Henry Stapp - Is Consciousness Entirely Physical?

You could say that gravity is a causal explanation, in a partial sense, though to me it seems what we really have are observations of regularities that we take as examples of "force" or "energy" governed by "laws of nature".

This doesn't really explain why there's a consistency that can be replicated, or even why we have gravitational constants rather than a large range of gravitational variability.

Hume, among others, observed this issue with causality - why some philosophers call a world that is only random a "Humean" possibility.


  - Gregg Rosenberg, A Place for Consciousness 9.3 - Physics is not a theory of causation

See also ->

I find Rosenberg's argument exceptionally weak. He obfuscates the distinction between the mathematical approximation of a physical phenomenon and the phenomenon itself. By conflating the two, he undermines the explanatory power of physical laws, especially when addressing complex systems, by focusing too much on the limitations of our models rather than the underlying causal reality they aim to describe. Assuming realism is true, gravity is a real causal mechanism in the world, operating independently of how we describe it. A ball falls to the ground due to gravity, whether we use Newtonian, Lagrangian, or Hamiltonian mechanics to model its motion or Einsteins theory of general relativity..

I find Rosenberg's argument exceptionally weak. He obfuscates the distinction between the mathematical approximation of a physical phenomenon and the phenomenon itself. By conflating the two, he undermines the explanatory power of physical laws, especially when addressing complex systems, by focusing too much on the limitations of our models rather than the underlying causal reality they aim to describe. Assuming realism is true, gravity is a real causal mechanism in the world, operating independently of how we describe it. A ball falls to the ground due to gravity, whether we use Newtonian, Lagrangian, or Hamiltonian mechanics to model its motion or Einsteins theory of general relativity..

Physical Laws have causal power?

Rosenberg is saying the equations of physics would still hold regardless of whether the universe is ordered or all order is just pure Luck in a completely random reality. That to me is just stating a fact, that the equations of physics need something to “breath fire” into them as Hawking once said.

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?”
― Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time

Another way one could make a similar argument is that if we’re in a simulation you could still get the current physics even if all forces and energy are illusions and the real causal power lay in the computer just as it does in the physics engine of video games. Or if the universe is God’s dream, or some other metaphysical picture with a different grounding for cause-effect relations.

As you yourself say, if realism is true then gravity has causal power. Though even then I would ask why this causal power stays predictable in the form of planetary constants and whether a gravitational field affects things causally in the same way as physical bodies bumping into each other…

As you yourself say, if realism is true then gravity has causal power. Though even then I would ask why this causal power stays predictable in the form of planetary constants and whether a gravitational field affects things causally in the same way as physical bodies bumping into each other…

My argument is grounded in realism. If idealism is true, then the argument falls apart. The issue with assuming that quantum fields have less causal power than physical objects colliding arises from a simplistic understanding of dimensions and physical interactions. The notion that fields are somehow less effective in producing causal effects makes sense only if one limits their view of realism to four dimensions. However, no one claims that only four dimensions must exist, and the causal influence of quantum fields should not be diminished just because they don't fit the conventional 'bumping into each other' model

My argument is grounded in realism. If idealism is true, then the argument falls apart. The issue with assuming that quantum fields have less causal power than physical objects colliding arises from a simplistic understanding of dimensions and physical interactions. The notion that fields are somehow less effective in producing causal effects makes sense only if one limits their view of realism to four dimensions. However, no one claims that only four dimensions must exist, and the causal influence of quantum fields should not be diminished just because they don't fit the conventional 'bumping into each other' model

Actually I'm proposing the opposite, that the causal ability of fields could be looked at as a different kind of causality that is just as causally powerful as "billiard ball causality". 

In fact it's possible fields are formal causes, and minds could be viewed as formal causes in a certain sense. This could be a way Dualists might tackle the supposed Interaction Problem.

Neverthless, it's still unclear to me how physics adequately explains causality. Do the laws somehow exert causal power on the fields, thus ensuring facts like the planetary gravitational constant don't change? (I feel there's already some uncertainty about the Universal Gravitational Constant).

Also unsure how much we can say about "force" or "energy" in a purely physicalist sense. As Feynman notes:

The student may object, “I do not like this imprecision, I should like to have everything defined exactly; in fact, it says in some books that any science is an exact subject, in which everything is defined.” If you insist upon a precise definition of force, you will never get it! First, because Newton’s Second Law is not exact, and second, because in order to understand physical laws you must understand that they are all some kind of approximation.

One might even argue the natural laws show only associations and correlations, rather than actually giving us a clear explanation for how causation is constrained or how effects get produced. It seems to me if there was such an adequate picture of how causation works there would not even be much ground for a Simulation Hypothesis, yet we see even some physicists like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bernard Haisch considering something along those lines.

edit: A causal model supplied by physics alone would also negate the Humean View, that everything that seems like causality is really just Luck because all things are completely random. But AFAICTell nothing in physics can negate the possibility that all seeming order in the material world is just a long lucky streak of seeming harmony.

I agree that we don’t fully understand what gravity is, but that doesn't imply that, because we lack a complete understanding, gravity can't be the causal mechanism behind objects falling downward.

My whole point is that I don’t understand you say causation is a mystery. We have very good causal explanations for all known classical properties. 

Those explanations could just be wrong of course.

Something you seem to be missing is that we only know about gravity, or the force we refer to as such, because we have observed it consistently. However, consistent observation is not enough for us to know the actual nature of what gravity is. And we don't know what gravity is or why it does what it does. We have no answers to why gravity as observed... and not something else entirely.

My whole point is that I don’t understand you say causation is a mystery. We have very good causal explanations for all known classical properties. 

Those explanations could just be wrong of course.

We can both know that the physical force we call "gravity" exists while understanding nothing about the root cause behind the causative effects of gravity. We do not have any "very good" causal explanations for "all known" classical properties.

We don't even know why matter and physics exist as they are ~ and are instead not something else. We cannot just take it for granted that "we know", because we really don't know at all.

All we know for certain are that we observe patterns. And that's about all we know when it comes to physics and matter. We have so many models of these patterns... but that's the problem ~ they're just models based on observations, of varying degrees of accuracy as to their predictive power.

Predictive power is not an explanation of why matter and physics behave the way they do. They're just an indicator of stability of the behaviour of physical and material properties, and that's frankly about it.

Actually I'm proposing the opposite, that the causal ability of fields could be looked at as a different kind of causality that is just as causally powerful as "billiard ball causality". 

In fact it's possible fields are formal causes, and minds could be viewed as formal causes in a certain sense. This could be a way Dualists might tackle the supposed Interaction Problem.

A field, by definition, has the potential to exert influence (do work) at every point in spacetime (x, y, z, t). However, I fail to see how this alone solves the interaction problem. A hypothetical consciousness field would have to continuously add and remove heat from the brain in a manner resembling an oscillating wave. Naturally, this addition and removal of heat would need to cancel each other out, otherwise, the brain could function as a perpetual motion machine. It also seems unlikely that such a field would interact exclusively with neurons. On reflection, I understand why Henry Stapp aims to avoid this issue by involving QM, but I personally find the notion of dualism highly improbable.

Neverthless, it's still unclear to me how physics adequately explains causality. Do the laws somehow exert causal power on the fields, thus ensuring facts like the planetary gravitational constant don't change? (I feel there's already some uncertainty about the Universal Gravitational Constant).

Also unsure how much we can say about "force" or "energy" in a purely physicalist sense. As Feynman notes:


One might even argue the natural laws show only associations and correlations, rather than actually giving us a clear explanation for how causation is constrained or how effects get produced. It seems to me if there was such an adequate picture of how causation works there would not even be much ground for a Simulation Hypothesis, yet we see even some physicists like Neil Degrasse Tyson and Bernard Haisch considering something along those lines.

edit: A causal model supplied by physics alone would also negate the Humean View, that everything that seems like causality is really just Luck because all things are completely random. But AFAICTell nothing in physics can negate the possibility that all seeming order in the material world is just a long lucky streak of seeming harmony.

It’s important not to confuse the mathematical approximations of the laws of physics with the laws themselves, as Feynman emphasized. Another key point is that it's not guaranteed that these laws are identical throughout the universe or constant over time. These are assumptions we use in our mathematical models, verified as far as possible through experiments. However, as the issue with the universal gravitational constant suggests, these assumptions may not always hold true. For example, we may never fully understand gravity on a universal scale, but that doesn’t mean gravity isn’t the causal force behind the attraction of masses. The alternative would be to assume that everything is completely random and, by some extreme coincidence, we’ve never observed objects falling upward instead of downward—despite the idea that there would be equal probability for both. If the probability isn’t equal, it implies that a law governs this behavior.

A field, by definition, has the potential to exert influence (do work) at every point in spacetime (x, y, z, t). However, I fail to see how this alone solves the interaction problem. A hypothetical consciousness field would have to continuously add and remove heat from the brain in a manner resembling an oscillating wave. Naturally, this addition and removal of heat would need to cancel each other out, otherwise, the brain could function as a perpetual motion machine. It also seems unlikely that such a field would interact exclusively with neurons. On reflection, I understand why Henry Stapp aims to avoid this issue by involving QM, but I personally find the notion of dualism highly improbable.

Well I'm not a dualist either, I'm just pointing out the notion of formal causes might offer some mechanism for the Dualist.

It’s important not to confuse the mathematical approximations of the laws of physics with the laws themselves, as Feynman emphasized. Another key point is that it's not guaranteed that these laws are identical throughout the universe or constant over time. These are assumptions we use in our mathematical models, verified as far as possible through experiments. However, as the issue with the universal gravitational constant suggests, these assumptions may not always hold true. For example, we may never fully understand gravity on a universal scale, but that doesn’t mean gravity isn’t the causal force behind the attraction of masses. The alternative would be to assume that everything is completely random and, by some extreme coincidence, we’ve never observed objects falling upward instead of downward—despite the idea that there would be equal probability for both. If the probability isn’t equal, it implies that a law governs this behavior.

I still don't understand if you're saying physical laws have causal power or not?

Well I'm not a dualist either, I'm just pointing out the notion of formal causes might offer some mechanism for the Dualist.

I actually don’t think the interaction problem is the biggest issue for dualism. The main problem is the entire idea that there’s a ‘real’ physical world governed by physical laws, and then a completely separate realm that’s only consciousness/spiritual. The whole idea is clearly a reminiscent of the concept of ‘paradise’ in Western culture.

I still don't understand if you're saying physical laws have causal power or not?

I'm making assumptions. If realism = true => physical laws have causal power. If idealism = true => there are no physical laws.

The in-between position of neutral monism is harder to argue about.

I actually don’t think the interaction problem is the biggest issue for dualism. The main problem is the entire idea that there’s a ‘real’ physical world governed by physical laws, and then a completely separate realm that’s only consciousness/spiritual. The whole idea is clearly a reminiscent of the concept of ‘paradise’ in Western culture.

Consciousness is not a "completely separate realm" if there are very clear interactions between mind and matter. The physical world is governed by physical laws, but is not deterministic because of the influences of consciousness, making it very indeterministic ~ consciousness interferes, as it were, in this otherwise neat system of predictability, by acting from beyond the observed behaviours of physics.

The realm of consciousness is not "reminiscent" of any kind of "paradise". You need to go back to roots of Cartesian Dualism to understand what is actually being stated:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Res_extensa

Res extensa is one of the two substances described by René Descartes in his Cartesian ontology (often referred to as "radical dualism"), alongside res cogitans. Translated from Latin, "res extensa" means "extended thing" while the latter is described as "a thinking and unextended thing". Descartes often translated res extensa as "corporeal substance" but it is something that only God can create.

For Descartes, only humans had res cogitans, considering it something only humans had, connecting it to language and thought. Thus, only humans had souls. Descartes is not describing any sort of "paradise" here.

I'm making assumptions. If realism = true => physical laws have causal power. If idealism = true => there are no physical laws.

The in-between position of neutral monism is harder to argue about.

"Realism" has nothing to do with physical laws, nor whether or not they have any causal power. Nor does it have anything to do with Idealism. Nor does Idealism have anything to do with there being no physical laws... lots of confusion here on your part. These are separate concepts that have overlap, but are not affected by one another.

Physical laws exist for every observer, irrespective of their ontological and metaphysical beliefs. They clearly have causal power in relation to material objects and physical forces, for every observer. No-one denies it. Thus, for Idealism, material objects, physical forces and physical laws clearly exist, as they observed within experience. For the Idealist, physicality is simply a particular form of mental phenomena. So, no conflict exists.

Neutral Monism isn't "in-between" so much it seeks a less uncertain base substance than matter or mind, neither of which are considered to clearly be able to give rise to the other. For Neutral Monists, neither mind nor matter are base substances, but can both be the result of some higher base substance that is able to result in both, perhaps even having the qualities of both.