On Matter

Matter is very versatile stuff. And it is capable of amazing feats: it excludes other matter from its place; it exerts gravitational force; it can condense into black holes; it can be extremely hot or extremely cold; it can be positively or negatively charged; it can emit radiation; it can cause massive explosions; it can change from solid to liquid to gas and back again; it can travel at widely different speeds; it can combine into different life forms; it can chemically react with other matter; and it can produce consciousness. Space (and time) has nothing like this richness of capabilities, and what powers it does have derive from matter (as in General Relativity). Matter is multifaceted, a highly accomplished actor on the world stage. It isn’t just brute extension or simple solidity or bare occupancy. We tend to underestimate its talents because they are not visible to unaided sense and because we haven’t witnessed its entire history (no one has ever seen a black hole form). And this is before we get to exotica like dark matter and quantum mechanics. Many of these powers are unexplained, possibly inexplicable; yet we know they exist (e.g., electromagnetic charge). Some are counterintuitive or contrary to common sense (e.g., atomic bombs). There may still be surprises in store for us. Light has surprised us several times: its speed, its particulate make-up, the color spectrum. Matter is like planet Earth: far more active and changeable and varied than we tend to suppose (I am speaking of its geology). Matter, like Earth, has a long and tumultuous history: the big bang and the formation of galaxies; volcanic upheavals, drastic climate change, chemical revolutions. Neither is a dull dead lump. Earth produced life; matter produced consciousness: we don’t know how but we know it is so. The brain is made of matter organized in a certain way, and it is the basis of consciousness. This is one of its many achievements, and not wildly out of character: matter is capable of many remarkable things and this is just one of them, though perhaps the most remarkable of all.

My point is that conscious matter is not something to recoil from (as Locke long ago urged): matter is capable of many amazing things and producing consciousness is one of them. No doubt this ability is deeply mysterious (as Locke also urged), but it appears to be so and the alternatives are unpalatable. It seems uncanny and impossible because we don’t comprehend the full nature of matter—its nature isn’t perceptually given. If we had found that the head was home to a remarkable ball of light, constantly changing, with many a variation of color and brightness, we might not be so inclined to jib at the suggestion that it is the basis of consciousness (by contrast, the brain has a dull dung-like appearance). But we have to accept that the brain is the de facto basis of consciousness, like it or not. It is just that its potency is hidden from us—like the explosive power of the atom (so much from so little!). There is no Second Substance allied with the atom that accounts for its explosive potential, as there is no immaterial substance tethered to the brain that accounts for its power to produce the mind. There is just matter exercising its astonishing range of abilities. The brain appears to offer the right conditions for this power to manifest itself, mysterious as that may be. Metamorphosis is not alien to matter; indeed, metamorphosis is endemic to it. We must not conceive of matter too geometrically, with shape and size predominating; nor should we think of it too practically, with solidity being its prime characteristic. We should recognize the impressive versatility and potency of matter, as evidenced in its behavior from the big bang to the present time. Matter contains multitudes.

One of the properties of matter I have not mentioned (there are several) is color and other secondary qualities. Some material things are red: how is this possible? By rights they shouldn’t be, because matter is objectively colorless. But matter interacts with the nervous system so as to give rise to impressions of color; it is capableof so doing. Thus, a color is “projected” onto a material thing and it sticks there, clinging to the surface, as it were. Color is, we are inclined to say, a mental property that has attached itself to insensate matter. Thus, the mental has invaded the physical, joined forces with it, infiltrated it: the two have become united in a single thing. This is not so far from what the brain does in relation to the mind: it brings mental and physical together (sensations and neurons). I will say that color is an “interaction effect”—a result of the interaction between external object and brain. It needs both: nothing is red without the joint action of object and sensory system. This suggests a bold hypothesis: consciousness is an interaction effect of the material brain. I mean this hypothesis to be super-speculative, as befits the subject. The brain interacts with the material environment in perception and with the material body in action, but it also interacts with itself—this is what is meant by neural “connectivity”. Neurons interact with other neurons in enormously complex ways and at different levels of description (electrical, chemical, informational, representational, phenomenological). The hypothesis, then, is that consciousness is an interaction effect of such myriad interactions. I don’t mean it is reducible to them; the effect is of an “emergent” character. This is quite commonplace with interaction effects from the chemical to the social. In some way we don’t understand, neural interactions give rise to conscious states; this is the kind of fact a conscious state emerges from.

Note how limited this claim is: it is not intended as explanatory, still less specific and detailed; it is merely a hypothesis about what to look for in searching for the neural basis of consciousness. Not in properties of individual neurons (like single action potentials), nor even in properties of ensembles of neurons (cascades of nerve impulses), but in interactions between neurons. Logically, it’s like looking for the origins of political movements in interactions between individuals: something new emerges from such interactions. The individual neurons have properties that may transcend what we know, and their interactions convert these properties into the conscious states we experience, by methods we don’t understand. There is therefore plenty of mystery in the interaction hypothesis, but it is not entirely toothless. We might call it “interactive materialism” (compare “central state materialism”); it is one class of materialist hypotheses, where by “materialism” we simply mean “brain-based”. Its full name might be “mysterian interactive non-reductive neural materialism”. We already know that parts of the brain can interact with other parts to produce properties not derivable from each part alone–as with language parts and emotion parts, or perception and thought parts, or memory and imagination parts. The interaction theory of consciousness extends this idea to the generation of consciousness itself—neural units interacting so as to produce (mysteriously) conscious experiences. Putting it in terms of the traditional identity theory, pain (say) is identical to an interaction of C-fibers and other associated fibers, not the firing of C-fibers alone. In principle, evidence could be found that supports this hypothesis (or refutes it). The underlying idea is that matter has the capacity to interact with itself and in special (unknown) circumstances this gives rise to consciousness. Brains provide these circumstances (we don’t know how) and they evolved millions of years ago (we don’t know when), thus unlocking yet another latent power of matter. The gravitational powers of black holes are released by increasing the density of matter; the mental powers of brains are released by suitable interactions between their constituents (of an unknown nature). No interactions between neurons, no consciousness.[1] Ordinary chunks of matter afford no such interactions between their parts, so they won’t be conscious; ditto for empty space. But the brain is essentially an interactive organ within its own confines, and on an unprecedented scale. This is the necessary correlate of consciousness, its material signature. But even if the interaction hypothesis is false, we can still say that consciousness is among the powers of matter, which is not the inert solid lump it has often been depicted as. Consciousness is as natural to matter as its other powers are. It is one of matter’s gifts to the world, for good or ill.

[1] This theory is no doubt wide of the mark, but it may not be as wide of the mark as every other theory hitherto proposed. Surely it is true that the brain’s interactive powers outclass those of any other natural object.

My Left Arm

Apparently, I have done the three things most likely to damage my right arm: drumming, kayaking, and tennis. All involve repetitive motions with the hand held high, and I have done a lot of each. In addition, my neck surgery caused some nerve damage to my right arm.  My left arm, however, is undamaged, as good as new, one might say. The trouble is, it is only my left arm and is therefore relatively underdeveloped compared to my right. During the last year I have undertaken to educate it, to work on improving it. This is my case report. It began when I realized I had to play tennis two-handed from now on, because I had lost power and accuracy in my right arm. Also, it hurt. So, I started using two hands for both backhand and forehand, practicing nearly every day. It has been nine months and I can now play two-handed tennis, which has its own charm. But the amazing thing has been the progress in my left arm, which has now taken on a new life, almost as if I have grown an extra limb. Or its partial paralysis has been cured, because I used to be highly right-handed. We tend to neglect our non-dominant arm (as it is normally described), letting it just hang there in an inferior role. The process has been fascinating: gradual but steady, as brain and muscle join forces, each developing in interaction with the other. I can feel the improvement from day to day. It’s slow, to be sure, too slow, but it happens. In hitting the backhand, you have to learn to rely on your left hand (assuming you are right-handed) and not expect your right hand to do the main work; it’s like a lefty forehand. The left side of your body gains a new autonomy. The will gets a firmer grip on it. It comes alive. It’s as if you have acquired a second body. A tennis coach said to me the other day that he loves the two-handed backhand, and I can see why: you use more of your body, you become symmetrical, you don’t droop on one side. You start respecting your sinistral self.

But the effects don’t just manifest themselves in tennis. My drumming has improved as my left hand acquired more dexterity. So did my guitar playing, because the fretting hand became more agile and controllable; the fingers got quicker, more connected to my will. But knife throwing was the real revelation. Throwing with my right arm is painful, so I had to focus on the left. At first it was hard even to get the knife to hit the target, let alone stick it. I had to learn how to throw with my left arm, as with throwing a ball. In tandem with this I was learning how to throw a frisbee lefthanded, which is incredibly difficult. Knife throwing is a complex skill, demanding much diligent practice; doing it lefthanded quadruples the difficulty. It was pretty frustrating. However, three months in, I can now throw it with power and accuracy, nailing a no-spin throw from, oh, ten feet or so (okay, I’m slightly exaggerating). It’s very satisfying, and miraculous-seeming. Wow, it went in! As it happens, I had to have a large tree removed from my property last week and I asked the guys if they would chainsaw me a slice of the trunk to use as a target. I now have three beautiful new targets each a couple of feet in diameter, mementoes of the tree (I was quite fond of that tree), which make excellent knife-beds—thethunk is delicious. I throw vigorously with my left arm, having raised it from the near-dead, like Lazarus; my right arm is quite jealous. So, the side-effect of disability has been ability. Would I like my right arm back, that old and reliable friend? Sure, but my left arm has stepped in to fill the gap with remarkable aplomb, and greatly to my surprise (I didn’t know it had it in it). Each moment of the day I can feel its coiled presence, ready to spring into action (it even types better than it used to). Body Wholeness, they call it. Bilateral Wellness. My advice: work on your left arm, you never know when you might need it. Dart throwing is a good place to start.[1]

[1] Has it added to the philosophical part of my brain? Not that I know of, but it isn’t impossible.

Two Reviews

Kerry McKenzie’s laughable, ignorant, foolish review of Colin McGinn’s Basic Structures of Reality (2011) could only have been published by Mind because she is a woman of junior rank. She clearly had never read the book she was reviewing, given how wide of the mark her observations are. She is completely out of her depth philosophically but vain enough to press on regardless with her misguided “criticism” of the book in question. Mind should be ashamed of itself.

Nina Strohminger’s flatulent, stinky, embarrassing review of Colin McGinn’s Disgust (2011) in Emotion Review demonstrates total ignorance of the philosophical literature on disgust and indeed of philosophy in general (she is some kind of psychologist). Mistaking her own incompetence for superior wisdom, she indulges in puerile “humor” while completely missing the point of what she is discussing. She would have acquitted herself better had she held it in till she was in a private place. Her review belongs in the toilet.

Nicol G. Minnc

How Old Am I?

Today I am 74 years old. But am I? Is it that simple? Maybe the referent of my “I” is younger, if new selves grow during a single life, or possibly a little older if we go back to the womb (that’s when I started aging). How old is my body, which is quite closely connected to me? When did it start to exist? We normally think it was in the time of gestation, maybe a few weeks or months after conception (before I was born). But is that really the biological reality? There was a continuous line from my parents’ bodies to mine—didn’t my body start to exist when theirs did? Isn’t it kind of arbitrary to think my body had no existence before my tiny blob came along? A part of their body morphed into what I call mine—aren’t our bodies like beads on a string, not that discontinuous? Isn’t it rather like the growth of a town, where one town changes over time to produce different town forms? My body still has something of theirs in it, so don’t I have another age, which includes my parents’ age? So, let’s say we include that in my age, making me about 100 years old. But then we can repeat the same reasoning and add my parents’ parents, and so on back. Then should we say I am as old as the human species? But that species is continuous with an earlier species, reaching back millions of years. How old are my genes, which have a lot to do with who I am, body and soul? Now we are talking big numbers—my genes are extremely old! Maybe not as old as life on earth, but certainly many hundreds of millions of years old. So, I am as old as that, as old as multicellular life maybe. I—this thing, this organism, this biological unit—am extremely old. For convenience, I say I am 74 years old, which helps the bureaucrats, but in point of fact I am of an indeterminate yet enormous age. Look inside my DNA and you will see what an ancient specimen I am! Oh, I have been around in one form or another for a very very long time. And so have you, and so have all the animals on earth—we all have an incredibly long history, a lengthy period of development. The universe got pregnant with us billions of years ago, ready to bring us to fruition. A side benefit is that I am really only minutely older than the youngest person now living. They are already ancient and I am just a fraction of a second older. We each have many ages, many lifespans, many births—not just the one conventionally assigned to us.[1]

[1] If you think of yourself as created by God in an instant a small number of years ago, you will think of your age as recent and determinate; but if you accept the evolutionary story, the question becomes a lot murkier and your age will span that history. I think of my biological self as roughly as old as the lobe fish from which we descended.