have had little choice but to accept this limitation, for it would have

been impractical to attempt to address a broader cross section of naturalisation

strategies within the space constraints of this thesis. Instead, I have had to focus on

one prominent attempt to naturalise phenomenology, and while neurophenomenology

is not the only prominent proposal on the market—similarly prominent are the so

called CREA proposal (so called because it was developed at the Centre de Recherche

en Epistémologie Appliquée), Front Loaded Phenomenology and Mutual

Enlightenment6—I think it is fair to say that neurophenomenology stands out as the

most appropriate target for such an undertaking.7 That said, this does not mean that I

6 Gallagher, The Phenomenological Mind, pp. 31-45; Gallagher, 'On the Possibility of Naturalizing Phenomenology'. 7 As I have already intimated, naturalising phenomenology is an intrinsically metaphysical project; it is a matter of unifying divergent metaphysical frameworks. While undoubtedly interesting and valuable, the latter two proposals are at base metaphysically neutral, and are as a consequence largely uncontroversial. To begin with, Front Loaded Phenomenology is a methodological proposal. Its central claim is that phenomenological insights should be incorporated into experimental design (S Gallagher, ‘Phenomenology and Experimental Design’, Journal of Consciousness Studies, vol. 10, no. 9-10, 2003). This is entirely consistent with both conventional reductive accounts of the mind, according to which conscious experience is the outcome of brain processes, and non-conventional accounts according to which conscious experience is in some way irreducible. The central thesis of the stance known as Mutual Enlightenment is that phenomenological and naturalistic investigations of the mind stand to benefit from one another, irrespective of whether they accept the other’s metaphysical presuppositions (S Gallagher, ‘Mutual Enlightenment: Recent phenomenology in cognitive science’, Journal of Conciousness Studies, vol. 4, no. 3, 1997). In other words, from a naturalistic perspective phenomenology can serve to clarify the explanandum of cognitive science, and from a phenomenological perspective empirical psychology can provide insights into the structures of consciousness provided its experiments are interpreted through a phenomenological lens (i.e. an epoché). Once again, this is consistent with both reductive and non-reductive accounts of the mind. Accordingly, while I do not want to take anything away from Gallagher’s methodological proposals, they do not represent real attempts to naturalise phenomenology but, rather, attempts to convince those from either side of the ‘divide’ that it is not only possible but pragmatic to work together despite their metaphysical differences. By contrast the CREA and neurophenomenology proposals do represent genuine attempts to naturalise phenomenology. In their respective works the authors of these proposals stake out a position on both phenomenological philosophy and naturalism, and then attempt to show how they can be made consistent with one another at a metaphysical level. The important difference between them, among others of course, is that the CREA proposal does not even purport to be a univocal strategy. The authors even admit to holding different views on various aspects of the proposal. Their essay is more than an overview of what is to follow in Naturalizing Phenomenology, but it is a less than a coherent univocal argument. Accordingly, it would be unwise to place too much store on their co-authored essay. It is for these reason, among others, that I will focus on the distinct strategy known as neurophenomenology. That said, this does not mean that I will not address the work of Gallagher

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will not address the work of Gallagher or those of the authors of the CREA proposal.

Indeed, I will use both (and more again) to elucidate what neurophenomenology

amounts to because they share a common theoretical background and dialectical

provenance. Finally, though focusing on neurophenomenology alone no doubt

represents a limitation to this thesis, by making explicit one way in which

phenomenological philosophy could be consistent with naturalism, I would like to

think that this investigation might still serve a purpose by suggesting future paths to

the kind of naturalism that might be consistent with a broader cross-section of

phenomenological philosophy.

With those caveats out of the way I can now proceed to my argument.

Immediately below I will begin by clarifying the neurophenomenological project. To

those familiar with their work it is no secret that Varela and Thompson describe

neurophenomenology in equivocal terms. In particular, their explicit goal, of effecting

a sweeping review of the of metaphysical framework of western science, would seem

to be at odds with the case studies they draw on to prove their point. In response to this

ambiguity I will propose a more modest ambition for neurophenomenology, such that

the end and the means are more aligned, and the end more achievable. With this

interpretation of neurophenomenology in place, I will then turn to the task of

establishing that it is necessary to find a naturalistic framework for

neurophenomenology. This I will do by first identifying the key desiderata that

prospective brands of naturalism must meet if they are to serve as a framework for

neurophenomenology, and then by arguing that the standard frameworks—

reductionism, non-reductive physicalism, and emergentism—cannot satisfy them,

from which it follows that neurophenomenology is in need of a novel naturalistic

framework. Having established the motivation for this thesis I will then proceed to my

central claim, namely that pragmatic naturalism promises to fulfill this need. This in

turn will require explicating the central features of pragmatic naturalism, and showing

how they accord with those of neurophenomenology. If successful, I will have shown

that pragmatic naturalism represents a ready-made naturalistic framework for

neurophenomenology, and thereby provided for one way, albeit a limited one, in

which phenomenological philosophy can be consistent with naturalism.

or those of the authors of the CREA proposal. Indeed, I will use both to elucidate what neurophenomenology amounts to because they share a common theoretical background and dialectical provenance.

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Chapter 1: Clarifying the Neurophenomenological Project

The goal of this chapter is to clarify the neurophenomenological project. Anyone

familiar with Thompson and Varela’s writings will know that they describe their

project in a broad variety of ways. At times they claim to be naturalising

phenomenology, at others providing a solution to the David Chalmers’ hard problem

of consciousness8, at others yet again to be effecting a fundamental revision of the

metaphysical framework of western philosophy. In fact these three projects are

intertwined: by naturalising phenomenology neurophenomenologists believe that they

will effect a revision of the metaphysical framework of western philosophy, and that

this in turn will render the hard problem obsolete. As if that wasn’t complicated

enough, neurophenomenologists make one further ambitious claim, namely that the

conceptual resources of dynamic systems theory is what makes naturalising

phenomenology possible in the first place. Altogether this makes for a rather heady

concoction of ideas. Not only does it take in two utterly divergent and disparate

philosophical traditions in philosophy of mind and phenomenology, it also draws on

an avant-garde trend in cognitive science in dynamicism. Accordingly, prior to setting

out in search of a brand of naturalism that can accommodate it, I will first clarify

exactly what neurophenomenology is. In so doing I will argue that the

neurophenomenological strategy for naturalising phenomenology will not resolve the

hard problem, let alone achieve the fundamental metaphysical shift of which they

speak. However, believing that the project as a whole still bears value even if it cannot

achieve its stated aim, I will propose a more modest rationale for

neurophenomenology.

The Rationale for Naturalising Phenomenology

From the outset Varela explicitly identified the hard problem of consciousness as the

ultimate rationale for naturalising phenomenology, even going so far as to include the

term in the title of his paper.9 However, both Varela and Thompson have also

8For a short introduction to the hard problem see D Chalmers, ‘Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness’, Journal of Conciousness Studies, vol. 2, no. 3, 1995. For a longer exposition see ———, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996.9 Varela, ‘Neurophenomenology: A Methodological Remedy for the Hard Problem’, p. 330. Before proceeding to the rationale for naturalising phenomenology I would like to make one quick clarification. As a general rule, though not invariably, neurophenomenologists treat the explanatory gap and the hard problem as one and the same problem. Accordingly, though they

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expressed a dissatisfaction with the basic ontological presuppositions of Chalmers’

position, suggesting that they do not in fact intend to resolve the hard problem but

make it obsolete.10 Similarly conflicting remarks can be found in Roy et. al.’s

introduction to Naturalizing Phenomenology. The authors discuss the hard problem at

length and at one point even describe their proposal as a response to it.11 However they

also explicitly state that their ambitions exceed solving the hard problem of

consciousness, and present their project as a contemporary instance of the historical

evolution of the ontological taxonomy of the natural sciences.12 At first sight this

would suggest that there are at least two distinct motivations for neurophenomenology,

one being the hard problem of consciousness, the other a rather speculative idea about

redefining the ontological framework of philosophy. However these two endeavours

are in fact one and the same as far as neurophenomenologists are concerned. The idea

is that revising the ontological framework of philosophy will allow for the unification

of first and third person perspectives within a single explanatory apparatus, and will

thereby resolve the hard problem. This much is stated explicitly in the introduction to

Naturalizing Phenomenology,

Many advocates of… cognitive research would… agree that… Cognitive

Science suffers from an “explanatory gap.” One of the main ideas… discussed

in this volume is that many descriptions of cognitive phenomena belonging to

the Husserlian tradition make possible a better understanding of the relation

between cognitive processes and their phenomenal manifestations.

Accordingly, the attempt to naturalize Husserlian phenomenology might

usefully be seen as an attempt to close this explanatory gap, although its

ambition looms larger and its intellectual origins are far more complex.13

According to the definition just offered, the problem of naturalization can be

considered as a special case of a more general process of recategorization of

the ontological divisions of reality recurrent in the development of scientific

do not always mean the same thing, in this context the two terms will be treated as synonymous. As for what the hard problem actually is, I will define it in the following section. 10 Ibid., pp. 339-41; 45. 11 J-M Roy, Petitot, B., Pachoud, B., & Varela, F., ‘Beyond the Gap: An Introduction to Naturalizing Phenomenology’, in B. Pachoud, Varela, F., Petitot, B., & Roy, J-M. (ed.), Naturalizing Phenomenology: Contemporary Issues in Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1999, p. 3. 12 Ibid., pp. 3; 46-49. 13 Ibid., p. 3.

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ideas… The evolution of several of the physical sciences has been dominated

by transformations of this kind, that is, by the destruction of an ontological

division through the discovery of a new set of properties… This general

schema looks equally appropriate for the analysis of the current efforts to

achieve a naturalization of the mental… the main idea in this essay is that this

general process of recategorization of the mental can be extended to

phenomenological data.14

If Roy et. al. present neurophenomenology as a contemporary instance of the historical

evolution of the metaphysical framework of the natural sciences, Thompson describes

it as a process of casting off Descartes’ heritage. Here is Thompson discussing the

hard problem and neurophenomenology,

Nagel’s point is the now familiar one that we don’t understand how an

objective physical process could be sufficient for or constitutive of the

subjective character of a conscious mental process. But stating the problem this

way embeds it within the Cartesian framework of the “mental” versus the

“physical,” and this framework actually promotes the explanatory gap… What

we need instead is a framework that doesn’t set “mental” and “physical” in

opposition to each other… For neurophenomenology… the guiding issue isn’t

the contrived problem of how to derive a subjectivist concept of consciousness

from an objectivist concept of the body. Instead, it’s to understand the

emergence of living subjectivity from living being, including the reciprocal

shaping of living being by living subjectivity. It’s this issue of emergence that

neurophenomenology addresses, not the Cartesian version of the hard

problem.15

Varela construes the neurophenomenological project in similar terms to Thompson. In

his words,

It is thus essential to be precise about what such a naturalization could possibly

be… As one can suspect, there are a number of distinct possibilities all starting 14 Ibid., p. 46. 15 E Thompson, ‘Life and Mind: From Autopoeisis to Neurophenomenology: A Tribute to Francisco Varela’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, vol. 3, 2004, pp. 384-85. Author’s emphasis.

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from the same explanatory gap… One thing is clear however: we are not

seeking in any way a naturalization project which would absorb the

phenomenological basis into a “merely” naturalized account. This would be as

futile as another turn of the circle that created Husserl’s anti-naturalism in the

first place. We seek to produce epistemological and ontological shifts whereby

the two domains of natural objects and phenomenological descriptions can

provide a three-dimensional view of the mind and experience altogether. From

this perspective, any dualist extreme, whether reductionist/objectivist, or

transcendentalist/mentalist is a declaration of failure. Moving beyond these

antinomies is precisely what is at stake here.16

Accordingly, for neurophenomenologists the ultimate goal of naturalising

phenomenology is a sweeping revision of our ontological landscape. Theirs is an

ontological project. The hard problem is referred to, and is a direct motivation for

neurophenomenologists, but it is not their end goal. Rather they aim to make the hard

problem obsolete by effecting a dramatic revision of the metaphysical framework

within which philosophy operates. The revision itself, while vague, is envisaged to

entail an enlargement of the concept of nature, from a restrictive account in which

nature is conceived in terms of physical phenomena to an enlarged account within

which non-physical phenomena such as life and subjectivity feature, and in which the

concepts of emergence and self-organisation play a central role.17

The Neurophenomenological Strategy for Naturalising Phenomenology

The neurophenomenological strategy for naturalising phenomenology is neither simple

nor self-evident. It combines two previously unrelated fields of thought, dynamic

systems theory and phenomenology, each of which is complex and nuanced in and of

itself. Moreover, it is inspired by similarly unrelated problems within philosophy of

mind, and it draws on experimental methods from cognitive science. Altogether this

makes for a rather heady mix of ideas that can come across a little opaque.

Accordingly, here I will attempt to present the neurophenomenological strategy for 16 F Varela, ‘The Naturalisation of Phenomenology as the Transcendence of Nature. Searching for Generative Mutual Constraints’, Alter, vol. 5, 1997, p. 360. 17 D Zahavi, ‘Naturalized Phenomenology’, in S. Gallagher, & Schmicking, D. (ed.), Handbook of Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, Springer Science+Business Media, 2010, pp. 15-17; Thompson, ‘Life and Mind: From Autopoeisis to Neurophenomenology: A Tribute to Francisco Varela’, pp. 384-85.

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naturalising phenomenology in clear and concise terms. Unfortunately space

constraints mean that I cannot substantiate my construal of the

neurophenomenological strategy with numerous examples from the literature. Instead I

will present the neurophenomenological strategy with the aid of only one example,

namely Hanna and Thompson’s study of multi-stability, which I chose on the basis

that it is the most accessible to those unfamiliar with neurophenomenology. I have

included a more detailed discussion of the neurophenomenological strategy which

addresses more examples from the literature as an appendix to this thesis.

In essence, the neurophenomenological strategy for naturalising

phenomenology consists in establishing that both phenomenological and neurological

models of conscious experience behave according to the principles of self-organising

dynamical systems, from which it follows that the explanatory framework of

dynamical systems theory can serve as a unifying framework for the two approaches

to conscious experience. There are two key components to this strategy. The first is a

specific kind of phenomenological model, namely one couched in the terms of

dynamical systems theory. While they are inspired by traditional phenomenological

writings, neurophenomenologists do not articulate their models of conscious

experience in terms of traditional phenomenological concepts. Instead they use the

theoretical tools of dynamical systems theory, the notions of attractors and

bifurcations, self-organisation, and so on, in order to represent what they perceive to

be the phenomenological structures of conscious experience. The second key

component is a model of the body as it undergoes this conscious experience. In the

case of neurophenomenology this generally amounts to a non-linear mathematical

model of neuronal activity in the brain and body. Once again, these models are of a

specific variety, namely the dynamical one. Now, with these two models in place, one

phenomenological and one neurological, neurophenomenologists then claim that there

is a basic similitude between the two approaches, namely their self-organising

properties, and thereby conclude that both the brain and the mind behave according to

one and the same set of principles, namely those of self-organising dynamical systems;

from which it follows that the explanatory framework of dynamical systems theory

can serve as a unifying framework for phenomenological and neuroscientific models

of conscious experience.

Robert Hanna and Evan Thompson’s paper on multi-stability fits this model

perfectly. In their co-authored paper Robert Hanna and Evan Thompson draw a direct

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link between the conscious experience of multi-stable images and the dynamics of

self-organisation within the brain.18 To begin with, Hannah and Thompson argue that

the experience of multi-stable perception justifies the postulation of a novel

phenomenological structure they call spontaneity, by which they refer to the

spontaneous self-organisation or self-generativity of mental acts. This is justified on

the basis that, by switching at random between two visual Gestalts despite the fact that

it is presented with one percept, in the experience of multi-stability consciousness

appears to be spontaneously alternating between two self-generated stable states.

Following this Hanna and Thompson proceed to draw a direct connection between this

experience and the dynamics of self-organisation within the brain. In particular they

claim that the multi-stability of perception is best explained as an instance of the

multi-stability of nonlinear dynamical systems in general (multi-stability is an

apparently ubiquitous phenomenon by which nonlinear systems switch between any

two or more stable states, otherwise known as attractors). By doing so they identify the

dynamics of self-organisation as a unifying framework within which

phenomenological and neuroscientific models can be made consistent with one

another. In their own words,

This spontaneity corresponds phenomenologically to the plasticity and self-

generativity of perception, and neurodynamically to the autonomy or self-

organisation of the system's dynamics.19

In other words, whether it be from a phenomenological or neurological perspective,

the phenomenon of multi-stable perception can be construed in terms of common

properties of self-organising dynamical systems, in particular multi-stability and

spontaneity, and therefore the principles of self-organisation can serve as a common

framework for the two models of multi-stable perception.

Thus the neurophenomenological strategy boils down to the claim that

dynamical systems theory provides an explanatory framework within which both

phenomenological and neurological models of conscious experience can be located,

and phenomenology thereby naturalised; or in other words, that if we adopt as our

18 R Hanna, & Thompson, E., ‘Neurophenomenology and the Spontaneity of Consciousness ’, in E. Thompson (ed.), The Problem of Consciousness: New Essays in Phenomenological Philosophy of Mind, University of Alberta Press, Calgary, Alberta, 2003. 19 Ibid., p. 153.

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worldview the explanatory framework of dynamical systems theory then we can

naturalise phenomenology. While it might not be evident at first sight, this means that

neurophenomenology actually reduces to the rather simple move of conjoining a

specific brand of phenomenology with a similarly specific brand of neuroscience. The

reason for this lies in the explanatory framework of dynamical systems theory itself.

While I intend to discuss it at greater length below, dynamical systems theory does

not aim to model natural systems at a detailed level, à la Newtonian mechanics, but

instead aims to model them at an abstract level from which they can be

approximated.20 This means that the models developed within dynamical systems

theory do not offer themselves up to reductive interpretations, for they are premised

on the approximation of total states within which the contribution of individual

elements is unknown, as opposed to traditional methods according to which the total

state is predicted by determining and then superposing the contribution of the

individual elements.21 It is this relational holism that leads some, Varela and

Thompson included, to postulate that complex dynamical systems are ontologically

emergent—which is not to say that they are, just that some take their epistemic

emergence to entail an ontological emergence.22 Now, insofar as the task at hand is

concerned this means that even if it is possible, locating phenomenological and

neurological models of conscious experience within the explanatory framework of

dynamical systems theory will not allow neurophenomenologists to explain

phenomenological models in terms of neurological ones. Rather, at best it will allow

them to claim that certain phenomenological structures are emergent phenomena that

arise according to the principles of self-organisation, out of the substrate that is the

brain, body and environment. This in turn means that neurophenomenology does not

represent a genuine attempt to unify phenomenological and neurological models with

each other—if by unify one means locate the two within a single explanatory

schema—because dynamical systems theory is a non-reductive explanatory

framework within which increasing levels of complexity are accompanied by novel

levels of explanation. As Scott Kelso, a major inspiration for neurophenomenologists,

once put it,

20 F Diacu, & Holmes, P., Celestial Encoutners: The Origins of Chaos, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1996. Ch. 1. 21 T van Gelder, & Port, R., ‘It's About Time: An Overview of the Dynamical Approach to Cognition’, in R. Port, & van Gelder, T. (ed.), Mind as Motion: Explorations in the Dynamics of Cognition, MIT Press, Massachusettss 1995, pp. 14-15, 23-24. 22 E Thompson, & Varela, F., ‘Radical embodiment: neural dynamics and consciousness’, Trends in Cognitive Science, vol. 5, no. 10, 2001; M Silberstein, & McGeever, J., ‘The Search for Ontological Emergence’, The Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 49, no. 195, 1999.

20

At each level of complexity, entirely new properties appear, the understanding

of which will require new concepts and methods. Of course, this is not to deny

that ordinary matter obeys quantum mechanics, but, again, it is the principles

of (self)-organised matter at the scale of livings things that we are after here.23

In other words, the worldview of dynamic systems theory lies closer to what Block

would call a many levels worldview, than that which is conventionally associated with

the terms unity and unification.24 Accordingly, I think it is fair to say that, rather than

an attempt to unify (a brand of) phenomenology and (a brand of) neuroscience,

neurophenomenology is better described as an attempt to conjoin the two approaches.

The Hard Problem

Neurophenomenologists refer to the hard problem and the explanatory gap as one and

the same thing. While this is not entirely accurate, I will follow

neurophenomenologists in their use of the two terms, meaning that in this thesis any

reference to the explanatory gap can be taken as a reference to the hard problem. The

hard problem begins with a claim about supervenience and physical explanation. This

claim is that, in order for a physical explanation of conscious experience to be

possible, the mental must supervene globally and logically on the physical. It is best to

explain global logical supervenience in parts, explaining each modifier in turn. Global

supervenience refers to the state of affairs where one set of properties, A-properties,

supervene on another set, B-properties, in such a way that no two entire worlds could

differ with respect to A-properties without differing with respect to B-properties.

Logical supervenience refers to the state of affairs where A-properties supervene on B-

properties in such a way that there are no two conceptually coherent states of affairs

(real or imaginary) which differ with respect to A-properties without differing with

respect to B-properties. By the lights of this idea a male vixen is logically impossible,

because it is conceptually incoherent, whereas a flying telephone is not, because it is

coherent.25

23 J Kelso, Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behaviour, A Bradford Book, 1995. p. 24. 24 N Block, ‘Anti-Reductionism Slaps Back ’, Mind, Causation, World, Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 11, 1997, p. 108. 25 Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, p. 35.

21

Global supervenience is often referred to as a minimal commitment of

physicalism. This minimal commitment, to which all physicalists are committed

regardless of their specific psycho-physical theory, is often defined thus: if

physicalism is true, then

“Any world which is a minimal physical duplicate of our world is a duplicate

simpliciter of our world.”26

Where ‘minimal physical duplicate’ means the two worlds are exactly the same with

respect to facts that can be stated in physical vocabulary, and ‘duplicate simpliciter’

means they are exactly the same with respect to facts stated in any vocabulary. This

commitment establishes that mental and physical properties co-vary as a matter of

metaphysical necessity, from which it follows that the physical facts about a state of

affairs are sufficient to explain all the facts about that state of affairs, the mental facts

included. In so doing this commitment also serves as a condition of possibility for

explaining conscious experience in terms of physical phenomena, for if it were not the

case that conscious experience supervenes on the physical in this way, then the

physical facts about a state of affairs would not be sufficient to explain all the facts,

and physicalism would thereby be false.

Since I will focus on David Chalmers’ arguments in this thesis, I will formulate

the physicalist thesis in his preferred terms. Chalmers holds that the supervenience

relation is not just a metaphysical necessity but must be knowable a priori with

certainty. Not all physicalists accept this ‘logical’ supervenience relation, but

following Chalmers’ formulation will make no difference to the arguments of this

thesis.

It is well known that global logical supervenience does not serve as a

substantive definition of physicalism. However, insofar as the hard problem is

concerned this doesn’t matter. This is because Chalmers’ target is minimal

physicalism. His goal is to establish that minimal physicalism is false, from which it

follows that all versions of physicalism are false. In his words,

26 F Jackson, ‘Armchair Metaphysics’, in J. Hawthorn, & Michael, M. (ed.), Philosophy of Mind, Kluwer, Amsterdam, 1993, p. 28.

22

A phenomenon is reductively explainable simpliciter iff the property of

exemplifying that phenomenon is globally logically supervenient on physical

properties.27

What is most important is that if logical supervenience fails (as I will argue it

does for consciousness), then any kind of reductive explanation fails, even if

we are generous about what counts as explanation.28

Chalmers’ argument that minimal physicalism is false turns on the claim that

conceivability entails possibility, in the sense that whatever is conceivable is possible.

Chalmers justifies this claim via a relatively nuanced argument that uses the

framework of 2D semantics to establish that either conceivability entails possibility, or

Russelian monism is true, from which it follows that standard accounts of physicalism

are false one way or another.29 This aspect of Chalmers’ argument is beyond the scope

of this thesis. Here I will simply have to take it for granted that conceivability entails

possibility.

There are a few different ways of developing Chalmers’ argument, however

the most prominent is the claim that phenomenal zombies are conceivable, and

therefore that conscious experience does not supervene (globally and logically) on the

physical. The concept of a phenomenal zombie is best clarified with the help of a

distinction between two concepts of mind, the phenomenal mind and the cognitive

mind.30 In crude terms, these two concepts refer respectively to mind conceived as

conscious experience, or how it feels, and mind conceived as cognition, or how it

functions. The cognitive mind is the mind conceived as a cognitive system. It therefore

concerns such functions as perceptual discrimination, coordination of movement,

cooperation, learning, decision making, and communication. While these functions are

often (though not always) accompanied by conscious experience in our lives, there

seems to be no reason why they can’t be instantiated in the absence of conscious

experience altogether. In contrast to the cognitive mind, the phenomenal mind is the

mind conceived as conscious experience, or how it feels. The phenomenal mind is the

mind insofar as it senses and experiences. It therefore concerns things like taste, smell, 27 Chalmers, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, p. 44. 28 Ibid., p. 46. 29 ———, ‘The Two-Dimensional Argument against Materialism’, The Character of Consciousness, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010, pp. 141-51. 30 ———, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory, p. 11.

23

and touch, concepts like pain and what it’s like to see red. Now, phenomenal zombies

are imaginary creatures that are physically identical to us in all respects—i.e. they are

not just identical in their physical structure, but their behaviour and function as well—

but which lack conscious experience. In other words, they are zombies in terms of the

phenomenal mind but not the cognitive one.31 From the outside they look and act no

differently to ourselves, and moreover, on the inside they even have internal states just

like ours, such as thoughts and perceptions. All that is missing is the phenomenal

‘feel.’

The point of Chalmers’ argument is that phenomenal zombies are conceivable,

or more specifically that it is conceivable that a world physically identical to ours

could lack conscious experience. While it might not be clear in positive terms how this

could be so, there seems to be no conceptual contradiction in the concept of a zombie

world, and this, says Chalmers, is sufficient to establish that it is negatively

conceivable.32 If correct, it would follow that conscious experience does not supervene

globally and logically on the physical, for if it did then there would be no two

conceptually coherent states of affairs which differed with respect to conscious

properties without differing with respect to physical properties, and the conceivability

of zombies shows that there are in fact two such conceptually coherent states of

affairs. Global logical supervenience being the minimal commitment of all kinds of

physicalism, it would follow that physicalism is false, and therefore that conscious

experience cannot be explained in terms of physical phenomena; and this would be so

not just because of an epistemic inability on our part, but because conscious

experience does not supervene on physical properties, because it is something over

and above the physical.

Importantly, this conclusion is entirely consistent with the fact that conscious

experience is systematically correlated with certain physical properties in our world.

What Chalmers’ argument establishes is that conscious experience is something over

and above the physical, that the physical facts do not entail all the facts. However, this

does not rule out the possibility that conscious experience is systematically correlated

with certain physical properties as a matter of nomic necessity, for under natural

supervenience it is logically possible to have one set of properties without the other—

all one need assume is that the laws of nature were different. Thus Chalmers can reject

31 Ibid., pp. 94-95. 32 Ibid., p. 95.

24

that conscious experience supervenes globally and logically on the physical and yet

accept that as a matter of nomic (or natural, or empirical) necessity, conscious

experience is systematically correlated with certain physical properties in our world.

This explains why Chalmers’ argument is not contradicted by the fact that in our world

conscious experience is evidently related to physical properties in a systematic way.

Finally, the upshot of all this is that there is a fundamental difference between

the cognitive and phenomenal aspects of the mind, namely that the former but not the

latter supervene globally and logically on the physical. It is this fundamental

difference which justifies Chalmers’ labelling the former set of problems the easy ones

for, at least in principle, these questions can be answered by articulating computational

mechanisms that perform these functions and identifying structures in which these

computational mechanisms can be realised. By contrast, no amount of computational

complexity will account for the fact that these functions are accompanied by conscious

experience, or why there exists a phenomenal mind in addition to the cognitive one.

And that is the hard problem. The hard problem is that no matter how complex or

nuanced one’s theory of consciousness is, no matter what physical mechanism is

attributed with explaining conscious experience, it will always be possible to conceive

of a state of affairs in which that physical mechanism is instantiated in the absence of

conscious experience, from which it follows that conscious experience does not in fact

supervene globally and logically on said mechanism.

Assessing the Neurophenomenological Argument Against the Hard Problem

In light of this reading of Chalmers’ argument I think it is pretty clear that

neurophenomenology will not resolve the hard problem. To recall,

neurophenomenologists claim that they can resolve the hard problem by naturalising

phenomenological accounts of conscious experience. This in turn they claim is made

possible by the conceptual resources of dynamic systems theory. By using dynamic

systems theory to render the first person data of phenomenological analyses into terms

that are congruent with the natural sciences neurophenomenologists believe they will

be able to establish explanatory connections between physical and phenomenal

accounts of conscious experience, and thereby bridge the explanatory gap.

Unfortunately for neurophenomenologists, even at this general level it is

possible to respond on behalf of Chalmers. Dynamical systems theory is about the

25

representation and explanation of highly complex systems such as one finds in

meteorology, ecology and neuroscience. While I will discuss it at greater length

further below, dynamical systems theory proceeds by conceptualising these systems in

terms of seemingly emergent properties, or properties that cannot be explained in

terms of their parts, such as attractors, multi-stability and self-organisation. It is these

properties that neurophenomenologists purport will bridge the explanatory gap.

However, the problem for neurophenomenologists is that even if these properties are

emergent phenomena—which is debatable—they are nevertheless structural or

functional phenomena, and as such there is no reason not to believe that they could be

instantiated in the absence of conscious experience. They are, thus, susceptible to

exactly the same explanatory gap that faces every other physical explanation of

conscious experience: it is possible to conceive of a world within which these

dynamical systems are instantiated in the absence of conscious experience without

committing a conceptual contradiction. From this it follows that conscious experience

does not globally logically supervene on these systems, and therefore that no amount

of chaos or non-linearity will remove the mystery surrounding the correlation of

conscious experience and physical systems. As Chalmers himself says,

We have seen that there are systematic reasons why the usual methods of

cognitive science and neuroscience fail to account for conscious experience.

These are simply the wrong sort of methods: nothing that they give to us can

yield an explanation… The same goes for nonlinear and chaotic dynamics.

These might provide a novel account of the dynamics of cognitive functioning,

quite different from that given by standard methods in cognitive science. But

from dynamics, one only gets more dynamics. The question about experience

here is as mysterious as ever.33

Hanna and Thompson’s study of multi-stability affords a similar interpretation,

for there is in fact nothing about multi-stable perception that makes it especially

relevant to the hard problem. Just as there is no conceptual contradiction in the

functional-causal profile of pain being instantiated in the absence of conscious

experience, there is no conceptual contradiction in the instantiation of multi-stable

33 ———, ‘Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness’, pp. 7-8. Sourced at http://cogprints.org/316/1/consciousness.html.

26

perception in the absence of conscious experience. At its heart multi-stable perception

is a matter of perception, more specifically the existence of certain perceptual states

(where a perceptual state is the combination of a perceiver and an environment) in

which the perceiver perceives two percepts interchangeably despite the fact that the

environment does not change. I see no reason why my phenomenal zombie wouldn’t

also be subject to multi-stable perceptual states, and therefore why multi-stable

perception isn’t a question of cognition rather than phenomenal experience. Moreover,

I see no reason why the neural dynamics that Hanna and Thompson claim correlate

with these perceptual states could not be instantiated in the absence of conscious

experience. Once again, the purported mechanism behind a given conscious

experience is a quintessentially physical phenomena: it is the multi-stability of patterns

of electrical charge in neural networks. There is no reason to deny that it is

conceivable that this phenomena could be instantiated in the absence of conscious

experience. Therefore there remains the same sense of mystery about the correlation of

multi-stability and conscious experience as there did before Hanna and Thompson’s

study.

If I am right, it would seem that the neurophenomenological strategy for

naturalising phenomenology has no bearing on the hard problem. This is because it is

conceivable that both their explananda (what they refer to as structures of conscious

experience but which I have characterised as structures (or simply properties) of

human perception) and their explanans (the dynamical systems of the brain, body and

environment from which they claim said structures or human perception emerge from)

could be instantiated in a zombie world, and therefore that there is an explanatory gap

between their explanatory posits and conscious experience. From this it follows that,

in its current state, neurophenomenology cannot meet its explicit objective of

resolving the hard problem. Moreover, it also suggests that there is reason to believe

that the explanatory posits of neurophenomenology can be accommodated by a

broadly physicalist framework. Thus far I have used the conceivability argument to

establish that there is an explanatory gap between the explanatory posits of

neurophenomenology and conscious experience. However it can also be used to

establish that those very same explanatory posits supervene globally and logically on

the physical. To do so one need only imagine a world that is physically identical to

ours, and then ask themselves whether that world would contain the psychological and

neurological structures identified by neurophenomenologists. I think it is pretty

27

uncontroversial that if such a world was an exact physical replica of our world,

simpliciter, then it would contain the dynamic systems identified by

neurophenomenologists. While the case of the psychological structures identified by

neurophenomenologists is likely to attract more disagreement, insofar as they are

functional phenomena there seems to be no reason why they would not also be

instantiated in a physical replica of our world. If this is right, then it follows that the

explanatory posits of neurophenomenologists supervene globally and logically on the

physical, and therefore that they can be accommodated by a broadly physicalist

framework.

This conclusion is very much at odds with the explicit goal of

neurophenomenology. To recall, the explicit goal of neurophenomenology is to effect

a radical revision of the ontological framework of western science. However, if I am

right, what neurophenomenologists put forward is no different to the psycho-physical

theories that have preceded theirs. What they have done is propose a structural-

functional account (dynamic systems) of a further structural phenomenon

(psychological structures). Accordingly, there is either more to the

neurophenomenological story, or there is a significant gap between what

neurophenomenologists say they are doing and what they are actually doing. Either

way, the neurophenomenological strategy cannot achieve its goal of resolving the hard

problem, let alone revising the ontological framework of western science.

An Alternative Rationale for Neurophenomenology

That neurophenomenology cannot meet its explicit objective represents an obvious

problem for neurophenomenologists. However, it doesn’t necessarily spell its end as a

project. For even accepting that neurophenomenology doesn’t address the hard

problem, it can still serve a purpose by addressing the so-called easy problems. If the

explicit project of neurophenomenology can be referred to as a phenomenal project,

with its objective the naturalisation of phenomenology per se, this alternative project

could be called a psychological project, with an alternative objective of naturalising (a

brand of) phenomenological psychology. What I mean by this distinction, between

phenomenology per se and phenomenological psychology, could easily be the subject

of a thesis in itself. Accordingly, here I will have to settle for a rudimentary definition.

Conventionally, the obvious place to begin making a discussion such as this more

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precise is the distinction between transcendental phenomenology and

phenomenological psychology. Some twenty five years after laying the groundwork

for what would come to be known as transcendental phenomenology, the goal of

which was to discover the transcendental conditions of possibility of knowledge,

Husserl put forward phenomenological psychology as an alternative yet nevertheless

intrinsically phenomenological project, the goal of which was to investigate

consciousness in a non-reductive and a priori manner.34 The most clear cut distinction

between these two phenomenological projects is that one, phenomenological

psychology, remains within the so-called natural attitude, while the other,

transcendental phenomenology, does not. What this means is that phenomenological

psychology, like natural science, takes the world of everyday experience for granted,

and treats consciousness like any other object in the world accordingly, whereas

transcendental phenomenology, unlike natural science, places everyday experience in

abeyance, and as a result treats consciousness as the ultimate source of the constitution

of the world of everyday experience.

Apart from this, however, it can be very difficult to pare these two branches of

phenomenology apart. For what I have said about phenomenological psychology can

almost certainly be said about transcendental phenomenology, in the sense that it also

involves the non-reductive analysis of consciousness, and what I have said about

phenomenological psychology can serve as the starting point for a journey towards

transcendental phenomenology, in the sense that an unbiased phenomenological

investigation into the structures of conscious experience could lead one towards

transcendentalism (among other things), as Husserl himself speculated.35 Nevertheless,

taking all this into account, and translating some terminology into contemporary

terms, I put forward the following working definition of phenomenological

psychology: phenomenological psychology investigates consciousness non-

reductively via bracketed reflection upon conscious experience, and describes the

essential properties of consciousness on the basis of both first and third person data.

By consciousness I mean psychical nature, or consciousness insofar as it is part of the

natural world. This is not transcendental subjectivity in the sense that it does not

precede the existence of the world studied by science, nor is it conventional empiricist

subjectivity in the sense that it does not passively receive ready made impressions

34 E Husserl, Phenomenological Psychology: Lectures, Summer Semester, 1925, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, 1962. 35 Ibid., pp. 47-48.

29

from the world. One could say it is the condition of possibility of the manifest image

but not of the world. By non-reductive investigation I mean that phenomenological

psychology explains the workings of consciousness without making reference to the

explanatory posits of other sciences. In other words, it does not aim to explain

conscious experience in terms of biological, chemical or physical phenomena, but,

rather, in terms designed to work at the phenomenologico-psychological level. This

does not mean that it cannot draw on the work of other sciences, however, for it is

possible to interpret the experimental results of other sciences from within the

perspective of phenomenological psychology, and therefore without necessarily

adopting the conclusions that the other sciences draw from them. This is because, as a

psychology informed by a bracketed reflection, phenomenological psychology aims to

investigate natural consciousness as it is in itself (as a natural phenomenon), and

therefore in isolation from the theories of the other sciences. Finally, the essential

properties of consciousness described by phenomenological psychology are putative

structures of conscious experience without which the world would not appear as it

does, but which are by no means transcendental conditions of its existence. To borrow

Husserl’s words, this means it aims to describe those properties “without which

psychological being… [is] simply inconceivable.”36 Examples include the figure-

background structure of Gestalt psychology, Husserl's tripartite account of time

consciousness, and even Gallagher's distinction between the body image and the body

schema.37 In the context of phenomenological psychology, these structures affect how

the world appears to us but they do not play a part in its existence; they are a natural

phenomenon like any other. Before proceeding one final point bears mention. If what I

have presented here is a general definition of phenomenological psychology, the

idiosyncratic approach practiced by neurophenomenologists would represent a sub-

branch, or brand, of phenomenological psychology, as per my discussion above

(concerning their use of dynamic systems theory to reinterpret phenomenological

data).

Now, I am claiming that naturalising this brand of phenomenology, indeed this

brand of phenomenological psychology, represents a viable alternative to the explicit

goal of neurophenomenology. While this rationale is not explicitly recognised by

36 Husserl, Phenomenological Psychology: Lectures, Summer Semester, 1925, p. 46. 37 K Koffka, Principles of Gestalt Psychology, Routledge, Oxon, 1935. Ch. 5; Husserl, Phenomenological Psychology: Lectures, Summer Semester, 1925, pp. 200-06; S Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006. Ch. 1 & 2.

30

neurophenomenologists, I believe it stands as a perfectly legitimate, and much less

controversial, reason to pursue the naturalisation of phenomenology. Indeed I suspect

that it is in fact the reason why many researchers within cognitive science, who

themselves tend to be indifferent to a priori philosophical problems like the hard

problem, are in fact interested in naturalising phenomenology. Moreover, given that

neurophenomenologists weren’t addressing the hard problem in the first place, this

proposal actually doesn’t have a substantial impact on the proposal as a whole. As I

will show further below, in the absence of the hard problem neurophenomenology still

represents one way of naturalising phenomenology, albeit a more or less attenuated

one, and it still poses a challenge for conventional accounts of naturalism and

traditional ideas about the place of the mind in nature. Accordingly, one can adopt this

alternative rationale without abandoning all the ambitions of neurophenomenologists,

for the naturalisation of phenomenology in this psychological sense will still entail

challenging the received ontological framework of western science—it just won’t

result in an ontological picture within which phenomenal zombies are inconceivable.

There are a number of points to observe regarding this alternative rationale.

Firstly, that in principle the easy problems can be solved does not mean they are easy

problems to solve, nor that their solution wouldn’t represent a major achievement for

cognitive science. For instance, an explanation of learning or perceptual discrimination

would provide invaluable insight into the workings of the human (and non-human)

mind, even if it wouldn’t provide any insight into why it is that in us such functions

are accompanied by conscious experience. Now it is true that phenomenological

accounts of conscious experience were never intended for this cognitive interpretation,

and therefore that using them in this way represents a dilution of the

phenomenological works in question.38 However, even if one interprets them solely in

terms of cognition, these phenomenological structures still represent interesting and

potentially useful explanatory posits. Thus, even if Husserl’s tripartite account of time-

consciousness is interpreted in terms of the navigation or management of time, the

prediction of future events, the recollection of past events, and the integration of

manifold coincident events into a single moment, its naturalisation would still allow

cognitive science to explain various aspects of our awareness of time. Extrapolating

this to other phenomenological accounts of consciousness, like Sartre’s account of the

38 D Zahavi, ‘Intentionality and Phenomenality: A Phenomenological Take on the Hard Problem’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. Supplementary Volume 29, 2003.

31

imagination, or Merleau-Ponty’s account of perception, it would seem that, provided it

can be naturalised, phenomenology has a lot to offer cognitive science. From this it

follows that neurophenomenology promises to be a valuable enterprise irrespective of

whether it can resolve the hard problem of consciousness.

Moreover, naturalising phenomenology in this psychological sense doesn’t

necessarily mean acquiescing to conventional accounts of naturalism. One conclusion

of the previous section was that neurophenomenology can be accommodated by a

broadly physicalist framework—because the phenomena neurophenomenologists

propose to naturalise supervene globally and logically on the physical. However, that

does not mean that there is a ready-made framework available for it. As I intend to

show below, there are many ways in which one can be broadly physicalist, and,

moreover, even as broadly physicalist neurophenomenology still diverges significantly

from the standard ways of being so. Therefore, even if it is interpreted solely in terms

of cognition, neurophenomenology would still require articulating a novel kind of

naturalism within which its phenomenological structures would count as legitimate

scientific artefacts, and would, in so doing, suggest future paths towards the kind of

naturalism that would be consistent with a broader cross-section of phenomenological

philosophy. Accordingly, as far as I can tell there is nothing in this alternative

rationale that contradicts neurophenomenologists’ existing aims; it simply represents a

less ambitious sample of their original intentions.

This explains a further feature of the cognitive project that speaks in its favour,

namely that it is far more discrete and achievable. Roy et. al., Varela and Thompson

present their project as a sweeping review of our ontological framework that will

redefine the transcendental and the empirical, the subjective and the objective, and the

first person and the third person. In this regard their closest predecessor is Merleau-

Ponty (or arguably the later Husserl). Merleau-Ponty’s attempt to reveal the

fundamental intertwining of the transcendental and the empirical within the Flesh,

which was born of his desire to completely cast aside Descartes’ legacy in (early)

Husserlian phenomenology, shares an obvious resemblance with the ontological

project of neurophenomenologists. However, all the authors considered here also

stipulate that they have no intention of following Husserl and Merleau-Ponty down the

path of transcendentalism. Their project is, therefore, truly original in the sense that it

will differ from even the radical phenomenological philosophy of Merleau-Ponty.

Now, given that Merleau-Ponty’s project is still considered highly speculative and

32

ambiguous, even though he devoted dozens of years and tens of thousands of pages to

it, one can only assume that, given the relatively small amount written specifically

about the phenomenal project, neurophenomenologists have a long way to go before

one could even roughly determine what their ontology would look like. Moreover, if

my observations of the previous section are correct, what neurophenomenologists have

said so far is not fundamentally at odds with our existing ontological framework.

Therefore it is not even clear how their project could indeed lead to a sweeping review

of our ontological framework. It is for these reasons that, following Zahavi, I contend

that the neurophenomenological project, while theoretically fascinating, is far too far

from concrete realisation to be gainfully pursued, and that the best way to proceed is

by pursuing discrete, concrete projects at the interface of phenomenology and natural

science—such as, for instance, the psychological projects discussed above.39

Accordingly, even though the project of naturalising phenomenology will not

resolve the hard problem it remains a worthwhile undertaking nonetheless. This is

because, irrespective of whether it can establish that conscious experience globally

logically supervenes on the physical, it promises to serve a very useful purpose by

providing answers (or more likely contributing to answers) to the easy problems of

consciousness. Moreover, adopting this alternative rationale does not render the

ontological ambitions of neurophenomenology null and void, for as I intend to show

below, it will still challenge conventional accounts of naturalism and established ideas

about the place of the mind in nature. All in all this means that dropping all reference

to the hard problem actually has little effect on the neurophenomenological project as

a whole, for while the ultimate goal may have changed the strategy and the ambitions

remain largely the same (if not a little diminished).

39 ———, 'Naturalized Phenomenology', p. 17.

33

Chapter 2: Establishing the Need for a Novel Naturalistic Framework

One of the conclusions of the previous chapter was that the explanatory posits of

neurophenomenology—the structures of conscious experience and the dynamic

systems—can be accommodated by a broadly physicalist framework. However, this

does not mean that there is no problem of naturalising phenomenology. For there’s a

lot more to naturalising phenomenology, even in a psychological sense, than

establishing that the explanatory posits of neurophenomenology globally logically

supervene on the physical. It is well known that global logical supervenience is

consistent with a number of mutually exclusive positions. It does not, therefore,

amount to a substantive account of the place of the psychological in nature. For such

an account one needs, at the very least, additional commitments relating to the nature

of higher order phenomena. It is to these additional commitments that I will speak in

this chapter. Having established that neurophenomenology is broadly physicalist, in

the specific sense that it is consistent with global logical supervenience, I will now

attempt to determine whether it can be accommodated by conventional accounts of

naturalism. To this end I will begin by identifying the core commitments of

neurophenomenology, at least insofar as they relate to the constitution of higher order

phenomena. Following that I will recapitulate the key themes of the three conventional

brands of naturalism, reductionism, non-reductive physicalism, and emergentism.

Finally, I will assess whether these three conventional accounts can accommodate the

core commitments of neurophenomenology, and will ultimately conclude that they

cannot. If correct, it follows that neurophenomenology requires a novel naturalistic

framework.

Characterising the Cognitive Project

While there are many interesting things to say about neurophenomenology, in the

current context three features stand out as particularly pertinent. These are: one, that it

is not dualistic, two, that it is committed to the causal autonomy of higher order kinds,

and three, that it is committed to the reciprocal constitution of subject and world.

These three features stand out because, insofar as the task at hand is concerned—the

identification of a naturalistic framework for neurophenomenology—it is these three

commitments that together determine why conventional accounts of naturalism cannot

34

accommodate neurophenomenology, and which therefore effectively select the

alternative model that I will put forward in the next chapter.

Substance dualism

When I say that neurophenomenology is not dualist I am referring specifically to

substance dualism. Defining substance dualism can be a complex task given its long

history as a philosophical term of art. Unfortunately, even though they use the term

none of Varela, Thompson or Roy et. al. offer a rigorous definition of it. Nevertheless,

comments by Varela and Roy et. al. serve to elucidate a rough picture of what they

mean. In their co-authored essay Roy et. al. explicitly distance themselves from

Cartesian substance dualism,

Can’t it after all be said that a dualist theory such as Descartes’s also intends to

show how mental properties can belong to a material entity and thus transform

them into natural ones? The problem is that dualism resorts to a specific

substance in its demonstration and consequently does not treat mental

properties as authentically natural. Mental properties belong only indirectly to

the body. The distinctive feature of the naturalist perspective is, on the

contrary, to try to transform these properties into properties sensu stricto of the

body, or more generally of natural entities as characterized by the physical

sciences.40

In other words, to naturalise phenomenology means finding a way to fit both

phenomenological and naturalistic accounts of conscious experience within one and

the same metaphysical framework, which in turn means rejecting substance dualism

because substance dualism entails that the mind and nature are separated by a

fundamental ontological fissure. Reinforcing this interpretation is a small section of

one of Varela’s earlier papers in which he wrote that,

the sort of phenomenology needed… should be a naturalistic one in the

minimal sense of not being committed to a strictly dualistic ontology. In other

40 Roy, 'Beyond the Gap: An Introduction to Naturalizing Phenomenology', p. 45.

35

words it should be open to explanatory accounts… [that] make clear how

phenomenological data can… link up productively to accounts of brain and

body… without recourse to an ontological leap in midcourse.41

Thus, in sum, the aim of neurophenomenology is to explain how the

phenomenological structures of our mind relate to the brain and body (and perhaps the

environment). They are thoroughly committed to the idea that these relations are not

inexplicable correlations between distinct substances but constitutive relations

between distinct properties. They are, therefore, not substance dualists.

Causal autonomy of higher order kinds

They may not be substance dualists, but neurophenomenologists passionately oppose

the machine metaphor for nature. Informing their stance in this regard is the science

of complex systems, or dynamic systems theory. Following dynamical systems

theorists, neurophenomenologists hold that the mind is a complex self-organising

system that cannot be explained in terms of its constituent parts, and therefore that it

is a causally autonomous or emergent entity. In other words, while they are not

substance dualists, neurophenomenologists are property dualists (but property

dualists in a specific sense, namely about causal properties, not phenomenal

properties).

Dynamic systems theory is a complex and diverse field of inquiry that ranges

from pure mathematics to the prediction of meteorological systems. It would not be

possible, nor productive, to provide an overview of this broad and diverse array of

research projects. Instead, the summary below is intended as an overview of the key

themes of dynamic systems theory insofar as it inspires neurophenomenologists. To

begin with, complex systems are best defined in contradistinction to simple ones.

Generally speaking, the behaviour of simple dynamical systems can be modelled quite

easily because their current state is always the cumulative outcome of the states of

their parts. Moreover, if the system is increased in size it will behave in the same way.

The classic example of such a system would be a mass on the end of a spring, the

behaviour of which is determined by the tension of the spring and the mass of the

41 Varela, ‘The Naturalisation of Phenomenology as the Transcendence of Nature. Searching for Generative Mutual Constraints’, p. 359.

36

weight regardless of what size it is. This property whereby a system displays

decomposability and scalability is known as linearity.42 Linearity can also defined in

terms of the superposition principle, which states that the net response caused by two

or more forces is equal to the sum of the responses which would have been caused by

each force individually; or in other words, that the whole state of the system is equal to

the sum of the states of its parts.43

In contrast to linear systems, non-linear systems behave in ways that are

extremely difficult, if not impossible, to predict. Their behaviour is neither

decomposable nor scalable, and they contravene the superposition principle. Yet at

base they are believed to be deterministic systems. The classic example of such a

system would be three or more celestial bodies interacting with each other

gravitationally. What is special about these systems is that even though the system of

equations that describe their evolution are perfectly deterministic, together they give

rise to an impossibly complex behaviour. The key reason for this is that the different

parts of this system—for instance the three celestial bodies—simultaneously influence

each others’ behaviour. As a result, the systems of equations that are used to model

these systems contain equations that are coupled to each other, meaning that the output

of one equation features as an input within the other (or others), and vice versa.44

Importantly, this means that one must consider the variables in such mathematical

models as an interactive whole within which one cannot identify the contribution of

individual elements, because when one variable changes the others do too. It is for this

reason that complex systems are said to disobey the superposition principle, because it

means that the whole cannot be explicitly traced to the sum of the parts.45

Of particular interest to neurophenomenologists is that one can perceive

orderly patterns within the apparent chaos of non-linear systems; patterns, moreover,

that are not just unique to particular non-linear systems but appear to be universal.46

Like the behaviour of the systems themselves, these patterns cannot be traced to the

42 M Silberstein, & Chemero, A., ‘Complexity and Extended Phenomenological-Cognitive Systems’, Topics in Cognitive Science, vol. 4, 2012, p. 39. 43 F Varela, ‘The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness’, in J. Petitot, Varela, F., Pachoud, B., & Roy, J-M. (ed.), Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, Standord University Press, Stanford 1999, p. 310. 44 Silberstein, ‘Complexity and Extended Phenomenological-Cognitive Systems’, p. 38. 45 Varela, 'The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness', p. 310. Thompson, ‘Radical embodiment: neural dynamics and consciousness’, p. 420. Kelso, Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behaviour, p. 16. 46 ———, Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behaviour, pp. 1-15; Silberstein, ‘The Search for Ontological Emergence’, p. 193; van Gelder, 'It's About Time: An Overview of the Dynamical Approach to Cognition', p. 26; S Kellert, In The Wake of Chaos, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1993. pp. 10-23.

37

substrate of the non-linear systems within which they appear.47 Because of this these

patterns are said to self-organise, or emerge spontaneously.48 Now, whether these

patterns represent genuine instances of ontological emergence is debatable, for

ultimately they are posited on the basis of an epistemic failure—i.e. our inability to

explain how it is that they got there.49 However, that it is debatable does not mean it is

not defendable, and neurophenomenologists are among those who believe such

patterns do represent genuinely emergent phenomena. For neurophenomenologists the

fact that these systems behave in ways that are not only greater than, but at times

entirely different to, the sum of what their parts’ behaviour would otherwise be (as far

as our understanding allows, of course), is reason enough to believe that they represent

ontologically emergent phenomena.50

Now, of even more interest to neurophenomenologists is that these self-

organising patterns appear to be self-perpetuating. This is commonly described in

terms of the slaving principle, according to which self-organising patterns ‘enslave’

their substrate such that they continue to exist despite perturbations in their

environment.51 Simple examples of enslavement include the formation of whirlpools

in water and tornadoes in air, though the stock example is the convection rolls in the

Rayleigh-Bérnard Experiment. In all of these examples a pattern emerges within an

otherwise chaotic milieu of molecules and then subordinates change at the molecular

level such that that pattern continues to exist. That these patterns appear to persist in

spite of the fact that the micro-level is constantly in flux suggests that they are causally

autonomous, for it says that, in effect, events at the micro-level have no causal effect

on events at the systemic level.52 This in turn has led some, neurophenomenologists

included, to postulate that nonlinear systems represent an instance of global-to-local

causation whereby a particular pattern, which exists at the global or system level,

constrains the behaviour of the systems components, which exist at the local level.53

Once again it is debatable wether they do in fact represent an instance of global-to-

local causation, for autonomy is also posited on the basis of a failure of explanation;

47 D Newman, ‘Emergence and Strange Attractors’, Philosophy of Science, vol. 63, 1996, pp. 254-58. 48 Kelso, Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behaviour, p. 16. 49 Silberstein, ‘The Search for Ontological Emergence’, pp. 193-94. 50 Kelso, Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behaviour, p. 16. 51 Ibid., pp. 1-15. For a relatively in depth introduction to how this process of self-organisation through enslavement is quantified see J Kelso, Ding, M., & Schoner, G., ‘Dynamic Pattern Formation: A Primer’, in L. Smith, & Thelen, E. (ed.), A Dynamic Systems Approach to Developement: Application, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 1993. 52 W Wimsatt, ‘The Ontology of Comlpex Systems’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. Supplementary Volume 20, 1994. 53 Thompson, ‘Radical embodiment: neural dynamics and consciousness’, p. 420. Thompson also describes it thus in his Mind in Life. See E Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 2007. pp. 60-65.

38

however insofar as enslavement is empirically verifiable—which it would appear to

be—it is at least defendable to claim that they do.

It is on these grounds that neurophenomenologists oppose the machine

metaphor for nature. Inspired by dynamic systems theory, neurophenomenologists

hold that higher order natural kinds, the mind included, are ontologically emergent and

causally autonomous phenomena. From this it follows that higher order kinds possess

properties that cannot be explained in terms of the properties of their parts. This

amounts to a brand of property dualism, indeed property pluralism, according to which

the physical properties of a kind do not exhaust all its properties. However this does

not mean that neurophenomenologists are substance dualists, for they nevertheless

believe that all kinds are comprised of physical kinds; they simply don’t believe that

all properties are physical properties.54

Reciprocal constitution of subject and world

This final aspect of neurophenomenology can be seen as an extension of the previous

one. It begins as a claim about the relation between a certain kind of nonlinear

system—namely an autopoietic one—and its environment, but it is then extended to

ourselves, where it has epistemological and metaphysical consequences. The theory of

autopoiesis—and therefore autopoietical systems—is one of the many research

projects that fall under the umbrella of dynamical systems theory. It was created by

Maturana and Varela in the late 1970’s in an attempt to articulate the defining features

of biological life. To anyone who’s read the two sets of works, there’s no doubting

that Varela’s earlier work on the theory of autopoiesis informed the development of

neurophenomenology. In other words, where dynamic systems theory in general

represents an inspiration for neurophenomenologists, I think it’s fair to say that the

theory of autopoiesis forms a part of it. Accordingly, the key references in this section

will be to neurophenomenologists themselves (in particular Varela and Thompson),

though it will be to their works on autopoiesis rather than neurophenomenology (for

the most part).

To begin I will recapitulate the concept of autopoiesis. According to Varela,

54 Kelso, Dynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behaviour, p. 24.

39

An autopoietic system is organized (defined as a unity) as a network of

processes of production (synthesis and destruction) of components such that

these components:

i. continuously regenerate and realize the network that produces them,

and

ii. constitute the system as a distinguishable unity in the domain in which

they exist.55

In other words, autopoietic systems are systems that not only self-organise but that

also produce the components (energy and materials) that they themselves require in

order to continue to exist. For example, a tornado is a self-organising system in the

sense that it displays a level of organisation that cannot be attributed to its component

parts, but it is not an autopoietic system because it does not produce the components

(energy being the key one) that it requires in order to continue to exist. By contrast a

living cell is both a self-organising system, because it displays a degree of organisation

that cannot be attributed to its components, and an autopoietic system, because it has

the capacity to produce the components it requires in order to subsist.

Now it is the latter of Varela’s two principles that is of interest here. According

to this principle, it is a defining feature of autopoietic systems that they demarcate

themselves from their environment. The paradigmatic example of an autopoietic

system, the single cell, provides a very tangible example of this process of self-

identity, for in order to establish its capacity for homeostasis a living cell must

produce a membrane to serve as a boundary between itself and its environment,

thereby defining itself by establishing itself. This is one of the key messages of the

theory of autopoiesis, namely that the defining feature of life is that it defines itself by

producing itself. To quote Varela at length,

The idea of autopoiesis capitalizes on the idea of homeostasis, and extends it in

two significant directions: first, by making every reference for homeostasis

internal to the system itself through mutual interconnectedness of processes;

and secondly, by positing this interdependence as the very source of the

system’s identity as a concrete unity which we can distinguish. These are

55 F Varela, ‘Patterns of Life: Intertwining Identity and Cognition’, Brain and Cognition, vol. 34, 1997, p. 75.

40

systems that, in a loose sense, produce their own identity: they distinguish

themselves from their background. Hence the name autopoietic, from the

Greek αυτóς = self, and ποιειν = to produce.56

What is not immediately apparent about this idea is that it entails that the

organism defines its environment as well. To return to the theory of autopoiesis, a key

feature of this theory is that it aims to explain how a biological phenomenon could

emerge out of a physico-chemical milieu. If one considers the limit case of a single

organism emerging out of a lifeless physico-chemical milieu—as per, for example,

Maturana and Varela’s tessellation example of autopoiesis—it is obvious that the

emergence of a living system leads to the definition of both organism and its

environment.57 The organism is simply the bounded autopoietical system and the

environment is the rest. More interesting, however, is that this state of affairs—the

existence of a discrete organism and an environment—is as dependent upon the

existence of the organism as it is on the existence of the environment. For if the single

cell ceased to exist it would no longer be possible to define either organism or

environment, while at the same time it is obviously true that the organism could not

exist without its environment. This observation has led Varela and Thompson to

conclude that the organism and its environment co-constitute one another; that, in

other words, the environment constitutes the organism by making its existence

possible, but that the organism constitutes the environment by producing the boundary

that serves to define both.58

Varela and Thompson extrapolate this theory of the organism and its

environment to encompass our own relationship with nature.59 Accordingly, they hold

that the world we experience, and by extension the world investigated by science, is

itself in some way dependent upon our own constitution, just as our constitution is

dependent upon it. This in turn suggests that the way the world is structured is not

entirely mind-independent but, rather, dependent upon our own corporeal capacities.

To quote Thompson at length,

56 ———, Principles of Biological Autonomy, North Holland, New York, 1980. pp. 12-13. 57 Ibid., pp. 19-23. 58 ———, ‘Patterns of Life: Intertwining Identity and Cognition’, pp. 75-81; Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, pp. 43-51. 59 Varela, ‘Patterns of Life: Intertwining Identity and Cognition’, pp. 81-85; Thompson, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, pp. 51-65.

41

In the case of animal life, the environment emerges as a sensorimotor world

through the actualization of the organism as a sensorimotor being. The

organism is a sensorimotor being thanks to its nervous system. The nervous

system… [establishes] a sensorimotor identity for the animal—a sensorimotor

self. In the same stroke… [it specifies] what counts as “other,” namely, the

animal’s sensorimotor world. This idea of a sensorimotor world—a body-

oriented world of perception and action—is none other than von Uexküll’s

original notion of an Umwelt. An Umwelt is an animal’s environment in the

sense of its lived, phenomenal world, the world as it presents itself to that

animal thanks to its sensorimotor repertoire.60

In other words, just as a single cell defines its environment in the process of

establishing its boundary, a sensorimotor being defines its lived world in the process

of establishing its sensorimotor self. Because both sensorimotor being and

sensorimotor world emerge as one it is impossible to attribute one or the other with

precedence. Accordingly, one must accept that subject and world co-constitute one

another. Importantly, if one accepts that the world of science is identical to our

sensorimotor world—as Thompson and Varela do—, it follows that scientific truth is

secondary to this originary event, meaning that the ultimate foundation of scientific

truth is not in the mind-independence of nature but, rather, in the dialectical

relationship between subject and world.

The Standard Frameworks

Below I will offer a definition of what I see as the three standard frameworks within

philosophy of mind: reductionism, non-reductive physicalism and emergentism. It

would have been neither practical nor possible to attempt a systematic review of each

and every instantiation of these three frameworks. Instead I have had to rely on

paradigmatic examples of each, and simply accept that the definitions I offer below do

not represent every last instance of each framework. However, if the definitions

proffered are accurate about a large cross-section of their respective instantiations,

then I will consider them sufficient for my purposes.

60 ———, Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind, p. 59.

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Reductionism

As Fodor once said, reductionism is the claim that “every natural kind is, or is co-

extensive with, a physical natural kind.”61 One of the classic presentations of this view

is Oppenheim and Putnam's ‘Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis.’62 On this

construal science works towards the ideal of unification by establishing a series of

reduction relations between the various branches of science. The process of reduction

whereby higher order sciences are reduced to lower order ones takes place between

both kinds and laws, and it is termed micro-reduction by Oppenheim and Putnam.

According to Oppenheim and Putnam a branch of science B2 (with theory T2) has

been micro-reduced to another branch B1 (with theory T1) if and only if:

(1) The vocabulary of T2 contains terms not in the vocabulary of T1.

(2) Any observational data explainable by T2 are explainable by T1.

(3) T1 is at least as well systematized as T2.63

and,

[T]he objects in the universe of discourse of B2 are wholes which possess a

decomposition… into proper parts all of which belong to the universe of

discourse of B1.64

Thus zoology, which is a branch of science with theories about multi-cellular

organisms, can be micro-reduced to microbiology, which has theories about individual

cells and their interaction. This process of micro-reduction is said to take place within

the following hierarchy of kinds: elementary particles, atoms, molecules, cells,

organisms, and social groups. The process of reduction being transitive, it is possible

that every domain of science can be micro-reduced to physics irrespective of how far

apart the two branches may seem (read psychology and physics). If and when this 61 J Fodor, ‘Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)’, Synthese, vol. 28, no. 2, 1974, p. 102. J Kim, ‘Multiple Realization and the Metaphysics of Reduction’, in D. Chalmers (ed.), Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1992. 62 P Oppenheim, & Putnam, H. , ‘Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis’, in M. Feigl, Scriven, M., & Maxwell, G. (ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, 1958. 63 Ibid., p. 5. 64 Ibid., p. 6.

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ideal of unity is realised, this series of micro-reductions will form the various domains

of scientific knowledge into a single, orderly, transitive whole.

Importantly, Oppenheim and Putnam explicitly distinguish their use of the

terms 'unification' and 'reduction' from an epistemological one, meaning they hold that

their hierarchy of kinds and the relations of reduction that pertain between them are

real features of a mind-independent nature.65 Their view is intimately connected with a

particular conception of nature according to which it consists of a series of discrete

domains, each containing distinct individuals of a given size or complexity, all but the

lowest of which can be perfectly partitioned into mutually exclusive and collectively

exhaustive subsets. The lowest of these domains, the physical, consists of elementary

particles, and all the other domains are purportedly a subset of it.

The kind of reduction relation that Oppenheim and Putnam describe is known

as type reduction, because it pertains between types or kinds. For example, the type

from molecular chemistry, H2O, can be identified with the conjunction of the two

types from atomic physics, H and O. In philosophy of mind the view that is the most

natural fit for Oppenheim and Putnam’s picture of nature is, therefore, the identity

theory. As Smart described it identity theory is the claim that mental states are

identical to brain states in the same way that lightning is identical to electrical

discharge, or “7 is identical to the smallest prime number greater than 5.”66 In other

words, mental states aren’t just correlated with physical states, they are physical

states. Thus, even though the two concepts ‘mental state’ and ‘brain state’ have

different meanings, and therefore appear to refer to different things, they actually have

one and the same referent—namely a brain state. Now it is not difficult to see that this

view is consistent with Oppenheim and Putnam’s account of reductionism—indeed

Smart even cites their article on unity in motivating his thesis.67 For if mental kinds

can be micro-reduced to physical kinds, it is because the types and laws of psychology

can be decomposed into proper parts which are themselves types and laws within

physics. Depending on one’s inclination, this could be taken to mean that the kinds of

psychology are identical, in the strict sense of identity, to conjunctions of types from

physics.

65 Ibid., p. 5. 66 J Smart, ‘Sensations and Brain Processes’, The Philosophical Review, vol. 68, no. 2, 1959, p. 145. 67 Ibid., p. 142.

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Non-Reductive Physicalism

It has been a long time since reductionism was the standard account in philosophy of

mind. Rather, in the last forty years there has been what Ned Block refers to as an

“anti-reductionist consensus;” namely, a consensus that mental states “can be

‘realized’ or ‘implemented’ in a variety of ways,” that this entails that they are “not

coextensive with any neurological property,” and therefore that they are “not definable

neurologically and so psychology is not reducible to neurophysiology.”68 However,

while anti-reductionists believe mental states are irreducible they do not hold that they

are something over and above physical states. As Kim once said,

[T]he abandonment of psychoneural reductionism has not led to a resurgence

of dualism. The new consensus is best known as non-reductive physicalism…

The distinctive feature of the mind-body theories that have sprung up in the

wake of identity theory is the belief, or hope, that one can be an honest-to-

goodness physicalist without at the same time being a reductionist.69

Non-reductive physicalism has been construed in a variety of ways during its

40 year history. Here I will present it in terms of four core commitments, beginning

with the most common, supervenience physicalism. There are many ways of defining

supervenience physicalism, however the most common would have to be the definition

from Jackson that I used above. According to Jackson, if supervenience physicalism is

true, then

“Any world which is a minimal physical duplicate of our world is a duplicate

simpliciter of our world.”70

Where ‘minimal physical duplicate’ means the two worlds are exactly the same with

respect to facts that can be stated in physical terms, and ‘duplicate simpliciter’ means

they are exactly the same with respect to facts stated in any vocabulary; or put more

68 Block, ‘Anti-Reductionism Slaps Back ’, pp. 107-08. 69 J Kim, ‘The Myth of Nonreductive Materialism’, Proceedings and Address of the American Philosophical Association, vol. 63, no. 3, 1989, p. 32. 70 Jackson, 'Armchair Metaphysics', p. 28.

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simply, if two worlds are physically identical simpliciter then they must be identical in

all respects.

The second commitment is the principle of the causal closure of the physical,

and it serves to demarcate non-reductive physicalism from emergentism. According to

this principle every physical event has a physical cause. This can be interpreted to

mean that every physical event has only a physical cause, which leads to strong causal

closure, or it can mean that every physical event has at least a physical cause, which

leads to weak causal closure. Strong causal closure precludes non-physical causation

by requiring that all events have only a physical cause.71 By contrast, weak causal

closure is consistent with there being non-physical causal powers, for it only requires

that every event have at least a physical cause, which is consistent with some events

having both a physical cause and a non-physical cause. It is for this reason that weak

causal closure is also referred to as causal overdetermination, for it is consistent with

their being two or more causes for a single event—such as, for instance, a human

behaviour that can be explained in terms of both mental and physical causes. Weak

causal closure does not rule out non-physical causes, however, either way the causal

closure principle entails that the physical is a causally complete domain of nature,

from which it follows that physics is capable of explaining all events. This implication

of causal closure, the causal completeness of the physical, has two important

consequences. Firstly, it renders non-physical causes epistemically superfluous,

because it ensures that there will always be a sufficient physical explanation for each

and every event—unless you believe in immaterial events. Secondly, it rules out

events that have do not have a physical cause, and therefore precludes causally

autonomous higher order kinds and/or emergentism.

The third commitment is that mental states are multiply realisable kinds (or

properties) that are not identical to the physical states upon which they supervene, and

it serves to demarcate non-reductive physicalism from identity theory. The classic

example of this is the psychological state of pain. As Putnam famously observed, the

psychological state of pain seems to be realised in a great variety of living organisms,

including mammals, birds, reptiles and molluscs.72 Now, if the identity theory were

right that pain was identical to some brain state, then all these animals would need to 71 L Baker, ‘Metaphysics and Mental Causation’, in J. Heil, & Mele, A. (ed.), Mental Causation, Clarendon, Oxdord, 1993; T Burge, ‘Mind-Body Causation and Explanatory Practice’, in T. Burge (ed.), Foundations of Mind, Volume 2, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007. 72 H Putnam, ‘Psychological Predicates’, in W. Capitan, & Merrill, D. (ed.), Art, Mind, and Religion, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1967.

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occupy the very same state when they are in pain. Given their vastly divergent

physiology this seems a far cry at best. This observation is generally taken to entail

that pain cannot be identical to a physical state, because otherwise it would not be

possible for it to be instantiated in organisms with different physiologies, from which

it follows that it must be multiply realisable.

The fourth commitment of non-reductive physicalism is that mental states are

token identical to physical states, and it ensures that non-reductive physicalism

remains physicalist. Token identity differs from type identity in that it is construed in

terms of events. Thus to say that mental states are token identical to physical states is

to say that all mental events are physical events.73 Importantly, as Fodor said in his

classic paper, token identity represents “the… identity of a pair of events,” one event

at the mental level and one at the physical level, and the identity of a pair of events

“does not guarantee the identity of the properties whose instantiation constitutes the

events.”74 Thus, even if one believes that “(token) psychological events are (token)

neurological events, it does not follow that the natural kind predicates of psychology

are co-extensive with the natural kind predicates of any other discipline (including

physics).”75 From this it follows that mental kinds and/or properties can be constituted

by physical states without being identical to them, in much the same way a house can

be constituted by bricks without being identical to bricks. Importantly, while it may

sound it, this is not just an epistemological claim. Non-reductive physicalists don’t

believe that the failure of reductionism in psychology (which they infer from the

apparent multiple realisability of mental states) is purely epistemic, they believe it is a

reflection of a metaphysical state of affairs.76

Together these four commitments serve to define non-reductive physicalism.

The first establishes that mental states and physical states co-vary as a matter of

metaphysical necessity. The second rules out non-physical causes and thereby

demarcates non-reductive physicalism from emergentism. The third rules out

reductionism and thereby demarcates non-reductive physicalism from the identity

theory, while the fourth provides for a way in which irreducible mental states could

nevertheless be nothing over and above the physical, and thereby ensures non-

reductive physicalism is indeed a kind of physicalism. Like those that constitute

73 Fodor, ‘Special Sciences (Or: The Disunity of Science as a Working Hypothesis)’, p. 100. 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid., p. 105. 76 Ibid., p. 113.

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reductionism, these commitments come together to form a particular picture of nature.

Within this picture there exist multiply realisable higher order kinds that supervene on

physical events but are not identical to them, and which are nevertheless nothing over

and above those physical events either. In other words, higher order kinds are like

patterns on a grid of black and white pixels in the sense that they possess properties

that cannot be defined in terms of the pixels themselves, whilst at the same time they

are nevertheless nothing over and above the pixels themselves.77

Emergentism

It has been a very long time since emergentism was the standard account within

philosophy of mind, however an increasing number of scientists and philosophers are

returning to the idea.78 Emergentism has been construed in many ways. The classic

example, however, would have to be British emergentism.79 British emergentism was

prominent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In effect it was a view about the

relationship between physical properties on the one hand and higher order properties

on the other. The emergentists claimed that higher order kinds possess causal

capacities that cannot be traced to the intrinsic casual capacities of their parts, nor the

relations that pertain between them. However, the emergentists were not substance

dualists. Rather, like non-reductive physicalists, they believed that certain wholes,

though constituted by physical kinds, possessed properties that are not physical.

Crucially, being causally efficacious, these properties were held to be capable of

downward causation, the phenomenon whereby macro level phenomena can alter the

course of events at a micro level. Moreover, these properties were held to be novel and

unpredictable in the sense that they could not be deduced from the properties on which

they supervene, and could only be known a posteriori, through scientific experiment—

at the risk of abusing the term, one could say that emergentists thought there is an

explanatory gap between emergent properties and the physical systems from which

they arise. Finally, while emergentists were committed to the unpredictability of

emergent properties, they did not believe that this endangered the status of the laws

77 D Lewis, ‘Reduction of Mind’, in S. Guttenplan (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, Blackwell, Oxford, 1994, p. 53. 78 J Kim, Mind in a Physical World, MIT Press, Massachusetts, 1998. pp. 8-9; Silberstein, ‘The Search for Ontological Emergence’, pp. 184-85. 79 These historical details were taken from B McLaughlin, ‘The Rise and Fall of British Emergentism’, in M. Bedau, & Humphreys, P. (ed.), Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2008.

48

that pertain to emergent phenomena, nor determinism more generally. For

emergentists, the laws of nature that pertain to emergence are no more or less rigorous,

universal, or exceptionless as those of physics.

Emergentism shares a number of commitments with non-reductive

physicalism. Like non-reductive physicalists, emergentists believe that all natural

kinds are constituted by physical kinds.80 Accordingly, while they themselves never

used the term one could say that the British emergentists were committed to token

physicalism. Moreover, the emergentists believed that the relationship between

emergent properties and their substrate was invariant and deterministic.81 Accordingly,

it is fair to say that they were also committed to global supervenience of higher order

properties on physical properties.82 Finally, because they held that chemical, biological

and psychological properties are strictly irreducible, emergentists held a view that was

entirely consistent with multiple realisability. One of the implications of multiple

realisability is that higher order properties are not identical to the physical properties

on which they supervene but, rather, represent further properties over and above

physical properties. One reason why such properties could exist is because they are

emergent. Where emergentism and non-reductive physicalism diverge is over the

causal closure of the physical. As I said above, an important corollary of this principle

is that physics can, at least in principle, explain all events without making reference to

the other sciences. Meanwhile emergentism posits fundamental causal powers that

reside outside the domain of the physical, that are, in other words, something entirely

new, over and above physical properties. Accordingly, if emergent properties exist

then there will be events that can only be explained in terms of emergent causal

powers, from which it would follow that physics is not a complete science, and

therefore that causal closure is false. Accordingly, emergentism can be defined as non-

reductive physicalism minus the causal closure of the physical.83

Like those that characterise non-reductive physicalism, these principles come

together to form a particular picture of nature. Within this picture nature is like a

pyramid, or a sedimentary rock, within which the domains of nature represent

successive strata. With each new strata arrives an entirely new domain of nature with

80 Ibid., p. 19. 81 Ibid., p. 37. 82 T Horgan, ‘From Supervenience to Superdupervenience: Meeting the Demands of the Material World’, Mind, Causation, World, Philosophical Perspectives, vol. 102, no. 408, 1993, p. 559. 83 I am obviously following Kim in this construal of emergentism. J Kim, Philosophy of Mind, Westview, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2006. pp. 290-97.

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its own natural kinds and laws which exist over and above those of the previous one.

No one domain is sufficient to account for the totality of nature, the physical included.

Instead one requires each and every level in order to explain how natural events

unfold, just like one needs every level of a pyramid in order to construct a pyramid.

Assessing the Frameworks

It should go without saying that reductionism is not an appropriate framework for

naturalising phenomenology. Of the three desiderata I identified above reductionism

only meets one; namely, that it is not dualist. As for the second and third desiderata of

neurophenomenology, reductionism denies both. Because reductionism says that all

natural kinds and laws are physical kinds and laws, it entails that the behaviour of

higher order kinds is just the concatenation of the behaviour of a large number of

physical kinds. They cannot, therefore, be in any way autonomous from the physical

domain. Moreover, because the mind is one such natural kind, reductionism further

entails that the mind is in fact just a physical phenomena, albeit a very complicated

one. This means that reductionism leaves no space for the possibility that the mind

constitutes the world; indeed it means the opposite, namely that the physical domain

constitutes the mind without remainder.

While non-reductive physicalism differs significantly from reductionism, and

enjoys much wider support, its prospects of satisfying neurophenomenology’s

desiderata are similarly simple to assess. Like reductionism, non-reductive

physicalism is not dualist. Also like reductionism, non-reductive physicalism is

inconsistent with the causal autonomy of higher order kinds. This is because the

principle of causal closure forms one of its core commitments. As I have already said,

whether weak or strong this principle entails that higher order phenomena are

completely coincident with physical phenomena. By contrast, if higher order kinds

were causally autonomous they would behave independently of events at the physical

level, and would thereby render causal closure false. As for the third desiderata, non-

reductive physicalism is similarly incapable of accommodating neurophenomenology,

and for similar reasons. According to non-reductive physicalism the mind relates to

the physical domain like a pattern in a dot matrix relates to the dots: it may not be

identical to them but it is nevertheless constituted by them without remainder.

Moreover, this relation is asymmetric: it is the dots that necessitate the pattern.

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Accordingly, for non-reductive physicalists the mind is necessitated by the physical,

and it does nothing that the physical kinds which constitute it do not themselves do. It

cannot, therefore, serve as the foundation for the structures of nature.

Unlike reductionism and non-reductive physicalism, emergentism can

accommodate at least two of neurophenomenology’s desiderata. Like the other two

frameworks, emergentism is not dualist. Unlike the other two frameworks,

emergentism can accommodate causally autonomous higher order kinds. To recall,

emergentism is the view that certain properties of higher order kinds, in particular the

causal ones, are strictly irreducible to physical properties and, moreover, possess the

capacity to influence events at the physical level via downward causation. While the

terminology may differ, and while the latter account may be more scientifically

nuanced, this is no different to the claim that higher order kinds subordinate their

physical substrate in a process of global-to-local causation. Unfortunately British

emergentism does not enjoy the same success with regards to the third desiderata of

neurophenomenology. To recall, British emergentism is consistent with both token and

supervenience physicalism. Emergentists held that all natural kinds are composed of

physical kinds, but that some natural kinds have properties that are not physical

properties. Though they are not physical, emergent phenomena are nevertheless

embedded in a broader matrix that does consist of physical phenomena. Moreover,

emergentism never strayed from the view that physical kinds come first. It is only

once specific basal conditions are met that emergent phenomena emerge. Until then

there are just physical phenomena. Accordingly, there is no way the mind could play a

role in the way the world is structured.

None of this is very surprising. The first desiderata of neurophenomenology is

uncontroversial. The second desiderata, though uncommon, nevertheless represents an

idea that enjoys widespread currency (if not acceptance). Meanwhile, the third

desiderata is, at least prima facie, entirely uncommon. By claiming that the mind plays

a role in the constitution of nature neurophenomenologists are diverging from an

assumption that underlies all three of the frameworks I have considered, indeed which

has arguably always underlain naturalism, namely, that nature is mind-independent,

and therefore that science parses nature into kinds and laws like a butcher carves an

animal at its joints. Therefore it is no surprise that conventional naturalistic

frameworks cannot accommodate the third desiderata of neurophenomenology, for it

represents the very point at which neurophenomenology diverges from established

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ideas about naturalism, nature and the place of the mind within it. This point becomes

even more obvious when one considers that neurophenomenology is expressly

inspired by the phenomenological tradition which itself has been, if not wholly, at

least predominantly anti-naturalistic—though not anti-scientistic. In light of this it

would arguably be inappropriate if neurophenomenology didn’t diverge in some way

from established accounts of nature. The upshot is that neurophenomenology is

inconsistent with all the conventional accounts of what it means to be naturalistic,

from which it follows that the only way it is going to count as naturalistic is on the

basis of a novel account of naturalism.

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Chapter 3: Pragmatic Naturalism as a Framework for Naturalising Phenomenology

In the previous chapter I argued that neurophenomenology cannot be accommodated

by conventional accounts of naturalism. This was due to the fact that only one of the

three could accommodate causally autonomous higher order kinds, and that none were

consistent with the idea that the mind and nature co-constitute one another. This leaves

neurophenomenology looking decidedly unconventional—and indeed it is. However,

as I hope to show in this chapter, it is not entirely unprecedented. In particular, I hope

to show that neurophenomenology shares a strong resemblance with a position that has

recently emerged within the philosophy of science. This position is known as

pragmatic naturalism, and it is due to Philip Kitcher.

Motivated by an array of issues in philosophy of science and metaphysics,

pragmatic naturalism represents a ‘modest kind of realism’ that attempts to do justice

to our daily experience of the recalcitrance of nature, whilst at the time allowing for

the possibility that there might be more than one way of parsing the world into objects,

and by extension that there might be more than one correct way of classifying it. Like

the philosophical tradition upon which it draws, pragmatism, pragmatic naturalism

prioritises explanatory practice over a priori argumentation, and thereby promises to

accommodate a large array of explanatory practices that have previously been ruled

out by reductionistic or physicalistic considerations. However, where the pragmatists

may have been open to the accusation of subjectivism, Kitcher insists that his

idiosyncratic combination of realism and pluralism is consistent with a correspondence

theory of truth, and therefore with the possibility that some explanations better reflect

reality than others. This in turn is made possible by a relatively unconventional picture

of the mind’s place in nature that accords it a role in the constitution of the structures

of nature without entailing that it is solely responsible for them, which is itself

motivated by a deeper analysis of just what is required for realism, or ‘real realism’ as

Kitcher likes to call it.

Though they emerged from different dialectical contexts, pragmatic naturalism

and neurophenomenology have a lot in common. They both proceed on the basis of a

deep respect for scientific practice and a pragmatic attitude towards the a priori

concerns typical of philosophy of mind and metaphysics. More importantly for my

purposes, they both accord independent ontological status to the explanatory posits of

the higher order sciences, and they both accord the mind a role in the constitution of

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nature whilst nevertheless insisting that it is still part of it. Of course this is not to say

that they are identical positions. At the very least they use divergent language and

draw on different historical traditions. They also differ in their scope and

systematicity. Whereas pragmatic naturalism represents a more or less complete

worldview which is applicable to all the sciences (and even ethics), and which at least

attempts to address broader metaphysical and epistemological concerns,

neurophenomenology has been developed within the confines of philosophy of mind,

phenomenology, and cognitive science, and has not, therefore, achieved the same

scope.

It is to this contention, that pragmatic naturalism could serve as the broader

naturalistic framework that neurophenomenology is in need of, that the current chapter

will be dedicated. To begin with I will recapitulate the central themes of pragmatic

naturalism, beginning with its motivation in the failure of reductionism in biology,

then moving on to (what I believe are) its two most important moving parts. Once I

have presented the key features of pragmatic naturalism I will attempt to show that it

is consistent with the project of naturalising phenomenology as I have defined it. If I

am successful, this will enable me to show that pragmatic naturalism is effectively a

ready made framework for naturalising phenomenology.

A quick caveat bears mention before proceeding. I take it that part of the task

of identifying a brand of naturalism that is friendly to neurophenomenology is the

need to render that brand of naturalism at the very least plausible, for otherwise the

whole exercise of identifying a framework in the first place would be futile.

Accordingly, in the process of establishing that pragmatic naturalism can serve as a

ready made framework for neurophenomenology I will also point out where and why I

believe pragmatic naturalism is plausible as a brand of naturalism. However, I do not

intend to suggest that in doing so I am mounting a substantial defence of Kitcher’s

position. That this means leaving a lot of questions unanswered is a limitation I simply

have to accept given the space constraints of this thesis.

The Motivation for Pragmatic Naturalism

As I said above, pragmatic naturalism is borne of longstanding problems in the

philosophy of biology. These problems are manifold and highly complex, so here I

have no choice but to rely on two simple and accessible examples. These two

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problems are the reduction of biological species to biological individuals and the

reduction of Mendelian genetics to molecular genetics. Respectively, these two

problems represent a failure of structural and functional reduction, and therefore cover

the two ways in which reductionism works—i.e. in terms of natural kinds and natural

laws. There are no doubt other examples, both within philosophy of biology and

beyond it, of these two ways in which reduction can fail. I have simply chosen these

two examples because they are both prominent and accessible to a non-scientific

audience. Moreover, in presenting these problems I do not purport to be mounting a

comprehensive argument against reductionism in biology. The examples discussed

below are intended as motivation only. That said, it is important to note that the two

anti-reductionist arguments I will summarise below represent longstanding and

defendable positions within the philosophy of biology. In the context of an

investigation into the kind of naturalism required by neurophenomenology I think this

is sufficient.

The problem of species can be summarised thus: the variety of ways in which

species membership is currently conceived in biology cannot possibly be condensed

into a single criterion, meaning that there is no way of partitioning the domain of

biological individuals into non-overlapping natural kinds, or species, and consequently

that it is impossible to reduce the domain of species to the domain of biological

individuals.84 Unidimensional criteria of species membership are either morphological

or evolutionary. As the traditional criterion by which individuals were sorted into

species, the morphological criterion has always faced the problem of intra-species

variation, the fact that features can vary more within a species than between them, and

therefore cannot by itself demarcate individuals into species. The second kind of

unidimensional criteria are evolutionary, and can be either biologically or

genealogically inspired. The biological criterion rests on the assumption that species

are in fact breeding populations. This criterion faces the problem of hybridisation, for

there are many situations where one breeding population blends gradually into another

and thereby blurs any potential boundary between the two. As for the genealogical

criterion, the biggest problem once again lies in the demarcation of species. For if, as

the genealogical criterion says, species are discrete and uniform genealogical units,

then individuals and species are coextensive, for the only truly discrete and uniform

84 For a fuller presentation of this argument see J Dupré, The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations for the Disunity of Science, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1993. Ch. 3.

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genealogical unit is the individual. Thus, to date, each attempt to articulate a

unidimensional criterion for species membership has failed, leaving no uniform way of

demarcating the domain of biological individuals into discrete species. Because

decompositional reduction requires that the reduced domain be partitioned into non-

overlapping subsets, this means that species cannot be micro-reduced to individuals in

the way Oppenheim and Putnam had expected that they would be. By contrast,

because global logical supervenience and token physicalism are consistent with the

failure of structural identity, the messiness of biological kinds does not necessarily

pose a problem for non-reductive physicalism.85

The second problem, the irreducibility of Mendelian genetics to molecular

genetics, turns on the fact that they speak about different things.86 Mendelian genetics

aims to explain the transmission of gross morphological features from one generation

to another, such as eye and hair colour in humans, in terms of putative genetic units

called chromosomes, which are themselves held to consist of numerous genes.

Molecular genetics, by contrast, aims to explain the transmission of individual genes

and their role in their development of individual organisms. Now, it is uncontroversial

that many different genes contribute to the development of a single gross feature and,

moreover, that a single gene contributes to many different gross features. From this it

follows that a Mendelian chromosome, which 'codes' for a gross feature, is a

conjunction of structurally and functionally diverse genes. Not only is it likely to be

practically impossible to identify each (putative) chromosome with such a conjunction

of genes, the functional profile of individual genes, when considered in isolation, will

not superpose to form the functional profile of the chromosomes which they

collectively constitute. Thus even if the practical problems of reduction could be put to

one side, it would seem that the behaviour of Mendelian chromosomes could not be

decomposed into that of molecular genes anyway. This arises because the two

accounts of heredity speak about different things. Mendelian genetics aims to explain

the behaviour, or function, of collocations of genes considered as a whole, whereas

molecular genetics aims to explain the behaviour, or function, of individual genes; and

the behaviours of the two diverge. Accordingly, the functional divergence of

Mendelian chromosomes and molecular genes presents an obstacle to the micro-

reduction of biological laws to chemical and physical laws. Moreover, unlike the first 85 Provided of course that the messy higher order kinds in question behave in accordance with the causal closure of the physical. 86 Once again, I am only presenting a summary of this argument. For a fuller exposition see Dupré, The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations for the Disunity of Science. Ch. 6.

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problem, the second problem is an issue for non-reductive physicalism. This is

because it has consequences for causation. As I said above, non-reductive physicalism

is committed to the causal closure of the physical, and whether weak or strong causal

closure requires that all causation mirrors physical causation. But if the functional

profiles offered by Mendelian and molecular genetics are not coextensive, then the

former is going to contravene causal closure. The second problem is therefore an issue

for both reductionism and non-reductive physicalism.

The Key Components of Pragmatic Naturalism

For the purposes of this thesis pragmatic naturalism can be characterised by two

interrelated claims, both of which were developed in response to the problems of

reduction I summarised above (among others). The first of these is a claim about the

nature of reality, which I will label metaphysical disunity following Dupré, and the

second is a claim about the nature of the relation between reality and observer, which I

will label real realism following Kitcher. Together these concepts form a variety of

naturalism, pragmatic naturalism, according to which our corporeal and cognitive

capacities, and our social and historical context, play a role in the way we

conceptualise nature, from which it follows that nature can be mind-independent and

yet such that there is more than one true, or correct, way of classifying it.

Claim One: Metaphysical Disunity

The observation that there remain difficulties with reductionism in biology 60 years

after the discovery of DNA has led some philosophers, notably Dupré and Kitcher, to

advocate an empirically motivated pluralism. In the case of species, Kitcher has long

advocated for pluralism on both conceptual and sociological grounds—i.e. on the

grounds that the criteria themselves are conceptually inadequate, and that in practice

biologists use a plurality of criteria.87 Dupré has taken this further in advocating for

wholesale ontological pluralism, which he variously refers to as promiscuous realism

and metaphysical disunity. Dupré describes metaphysical disunity in the following

terms,

87 P Kitcher, ‘Some Puzzles about Species’, in M. Ruse (ed.), What the Philosophy of Biology Is, Kluwer Academic, Dordrecht, 1989.

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The most general positive doctrine I shall advocate is pluralism: first, in

opposition to an essentialist doctrine of natural kinds, pluralism as the claim

that there are many equally legitimate ways of dividing the world into kinds…

and second, in opposition to reductionism, pluralism as the insistence on the

equal reality and causal efficacy of objects both large and small.88

However, where pluralism is generally associated with a denial of realism, Dupré

believes his position is consistent with realism. In his words,

[I]t is my impression that most theorists who advocate such pluralistic

positions think that the admission of equal status to so many kinds must

amount to denial of real status to any. I see no reason why many overlapping

and intersecting kinds might not be equally real… For if there are numerous

distinct ways of classifying objects into real kinds, any one of which schemes

of classification could provide the basis for a properly grounded project of

scientific inquiry, then there can be no reason to expect a convergence of these

projects of inquiry onto one grand theoretical system… I do not take this as

contradicting the claim that good scientific research can, nevertheless, describe

the way things objectively are. It is just that a particular scientific project can

describe only one of the many ways things are.89

By adopting this view Dupré is in effect dispensing with reductionism’s chief

means of triage. It is the assumption that the world is unified by physics—or that all

natural kinds and natural laws decompose into those of physics—that justifies ruling

posits in and out on the basis of their reducibility to physics. Accordingly, in the

absence of this constraint there is little but empirical success (and perhaps

epistemological virtue) with which to judge the truth of scientific explanations.

Naturally, this has implications for the identification of natural kinds and causal

powers. In the case of kinds, it means he is happy to accept that for the identification

of a natural kind it is sufficient that its instances share the same properties or

88 Dupré, The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations for the Disunity of Science, pp. 6-7. 89 ———, ‘Metaphysical Disorder and Scientific Disunity’, in P Galison, & Stump, D. (ed.), The Disunity of Science: Boundaries, Contexts, and Power, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1996, pp. 105-06.

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dispositions and are susceptible to the same forces.90 In the case of causation, it means

he is happy to accept that for the attribution of a causal power to a natural kind it is

sufficient to show that its presence or absence within a given causal context correlates

with a specific outcome.91 These two definitions can be contrasted with a reductive

account of kinds and causes, according to which the identification of a unique

microstructure is a necessary and sufficient condition of the definition of a natural

kind, and the identification of a mechanism, or series of mechanisms, is a necessary

and sufficient condition for the attribution of a causal power to a natural kind.

Importantly, by the lights of Dupré’s definitions the postulates of the special

sciences are safe from elimination. For good or bad, Dupré’s account of kinds and

causal powers effectively ties their reality to the explanatory success of the models

within which they feature, for in order to establish the existence of a kind or causal

power it is sufficient that it feature in an empirically successful model of some aspect

of the world. This means that any theoretical posit that stands up to empirical

verification is safe from reductive elimination, species and Mendelian chromosomes

included. Importantly, this means that Dupré’s position can accommodate the causally

autonomous higher order kinds that neither reductionism nor non-reductive

physicalism can. Whereas reductionism rules out causally autonomous higher order

kinds as a mater of principle, and non-reductive physicalism rules them out in virtue of

its commitment to the causal closure of the physical, Dupré’s position rules nothing

out on the basis of its consistency or otherwise with the causal powers of physical

phenomena. Insofar as the reality of posits is concerned, all that matters for Dupré is

that a posit can be shown to stand up to empirical experimentation, and if this means

contradicting causal closure then he couldn’t care less (indeed he would take it as

evidence that closure is false).92

The unconventional nature of this suggestion, that one abandon causal closure,

might lead some to conclude that Dupré’s position is in fact inconsistent with a

scientific worldview on the basis that the principle of causal closure is an essential

commitment of naturalism, and therefore that one cannot abandon it without

abandoning the scientific worldview altogether.93 In fact, in general outline Dupré’s

position is entirely consistent with a standard account of causation, namely

90 ———, The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations for the Disunity of Science, p. 80. 91 Ibid., pp. 201-05. 92 Ibid., p. 102. 93 Such as Jaegwon Kim, for instance. See Kim, Philosophy of Mind, p. 195.

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counterfactual causation, and it is also consistent with the kind of causal stories found

in fundamental physics. In general, counterfactual accounts of causation attribute a

given causal power to a given causal entity on the basis that, if it had not been present

in a given causal context, then the effect associated with it would not have come

about. It does not go so far as to say that the entity itself is solely responsible for the

effect but, rather, says that in conjunction with a causal context, the causal entity will

bring about a given effect. This means that the provenance of a given causal power is

not relevant to counterfactual accounts, from which it follows that counterfactual

accounts of causation are—in general outline at least—entirely consistent with causal

powers that are attributed on the basis of the behaviour of whole states as opposed to

individual elements within those states. Further, it is exactly these kinds of causal

stories that one finds in fundamental physics. To take one prominent example,

quantum entanglement is a commonly accepted phenomenon within contemporary

physics, yet it straightforwardly entails that the behaviour of certain systems can only

be explained in terms of whole states. Entanglement is the phenomenon whereby the

behaviour of a system composed of two or more particles cannot be decomposed into

the behaviour of those particles themselves.94 This occurs, for instance, when a spin-0

particle decays into two spin-1/2 particles, which then proceed to spin in opposite

directions with exactly the same angular momentum, irrespective of how far apart

they are, or how slow or fast they spin.95 Accordingly, the behaviour of the two

particles must be explained in terms of the whole states they form together rather than

their behaviour as individual elements within those states. This in turn amounts to a

broadly counterfactual account of causation according to which the causal powers of a

given phenomenon—the system of two particles—can only be posited on the basis of

the whole states within which they feature, and therefore not attributed to the particles

themselves.96 Now, the point of all this is that there is no reason why the causal

powers of structurally complex higher order kinds could not be exactly the same,

meaning that their causal powers could also be attributed on the basis of the whole

states within which they feature; and all this without contradicting a standard account

of causation or fundamental physics—at least, once again, not in broad outline.97 As

such, to those who claim one cannot be an honest-to-goodness naturalist without 94 M Silberstein, ‘Converging on Emergence’, Journal of Conciousness Studies, vol. 8, no. 9-10, 2001. 95 ———, ‘Emergence & The Mind-Body Problem’, Journal of Conciousness Studies, vol. 5, no. 4, 1998, p. 468. 96 B Loewer, ‘Review of Kim: Mind in a Physical World’, Journal of Philosophy, vol. 98, no. 315-24, 2001, p. 323. 97 D Ross, & Spurrett, D., ‘What to say to a skeptical metaphysician: A defense manual for cognitive and behavioural scientists’, Behavioural and Brain Sciences, vol. 27, 2004, pp. 622-23.

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casual closure, I respond that, in general outline, what Dupré is proposing is entirely

consistent with a standard account of causation, and, moreover, with key concepts

from fundamental physics.

Finally, in case it doesn’t go without saying, what Dupré is effectively

advocating is a wholesale commitment to empiricism. To recall, Oppenheim and

Putnam proposed their account of reductionism as an empirical hypothesis. They

claimed that the success of reductionism to that date, which consisted largely in that of

thermodynamics to statistical mechanics and purely speculative claims about the

potential of DNA to unify biology, justified holding their position. As it stands now,

however, in the everyday practice of science it would seem that the reductionist’s

dream of a unified science is further away than ever, despite decades of hard work by

scientists and philosophers.98 From this it follows that, insofar as reductionism is an

empirical hypothesis, the burden of evidence lies squarely with the reductionist, not

the anti-reductionist. Thus Dupré is claiming that the notion that there is a single

perspective from which all aspects of the world can be explained in an internally

consistent and unified explanatory framework is simply not borne out by the evidence

of science over the last 50 years. As such the underlying presumption of this notion,

that the world possesses a unique and orderly structure which is revealed by physics, is

not borne out either. Accordingly, believing that an honest empiricist "should assume

no more about the world than is necessary to account for our most successful

investigations of it," Dupré is willing to entertain the idea that the world is disunified;

98 One might think that the startling success of the natural sciences over the past century or two is justification enough for the kind of view that Kim holds. But what success, and for whom? Sure, science has made remarkable progress in providing us with greater and greater powers of manipulation over our environment. But it hasn't made a huge amount of progress in providing an explanation of everything in terms of physics. Apart from the reduction of the Mendeleevian periodic table to atomic physics, thermodynamics to statistical mechanics, and optics to electromagnetism, such cut and dried reductions are in fact extremely rare. In practice reduction resembles a patchwork whereby the conceptual apparatus of macro and micro levels co-evolve in response to one another, and which progresses on a case by case basis rather than a systematic one. (See PS Churchland, ‘A neurophilosophical slant on consciousness research’, Progress in Brain Research, vol. 149, 2005, p. 286; W Wimsatt, ‘Reductionism and its heuristics: Making methodological reductionism honest’, Synthese, vol. 151, 2006, p. 450; K Schaffner, ‘Reduction: the Cheshire cat problem and a return to roots’, Synthese, vol. 151, 2006, pp. 383-84; S Sarkar, ‘Models of Reduction and Categories of Reductionism’, Synthese, vol. 91, no. 3, 1992, pp. 175-76.) Kenneth Schaffner, the man who attempted to extend the Nagelian model of reduction to the biological sciences, has since admitted that in practice science just doesn't look like that. (Schaffner, ‘Reduction: the Cheshire cat problem and a return to roots’, pp. 383-84.) This is also why Kitcher, whose name was long synonymous with unificationism, has pronounced that "The Unity of Science Movement is dead." (P Kitcher, ‘Unification as a Regulative Ideal’, Perspectives on Science, vol. 7, no. 3, 1999, p. 337.) Even Ross, Ladyman and Collier, in their unificationist response to Dupré, admit that the increasing multiplicity of, and discordance between, scientific institutions is such that the burden of argument lies with the unificationist, not the Dupré disunity theorist. (D Ross, Ladyman, J., & Collier, J., ‘Rainforest Realism and the Unity of Science’, in J. Ladyman, Ross, D., Spurrett, D., & Collier, J. (ed.), Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, p. 194.) Obviously the failure of reductionism to date cannot definitively disprove reductionism because one can always appeal to the nebulous figure of future progress. However that is not the point. The point is if one were truly guided by empirical results, one would have to favour the disunity thesis over the unity thesis.

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that, in other words, there is an extreme diversity of things in the world that behave in

an extreme diversity of ways. 99

Claim Two: Real Realism

In case it doesn’t go without saying, Dupré’s view is at odds with conventional ideas

about realism. This is because it diverges from the idea, seemingly traditional to

realism, that

[t]he world comes prepackaged into units, and a proper account of the truth and

objectivity of the sciences must incorporate the idea that we aim for, and

sometimes achieve, descriptions that correspond to… natural divisions.100

In other words, realism is conventionally associated with the idea that the world is

structured independently of human capacities or concerns, and therefore that there are

natural divisions between objects that exist prior to, and independently of, the human

act of classification. From this idea it follows that there is a uniquely correct way of

classifying nature, for it entails that all the sciences are classifying one and the same

set of objects and therefore that they ought to lead to mutually consistent classificatory

systems. Meanwhile, Dupré is claiming that the world can be divided into objects in a

variety of ways, and therefore that the sciences need not necessarily lead to mutually

consistent classificatory systems; without, however, wanting to relinquish the idea that

the world exists independently of human observers, and therefore that there exist

natural divisions between objects about which we can be right or wrong. This leads

him to the conclusion that the world is disunified; that, in other words, the world is

crisscrossed by a cacophony of natural boundaries that overlap and intersect one

another. While strictly speaking there is no reason why one cannot be a realist and also

believe the world is disunified, I think it’s fair to say that this represents a significant

deviation from the conventional kind of realism I defined above.

Accordingly, disunity requires an alternative model of the relation between

observer and world than that which is offered by conventional realism. If the

conventional picture consists of a neat and orderly world sitting over against an

99 Dupré, The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations for the Disunity of Science, p. 202. 100 P Kitcher, Science, Truth and Democracy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2001. p. 43.

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observer that passively receives information about it, the kind required by disunity

needs to make sense of the possibility that one and the same world can not only appear

different, but actually be different, from different perspectives. For if we assume that

the problems facing the reduction of biology are faced by at least the other special

sciences—ecology, psychology, sociology, economics etc.—then insofar as one

accords equal ontological status to each and every empirically verifiable classificatory

system, one will be faced with a series of equally valid yet divergent ways in which to

parse the world into objects, from which it would seem to follow that the world

possesses multiple structures at once; or in other words, that there are multiple

worlds—i.e. the world according to physics, the world according to biology, and so

on; and this, I think it is fair to say, is wildly different to the worldview conventionally

associated with realism.

It is here that Kitcher’s concept of real realism becomes relevant. On one

construal, Kitcher’s position can be traced to the recognition, found in Dupré, that no

branch of science is uniquely qualified as the ultimate arbiter of what does and does

not exist. Having been a major proponent of the problems of reductionism in biology

that I summarised above (and of the philosophy of biology in general), Kitcher is

clearly committed to the kind of epistemic egalitarianism that one finds in Dupré.

However, while Kitcher, like Dupré, accepts that this egalitarianism leads to a

proliferation of worldviews, he, unlike Dupré, attempts to render it plausible for those

less inclined to simply disregard traditional epistemological and metaphysical

concerns. Oddly enough, he does this by returning to, and reinterpreting, the

epistemological and metaphysical principles of pragmatism. To see how this works it

is best to begin with a couple of old metaphors.

The first is one of Plato's metaphors, that nature is like a giant animal at whose

joints the knowing philosopher carves. This metaphor is entirely consistent with

Oppenheim and Putnam's conception of nature. By claiming that the relation of

science to nature is like that of butcher to animal, one is in effect saying that nature

comes pre-packaged into discrete kinds and causes, and that it is the job of science to

discover the natural divisions that demarcate them. Accordingly, for those who

subscribe to Plato's metaphor there is only one way of classifying reality. By contrast

Dupré and Kitcher want to allow for alternative classifications of reality, without,

however, thereby undermining its mind-independence. To this end Kitcher returns to

William James’ metaphor that nature is like a giant marble block out of which we

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sculpt our respective realities.101 By claiming that the relation of science to nature is

like a sculptor to marble, one is in effect saying that nature can be divided in any

number of equally legitimate ways. For there are uncountably many ways of dividing

up a given block of marble, every one of which will yield a unique array of pieces (or

objects), yet that does not mean that the pieces formed by such divisions do not exist

independently of their sculptors’ conceptions of them.

In advocating a return to James’ metaphor Kitcher is in effect advocating a

return to the old pragmatist maxim that ‘truth happens to an idea,’ however he does so

with a specific interpretation in mind: namely, that the subject plays a constructive role

in the structure of reality, but not that they construct it entirely—just like the sculptor

doesn’t construct the marble out of which they carve their sculpture, yet nevertheless

determines its ultimate shape.102 In other words, if the traditional realist picture says

that the world comes prepackaged into discrete kinds and causes about which the

subject passively receives information, Kitcher’s says that the boundaries that

demarcate the totality of nature into discrete kinds and causes are the outcome of the

intersection of an independently existing world on the one hand, and our corporeal and

cognitive capacities on the other. In Kitcher’s words,

Pragmatism recapitulates the analogy that James originally introduces in

Principles of Psychology: even with respect to sensory experience, the subject

plays a constructive role, because even though “[w]e receive the marble,… we

carve the statue ourselves.” The world allows division into objects and

categories of objects in many different ways, and we choose the boundaries

and class limits that suit our purposes. Agreement with reality is subsequent to

this initial decision… Human beings with different interests—and, more

radically, other cognitive creatures with different capacities—would respond to

the same independent reality in distinct ways, generating alternative schemes

for dividing it up. Properly understood, there would be no incompatibility

among the statements generated and accepted by the users of the rival schemes,

simply differences in the ease with which the users could pursue their diverse

projects.103

101 ———, Preludes to Pragmatism: Towards a Reconstruction of Philosophy, Oxford University Press, New York, 2012. p. 134. 102 Ibid., pp. 134-39. 103 Ibid., p. 134.

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As the last sentence of this quote suggests, Kitcher reconciles these two

seemingly antithetical claims—that the world exists independently of the subject, and

that the subject plays a constructive role in the genesis of its structure—by adopting

another pragmatist maxim, this time that ‘the true is only the expedient in the way of

our thinking.’ However, once again, he does so with a very specific intention in mind,

namely that truth consists in sustained and systematic world-adjusting success. The

advantage to defining truth in this way is that, while it does not require that there be a

uniquely correct way of classifying the world, it nevertheless establishes a basis upon

which explanations can fail to correspond with reality. To see this it is sufficient to

observe that Kitcher’s position is consistent with the following two ideas, both of

which are central to any kind of realism about scientific postulates: one, that scientific

postulates represent states of affairs that exist independently of human observers, and

two, that the truth of scientific postulates consists in their correspondence with said

states.104 Now, provided explanatory success is measured in terms of the success of

our world-adjusting projects, there is no reason to believe that Kitcher’s position is

inconsistent with this basic correspondence theory of truth. By way of a working

definition, world-adjusting success requires the successful prediction of, and

intervention with, a recalcitrant world that regularly offers up resistance to our

projects. It requires that the world exist independently of our conceptions of it, such

that some representations lead to successful ventures in world-adjustment and that

some do not, but it does not require that there is one ultimate representation, for it is

entirely possible that two (or more) quite divergent representational schemas could

enjoy similar levels of world-adjusting success. This is due to the fact that world-

adjusting success can only be measured relative to the capacities and concerns of those

who attempt it. Two very different projects in world-adjustment could meet with

identical levels of success yet be premised on entirely different representational

schemas. Consider for example that the following sciences all enjoy remarkable

world-adjusting success even though they partition the world in very different ways:

ecology, zoology, physiology, molecular genetics, and physics.105 To this list one can

arguably add non-scientific specialities such as gastronomy, gardening, horticulture

104 ———, ‘On the Explanatory Role of Correspondence Truth’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 64, no. 2, 2002, p. 347. 105 For further discussion of the divergence between these sciences see Dupré, The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations for the Disunity of Science.

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and hunting (among others), for they also enjoy world adjusting success yet partition

the world in ways quite different to the institutional sciences.106 Moreover, it is

entirely conceivable that beings with different capacities and/or concerns would

pursue different world-adjusting projects, and would therefore arrive at different

conceptual schemas which nevertheless enjoy world-adjusting success. Accordingly, it

is possible to conceive of correspondence in terms of world-adjusting success without

committing to the further assumption that there is ultimately only one correct way of

classifying the world. Meanwhile however, conceiving of explanatory success in this

way nevertheless manages to establish the mind-independence of nature. For the only

way a representational schema can enjoy world adjusting success is because it divides

nature into discrete objects in a way that corresponds to natural boundaries. This of

course is not to say that there is only one set of natural divisions to represent, for it is

possible that the world is disunified yet independently existent, from which it would

follow that the world is criss-crossed by different sets of natural boundaries that

overlap and intersect one another, and therefore that more than one classificatory

schema can enjoy correspondence with natural boundaries.

Like the other brands of naturalism I have considered this one is associated

with a particular picture of nature and our place in it. Oddly enough, this picture is best

explicated with the help of Quine. This is because it not only shares a precedence with,

but is directly inspired by, Quine’s concept of ontological relativity.107 Indeed one

could arguably summarise the conjunction of Kitcher’s and Dupré’s positions as an

elaboration on this very concept. In the first place, Dupré explicitly states that his

disunity hypothesis is inspired by Quine's famous injunction to commit to only those

ontological entities we need to appeal to in our successful explanations.108 In fact

Dupré's argument could be paraphrased as Quine's essay entitled "Natural Kinds"

minus what Dupré would label an unjustified presumption of the epistemological

purity of science.109 For in this essay Quine portrays natural kinds as endlessly

reinterpretable similarity relations that emerge from our corporeal and cognitive

capacities. As the product of two divergent relations to the world, a pre-theoretical and

a scientific one, natural kinds are manifold. Quine’s answer to the proliferation of

natural kinds was to ascribe scientifically motivated kinds a privilege over those of a 106 Ibid. 107 Kitcher, Science, Truth and Democracy, p. 206. 108 WV Quine, Word and Object, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts, 1960. p. Ch. 7; Dupré, The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations for the Disunity of Science, p. 94. 109 WV Quine, ‘Natural Kinds’, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, Columbia University Press, New York, 1969.

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more pedestrian heritage. However, if, following Dupré, one denies that scientific

kinds are somehow privileged over their everyday counterparts, then it follows that the

world is populated by an extreme diversity of overlapping and intersecting natural

kinds. Furthermore, Kitcher’s idea that the world can be parsed in multiple equally

valid ways has a clear precedent in Quine's essays "On Speaking of Objects" and

"Ontological Relativity."110 In these essays Quine argues that natural kinds are to be

understood against a background theory, or language, which, moreover, is not

universal to all humans. To take his famous example, it is conceivable that there are

conceptual paradigms within which the things we call 'rabbits' do not exist, but within

which rabbit time-slices exist in their place. And moreover, just as there is no absolute

perspective when it comes to velocity, there is also no such perspective when it comes

to natural kinds. Accordingly there are manifold ways of parsing the world all of

which are empirically verifiable and one can do no more than calibrate them against

one another.

Thus runs the precis of Kitcher’s pragmatic naturalism, in which metaphysical

disunity and real realism come together to form the metaphysical and epistemological

foundation of an alternative brand of naturalism. According to this naturalism it is

entirely consistent with realism that there are equally valid yet divergent ways of

classifying reality. If we conceive of scientific disciplines as sculptors and nature as a

giant marble block, then it makes perfect sense that those scientists who set out to map

species don’t carve out the same shapes as those who set out to map atoms. That

different scientists come up with divergent maps for reality doesn’t mean that the

things they map don’t exist (or that one of them is wrong), just that they have mapped

reality in terms of different variables, in line with the different world-adjusting

projects they had at hand.

With this in place, the next step of my argument is to show that pragmatic

naturalism allows for naturalisation of phenomenology. I will turn to this task in a

moment, but first I would like to make a passing observation about Kitcher’s position.

The unconventional nature of Kitcher’s position might lead some to think that it isn’t

consistent with what science tells us about the world, and therefore that it is not after

all a plausible account of naturalism. However, while it is true that pragmatic

naturalism might seem a little far fetched at first site, it is in fact entirely consistent

110 ———, ‘Ontological Relativity ’, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays, Columbia, New York, 1969; ———, 'Speaking of Objects'.

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with what science tells us about our epistemological condition.111 From physiology

and zoology we know that different species experience their environment in different

ways according to their specific perceptual and cognitive capacities. We also know

that we are just one species among many and that our experience of the world is

specific to our corporeal capacities. If one accepts that science proceeds on the basis of

manifest properties, in the sense that the discovery of a natural kind or causal power

presupposes the prior identification of a cluster of manifest properties, this observation

suggests that scientific knowledge is circumscribed by our contingent corporeal

capacities. In other words, if we were smaller we might see divisions between things

that we currently do not, and this would cause us to be interested in 'objects' that we

are currently not. Similarly, if we were larger we would group objects that we

currently see divisions between. Moreover, at the risk of labouring the point, if we had

different vision, or used echolocation instead, we would encounter the world in a very

different manner, and this would have consequences for the questions we formulated

about it, and therefore by extension for the knowledge we formed on the basis of those

questions.

Further, from anthropology and sociology we also know that science is a

cultural phenomenon like any other. True, it may have a capacity for revealing truth

that other cultural practices do not. However, that is debatable, and even if it does that

does not discount the fact that contemporary scientific practice is the outcome of a

process of cultural evolution and diffusion that began in Western Europe during the

Enlightenment (or the mediaeval Islamic world, or ancient Greece, depending on how

far back one wants to go) and now covers the entire globe. Nor does it discount the

fact that it was concrete human individuals that were the vector of this process of

cultural evolution and diffusion. Accordingly, if one accepts that scientific enquiry is

carried out by historically and culturally situated agents, in the sense that it is carried

out by concrete human beings who have at their disposal historically specific theories

and technology, and who are responding to historically specific questions, then this

observation suggests that scientific knowledge is circumscribed by cultural and

historical factors as well. By extension, it also suggests that different sciences might

parse reality in different ways because they represent different cultural practices, each

with their own idiosyncratic evolutionary histories.

111 For a fuller presentation of these points see Kitcher, Science, Truth and Democracy. Ch 4-6.

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While I do not intend to suggest that pragmatic naturalism is entailed by

scientific practice (there are no doubt alternative interpretations of these observations),

nor that these observations amount to a defence of Kitcher’s position, they do reveal

that there is nothing in Kitcher’s position that contradicts what science tells us about

our epistemological condition. Therefore, claiming that reality might be accurately

represented in more than one way need not mark a departure from what science tells us

about our relationship with reality. Evidently this alone is not enough to render

pragmatic naturalism acceptable to everyone who calls themselves a naturalist,

however it is enough to render it plausible as an account of naturalism. In the context

of an investigation into the kind of naturalism within which phenomenology could be

naturalised, I think this is sufficient.

Assessing Pragmatic Naturalism

In the previous chapter I argued that three key commitments determine what brand of

naturalism is best suited to neurophenomenology. These were, one, that it is

metaphysically monist, two, that higher order kinds are causally autonomous, and

three, that subject and world co-constitute one another. That pragmatic naturalism

meets the first requirement is clear. Pragmatic naturalism is borne of a categorical

commitment to scientific practice. This strict empiricism ensures that only those

explanatory posits that can be verified via real world experimentation ought to be

ascribed ontological status. Given that it has been hitherto impossible to establish

substance dualism via experimentation this commitment effectively rules it out. It is

for this reason that Dupré is happy to endorse global supervenience theses,

If these additional assumptions [pertaining to local supervenience] are rejected,

then we will be driven to a merely global supervenience, in which the total

state of the universe is held to supervene on its microphysical state. And this

would surely be a thesis of such blinding epistemological vacuity as to add

nothing to the thesis of the nonexistence of the immaterial.112

112 Dupré, 'Metaphysical Disorder and Scientific Disunity', p. 109.

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Insofar as standard ideas about physicalism are concerned the problem for

pragmatic naturalism lies with causal closure. As I said above, pragmatic naturalism

proceeds on basis that no branch of science is uniquely qualified as the ultimate arbiter

of what does and does not exist. From this it follows that each and every empirically

verifiable classificatory system ought to be ascribed equal ontological status,

irrespective of whether they are mutually consistent. This in turn means that the

representational schemas of the higher order sciences are in effect autonomous, for

they are not required to conform with those of lower order sciences, physics included.

For this reason Dupré and Kitcher cannot accept the principle of the causal closure of

the physical, for if it was true the representational schemas of the higher order sciences

would have to mirror those of physics, and that is exactly the idea that Kitcher and

Dupré want to oppose.113 Accordingly, this means that pragmatic naturalism can also

satisfy the second desiderata identified above, namely that it allow for the causal

autonomy of higher order kinds. To reiterate, according to pragmatic naturalism a

natural kind is any phenomenon whose instances share the same properties or

dispositions and are subject to the same forces. I interpreted this to mean that, insofar

as a theoretical posit features in an empirically successful model of some aspect of the

world, it is taken to be a real feature of it. Thus, to the extent that

neurophenomenology produces empirically successful models of conscious

experience, and insofar as conscious experience is an aspect of the world, this means

that its theoretical posits should count as natural kinds with their own causal powers

(be them what they may). In other words, within this framework neurophenomenology

counts as a legitimate scientific activity, no more nor less a science than chemistry or

physics.

To make this clear I will turn to a prominent example from the literature

provided by Shaun Gallagher and show how it fits into the broader picture of

pragmatic naturalism. In this example a phenomenological structure is posited as a

non-reductive, cognitive level explanation of a particular cognitive disorder. This

phenomenological structure is posited as an underlying property of the mind that

invisibly structures our subject experience, and it is its malfunctioning which explains

the cognitive phenomenon in question. The structure in question is Gallagher’s

113 For a clearer picture of Dupré’s rejection of causal closure see ———, The Disorder of Things: Metaphysical Foundations for the Disunity of Science, pp. 99-102.

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distinction between a sense of ownership and a sense of agency.114 This distinction

was originally introduced by Gallagher for the purpose of explaining thought insertion

in schizophrenia. While the two senses often coincide, one's sense of ownership and

one's sense of agency for a given action can in fact be separated. In normal subjects

this occurs in involuntary movement. If for instance one is pushed from behind, one

will feel a sense of ownership for that movement, yet will not feel a sense of agency

for it. In the case of schizophrenia, one can have a sense of ownership for a given

action or thought, and yet feel as if someone or something else is the agent of it, as is

the case in thought insertion and delusions of (external) control. Thus, given the

existence of these two modes of experience, it makes sense that if one of them was

malfunctioning a person could experience a thought as one’s own yet nevertheless feel

as if they were not responsible for it.

Accordingly, the agency/ownership dichotomy stands as a non-reductive,

cognitive-level explanation of thought insertion. It follows that this phenomenological

structure, like all the others posited by neurophenomenologists, is in fact no different

to the higher order scientific posits that inspire Dupré and Kitcher. They are in effect

properties of a higher order natural kind, the mind, which are established on the basis

of the correspondence between representational schemas and real world states of

affairs—which, though not strictly the outcome of a world-adjusting action of human

beings, is nevertheless the outcome of a measurable world-adjustment that is of

interest to humans. Accordingly, the kind of phenomenology I have described—my

definition of neurophenomenology—would count as a legitimate science activity

within the context of pragmatic naturalism.

Finally, pragmatic naturalism can also accommodate the third core

commitment of neurophenomenology, namely that subject and world co-constitute one

another. According to pragmatic naturalism it is entirely consistent with realism that

there are equally valid yet divergent ways of classifying reality. If one accepts the

metaphor that the scientific disciplines’ relationship to nature is like that of different

sculptors to a single block of marble, then it makes perfect sense that different

scientists with different projects will parse one and the same reality in different ways,

and that this doesn’t mean the shapes they come up with don’t exist, just that they

have carved reality in terms of different variables, in line with the different world-

114 S Gallagher, ‘Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science’, Trends in Cognitive Science, vol. 4, no. 1, 2000.

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adjusting projects they had at hand. As I said above, by returning to James’ metaphor

Kitcher is in effect claiming that the subject plays a role in the way reality is divided

into objects without, however, constructing it—just like the sculptor doesn’t construct

the marble out of which they carve their sculpture, yet nevertheless determines the

shapes it is broken up into. However, in so doing he does not depart from what science

tells us about our epistemological condition: namely that we are animals that form

representations about a mind-independent environment and that the way we do so is

influenced by both our corporeal capacities and our cultural context. Accordingly, it is

fair to say that pragmatic naturalism accords the mind a role in the constitution of

nature whilst nevertheless insisting that it is still part of it, from which it follows that it

can accommodate the final desiderata of neurophenomenology. To recall, Thompson

and Varela hold that sensorimotor beings and their sensorimotor worlds emerge

together, as one, and that therefore it is impossible to attribute one or the other with

precedence. Accordingly, they claim that subject and world co-emerge, or co-

constitute one another. This in turn means that, like Kitcher, they believe scientific

truth is secondary to this originary event. Thus both neurophenomenology and

pragmatic naturalism accept that the ultimate foundation of scientific truth is not in the

mind-independence of nature but, rather, in the dialectical relationship between mind

and nature.

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Conclusion

If the arguments of the previous chapters are correct, pragmatic naturalism represents a

ready made naturalistic framework for neurophenomenology. First and foremost, it

meets the three key desiderata of neurophenomenology, for it is not dualist, it allows

for the causal autonomy of higher order kinds, and it allows for the co-constitution of

subject and world. Just as importantly, however, it is independently plausible, being

consistent with what science tells us about our epistemological condition, and also

conforming to a modest correspondence theory of truth. Altogether this leaves

pragmatic naturalism looking like a very simply solution to the problem that motivated

this thesis.

Of course this claim depends on the accuracy of my presentation of

neurophenomenology in the first place, because it is only on the basis that

neurophenomenology is not about the hard problem, but the naturalisation of a brand

of phenomenological psychology, that pragmatic naturalism represents a brand of

naturalism friendly to the concerns of neurophenomenologists. To recall, in chapter

one I explicated the explicit goal of neurophenomenology: to effect a radical revision

of the metaphysical framework of western philosophy by naturalising phenomenology,

and thereby resolve the hard problem. However, in light of a careful reading of

Chalmers’ argument it became apparent that neurophenomenology cannot resolve the

hard problem, let alone redefine the metaphysical framework of western philosophy.

This was due to the fact that, at base, what neurophenomenologists put forward is no

different to the psycho-physical theories that have preceded them. What they have

done is propose a structural-functional account (dynamic systems) of a further

structural phenomenon (psychological structures). Accordingly, their proposal remains

as vulnerable to Chalmers’ argument as those that preceded it. For it remains possible

to conceive of a possible world in which said structures were instantiated in the

absence of conscious experience, from which it follows that there’s an explanatory gap

between the structures about which they talk and the conscious experience that

accompanies them. Believing neurophenomenology still represents a potentially

valuable research project, I put forward the so-called easy problems as an alternative

rationale for naturalising phenomenology. While it undoubtedly represents a

divergence from the original intentions of neurophenomenologists, adopting this

psychological objective actually has little effect on the project as a whole, for it still

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represents one way of naturalising phenomenology, albeit a more or less attenuated

one, and it still poses a challenge for conventional accounts of naturalism and

traditional ideas about the place of the mind in nature. Moreover, while it is a more

discrete and achievable objective than their original one, naturalising phenomenology

in a psychological sense would still represent a major success for philosophy,

phenomenology and the cognitive sciences.

Similarly crucial for my central claim are the arguments of the second chapter,

for it is only on the basis that conventional brands of naturalism cannot accommodate

neurophenomenology that one would bother looking for an alternative framework in

the first place. To recall, in chapter two I claimed that neurophenomenology can be

characterised by three key commitments: one, that it is not dualistic, two, that it is

committed to the causal autonomy of higher order kinds, and three, that it is

committed to the reciprocal constitution of subject (or observer) and world. All three

of these commitments are based in some way on neurophenomenologists’ use of

dynamic systems theory. In the first case, it is because dynamic systems theory

provides a non-reductive model of explanation that neurophenomenologists can aim to

naturalise an emergent phenomenon whilst nevertheless insisting that they are not

dualist. In the second case, it is because neurophenomenologists draw on a specific

interpretation of the dynamical account of the mind, namely that it is an ontologically

emergent self-organising system, in order to naturalise phenomenological structures

that one can say they are committed to the causal autonomy of higher order kinds. In

the final case neurophenomenologists’ belief that subject and world co-constitute one

another was premised in Varela and Maturana’s theory of autopoiesis, according to

which the environment constitutes the organism by making its existence possible, but

that the organism constitutes the environment by producing the boundary that serves to

define environment and organism.

Now, if correct, it follows from this that none of the three conventional brands

of naturalism can accommodate neurophenomenology. In the case of reductionism this

was due to the fact that it rules out the causal autonomy of higher order kinds in

principle, and also because it claims that the mind is in fact a physical phenomenon,

from which it follows that it couldn’t possibly play a role in the way nature is parsed

into objects. In the case of non-reductive physicalism the problem was that causal

closure rules out causally autonomous higher order kinds, and because supervenience

and token physicalism entail that the mind is necessitated by the physical kinds on

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which it supervenes and/or is constituted by, from which it also follows that it couldn’t

possibly play a role in the way nature is parsed into objects. Finally, while

emergentism can accommodate causally autonomous higher order kinds, it cannot

accommodate the third core commitment of neurophenomenology because it never

strayed from the view that physical kinds precede higher order kinds, from which it

follows once again that the mind couldn’t possibly play a role in the way nature is

parsed into objects. The upshot of all this is that neurophenomenology is inconsistent

with all three conventional accounts of what it means to be naturalistic. This being the

case, if neurophenomenology is going to count as naturalistic it is only going to be on

account of an alternative brand of naturalism.

The central claim of this thesis is that pragmatic naturalism promises to serve

this purpose. Though they have emerged from very different dialectical contexts the

two positions share a lot in common: they both proceed on the basis of a deep respect

for scientific practice and a pragmatic attitude towards the a priori concerns typical of

philosophy of mind and metaphysics, they both strive to defend the epistemic

legitimacy of scientific posits that are irreducible to physics, and they both represent

an attempt to combine epistemic egalitarianism with realism. More importantly

however, as a more or less systematic framework for the natural sciences, pragmatic

naturalism meets all three of neurophenomenology’s key desiderata. Firstly, pragmatic

naturalism is not dualist. Being committed to a strict empiricism with regard to

explanatory posits pragmatic naturalism rules out immaterial substances. Secondly,

pragmatic naturalism is consistent with the causal autonomy of higher order kinds.

According to pragmatic naturalism theoretical posits are objective features of the

world insofar as they feature in empirically successful models of it, irrespective of

whether they accord with the explanatory posits of the other sciences, and especially

physics. This means that, in effect, pragmatic naturalism endorses the causal autonomy

of higher order kinds, for it entails that the natural kinds posited by the higher order

sciences need not conform with those of physics in either structural or functional

terms. Accordingly, pragmatic naturalism represents a general framework within

which the structures of neurophenomenologists could count as legitimate scientific

artefacts despite the fact that they contradict causal closure. Finally, pragmatic

naturalism is consistent with the idea, found in neurophenomenology, that subject and

world co-constitute one another. Pragmatic naturalism arises from the conjunction of

two seemingly antithetical notions: one, that the world exists independently of

76

observers and, two, that it can be correctly classified in a number of different ways.

Kitcher proposes to unify these two claims by relativising the structure of the world to

the corporeal capacities and cultural context of the observer, for doing so enables him

to claim that the world can be parsed into objects in many ways without departing

from what science tells us about our epistemological condition: namely that we are

animals that form representations about a mind-independent environment and that the

way we do so is influenced by both our corporeal capacities and our cultural context.

Accordingly, it is fair to say that pragmatic naturalism accords the mind a role in the

constitution of nature whilst nevertheless insisting that it is still part of it, from which

it follows that it can accommodate the final desiderata of neurophenomenology.

If correct, it follows that pragmatic naturalism can serve as the “redefined non-

reductionist naturalism” that Gallagher speaks of, and therefore that the objective of

this thesis has been met—given, of course, the many caveats I have made along the

way. To recall my motivation, neurophenomenologists propose to naturalise

phenomenology, however what they propose is itself inconsistent with the standard

accounts of what it means to be naturalistic. Moreover, while they gesture towards

non-reductive brands of naturalism they do not offer an alternative account in any

substantive way. Accordingly, in this thesis I set out to fill this dearth by setting out at

a general level what an alternative account could look like. This, I said, was a response

to Gallagher's recent (albeit tentative) suggestion that the unification of

phenomenology and naturalism may only be achieved by redefining both, for by

developing a non-reductive brand of naturalism one is in effect meeting one half of

Gallagher’s challenge. If the arguments of the preceding pages have been correct, the

kind of naturalism required by neurophenomenology looks a lot like pragmatic

naturalism. In other words, if by naturalism one means pragmatic naturalism, then

neurophenomenology has no problems counting as naturalistic.

Obviously there remain many unanswered questions. First among them for

mine is whether pragmatic naturalism is an acceptable framework to adopt, and if so

for whom? For in order to be successful it not only has to be acceptable to a healthy

cross section of phenomenologists, it also has to be defendable from the point of view

of naturalists; and in the first case, it is arguable that for phenomenologists pragmatic

naturalism’s epistemological model does not grant consciousness a central enough role

in the genesis of the structures of nature, and in the second, it is just as possible that

for naturalists pragmatic naturalism grants consciousness too great a role. No doubt

77

other questions abound as well. However, even though these limitations render the

final conclusion of this thesis somewhat tentative, I would like to think that one small

step has been taken toward the ultimate goal of naturalising phenomenology. For

insofar as I have shown, via an exercise akin to reverse engineering, what it would

take for neurophenomenology to count as naturalistic, I would like to think I have

shown to what extent naturalism would need to be revised against its traditional forms

in order make it consistent with a modest example of phenomenological philosophy.

This, in turn, I would also like to think might point toward future avenues to the kind

of naturalism that would be consistent with a broader cross section of

phenomenological philosophy, and therefore guide future steps towards a more

ambitious attempt at naturalising phenomenology.

78

79

Appendix: The Neurophenomenological Strategy for Naturalising Phenomenology

Neurophenomenologists claim they will achieve their ultimate goal by naturalising

phenomenology, and this in turn they argue is made possible by the conceptual

resources of dynamic systems theory. For it is on the basis of the respective systemic

properties of phenomenological and neuroscientific models of conscious experience

that neurophenomenologists propose to naturalise phenomenology. The unification

of phenomenological and naturalistic accounts of conscious experience is to be

achieved by considering each side of the dichotomy from the abstracted perspective

of dynamic systems theory, on the basis that, while phenomenological and

neuroscientific models may seem utterly heterogeneous when considered in their

own terms, when considered from the perspective of dynamic systems theory they

can be seen to share common properties, namely systemic ones. While the emphasis

is quite naturally on how to naturalise phenomenological models, it is just as

important to note that within this framework neuroscientific models are similarly

constrained by dynamic systems theory. The neuroscientific models referred to are of

a particular kind, namely the dynamical one.

This strategy is made explicit by Roy et. al. Though they do not provide any

case studies to show it at work, Roy et. al. claim that phenomenology can be

naturalised via the following three step process: 1) from the interrogation of raw

phenomenological data one develops a phenomenological account, or model, of a

given conscious experience; 2) one translates this phenomenological account into a

dynamical one, meaning that the phenomenological account, which has been

developed within a natural language, is effectively translated into the language of

dynamical systems theory; and 3) this dynamical account is then integrated into the

overarching framework of dynamic systems theory alongside the results of other

scientific investigations of the brain and body.115 Later they claim that it is

specifically the theoretical apparatus of dynamical systems theory that will allow

them to mathematise the phenomenological investigations of Husserl, and thereby

naturalise phenomenology. In their words,

115 Roy, 'Beyond the Gap: An Introduction to Naturalizing Phenomenology', p. 48.

80

[I]t can be argued that most of the genuinely scientific reasons that Husserl

might have had for refusing to allow his phenomenology to be integrated into

the field of the natural sciences… have been invalidated by progress in the

sciences… With respect to natural morphologies, we already noted… that

there do now exist physical theories of qualitative manifestation. These are

physico-mathematical theories (such as those dealing with catastrophes,

attractors and bifurcations of non-linear systems, critical phenomena and

symmetry breakings, self-organization and critical self-organizing states…

and so on) which make it possible to explain how small-scale (“microscopic”)

units can get organized into large scale (“macroscopic”) emergent

structures… They… demonstrate that what Husserl called “inexact

morphological essences,”… are indeed amenable to a physical account.116

In other words, it is the theoretical tools of dynamical systems theory, the notions of

attractors and bifurcations, self-organisation, and so on, which make it possible to

represent phenomenological analyses of conscious experience in terms that are

congruent with the natural sciences.

Varela’s paper on time-consciousness fits this model perfectly. In his

contribution to Naturalizing Phenomenology Varela effectively identifies the

conscious experience of time with the dynamics by which our bodies integrate the

manifold coincident events that occur at every second into a single experiential

moment. In his own words,

[A]ny mental act is characterized by the concurrent participation of severally

functionally distinct and topographically distributed regions of the brain and

their sensorimotor embodiment… In this view, the constant stream of sensory

activation and motor consequence is incorporated within the framework of an

endogenous dynamics… These endogenously constituted integrative

frameworks account for perceived time.117

After proposing a tripartite classification of timescales, on a scale from 1/10 to 1 to

10, Varela explicitly identifies the conscious experience of momentary time (the 1

116 Ibid., pp. 54-55. 117 Varela, 'The Specious Present: A Neurophenomenology of Time Consciousness', p. 273.

81

scale) with the transient synchrony of (the electrical charge of) networks of neural

cells (which operate on the 1/10 scale), and the conscious experience of ‘lived time’

(the 10 scale) with the medium and long range dynamics of said neural networks.118

With this in place he draws a parallel with Husserl’s tripartite retention-impression-

protention account of the conscious experience of time, where retention is the trace

of the network’s dynamical past (or its past states) within its present state, the

impression is its current state of synchrony, and protention is the network’s

‘readiness’ to occupy a new state on the basis of its current and previous states.119

A couple of years later, in a co-authored study with Shaun Gallagher, Varela

draws on this work in an attempt to establish a direct link between the experience of

thought insertion in schizophrenia and the self-organising dynamics of the brain.120

After interpreting the experience of thought insertion in terms of a breakdown of the

Husserlian retention-protention structure, on the basis that the experience of thought

insertion could be the result of a malfunction of protention, Gallagher and Varela go

on to explain this breakdown as a malfunction of the self-organising dynamics of the

brain. In particular they identify the dynamics by which distributed events within the

brain are integrated into a single coherent cognitive act as the basis of the lived

present—as per Varela’s contribution to Naturalizing Phenomenology—upon which

the Husserlian retention-protention model is developed.121 This then allows them to

explain the experience of thought insertion as an interruption of the proper

functioning of these dynamics, whether as a result of sub-personal or personal

factors.122 In proffering this explanation Gallagher and Varela explicitly identify the

dynamics of self-organisation as an abstract level of description that is common to

both sub-personal (neurological) processes and personal (conscious) experience. In

their own words,

Is it possible to find a common, albeit abstract, level of description that would

capture both the dynamics of neuronal processes and the dynamics of the

118 Ibid., pp. 282-88. 119 Ibid., pp. 285, 99. 120 S Gallagher, & Varela, F., ‘Redrawing the Map and Resetting the Time’, in S. Crowell, Embree, L., & Julian, S. (ed.), The Reach of Reflection, Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology, www.electronpress.com, 2001. 121 Ibid., pp. 35-38. 122 Ibid., pp. 38-39.

82

retentional-protentional flow of time-consciousness? A common feature is

that both domains involve self-organizing dynamics.123

Evan Thompson’s work fits the same mould. In a co-authored paper on multi-

stable perception, Thompson and Robert Hanna draw a direct link between the

conscious experience of multi-stable images and the dynamics of self-organisation

within the brain.124 To begin with, Hannah and Thompson argue that the experience

of multi-stable perception justifies the postulation of a novel phenomenological

structure they call spontaneity, by which they refer to the spontaneous self-

organisation or self-generativity of mental acts. This is justified on the basis that, by

switching at random between two visual Gestalts despite the fact that it is presented

with one percept, in the experience of multi-stability consciousness appears to be

spontaneously alternating between two self-generated stable states. Following this

Hanna and Thompson proceed to draw a direct connection between this experience

and the dynamics of self-organisation within the brain. In particular they claim that

the multi-stability of perception is best explained as an instance of the multi-stability

of nonlinear dynamical systems in general (multi-stability is an apparently ubiquitous

phenomenon by which nonlinear systems switch between any two or more stable

states, otherwise known as attractors). By doing so they identify the dynamics of

self-organisation as a unifying framework within which phenomenological and

neuroscientific models can be made consistent with one another. In their own words,

This spontaneity corresponds phenomenologically to the plasticity and self-

generativity of perception, and neurodynamically to the autonomy or self-

organisation of the system's dynamics.125

Finally, I will consider a couple of examples from Shaun Gallagher. To be

clear, I think it’s fair to say that Gallagher’s proposals are more or less

metaphysically neutral, in the sense that they are consistent with a range of views on

the constitution of the mind (apart, perhaps, from reductionism). However, even

though he refrains from endorsing a specific naturalisation strategy, the

phenomenological structures that Gallagher puts forward are intended to be 123 Ibid., p. 35. 124 Hanna, 'Neurophenomenology and the Spontaneity of Consciousness '. 125 Ibid., p. 153.

83

consistent with a naturalistic perspective, and therefore they can still serve to

elucidate one half of the neurophenomenological strategy by serving as examples

what neurophenomenologists propose to naturalise.

Firstly I will consider Gallagher’s distinction between the body-image and

the body-schema.126 These two aspects of the body, the body image (attentional) and

the body schema (non-attentional), are disclosed with the aid of the remarkable case

study of Ian, a man who lost all proprioception (non-attentional bodily awareness)

from the neck down as a result of a large fibre neuropathy. This meant that Ian lost

the ability to carry out everyday activities without paying attention to them. At first

he lost these abilities altogether: he could not walk, write, or even pick up simple

objects. After some time and considerable effort, however, Ian managed to train

himself to perform these acts consciously. Whereas previously activities such as

walking, writing, and picking up objects were simple, even thoughtless, tasks for

him, since the neuropathy he has had to perform these tasks consciously. While

walking, for instance, Ian has to watch every step; he cannot take his mind off the

task. On the basis of this case study Gallagher speculates that there are two systems

responsible for motor control of the body, one attentional and one non-attentional,

and argues that Ian has lost one but not the other. Attributing this unconscious

activity to the body schema, Gallagher speculates that Ian has lost his body schema

but not his body image, and that it is for this reason that he can still perform tasks

like walking and writing, albeit in a different manner to what he could prior to his

fibre neuropathy.

Now I turn to Gallagher's distinction between having a sense of agency and a

sense of ownership.127 This distinction informed Gallagher and Varela’s co-authored

study on thought insertion that I referred to above, however it has also been used

since then to explain certain features of the rubber hand illusion as well.128 The

distinction between a sense of ownership and a sense of agency was originally

introduced by Gallagher for the purposes of explaining thought insertion in

schizophrenia. While the two senses often coincide, one's sense of ownership and

one's sense of agency for a given action can in fact be separated. In normal subjects

this occurs in the involuntary movement. If for instance one is pushed from behind,

one will feel a sense of ownership for that movement, yet will not feel a sense of 126 Gallagher, How the Body Shapes the Mind. 127 ———, ‘Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science’. 128 ———, 'On the Possibility of Naturalizing Phenomenology'.

84

agency for it. In the case of schizophrenia, one can have a sense of ownership for a

given action or thought, and yet feel as if someone or something else is the agent of

it, as is the case in thought insertion and delusions of (external) control. With this

distinction in place Gallagher can speculate that there are different sub-personal

mechanisms responsible for these two senses, and that abnormalities in the those

controlling our sense of agency are responsible for thought insertion.129

Though small, this sample of works is sufficient to show that

neurophenomenologists have a more or less uniform strategy for naturalising

phenomenology. In essence, this strategy consists in establishing that both

phenomenological and neurological models of conscious experience behave according

to the principles of self-organising dynamical systems, from which it follows that the

explanatory framework of dynamical systems theory can serve as a unifying

framework for the two approaches to conscious experience. There are two key

components to this strategy. The first is a specific kind of phenomenological model,

namely one couched in the terms of dynamical systems theory. While they are inspired

by traditional phenomenological writings, neurophenomenologists do not articulate

their models of conscious experience in terms of traditional phenomenological

concepts. Instead they use the theoretical tools of dynamical systems theory, the

notions of attractors and bifurcations, self-organisation, and so on, in order to

represent what they perceive to be the phenomenological structures of conscious

experience. The second key component is a model of the body as it undergoes this

conscious experience. In the case of neurophenomenology this generally amounts to a

non-linear mathematical model of neuronal activity in the brain and body. Once again,

these models are of a specific variety, namely the dynamical one. Now, with these two

models in place, one phenomenological and one neurological, neurophenomenologists

then claim that there is a basic similitude between the two approaches, namely their

self-organising properties, and thereby conclude that both the brain and the mind

behave according to one and the same set of principles, namely those of self-

organising dynamical systems; from which it follows that the explanatory framework

of dynamical systems theory can serve as a unifying framework for phenomenological

and neuroscientific models of conscious experience.

129 ———, ‘Philosophical conceptions of the self: implications for cognitive science’.

85

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Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne

Author/s:Staalesen, Steffen Severin

Title:The naturalisation of phenomenology: phenomenology meets philosophy of biology

Date:2015

Persistent Link:http://hdl.handle.net/11343/91288