Where Chalmers is mistaken regarding “the Hard Problem” of consciousness

 By Mathew Goldstein

Philosopher Massimo Pigluicci recently commented on two mistakes found in Philosopher David Chalmers arguments for consciousness being a uniquely hard problem that is resistant to scientific explanation. The article, The Hard Problem is a category mistake, is partially restricted to subscribers. Chalmers claims unconscious human zombies must be possible merely because they are conceivable and he also claims that attempts to explain how consciousness manifests itself will be incomplete as long as such explanations fail to also explain how consciousness is experienced. 

Pigluicci points out that it is conceivable that a circle can be converted into a square encompassing the same area as the circle. However, the number corresponding to the area of a circle always includes a transcendent value, pi, while the number representing the area of square contains no transcendent number. So what is conceivable is not therefore what is also possible. Now it needs to be said here that the recent progress in computer artificial intelligence arguably provides more credence to philosophical zombies being a possibility.

Furthermore, it is generally true that “a description of anything is not the same thing as the thing described…. This is not a special problem about consciousness, it is just what descriptions are. They are not the things they describe. The map, if you will, is not the territory, and to confuse the two is a serious error. To treat such a “gap” as evidence that the description is incomplete is to commit what [philosopher Gilbert] Ryle called a category mistake: demanding that an explanation do something that explanations are not in the business of doing.”

The phenomena of consciousness is more intertwined with the first person experience perspective than most other phenomena. This is a genuine complication. Yet consciousness also has observable implications and correlates. We need not be thwarted by philosophical zombies, or questions regarding what it is like to be a bat, when logically associating those observations with consciousness. This is because we know we share the same biology as a result of biological evolution so we can build our understanding of consciousness on that solid foundation.

Notice that this still leaves open the question of whether an intelligence that is not biological can be conscious. Richard Dawkins has been ridiculed for taking this possibility seriously. See A conversation between Dawkins and ChatGPT. His perspective is that the evolution that gave us conscious self-awareness works at the level of the gene. Consciousness is a product of information processing if we understand that the brain, together with the body, is an information collecting and processing machine. This perspective has merit regardless of how uncomfortable it may be for us. An understanding that AI relies on sophisticated pattern matching gives us reason to dismiss the conclusion that it is conscious regardless of any appearance to the contrary. Yet we cannot rule out that future technological advances could enable future AI to acquire consciousness. It could be difficult for remote AI users to recognize the difference between AI that is unconscious and AI that is conscious.

Biological sex discrimination in sports competition contexts

 By Mathew Goldstein

In the recent case WEST VIRGINIA ET AL. v. B. P. J., BY HER NEXT FRIEND AND MOTHER, HEATHER JACKSON I have read the dissents written by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, and also supported by Kagan. I agreed with their dissents, see https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-43_2b35.pdf. They agreed that the majority is correct to conclude that the Javits Amendment and resulting regulations permit biological sex discrimination of this sort in a sports competition context under TITLE IX. However, they argue that the majority was wrong to assert that the term “sex” in Title IX “cannot plausibly be interpreted to refer to anything other than biological sex.” The minority opinion also complained that there are relevant unresolved factual issues that should be considered before reaching a decision in this particular case. That approach introduces a substantial decision making complexity. It could be difficult to draw such lines given all of the technical uncertainties and ambiguities inherent in evaluating how the various medical interventions interact with the various biological mechanisms that potentially changes the various relevant sports competition outcomes for various different sports. Most people with disorders of sexual development are either biological males or females, and some are not, which are additional complications.

The majority decision bypasses the complexities by placing no restrictions on the states with no commitment to revisit this issue. For them, transgender youth lack a compelling federal equal protection claim that SCOTUS needs to act on. In contrast, the dissenters want to consider defining federal restrictions on state laws that otherwise would disadvantage transgender youth. Yet they indicated they are unprepared to proceed with that at this time because they lack the factual foundation for deciding precisely what limits on state authority will strike the needed balance between the potentially conflicting equal protection rights of the biological females and transgender girls. The dissenters say that attempting to decide this case at this time is premature because the relevant factual issues have not yet been litigated. The biological male who was prevented by state law from participating on the public school woman’s sport team, and on whose behalf this lawsuit was filed, takes male puberty blockers. It is not entirely clear to what extent the participation of a biological male in female sports who never underwent male puberty would be unfair to biological females.

The controversy is not confined to how to manage biological males participating in female sports competitions, it also encompasses the question of whether puberty blockers (and other such medical interventions) should be used on minors to treat gender dysphoria. The currently available evidence relevant to evaluating whether the benefits of such treatments for minors outweighs the costs (including the potential costs of long term use of puberty blockers to prevent puberty) is incomplete. It is generally not the role of the judiciary to evaluate the appropriateness of medical practices when deciding how to resolve civil rights claims and the dissenting Justices did not raise this issue. Yet ongoing uncertainties surrounding what qualifies as best practice for managing youth gender dysphoria is also a reason for the Justices to be cautious when being asked to make rulings based on current medical practice.

This decision arguably went further than necessary by restricting the applicability of the anti-discrimination provisions of Title IX to biological sex. There already is a legal exemption from Title IX for sports competitions. Nevertheless the majority decided to leverage this case to establish that additional, and broader, limitation on the scope of Title IX. Critics of this decision are correct to be concerned that there is a tendency of various recent Supreme Court decisions to erode civil rights protections for some minorities. Various secularists groups, specifically AA, FFRF, and AHA, expressed opinions against this decision that could be described as strident.

When adults medically transition themselves away from their biological sex (biological sex is both permanent and binary) they thereby do no harm to anyone else. They thereby newly re-present themselves as a woman, or as a man, and for most contexts that is what they are. Yet there are a few contexts where biological sex still retains some significance. There is a tendency when confronted with this complexity to oversimplify. Some people very skeptically declare that there is no such thing as gender dysphoria, other people very non-skeptically declare minors in distress who claim to be transgender should be promptly placed on puberty blockers and be encouraged to publicly transition themselves with few exceptions. There appears to be good reason to doubt that implementing either of those simple approaches produces the best overall results.