Hi All:

In a recent post, I expressed agreement with the an article that asserted that that “the mind does not exist” – at least to the extent that “mind” and “mental” are defined in contrast with “physical” and “material”.  The mental/physical dichotomy is a nasty one, as it suggests that “mind” is something that is non-corporeal.  Robert Ryan — in a post that I am deeply grateful for — suggested that the ideas that I had advanced are reductionistic. Robert inspired me to try to be clearer in my thoughts about why “mind” and “mental” are unhelpful concepts, and how it is possible to be both a materialist and to be non-reductionist.  I believe that it is possible to have a non-reductionist materialist conception of consciousness and experience.  And I think that this position aligns quite closely indeed with Gregg’s system.

I want to assert a concept that I have called embodied emergence (Mascolo & Kallio, 2019) — the idea that psychological processes and states (consciousness, experience) are complexly-organized biological processes, albeit ones with novel emergent properties. (Please – stay with me – there is something new here as I hope will become clear below.)  Novel psychological properties – e.g., awareness meaning, experience, qualia – are emergent from biological processes in the sense that they are not found in their base biological elements.  However, these novel and emergent psychological processes do not contain (nor do they have to) properties that override or conflict with the properties of their base elements.

To make this argument, I want to show that qualitative transformations routinely occur in everyday physical systems without creating structures that override or conflict with the properties of their base elements.  This can be illustrated with the common example of how we get liquid – water – from the combination of two gasses – hydrogen and oxygen.  When we combine hydrogen and oxygen – two gasses – we don’t get more gas – we get a liquid – something with qualitatively different properties.  How is this possible? 

This is not a mysterious process. This well-understood process is described in the graphic below.  The short story: A water molecule, of course, is formed with two molecules of hydrogen combine with one molecule of oxygen. When this happens, individual water molecules connect to each other through the formation of a hydrogen bond between the slightly negatively-charged oxygen molecule of one water molecule and the slightly positively-charged hydrogen molecule of another This bond, however, is very weak. As a result, movement breaks the bond quickly, allowing molecules to flow over each other – thus producing liquid.

The novel way of understanding this process is to be found in the concept of EQUIVALENCE (which, as I understand in mathematics, is different from equality).  Liquidity is an emergent property of H₂0 molecules aggregated together.   When we combine material gas of H and the material gas of O, we get the material liquid of H₂0.  When we say that liquid emerges from a combination of H₂ and O, we do not say that the combination produces H₂0 and then also the liquid we call water.  H₂0 is the EQUIVALENT of the liquid we call water. The properties of water are fully explainable by the novel structure that arises from the relations between H₂ and O.  We don’t need to add something in addition to the novel structure of H₂0 to explain its properties.  We simply have a novel structure with emergent properties.  The properties that emerge from the coordination of base elements are not to be found in those base elements. In this way, the novel properties cannot be reduced to their base elements.

I want to say that the same basic equivalence relation occurs between base biological processes and emergent psychological processes.  We have biological structures and processes – cells, neurons, synapses, etc.  Psychological states and processes emerge from the complex organization of biological structures and processes (in ways that we do not understand).  Now, here is the important philosophical point: When this happens, the higher-order biological organization has novel psychological properties – e.g., awareness, qualia, etc. – that are not found in the base elements themselves (e.g., individual cells). 

What I want to say is that the relation between (a) base biological processes and (b) biological processes with emergent psychological properties is akin to the relation between (a’) the base physical elements of H and O (b’) and the physical water molecule -- H₂0 – with the emergent property of liquidity. That is:

The liquid we call “water” is the EQUIVALENT of H₂0.  There is not H₂0 and THEN ALSO something else – some emergent liquid we call “water”. Liquidity is the emergent property of H₂0 – a higher-order structture  We don’t have H₂0 plus something else called “water” or “liquid”.

States we call consciousness, awareness or qualia are the EQUIVALENT of complexly organized biological processes. There are not the complexly-organized biological structures and THEN ALSO some novel “mental” or “non-biological” something called “consciousness”.  We don’t have biological processes PLUS something else called “mind” or the “mental”. Psychological processes ARE complex biological processes with emergent properties (awareness).

But wait, you might say: The psychological person is an agent – the person has something akin to “free will” – the capacity to control his or her own behavior.  Physical systems don’t do this.  How do we get something like conscious agency from a physical system?  To explain psychological processes in a material system, don’t we have to explain how we are capable of conscious control?  Don’t our powers of conscious control mean that somehow “minds” emerge that control “physical” or “biological” bodies?

The answer is “no” – we do not have to postulate a “mental” entity to control behavior – because the capacity for hierarchical regulation is already built into the structure and processes of biological systems. 

I believe that we tend to believe that “mind” is something that is separate from “body” not not because we can’t imagine how awareness can emerge from biological processes, but instead because we cannot imagine how human agency –  the capacity to consciously control behavior --  emerges from a physical or biological system.  We attribute a capacity for conscious control (sometimes called “free will”) to “mind”.  How else can “we” be in control? 

But the point is this: We don’t need complex “mental” processes to explain the capacity for agency.  Agency – or at least hierarchical regulation is a basic property of biological systems. Even single celled organisms are self-regulating systems.  The complexity of self-regulation increases as we move up phylogenetic levels of complexity.  At some point, the capacity to represent one’s environs (and indeed, one’s own processes) comes to function as part of the biological self-regulating system itself.  If this is true, then we do not need to invoke mysterious conceptions of “I” or attribute mysterious properties of agency to consciousness to explain human behavior. Consciousness and other psychological processes serve functions other than agency in the human system.  Consciousness and other psychological processes transform the already existing capacities for agency and hierarchical control that already exist in biological systems.  Consciousness likely serves the function of coordinating or integrating information from endogenous and exogenous sources so that the organism can respond to increasingly complex systems of adaptive challenges.

And so, the assertion that psychological processes ARE complexly-organized biological processes is not a reductionistic statement (although it can be, in some formulations).  Glucose metabolism is a biological process but not a psychological process (although it can arguably be influenced by psychological processes). Consciousness is both a biological and a psychological process; it is a biological process with emergent properties that function in the service of the already adaptive self-organizing organismic system as a whole.  

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