Susan Greenfield - Is Consciousness Irreducible?

Why is consciousness so contentious? Neuroscience can increasingly explain many facets of consciousness, but what about conscious awareness itself? Some philosophers claim that although facets of consciousness—such as how we see edges or colors—can be explained, we have no possibility of explaining, in purely physical terms, the experience of consciousness.

Susan Adele Greenfield is a British scientist, writer, broadcaster, and member of the House of Lords. Greenfield, whose specialty is the physiology of the brain, has worked to research and bring attention to Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.

Closer To Truth, hosted by Robert Lawrence Kuhn and directed by Peter Getzels, presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions. Discover fundamental issues of existence. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Share your own opinions. Seek your own answers.

[bretnetherton]

Awareness is known by awareness alone; is the sole irreducible axiom of reality. To put forth a syllable to the contrary is but to concede.

[numericalcode]

I like the insight on variable levels of consciousness. I think children are also more conscious of the moment while adults are more conscious of hypotheticals.

[XiDingArt]

Robert was doing a great job guiding her to understand the real philosophical question and for a moment it seemed that she was finally getting what it's all about, but in the end she circles back to the neural correlates of consciousness and fell into the abyss of the explanatory gap

[scienceexplains]

Is there something to a traffic jam that can’t be explained by cars? Yes, but it’s not supernatural.

[tez]

So much of what Greenfield espouses is based on materialist ontological/metaphysical assumptions. Rather than being arguments for materialism, most of what she says simply shows her unconscious bias for materialism. In philosophy, that's called 'begging the question'. Meaning that she's using the very thing in question as the foundation her argument. AKA circular reasoning. Let's keep in mind that there are no equations or experiments that provide substantial evidence for materialism, much less prove it. Yet she acts as if every other theory requires proof while materialism gets a pass, or in her terms, a get out of jail free card.

[jan-erikjones]

I’m grateful for these CtT videos. They are a great treasure on the internet. Thank you TLK. I’m sympathetic to Susan’s insistence that consciousness is natural, but the reducibility issue is different. The idea that reduction of consciousness to the physical states is a starting place, i.e., a stance, that needs to be fully explored before irreducibility should be accepted is in tension with her idea that the reduction could be beyond our conceptual categories but still be reduction. That’s true, but more than a starting place, it’s an a priori philosophical commitment that seems unfalsifiable.

[davidpalmer]

A good conversation. I incline toward panpsychism myself, but I admired Ms Greenfield's honest scientific rigour: as a scientist she must assume that the brain is the cause of consciousness. This shows why philosophy is necessary: to ask the questions and entertain the speculations that are outside the bounds of science. What irritates me is when scientists promote a materialistic philosophy and call it science. Scientists study material processes. Philosophers speculate about the nature of reality. The two disciplines are not competing; they should work in an intimate two-step.

[festeradams]

Twelve minutes, 58 seconds Vs. "We don't know enough to know"....

[silversurfer]

As a materialist who can't account for the immaterial nature of consciousness, she's the one who's pulling the get out of jail free card. It's called promissory materialism.

[DickusCopernicus]

How is it that scientific explanation is spoken of as reduction? Is it that physical explanations are somehow considered as destroying what some want to be the magic of reality? If at some end point of understanding, where life is found to be just an evolved organic machine, the mystery would evaporate, and hence we as humans would no longer be special.

[ultimateman]

For all those saying that this woman missed the point, I disagree. She's fully aware of the Hard Problem of Consciousness and she understands that the arguments she's putting forth do not solve it. What she IS doing is elaborating on the real scientific research that can be done to actually investigate conscious states, which could then just MAYBE be used as a spring board in order to be able to begin to understand consciousness.

If you believe that what she is saying is completely useless and could never IN PRINCIPLE begin to attack the Hard Problem, then you're effectively defining the problem as one that is IN PRINCIPLE unsolvable. Taking that view, you could be a philosopher, but you could not be a scientist, because you assuming a priori that the methods of science cannot solve the problem.

It could very well be that the Hard Problem is unsolvable by the methods of science, but she is a scientist and assuming such things does nothing to help her reach her goal. In order to tackle the hard problem as a scientist, you must first assume that it is, in principle, solvable.

[stellarwind]

Matter is not subjective. There’s your first problem in reductionism.

[njhoepner]

I think she's right on both points: it would be unscientific to presume up front that consciousness is something we can't scientifically investigate or explain, AND that the path forward is to start measuring levels of consciousness. I'm also intrigued by the idea that other animals have consciousness, maybe at different levels...trying to measure and study that could tell us a lot too.

[timeslikethese]

Greenfield's "somehow translate into a subjective state" is equivalent to "then a miracle happens". She is saying nothing.

[mohdnorzaihar]

Wondering the schizophrenia, downsyndrome individu/patients consciousness/unconscious

[tomazflegar]

Brain and the mind are not the same thing. Maybe it's time for the scientists to expand their scope of what they are talking about. If you want to discuss something you need the comon ground for discussion. And how can you speak of my subjective if you do not now what fully it means for me? :-P

[LearnThaiRapidMethod]

Susan is absolutely right. And I think the main reason is that we are mostly NOT conscious about just about everything that goes on in our bodies, brain or the world around us.

So to consider ourselves (or other animals) as conscious beings is a bit meaningless, because we’re not.

The fact that we have a tiny pineal of (fairly fleeting) consciousness seems almost an after-thought, like the occasional sparks in a fire that blink into existence and then are gone. The fire is what it’s all about, for humans, animals and perhaps even reptiles, insects and perhaps even plants.

I think the question is: what makes these sparks somehow connected to each other (not necessarily as a unified whole, but little islands of connectivity) and with a duration (or “memory”) that outlives the individual sparks?

[pjbarnestx]

To say that there are degrees of consciousness is a step in the right direction, and I think it's even more complicated than that. There are multiple taxonomies or ways to categorize the different types of experiences, such as: (1) external vs. internal, (2) positive vs. negative, (3) "flavors" like red vs. blue, or chocolate vs. broccoli, (4) volitional vs. non-volitional. It gets even more complicated when you consider how our consciousness interacts with other parts of our brain like the hippocampus (memories) and prefrontal cortex (making decisions) and motor cortex (moving our bodies).

[caricue]

I hate it when they talk about human philosophical zombies as if that could be a real thing. I'm glad she shut him down with that talk. You can't just make up some nonsense and then use it to make a point. In fact, all the AI that is being created today are indeed philosophical zombies and we see how limited they are. There has to be "someone in there" in order to have understanding, knowledge or intention. All the AI can do is be a clever simulation.

[fredm]

Dear Mr. Robert, thank you for this incredible interview. You are truly a gentleman and I apologize for my infinite ignorance clearly expressed in my opinions. As described by the interviewee, science must first do what it can. The science management process is what will prepare us for the inevitable. However, it may be important to remember that a radio is just a device for decoding a signal emitted by another device capable of capturing an individual's voice. Our brain is just a radio. At least that's how we know how to use it, in general. Consciousness is still far from that. Some arguments sound like asking an electronics technician while listening to the radio, to confirm whether someone is on the other side of the emitting device by turning it off. The same experience she mentions can also give us clues in the opposite direction. If I'm not mistaken, placebos worked for creatures that also didn't have a brain. Thank you very much for this interview.