Exploring the Depths of Consciousness: The Black-and-White Dilemma
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Chapter 1: The Concept of Black-and-White Mary
The thought experiment known as Black-and-White Mary features an exceptional neuroscientist who grows up in an environment devoid of color, immersed only in shades of black and white. Despite this limitation, Mary becomes an expert on color perception, studying extensively and absorbing all available knowledge on the subject. However, when she finally steps outside her monochromatic confines and experiences color for the first time, a pivotal question arises: does she gain any new insights? My introduction to this thought experiment came during my graduate philosophy studies at Texas State University around a decade ago, but I have recently revisited it through Philip Goff's book, Galileo's Error. Initially, I struggled to grasp the materialist challenge presented by this experiment, but upon re-examination, I have developed a clear response to the concerns I previously noted.
The crux of the issue is that materialism is not necessarily disproven if Mary discovers something new; her brain may undergo a different process when she experiences actual color perception—an understanding that is well-supported by research. However, it may be prudent to disregard much of the contemporary discourse surrounding this problem, as many philosophers overlook the essential point: what Mary has acquired is a complex web of abstract concepts. These concepts do not change the wiring of her primary visual cortex or allow her to experience color directly. Consequently, we find ourselves in a situation reminiscent of Philippa Foot’s Trolley Problem—all relevant content has been abstracted, leaving us with the same dilemma but without a solid basis for making a decision. Yet, there is a prevailing belief that merely learning about the science of color perception should suffice to replace the actual experience. If Mary learns something new, it is argued that materialism must be false, as she is presumed to possess complete knowledge of color experiences, which materialism is thought incapable of explaining.
Supposing that Mary does not gain any new understanding of color from her first encounter with it poses a challenge to the widely accepted bottom-up cognitive model, which most of us consider standard for sensory data integration. The extraordinary steps required to create a brilliant neuroscientist in a colorless setting aside, the material interactions between mind and world suggest that learning about a concept differs from learning the concept itself. For example, consider a sex education teacher explaining that the penis enters the vagina and assuming that this description encapsulates the entirety of a sexual experience. In contrast, participating in a sexual experience and attempting to articulate it reveals the emotional layers, sensory data, and spiritual aspects that cannot be fully captured by a simple description. The former scenario represents a brain attempting to recreate another's abstract representation of an experience, often failing to convey the depth of that experience.
Individuals who engage in this line of thinking should easily grasp the nuances distinguishing a conceptual framework from the experience that inspired its creation—these two are always distinct; the conceptual framework is merely a compressed version of the originating experience. However, in the case of Black-and-White Mary, philosophers seem to struggle with differentiating between the neural processes of packaging and unpackaging information involved in communication.
Mary has always been a recipient of conceptual packages crafted by others; she has never directly experienced color and primarily functions as an unpacker of concepts. Imagining her exhilaration upon witnessing color for the first time must be quite stimulating! Perhaps she will return to her monochromatic room to document this firsthand experience. While her creative output may indeed be impressive, it could never adequately convey the essence of a first color experience to another individual confined to a black-and-white existence, as the language used to encapsulate the experience inevitably compresses information, resulting in the loss of certain details. Moreover, memory can distort facts during recall, further complicating the position of materialists who wish to argue that Mary learns nothing new from her initial color experience to protect their stance.
Frank Jackson, the originator of the Black-and-White Mary thought experiment, ultimately shifted his view to embrace materialism, perhaps for reasons akin to the argument presented here (Alter, 2023). This shift in perspective relates to a newfound capacity to employ physicalism to account for perceptual novelties, even within the peculiar discussions of this nature. For the materialist perspective to withstand Jackson’s argument, it merely needs to elucidate the physical interactions Mary experiences with her environment upon encountering color for the first time.
In the video, "Mindscape 71 | Philip Goff on Consciousness Everywhere," Goff explores the implications of consciousness and its omnipresence, providing insights into the philosophical ramifications of these discussions.
Section 1.1: Implications for Panpsychism
If you are following the thread of my argument, you may have discerned the significant difference between experiencing something firsthand and merely reading about it after someone else has experienced it. Contemporary physicists often assert the irrelevance of philosophy, and in the context of academic discussions surrounding topics like free will, they are not entirely incorrect (Hawking & Mlodinow, 2010; Daniel, 2018). However, both philosophers and physicists seem to overlook the distinction between abstract descriptions and the phenomena they describe. This conflation may appear ludicrous, but if you contest the fundamental point, try engaging with the term "dog" and see if you can get it to retrieve a thrown object for you. The challenge seems to lie in people's reluctance to acknowledge the limitations of language.
For proponents of panpsychism, we must accept the notion that everything we can experience is inherently tied to our consciousness. This implies that if there exists another dimension of reality governed by rules imperceptible to consciousness, we will never uncover it—even if evidence emerges from physics or other fields—because our awareness remains a primary driver of our conscious thought processes.
Imagine, instead of a brilliant neuroscientist in a colorless environment, that you are a conscious human being with a body that mediates your consciousness in relation to your surroundings, granting you access to the events unfolding around you. Now, assume that anything you can perceive is somehow influenced by your consciousness. An arbitrary object may exist independently of your ability to perceive it; however, once you become aware of it, that object undergoes a change. Consequently, you cannot perceive or measure the object without invoking a reaction from it based on your consciousness. This concept resonates with the observer problem in physics, yet it does not inherently contradict our scientific or philosophical understandings.
If this perspective holds true, then panpsychism seems to be validated. The influence of consciousness appears to permeate everything observable in the universe; it is omnipresent. Even at the quantum level, our actions provoke responses from entities that seem external to and independent of us.
Nevertheless, this leads to another important question: what is the universe like beyond the bounds of consciousness? Numerous phenomena with arbitrary properties might exist, potentially defying the laws of physics, yet conscious beings can never access this knowledge because consciousness invariably interferes with our attempts to escape its influence.
The challenge for panpsychism is that conscious beings can never escape consciousness when investigating this issue. Therefore, independent of our consciousness, we cannot validate or invalidate the assertion that all matter is infused with consciousness. Moreover, claiming that the entire universe possesses consciousness hinders researchers from distinguishing between various activities occurring in matter, as it eliminates the possibility that consciousness is a defining characteristic of only certain types of objects. To account for phenomena such as death—where a body transitions from possessing agency and knowledge to becoming inert—the panpsychist must differentiate between varying levels of consciousness.
In turn, the idea that everything is conscious or somehow influenced by consciousness provides a weak explanation that lacks utility in enhancing our understanding of the world. A more robust explanation might suggest that our entire experience is mediated by the electromagnetic force. Consciousness is fundamentally linked to the electromagnetic force, acting through it and for it. Consciousness is not devoid of preferences; our senses are attuned to specific aspects of reality while neglecting others, and these preferences are arbitrary. Evolution could have potentially unfolded differently within the same physical framework, yielding entirely different outcomes.
If our goal is to maximize the value of our scientific comprehension of the universe, it may be more productive to assert that our conscious minds interact with the electromagnetic force in ways that collapse wave functions and superpositions, producing specific patterns. In this scenario, we establish a basic distinction between the operator and the operation, facilitating the investigation of particular phenomena. In the classic double-slit experiment, the wave function collapses, leading to varying test results. I argue for a similar structure in our linguistic representations of the world and their relationship to the phenomena they depict—acknowledging that incompleteness is inherent in the interplay between description and the described phenomenon—and I contend that contemporary neuroscience's materialist representation undermines the reductio ad absurdum originally postulated by Jackson.
Chapter 2: Reevaluating Consciousness in Science
In the video "David Lewis on Frank Jackson's Knowledge Argument," Lewis discusses the implications of Jackson's argument and provides a critical examination of its impact on the philosophy of mind.
For panpsychism, the pertinent question revolves around the significance of terminology in the scientific discourse. Since positing that consciousness pervades the universe fails to provide substantial explanatory value or generate empirically testable hypotheses, it is clear that issues arise from this perspective. However, replacing "consciousness" with "electromagnetic force" accomplishes two important objectives: it allows for the differentiation between living and nonliving entities based on their capacity to make choices and influence their environment, and it highlights the electromagnetic force that indeed permeates all matter, regardless of its levels of consciousness or lack thereof.