Subjective Realism - Integral Naturalism?

I found this essay by Owen Flanagan on subjective realism and phenomenal consciousness today. I believe it is actually an excerpt from his book The Problem of the Soul. I was re-reading a section on subjective realism in that book the other night and this essay sounded like the same text. Actually I just compared the text and the books has additional information so it looks like this essay was a basis for that particular section in the book.

Anyway, I wanted to post a few excerpts that have had me thinking a lot lately about conscious experience and the relationship of subject and object. Flanagan's mention of indexicals always reminds me of Wilber's use of pronouns with the quadrants and I think a certain correlation of Wilber's UL and UR can be made with Flanagan's subjective realism. I'm continuing to explore Flanagan's application of the Natural Method (again similar to Wilber's IMP) to study consciousness. Flanagan mentions in his book that the Janus-faced description of consciousness is not very common due to the lack of a conceptual framework to hold it. Flanagan writes that “there is something right about the point that first-person consciousness cannot, even in principle, be captured in the sort of third-person objective description that normal science relishes.” Of course Wilber writes of this often – just think of his UL “I” (phenomenology) versus UR “it” (neuroscience).

Flanagan goes on to say:

There is something right about this point, although it is implausibly used by many philosophers – the ones I dubbed “Mysterians” a decade ago – to argue that although the mind is a natural phenomenon we humans are not smart enough to ever grasp or make intelligible its nature. Why’s that? Because we have no conceptual resources, nor are they in the offing, to comprehend a phenomenon as both subjective and objective.

I think his subjective realism and Wilber's quadrants and IMP application are two of those conceptual resources/frameworks that can help us understand consciousness from the subjective-objective (and of course intersubjective-interobjective) points of view. It seems to me that Flanagan's subjective realism bridges a gap that exists between the strict physicalist on one side (Wilber's UR quadrant absolutist if you will) and the Cartesians (mind is nonphysical). Or at least is makes a good attempt in my opinion.

I'm very curious as to where Flanagan and Wilber would agree and agree to disagree on various issues. A debate between these two would be interesting to say the least. All of this leads me to one question I have now - can there be an integral naturalism? Or would Wilber possibly label it as reductionist and confine it to a particular level of development? I certainly think a synthesis of these two thinkers conceptual resources is worth looking into. If not a synthesis per se then definitely a drawing out of their complementary aspects. A naturalized quadrant meta perspective perhaps?

Some excerpts from Flanagan's essay:

- One thing many people fear about a naturalistic view of mind is that they think it will, in virtue, of identifying mind with brain make experiences a thing of the past. The worry goes something like this: The Cartesian picture of mind begins (and possibly ends) with recognition of the fact that we humans possess phenomenal consciousness, there is something-it-is-like first personally to be a subject of experience. We our not mere information processors. We have experiences. The scientific picture of mind identifies the mind with certain objective physical processes. But the subjective and the objective can't be meshed or melded. First-person phenomenal consciousness -- not only isn't -- it cannot even, in principle, be captured in the sort of third-person objective description normal science relishes.

- Conscious mental events are essentially Janus-faced and uniquely so. They have first-person subjective feel and they are realized in objective states of affairs.

- The objective states of affairs in brains that are conscious mental events are unique in producing first-personal feel -- phenomenality.

- The nature of conscious mental events is such that despite being perfectly natural, objective states of affairs, they have as part of their essential nature the subjective feel they have. Call the basic idea subjective realism. Subjective realism says that the relevant objective state of affairs in a sentient creature properly hooked up to itself produce certain subjective feels in, for, and to that creature.

- For many it produces a mental cramp to think the thought that mental events are neural events but that their essence cannot be captured completely in neural terms. Such is the power of objective realism, a doctrine that is true for most of the things and types of things in the universe, but that is not true for experiences. The cramping can be eased, I propose, by accepting that the subjective realist is claiming nothing mysterious. It is simply a unique, but nonmysterious fact about conscious mental states that they essentially possess a phenomenal side. Don't mention that, and possibly how, they appear first-personally and you haven't described one, possibly two, of their essential features. Your metaphysic is incomplete. See things in the Janus-way recommended and the intuition that gives rise to the thought that there is an unbridgeable explanatory gap between conscious mental states and their realizers is deflated, possibly it disappears. Or, so it seems to me.

- There is another, related way to make the point in favor of subjective realism. This way of making the point turns on paying attention to indexicals, in particular to pronouns. "I" is an essential indexical from the point of view of the subjective realist because it essentially and uniquely captures, or at least, it essentially marks the first-person feels that I have been discussing. Description and explanation in normal mind science is in an objective third-personal or impersonal idiom

- The subjective realist is a physicalist who claims that she can meet the plausible demand of the Cartesian to account for, or at least to leave ample space for -- phenomenal consciousness.

- It (subjective realism) explains everything the Cartesian view can explain but in a nonmysterious way that fits much better, than the Cartesian view, into a unified naturalistic picture of the world.

Comments

[Tom Clark]

I wonder if Flanagan and Wilbur share enough in the way of methodological commitments to be commensurable. Flanagan comes out of the mainstream Western philosophical tradition, although of course he's informed by Buddhism. Seems to me Wilber is more new-agey, less rigorously scientific in his explanations, at least judging by his dialogs with Andrew Cohen in What Is Enlightenment? magazine.

Anyway, I don't find Flanagan's subjective realism that enlightening, since for me at least there's still an explanatory gap aching to be closed. I attempt to close it in “Killing the Observer” at http://www.naturalism.org/kto.htm. Btw, do you know about the conference on naturalism coming up in September at CFI? Flanagan will be speaking, details at http://www.naturalisms.org/2007/

best,

Tom