Amit Goswami was a professor at the Institute of Theoretical Science at the University of Oregon. He taught physics for 32 years in the USA, mostly at Oregon. He now is Senior Resident Researcher at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.
...consciousness transcends both matter and mind ...In so far as Goswami's philosophy is a monism at all, it is therefore a neutral monism, not a mental monism (or 'monistic idealism' as he calls it). As I have argued elsewhere, any neutral monism is actually identical to a version of physical monism, just because the physical world is already as neutral as a world can be. For, the constituents of the physical world are defined exclusively and exhaustively by their logical and mathematical properties in relation to one another. As far as physics is concerned, the basic particles and fields that make up the physical universe have no intrinsic qualities but only extrinsic, relational properties such as mass and electrical charge. All such entities are defined by physics, however. You will not, for instance, spot any electrons by looking out of the window of the Clapham omnibus: we are acquainted with the basic constituents of the physical world only through the propositions and formulae of physics. So, those extrinsic properties are the only properties possessed by those entities. Hence, physicalism itself is 'neutral' in the relevant sense. Therefore, to say that a metaphysical theory such as Goswami's is a 'neutral' monism is just to say that it is a 'physical' monism.
[Hard Questions, Sect. II]Conventionally, Western philosophers attribute properties of consciousness - experience and choice - to the mind. This has been corrected in quantum functionalism in which consciousness is defined to transcend both matter and mind.
[Hard Questions, Sect. VI]
The non-mentality of Goswamian 'quantum consciousness' is again brought out in the following passage:
Ordinary perception consists of the collapse of a possibility wave by consciousness (via recognition and choice) in the presence of awareness. But in unconscious (subliminal) perception, in which consciousness but not awareness is present, there should be no collapse of the wave.It seems here that Goswami is using 'awareness' to mean 'mental consciousness' as opposed to 'quantum consciousness'.
[Hard Questions, Sect. IV]
... the new hypothesis is postulating a new psychophysical parallelism, but firmly within a monistic idealist ontology.In fact, Goswami's philosophy is really not even a monism. He claims that that consciousness creates mind and matter, or subject and object. That, however, still allows that mind and matter are irreducibly different, and it still leaves unsolved Chalmer's Hard Problem of accounting for mental consciousness. He writes:
[Hard Questions, Sect. VI]
... the subject consciousness of the experience ... arises co-dependently and tangled-hierarchically with the chosen brain state ... both of which exist only as possibility until the collapse, and no dualism is involved.There is no reason given for thinking that the mind and the brain are not ontologically irreducibly different. Goswami repeatedly refers to mind and matter as two distinct things, and one can only assume that they have their normal connotations, in which case they are indeed fundamentally different for reasons given by philosophers throughout modern history from Descartes to Chalmers. In order for Goswami to claim that he they are 'one', he needs to address the well-rehearsed arguments that they are different. He does not do so. Instead, all he offers is the theory that they arise out of potentiality together: even if this were true, it would not be an argument for saying that they are one after they have arisen out of that potentiality.
[Hard Questions, Sect. III]Both subtle and physical worlds remain in possibility until consciousness self-referentially collapses the possibility structure into actuality.
[Hard Questions, Sect. VI]
Depending on how it is interpreted, Goswami's philosophy might even be not dualistic but triadic, for he says:
[Scientists] tend to think that any positing of consciousness collapsing a the possibility wave must refer to a dualistic consciousness - a consciousness separate from matter.What those scientists "tend to think" is quite correct. Whether consciousness here refers to Goswami's quantum consciousness or the more usual mental consciousness of Chalmers, it must be non-physical - just because the existing equations that describe the behaviour of physical systems between successive measurements make no reference to consciousness. (Admittedly, 'non-physical' here means only that the consciousness to which we are referring is not part of the physical world as presently conceived. One could, however, envision some future extension of physics that incorporates a novel physical entity that objectively collapses wave functions. This is in contrast with mental consciousness, which is irreducibly non-physical because it involves qualia. But if we were to posit such an entity, a 'quantum consciousness' in Goswami's terms, it would nonetheless be separate from matter.)
[Hard Questions]
That Goswami has made no progress on the Hard Problem is clear from these passage:
At this point consciousness collapses that component of the uncollapsed coherent wave superposition, all the neurons involved in that meaningful state simultaneously fire, and a perception arises (along with a subject).This totally glosses over the very point that Chalmers' Hard Problem addresses: How could the collapse of the superposition conceivably give rise to a qualial perception? Why should that physical event have any quale associated with it? Given that the physics of the event does not entail the quale, we are left with an unexplained quale. Despite the title of his article, Goswami is just not addressing the Hard Problem: he is not tackling the deep question of why the neural correlate of consciousness (which he claims is a collapse of a wave function) should be associated with any quale whatsoever.
[Hard Questions, Sect. II]
When consciousness collapses the possibility waves of this tangled-hierarchical system of the brain and mind, self-reference, the quantum experience, arises.
[Hard Questions, Sect. II]
That Goswami is not taking us anywhere is further indicated by his admission that his theory is a version of functionalism, a theory that is known to fail as an attempted solution to the Hard Problem:
... an idealist model of consciousness, quantum measurement, and self-reference called quantum functionalism.
[Hard Questions, Sect. II]
How does the one world of matter separate into two, subject and object?When he does eventually mention qualia, it is only the subjectivity that bothers him:
[Hard Questions, Sect. I]
How can a subjective quale be explained from a science which is avowedly purely objective?One reason why the problem of subjectivity is weaker than the problem of qualia is that it is not at all clear what subjectivity is, and indeed whether there is such a thing as a subject at all. In contrast, it is transparently obvious what qualia are because they present themselves vividly to our awareness throughout our waking lives, and we can mentally point to them. The subject of mental experience, however, is notoriously elusive. The subject cannot be known in the normal sense of the verb 'to know'. Hence there is an initial hard problem of articulating anything at all about the subject, which places us at one remove from even being able to state the problem of accounting for subjectivity in a physical world. In contrast, as I have said, the problem of qualia can be stated much more cogently and forefully - as it is, for example, in Jackson's argument about Mary's escape from the black-and-white room.
[Hard Questions, Sect. I.1]
The measurement [of a quantum-mechanical system] is tangled-hierarchical and produces self-reference. An example of a tangled hierarchy is the self-referential sentence, I am a liar. ... This tangled hierarchy causes the self-reference of the sentence.This involves a category error, to use Gilbert Ryle's term. Self-reference in this sense is a property of propositions. It is not a property of any physical things, or indeed of any mental things. So, it cannot be correct to say that a measurement "produces self-reference". Hence the metaphysical conclusions that Goswami builds on this also fail:
[Hard Questions, Sect. II]
Out of the self-referential measurement itself simultaneously arises a subject - which I call the quantum self - that measures, that chooses, that observes, and object(s) that are observed. Notice how, in this description, dualism is avoided because ultimately there is oneness (the division is only an appearance), allowing subjects and objects to be treated on the same footing.In this passage, Goswami has now added another layer of error. The first layer of error is, as I have said, to ascribe self-referentiality to the measurement. The second is to infer that the division into subject and object is illusory. Note, it is only the inference of identity, and not the assertion of it, that I am claiming is faulty here. Well, perhaps subject and object are indeed one: but we cannot be sure because Goswami has neglected to tell us what exactly the 'subject' is. Nonetheless the assertion that they are one just does not follow from the measurement's being self-referential - even if per impossible the measurement could be self-referential (which, as we have seen, it cannot be because it would be category error).
[Hard Questions, Sect. II)
... transcendence, unity, and self-reference ... are also the characteristics of consciousness that mystics from every age have declared based on their direct realization ...Undoubtedly, the first two characteristics ("transcendence" and "unity") are indeed commonly declared by mystics down the ages. The third characteristic ("self-reference") I have never seen mentioned by any mystic of any age, nor have I seen any like self-reference declared, nor do I think it is even remotely in keeping with the sorts of things that mystics say. I am therefore very surprised that Goswami claims self-reference to be a common mystical insight, and I would be very interested to see what references he could give to support this.
[Hard Questions, Sect. II]
This self-reference is also the most important brain-mind paradox - how is it that we can refer to ourselves?There are two points I would make about this. First, there is nothing difficult, mysterious, or problematic about referring to oneself, as it is a merely prosaic, mechanical, and easy thing to do. Second, it is perfectly possible to be mentally conscious without referring to oneself, therefore self-reference cannot possibly be the most important brain-mind paradox (even if it were a paradox at all, which it is not).
[Hard Questions, Sect. II]
Unfortunately, Goswami has neglected to say what he thinks is the problem or paradox in referring to oneself. It is actually very straightforward. One way of doing it is to get a sticky label, write your name on it, and stick it on your forehead. You can now unamiguously refer to yourself. If you want to make it clear that you are referring to your mind, not your body, then just think of your mind for a few moments, and say to yourself, "I hereby designate this mind, Peter Lloyd" (or whatever your personal name is. Thereafter you can refer to yourself by mentioning that name. I do not see where Goswami finds any difficulty here. I can only suppose that he is conflating formal systems (where self-reference is indeed problematic) with things in the real world (where self-reference is unproblematic).
This is the paradox of self-reference back again. ... The theory of quantum functionalism above, having addressed the paradox of self-reference, thus also successfully eradicates the paradox of the qualia of experiences.This is a non sequitur. Goswami has simply pulled this conclusion out of thin air, without any argument at all.
[Hard Questions, Sect. III]
... the difference is that in the former case, as soon as the wave function is collapsed by measurement, the objects become correlated; but in the case of the correlated brains, consciousness maintains the correlation ...A more damaging criticism is just to point out that telepathy has often been established to occur without any such prior 'correlation' or 'synchronisation', therefore any theory that takes that as its basis cannot explain the overwhelming majority of the telepathy data.
[Hard Questions, Sect. V]
These problems have now been solved within the new paradigm of science within consciousness.He jumps to the conclusion that psi phenomena can be accounted for by quantum mechanics without giving any argument for it. He simply announces:
[Understanding the Paranormal]
Evidence for quantum non-locality of our experience abounds in the literature of paranormal phenomena. ... The straightforward explanation is quantum non-locality ...This is simply not true. The empirical data that exist (for instance that produced by the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory, which Goswami cites) indicate only anomalous channels of control and information. It is not directly indicative of non-locality as such, and certainly not of specifically quantum non-locality. Non-locality in general, and quantum non-locality in particular, are characteristics of possible models that could perhaps be formulated. As far as I am aware, however, nobody has yet even formulated a model of psi phenomena to a level of detail that enables the prediction of experimental psi results. Therefore the involvement of any kind of non-locality, let alone quantum non-locality, is far from being established. All that has been established so far is the mere existence of the psi phenomena.
[Hard Questions, Sect. V]
It is curious to note how Goswami tries to slide the quantum-mechanical interpretation into his report of the one experiment in telepathy that he mentions:
A recent experiment by the Mexican neurophysiologist Jacobo Grinberg-Zylbernaum and his collaborators (1994) is even more telling. In their work, the researchers used subjects "correlated" (after the fashion of quantum nonlocal correlation posited by Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (1935) and verified by Alain Aspect (Aspect et al, 1982)) by meditating together for twenty-minute [sic].This is seriously misleading, as it suggests to the reader that Grinberg-Zylbernaum's procedure was derived in some meaningful way from the method of correlating sub-atomic particles. This is not so. Having the two subjects sit down in the same room and do a bit of meditating is emphatically nothing like the correlating of sub-atomic particles. Goswami is taking poetic licence too far here.
[Better Ontology, penultimate section]
it [idealist science] integrates all the forces of psychology, and physics and biology.which is an astonishingly sweeping statement, given the rather meagre evidence that Goswami gives to back it up. It also leaves one wondering whether the idealist science is also supposed to "integrate the forces of" the other disciplines not mentioned, such as chemistry and economics. In respect of religion and spirituality, he writes:
[Better Ontology, Abstract]
Have you ever wondered where the moral fortitude of Gandhi and Mother Teresa comes from? Or the love of Saint Theresa of Avila or Anandamayi Ma of India? Or the wisdom of Lao Tsu or Thomas Jefferson? ... The origin of their behaviour is the real freedom of the quantum self toward which their identities had shifted.To say that great human achievements can all be explained by the collapse of wave functions, it seems to me, is reductionism at its silliest.
© Peter B. Lloyd, 1999