Genesis by Experience, Part 1

Douglas Hofstadter's I Am a Strange Loop

Douglas Hofstadter has a new book out, I Am a Strange Loop, giving his explanation of how the human brain generates a sense of self or "I." I've discussed the book to some extent in Douglas Hofstadter Is a Strange Loop. Now I'd like to present my counter-theory. Or, at least, I'd like to stake out the general territory it occupies in the realm of ideas, since I am by no means ready yet to answer all questions about my theory-in-the-making, much less meet all objections to it or fend off all misconceptions about it.

Hofstadter has it that the personal "I" is an epiphenomenon, by which he means it is real in the same sense that any thought pattern is real. Any thought pattern — or, as he calls it, any "symbol" in the human brain's vast repertory of symbols — is a phenomenon that emerges from entirely physical, wholly mechanistic workings that go on at the level of neurons or atoms or subatomic particles.

David J. Chalmers's The Conscious Mind

As such, the emergent "I" — which, at least in his early chapters, Hofstadter equates to the conscious mind and to the soul — is entirely a part of the material reality of the world, even if it is no solid, tangible thing. For a contrasting view of what it means for consciousness to be an epiphenomenon, one can read such philosophers of mind as David J. Chalmers, author of The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory.

As I discussed in a great many of my earlier posts, beginning with Quickening to Qualia, or Taking Consciousness Seriously, Chalmers argues persuasively — though I now think he's wrong — that our conscious mind is at least to a first approximation epiphenomenal is a stricter sense than Hofstadter uses.

Specifically, Hofstadter's epiphenomenal "I" is capable of "pushing things around" in the physical world. For instance, when my "I" decides that my body needs to be fed, it arranges for me to (for example) stuff a hamburger into my mouth.

Chalmers' possibly epiphenomenal conscious mind — he's sure it is "naturally supervenient" on physical facts, less sure it is a true epiphenomenon according to the definition which he employs — pushes nothing whatsoever around. It lacks "causal efficacy" entirely (see p. 150 in the section "Is This Epiphenomenalism?").

He equates the conscious mind to "subjective experience," or just "experience." He says that our subjective experience is a nonphysical freebie that need not happen at all for the sum total of all the physical causality that takes place in the world to be exactly the same as it is.

If I stuff a hamburger into my mouth because I'm hungry, says Chalmers, that happens because of activity in my brain that is wholly physical. But my conscious experience of the hunger and of its satisfaction — whether or not it is truly epiphenomenal in the strictest sense — is a side show to all of that causal brain activity. "It seems to be a mere epiphenomenon, hanging off the engine of physical causation," writes Chalmers (p. 150).


My initial inclination when I first read the Chalmers book was to applaud his claim that human consciousness is immaterial and acausal — i.e., it exists in and of itself, but it does not intrude upon a "causally closed" physical world. I did this for reasons that have to do with my personal philosophical and religious biases. To wit, it seemed to me that establishing that we each have an immaterial component to our mind, the faculty which we call consciousness or subjective experience, makes it easier to maintain that we each have an immaterial soul.

I have since modified my views on questions of self, consciousness, and soul, but my philosophical and religious biases remain the same. I'd like to go into those biases now, if only because doing so will make it easier for me to get across what my new theory of the soul is all about.

I consider myself a Christian, and in my mind the "message" of my religion boils down to this: We are, each of us, equally and irrevocably precious in the sight of God, and we ought to treat one another — and ourselves — accordingly.

I bear in mind the passage in the Gospels where Jesus tells of the so-called Great Commandment and its sequel:

One of the scribes, when he came forward and heard them disputing and saw how well he had answered them, asked him, "Which is the first of all the commandments?" Jesus replied, "The first is this: 'Hear O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these." The scribe said to him, "Well said, teacher. You are right in saying, 'He is One and there is no other than he.' And 'to love him with your heart, with all your understanding, with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself' is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices." And when Jesus saw that he answered with understanding, he said to him, "You are not far from the kingdom of God." And no one had the courage to ask him any more questions. (Mark 12:28-34)

Here, love of God is juxtaposed here by Jesus with love of "neighbor" (and, not incidentally, of self) in such a way as to make it clear that we are to treat everyone, our own selves included, in the same way in which we are told to treat God himself: as a personal "Thou," rather than as a thing, an object, an "It."

When I say we are being told by Jesus in this passage to recognize," as we gaze upon one another, our mutual preciousness "in God's sight," I am I hope honoring Jesus's intentional juxtaposition of the Great Commandment with its equally great sequel. But my intent here is to dwell upon the phrase "in God's sight," because I think it is crucial.


My theory of consciousness incorporates the idea that it is "sight," in the sense of an exercise of observational powers from which emerge conscious experiences, which make things real. This is a sense of consciousness in which it cannot be considered as something separate from causality.

In coming up with my view of consciousness as profoundly causal in a way which does much more than "push things about," I am attempting to draw together several influences upon my thought. One of them is an idea I originally discussed in Genesis by Observership. Namely, there seems to be good scientific reason to be that there are events at the quantum level of the physical world that are ambiguous in nature — there are at least two possible ways in which such events could have transpired — until an act of observation made at a later time "fixes" one of those ways as "real" and discards all the others.

Several years ago, quantum physicist John Archibald Wheeler described a thought experiment in which a photon, a unit of light energy, is emitted by a far off quasar, somewhere across the broad vastness of space. It has two possible paths between there and here on Planet Earth, each path bent towards us by the gravity of a separate, conveniently positioned galaxy. Wheeler maintained that, according to the laws of quantum mechanics, which of the two paths the photon actually takes — or took — depends on which way we have decided to point our observational telescope!

Wheeler's conclusion could be summarized as, observation is required before certain "facts" become facts. It was later confirmed by real experiments performed on earth. He called the strongly counterintuitive phenomenon "genesis by observation."

The question arose whether the observation has to be done by a conscious being, with Wheeler answering in the negative. He said the mere registration of the event by a purely mechanical "observer" would suffice. Another scientist, the cosmologist Andrei Linde, disagreed. Linde posits that the observer has to be conscious.

I'm siding here with Linde, for reasons which I hope will become apparent as I lay out my theory.

Another train of thought which feeds into my incipient theory is one I broached in Esse Est Percipi. In that post, I talked about the philosophical stance of the Irish philosopher George Berkeley, who became a bishop in the Church of Ireland in the 18th century. Berkeley's thesis was esse est percipi, to exist is to be perceived.

By that he meant that all which exists — all except mind, which is the seat of perception — does so because it is perceived by a conscious mind. To avoid infinite regress, Berkeley posited that the great mind by virtue of whose conscious experience the universe comes to be in the first place is God's.


A third set of ideas which underpin my theory comes from the Chalmers book. In his "Is This Epiphenomenalism?" section, he looks for ways be which he might avoid identifying what he calls "naturally supervenient" consciousness as epiphenomenal, in the sense of lacking causal efficacy. One possible strategy which he considers for this is "the nonsupervenience of causation."

In an earlier chapter, Chalmers has already given the reasons why he finds the conscious mind to supervene — to emerge from — physical events naturally, not logically or metaphysically. He argues that there is no necessity of pure logic why what goes on in a brain must be associated with subjective experience. Likewise, it cannot be shown within the philosophical realm of metaphysics that consciousness must automatically accompany brain processes. Hence, given that consciousness does accompany brain states in the world we live in, the supervenience must be a natural one: i.e., by virtue of laws of nature which amplify those pertaining merely to physical matter.

Is there anything else we know about, he asks, that likewise supervenes on the physical world, but not for reasons of logic or metaphysics? Yes, he answers, there is in fact one other thing: causality itself. Consciousness and causality are the two main aspects of the world we live in that supervene naturally on physical facts.

To my mind, Chalmers is not entirely clear on what he means by "causality" — for the excellent reason that, as he shows, philosophers disagree as to precisely how our minds ought to deconstruct propositions such as "A causes B" to get to the bottom of what is meant by them. Chalmers writes:

... the very nature of causation is quite mysterious, and it is possible that when causation is better understood [by philosophers] we will be in a better position to understand a subtle way in which conscious experience may be causally relevant [after all]. (p. 150)

Again, one way in which conscious experience may be causally relevant is if causation itself, like consciousness, is "nonsupervenient" on physical reality, in the sense of not being either logically or metaphysically a slam dunk, given the physical facts. If, like consciousness, causation is only naturally supervenient, then perhaps those "two mysteries might be more neatly wrapped into one. Perhaps, for instance, experience itself is a kind of causal nexus ... " (p. 152).

"On this view," Chalmers adds a few sentences later, "causation needs to be realized by something in order to support its many properties, and experience is a natural candidate. If this is so, it may be that it is the very existence of [conscious] experience that allows for causal relations to exist, so that there is a very subtle sort of relevance for experience in causation."

Chalmers is not convinced that such a position is well-grounded, for reasons he mentions quite briefly. "The metaphysics of causation is as yet far from clear," he nonetheless says (p. 153), "and [accordingly] this proposal is certainly worth investigating."


My theory about consciousness-as-causation, then, draws from the notion of genesis by observership proposed originally by John Wheeler and modified by Andrei Linde to have it that the observer be conscious; from Berkeley's "immaterialism," a.k.a. "subjective idealism," which maintains that esse est percipi, to exist is to be perceived; and, thirdly, from Chalmers' hint that there may be "a very subtle sort of relevance for [conscious] experience in causation." At least for the moment, I'd like to call my theory that of "genesis by experience." By "genesis," I fully mean to imply that experience — observation, perception, sight — is directly implicated in God's creating and sustaining us and the universe we live in.

So, yes, my theory is as much a theological one as it is philosophical/metaphysical. It is also a scientific one, to the extent that it accords with Wheeler and Linde. Put all those adjectives together, and you can see why I feel my theory of consciousness-as-causation satisfies one of my deepest biases.

To be specific, I fully admit to being "biased to the bone" against two worldviews that are very much at loggerheads today, atheism and fundamentalism.

Atheists, agnostics, secularists, skeptics, freethinkers — these are all people who are reluctant to believe in God or religion, some of them quite outspokenly. Meanwhile, creationists, biblical literalists, advocates of so-called "intelligent design," and their ilk snipe at the atheistic elites, as they like to call them, in the name of a type of religion which repels me as much as atheism does.


"Conservative" Christians seem too often to be hate-filled Christians, which means they are no Christians at all. Not to speak ill of the dead, but some of the remarks of the late Jerry Falwell about gays and others epitomize what I am talking about:

"I really believe [said Falwell after the September 11 attacks] that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

Such remarks (which Falwell later apologized for but said nonetheless that he stood behind) show how hate and fear go hand in hand — and how the idea that God sees each and every one of us as equally and irrevocably precious can get completely lost.

On the other side, when outspoken atheist Christopher Hitchens discusses religion as if it were poison (see In Search of Comity) I cringe. As I say, I believe a worldview such as the one I am outlining that ties creation and consciousness together in a deep way makes it clear that there is a God, and that we need to base how we treat each other on the preciousness we have in our Creator/Sustainer's eyes. What firmer basis for that sort of commitment could there possibly be?