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WITTGENSTEIN AND THE PROBLEM

OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Oswald Hanfling

You have a rich inner life of conscious experiences.

For example, you have pains and other sensations.
And you have sensory experiences, such as that pro-
duced by chewing on something bitter. Scientists are
currently puzzling over how to explain this inner life in
scientific terms. Can we, for example, ‘explain’ con-
sciousness by appealing to certain facts about our
brains?

Here, Oswald Hanfling explains why he believes the

scientific ‘problem’ of ‘explaining’ consciousness is
ultimately a pseudo-problem. There is no problem!

The problem of the problem

The ‘problem of consciousness’ has caught the attention

of the public as never before. Almost daily we hear or read
discussions of it, and new books and articles on it are ap-
pearing even as I write. Distinguished people from the worlds
of philosophy, psychology, brain science and computer sci-
ence are taking part in the debate. Some people believe
that, though exceptionally difficult, the problem will finally
yield to a scientific solution, but others think that it will never
be granted to human beings to get to the bottom of it.

But what exactly is the problem? What is special about

consciousness? Consciousness, it has been said, is ‘the
last surviving mystery’ (Dennett, p. 25). Suppose we were
told that everything has been explained, with one excep-
tion: consciousness. Then we might wonder why this should
be so: it would be a mystery. However, the suggestion that
everything has been explained is obviously absurd. Let us
try the idea that everything, except consciousness,

can be

explained. Then we might wonder why, as it has been put,
‘consciousness should be the one thing that can’t be ex-
plained. Solids, liquids and gases can be explained’, etc.

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(Dennett, p. 455). Now the suggestion that everything (other
than consciousness)

can be explained does not seem very

plausible either. But if we are willing to make that sugges-
tion, why should consciousness be excluded? Why not sim-
ply suppose that consciousness, like everything else,

can

be explained? We are after all, merely speculating. No one
is claiming, absurdly, that everything (except conscious-
ness) has actually been explained.

Let us try the idea that where things

are explicable, they

are always (except, again, in the case of consciousness)
explicable in a particular kind of way – that in which we
explain the behaviour of physical substances (including ‘sol-
ids, liquids and gases’, etc.)

. Consciousness might then

appear as an ‘odd one out’: perhaps it could never be ex-
plained in that way. But is it plausible to think that there is
one particular way in which everything (other than conscious-
ness) is to be explained? Think of the different ways in which
things are explained. There is biology, ethology, anthropol-
ogy, economics, history, art criticism, psychology, etc. Each
of these disciplines has its own terminology, methods of
enquiry and explanatory aims.

Consider also how we explain human behaviour in every-

day life. Why is Joanna laughing? Because she heard this
joke about... This is a perfect explanation: we now

under-

stand why she was laughing. The other day I read that ‘sci-
entists have discovered what makes people laugh.’ But didn’t
we know what makes people laugh? Sometimes, it is true,
we can’t make out why someone is laughing. But what we
need in that case is not a

scientific explanation.

Let’s see whether this makes you laugh: A man bursts

into a bank and rushes up to the counter shouting ‘It’s a
mess-up!’ – ‘Excuse me,’ says the cashier, ‘don’t you mean
a hold-up?’ – ‘No,’ shouts the man, ‘I mean a mess-up. I
forgot to bring my gun!’ I hope this joke didn’t need explain-
ing. But if it did, then what you needed was to be told the
point of the joke, and not a scientific account of what goes
on in your brain or body when you laugh.

Hanfling

Wittgenstein & consciousness

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Here is another attempt to introduce a problem of con-

sciousness. How, it may be asked, did consciousness
evolve? How did life without it evolve into life with it? Con-
sider the difference between an animal with eyes and ears,
etc. and its distant, primitive ancestors, which had no such
organs or faculties. The first, when awake, is able to be
conscious of its surroundings – food, predators, etc.; while
the primitive ancestors were not. What we have here is the
evolution of sense-perception. Now it is true that this evolu-
tion – the details of this story – may present problems for
biologists, as may the evolution of any other aspect of life.
But they are not ‘deep’ problems, to be contrasted with oth-
ers with which evolutionary biologist are concerned. There
is nothing special about consciousness in this respect.

Is there some other way of identifying ‘the problem of con-

sciousness’? I doubt it; but instead of going on with the
attempt, I shall make two suggestions to explain the feeling
of mystery that is liable to surround the concept of con-
sciousness.

Are brains conscious?

The first is about the assumption, common nowadays,

that consciousness is a property of

the brain. It has been

known for a long time that the brain is more closely corre-
lated with mental processes than other parts of the body,
but in recent times there has been much scientific interest
in this correlation and in the relevant processes and struc-
tures of the brain. At the same time the view has become
prevalent that mental processes are

nothing other than brain

processes, and that thinking, feeling, reasoning and con-
sciousness itself are really properties of the brain. Now the
‘problem of consciousness’ is often expressed in such ques-
tions as ‘What makes brains conscious?

’; and this is in-

deed a puzzling question. But does the question make
sense?

You will agree, I suppose, that consciousness cannot be

ascribed to anything whatever. You can’t say of a chair, a

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wheelbarrow, or a fingernail that they are, or might be, con-
scious. That would be nonsense. But you

can say of a hu-

man being or a blackbird that they are conscious, or con-
scious

of something or other. Indeed you need, on suitable

occasions, to say such things. But what about brains? Many
writers today attribute consciousness to the brain. Brains,
according to them, have thoughts and feelings, receive in-
formation, arrive at conclusions, etc. But how are we to un-
derstand this? Consider a remark in Wittgenstein’s

Investi-

gations:

Only of a living human being and what resembles

(behaves like) a living human being can one say: it
has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is
conscious or unconscious. (

Philosophical Investiga-

tions, part I, section 281)

Now if this is right, then such questions as ‘What makes

brains conscious?’ embody a nonsensical presupposition,
since the brain does not in the least resemble or behave like
a living human being. In this respect it is no better than any
other bodily organ. But if such questions really are non-
sense, then we should not be surprised if they seem intrac-
table and even mysterious.

But are they really nonsense? Why should we accept

Wittgenstein’s statement rather than those of the other writ-
ers? Well, one thing that can’t be questioned is that we do
ascribe consciousness – thoughts and feelings, etc. – to
people. We say that Bill has a toothache, Belinda sees a
blackbird, Beryl is unconscious (asleep, perhaps), etc. But
could we not ascribe them to brains as well? Why shouldn’t
I say that my brain thinks and feels, considers information,
reaches conclusions, etc.? Here are two problems for this
view:

(i) Suppose you, a ‘living human being’, arrive at the con-

clusion that it is time to go home. Should we say that your
brain

also arrived at this conclusion? But then, might not

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your brain arrive at a different conclusion? How would you
know?

(ii) Suppose you felt a pain in your foot. According to the

above view, that feeling would also be in your brain. Hence
you would be suffering

two pains: one, in your foot, of which

you were conscious; the other, in your brain, of which you
were not. But does it make sense to speak of a pain (say a
severe pain) of which one is not conscious?

According to some writers, the brain is the real location of

pain and other feelings. But if this were so, might one not be
mistaken about being in pain? (‘Good news! I thought I had
a pain, but the brain-scientist informed me I was wrong.’
Would this make sense?)

I took the example of a pain in my foot from a famous

passage in Descartes’

Sixth Meditation. Descartes ascribed

consciousness (including feelings etc.), to the mind and not
the brain, but the difficulty he faced was similar. In that pas-
sage he supposed he had a pain in his foot. But how could
this be, if feelings really belong to the mind? Somehow, he
maintained, the mind must be ‘intermingled’ with every part
of his body, including his foot, so that the pain would be (as
he put it) ‘in the mind, as it were in the foot’. But how are we
to understand this ‘intermingled’? The mind, according to
Descartes, is a non-physical, non-spatial entity. How can
such a thing be intermingled with the body, which is (as
Descartes also stressed) essentially extended in space?

What is consciousness? Descartes on sponges and
oysters

Now for my second explanation of the aura of mystery

that is liable to surround the idea of consciousness. What,
we may want to ask,

is consciousness? There must be

something, we feel – some

thing, some entity – that we can

indicate by way of answer. Consciousness, it has been
thought, is a kind of ‘inner’ entity that is hidden from view;
and possession of it makes all the difference between a
human being and a mere zombie. A leading participant in

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the debate about consciousness asks us to imagine that
‘there could be zombies that were organized just as we are
and had exactly the same behaviour patterns, but were to-
tally devoid of consciousness’. (John Searle, ‘Review of David
Chalmers,

The Conscious Mind’, in New York Review of

Books, 6.3.97, p. 44)

But how are we to understand this? Suppose we put it to

such a being: ‘Are you really conscious?’ Presumably, hav-
ing ‘the same behaviour patterns’ as ourselves, he would
express the same surprise as we would when faced with
this question. Or suppose he came clean: ‘You have found
me out; I am not really conscious.’ Would this make sense?
Here another remark of Wittgenstein’s is appropriate: ‘A man
can pretend to be unconscious; but conscious?’ (

Zettel,

section 394).

The idea that consciousness is an item that may be present

in one person but absent from another, even though they are
‘organized’ in the same way and ‘have exactly the same
behaviour patterns’, is likely to produce a sense of mystery.
The same is true of Descartes’ view that the mind or soul
(he treated these as identical) is a kind of immaterial thing
that is located, somehow, in our bodies. How, we might
wonder on this view, can we be sure that tables and chairs,
sticks and stones, are not inhabited by such a thing? Or
that some are, while others are not? Descartes was per-
plexed by such questions. How, he wondered, can we tell
whether animals have souls? In a letter to the Marquess of
Newcastle, dated 1646, he wrote:

The most that one can say is that though the ani-

mals do not perform any action which shows that
they think, still, since the organs of their body are not
very different from ours, it may be conjectured that
there are attached to those organs some thoughts
[…]. (Philosophical Letters, p. 208)

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Now according to Descartes, thinking, which he identified

with consciousness, is essentially a property of the mind;
and the latter, being distinct from the body, could exist in
separation from the body and be immortal. (By further argu-
ments he tried to prove that it is indeed immortal.) But would
this also be true of animals? And if it were true of some, why
not others? Having speculated (as we have seen) that ‘there
are attached to those organs [of animals] some thoughts’,
he went on: ‘To which I have nothing to reply except that if
they thought as we do, they would have an immortal soul
like us.’ But this, he thought, ‘is unlikely, because there is
no reason to believe it of some animals without believing it
of all, and many of them such as oysters and sponges are
too imperfect for this to be credible.’

Here again we are in a realm of imponderable questions

and a sense of mystery may well overtake us. But if
Wittgenstein’s remark about ‘a living human and what re-
sembles (behaves like) a living human being’ is right, then
the mystery is spurious. To such beings we can and do
ascribe thoughts and feelings – we cannot, indeed,

avoid

doing so, on suitable occasions. But these ascriptions are
not based on speculations about an ‘inner’, imperceptible
entity. (Notice that Wittgenstein’s ‘what resembles a living
human being’ also takes care of the question of animals.
The degree to which we can – and need to – ascribe thoughts
and feelings to animals depends on the degree to which,
and the ways in which, their behaviour resembles ours.)

Houses of cards?

This article may have disappointed your expectations. You

may have expected me to give an exposition of the problem
and perhaps even do something towards solving it; but I
have not even been able to do the first, let alone the second.
The best I could do was to try to explain why there is

thought

to be a problem. This treatment of the topic will not be to
everyone’s taste, but it may be the right way of treating it in
spite of that. My thoughts on this matter, as on many oth-

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ers, have been influenced by Wittgenstein, and I shall close
with another quotation from his

Philosophical Investigations:

Where does my investigation get its importance

from, since it seems only to destroy everything inter-
esting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it
were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone
and rubble.) But what I am destroying is nothing but
houses of cards, and I am clearing up the ground of
language on which they stood. (

Philosophical Inves-

tigations, part I, section 118)

References

John Searle,

The Rediscovery of the Mind (Cambridge,

Mass.: MIT, 1992)

D. J. Chalmers,

The Conscious Mind (Oxford: OUP, 1996)

D. C. Dennett,

Consciousness Explained (London: Pen-

guin, 1991)

Descartes,

Meditations

Descartes,

Philosophical Letters, ed. A. Kenny (Oxford:

Blackwell, 1981)

O. Hanfling, ‘Consciousness: “The Last Mystery”’, in S.

Schroeder,

Wittgenstein and Contemporary Philosophy of

Mind (London: Palgrave, 2001)

L. Wittgenstein,

Philosophical Investigations and Zettel

Hanfling

Wittgenstein & consciousness