[This is an essay I wrote for my Philosophy of Mind class. The topic at hand is the legitimacy of physicalism. I thought the prompt was interesting enough that I would post my response here. By no means do I endorse watching the movie "Daredevil" with Ben Affleck.]
In Alter and Howell’s “A Dialogue on Consciousness,” the character called Ponens cites a well-known philosopher named Thomas Nagel while defending his own dualist position. The particular article Ponens references deals with echolocation, and is called “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” In it, Nagel writes about how neuroscience and biology can explain how information processing would occur for a bat, but that the sciences (as they exist today) are unable to sufficiently convey what it’s like to be a bat, or, what it’s like to have a mind that operates so differently from the typical human mind that we know. Because of the physical sciences’ inability to explain what it’s like to be a bat, and thus, their inability to explain all of the qualities of a bat’s conscious perception, Nagel believes that there are qualities of conscious perception that are nonphysical. The character Ponens also subscribes to this belief, and therefore considers himself a dualist. His position, however, goes not uncontested by the dialogue’s other participants.
Being largely creatures of the dark, bats must rely on methods of perception other than the method of visual stimulation familiar to most human beings and many other animals. The primary mode of sensory perception, for bats, is echolocation. This consists of a bat’s emission of high-pitched chirps, and their succeeding recognization of the amount of time the sound waves take to bounce off any surrounding objects, and also any effects the objects may have had on the characteristics of the sound waves themselves. This allows the bat to create a sort of internal map of the relative distances and densities of the objects and structures that surround it. Nagel writes about how bats, in their employment of echolocation, have a way of sensing the world that (most) humans lack. Biology and neuroscience might be able to explain the way, mechanically, that this process of perception works, but as of now, it is unable to explain what it’s truly like to be a bat, to echolocate. True, some human beings (typically blind, and utilizing the body’s natural enhancement of the remaining senses after the loss of sight) have been able to teach themselves to echolocate. And it could be said for them, that in this small way they could come to know part of what it’s like to be a bat. But the point of the argument is that we cannot come to know what it’s like to echolocate by merely studying cognitive science.
The character Tollens, determined to redeem the physical sciences, tries to rebuke this argument by suggesting that perhaps in studying the brain of a bat, we might find parts that correspond to our visual and auditory cortexes, which could support a hypothesis that echolocation feels similar to a combination of hearing and seeing. Ponens retorts that in trying to understand what we have not experienced, we’d be projecting our own subjective experiences (i.e. what it’s been like for us to see and hear) onto the bat’s circumstances, and not relying on objective science. He wants to say that furthermore, our brain states would be too different from the bat’s to even attempt this sort of imaginative projection.
Outside of the dialogue’s fictional setting, one could simply ask Daniel Kish, who has developed a form of echolocation after losing his eyesight to retinal cancer as a young child. His form of echolocation allows him to ride bicycles and perceive excellently the world around him. He has been teaching his ability to other visually handicapped people for several years, and these people come to be able to decipher the exact shape of items around them, and thus to identify these items. In an episode of the television show Is It Possible?, Daniel Kish described his echolocation as being “…something like carrying a flashlight around with you, and shining that flashlight into the environment. Except instead of using light, you’re using sound” (Jbara, “Ironman, Batman, and Flexi-Woman”).
The parallel between the flashlight and Kish’s ability to echolocate is somewhat enlightening. However, as is the case with the fictional Mary’s finally seeing color after only studying it for years (Jackson 127-136), receiving descriptions of the characteristics of something is not the same as actually experiencing it firsthand. Though Kish gives us an interesting new way to think about echolocation, the viewer (or reader) is still not much closer to understanding what it would be like to experience echolocation firsthand.
The movie Daredevil uses Hollywood special effects to try to convey the blind superhero’s own form of echolocation. When the director tries to show the viewer what it’s like to rely on this form of perception, the screen shows a blue, filtered portrayal of Daredevil’s surroundings, with white dots and circles, bouncing and rippling off of objects to simulate the effects of sound waves refracting off of them. But by the very nature of film, it requiring us to watch and listen in order to understand, we could never hope to ascertain what it would be like to echolocate from a simple screening. In viewing the film, we have to use the same modes of perception we’ve always used, and so of course we gain no new knowledge about what it’s like to echolocate like bats do.
Back in the context of the dialogue, Ponens says that if anything could truly, clearly illuminate what it would be like to be a bat, it would be objective science, but objective science (as of current standards) isn’t up to the task. So at least until some great advancements occur in the sciences, it seems, at least to Ponens, that there must be parts of conscious (and unconscious) perception that are nonphysical, since they escape scientific description. Nagel’s (and to a certain extent, Ponens’s) argument can thus be summarized as follows:
“We can understand how physicalism might be true only if we have a theoretical framework that explains how phenomenal properties, which seem subjective, might really be objective, physical properties. [But] we have no such framework, [and so] we cannot understand how physicalism might be true” (Alter and Howell 28).
Tollens and Bella think that this just means that humanity should “do more science.” They think that Nagel underestimates the explanatory power of the framework provided by neuroscience, yet Ponens remains dismissive. He says that even if neuroscience could eventually come to explain how physicalism could be true, it has a very long way to go before it will be capable.
Nagel does allow for the possibility that perhaps neuroscience could make enough developments to eventually come to convey completely and accurately what it’s like to be a bat, to echolocate, or just more generally, to experience any sort of conscious perception that would be foreign to the average human being. If consciousness is entirely physical, a complete understanding of neuroscience would allow for the smooth conveyance of these ideas. Nagel does not mandate that physicalism is false, but he does rightly proclaim that as of now, we have no way of understanding how physicalism could be true, since we have no such scientific framework.
For me personally, it holds weight that neuroscience is so largely undeveloped. I feel more than a little compelled by the as of yet unknown body of knowledge neuroscience could eventually come to wield. It doesn’t seem too unreasonable that, when and if the science became more fully developed, we might come to gain a new understanding of the processes of the brain that would reveal physicalism to be true. But of course, we aren’t there yet. I’d like to think that there is more to being human than just being a carbon-based, insignificant arrangement of molecules, bound not just to act, but also to think based only on these physical and chemical laws. I’d like to think that we have free will, that consciousness and decision-making are not just physical concepts driven only by the chemical reactions that occur in our brains. But I haven’t the capability to decide what the ultimate truth is in this situation. And based on the lack of development in neuroscience, at present, it seems that no-one else does, either.
But the human development of echolocation is great news for the evolution of neuroscience. The brains of human beings like Daniel Kish can be compared to the brains of bats, and to the brains of human beings without Kish’s unique ability. With enough probing, neuroscientists could come to pinpoint and describe exactly the differences in neural activity and thus, perception. Surely, it’s only a matter of time before enough great developments take place that some serious light can be shed on the issue of physicalism’s legitimacy. But as of now, we remain at a standstill.
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