Pietro Snider The Natural Problem of Consciousness Epistemic Studies Philosophy of Science, Cognition and Mind Edited by Michael Esfeld, Stephan Hartmann, Albert Newen Volume 36 Pietro Snider The Natural Problem of Consciousness ISBN 978-3-11-052696-7 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-052557-1 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-052469-7 ISSN 2512-5168 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com Acknowledgments First and foremost I thank my dissertation supervisors Prof. Markus Wild and Prof. Michael-Andreas Esfeld for trusting me, for their relentless, competent, and frank professional support and advising throughout the years, for their patience in accompanying me through administrative endeavours, and most of all for their friendliness and humanity. This work would have not been possible without their constant encouragement. I thank the Swiss National Science Foundation for gen- erously funding my research in Switzerland and abroad, allowing me to pursue my interests in very privileged working conditions. I also thank the Forschungs- fonds der Universität Basel for allowing me to conclude my dissertation in the best possible conditions. I owe a lot to the students, faculty, and staff of the philosophy departments of the Université de Lausanne, Université de Fribourg, and Universität Basel. For providing a pleasant and intellectually stimulating working environment over the years I wish to mention in particular Emmanuel Baierlé, Jiry Benovsky, Simone Chambers, Christine Clavien, Coralie Dorsaz, Matthias Egg, Patrik Engisch, Andrea Giananti, Nadja Heller Higy, Brigitte Hilmer, Gunnar Hindrichs, Rebekka Hufendiek, Thomas Jacobi, David Jolidon, Susanne Kress, Vincent Lam, Anna Lettieri-Beck, Hannes Ole Matthiesen, Anne Meylan, Deborah Mühlebach, Fran- ziska Müller, Jan Müller, Jacob Naïto, Martine Nida-Rümelin, Michael O’Leary, Sebastian Pabst, Matthieu Queloz, Christian Sachse, Melanie Sarzano, Mario Schärli, Susanne Schmetkamp, Jelscha Schmid, Hubert Schnüringer, Christine Sievers, Gianfranco Soldati, Michael Sollberger, Marc Nicolas Sommer, Patrice Soom, Christian Steiner, Marie van Loon, and Antonio Vassallo. I am very grateful to Albert Newen, Karen Neander, and Ned Block for super- vising me during my research visits, for their constructive criticism, the price- less commentaries, the suggestions for improvement, and – more in general – for offering me the great opportunity to improve my work in highly stimulating envi- ronments. I am also indebted to the rest of the faculty, the graduate students and the staff at the Institut für Philosophie II and Center for Mind, Brain and Cognitive Evolution at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, the Philosophy Department of Duke University, and the Philosophy Department of NYU. My research visits would not have been equally enriching, profitable and rewarding both at a professional and personal level without the company and the discussions I had with David Barack, Luca Barlassina, Rosa Cao, Grace Helton, Lena Kästner, Andrew Lee, Vincent Legeay, Kristen Miller, Jorge Morales, Nicolas Porot, Tomoo Ueda, Petra Vetter, and many others. I also would like to thank the audiences of talks on interme- diate versions of this work I gave in Fribourg, Luzern, Coglio, Mainz, Bochum, Ovronnaz, Geneva, Lausanne, San Diego, Basel, Durham (NC), New York, and DOI 10.1515/9783110525571-002 VI   Acknowledgments Tucson for helping me improve my work with precious comments, questions and suggestions. These include also some of the experts I had the pleasure to talk to during conferences, workshops, and in private correspondence during the last years, including Fred Adams, David Chalmers, Tim Crane, Daniel Dennett, Owen Flanagan, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Steven Harnad, Robert Hopkins, Frank Jackson, Thomas Metzinger, Thomas Nagel, Jesse Prinz, Jim Pryor, Chris Peacocke, David Rosenthal, John Searle, Marcel Weber, and Michael Wheeler. Many thanks to Paolo Jacomelli for his meticulous proofreading, to Konrad Vorderobermeier for his support and care in the formatting of the manuscript, to Stephan Hartmann, Albert Newen and Michael Esfeld, editors of the series Epistemic Studies, and to De Gruyter – in particular Christoph Schirmer, Gertrud Grünkorn, Nancy Christ, and Maik Bierwirth – for their kind and professional support throughout the process leading to the publication. Last, but not least, I wholeheartedly thank my family and friends for their unconditional love and invaluable support throughout all these years. This work is dedicated to all of you. Pietro Snider Locarno, 8 March 2017 Funding This work has been supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Forschungsfonds der Universität Basel. Junior Research Grant, Forschungsfonds der Universität Basel, Förderung exzel- lenter junger Forschender 2015 (no. DGK2615). SNSF Mobility Grant (Mobility Within Project no. 139037) for a research stay at NYU and Duke University, including the participation to the Tucson Conscious- ness Conference 2014, United States (03.01.2014 – 30.06.2014). University of Fribourg Grant for participation to the 17th Conference of the Associ- ation for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (ASSC), San Diego, USA (July 2013) SNSF Project no. 139037, “Biosemantics and Normative Pragmatism: Towards a Unified Picture of the Place of the Mind in the Natural World” (Professeurs boursi- ers FNS). Main applicant Prof. Markus Wild. Université de Fribourg and Universi- tät Basel (15.07.2012 – 30.09.2014). University of Lausanne Grant for participation to the Summer School in the Cog- nitive Sciences “Evolution and Function of Consciousness”, Montréal, Canada (June–July 2012) SNSF Project no. 132389, “Causal Properties and Laws in the Philosophy of Science” (“Mind and Reality” ProDoc). Main applicant Prof. Michael Esfeld. Uni- versité de Lausanne (01.10.2010 – 30.06.2012). DOI 10.1515/9783110525571-003 Contents Acknowledgments  V 1 Introduction  1 1.1 Why Care About Consciousness  1 1.1.1 Nothing To Care About  3 1.1.2 An Intellectual Challenge  4 1.1.3 Practical and Ethical Applications  4 1.1.4 A Hopeful Research Project in Philosophy and Science  5 1.2 Consciousness and the Scientific Paradigm  8 1.2.1 Epistemic Objectivity and Ontological Subjectivity  9 1.2.2 Dealing With the Subjective Ontology of Consciousness  13 1.3 Neural Correlates of Consciousness (NCCs)  16 1.3.1 Defining NCC  18 1.3.2 Explanatory Limits and Fuzziness of NCC Research  21 1.4 The Hard Problem of Consciousness  24 1.5 Consciousness: Toward A Diachronic Approach  28 1.5.1 Consciousness in Time: a Thought Experiment  31 1.5.2 Excursus on Objective Knowledge  34 2 The Metaphysical Problem of Consciousness  40 2.1 The Mind-Body Problem: the Mind in a Physical World  40 2.1.1 The Set of Premises to the Puzzle of the Inconsistent Triad  41 2.1.2 Only a Physicalist Framework Can Account for Causation  42 2.1.3 The Subjective Character of Consciousness is Irreducible  43 2.1.4 Mental Causation  50 2.1.5 The Joint Inconsistency of the Set of Premises  51 2.2 A Sketch of the Metaphysical Landscape  53 2.2.1 Ontological Monism  54 2.2.2 Ontological Dualism  58 2.2.3 Supervenience as Framework for Physicalism  61 2.3 The Metaphysical Background for the Natural Problem  64 3 The Natural Problem of Consciousness  66 3.1 Adopting Naturalism: A Pragmatic Approach  67 X   Contents 3.2 Consciousness as Contingent Biological Phenomenon  70 3.2.1 Dismissing Solipsism in the Actual World  73 3.2.2 Dismissing Panpsychism in the Actual World  74 3.3 Why Are There Feeling Beings in the Natural World?  76 4 Consciousness as Feeling. Defining Criteria  80 4.1 State, Creature, and Being Consciousness  80 4.1.1 State Consciousness  82 4.1.2 Creature Consciousness  86 4.1.3 Being Consciousness  88 4.1.4 Intentionality and Transitivity  88 4.1.5 Higher-Order Theories of Consciousness  90 4.2 Attempts to Characterize Consciousness  92 4.2.1 Consciousness: A Mongrel Concept  92 4.2.2 Toward a Taxonomy of Intransitive Being Consciousness  95 4.2.3 Candidate Feeling Beings: A Problem  97 4.3 Defining Criteria for Being Consciousness  98 4.3.1 Limits of Characterizations of Consciousness  98 4.3.2 Consciousness as Sentience and Responsiveness  101 4.3.3 Consciousness as Wakefulness and Normal Alertness  103 4.3.4 Phenomenal Consciousness (What it is Like)  106 4.4 Feeling and Self-Consciousness  110 5 Working Out Diachronic Claims  115 5.1 Feeling Presently Exists  115 5.2 Phylogenetic Evolution and Ontogenetic Development  120 5.2.1 Phylogenetic Evolution  120 5.2.2 Ontogenetic Development  121 5.3 Two Fine-Grained Questions  122 5.3.1 Radical Change Claim VS Qualitative Change Claim  124 5.4 Examining the Two Fine-grained Diachronic Claims  126 5.4.1 Feeling Is Subject to Phylogenetic Evolution (a)  126 5.4.2 Feeling Is Subject to Ontogenetic Development (b)  131 5.5 Summary of the Claims and of the Conclusions  136 6 Why Do We Feel?  137 6.1 Feeling in an Evolutionary Framework  137 6.1.1 A Darwinian Evolutionary Theory  137 6.1.2 A Sketch of the Hypothesis  143 6.2 Distinguishing Kinds of Function  144