Advances in Consciousness Research (AiCR) ISSN I381-589X Provides a forum for scholars from different scientific disciplines and fields of knowl edge who study consciousness in its multifaceted aspects. Thus the Series includes (but is not limited to) the various areas of cognitive science, including cognitive psychology, brain science, philosophy and linguistics. The orientation of the series is toward devel oping new interdisciplinary and integrative approaches for the investigation, descrip tion and theory of consciousness, as well as the practical consequences of this research for the individual in society. From 1999 the Series consists of two sub series that cover the most important types of contributions to consciousness studies: Series A: Theory and Method. Contributions to the development of theory and method in the study of consciousness; Series B: Research in Progress. Experimental, descriptive and clinical research in consciousness. This book is a contribution to Series A. For an overview of all books published in this series, please see http://benjamins.com/catalog! aicr Editor Maxim I. Stamenov Bulgarian Academy of Sciences Editorial Board David J. Chalmers Steven Laureys Australian National University University of Liege Axel Cleeremans George Mandler t Universite Libre de Bruxelles University of California at San Diego Gordon G. Globus John R. Searle University of California Irvine University of California at Berkeley Christo£ Koch Petra Stoerig Allen Institute for Brain Science Universitat Diisseldorf Stephen M. Kosslyn Harvard University Volume95 Consciousness and Object. A mind-object identity physicalist theory by Riccardo Manzotti Consciousness and Object A mind-object identity physicalist theory Riccardo Manzotti IULM University of Milan John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam I Philadelphia The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences - Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39-48-1984. DOI 10.1075/aicr.95 Cataloging-in-Publication Data available from Library of Congress: LCCN @@(PRINT) I@@ (E-BOOK) ISBN 978 90 272 1362 4 (HB) ISBN 978 90 272 6509 8 (E-BOOK) © 2017 - John Benjamins B.V. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means, without written permission from the publisher. John Benjamins Publishing Company · https://benjamins.com Table of contents Foreword IX Acknowledgements xv CHAPTER 1 A materialist theory of the mind 1 CHAPTER 2 Naive materialism 7 2.1 The standard view 10 2.2 The digestive model of the mind 13 2.3 The hallucinatory model of perception 16 2.4 Physiological minds and mechanical worlds 20 2.5 The object-object problem 22 2.6 Inner man and inner world 24 2.7 Am I my body? 26 CHAPTER 3 Consciousness and nature 31 3.1 Neural local supervenience and internalism 33 3.2 Brain in a vat are no starters 34 3.3 Misperception by and large 36 3.4 Mental and physical are different 38 3.5 The issue of representation and the vehicle/content dichotomy 41 3.6 Appearance vs reality 42 CHAPTER 4 A mind-object identity theory 45 4.1 Identity theories and consciousness 45 4.2 BRAINBOUND 47 4.3 OBJECTBOUND 49 4.4 Where am I? 51 4.5 Mind and world 54 4.6 The inner world is outside 56 4.7 Linguistic boobytraps 59 4.8 There's no distance between experience and world 62 VI Consciousness and Object CHAPTER 5 The actual object 67 5.1 Actual objects vs nai:Ve objects 69 5.2 Existence and causation 73 5.3 The joint cause 76 5.4 Relative existence 79 5.5 Bodies are object-makers 82 5.6 Actual objects and time 86 5.7 A hoard of actual objects 89 5.8 Spatiotemporal objects 92 CHAPTER 6 Consciousness, body, and world 95 6.1 The actual world 97 6.2 Brains are never isolated 100 6.3 Causal carvings 102 6.4 Temporal unfolding 106 6.5 Causal simultaneity 109 6.6 Present and past are relative 114 6.7 Time lag debunked 118 CHAPTER 7 All experience is identity 121 7.1 Modes of perception 124 7.2 A taxonomy for hallucinations 127 7.3 Hallucinations and dreams 131 7.4 Identity and hallucination 137 7.5 The common-kind assumption turned upside down 141 7.6 Illusions 144 CHAPTER 8 Neuroscientific evidence 149 8.1 Penfield and direct brain stimulation 151 8.2 Congenitally blind subjects and visual experience 153 8.3 Hallucinations caused by sensory blockage 156 8.4 Persisting objects 160 8.5 Filtering the world: The case of afterimages 162 8.6 Supersaturated red and other impossible colors 169 Table of contents vn CHAPTER 9 Subjectivity reloaded 173 9.1 Is the phenomenal physical? 174 9.2 One kind of property to rule them all 177 9.3 Subjective and objective are relative 180 9.4 Measurement and causality 186 9.5 Experience and knowledge 187 9.6 Perceptual error 189 9.7 Incorrigibility 192 9.8 Feeling vs functioning 194 CHAPTER 10 A reduction 197 10.1 The hard problem 198 10.2 Intentionality or aboutness 200 10.3 What it is like to be something 202 10.4 Points of view and perspectivalness 204 10.5 Semantics is identity 207 CHAPTER 11 A comparison with other views 211 11.1 Idealism 212 11.2 Enactivism 212 11.3 Direct realism 215 11.4 Russellian monism 217 11.5 Panpsychism 219 11.6 Soul-less Descartes 220 CHAPTER 12 The last blow to the narcissism of man 223 CHAPTER 13 In a nutshell 231 References 233 Foreword The invention of alternatives to the view at the centre of discussion constitutes an essential part of the empirical method. (Paul Feyerabend) This book is a reboot of the mind-body problem - what is consciousness? How does it connect with the world? Actually, it is a reboot in terms of mind-object identity. Its main goal is to offer a fresh start that will challenge and upturn the standard approach that - following David Armstrong's, Thomas Nagel's, and David Chalmers' work - has taken over the debate in philosophy of mind and, to a large extent, neuroscience. By and large, the received view is that consciousness is a physical phenomenon that cannot be observed by traditional means and that will require some exceptional psycho-physical law to be properly understood. Such a zeitgeist reveals an underlying anti-Copernican attitude - subjects are special and require special rules. As Spinoza stated, they are supposed to be a special domain inside a larger domain. In contrast, this book will try to explain consciousness without stepping outside of existing and known natural laws, i.e., a pure Copernicon attitude. No emergence, dual aspect of information, additional layers or ontological allowances of any kind will be invoked. Consciousness must fit inside the existing physical world as we known it. Henceforth I will use the terms consciousness, phenomenal experience, expe rience, conscious experience, and conscious mind as synonyms. Other scholars have pointed out the practical overlapping of such terms. For one, Galen Straw son reckoned that consciousness is "the phenomenon whose existence is more certain than the existence of anything else: experience, 'consciousness', conscious experience, 'phenomenology', experiential 'what-it's-likeness', feeling, sensation, explicit conscious thought [ ... ] Many words are used to denote this necessarily occurrent phenomenon'' (Strawson 2006, 3). In this regard, Chalmers himself stated that "The really hard problem of consciousness is the problem of experi ence" (Chalmers 1995, 202) and that "'consciousness' and 'experience' are the most straightforward terms" (Chalmers 1996, 6). The book calls into question the gap between phenomenal and physical prop erties. Phenomenal and physical properties, surprisingly, might turn out to be the same. Their alleged difference, I will argue, is neither an empirical fact nor a self evident truth. Rather it is the consequence of the way in which the mind-body prob lem has been addressed. The alleged metaphysical chasm is the offshoot of a wrong premise, namely that our experience is distinct from the object we experience or, x Consciousness and Object similarly, that we are different and separate from the nature we thrive in. Such a premise, in turn, is the result of a belief that has all too often driven philosophical speculation - namely that we are somehow special with respect to the rest of the universe. We are not and there's no reason why we should be. By and large, the belief in the separation between subject and objects is based on two further premises - one of allegedly empirical nature and another one stem ming from an arbitrary hypothesis. The former is the belief in the possibility of genuine pristine mental content of the kind allegedly experienced in the case of such hallucinations and illusions. Something I will attempt to address and debunk such alleged empirical evidence. The latter is the notion that we are located inside our bodies, which is another belief that has no real empirical ground and that will be the main point on contention during this book. Very suspiciously, the notion that the mind is different from the physical world has always been all too reassuring. Likely, It sterned from the very human desire of being special. In turn, the belief in the uniqueness of the mind spawned the cognate belief in the uniqueness of the brain, which is commonly believed to host unique powers, even in the most scientific circles an updated version of Pascal's thinking reed. Due to yet-to-be-ascertained circumstances, the brain is routinely deemed to be unique. And yet, the brain is just a chunk of cells. There are no known reasons why the brain should require any more ontological allow ance than, say, the liver or the lungs. The brain does what it does, just like all other organs, they do what they do - they all abide by the same natural principles, and no allowances should be asked for. All too often, attempts to find consciousness inside the nervous system have one thing in common: they suggest that man is unlike nature. We desire a gap between us and the world. We want to be kept separate from the brute and decay ing matter. It is not by chance that the word 'distinction' means both separation and superiority. By and large, such attempts are anti-Copernican insofar as they try to explain the mind, and thus consciousness, by means of a special principle. Anti Copernican approaches are suspicious because they explain human affairs by appealing to special ad hoc principles that are opaque to any future explanation: they are the hallmark of a deep misunderstanding about what is under scrutiny. Eventually, notions such as the Earth had a special place in the universe, human beings had a special place in the animal kingdom, that human history had a special place in time, and that life had a special nature, proved to be parochial delusions. Mind must find a place in nature, and the distinction between subjects and objects is the last Copernican stanced. In contrast, here I adopt a bold Copernican attitude - all aspects of con sciousness must fit in the physical domain, since they are no more special than,