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I give four stars (out of five) to this book because I think consciousness is a topic that deserves a lot of attention, and reflections on it, when dealt with in a scholarly manner, deserve full support. Also because this book does bring priceless contributions in some topics (especially in Papineau's "history of the completeness of physics," and in his "pessimism" about brain research finding the precise "spot" of consciousness). On the other hand, I cannot help directing (regretfully) acid criticism towards this work, for I think Papineau failed in many different fronts.



The Four Cardinal Sins of this work, IMO, are:



1- Papineau denies consciousness property status. He embraces ontological monism (i.e. "everything" is matter), conceptual dualism (material concepts are different from experiential/phenomenal concepts; i.e., not everything is part of the afore mentioned "everything"...), and, above all, no dualism of property! So, water may have the property of being (1) transparent, (2) fluid, (3) electro-conductive, and these properties may have different ontological histories, different structures, and different places in the Universe's causal-effect chain. Similarly, a living human body may have the property of being (1) opaque, (2) "hot" (i.e. somewhat above zero degrees Celsius), and (3) not liquid (I avoided saying "solid"...), but this very same body does not have the property of (4) having its brain-cortical neurons acting in ABC manner and (5) being conscious. Properties 4 and 5 are not different properties. They are the same!...



2- Papineau does not analyze the "turning on" of consciousness, and its "turning off." To me, this is the most mysterious thing about consciousness, and it deserves an in-depth analysis, especially in its bio-physical dynamics (biology, physiology, physics). That is, what happens to a physical system at the very moment it becomes conscious? We have physical accounts for similar transitions: liquid to solid; opaque to transparent; cold rock to hot rock; etc. What about the moment when consciousness sparkles?



3- Papineau does not deal with the issue of why consciousness came to be in this Universe of ours to begin with. That would be essential for trying to understand, from the point of view of evolutionary biology, why Humans are conscious and why Chips are not (yes, I meant chips, and not chimps ;-) ). What is the evolutionary advantage that consciousness bestows upon those who have it? As far as anyone knows, none whatsoever... Add to it that even Papineau himself does not trust the "mouthings" of those claiming to have consciousness (except when they are humans, though I am not sure why he accepts human mouthings in this regard...) and we are just up "rose" creek in our attempt of an evolutionary account of the emergence of consciousness!



4- He does not theorize solidly and compellingly on the main thesis of his book, that is, explaining why the intuition of distinctness (i.e. brain is different from mind) is false. His hunch is that phenomenal (experiential) concepts (like "the redness of the red color") instantiate the things they refer to (that is, we bring to mind the very experience of seeing the red color), whereas material concepts (like "neurons in A-K-W arrangement") do not instantiate their referents. But in fact, he says (in my terms), "the redness of the red color" and "neurons in A-K-W arrangement" are one and the same material property! (though they are two different CONCEPTS). I think it is hardly plausible that this is the key to the intuition of distinctness. Water has many very different properties: it is fluid, it is cold sometimes, it is electro-conductive, it is made of H2O, and, in a very robust way, I do instantiate some of these properties (in my imagination) while thinking about them. Yet, I have no difficulty in merging all these "properties" into one entity. If I can easily merge two very different PROPERTIES into one identity (water), how come I have such difficulty in merging two different CONCEPTS? (of just one property!).



It is easy to be a materialist if we sweep under the carpet these four items above... But, as it seems, even Papineau himself is having some trouble in hiding under his carpet the mighty dust and the dust mites (he too claims to be still kind of haunted by the intuition of distinctness).



I think Papineau was weak or wanting in many other items too. I really missed actual brain-research data, and deep reflection upon this data, for instance: the bizarre dissociations reported by Susan Blackmore in mindfulness states, or in OBE states too (Dying to Live, 1993); and a deeper analysis of Libet's findings, and of Libet-like findings (Claxton, 1999, The Volitional Brain). His categorization of concepts as "referring directly" vs "referring by description" seemed to me somewhat artificial and mistaken. I felt a "begging-the-question flavour" when he said that no amount of book learning would make Mary "know" (experience) the redness of red, and in this I ended up (much to my own surprise!) agreeing with... Dennett!!! (that is, Dennett's view is, IMO, more coherent than Papineau's). Again I scented "begging the question" when he used as one of his three premisses (of his Definitive Materialist Argument) the idea that conscious states (volition) cause physical states (free willed behaviour).



Some other times I found him rather incoherent or shallow. For instance, in his chapter on zombies, it seems that he declares zombies impossible because phenomenal concepts refer directly and there would, then, be no actual possibility that a being would have all my physical properties and yet lack my phenomenal ones. That would be ok for perfect clones. Anything less than "Godly crafting cloning perfection" would be, arguably, left out of this "impossibility"... In one curious passage, he claimed God Almighty Himself (omniscient) could not tell if an octopus has phenomenal consciousness (agreed), just as God can't tell whether he, Papineau, is...bald! (bewilderment!). (many pages onward he softened his claim, saying the Lord cannot tell who is balder, Papineau or his neighbour). In another instance we have, on the one hand, Papineau saying that phenomenal concepts are not associated with causal roles, and, on the other hand, him saying that phenomenal concepts are tools to track human experience (tools, but not role-performing...). A little bit confusing. Also, we get to learn that phenomenal concepts are vague, to the point of making it probably impossible to pinpoint what is the exact neuronal counterpart of them. However, these concepts are not so vague as to make the idea of human zombies possible... Philosophers!



The bottom line is that I ended up not being able to get past my present panpsychist persuasion. It seems to me that there is a difference in a physical system (brain or whatever) before vs after it gets conscious. Consciousness is, then, something new in the scenario. Something rather like 1 + 1 = 3. And I am left with the feeling that the materialist account of consciousness leads us to a violation of energy conservation, or perhaps to something even worse than that...



That is why I think we have only two options to keep our hearts at ease. Either we deny the existence of consciousness altogether, or we claim that it never comes or goes, it is always present. The latter view is that of panpsychism. However, beings like us, who "experience" interruptions of consciousness (by the way: how on Earth can anyone experience unconsciousness??!!...) are not likely to be fans of panpsychism. Perhaps it takes the wisdom of creatures like dolphins, that never sleep (they always keep half brain awake, in turns), to fully appreciate the virtues of this philosophy. As to its being the correct answer to the puzzle of consciousness, well, that is another story...



Julio Siqueira

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