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A New Model of Consciousness

Do we need a new model to understand thought?

Issue 29, 8th March 2015
| Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. His principal areas of research are philosophy of mind, metaphysics, and metaethics.
1,028 words
Read time: approx. 5 mins

Do we need a radically new model to explain the place of consciousness in the material world?

The answer is yes, because both old models are failing.

Old model #1 is materialism – also known as physicalism – which says that consciousness is a function of organised matter. The problem with materialism is that on any known view of what matter is, consciousness is palpably not a function of it. This is the lesson of the famous set of arguments about matter and consciousness in philosophy: the superscientist Mary, philosophical zombies, the inverted spectrum, etc.

Old model #2 is dualism, which says (negatively) that consciousness is not a function of organised matter, and (positively) that consciousness is a basic element of nature something like time, space, gravity, or indeed matter itself. The problem with dualism is that it can’t explain how consciousness is integrated into the rest of nature in the way it palpably is. That is the lesson of another set of arguments in philosophy that are famous but not quite as famous: the exclusion argument, the nomological dangler argument etc.

Daniel Stoljar
Issue 29, 8th March 2015

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falakshairr falakshairr 24 April 2021

So the old ways have failed, and we want a new one. Okay, don’t ask: is consciousness a function of matter? Ask instead: what is the point of consciousness being your work? We should have accounting assignment help for them. If no known property of matter can answer this question, the natural exception is that some unknown property does. So the new model says that the unknown properties of our text, perhaps together with known properties, account for consciousness.

kyoung21b 4 April 2017

It seems like this model could lead to something a little different than materialism in that we might learn that there are terminal unknowns but that we could bound them in a useful way. That would never make a pure materialist happy.
That there are properties of matter we don't yet know seems trivial, e.g. we don't "know" the properties ascribed to string theory as an attempt at a complete materialist theory, as we haven't been able to confirm that it is in fact an adequate and complete description.
Though even more vague than what is proposed here (not a defect - that's the state we're in) I always preferred Spinoza's starting point, i.e. that consciousness and material properties are complementary views of something more fundamental. Though it's not a whole lot different than what's proposed here it seems to emphasize that consciousness and material properties have equal status and that considering either more fundamental than the other might be mistaken.

Mario Imagimario 22 May 2016

The philosopher Nisargadatta Maharaj could add some interesting insights to the conSciousnes discussion. To him, there are two different aspects: one is conSciousness that needs or implies an object or a relation between subject and object and Science that is the self percecption per se. His master work is avaiable to the english reading people as "I Am That". Sure a must read!

GeneToy 12 January 2016

I don't understand why we need to look for a new, unknown property of matter to explain consciousness. Why isn't consciousness itself a property of matter? In particular, why isn't it a property of neurons? Poking particular neurons yields predictable changes in consciousness.

Might there be more progress in looking for a functional definition of consciousness? What is consciousness for? Why has it been naturally selected? This does not seem obvious to me. How is it an advantage over physiologic processes that are controlled without consciousness? Also, what advantage does it have over computers that control complex processes without consciousness?

natcurland 5 April 2015

This is B.S. The 'new' model is simply another version of the rational 'we don't know yet, so let's keep doing the science and see what happens', i.e. the scientific method. This is simply a restatement of the materialistic argument. The last paragraph is right on but to call this 'new' is B.S.