29 theories

Challenge: theories of consciousness

Consciousness may resist explanation altogether. These views diagnose what is wrong with current theories, especially materialist ones, and question whether human minds can solve the mind-body problem, without offering a confident answer of their own.

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The Challenge category collects views that are better at diagnosis than cure. They argue that existing accounts of consciousness, materialist ones above all, fail in principle, and some doubt that any account will succeed. They mark the depth of the problem that every other category on the map claims to solve.

The best known is Colin McGinn’s mysterianism. McGinn argues that the link between brain and experience is real and natural yet may lie permanently beyond human understanding, in the way some concepts lie beyond the grasp of other species. Thomas Nagel, author of ‘What Is It Like to Be a Bat?’, argues in Mind and Cosmos that the materialist, neo-Darwinian picture of nature cannot account for consciousness and will have to be expanded.

Others attack the way the question is framed. Ludwig Wittgenstein and his follower Peter Hacker hold that much talk about consciousness misuses ordinary language. Raymond Tallis rejects what he calls neuromania, the habit of equating minds with brain scans. Eric Schwitzgebel argues that introspection is unreliable and that metaphysical humility is the right stance. Michael Shermer, David Eagleman and Sam Harris consider whether the problem may never be solved.

These views offer few positive proposals. Nagel goes furthest, suggesting that nature may contain a built-in tendency toward mind, while McGinn holds that the answer exists even though human minds cannot grasp it.