Hey Scott. Great piece, You and I have been talking about this recently. Or maybe, more accurately, I’ve been incessantly blathering to you about consciousness as an emergent phenomenon like a gnat buzzing around your ear.
I just wanted to let you know that I do recognize the problem you’re pointing out, and I think you’re absolutely right to raise it. Anyone with an operational neocortex should. As I understand it, your argument is structured like this:
Consciousness is known first-personally.
Every other emergent phenomenon is knowable from the third person.
Therefore consciousness is ontologically different.
As you know, I ultimately land on the other side of the river from you. But your essay made me realize that our disagreement may be even more specific than I had appreciated. What I mean is that I wonder whether (3) necessarily follows from (1) and (2), or whether this is more fundamentally a question of epistemology than ontology.
In other words, does a unique mode of access necessarily imply a unique mode of existence? I obviously lean heavily toward “no,” while you’re are in the “yes” camp. And let me just say, you may very well be right. I just haven’t yet become convinced that consciousness gets to be the one ontological aristocrat while everything else in the universe has to fly coach.
Maybe that’s simply my inductive bias. Every other genuinely novel phenomenon we’ve discovered, from chemistry to life to culture, eventually found a home within the same natural world, even if it required an entirely new level of description. My instinct is to keep betting on that pattern until reality forces me to stop.
In any case, I genuinely enjoyed the article. It gave me a lot to think about and I’ve really enjoyed talking with you.
Thanks, Matt. I'm glad the article prompted you to reflect; that's my overarching goal with all of this.
Every framework we have for understanding the world is a human construction—some more reliable than others, none likely to be final. The question worth asking about a framework isn't just whether it's logically defensible, but whether it opens you to or closes you off from the deepest sources of understanding available to you. Consciousness is not one phenomenon among many waiting to be explained; it is the ground of all explanation, known most fundamentally from within. A worldview that treats it as merely another puzzle to be solved from the outside isn't necessarily wrong in any way that argument can demonstrate—but it is impoverished in a way that matters for how you live. The point isn't to win the ontology debate. The point is to notice what you're giving up if you refuse to take seriously the one thing you know most intimately.
You're asking me to defend an ontological claim. I'm asking you to consider what your framework makes invisible.
“Consciousness is not one phenomenon among many waiting to be explained; it is the ground of all explanation.”
-That’s both poetically and rhetorically beautiful, Scott. I sincerely mean that. But I also think it’s more of a philosophical starting point than an argument. And yet despite it all, I’d agree with that statement….epistemically, not ontologically.
I’m genuinely curious what existential richness you think I’m missing. Wonder? Reverence? Gratitude? Moral concern? A sense of connectedness? Because those are all things I experience quite profoundly within a naturalistic worldview. I’d argue even more deeply because I’m constantly aware of its rarity, fragility, richness, and fleetingness. Consciousness isn’t like some metaphysical crossword puzzle I’m trying to solve. To me, it is perhaps the single most extraordinary phenomenon in the universe.
So I’d love to understand what positive dimension you believe becomes available once consciousness is treated as ontologically fundamental rather than biologically emergent. If the ontology is supposed to enlarge life, what does it enlarge? Is it because different metaphysical pictures actually cultivate different ways of inhabiting the world? If so, that’s a super interesting conversation. Even so though, if a particular metaphysics does existentially enrich people, does it by necessity make it the correct one? IOW, does existential fruitfulness track truth?
You’re right that my statement is a philosophical position, not an argument. Whether one frames it in epistemological or ontological terms matters for the nature of the discussion that follows, but the bottom line is the same either way: it is incoherent to think that anything could be explained without consciousness. We agree on that much, even if we’d describe what we’re agreeing about differently.
I want to be careful with your question about what richness you might be missing. I don’t doubt the depth of your experience. When you describe wonder at the rarity and fragility of consciousness, I believe you completely. The question I’d raise isn’t about the intensity of your experience but about what your framework permits you to do with it. Does it allow you to treat that sense of wonder as a genuine form of understanding — as something that reveals — or does it quietly require you to translate it into neurochemistry before it fully counts? If the awe you feel at consciousness is, on your own account, ultimately reducible to electrochemical events, then you are in the odd position of using consciousness to marvel at consciousness while holding that neither the marvel nor the consciousness is, at bottom, what it seems to be. I’m not sure that’s a contradiction, but it is a kind of tension worth considering further.
You ask whether existential fruitfulness tracks truth. That’s a genuinely sharp question, and an honest answer is: probably not, and neither does anything else we have. Every framework we hold for understanding the world — physicalism included — is a human construction. Some are more reliable than others. Physics is extraordinarily good at what it does. But the claim that all of reality must ultimately be explicable in third-person terms is not itself a finding of physics. It is a philosophical commitment that rides on the success of physics, borrowing its authority for a claim that physics does not actually make. No one knows what the final truth about consciousness is. We may never know. What I am arguing is that the physicalist framework, by defining real explanation as third-person explanation, has made it impossible for anything to count as evidence against it. You’ve said you’ll keep betting on the physicalist pattern until reality forces you to stop. I’d gently suggest that reality will never force you to stop — not because physicalism is true, but because it has drawn the boundaries of what counts as “reality forcing you” in a way that excludes the very thing at issue.
So no, I don’t think adopting a different metaphysics guarantees a richer life, and I don’t think richness of experience validates a metaphysical position. What I do think is that frameworks shape what we’re able to take seriously. And the framework that treats consciousness as one more phenomenon to be explained from the outside — however sincerely its holders experience wonder — is one that cannot, on its own terms, take seriously the most immediate thing any of us knows. Not as a puzzle. As a ground.
Hey Scott. Great piece, You and I have been talking about this recently. Or maybe, more accurately, I’ve been incessantly blathering to you about consciousness as an emergent phenomenon like a gnat buzzing around your ear.
I just wanted to let you know that I do recognize the problem you’re pointing out, and I think you’re absolutely right to raise it. Anyone with an operational neocortex should. As I understand it, your argument is structured like this:
Consciousness is known first-personally.
Every other emergent phenomenon is knowable from the third person.
Therefore consciousness is ontologically different.
As you know, I ultimately land on the other side of the river from you. But your essay made me realize that our disagreement may be even more specific than I had appreciated. What I mean is that I wonder whether (3) necessarily follows from (1) and (2), or whether this is more fundamentally a question of epistemology than ontology.
In other words, does a unique mode of access necessarily imply a unique mode of existence? I obviously lean heavily toward “no,” while you’re are in the “yes” camp. And let me just say, you may very well be right. I just haven’t yet become convinced that consciousness gets to be the one ontological aristocrat while everything else in the universe has to fly coach.
Maybe that’s simply my inductive bias. Every other genuinely novel phenomenon we’ve discovered, from chemistry to life to culture, eventually found a home within the same natural world, even if it required an entirely new level of description. My instinct is to keep betting on that pattern until reality forces me to stop.
In any case, I genuinely enjoyed the article. It gave me a lot to think about and I’ve really enjoyed talking with you.
Thanks, Matt. I'm glad the article prompted you to reflect; that's my overarching goal with all of this.
Every framework we have for understanding the world is a human construction—some more reliable than others, none likely to be final. The question worth asking about a framework isn't just whether it's logically defensible, but whether it opens you to or closes you off from the deepest sources of understanding available to you. Consciousness is not one phenomenon among many waiting to be explained; it is the ground of all explanation, known most fundamentally from within. A worldview that treats it as merely another puzzle to be solved from the outside isn't necessarily wrong in any way that argument can demonstrate—but it is impoverished in a way that matters for how you live. The point isn't to win the ontology debate. The point is to notice what you're giving up if you refuse to take seriously the one thing you know most intimately.
You're asking me to defend an ontological claim. I'm asking you to consider what your framework makes invisible.
“Consciousness is not one phenomenon among many waiting to be explained; it is the ground of all explanation.”
-That’s both poetically and rhetorically beautiful, Scott. I sincerely mean that. But I also think it’s more of a philosophical starting point than an argument. And yet despite it all, I’d agree with that statement….epistemically, not ontologically.
I’m genuinely curious what existential richness you think I’m missing. Wonder? Reverence? Gratitude? Moral concern? A sense of connectedness? Because those are all things I experience quite profoundly within a naturalistic worldview. I’d argue even more deeply because I’m constantly aware of its rarity, fragility, richness, and fleetingness. Consciousness isn’t like some metaphysical crossword puzzle I’m trying to solve. To me, it is perhaps the single most extraordinary phenomenon in the universe.
So I’d love to understand what positive dimension you believe becomes available once consciousness is treated as ontologically fundamental rather than biologically emergent. If the ontology is supposed to enlarge life, what does it enlarge? Is it because different metaphysical pictures actually cultivate different ways of inhabiting the world? If so, that’s a super interesting conversation. Even so though, if a particular metaphysics does existentially enrich people, does it by necessity make it the correct one? IOW, does existential fruitfulness track truth?
You’re right that my statement is a philosophical position, not an argument. Whether one frames it in epistemological or ontological terms matters for the nature of the discussion that follows, but the bottom line is the same either way: it is incoherent to think that anything could be explained without consciousness. We agree on that much, even if we’d describe what we’re agreeing about differently.
I want to be careful with your question about what richness you might be missing. I don’t doubt the depth of your experience. When you describe wonder at the rarity and fragility of consciousness, I believe you completely. The question I’d raise isn’t about the intensity of your experience but about what your framework permits you to do with it. Does it allow you to treat that sense of wonder as a genuine form of understanding — as something that reveals — or does it quietly require you to translate it into neurochemistry before it fully counts? If the awe you feel at consciousness is, on your own account, ultimately reducible to electrochemical events, then you are in the odd position of using consciousness to marvel at consciousness while holding that neither the marvel nor the consciousness is, at bottom, what it seems to be. I’m not sure that’s a contradiction, but it is a kind of tension worth considering further.
You ask whether existential fruitfulness tracks truth. That’s a genuinely sharp question, and an honest answer is: probably not, and neither does anything else we have. Every framework we hold for understanding the world — physicalism included — is a human construction. Some are more reliable than others. Physics is extraordinarily good at what it does. But the claim that all of reality must ultimately be explicable in third-person terms is not itself a finding of physics. It is a philosophical commitment that rides on the success of physics, borrowing its authority for a claim that physics does not actually make. No one knows what the final truth about consciousness is. We may never know. What I am arguing is that the physicalist framework, by defining real explanation as third-person explanation, has made it impossible for anything to count as evidence against it. You’ve said you’ll keep betting on the physicalist pattern until reality forces you to stop. I’d gently suggest that reality will never force you to stop — not because physicalism is true, but because it has drawn the boundaries of what counts as “reality forcing you” in a way that excludes the very thing at issue.
So no, I don’t think adopting a different metaphysics guarantees a richer life, and I don’t think richness of experience validates a metaphysical position. What I do think is that frameworks shape what we’re able to take seriously. And the framework that treats consciousness as one more phenomenon to be explained from the outside — however sincerely its holders experience wonder — is one that cannot, on its own terms, take seriously the most immediate thing any of us knows. Not as a puzzle. As a ground.