Abstract
In physics it is well-known that finding the right question is often at least 50% of the difficulty. This paper does not propose a solution to the problem of consciousness, not even a tentative one. Rather it examines the question. This is in the belief that the question is currently mis-posed. The current conception of consciousness may be regarded as an attenuated version of the Cartesian concept of mind. It is argued that the Cartesian philosophy was originally motivated by conceptual problems with Galilean physics. Quantum mechanics changes things. This is not to say that the problem of consciousness is a pseudo-problem, as is sometimes suggested. It is, however, to say that the problem is not quite as is often assumed. In particular, it is argued that current conceptions encourage an unbalanced conception of mentality, according to which the state of being barely awake is the essence of what it is to be human, whereas the thought processes which led Einstein to the general theory of relativity are something a zombie could manage.
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Notes
- 1.
As opposed to, for example, uncontroversial medical textbooks.
- 2.
Of course, in the seventeenth century physics was considered a part of philosophy. However, a distinction between physics and what seventeenth century thinkers called metaphysics was still recognized.
- 3.
See, for example, Burtt (1954).
- 4.
In the modern meaning of the word “philosophy” which differs, of course, from the seventeenth century meaning.
- 5.
I am not suggesting that it should be seen as a kind of fossil, preserving Descartes thinking complete and entire, exactly as it stood in 1633. On the one hand there is evidence (Machamer and McGuire 2009) that he continued to revise it for some years after 1633. On the other hand there is evidence (Hatfield 2014; Schuster 2013) that he had already constructed early versions of some of the arguments that appear in the Meditations in 1629. My proposal is only that his dualism was originally motivated, not primarily by religious or moral concerns, but rather by considerations internal to his physics. The relevance of The World is that in it he presents a dualistic account of human nature without any of the accompaniments which elsewhere may suggest a motivation coming from somewhere other than physics.
- 6.
Democritus was already aware of the difficulty, as shown by the passage in which he has the senses respond to his atomistic philosophy with the retort “Wretched mind, you get your evidence from us, and yet you overthrow us? The overthrow is a fall for you.” (Taylor 1999, fragment D23).
- 7.
For instance, according to QBism quantum mechanical calculations only concern one’s experience of a white dwarf, whereas it seems to me they must be saying something about the star itself.
- 8.
The information one actually possesses as a result of observation, as opposed to the information one may imagine oneself possessing when contemplating a hidden variables model.
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Appleby, M. (2019). Mind and Matter. In: de Barros, J.A., Montemayor, C. (eds) Quanta and Mind. Synthese Library, vol 414. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21908-6_2
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