It would appear that members from both sides of our standoff have unwittingly given the considerations cited by their opponents more credence than their tough talk would suggest that they were willing to. If it is in any way plausible that Zen talk of certainty regarding immediate experience trumping the natural attitude is mere posturing, or that conservative talk of theory building considerations trumping experiential considerations is mere posturing, a potential strategy opens up for opponents of each respective position. It is one thing to express a willingness to bite a bullet, another to actually do it. As it stands, neither faction really believes it must pay the metaphysical cost it proclaims to be willing to pay. If it could be demonstrated that those metaphysical costs actually were entailed by their view, they would be forced to show the depth of their convictions.
This strategy promises a road from the present standoff back to genuine debate, but it requires that one know one’s enemy well enough to be capable of discerning the unpalatable
67 Con’s method will be recognised by those familiar with Dennett’s work on consciousness as
heterophenomenological in spirit. Rep is allowed the freedom to describe a “heterophenomenological world ... populated with all the images, events, sounds, smells, hunches, presentiments, and feelings ... [he] sincerely believes to exist in his ... stream of consciousness” (Dennett 1993a p. 98). But Con ultimately decides on conservative third-personal theoretical grounds which items in Rep’s heterophenomenology, given a degree of “metaphorical slack”, might be said to exist, and which, in contrast, are mere “confabulations” (Dennett 1993a pp. 94, 98).
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metaphysical costs internal to their view. Genuine dialogical progress requires that each party abandon arguments premised upon principles only they accept in favour of arguments
premised upon principles those in the opposing camp might accept. To explore the implications of Cartesian realism regarding consciousness is likely to strike those of a conservative persuasion, at first blush, as an act of sheer perversion, but the Zen view, premised, as it is, upon the Cartesian conceit, is impervious to the standard empirical
considerations conservatives raise against it. What’s more, such an exploration is already an implicit part of the conservative research program. Researchers like Con need only consider the implications of the less empirically plausible aspects of data provided by subjects like Rep, what would be the case if their testimonials regarding their experiences were true. Exploring the kinds of deflationist accounts of cognitive architecture conservatives are wont to defend might likewise strike some Zen adherents as an exercise in futility, but
conservatives will be as blithely dismissive of their ten thousandth appeal to unmediated access to truthmakers as they were of their first. Also, inasmuch as many Zen adherents seek an understanding of the metaphysical connection between conscious and physical states, and generally think the kind of brain states conservatives are likely to identify with conscious experience are somehow involved in this connection, such exploration is likewise an implicit part of their research. Obviously, one can only successfully demonstrate that a view entails some metaphysical cost if the view does in fact entail such a cost. It is by no means obvious that either of the two views under discussion entail the metaphysical cost they claim a willingness to incur, but the tendency for members of each side to traverse the previously discussed tipping points suggests a lack of appreciation of the nature of the standoff they find themselves in, and, consequently, what they themselves are committing to in taking the position they take. Also, with respect to each faction, there is at least some reason for
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thinking their view might incur a heavier metaphysical cost than they have heretofore acknowledged.
The major problem for the robust realism with respect to experience endorsed by those in the Zen camp is how it might be brought into harmony with the realistic picture of the world born of the natural attitude. Attempting to answer the question of how this might be done is
perhaps the most active research project within the Zen camp, and every canonical solution has its canonical problems, for traditional interactionist dualism, the causal closure of the physical, for epiphenomenalist dualism, the very idea of epiphenomenalism, for Russellian views, the combination problem.68 There is nonetheless an overriding conviction that the problem of integrating consciousness into a metaphysically realistic picture of the world is a problem with a solution. But we have already seen that there is a tendency among those in the Zen camp to afford considerations born of the natural attitude more weight than their stated position actually allows. Might their insistence upon the metaphysical marriage of non- reductive phenomenal realism and non-skeptical realism with respect to the world reflect a tacit unwillingness to pay the price that they claim to be willing to pay for their metaphysical commitments? An ambitious and committed conservative would do well to search for as many obstacles to the metaphysical integration of experiences (taken in the robustly realist Zen sense) and the world as possible, in hope that a watertight case against such a possibility might be made out.
There is also at least some reason to think conservatives might need to pay the kind of heavy price with respect to consciousness that the theoreticians conceit would have that they are willing to pay, though it must be admitted that it is somewhat more of a long shot. It is true that non-representational accounts of cognitive architecture have gained some degree of
68 See Lewis (1999 pp. 282-285) for a succinct statement of the argument from causal closure and an unargued
rejection of epiphenomenalism (albeit an attenuated form that survives the postulation of a Humean parapsychology). For more on the combination problem, see Chalmers (forthcoming b).
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traction, but there is little prospect of such account becoming so well developed as to supplant even folk psychology, let alone representationalism in general, as the preferred kinematical explanation of human and animal behavior. And even if an ambitious Zen disciple did manage to show conservatives that there were simply no plausible theoretical
grounds for postulation of a theoretical entity or property complex sufficiently isomorphic to the folk notion of conscious experience to deserve to be called such, victory would come with a sting in its tail. The desire for there to be some such physical complex is also shared by most members of the Zen camp. Without it, they lose any strong metaphysical intersection point between consciousness, as they characterize it, and physical reality.69 In severing such a connection, they bring themselves much closer to a situation where they might have to make good on their own tough talk.
It would appear that inasmuch as the foregoing strategy offers a way beyond the present impasse, it places conservatives at an advantage. The possibility of Zen adherents having to make good on their tough talk seems far more likely, as much of the writing is already on the wall, and in calling members of the Zen camp out on their tough talk, conservatives incur no cost themselves. In any case, I will only be concerning myself with the conservative version of the foregoing strategy in this thesis. Over the following two chapters, I will attempt to demonstrate that Robust Realism, the strong form of phenomenal realism endorsed by those of the Zen faction, rules out the possibility of experiences existing spatiotemporally ‘within’ a transcendentally real physical world, or causally interacting with one from without.
Spatiotemporal inclusion and causal interaction are the two primary means by which robust realists have attempted to forge metaphysical connections between experience, as they characterize it, and the physical world. Without them, it would seem that the most intimate
69 Chalmers (1996 pp. 222, 223), for instance, subscribes to what he calls “the principle of structural coherence”,
according to which “various structural features of consciousness correspond directly to structural features that are represented in awareness”.
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fundamental metaphysical relationship that might pertain between them is mere coexistence, albeit in complete isolation from each other.70 In such a case, it’s difficult to see what
justification experience, the robust realist’s sole source of empirical revelation, could
possibly provide for the existence of such a world. It would be incumbent upon robust realists who continue to subscribe to transcendental realism regarding the physical world to explain why they do so without any reason whatsoever, why they don’t just bite the bullet the Cartesian conceit has it that they are willing to bite. 71