What, exactly, is consciousness? What is it “made of”, if anything? What’s the mechanism by which it controls the brain when we will an action, if it does?
There is no generally accepted answer to these and related questions, but theories tend to fall into two camps: (a) those who say that consciousness is merely subjective, an illusion of some sort, while the physical activity of the brain is all that really matters, and (b) those who insist consciousness is real, and requires either a spiritual/supernatural explanation, or a fundamental new discovery in physics.
My answer, I believe uniquely, transcends that dichotomy. It explains how consciousness is in no way illusory, while relying on neither the supernatural nor new physics.
I say consciousness is subjective but real, real but subjective. We need to reassess subjectivity and objectivity. If we really want to understand the universe and everything in it, objectivity is just not enough. We need to ditch the “real” and “unreal” implications of “objective” and “subjective”, and use these words to mean just “associated with the object” and “associated with the subject,” respectively. And consciousness cannot be an illusion—only conscious entities can be deluded.
The so-called “the hard problem” (HP) of consciousness—regarding what it is and how it relates to the brain—only appears when we neglect the difference between (a) pretending we’re disembodied intellects, capable of absolute objectivity, and (b) accepting that we’re entirely human, embedded in social as well as physical environments. Consciousness as subjective experience belongs entirely to context (b)—in strictly objective terms there’s no such thing—nor is there free will, nor values of any kind—there’s nothing, in fact, but mindless mechanism and inanimate matter. I sometimes call absolute objectivity “the dead zone”. Thomas Nagel called objectivity “the view from nowhere.” (See his book of that title.)
But the universe really does have a subjective aspect, which is what it’s like—or, rather, that it’s like something—to be part of it. This is a dual aspect theory—reality is really one coherent whole, but it seems dualistic to us, because we’re embedded in it, but theorize about it as if we were looking into it from outside. Our embedded experience is subjective, while our theories are objective, and the “hard problem” of consciousness appears when we fail to allow for that difference. The mental and physical aspects of reality are psychological rather than metaphysical, due to subjective and objective ways of thinking—but, in general terms, subjective aspects are not inferior to objective ones, being necessary as well as natural for human beings, though not for disembodied intellects (which, of course, don’t really exist).
Objective, third person accounts of consciousness are often accused of failing to account for the actual nature of subjective experience. But that’s not what they set out to do. This, for instance, is my most objective account of consciousness:
Attribution of consciousness is a function of the relationship between attributor and attributee. The attributor exploits similarity between itself and attributee, using its own self-model to predict the attributee’s behaviour. From the earliest developmental stages, the self-model is applied to others as well as self. This projection of the self-model is the essential element of any community of “conscious” agents—that is what the word means—and is inevitable in any social species of sufficient intelligence.
That paragraph was produced by taking what follows and eliminating subjective and intersubjective elements:
Attribution of consciousness is a function of the relationship between attributor and attributee. It signifies the identification of one with the other, viewing the other as a self. The attributor uses his imagination to put himself in the shoes of the attributee. We view as conscious those entities with which we might identify, or empathize: those that seem like ourselves. We learn to attribute consciousness to ourselves and to others at about the same time: self-consciousness is an internalisation of the realization that others see us, as we see them, and identify with us, as we identify with them. This self/other reflection is the essential element of any community of conscious agents—that is what the word means—and is inevitable in any social species of sufficient intelligence.
Objectivity gains generality at the cost of particularity. The second description is less strictly objective than the first, but I believe is much more effective. What it adds might not be necessary if the task is to design robots that will deal with each other as if conscious, but it probably helps where I’m trying to convince someone that I have some understanding of consciousness. Even so, it doesn’t begin to convey the flavour of any particular experience, or to account for the wondrous fact that there are physical things that enjoy pleasure, suffer pain, experience love, hope and despair. That’s not its job—but that fact, intersubjective as it is, is well worth contemplating. (Intersubjectivity is simply shared subjectivity. The validity of subjective/intersubjective concepts is instrumental.)
The subjective/objective aspect (SOA) theory relates mind to matter, solving (or exposing as a pseudo-problem) what used to be called “the mind/body problem,” but was reformulated by David Chalmers (Chalmers@Wikipedia) as “the hard problem” of consciousness.
Intersubjective panpsychism (ISP) developed out of the SOA theory. The SOA theory tells us what it means to consider something to be conscious, while ISP tells us what we should consider conscious. Of course, these are very closely related.
Mind, matter, meaning and information also developed out of the SOA theory, and might be seen as confirmation of its validity and demonstration of its power. Mind, matter, meaning and consciousness are explained in terms of information, but neither that explanation nor the SOA theory is intended as “the last word”: these things are too big to be covered by any single theory.
