Consciousness as a Self-Explaining Foundation (Possible Argument)

Consciousness as a Self-Explaining Foundation

Introduction

It is often claimed by atheist philosophers, mainly seen in the work of Graham Oppy, that a naturalistic foundation to reality is always ontologically and epistemically superior to a personal, conscious foundation resembling a God. Here, I want to articulate an idea which might tip the scales in favour of a conscious foundation, based off an explanatory property which only a conscious foundation could have – the ability to be self-causing without leading to a contradiction. Note that this is not an argument I am avidly defending at the moment, it may be flawed. I just want to articulate it in the best way possible.

1 – The Need for an Ultimate Foundation

When looking for answers to the ultimate question of “Why is there something rather than nothing?” or my preferred phrasing “Why is there anything at all?”, philosophers seem to arrive quickly at something which is fundamental – the first cause, the uncaused cause, the unmoved mover, the unactualized actualiser, the necessary item. Call it what you will, but what the consensus agrees upon is that there is something which must exist at the most fundamental level of reality which does not depend on anything else to exist, or is caused by anything else to exist. This is needed in order to avoid the problem of an infinite regress. Metaphysicians label the fundamental item of reality ‘necessary’. Something is necessary if it meets the following criteria…

1.       Exists in all possible worlds (modally speaking)

2.       Has never begun to exist

3.       Will never fail to exist or go out of existence

4.       Can exist independent of all contingent things

However the term ‘necessary’ seems to be a label that philosophers will slap onto the fundamental item of reality in order to explain its existence. Necessity is treated as some sort of property of the item itself, however to me this is only a definition and a word we have made up in our heads in order to ground the fundamental item of reality. Necessity has lost all of its meaning. It is just used as a buzzword in order to avoid any further explanation.

2 – Failures in Naturalistic Explanations

The most popular naturalistic explanation to date is the idea of a fundamental quantum haze or foam which exists outside of space and time. When virtual particles and fields interact in certain ways, they can randomly and spontaneously create universes, like ours, but which may operate on many different laws of physics. The multiverse hypothesis has become popular in order to explain the apparent fine tuning of our universe for life. However this is besides the point. When examining the quantum foam hypothesis, many questions can arise, such as…

1.       Why is the quantum foam arranged in any certain way at any particular instant?

2.       Why is the fundamental layer of reality constrained by the laws of quantum physics?

It seems that either (1) a deeper level of explanation is needed or (2) an appeal to brute facts is needed. However the second option leaves little to be desired. Brute facts are the absolute stopping point for explanation. They are facts that, in principle, cannot have an explanation for why they are. For example, many philosophers believe that mathematical truths are brute facts, since it cannot be conceived that 1+1 for example would be anything other than 2. When answering the two questions above, naturalists will often appeal to said brute facts. When answering the question of why the fundamental item of reality behaves in a quantum manner with quantum physics laws, brute facts will often be employed. However, if naturalists can use appeals to brute facts, so can idealists and theists. We either both get them, or neither get them. Adding the term or property of ‘necessary’ also does little explanation in my eyes. Additionally, asking why is something necessary also ends with an appeal to brute fact. It seems that naturalistic explanations are littered with brute facts which avoid any attempt at an explanation.

3 – Why a conscious foundation might be better

Preface to the rest of this post by saying that I am not saying that this is any kind of knockdown argument. I have only just discovered this idea recently and simply want to flesh out this idea properly in order to receive criticism and feedback. Onto the idea. The movement of German Idealism, which began in the late 1700s, was the first to argue for the primacy of consciousness in any explanation of ultimate and foundational reality. Hegel, Schelling and Fitche were fond of the idea that the fundamental item of reality might infact be consciousness itself. They claimed that existence must be self-grounding, and that the fundamental item of reality must be the cause/explanation of its own existence. Existence would be fundamentally attached to the essence of the fundamental item. Here is where consciousness comes in – the imminent, immediate and direct reality of consciousness in itself is the only nature we know of, can ever know of and will ever know of. Everything else – space, time, matter are all inferential models we make in order to make sense of the barrage of sense experience and qualia around us in our perception. The only thing which seems to be pure existence to us, whose existence cannot be doubted is consciousness. Fitche articulated this idea by arguing that consciousness doesn’t seem to be grounded in anything but itself. It only exists in and of itself. No amount of introspection and direct experience would lead anyone to the conclusion that the brain is the producer or holder of our personal consciousness. The idea that the brain is the producer of consciousness is a late one in our scientific history but has very little evidence apart from correlations between brain states and reported mental activity and sense experience. It is simply a model we have made to make sense of neuroanatomy. Because consciousness is the one fact of reality which cannot be doubted, it would seem far more epistemically parsimonious to simply apply consciousness all the way down rather than create ontological abstractions part way through. This is the first reason why I believe that a conscious foundation in an idealistic universe is, prima facie, the most ontologically and epistemically parsimonious theory of the foundational item.

However, the main item on the agenda is to try to argue that a conscious foundation would actually have more explanatory power and less shackled brute facts when pertaining to the question of its own existence. I want to articulate that a conscious foundation may be able to be explained better than a ‘necessary’ naturalistic foundation. Philosopher Freya Mathews has argued that any fundamental item of reality must be ‘reflexive’. This means that because it is self-causing/explaining, it must be able to direct itself back into itself. It cannot be directed out towards anything until it actually creates something. This ability to direct itself into itself is a function that has only ever been observed and experienced within consciousness. Consciousness seems to be the only phenomena that can do this, more specifically, self-consciousness, or meta-consciousness. This reflexiveness is a phenomenon which Douglas Hofstadter spoke about in his book “I am a strange loop”, in which he argued that these reflexive loops of consciousness being directed back into itself are the cause of the feeling of personal identity – hence the book title. Therefore, if the fundamental item of reality is reflexive, then it is parsimonious to conclude that is has some form of self-consciousness, since reflexive systems are only ever seen in consciousness or computers which resemble brain processing which is associated with consciousness. However, the fundamental item cannot be a physical computer because the fundamental item must be non-physical and non-concrete. A quantum foam will hardly give rise to a computer which can perform reflexiveness. Hofstadter also wrote that :

“it is almost as if this slippery phenomenon called ‘self-consciousness’ lifted itself up by its own bootstraps, almost as if it made itself out of nothing.”

This seems to serve as an explanation of why the fundamental item would have self-consciousness. It didn’t depend on anything else, but it also isn’t just a brute fact that it has self-consciousness. Self-consciousness seems to arise out of the naturally feature that the fundamental item is reflexive – again, a property which can be best made sense of as existing within a conscious system. In addition, this self-causing/explaining fundamental item, if reflexive, also has to be in essence, about itself. It cannot be about anything else because it would have existed at an instant prior to the creation of anything else since it is fundamental. Aboutness, or directedness, or intentionality, is again, a property only found in mental states of consciousness. Since it is fundamental, it must be about itself and be directed towards itself in an inward and reflexive direction. There is nothing external to it which it can be about or intended towards. This chain of inner reflexiveness is best identified with the conscious foundation rather than a naturalistic one for the reasons articulated before. This then creates the strange chains and loops which Hofstadter showed are the originators of self-consciousness. How can this be formalised?

4 – The Formal Argument

1.       There exists an item at the most fundamental level of reality which does not depend on anything else for its existence.

2.       This item would have the property of reflexiveness.

3.       Reflexiveness has only ever been observed immediately and directly inside a conscious system.

4.       Therefore epistemically, it is most viable to conclude that the fundamental item is a conscious system.

5.       Any fundamental, conscious, reflexive system would generate intentionality which would only be directed towards itself.

6.       Reflexive intentionality generates self-consciousness.

7.       Therefore, the fundamental item of reality is most likely a self-conscious item.

Premise 1 is undeniable and is held by the consensus of people in physics and philosophy so it needs no further defence.

Premise 2 can be defended by saying that the fundamental item must be able to cause things to happen without any outside determination, i.e. it must be able to do something by itself. It cannot have anything external to itself which it can be related to or determined by, only itself. Again, I think that this premise will be the most disputed and a lot more needs to be put in to defend this one.

Premise 3 is obvious and undeniable to any conscious agent. Introspection is exactly the practice of reflexiveness and is the only place we have ever seen or ever could see this phenomena happening. If it could be shown that the fundamental item had reflexiveness in a similar way of being directed back into itself, then it would be a fast road to a conscious foundation.

Premise 4 simply follows from 1-3.

Premise 5 can be defended iff it premise 2 can be substantiated. If it can then it would be shown that there is already a conscious reflexive system at the fundamental layer of reality. Conscious reflexion or inwards intentionality can only be into oneself by definition.

Premise 6 is defended by Hofstadter’s work on this idea and how it relates to personal identity.

Premise 7 would be the final conclusion which would follow from all the other premises. Again I would stress that premise 2 would be the key premise to investigate more. Premise 5 would be the next debateable one but if premise 2 was secure then it would be a lot easier to defend.

5 – An explanation of its own existence

I would like to draw an analogy between Hofstadter’s claims about how self-consciousness “pulls itself up by its own bootstraps and…made itself out of nothing” to the issue of why the self-conscious foundation might exist in a similar way. The analogy could be drawn between why self-consciousness exists “out of nothing” to why the conscious foundation exists at all. Rather than labelling it as a brute necessity, it could be argued that the conscious foundation simply causes itself to exist and “pulls itself up by its own bootstraps”. The property of consciousness would no longer be a brute fact or brute necessity but actually an entailment of the reflexive property of the fundamental item. The self-consciousness entailed by the reflexiveness could almost work in a loop and pull the foundation up by its own bootstraps into retaining existence. This would be more epistemically parsimonious than an arbitrary ‘necessary’ fundamental item but again the argumentation would need to be fleshed out a lot more for the argument to gain any traction.

6 – Conclusion

This is simply an articulation of an argument which I have been developing and was inspired by Adrian David Nelson’s video on consciousness and the mystery of existence (link here Consciousness and the Mystery of Existence - Documentary about Consciousness and Reality (2020) - YouTube). I hope to get some feedback to see whether this is an avenue worth pursuing.