"Materialism" is the belief that
only physical things exist. Other than the physical world,
there is nothing else. I hope materialism is false. I want more to reality. I want more than physical
things in the physical world - meaning beyond the mundane,
a richer reality. Possible purpose in life. Something beyond death. That's why I focus
on consciousness. Is anything beyond the physical? If yes, consciousness is a
key to undermine materialism. If no, consciousness is a
key to confirm materialism. Because for the philosophy
of materialism to hold, physical facts must explain
everything - and the big challenge is consciousness. Consciousness is inner
awareness, felt experience - what it feels like inside
to sense and to think. The big question is whether
materialism can explain our inner awareness and
felt experience or... does consciousness
defeat materialism? I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn
and Closer To Truth is my journey to find out. Sure, explaining
consciousness is a central scientific question. But it's far more. It's the heavyweight
championship of competing worldviews. In one corner
stands materialism. In the other, consciousness. And the battle has only
two possible outcomes: either physical facts about the
brain totally account for all aspects of the mind -
and thus materialism subsumes consciousness,
conquers it. Or materialism cannot explain
consciousness and materialism is dealt a mortal blow. It's a game of great stakes -
truly the meaning of life, the essence of existence -
and winner take all. I want consciousness to defeat
materialism - that's why I must be exceptionally careful -
I cannot allow my hope to warp my reason. So, how might consciousness
defeat materialism? How to frame the question
rationally, neutrally? I begin with a leading
philosopher of mind, Ned Block. Ned, some philosophers,
would use consciousness as the primary evidence, to defeat
the philosophy of materialism. Do you agree with that? I think that if materialism is
going to be defeated, it's going to come from consciousness. Consciousness is the one
phenomenon in our lives that may not be understandable within
a materialistic framework. First, define materialism. Okay, well, one version of it is
the mind-body identity theory. It's that consciousness just is
a state of the brain the way water is H2O, the way lightning
is electric discharges, the way heat is
molecular kinetic energy. Now, that can be
defeated in two ways. One is, if it turns out that
consciousness is a state of the immaterial soul
that would be really a big defeat for materialism. But another way would be if
consciousness turns out to be something functional, whose
essence isn't any particular kind of matter but whose essence
is something computational, the way adding is a
computational thing. Now, nobody feels that the fact
that adding does not have a material essence shows
that materialism is wrong. But, in the case of
consciousness, I think it would require a different
way of thinking. If it turned out that a computer
program could really capture all there is to consciousness. Okay, but that would not
invalidate materialism, because the computer,
whatever substrate that this is working on, is still well
in the material world. In the material world,
but, not essentially so. How do you distinguish
between them? The idea is, is that water
is essentially in the material world because it's just H2O. But adding isn't essentially in
the material world because there might be an immaterial
computer that could add. All it takes is to function
a certain way, even if an immaterial state
could function that way, then it would be adding. How would you rigorously define
materialism, or physicalism? Do these differ from each other? How do philosophers
deal with that today? The natural way to define
physical is to define it in terms of what
physicists talk about. But that leaves one hostage to
the physicists of the future. We know that the physicists
now are certainly wrong. Future physics will correct
what physicists say now. So, there is that problem
in how to define 'physical'. One way that people have
of getting around that is to just do it in
terms of non-mental. So, the idea is that what's
physical is what does not require mentalistic
concepts to talk about. Concepts. And defining it that way,
carefully, you can still ask the question about is consciousness
that kind of material. You haven't destroyed
your definition by defining it that way? Yes, because what you're saying,
is what consciousness fully is, something that can be picked out
without using mentalistic terms? Yes. And many people would answer,
no, you can't do that. Yes, right, many people would. How would you conclude? You skew very heavily to
you think 'yes,' but are you like 51/49 or 99/1? I'm 90 to 10. 90-10. Okay. But how has your feelings
progressed over this, over your career? Oh, I used to be 50/50, and now
I'm 90/10, because the science, the neuroscience of the mind,
is just - has been fantastic. We seem to be finding out more
and more, it's looking more and more like consciousness
is a biological phenomenon. Of course, things could go the
other way, and that could defeat materialism if we hit a wall. But, I don't think it's
going to work that way. I'm a materialist. Ned is a materialist,
motivated by the accumulating achievements of neuroscience. Personally, I bear witness -
I did my doctorate in brain research - and I follow
the remarkable discoveries. But I have doubts. Is neuroscience progressing
in explaining the phenomenal experience of consciousness? Or only in providing mechanistic
components of mental content? But are my doubts
caused by my hopes? Or worse, by my superstitions? I should examine the other side;
reverse my thinking for a while. What would it take to
show that consciousness cannot defeat materialism? One way, for me, would be
if consciousness could be created artificially, in
non-biological materials. I ask a robotics pioneer and
entrepreneur, a former director of MIT's Computer Science
and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Rodney Brooks. I don't think that consciousness
can defeat materialism, I think that consciousness and the
things that we are emerge from the biological activity
of the biomolecules. But, that emergence may be quite
complex, so I think, you know, modern physics says that
chemistry emerges from physics. There are fundamental particles,
they interact in certain ways, and out of that comes chemistry. But, you wouldn't try to have
a chemistry department which was just made up of
physicists who didn't have the specialized
chemical knowledge. Sure. We need a different set of tools
to describe the chemistry and I think that the same is
true in biological systems and with consciousness. I think that it comes from what
is below, but we aren't able to bridge that gap in any way right
now so it is worth asking the questions at that higher level. Okay, the question is when
you get to consciousness in principle, can you make that
same statement, can you say that for consciousness, if we knew
everything at the lower level, we could in principle predict
and explain consciousness? I think that's in principle,
a valid thing to say... it's so far in the
future it hard to... And that's fine...
the other argument would say that in principle,
it will be impossible, ever to be able
to make that leap. But that's not saying there's
some spirit or some soul, or anything like that. It just says that to go to
consciousness requires something so different in the structure of
the physical world that it's in principle impossible to predict. I reject that. And I like to think about
that level of complexity change with an analogy. If you look at what a computer
is doing, down at the lower level with bits going in
and out, we can't infer the structure of the
programming language. But, we know that what
it's doing was written in C plus plus. But, when we just probe and look
at those things, even though we built the thing, it's really
hard to reverse engineer it. So, that in principle argument
about consciousness coming out of the physical layer, it may be
something we never do because it would take longer than
the universe exists to work through all the computations. But the question is, in
principle, is it possible, 'cause many people now say that
it's not possible, that there are kinds of laws
operating at the level of consciousness which are
sufficiently different. Now, they may be the equivalent
of, if you take an extreme case, a fifth law of force of nature. I can't rule that out. That may be the case that we've
come across new forces before. But, since consciousness is so
abundant around us, if it relies on this other law, I think we
would have had started to see other manifestations of it. Do we have any help
from the rapid development of artificial intelligence? Well, I think the sheer bulk of
computation, doing some task, makes us understand
things differently. And I think we saw that with
the Watson program from IBM that played Jeopardy. Some of those answers
that it came up with were completely amazing. How did it know to make that
analogy, that word play, well, it didn't really know it was
applying statistical techniques into doing a big search, but to
us, it was really astonishing how it got some
of those answers. So, at a certain level of deep
quantitative improvement, you suddenly have a sense
of qualitative difference. Yes, to me, that says we see
that, we see another version of that emerges in these
artificial intelligence systems, and it feels to us the
same as seeing it in a human. And we know it's different, so,
that says to me, we don't need more stuff than
mechanism to explain. So, to external
observers it appears as if Artificial Intelligence
is doing human-level things, even though we know
that internally, it is not. Well, isn't consciousness
even more special? Consciousness is an
internal experience that "feels like something" -
that's radically special! It's not what consciousness
does that's the problem - it's what consciousness is! I should explore the opposite
side - where consciousness is assumed to
transcend the physical. It's not hard to
remain skeptical. I meet an expert in
consciousness studies, President Emeritus of the
Institute of Noetic Sciences, Marilyn Schlitz. Marilyn, some would say that consciousness
defeats materialism. Others would say that
consciousness is the perfect expression of materialism. So, consciousness becomes the
battlefield for the fight over the worldview of the primacy and
the dominance of materialism. Well, I'd start by resisting the
metaphor of a military battle. Oh, I love battle. Well, this is going to be a
gender issue between us, then. But, I would prefer to think
that they're complementary, and that certainly there is a
biological material substrate that is consciousness
and is very real. And it is equally true that
people have these experiences that transcend this
sense of our embodiment. I am increasingly fascinated by
the discoveries we're making about the brain and the physical
aspects of our consciousness. Things like intention that
had kind of been wooly and ill defined. We now know about these
configuration of neurons called the mirror neurons, and we can
see that the brain lights up in a certain way when we attribute
intention to another person. Whether that's the complete
final story is to me something that ultimately, we're all going
to have to die to understand. But, if you accept the
lineage lines of these various traditions, whether they're
religious or spiritual or even pagan, which one's going to win
could become a political issue. One truth claim overriding
another because they control the budgets of the National
Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation,
and therefore, they then become the official authorities
on what is true. We would all want to eject
that for sure, even if that dominates, it can't last. Because whatever's true is true,
and if that is true, it will last. But, that assumes truth is
an absolute reified construct, and what I would argue from the
history of science is that our model, of what is true, has
changed periodically over time, and it's going to
continue to change. And my hope is that rather
than seeing these kind of militaristic metaphors as the
dominant paradigm, is to begin to cultivate a
position of pluralism. Here's the reason I used
the militaristic language. Because that's what
materialism has set up. Materialism doesn't say that we
explain some of the things and we can have other things. If there is anything that
materialism can't explain, then materialism by its
self-definition is destroyed. Well, my hope is that as we move
into 21st century life with all of the ways in which complexity
and multiplicity of viewpoints come together that we can begin
to build a more humble approach to this question
about what is true. And I think this notion that one
system trumps the other one, becomes a power issue,
not an ontological issue. The most important aspect of
this convergence is that science is being informed by wisdom. And wisdom is being
informed by knowledge. And out of that, I think, come a
new set of possibilities for how we can understand reality and
in fact how we live into it. Marilyn argues for diversity
of worldviews and for harmony among them - but that won't do. If materialism allows other
worldviews to co-exist as "real", it is
self-contradictory. Suicidal. Materialism dies. Can religion help? Religion and materialism
are mortal enemies - but if consciousness
requires some kind of 'soul' - as most religions assume
and most people believe - then materialism is
defeated instantly. I ask the
intellectual leader of the Intelligent Design
Movement - William Dembski. I'm cautious. Bill, you have pioneered the
development of intelligent design as a mathematical,
philosophical view to in essence defeat the materialistic,
naturalistic view of the world. Do you see consciousness as
another arrow in your quiver? I'd like to, but it seems to me
that right now we don't have any in-principle proofs that
matter cannot generate mind. We'll talk about
reductive materialism, non-reductive materialism. And intelligent design actually
would not be at odds with a non-reductive materialism. So, I don't see consciousness
as being an avenue for defeating materialism. I think it's a challenge
to materialistic theories. I mean, why isn't
there a theory? Is it just that it's a difficult
problem on materialist terms, or is it that materialism simply
cannot support consciousness? What I find interesting is that
you would look to other things in the physical world as we
find it as evidence of design, some micro-motors
in certain types of single cellular animals. Would you see that as being
stronger evidence for design than the human consciousness,
the self-awareness that we think is the most certain
thing that we have? I think we don't
even really fully grasp what consciousness is. I mean, these motors, we can
objectify them; we can deal with them; we can quantify; but
consciousness, I mean, you read, various people, it's an
illusion; we don't even really have consciousness,
so, what is it? As an argument to defeat
materialism, it's not clear that you have a lot really
to work with there. And then you've got
materialism itself; what is the nature of matter? The sort of reductive
materialism, I think we're getting closer there because
this notion that we can get consciousness just by sheer
complexity, where basically it's just electrical impulses
and just their interaction that gives it to us. But, if we're talking a
materialism that's non-reductive you have some sort of emerging
property that has these new causal powers, to me that's
mystery mongering there because you're putting all this
emphasis then on emergence. I'm skeptical of all these
arguments that other Theist' think have a lot of weight. What I'm fascinated about is
why the intelligent design of micro-motors does move you,
whereas consciousness does not? Well, I think there's a vast
difference between things being consistent, you know. And there's sort of this
beautiful interplay of things where everything is kind of
fitting together hand in glove. I mean, consciousness,
non-materialism, belief in God, all of that... But, it's one thing
for things to fit nicely. Paranoids have delusions
that fit nicely, you know. Yeah, sure. But, it's another thing for
there to be positive reasons, confirmation, disconfirmation. These sorts of design inferences
in biological systems do give me reason, actually, I mean, not
just to believe in the design of these systems, but to question
the reigning materialistic creation account for
biological complexity. But, you do not feel
the same way about the nature of consciousness? No. I think what we have to
say is we just don't have a materialistic account
at this point. Bill surprised me. I'd have thought he'd eagerly
recruit consciousness to defeat materialism and defend
his religious worldview. But if consciousness is entirely
physical, Bill says, that would not upset his
religious convictions. I feel I'm on shifting sands? Scientists, philosophers, even
religious believers all seem split over whether consciousness
defeats materialism. Why such uncertainties,
such confusion? What's going on? I need a philosopher who grasps
the uncertainties and confusion troubling consciousness - and
who values the nature of belief. I meet Eric Schwitzgebel. Eric, does consciousness
defeat materialism? I don't think it
defeats materialism. I'm about 50/50 on
materialism myself. I started as a materialist. But, I also think there are
alternative views out there that might also work and that
we can't decisively refute. What caused that transition? I think it was caused
by reflecting on our poor epistemic situation
with respect to settling questions of metaphysics. So, I think there are basically
three ways that you can approach the metaphysics of
consciousness: you can do it with science, you can do it with
common sense, you can do it with things like
theoretical elegance. But none of those things seem to
me like they decisively settle among the various options. For me, maybe the
last straw was reading Nick Bostrom's
Simulation Argument. The idea that we might
be computer programs in an artificial
simulated environment. If that's the case, then when
I look out at the world, what I'm seeing is something
that has been kind of constructed for me by
the computer in which we're being instantiated. But, that's a wholly
materialistic... No, I disagree with that. Does computation
have to be material? I don't see why. If something is not spatial,
it's not material. Computation doesn't
have to be spatial. Space might be a feature of our
programming environment that doesn't reflect the
fundamental nature of reality. Maybe the fundamental nature
of reality is, God's mind is a computer, transitioning
through a turing table. Right? Different kinds of conditional
computational possibilities. There's nothing about
turing tables I think that has to be spatial. Okay, I understand your
transition away from a hardcore materialist to 50/50,
sitting on that fence. Along with me, by the way. What's in that other 50%? What are the components
of it that make up a non-materialist
possible worldview? There are four broad categories
in metaphysical positioning. So, one, it would
be materialism. But another would
be substance dualism. The idea that there's an
immaterial soul, and a material world, and they're equally real
and equally fundamental and one is not reducible to the other. That's a view that deserves
some credence I think... Certainly, it's been
a religious view... It's been a religious view. I find various forms of
idealism also attractive. On an idealist view, what's
really fundamental are minds. Right, so, you could have a
view like Barclay's where there just our minds... Maybe an interaction with
each other and with God. Or you could have an atheistic
version of that, where they're just our minds in
interaction with each other. Another possibility that I find
attractive is something like Kantian transcendental idealism. What is that? So, in transcendental idealism,
space is something that's constructed by or created by our
minds, and not fundamental to reality kind of
independent of us. Or maybe it is, but we
don't know that it is. On transcendental idealism,
we don't really know what the reality fundamentally is like. But there's no particularly
good reason to think that it's spatial. It might be something quite
alien to us, something that we wouldn't understand,
or maybe something mental or something divine. One of the things that as a
skeptic, I want to do is try to put back on the map
other possibilities besides materialism that I think
philosophers in the 20th century, there's
this very quick shift in the philosophical community,
to materialism. Scared by science. (laughs) Maybe. So, I think in that swift
transition, we left behind a variety of other views
that are worth at least still taking seriously, I think. For materialism to triumph,
it must explain consciousness. Here are five ways: 1. Consciousness is an illusion
- there's no problem to solve. 2. Neuroscience is
making great progress - eventually, brain
will explain mind. 3. Consciousness is a weak
emergent property of the brain - like the wetness of water
from hydrogen and oxygen. 4. Consciousness is a strong
emergent property of the brain, even if consciousness would
be impossible to predict, it would still be physical. 5. Consciousness requires a
new kind of physical law or force or dimension. I myself reject one; two
and three - consciousness is not an illusion. Neuroscience can never
account for consciousness. Mental states cannot be
explained solely in terms of brain states. Four, strong emergence,
is a candidate - but how would it work? It must be material
and it can't be magic. If I were a materialist,
I'd go for five - something beyond known physics. There could be at
least two non-material explanations of consciousness. 1. A kind of non-physical
component that somehow combines with
the physical brain. 2. Consciousness is the
true reality - and the entire material world is either
derivative or an illusion. That makes at least seven
possible explanations of consciousness - five material,
two non-material. Which do you think is... closer to truth? For complete interviews
and for further information, please visit
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