The misleading burden of self-consciousness

Perception does not require consciousness.

I have always disliked the philosophical concept of sense data. The idea of such being that the world, via our organs of perception, generates sense data that our minds then deal with. My intuition was that it was creating more complex moving parts than was necessary, so was not accurate.

Source.

The most elaborate version of this sort of approach to perception and human knowledge is Kant’s noumena (reality) and phenomena (what we perceive), where the claim is that we humans never directly perceive the underlying reality. The end-point of this is the bonkers construct of Critical Constructivism where reality is literally constructed by our perception and categorisation of it. As Education Professor Joe Kincheloe tells us in his Critical Constructivism Primer:

Nothing exists before consciousness shapes it into something that we can perceive. What appears as objective reality is merely what our mind constructs, what we are accustomed to seeing. (p.8)

The world is what is what dominant groups of human perceive to be. (p.8)

Thus, the structures and phenomena we observe in the physical world are nothing more than creations of our measuring and categorizing mind. (p.9)

For decades now, Critical Constructivism has been the dominant view taught in North American Education Faculties, where those studying to be teachers are taught that—amongst other things—they can judge science by its implications for approved (and disapproved) groups. For, as Kincheloe also tells us:

Critical theory is concerned with extending a human’s consciousness of himself or herself as a social being in light of the way dominant power operates to manage knowledge. (p.10)

Critical constructivism thus promotes reflection on the production of self. (p.10)

Action to correct what may be viewed as harmful constructions can be negotiated one reflections reveals the psychological, moral and political foundations of the pathology.

This notion of critical constructivism allows teachers and students a critical consciousness. This involves an ability to step back from the world as we are accustomed to perceiving it and to see ways our perception is constructed via linguistic codes, cultural signs, race, class, gender and sexual ideologies, and other often-hidden modes of power. Such ability constitutes a giant step in becoming a critical analyst, learning to be an emancipatory teacher and assuming the role of a producer of dangerous, world-changing knowledge. (p.11)

Without such informed modes of making meaning, schools tend to reinforce patriarchal structures, Eurocentric educational practices, homophobia and racism. The struggle for the soul of North American education is playing out before us. (p.12)

If you were wondering why the blatant denial of biological reality involved in Transactivism became all the rage—and why the genderwoo of Transactivism penetrated schools so readily—this is a huge part of why.

There is a simple problem with the notion of sense data (and all the above nonsense): perception does not require consciousness. Bacteria can perceive (there are some cool videos of bacteria perceiving here).

DNA is based on transmitting information, no consciousness required. I dislike the metaphor the selfish gene, as genes are not the sort of thing that can have intent. But—given they are embedded in feedback-and-response mechanisms—the propagation of genes can be analysed by Game Theory, so perhaps we can give Richard Dawkins a pass.

We can perceive while asleep—that is why a loud noise can wake us up. Perception is direct receipt and use of information. The intervention of consciousness is completely unnecessary.

This is also why trying to use Quantum Mechanics—specifically, the collapse of the wave function—to infer something grand about consciousness also falls over. Measurement is an information act that increases the information available, not a conscious perception act. This is, however, not as clear as it might be to self-conscious beings talking about measurement.

The point of consciousness is to focus attention—both for action and for perception. Attention that both results from perception and focuses the organism’s organs of perception on the object of attention. This is both a very energy-intensive activity and a very useful one for any complex organism.

Every organism that sleeps has consciousness. The need for sleep—a state of vulnerability—speaks to both the demands, and the survival and propagation value, of consciousness.

Daylight hugely increases the ease and capacity for perception, as light is such an excellent medium for information. Hence so many organisms sleep at night.

Hence there is also various niches for nocturnal animals. But, one notes, there are a lot fewer niches for operating in the much more information-limited environment of night-time than for active-during-day animals.

You do not need self-consciousness, unless you become a linguistic species. To do language, you have to be able to assemble, assess and package information. You have to be able to interrogate what you are doing. Which also, of course, gives you the power to interrogate information that you receive. Hence, being self-conscious.

Philosophers have spent centuries confusing being self-conscious—having the ability to assess, assemble, and package information—with consciousness—the ability to do focused attention—and with perception. This is not surprising, as any abstract thought is very much a function of self-consciousness. The problem with Philosophy is—as ever—being lost within the processes of self-consciousness, of abstraction, resulting in having inadequate decision procedures.

A decision-procedure is a mechanism for deciding what works and what does not. This includes deciding what is accurate about the world, or not. Something becomes a science when it acquires sufficiently strong, and regular, decision procedures.

It was not Philosophy that enabled me to see what is wrong with the concept of sense data. It was reading a great deal of (evolutionary) biology.

This also means that Donald Hoffman’s interface theory of perception is quite wrong. But that is a matter for another post. Demolishing the unnecessary moving part of sense data—and the cloud castles of Theory built on such—is enough for now.

ADDENDA (Measurement): If we throw a ball, yes, we consciously intended to throw the ball, but our conscious intention has no effect at all on the physics of throwing the ball. On the contrary, it is by learning how to throw the ball—given the underlying physics—that enables us to use that underlying physics to throw the ball.

It is the same with measurement. Yes, we consciously intend to measure, but that conscious intention does not change the underlying physics that enables us to measure and that we use in order to measure and that, typically, increases (at least locally) the information in the system.

ADDENDA SECUNDUS (Perception and categorisation): That perception is prior to consciousness means that perception is also prior to our categorisations. We have an inbuilt tendency to categorise—even to categorise in certain ways—that we learn by interacting with the world around us. The better our categorisation, the more successfully we can interact with the world around us.

There can be some interaction here, as we can “try out” different categories when something is indistinct. But when the category lines up with the information, then it “clicks” into place. The categorisation is being applied to the information we are getting, it is not determining that information, still less the reality that is generating that information.

Unfortunately, certain mis-categorisations of reality can be very socially effective, as we can see with Critical Constructivism, which greatly flatters its proponents and provides a binding sense of superior knowing.

ADDENDA TERTIUS (Perception and apprehension): Illusions and mirages are a cost of consciousness. Bacteria perceive, but are not conscious.

What happens is people confuse conscious apprehension with perception. You perceive way more than you consciously apprehend. Perception that trips a certain threshold becomes consciously apprehended.

This is the problem with the concept of sense data. It implicitly insists that perception is conscious (clearly false) and it packages off a certain subset of the information flows involved in perception, requires consciousness to be involved, and thereby lets loose all sorts of florid ontological and epistemic confusions.

References

Chris D. Frith, ‘The role of metacognition in human social interactions,’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2012, 367, 2213–2223. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3385688/

Joe L. Kincheloe, Critical Constructivism, Peter Lang, [2005] 2008.

Michael Stevens, The Knowledge Machine: How an Unreasonable Idea Created Modern Science, Penguin, [2020] 2021.