It sure does not feel like it!

When some people discover the mechanistic or scientific explanations for certain things pertaining to a human experience, some will have an intuitive form of skepticism. You will often hear something to the effect that "Fine, but it does not feel as though X is the result of Y." X being some kid of experience, such as the experience of love, the experience of consciousness, or the experience and conviction that we posses freewill. Y being some kind of natural process or material process.

The argument often goes as follows:

David: It's pretty much universally agreed, by scientists at least that subjective experience is a consequence of a kind of physical brain. All kinds of things support the idea that a physical brain is required for subjective experience -- like the fact that alcohol and other physical substances can change our conscious states, that degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer's or physical injuries can seriously impair or even destroy conscious states, and the fact that we don't expect young children to be capable of the types of abstract reasoning that require more fully developed brains. So the idea that we need immaterial souls or whatnot to account for our minds, at least at the moment, is ad hoc.

Gatlin: I see. That may be true, but I still can't overcome my conviction that all of this subjective experience I feel is something above and beyond just matter in motion. It just does not feel as though consciousness is the result of 'just' physical processes going on in my brain. It feels like there's something going on that's immaterial.

There are many examples where this kind of 'from the gut' argument is made. In the context of accounts for love, spiritual experience, freedom, awareness. The argument is never an argument using some kind of objective measure, but rather an argument from experience, an argument from conviction. I think this kind of reasoning may be a mistake, at least in the context of trying to explain certain experiences. I'll begin making my case after a quote reportedly from Wittgenstein

"Wittgenstein: Tell me," he asked a friend, "why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the Sun went round the Earth, rather than that the Earth was rotating?"

His friend replied, "Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth."

And Wittgenstein replied, "Well, what would it have looked like, if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?"

It's interesting to consider this. What would it look like if the earth was rotating, and not the sun? It obviously, would look exactly the same. We could ask the same question to the skeptic who asserts that it does not feel like love is a natural thing, or that consciousness is physically possible. What would it feel like if love was a natural thing? What would it feel like if subjective experience was the result of only a physical brain? Would we 'feel' the atoms responding appropriately? Would we go "All right, now based on the situation, I should be feeling high levels of dopamine and norepinephrine and probably low levels of serotonin, oh boy here it comes! Aw, I love you!" What would a naturalistic/compatibilist notion of freewill feel like? Could we 'feel' our thoughts if the physicalist notion of the mind is true?

The main issue with this is, to claim that it would feel differently if our minds were 'physically possible' presupposes some type of way of comparing the two, and unless God grants us access to two different universes where love is magic and then love is natural, we have no way of possibly knowing. It's not as though we're talking about petting a dog, and someone claims that this dog has no hair. It's clear we could say something to the effect that it would feel like something else to pet a bald dog. Of course a bald dog and a furry dog are something that can be compared. So it seems such a statement could never be epistemicaly justified.

When I encounter a person like the hypothetical character as Gatlin, I find it fun to reverse the argument. "That's fine" I would reply "It just feels so much like my mind is the result of a physical brain." – I'm at least justified in saying that, although I may not know what it would feel like (assuming it would feel differently) to have a immaterial mind, I'm least am pretty sure what a materially produced mind feels like, since we're certain it's true we have one. Some may claim it feels as though our minds are magical, which leads to the conviction that they are, but like the rotation of the earth, it may be that a physicalist mind feels the same.

By: David Campbell
Originally written: Monday, May 28, 2007