Eagleman’s Possibilianism

Neuroscientist, technologist, and author David Eagleman labels himself a “possibilian” in that he calls for “an openness in approaching the big questions of our existence” (Eagleman, 2010). He embraces “Possibilianism” as an overarching philosophy, rejecting a false dichotomy between either atheism (denying the existence of God) or theism (wholly believing in God)—and he finds agnosticism passive and uninteresting (Possibilianism, 2022). Eagleman's Possibilianism applies, with similar significance, to consciousness (Eagleman, n.d.).

Consciousness as Abstraction and Control

Eagleman says consciousness “rides on top of a massive amount of machinery … it's successive levels of abstraction.” Even a basic movement like drinking a cup of coffee triggers a “lightning storm of neural activity that underpins that act.” But “I'm not aware of any of that in my consciousness. All I want is a very high-level abstract representation, which is, ‘Am I succeeding or am I spilling it on myself?’” (Eagleman, 2011a).

Eagleman draws the analogy between consciousness and the CEO of a large company. “He or she doesn't understand much of anything about the machinery underneath.” The CEO's job is setting the company's long-term vision and the plan to accomplish it. “If everything is running just fine, the CEO doesn't even need to know … it's only when something surprising happens that the CEO has to sit up and say, ‘OK, what's going on?’” It's exactly the same with consciousness. “Why does it [consciousness] feel like something?” Eagleman asks. “That we don't know—and the weird situation is that not only don't we have a theory, but we don't even know what such a theory would look like. Because nothing in our modern mathematics says, well, ‘do a triple integral and carry the two’ and then here is the taste of feta cheese.”

We can see “this set of Christmas tree lights [flash in the brain] when you're conscious of this or that—but it still leaves us feeling quite empty as to why it feels that way” (Eagleman, 2011a). Eagleman says. “If everything is going as expected, I don't have to be very conscious.”

Limits of Explanation and Open Possibilities

Can we ever, in principle, explain inner experience? “I don't see how,” Eagleman says, adding quickly, “Now that is either (a) a limitation of my imagination or (b) … it might be materialism is wrong.”

He explains, “The reason neuroscientists generally subscribe to materialism” is “because we have a million examples where brain damage changes the person, changes their conscious state … there's this irrevocable relationship between the biology and the conscious state, but that doesn't mean materialism has to be true. There are alternative theories that could be the case.”

Eagleman stresses he is not saying he subscribes to these alternative theories, but notes, “let me just say, agnostically, they are perfectly possible.” No doubt, he concludes, “our mind is integrally dependent on the brain.” But “whether this is all that's required or whether there's something else that our science is too young to understand, that's the open question” (Eagleman, 2011b).