The paradox of consciousness postmodern cosmology, science and and philosophy of mind (healing the mind-body split through radical materialism)
The paradox of consciousness postmodern cosmology, science and and philosophy of mind (healing the mind-body split through radical materialism)
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Issue Date
1995
Authors
de Quincey, Christian
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Abstract
It is inconceivable that sentience could ever emerge from wholly insentient matter. Yet here we are! thinking and feeling embodied beings. Can our philosophy and science—based on rationalism and empiricism—account for this?
Immediately we have a two-fold problem: First, empiricism works only because we experience the data; second, reason works only because we experience the abstract relations. Both empiricism and rationalism—the very essence of science depend, inevitably, on an experiencer, on consciousness. The paradox of consciousness is this: Nowhere among the data of the senses, nor even among the abstractions of logical relationships, will we ever locate the concrete reality of consciousness as an experience.
How, then, could we ever meaningfully talk of philosophy of mind or of developing a true science of consciousness? The thesis developed here proposes that an adequate answer to this question will involve a radical transformation of our current epistemology—beyond the recursive limitations of empiricism and rationalism—and adoption of a radically different fundamental ontology.
For centuries, philosophers have grappled with the conundrum of how mind and matter are related. Various solutions have been proposed, falling under three general headings of "dualism", "materialism", and "idealism". None of these has provided a satisfactory solution. The mind-body problem remains as intractable as ever—given the assumptions underlying these three major ontologies.
The joint legacy of dualism and materialism is based on a common assumption that has led to profound consequences for the modern world: matter is intrinsically inert and insentient. We must begin, I will argue, with an opposite assumption: that, to its core, matter is sentient.
Critiquing the various failed "solutions" to the mind-body problem, the way forward, I propose, is via a fourth ontology—radical materialism. The central assertion of this thesis is that it is inconceivable that subjectivity could ever arise from purely objective matter. We need to adopt a radically different understanding of what matter is if we are ever to come to terms with the mind-body split, or to develop a true science of consciousness.
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Consciousness--philosophy , Philosophy of mind , Panpsychism , Process philosophy , Postmodernism , Cosmology