The mind-body problem has been developing since the 17th century. It is the problem of the connection between the physical and mental; the body and the mind. After the development of the problem throughout the years, consciousness became one of the main questions of the problem nowadays. However, there has not been a general consensus on the definition of consciousness within the philosophical community. This paper will not focus on the definition as it is the hard part of the question of consciousness, but it will take a smaller question to give a better understanding of what is consciousness. I will address the question: “Is consciousness compatible with materialism?” There are two dominant accounts that explore consciousness and will be evaluated through the contemporary philosophers: Thomas Nagel, and Frank Jackson. The account that this paper is interested in is materialism, which claims that reality is fundamentally made up of matter – physical stuff.
In the beginning, I would like to introduce two main kinds of materialism:
- Identity theory, which holds the view that consciousness is identical to a physical event in the brain namely matter.
- Functionalism, which holds the view that consciousness is a function of running the “right software” on the brain or any “hardware” like material.
Using these two kinds of materialism, physicalists take advantage of the identity-based and the functional reductive explanations. These reductive explanations are going to be the basis to the materialism account of consciousness by employing an analogy for each of the explanations. The water and H2O example expresses the identity-based reductive explanation. Water is identical to the chemical compound H2O, and when we want to answer what is water our reductive explanation would be it is the substance that boils at one hundred degrees Celsius and freezes at zero degree Celsius, etc. Using this analogy, water is consciousness and H2O is neural-firing at a certain speed and in that manner consciousness is identical to the neuro-firing. Moreover, the gene-DNA example expresses the functional reductive explanation. The genes of the human beings play a functional role of transferring information between generations for the DNA. But in the case of aliens or other creatures that does not have DNA but they might have something else, which we could call X, that would have genes that transfer information for. Genes for these creatures would still be a function for X. Using this analogy, consciousness represents genes and it performs function to whatever depending on the “creature,” for instance, brain for the human beings. These two reductions demonstrate how materialism illustrates consciousness.
Thomas Nagel analyzes the above reductive explanations in his paper: “What is it like to be a bat?” He introduces consciousness as special and endures its definition as follows: “An organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism.”
By applying his definition, he derives that the reductive explanations fail because they leave out the explanation of what it is like to be in a conscious experience. The reductive explanations show what consciousness could be but it does not explain what it entails. Nonetheless, Nagel believes that it is impossible to explain consciousness physically because we do not understand materialism totally as of right now. He states: “It would be a mistake to conclude that materialism must be false … It would be truer to say that materialism is a position we cannot understand because we do not at present have any conception of how it might be true.”
This statement of Nagel explains a neutral position of where consciousness stands in terms of materialism and allows the physicalist account time for us to perceive a conception of how it might be true. As a supporting example here, I would like to use the Einsteinian physics and more specifically the famous relation E = mC2. This relation means that energy and matter are one of the same under certain speeds. We take this theory for granted since it solves more problems than other paradigms. Even though we do not fully understand it or have a conception of how could it be the case that energy and matter are one. In the same approach, consciousness of the mind and the physical brain may be the same but we are missing the ability understand it.
Last but not least, Jackson’s thought experiment of Mary, the scientist, in the black and white room adds the last ingredient of this paper. Mary is a color scientist that lives in a black and white room; but she learned every physical fact of red prior to any conscious visual experience of seeing red. She was perfect in reasoning, as in she is able to deduce any entailment by a physical fact. When she saw red tomato, she learned a new fact about red, which is entailed by the conscious visual experience of red. Jackson goes on and says: “It is inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that, and materialism is false.”
In contrast, the ability hypothesis states that Mary did not gain any new information or facts about red when she perceived red. She just acquired the ability to perceive the color red. Therefore, the physicalist explanation of knowing all about the color red is satisfactory to say that the conscious experience of red is entailed by the knowledge of the physical facts if we reach the maximum of understanding the conception of materialism.
The conclusion obtained from analyzing the arguments from Nagel and Jackson articulate that consciousness could be different physical things in different beings, which could also imply that consciousness is fundamental and universal; however, it is still explained physically. Also, our understanding and conception of materialism is limited to the point that we might not be able to explain consciousness in those terms right now but may be in the future. The direct answer is, yes, consciousness is compatible with materialism in many ways but it is not complete yet. I think that we just need time until we develop an understanding of a fundamental physical conception of consciousness. Until then, stay conscious!
