Hardcastle’s Argument Against Materialism Skeptics

Philosopher Valerie Gray Hardcastle argues that the points of division between materialists and materialism-skeptics “are quite deep and turn on basic differences in understanding the scientific enterprise.” This disagreement, “the rifts,” which she frames, in part, between David Chalmers and herself, concerns whether consciousness is a brute fact about the world, which materialists deny and its skeptics affirm. Rather, materialists believe that consciousness is part of the physical world, just like everything else. “It is completely nonmysterious (though it is poorly understood) [and materialists] have total and absolute faith that science as it is construed today will someday explain this as it has explained the other so-called mysteries of our age” (Section: Hardcastle, 1996).

The Skeptics’ Challenge

Hardcastle gives her clear-eyed assessment: “I am a committed materialist and believe absolutely and certainly that empirical investigation is the proper approach in explaining consciousness. I also recognize that I have little convincing to say to those opposed to me. There are few useful conversations; there are even fewer converts.”

She epitomizes the skeptics' position: “Isolating the causal relations associated with conscious phenomena would simply miss the boat, for there is no way that doing that ever captures the qualitative aspects of awareness. What the naturalists might do is illustrate when we are conscious, but that won't explain the why of consciousness.”

Thus, she continues, whatever the neural correlate(s) of consciousness may be, the naturalists would not have explained why it is that (or those). Part of a good explanation, skeptics maintain, “is making the identity statement (or whatever) intelligible, plausible, reasonable” and this is what materialists have not done and thus have not closed the explanatory gap.

Hardcastle’s Response to Mysterians

In response, Hardcastle is frank: “To them, I have little to say in defence of naturalism, for I think nothing that I as an already committed naturalist could say would suffice, for we don't agree on the terms of the argument in the first place.”

The consciousness identity, whatever it turns out to be, could be a brute fact about the world, just like the laws of physics. At some point, in all theories, explanations must end.

Hardcastle asks, “How do I make my identification of consciousness with some neural activity intelligible to those who find it mysterious? My answer is that I don't. The solution to this vexing difficulty, such as it is, is all a matter of attitude. That is, the problem itself depends on the spirit in which we approach an examination of consciousness.”

In characterizing “consciousness-mysterians,” she states, “They are antecedently convinced of the mysteriousness of consciousness and no amount of scientific data is going to change that perspective. Either you already believe that science is going to give you a correct identity statement, or you don't and you think that there is always going to be something left over, the phenomenal aspects of conscious experience” (Hardcastle, 1996).

Hardcastle's advice to skeptics? “Consciousness-mysterians need to alter their concepts. To put it bluntly: their failure to appreciate the world as it really is cuts no ice with science. Their ideas are at fault, not the scientific method. Materialists presume that there is some sort of identity statement for consciousness. (Of course, we don't actually have one yet, but for those of us who are not consciousness-mysterians, we feel certain that one is in the offing.) Hence, the skeptics can't really imagine possible worlds in which consciousness is not whatever we ultimately discover it to be because they aren't imagining consciousness in those cases (or, they aren't imagining properly). But nevertheless, what can I say to those who insist that they can imagine consciousness as beyond science's current explanatory capacities? I think nothing …”

The fundamental difference between materialists and their skeptics, according to Hardcastle, is that “Materialists are trying to explain to each other what consciousness is within current scientific frameworks … If you don't antecedently buy into this project …, then a naturalist's explanation probably won't satisfy you. It shouldn't. But that is not the fault of the explanation, nor is it the fault of the materialists. If you don't accept the rules, the game won't make any sense” (Hardcastle, 1996).

Broader Contributions to Consciousness Studies

Hardcastle's own approach to consciousness includes: viewing it as a lower-level dynamical structure underpinning our information processing (Hardcastle, 1995); the relation between ontology and explanation providing a framework for referring to mental states as being the causally efficacious agents for some behavior (Hardcastle, 1998); a more nuanced approach to the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC) in that it “there might not be an NCC—even if we adopt a purely materialistic and reductionistic framework for explaining consciousness (for example, perhaps consciousness is located out in the world just as much as it is located inside the head) (Hardcastle, 2018; Hardcastle and Raja, 1998); and action selection and projection to help refine notions of consciousness from an embodied perspective (Hardcastle, 2020).