Emma Cohen-Edmonds
David Chalmers distinguishes an explanatory gap between consciousness and standard functional properties, intuitively, what we experience differs from how we experience. This essay explores how the explanatory gap can be bridged with embodied understandings of function. Embodiment suggests that what we experience can end in how we experience. According to developments by Thomas Fuchs, through Embodied Cognition, the gap does not explicitly make explaining consciousness a distinctively hard task. Embodiment poses a solution, suggesting that consciousness “is not confined to the brain”, but involves a whole human and their interaction with the world.
Chalmers puts forth that phenomenal, conscious facts do not necessarily follow from functional or physical facts about a person. Although conscious experience may arise when certain functions are performed, consciousness itself is not explainable in the same way that one can explain, for example, how eyes come to visually recognise objects. It is far easier to identify a mechanism (like the eye) and then naturally, we can understand the function (to see.) He then identifies a unique characteristic of consciousness, a resistance of explanation in functional terms. There exists a clear distinction between what exactly we feel consciously and how said conscious feelings can occur on a physical level. Returning to the example of vision, it is one thing to explain how light is received in my eye and how signals are sent to my brain accordingly. It is an entirely separate thing to explain the beauty I perceive in seeing a child happily receive a balloon.
However, there are arguments in the field of Embodied Cognition against the Hard Problem of defining ‘consciousness’ being especially “hard.” If you run with Chalmers’ sharp distinction between function and consciousness you arrive at the risk of consciousness becoming too abstract in lacking explanatory tractability. For some cognitive philosophers, including Thomas Fuchs, the risk of consciousness being an explanatory dead end is considered too great. Fuchs endorses a theory of embodied cognition to avoid this risk. He explains that a focus on the “embodiment and aliveness” that constitute a person results in “no abstract inwardness, disembodied consciousness or pure spirit” as guiding ideas of human identity. This presents a route to deny Chalmers’ strong separation of physical function from conscious living.
Let us consider the claim that most psychological phenomena are manifested in the observable psychological behaviours of humans and other animals. Through this, there is a possibility for the embodied existence that Fuchs refers to. In opposition to Chalmers’ property dualism stance, he argues “humans are not dualistically divided beings of mind and body…” Instead, Fuchs emphasises comprehending humankind as “beings of flesh and blood, and as such simultaneously experiencing and aware of themselves…” The phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, summarises this argument, explaining the essence of subjectivity as “bound up with that of the body and that of the world.” He unifies the body’s experience with the mind’s experience, diagnosing “my existence as subjectivity is merely one with my existence as a body and with the existence of the world…” With the mind and body unified, the hard problem is minimised.
This position being established, for those who agree with Chalmers, Embodiment is still under-developed in how it could bridge the gap. Chalmers himself touches on Embodiment in his paper, explaining “we can see information as physically embodied when there is a space of distinct physical states” these can be seen as themselves constituting an “information space” for consciousness. The difference between him and Fuchs then, is that he concludes the status of Embodied Cognition as “less certain.” He elaborates, “right now it is more of an idea than a theory.” For Embodiment to be successfully explanatory to Chalmers, “it will have to be specified more fully…”
The theory of Embodied Cognition becomes more convincing if we accept a possibility that consciousness could arise from external matter. This can be explained by understanding our developmental psychological experiences as enactive, public, and necessarily involving the outside world. As newborn babies we slowly witness second person exchanges with our parents. Then we may witness third person exchanges as our parents interact with others. Embodiment would pose that only gradually after receiving these external states, would we enable a first person interiority of consciousness. Embodiment does not deny the existence of phenomenal consciousness, it re-orients the subjects of function and consciousness to place more emphasis on the relationship between the mind and the body. Therefore, while dualism assumes form and matter are extrinsically related, embodiment theories conceive form and matter as intrinsically related.
There are already neurological bases that show how the external world affects our internal experience of it. Evidence of this can be seen in the Romanian Orphans of 1980’s and 90’s. Harry Chugani, among others, conducted a series of neurological studies in children that had been neglected as a result of natalist policies in the Socialist Republic of Romania. The study demonstrated that the orphans showed significantly decreased activity in the orbital frontal gyrus, parts of the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala and the brain stem. Chugani concluded that this was a result of stress from early deprivation and suggested links to long-term cognitive and behavioural deficits. This case communicates the fundamental impact on cognition from the external world. I must clarify that due to this being research into standard functions of the brain, no conclusions should be made regarding how consciousness had been affected and Chalmers would be right to assert this. This study only shows that cognition and one’s ability to communicate conscious experience has a clear link to one’s external experience of the world.
Applying Embodied Cognition to the gap between function and consciousness changes the nature of the issue. If personal consciousness arises from the external world and functions of the brain, the issue is then that consciousness has no explanatory tractability with standard methods of function (like the eye is.) Consciousness does have explanatory tractability in embodied cases of function. In assuming that no function at all could communicate a level of consciousness, Chalmers implies quite a pessimistic outlook in regards to our relationship with the surrounding world. It is true that I cannot assess my friend’s consciousness because that belongs to them, the same way that any part of themselves belongs to them, however as I live my life alongside this friend I do not doubt their phenomenal experience. Peter Godfrey-Smith mirrors my rebuttal in regards to the consciousness of animals. Analysing the complex systems of mantis shrimps, Godfrey-Smith proposes that there should be no leap in determining a lack of consciousness simply because it cannot be pointed at. If we are embodied composites of both standard physical functions and witnesses of external experiences, then Chalmers lacks an argument in explaining how consciousness would not be a consequence of these processes. His requirement for embodiment to be “specified more fully” could equally apply to his conception of disembodied consciousness.
Conclusively, while Chalmers’ argument relies on an assumption that no function can indicate phenomenal experience at all, Embodiment theories take a different approach to function through an assumption that consciousness follows from external experience. Though it is true that an inability to structure consciousness in purely standard functional terms presents itself as a barrier, the way we ordinarily live and experience is more conducive to Embodied Cognition. Embodiment theories can present a future for looking at functional explanations for consciousness by looking at behaviours, second and third person experiences rather than the structural functions of the brain.
References and Further Reading
Bayne, Tim. Philosophy of Mind : An Introduction. Routledge, 2022. Print.
Birch, Jonathan. The Edge of Sentience : Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI. First edition. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2024. Print.
Chalmers, David J. “Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness.” (1995): Print.
Chugani, H T et al. “Local brain functional activity following early deprivation: a study of postinstitutionalized Romanian orphans.” NeuroImagevol. 14,6 (2001): 1290-301. Web.
Fuchs, Thomas. In Defence of the Human Being : Foundational Questions of an Embodied Anthropology. First edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Print.
Glock, Hans Johann. “Minds, Brains, and Capacities: Situated Cognition and Neo-Aristotelianism.” Frontiers in psychology 11 (2020): 566385–566385. Web.
Godfrey-Smith, Peter. “Animal Evolution and the Origins of Experience.” How Biology Shapes Philosophy. Cambridge University Press, 2016. 51–71. Web.Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. “Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Phenomenology of Perception.” Phenomenology of Perception. United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis Group, 2012. Print.
Edited by Samuel Coleman