Towards a Neutral-Structuralist Theory of Consciousness and Selfhood

ABSTRACT

Recently, an information-theoretic structural realist theory of the self and consciousness has been put forward (Beni, M. D. 2019. Structuring the Self, Series New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Palgrave Macmillan). The theory is presented as a form of panpsychism. I argue against this interpretation and show that Beni’s structuralist theory runs into the hard problem of consciousness, in a similar way as the Integrated Information theory of consciousness. Since both of these theories are structuralist and based on the notion of information, I propose to use a solution that has been employed for Integrated Information Theory, namely introducing the distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic structure and dynamics (intrinsic information and intrinsic structure). Making these metaphysical enhancements to Beni’s structuralist theory of consciousness will give the theory a better chance of overcoming the hard problem. In terms of the metaphysics of consciousness, it takes us beyond physicalism. I then suggest that the information-theoretic structuralist theory of consciousness should, instead of panpsychism and physicalism, be combined with neutral monist ontology which is a better fit. These reworkings could lead to an improved naturalistic account of consciousness – the neutral-structuralist theory of consciousness and the self.

KEYWORDS:

• Information
• ontic structural realism
• panpsychism
• neutral monism
• consciousness
• self

Acknowledgement

Earlier drafts of the paper were presented at the Higher Seminar in Philosophy of Science at the Stockholm University, the East European Network for Philosophy of Science Conference at the University of Belgrade, and the POND reading group seminar in the Philosophy of Cog Sci. I’d like to thank the audience on these occasions. I am grateful to Orly Shenker and Vanja Subotić for reading previous versions of this paper and commenting. I would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful and detailed comments and suggestions.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The phenomenal/minimal self theory, stemming from the Phenomenological tradition, has also garnered popularity in the past couple of decades. e.g. Zahavi (2014) minimal self.

2 Ladyman (1998) and Worrall (1989). For an insight into recent debates on the scientific progress and different forms of scientific realism see Dellsén (2018), Niiniluoto (2019), Bird (2016).

3 Ontic SR parts ways with traditional substantivalism and object-oriented metaphysics. SR emerged as an answer to pessimistic meta-induction and metaphysical underdetermination in physics. Beni (2019, 44) points out that the object-oriented version of scientific realism could not resolve these problems satisfactorily, but SR could. His claim is that a similar problem of the metaphysical underdetermination occurs in psychology pertaining to the nature of the self. Benìs motivation for adopting SR is that it could resolve this problem concerning the self, as well. More on the problem of metaphysical underdetermination of the self in Footnote 10. I thank one of the reviewers of this journal for pressing me to say more about this point.

4 The following is a garden-variety distinction made between different versions of structural realism. See Ladyman (2020).

5 There are relational/extrinsic (structural) and nonrelational/intrinsic properties (and these can be categorical or fundamentally dispositional) (e.g. Seager 2006). According to Jeagwon Kim (1982) intrinsic property is to be understood as the property that belongs to an object that does not coexist with any contingent object distinct from itself (lonely or unaccompanied object). Lewis defines an intrinsic property as property ‘which things have in virtue of the way they themselves are’. Things have an extrinsic property ‘in virtue of their relations or lack of relations to other things’ (Lewis 1986, 61). In Lewis and Langton`s (1998) it is argued that ‘intrinsic’ properties are logically independent of both loneliness and accompaniment. Francescotti (1999, 608) considers that F is an intrinsic property =_df necessarily, for any item x, if x has F, then there are internal properties I₁, … ,I_n had by x, such that x's having F consists in x's having I₁, … ,I_n.’ More on intrinsicality in Footnote 20.

6 The master argument for intrinsic properties given by Esfeld and Lam goes as: „(1) Relations require relata, that is, objects that stand in the relations. (2) These objects have to be something in themselves, that is, they necessarily have some intrinsic properties over and above the relations that they bear to one another—even if the relations do not supervene on the intrinsic properties and even if we cannot know the intrinsic properties‘ (Esfeld and Lam 2008, 29).

7 Speaking of consciousness and subjects of experience, there are many positions, including panpsychism, that are serious about consciousness and subjectivity, but which do not posit subjects as enduring substances, although they still have intrinsic properties. See Seager (2006), Dainton (2008), Mørch (2018).

8 Problems for structural realism could arise from quiddities. Ungraspable quiddities would undermine ontological structural realism, while graspable quiddities would undermine both ontological and conceptual structural realism. Now, quiddities need not undermine epistemological structural realism, as long as the distribution of the quiddities is not knowable (Chalmers 2012, 422).

9 Beni's view is radically different in the same way that OSR is radically different from traditional object-oriented ontology.

10 The problem of metaphysical underdetermination is encountered in the field of the philosophy of physics. The metaphysical underdetermination comes from quantum statistics cases which result in incompatible metaphysical consequences (French 2018). A solution for this problem is to show that there is a common structure that underpins the individualistic and the non-individualistic notion of objects. This is where the Ontic SR comes into play (Beni 2019, 110). Beni finds similarities between the state of underdetermination in physics and the state of underdetermination in the neuroscientific accounts of the self. Therefore, an analogous threat pertains to the philosophy of self (a form of metaphysical underdetermination ‘breaks out’ in this field anew). This underdetermination is caused by the heterogeneity of neuroscientific theories of consciousness, like the Integrated Information Theory, the resting-state-based theory, and the FEP-based theory of consciousness. For a detailed exposition of this problem, see Beni (2019, Sect. 2.2.2; Sect. 3.8).

11 The sense of agency, the sense of ownership, and mineness.

12 One could envisage an argument against structuralism claiming that selves are the only real objects we know about. Nida-Rümelin (2017), for example, would argue that we have pre-reflective self-awareness, an awareness of one-self as an experiencing subject - we are aware of ourselves as unifying simultaneous and subsequent experiences. She defends the view that the self is an unchanging experiencing subject, a special kind of substance that has a non-descriptive individual nature.

13 Integrated Information Theory (Tononi et al. 2016) is a neuroscientific theory about the nature of consciousness. According to IIT, consciousness is the result of the process of information integration in a system, and the quantity of consciousness (that integrated information) is quantified by value of Φ. Adherents of IIT take consciousness seriously and put forward certain axioms and postulates concerning it. Five axioms are the essential phenomenological properties of consciousness and include: Existence, Composition, Information, Integration and Exclusion. On the merits of IIT and criticism of the notion of information in Integrated Information, see Mindt (2017). Mindt argues that IIT is unable to properly answer the hard problem of consciousness in its present form. It falls victim to the structure and dynamics argument. More on this in Section 5.

14 Cf. Strawson`s (2008) ‘the hard part of the mind-body problem’ and Levinès (1983) ‘explanatory gap’.

15 In his account, Beni uses IIT and free-energy-based theory as structural theories of consciousness. If free-energy-based theory is also conceived as structuralist it would be hard to see how it is panpsychist, and Beni does claim that Friston’s theory supports panpsychism (Beni 2019, 183–4). In a more recent work, Beni (2021a) posed the hard problem of consciousness for FEP and pushed for the critique of the so-called Markovian monism, in that it is not a viable metaphysical theory of consciousness or a good answer to the hard problem. In another paper, he used the scientific literature around the Free Energy Principle to reconstruct two well-known arguments for panpsychism - the argument from continuity and the argument from intrinsic nature (Beni 2021b).

16 Perhaps, what Beni means by ‘panpsychism’ (and ‘pancomputationalism-cum-panpsychism’) is the following: where there is information processing, there is phenomenal experience/consciousness. Whenever there is life, there is consciousnes experience. In that case, Beni would subscribe to the mind-life continuity thesis. There are some clues to this in Beni (2021b).

17 Orthodox interpretation of IIT is panpsychist, but since IIT was formulated this interpretation has been highly controversial. McQueen (2019) argues that orthodox interpretations of its own ontological and epistemological basis should be rejected for an interpretation-neutral formulation. Cf. Mørch (2018).

18 There are several forms of panpsychism. Constitutive panpsychism, where macroexperience is (wholly or partially) grounded in microexperience and emergent panpsychism in which macroexperience is emergent from microexperience (Roelofs 2015). Russellian panpsychism is the thesis that quiddities are the fundamental categorical bases of relational physical properties. Panprotopsychism is the thesis that fundamental physical entities are of the proto-conscious kind (Chalmers 2015, 252-9). Mørch (2014) presents emergentist version of panpsychism. In addition, there is the cosmopsychist view, that cosmos itself instantiates experiential properties (see Brüntrup and Jaskolla 2016). Constitutive panpsychism seems to suffer from difficult new problems, so-called combination problems (cf. Coleman 2013; Chalmers 2016; Goff 2017, Chapter 7 and 8) that relate to issues surrounding emergence of macroconsciousness from microconsciousness. Analogous hard problem of combination poses the question how macrosubjects (o-subjects) come from microsubjects (the subject summing problem). Cosmopsychism has the decomposition/decombination problem. In previous work, I tackled the torny problem of subject-summing (Nešić 2017) and an emergentist panpsychist interpretation of IIT (Nešić 2018).

19 This is how Mørch defines OSR: ‘Ontic structural realism is the view that all physical properties are purely structural or relational, but that relations do not need relata with non-relational properties; rather, physical relations can subsist on their own, or at least prior to their relata such that the relata are constituted by their position in a relational structure and would have no reality outside of it’ (Mørch 2018, 4). The alternative to OSR (in which structures are fundamental) is dispositionalism, where dispositions or powers are fundamental, non-reducible to structural or categorical properties. Dispositionalism can answer the question what distinguishes physical from mathematical structure - physical structure is realised by powers.

20 I discussed what intrinsic properties are in Footnote 4. Russell (1927) holded that physical events have an intrinsic character beyond the structuralism of physics. In structuralist views of physics, which eliminate intrinsic properties, ‘all the things in the world will merely be each others’ washing’ (1927, 325). Recently, many views (inspired by Russell`s positions) under the umbrella term Russellian monism have appeared claiming that ‘matter has intrinsic properties that both constitute consciousness and serve as categorical bases for the dispositional properties described in physics’ (Alter and Nagasawa 2015, 1). Chalmers` (2010) type-F monism is also a form of Russellian Monism or panprotopsychism.

21 The same assertion can be found in Esfeld and Deckert (2018, 54) about dispositions as intrinsic properties and that is why they are not admitted in structural realism. It is also the reason why Esfeld and Deckert say we don`t even need to admit physical properties, just relations. Endorsing dispositionalism goes beyond structuralism, amounts to something more than ontic structural realism. Chakravartty goes through all the ontological alternatives of object ontologies, between substance realism and eliminativism (thick and thin): substances, bundles, dispositions (dispositional essentialism: there is a generally intrinsic potential for relations, causal powers investigated by the sciences are generally intrinsic properties). He defends semi-realism (Chakravartty 2007) incorporating the bundle view through a dispositionalist account (French 2014, chapter 7 entertains the possibility of ‘bringing back the bundle’).

22 Is every living creature also conscious? What creatures are endowed or imbued with consciousness? Consider Godfrey-Smith (2016) for discussion. Mindt (2021, 9–10) is cautious when discussing the relationship between life and consciousness.

23 For example, what is the difference in levels of consciousness in a newborn baby, an animal like a bat or in vegetative patients with just „islands’ of brain activity.

24 Goff (2021) is explicit about his commitment to Epistemic SR, for example. I thank one of the reviewers of this journal for bringing this point to my attention and urging me to state this explicitly.

25 Physicalism and materialism are usually taken to be synonimous.

26 The theory-based conception: ‘A property is physical iff it is the sort of property that physical theory tells us about.’ Stoljar (2017).

27 Argument`s principal claims are: ‘First: physical descriptions of the world characterise the world in terms of structure and dynamics. Secondly: from truths about structure and dynamics, one can deduce only further truths about structure and dynamics. And thirdly: truths about consciousness are not truths about structure and dynamics.’ (Chalmers 2003, 120). Alter (2016, 2) defends Chalmers` S&D argument and formulates it as: ‘1. All physical truths are purely structural. 2. From purely structural truths, one can deduce only further purely structural truths. 3. Some truths about consciousness are not purely structural. 4. Therefore, there are truths about consciousness that cannot be deduced from (i.e., are not a priori entailed by) the complete physical truth.’

28 Mindt (2021, 14) differentiates between extrinsic and intrinsic structure and dynamics (S&D), and between external and internal (meaningful S&D properties), depending on the perspective one takes on the target system. From the external perspective, there are meaningful and meaningless S&D properties of a system. Intrinsic S&D can be interpreted from an external perspective, connected to the semantic notion of information. There is also a meaningless (non-meaningful) variant of external S&D or extrinsic S&D.

29 The extrinsic structural and dynamical properties merely indicate a system’s syntactical features and are the same features Chalmers calls structural and dynamical in his characterisation of physical explanations.

30 Physicalism can also be viewed as positing intrinsic/categorical physical properties. This kind of physicalism is not an option for a structuralist theory. There are varieties of physicalism without instrinsicality - e.g. Physical Structuralism (Ney 2015).

31 On the metaphysical implication of intrinsic structure see Mindt (2021, 16–17). I side with Mindt that at this point physicalism is to be abandoned and neutral monism embraced. I thank one of the anonymous reviewers for pushing me to further develop my position.

32 Mindt (2019, 2021) argues that if the intrinsicality/categoricality is denied, then structuralism and neutrality follow.

33 There are several proposals on how to understand neutrality in neutral monism, and The Neither View is one option. See Stubenberg (2016).

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported by the ‘Sciences of the Origin’ project, under the University of Oxford project ‘New Horizons for Science and Religion in Central and Eastern Europe’ funded by the John Templeton Foundation.