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Submerged Selves

Immersionism & the Refutation of Material Reductionism

By

Sean Thomas Martin

________________________________

Copyright © Sean Thomas Martin 2015

A Capstone Thesis submitted to

Professor Russell Marcus Ph.D. of the

DEPARTMENT OF PHILSOPHY

In partial fulfillment of the requirements

For the degree of

BACHELOR OF PHILSOPHY Φ

At

HAMILTON COLLEGE

December 7th, 2015

APPROVAL STATEMENT: _________________________________

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“The key to growth is the introduction

of higher dimensions of consciousness

into our awareness.”

– Lao Tzu

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Table of Contents

ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………...…. 5

PRÉCIS……………………………………………………………………………………………6

1. INTRODUCTION………………………………………….………………………………….. 9

2. MISCONCEPTIONS IN MODERN SCIENCE…………………………….……………….. 12

2.1. The Solipsistic barrier and mind-body Dualism…………………………………… 12

2.2. Impossibility of Impersonalism…………………..………………………………… 13

2.3. Agential Realism…..…………………………………..………….…………………15

2.4. Material Discursivity……….…………………………….……..………………….. 16

2.5. Distribution of responsibility………………………………….….………………… 17

3. EXTENDING COGNITION..………………………………………………………..…….… 18

3.1. Redefining the Body ……………………………………………………………….. 18

3.2. Physical to mental Externalism ……………………………………………………. 20

3.3. Three criterion of Osmotic Consciousness………..……………………………….. 20

3.4. Coupled systems………………………………………………………...………….. 21

3.5. Otto and Inga, the environment “in the loop”………………………………….……22

3.6. Pragmatic vs epistemic distinction………………………….….……………………23

4. EXTENDING THE MIND…………………………………………………………………… 24

4.1. Extended beliefs and desires…………………………………………….………….. 24

4.2. Reliability criterion…………………………………………………………………. 25

4.3. Active Externalism ……………………………………………………………….…26

5. CONSCIOUSNESS AS EXTERNAL INTERACTION…………………….……………….. 27

5.1. Attributions of agency……………………………………………...…………..……27

5.2. Behavioral and biological frameworks ………………………….….………………27

5.3. Life as the lower limit………………………….….…………………………….…. 29

6. OSMOTIC CONSCIOUSNESS………………………….….…………………………….…..30

6.1. Defining consciousness………………………….….…………………………….…30

6.2. Life-appropriate minds………………………………………………………………31

6.3. Neural vs perceptual plasticity………………………….….……………………..…31

6.4. Completion myths and Contextualism ………………………….….…………….…32

7. REFUTATIONS & DEFENSES OF OC………………………….….…………………….…33

7.1. Refutations of the “Brain in the Vat”………….…………………………………… 34

7.2. Grand illusion of vision …………..……………………………………………….. 35

7.3. Context-bound world and perception………………………….…………………… 36

8. DISSONANCE OF INTERPRETATION………………………………….………………… 37

8.1. Kantian Distinctions and misinterpretations...…………………………….………... 37

8.2. Alternative conceptual frameworks………………………….….…………………. 38

8.3. Untranslatable NON-languages ………………………….….…………………….. 39

8.4. Greeks, Galactics, and personhood………………………….….…………………...40

8.5. Galactics or butterflies………………………….….……………………………..…41

8.6. Neurath’s Boat and Scientific Realism ………………………….….………………42

9. IMMERSIONISM ………………………….….…………………………….….……………43

REFERENCES………………………………………………………………………………….. 45

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Abstract

Modern Philosophy has long been understood as having stemmed from the identification

of the self. Descartes – “the father of modern philosophy” – put us in the hamster wheel back in

1641, and we’ve been running ever since. While his Cogito defined the self as “some thinking

thing,” his criterion for knowledge allowed him to separate the body from the mind, and conflating

the two cast us into the pits of skepticism all those years ago. While Descartes called it the soul, it

is fairly agreeable to translate Descartes’ work in the Meditations to have identified the self as the

mind – that thinking thing. However, the skepticism that arose out of the Cogito and the problem

of other minds has piled higher and higher as the years have passed.

Today, the dualism of the mind-body relation and the daunting severity of the solipsistic

barrier have caused many philosophers and scientists to grasp towards a sort of physical

determinism – or what I will call material reductionism – in which, to save themselves from the

opacity of Descartes’ Cogito, they reduce the mind to the brain. In their overcorrection, however,

material reductionists have failed to see how they have simply created a new form of dualism: now

between the brain and the body. The “mind is the brain” theory essentially is redefining the

ontology of human beings to a computing system – our bodies are simply robots our brains inhabit.

The subject and the World are still just as separate as when Descartes, and later the distinction

between phenomenal and noumenal world, first drove the division between them. In the following

paper, I propose a theory of consciousness and the self I call Immersionism. The theory is

developed out of Karen Barad’s Material Discursivity and Agential Realism, as well as the work

of Andy Clark on the Extended Mind Theory and Alva Noë on interactive externalism in his piece

Out of Our Heads (as well as other supporting works). By fully reconnecting subject and World,

and immersing her in the produced and present phenomenology of Osmotic Consciousness, I hope

to open up discussion about authenticity in regards to scientific methodology and our

understanding of ourselves.

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Précis

P1. What we consider the self is the entirety of what we consider our conscious experience given

around a central local – a particular body pairs to a specific mind within the world.

P2. Mind-body dualism and the problem of other minds (solipsistic barrier) both arose from

Descartes’ Cogito and have caused problems for theories of consciousness.

P3. Modern science and philosophy attempt to answer questions of the self/consciousness that

arise from the issues of mind-body dualism and the solipsistic barrier.

P4. Material Reductionism attempts to solve mind-body dualism by transforming it into brain-

body dualism and saying that consciousness if fully reducible to the brain.

C1. Material Reductionism is wrong, or at least only solves part of the problem;

consciousness is not isolatable or reducible to the brain.

P6. The Cogito and solipsistic barrier is rooted in the fundamental assumptions of the sciences.

P7. Scientists claim impersonal stance in experiments to guarantee “objectivity.”

P8. Impersonalism is impossible both in theory and our pragmatic behaviors.

P9. We are not isolated within our brains, our behavior and intervening constantly shows us this.

C2. To strive towards accurate scientific accounts we must account for our externalism. .

P10. Current rigid designations of mind and body and self are inaccurate and must be changed.

P11. Current rigid designations fails to account for our materially discursive nature.

P12. Our behavior shows, however, that our bodies are alterable and materially discursive.

P13. Consider the body more akin to the body schema: a range of possible actions

P14. Different examples of material discursivity use distribution of responsibility across agent

and tool to justify externalism.

C3. Extension becomes a matter of distributing physical and mental responsibility.

P15. Making the jump from physical extension to mental means having to account for cognitive

functions as well as beliefs and desires.

P16. The brain is still very important, just part of three criterion of consciousness, not alone.

P17. The environment and body must both be active and present in interactions of OC.

P18. Cognitive functions pass through the skull/skin barrier due to our human tendency to lean

on our environment for support.

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P19. Human beings establish coupled systems within the environment to aid themselves in

pragmatic and epistemic actions in the world to aid in their cognitive processes.

C4. We are extended in the environment and the environment is “in the loop” with us.

P20. Otto and Inga example shows that biological memory can be replaced externally.

P21. There is a significant reliability criterion to the extension of our memories and minds.

P22. If we can show that Otto’s beliefs and desires are rooted in his external memory, than the

rest of the mind can be shown as extended as well.

P23. Otto’s beliefs and desires are contingent of his active and presently external memory.

C5. So, in active and reliable behaviors and environments, the mind is extended.

P24. Consciousness is not isolatable to the brain and is not fully extended outside the brain, it is

the interaction between brain body and world together.

P25. Consciousness is actually more like a success term: “something we do.”

P27. For sake of argument the dynamic interaction of consciousness is conflated with mind.

P28. The lower limit of consciousness is life: if you are a living creature you have a “mind.”

P29. Biological frameworks handle this idea of life as the lower limit better than physics.

C6. We must view ourselves with the proper theories in mind, biological and behavioral

not physical and mechanical.

P30. We embrace biological frameworks and attribute agency to objects whenever we question

their intentions or a reason behind their unified actions.

P31. We must concede that these minds that we attribute to living creatures other than human

beings have minds appropriate to their lives.

P32. Looking at humans as well, biology explains our behavior more than neurology.

P33. Neurology supposes that the brain “runs the show” and controls all perceptual experience.

P34. There is a dissonance between neural (physical) plasticity and perceptual (experiential)

plasticity.

P35. Neurology’s base assumption is wrong, we must explain more than just the brain.

P36. Neurology also implies a completionism about rational intentional thought.

P37. The novice vs master example shows that completion myths are also incorrect.

C7. Our abilities are not isolatable to the brain, and are context-bound and geared into the

environment – focusing just on the brain in both theory and action is folly.

P38. The brain in the vat example embraces material reductionism to disprove immersionism.

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P39. But, the brain in the vat example fails to disprove immersionism’s thesis.

P40. The grand illusion of vision also works against immersionist theories.

P41. But, the grand illusion of vision accounts only for the context-bound nature of our abilities.

P42. These counter examples imply a sense of immaculate perception and completion that.

P43. Human beings and their faculties are not perfect, or capable of being perfected.

C8. It is only human hubris that provides these “scientific” counter examples which fail.

P44. Reconnecting the subject to her world does not necessarily ring true for all possible worlds.

P45. Kantian distinctions between the given/interpreted and the necessary/contingent show that

there is a possibility of entirely different conceptual frameworks to backdrop our perception.

P46. A new or alternative conceptual framework would constitute different a priori claims and

natural laws and would produce an entirely different, untranslatable NON language to us.

P47. We ascribe personhood to those who speak language and hold beliefs that seem reasonable

to us.

P48. If we ascribe personhood to past generations who differed in a priori concepts, and future

generations that will, we must concede that a priori concepts are shifting.

P49. Either we embrace shifting a priori concepts or embrace the possibility of an infinitude of

alternative possible frameworks that we simply do not have access to.

C9. The “world” refers actually to our currently unquestioned beliefs that frame working

the backdrop of our perceptual experience.

CT. The subject and world are once again fully connected via Immersionism.

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SUBMERGED SELVES

Immersionism & the Refutation of Material Reductionism

Sean Thomas Martin

How strange it was. To look down

And see feet other than my own. To

See a world unlike this: unknown,

Where another Sun - lines curled,

Ripples, and waves, shown through

Moving glass, distorted and separate.

Oh, how I longed to pass through it.

How I longed to dive into the World.1

§1. Introduction

The bulk of contemporary research on consciousness in philosophy and neuroscience, as

of today, rests heavily on a human ontology that is derivative of the Cartesian self, established

back in 1641 by Descartes’ Cogito. However, while the theories of the self and consciousness

have varied from Descartes’ time, the consequent of his thinking thing, i.e. the solipsistic barrier,

has been a constant and pestilent weapon with which the skeptic has constantly prodded and

undermined the accuracy of any philosopher’s assertions about our phenomenology.

1 Descartes, Rene. 2010. Meditations on First Philosophy. Seattle: Pacific Publishing Studio. (9). An

epigraphical poem that I wrote in response to Descartes’ sentiment at the beginning of the Second Meditation, where

he writes: “Just as if I had fallen all of a sudden into very deep water, I am so greatly disconcerted as to be unable

either to plant my feet firmly on the bottom or sustain myself by swimming on the surface” (9).

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By the statement, “I think, therefore I am,” Descartes was able to satisfy his criterion for

knowledge2 and prove to himself that he exists. However, this criterion for knowledge allowed

him to perceive the actually conscious entity – the mind – as separate from his body. By this

logic, the mind and body must be distinct and individual entities. And with some simple modus

ponens, Descartes successfully shoved dualism down the throat of modern philosophy. Of

course, because the only thing he was able to believe necessarily exists (besides God) was

himself, Descartes then had to face the problem of other minds. This is no problem to a Christian

philosopher who can explain any discrepancy “by the goodness of God.” But for the more

agnostic thinkers such as myself, the problem of other minds and the solipsistic barrier pose a

huge threat to the accuracy of our perceptions and the reliability of our own conscious

experience. If we are trapped within the Cartesian box, we are equally trapped within our own

subjectivity. This poses little threat to those who would jump on the relativist’s band-wagon, but

there are greater issues at risk here than most contemporary theorists and scientific realists seem

to believe.3

There are two major reactions to the solipsistic barrier that I wish to address. First, there

are those who simply toss their hands up in reaction to our infallible subjectivity. We are simply

doomed to never understand the world – or even ourselves – as it actually is or we actually are.

Everything is filtered and second-hand at best, and any form of knowledge or truth comes with

an asterisk attached to it. These skeptics, I refer to the natural sciences, in which we observe,

experiment, and – which I will prove later on – even intervene in the world and claim to push

towards some corresponding truth about it. If the skeptic buys into the subjectivity of the

Cartesian self, then she must also accept that no scientific understanding is ever truly

correspondent or accurate; for all interpretations of any data are always filtered by some

experimenter’s subjectivity. While this trail of thought may seem logically sound, there can be

2 Ibid. (10-12). Descartes establishes his criterion for knowledge as something he can perceive (better

translated as understand) clearly and distinctly in and of itself. He can clearly perceive his existence whenever he is

thinking, deceived or not, because in order to think or be deceived one must exist to be thinking or be deceived.

However he does not share this sentiment of affirmed existence with his corporeal body, which he perceives

distinctly form his mind. In the Second Meditation he questions whether or not he can “affirm that I possess any one

of all those attributes of which I have lately spoken as belonging to the nature of body? After attentively considering

them in my own mind, I find none of them that can properly be said to belong to myself” (12).

3 The “greater issues at risk” here refer to the Myth and Reality of our understanding of Scientific Realism

and the relationship between our own Subjectivity and our conceptualization of Objectivity, discussed later on.

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no greater form of apathy towards knowledge and truth, and I would go as far as to say that no

authentic philosopher would ever support such a lazy hypothesis.

However, the second reaction to Descartes’ solipsistic barrier, I argue is even worse. In

an attempt to find some foot-hold of verificationism, many philosophers and scientists alike have

embraced a form of material reductionism that isolates the mind to the brain. This type of

physical determinism is meant to aid in their explanation of our phenomenological experience4,

explaining consciousness away as a series of neural firings elicited by certain electro-chemical

inputs. What they fail to notice, though, is that reducing the mind to the brain – or consciousness

to the brain – does not solve the problem of dualism. Rather, it simply reframes the issue from

“mind-body dualism” to “brain-body dualism.” If we embrace this material reductionism, we

embrace an ontology of ourselves that is parallel to our bodies being robots that our brains

inhabit. We also get no closer to bringing down the solipsistic barrier, and the skeptic still has

every chance he gets to undermine us as we try to solve the “easy problem” of consciousness by

mapping the brain.

Instead of these two unsatisfying options, I propose we embrace a different theory of the

self – of consciousness – of the mind. I suggest a more realistic theory of what I am. I am not my

mind, I am not my brain nor my body, I am a conscious thing, and this consciousness that that

makes up my self is not reducible to the brain, but is the dynamic interaction between the brain,

the body, and the world. I will call this new and enlightened self-consciousness Immersionism

(as opposed to Dualism or Externalism) and in the following paper will show the step by step

progression from the dark, locked box of dualism to the fully engulfed and interactive world of

immersionism. The arguments of the paper will follow a progressive breaking down of barriers

between mind, body, our world, and the world.

But all in due time.

Figure 1. A “roadmap” from Dualism to Immersionism

DUALISM EXTENDED MIND OSMOTIC CONSC IMMERSIONISM

m / b / w / W m-b / w / W m-b-w / W m-b-w

m: mind, b: body, w: subjective phenomenal world, W: objective noumenal world, /: division

4 Consciousness, as I will handle it in the following pages, refers to the entirety of our phenomenological

experiences. What I consider to be the self. Thus, after embracing my theory, it may seem more accurate to say,

instead of “I am a human being that has consciousness,” that “I am consciousness shaped into a human being.”

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§2. Misconceptions in Modern Science

Dualism, as a consequence of Descartes’ cogito, has rooted itself in the fundamental

assumptions of the natural sciences. Isolating the self to the mind, as Descartes did, separated the

metaphysical self from the physical world and mystified the very notion of understanding our

conscious experiences. Of course the mysticism of the unexplained carries a very negative

connotation in the sciences, which seek to provide a comprehensive explanation of everything.

The problem of other minds (our inability to reliably confirm the existence of other subjects of

experience) and mind-body dualism have created a misguiding binary in the undertone’s of the

scientific and philosophical community. This binary can be simplified to the skull-skin barrier.

That is to say that, for the most part, scientists and philosophers have embraced a certain form of

material reductionism that assumes that all aspects of what make up the self must exist entirely

within the skull-skin barrier. All that is outside the barrier is not of the self. All that is not

explained by singular physical processes does not exist or cannot be relied upon. The skull-skin

barrier is the strongest example of how the solipsistic barrier still holds such a vice like grip on

our fundamental assumptions. Instead of such material reductionism (or internalism), I propose a

form of externalism that more accurately accounts for our phenomenological experiences.

§2.1. The Solipsistic Barrier and mind-body Dualism

As neuroscience is the most paradigmatic of my characterization of the solipsistic issue, I

will focus most of my critiques refuting neuroscience’s consciousness-specific material

reductionism. It may be an historic instead of philosophical point to make, but I believe that the

natural trend of the sciences to embrace “discoveries” that are more materially reductive can best

be traced back to Descartes’ Meditations and the first instantiation of mind-body dualism. The

addition of the cogito to the fundamental assumptions of our sciences has lead neuroscientists

down the wrong path in terms of explaining our comprehensive phenomenological experiences.

Taking on what philosophers call the “easy problem” of consciousness (i.e. mapping the brain)

they function under the assumption that explaining the entirety of the physiological phenomenon

associated with our processing of our experiences actually gives us a complete picture of what

consciousness is as a whole. By embracing the solipsistic barrier of this new “brain-body

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dualism, scientists have over corrected from the problems of dualism to their inadequacies of

material reductionism. This has lead neuroscientists to cast aside two essential parts of the

dynamic interaction: the body, and the world itself.

Scientists usually rely on the “Brain in the Vat” experiment to justify their narrowed

focus on the brain, which I will refute later on in the paper. The more significant claim to be

made here, however, is that the fundamental assumption of material reductionism is incorrect.

We can see in many examples of our regular behavior and interactions that we are very much not

locked within the Cartesian box. Scientist would have us believe that we are locked within our

own subjective experiences, and that we must strive to escape these boxes to a neutral state of

objectivity (the goal of all sciences). But the very impersonalism that the sciences claim to adopt

in order to study the natural world in an objective light, is contradictory to their own goals.

Impersonalism and the detached, “objective” stance that the sciences claim to be ideal is just one

more of the multiple misconceptions modern day science and philosophy have embraced as a

result of Descartes’ overly reductive cogito.

§2.2. Impossibility of Impersonalism

The notion of scientific impersonalism or detachment stems from the urge for sciences to

reach some indifferent truth about the world independent of our experience of it. The separation

between subject and World at a fundamental level comes from Descartes’ and the development

of the self in contrast to the world that is known as the corner stone of modern philosophy. This

desire to explain things separate of our experience for some reason has even seeped into our

understanding of our experiences. We now – for some reason – seek to understand our

phenomenological experience separate from that very experience. This is what leads material

reductionists in modern sciences like neurology to strive towards impersonalism and detached

explanations, viewing only the physical causes instead of the phenomenological experiences.

However, assuming such an impersonal stance of something like consciousness or the

mind proves to be impossible. Such impersonalism in regards to the mind of a subjective agent

implies taking away the subjective agency of that mind. Once a mind becomes only a brain, it

cannot go back. That is to say that the mind is not entirely defined as the brain. Solving the issue

of mapping the brain does not solve the issue of Descartes’ problem of other minds. However,

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instead of the goodness to God, there is an equally simple and fairly obvious justification for our

beliefs in other minds to which we can turn. Alva Noë, a philosophical psychologist specializing

in extended consciousness, may throw scientists under the bus when panning out this

justification:

The basis of our confidence in the minds of others is practical. We cannot take seriously

the possibility that others lack minds because doing so requires that we take up a

theoretical, detached stance on others that is incompatible with the kind of life that we

already share with them. All this points to something paradoxical about the science of the

mind; science requires detachment, but mind can only come into focus if we take up an

altogether different, more engaged attitude.5

The impossibility of the impersonal stance which scientists claim to take makes sense when you

consider that the very existence of a mind is contingent upon an interaction between a brain and

world instead of just neural firings. By taking their so called “impersonal” stance and

objectifying the mind to the material reductionism of the brain, scientists are actually solving

only part of the problem. The mind as a whole is an extended entity between brain and body.

And even the world – as we have proven that the body is no longer restrained within the walls of

our skin. So, scientists relying on an impersonal stance of the “mind is the brain” reduction make

it simply impossible to grasp at any real understanding of the mind.

However, our understanding of the sciences and their goals depends heavily on our

reliance on their impersonal stance. It is by this very detachment that the scientists claim to grasp

– or at least get closer to grasping – the fundamental truth of the world, independent of our

perception of it. Yet our perception of the world – our phenomenological experience – our

consciousness is an always present interaction with the world. And so taking an impersonal

stance is impossible by the very nature of perception, our consciousness, and the world

themselves. It is impossible to explain our experience separate from our experience.

Instead of these hubristically distant and pseudo-impersonal claims to objectivity, I

suggest instead we examine a more authentic and realistic sense of our epistemology and the

nature of the world which we perceive. This new epistemology calls into account new definitions

5 Noë, Alva. 2009. Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons From the Biology

of Consciousness. New York: Hill and Wang, A division of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. (25).

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of body and mind, and the coming sections will lay out how the mind extends into the body, the

first step in establishing a new and more accurate theory of consciousness.

§2.3. Agential Realism

Certain methodological changes must be accounted for if we are to embrace a more

externalist set of fundamental assumptions in regards to our theory of consciousness. What

Karen Barad calls agential realism, she describes through the frameworks of Bohr’s

epistemology and Foucault’s theories on the productive nature of apparatuses of observation.

This form of scientific realism can be considered a communal extension of our subjectivity, of

our extended minds and bodies, intervening in our observations and experiments in the world.

Barad raises the question poignantly:

If a computer interface is hooked up to a given instrument, is the computer part of the

apparatus? Is the printer attached to the computer part of the apparatus? Is the paper that

is feed into the printer? Is the person that feeds in the paper? How about the person who

reads the marks on the paper? How about the community of scientists who judge the

significance of the experiment and indicate their support or lack of support for future

funding? What precisely constitutes the apparatus that gives meaning to certain concepts

at the exclusion of others?6

This kind of distribution over assemblages of agents and objects makes it difficult to see where

our body ends and the impersonal tool begins. This is precisely because that barrier is no clear

division – but an interaction in itself. We are extended through our tools, into our experiments,

intervening and producing in the world at the same time we are perceiving and evaluating it.

These points will be touched upon in greater detail later on, but the main conclusion to take from

Barad’s agential realism is that our tools and experiments, and our interactions with and through

them, are not just “instruments but are themselves complex material-discursive phenomena,

involve in, formed out of, and formative of particular social process. Power, knowledge, and

6 Barad, Karen. 1999. “Agential Realism: Feminist Interventions in Understanding Scientific Practices.”

The Science Studies: 1-11. (6). Barad, like other members of the field of philosophy which I like to call distributists,

proposes the distribution of responsibility and agency among larger assemblages of minds and bodies, the extension

of our subjectivities. These apparatuses and their productivity prove that the agency and responsibility of the actual

observation – the actual result of the experiment, are distributed through multiple agents, tools, communal functions,

&c. Another blow against the so called “objectivity” and impersonalism of the sciences.

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being are conjoined in material-discursive practices.”7 These material-discursive practices

provide myriad examples of how material reductionism is an inaccurate account of our

interactions with the world. The world kicks back – the environment is brought into the loop of

our cognitive process. We extended into the world on a regular basis, crossing past the skull/skin

barrier constantly to interact and intervene in the world. We, our minds and bodies, are

materially discursive and intertwined, extending into the world.

§2.4. Material Discursivity

Barad recognizes materially discursive practices as being “productive rather than merely

descriptive. However, what is produced is constrained by particular material-discursive facts and

not arbitrarily construed.”8 This theory of our extension by means of tool is further panned out in

her later paper “Posthumanist Performativity,” in which she discusses the nature of material

discursivity in terms of what she calls cyborgian cuts, or colloquially, “thingification.” She goes

so far to say that this “thingification” – “the turning of relations into ‘thing,’ ‘entities,’ ‘relata’ –

infects much of the way we understand the world and our relationship to it.”9 These cyborgian

cuts extend into the world and distribute our agency within it, shaping and reshaping our

fundamental concepts that make up the world as we understand it. We can see this through every

day cyborgian cuts likes the use of a hammer to extend and enhance the force of our swinging

arm, or even the use of our phones as an extended and more reliable memory. These extensions,

when in the correct context, even have the potential to “produce,” in some way or another, our a

priori concepts and fundamental beliefs. The importance of this epistemology will be discussed

later in section §8. The so called “border” of the self is altered in this different materially

7 Ibid. (6).

8 Ibid. (2). Barad’s account of material discursivity also accounts for a realism about the way in which “the

world kicks back” and stresses the “symmetrical form of interaction between knower and known” (2). Her account

works perfectly with the Extended Mind Theory by Andy Clark that I will examine in the following sections, in

which we see that our mental extension into the body and the world have a productive and not simply passive and

observational quality to them. This is the most significant implication of Immersionism, as it is what calls for the

severe alteration of methodology in order to account for Agential Realism.

9 Barad, Karen. 2003. “Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to

Matter.” SIGNS: 801-831. (812-813).

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discursive practices, showing how the rigid designations of the solipsistic barrier are actually

osmotic barriers at best. For now we need only consider the significance of material discursivity

as it distributes the responsibility of our physical, cognitive, and conscious processes into the

world and out of the intellectualist Cartesian box.

§2.5. Distribution of Responsibility

Here, I feel it necessary to establish a criterion for extension. Just as Descartes defined

his criterion for knowledge as something he can perceive clearly and distinctly in and of itself, I

define my criterion for extension as any relation between mind and body in which the

responsibility of some task is distributed between the subject and the tool or media form that lies

beyond the skull-skin barrier. Andy Clark and David Chalmers use this criterion in their

Extended Mind Theory, which I will examine closely in Section §4, but as they focus on the

mind extending to the body, and here I focus on extension of any sort (as in any alteration of the

body schema in relation to epistemology) I will tweak the wording to make the transition easier

on the ears. The distribution of responsibility can be seen as a distribution of “epistemic credit.

If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process, which, were it done [by

the subject alone], we would have no hesitation in recognizing as part”10 of the process, then that

part of the world is interwoven within our agency of the process. We have proven ourselves

extendable into the world through this criterion for extension. Now, I begin the work of proving

this new theory of extended consciousness, through extending the mind into the body, the body

into the world, and reuniting the subject and the world.

10 Clark, Andy; Chalmers, David J. 2000. “The Extended Mind.” Ridgeview: 59-74. (62). Clark and

Chalmers here actually define the distribution of epistemic credit here in terms of extending the mind into the world

through this criterion for extension, however for the sake of the argument as a whole I feel it better to have started

with redefining the body and brain, and setting out osmotic consciousness as the clear goal in order to bridge the gap

the long distance from dualism all the way to Immersionism.

18

§3. Extending Cognition

Sections §3 and §4 will be spent making the step from the first box in Figure 1 to the

second. To make the step the connection between mind and body (or brain and body if we are

using the dualist’s terminology) must be proven as extended in a way that functions under my

new definition of body. Andy Clark’s and David Chalmers’ “Extended Mind Theory” provides

an account of what they call active externalism in which they stress “the active role of the

environment in driving cognitive processes.”11 This theory both functions within my new

definition of body and meets the Three Criterion of consciousness – brain, body, world – thus

showing how there is a distribution of not only physical but also cognitive responsibilities.

§3.1. Redefining the Body

When attacking the problem of brain-body dualism, certain barriers and definitions are

called into question. Such is the nature of this entire paper after all. I will first begin by

redefining the term body. As Descartes defined it, a body can be understood as:

Anything that can be comprised in a certain place, and so fill a certain space as therefrom

to exclude very other body; that can be perceived either by touch, sight, hearing, taste, or

smell; that can be moved in different ways, not indeed of itself, but by something foreign

to it by which it is touched (and from which it receives the impression).12

Such a rigid designation of the body will not do within this argument. And when consulting

cognitive science, one may begin to see that the body should not be defined by such reductive

borderlines.

Considering different examples such as the phantom limb experiment, we can see that

sensation and feeling can long outlive a severed limb. This of course does not work within

Descartes’ definition of the body. To solve the problem, we must redefine the term body (at least

our bodies, not all extended objects) to instead refer to the potentiality of involvement and

11 Clark, Andy; Chalmers, David J. 2000. “The Extended Mind.” Ridgeview: 59-74. (60).

12 Descartes, Rene. 2010. Meditations on First Philosophy. Seattle: Pacific Publishing Studio. (12).

19

interaction with one’s environment. Or, as Noë rephrases it in his book, Out of Our Heads, “our

body is ours – the place where we feel and the means by which we act – insofar as the current of

activity that flows toward the world passes through it.”13 We can examine the implication of the

term means here as well as the opacity of the term place to understand the definition more

clearly.

Looking first at the term place, we can already extend the body past the phantom limb to

see how we can feel things past the skull-skin barrier. Noë also considers the body schema when

redefining the body, finally titrating his definition to “the body is present schematically as a

range of possibilities of movement or action.”14 The body can be considered – instead of the

rigid designation of the skull/skin barrier – as a center of gravity, a central local around which

specific experiences are cultivated within a certain consciousness. This central local – this place

– is malleable and adjustable, allowing for additions and subtractions that do not always coincide

with our neural processes. To alter the conception of the body now seems far more fathomable,

as we need only add or extend the body schema – our potentiality of movement.

In order to alter or extend the body schema we need only look to our everyday

dependence on – and dexterity with – tools. Here we can examine the term means by which we

act in the world. In terms of neuroplasticity we can examine the use of tools as essentially the

opposite of the phantom limb experiment. Where in the phantom limb example the body schema

has remained the same while the actual physical body has lost the limb, with the use of a tool

(say, a cane) one can, with enough practice and skill, change one’s expectations of movement

and the way one interacts in the world. To explain in more detail, while in the phantom limb

experiment we see the body schema is altered without our neural processes changing (thus

showing that our conscious experience does not always match our neurology), in the cane

experiment we can see the body schema being added to and letting our neural plasticity catch up

afterwards to account for a more natural and masterful use of the tool. Following such an

13 Noë, Alva. 2009. Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons From the Biology

of Consciousness. New York: Hill and Wang, A division of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. (76). This is Noë’s

paraphrasing of Merleau-Ponty in which he notes that “the absence of your hand is not real until it fails to be at your

disposal when you prepare to reach with it or stop your fall with it.” (76). The theory of body here emphasizes the

usage and context-bound capabilities of our body (ex: a hand) to explain the continued sensations of a phantom limb

– as its environmental uses and habits still exist without the capability.

14 Ibid. (77).

20

extension of our body, Noë observes that as our “body schema changes, our relation to the world

around us changes, and so how we perceive the environment changes.”15 Now, having

established my new definition of body that coincides with our interactions with the world more

fluidly, we can look at the ways we extend our body, and thus our minds, and subjectivity, into

the world.

§3.2. Physical to Mental Externalism

The distribution of physical responsibility is such a common phenomenon that at first

glance it would seem that it requires little reflection. Examining the use of a hammer as a

cyborgian cut (the cut here being the defining line of our agential body being moved from the

skin barrier of our hand outwards to include the hammer itself) and a distribution of the physical

responsibility of blunt force seems like a logical enough conclusion. We often distribute our

physical responsibilities with the use of tools, cars, &c. That alone is not sufficient to prove our

extension. We need to prove how our cognitive responsibilities are distributed past our skull-skin

barrier in this active externalism. These examples, instead of focusing on simply altering the

Body Schema, will focus on the distribution of cognitive processes and responsibilities to show

how the mind is extended not only into our body, but into the environment as well.

It is very important to emphasize here, that after all of my brain-body dualist bashing I

still do concede to and support the importance of the brain in the development of consciousness.

It is still a very vital part of this external interaction. Osmotic consciousness should not be

misconstrued for some extreme externalism which places the mind and consciousness entirely

outside of the skull-skin barrier. It is simply a re-emphasizing and re-appropriation of

responsibilities and functions within the brain, the extended body, and the environment, all in

cohesive interaction.

§3.3. Three Criterion of Osmotic Consciousness

What I propose, instead of thinking that the brain is both necessary and sufficient for

consciousness (which is a mistake that even material dualists make, like in the Brain in the Vat

15 Ibid. (79).

21

example)16, that the brain is necessary, but what is equally necessary for consciousness to be

present is an extendable body and an environment with which to interact, develop, and intertwine

with. What I will call the Three Criterion for osmotic consciousness then, will be a brain as

qualified earlier in this paper as continuously active in the production and interaction of

consciousness, a body as defined previously as the potentiality of movements or actions within a

central local, and a world – an environment with which these two entities can interact. I will

flush out the implications of the term world later in section §8. These connected theories will do

the work of solving the skeptic arguments against the reliability of our individual brain’s

extension into the body, and our individually extended brain/body’s extension into the world.

Justifying the reliability of our general immersion in the world will come afterwards.

§3.4. Coupled Systems

To emphasize the distribution of cognitive processes, Clark and Chalmers use the

example of computers in controlled experiments to show how we often make the jump from

using technology as an aid to our cognitive processes to having technology handle our cognitive

processes for us. These examples will focus on the mind’s extension into the body (both having

been redefined for the purpose of this argument). In these cases, where there is an active

externalism into the environment via some media or tool we can actually see our extension at

work.

Clark and Chalmers begin their paper by providing three different cases of human

problem-solving: (1) a person is asked to identify which geometric shapes fit into which socket

on a screen and must do so by mentally rearranging them on her own; (2) a person is given the

same task but can now either mentally rearrange the shapes or press a button to have them

rearranged on the screen by the computer for her; (3) a person is given the same task but is given

a neural implant which will rearrange the shapes as fast as the computer in the previous example,

16 The “Brain in the Vat” example, which I will examine in more focused detail later on, proposes that if an

isolated brain, without an actual environment, is given the correct electro-chemical input or impulse, it will produce

the effect of perception and experience “a world” within the brain. Material Reductionists use this hypothetical to

justify that consciousness is reducible to the brain alone. However, even if this hypothetical accurately portrayed

how our consciousness worked (which I will prove later it does not) scientists would still make the mistake of saying

the brain is the only necessary facet of consciousness, for they are providing the second: the input (i.e. a world).

22

but she still must choose which mental processes to use to rearrange the shapes (mental or neural

implant).17 When examining these three different cases we see that both (2) and (3) “display the

same sort of computational structure,” only in (2) the responsibility of the rearrangement “is

distributed across agent and computer instead of internalized within the agent. If the rotation in

case (3) is cognitive, by what right do we count case (2) as fundamentally different?”18 What

Clark calls the “tendency of human reasoners to lean heavily on environmental supports” can be

seen in the many different ways we casually distribute the responsibilities of our memories,

navigations, computations, and thought processes.

We establish what Clark calls coupled systems where we as human organisms are linked

with an external entity in our heuristic and productive endeavors. In these systems, it could be

said that as much as we extend into the environment, the environment extends into us, a “two-

way interaction, creating a coupled system that can be seen as a cognitive system in its own

right. All the right components in the system play an active causal role, and they jointly govern

behavior”19 the same way cognition normally functions. This active externalism brings the

Environment “in the loop” of our cognitive processes, and by distributing our cognitive

responsibilities we distribute our minds with them.20

§3.5. Otto and Inga, the Environment “in the loop”

Before making the leap from cognition to beliefs and the mind as a whole, I must first

identify and qualify the necessary requirements of these coupled systems. When first tackling

cognitive processes alone, Clark uses the example of Otto’s notebook and Inga’s memory to

show how we can replace our biological memory with parts of the environment, thus establishing

justified coupled systems.

17

Clark, Andy; Chalmers, David J. 2000. “The Extended Mind.” Ridgeview: 59-74. (60).

18 Ibid. (61).

19 Ibid. (62).

20 Ibid. (62). Here I feel it is important to again specify that the brain and our internal cognitive processes

are still very important. These coupled systems do not undermine the vital importance of the brain, but simply say

that it is not alone in its responsibilities. As Clark says, “In all these cases the individual brain performs some

operations, while others are delegated to manipulations of external media” 62).

23

The thought experiment is as follows: take Inga, a normal case of belief embedded in

memory, and juxtapose her behaviors and cognitive processes with Otto, who suffers from

Alzheimer’s disease and relies on information written down in his notebook, always by his side.

The establishment of the coupled system here is very clear, as we can believe realistically that as

an Alzheimer’s patient, Otto would always have his notebook with him – and at this point be

naturalized to the processes of checking his notebook for information as if it was his memory.

Some of course would attack the credibility or reliability of Otto’s notebook, but the Reliability

Criterion of our mind’s extension will be discussed later. For now, we can assume that “for Otto,

his notebook plays the role usually played by a biological memory.”21 In this thought

experiment, Inga and Otto are both going to the Museum of Modern Art to see a visit and so

must remember the location of the Museum, on 53rd Street. Inga recalls to her own memory and

so goes to 53rd street, finds the Museum where she believed it to be, and goes in. Otto, instead of

looking to his memory for the location of the Museum, has previously noted that it is on 53rd

Street, and so looks to his notebook to find the location. He then goes to 53rd Street, finds the

Museum where he believed it to be, and goes in. We can see that Otto’s extended memory

functions in the same way the Inga’s biological memory does, and I will show later that they

share a similar level of reliability in terms of accuracy, misinformation, and contingency.22

§3.6. Pragmatic vs Epistemic Distinction

Look back at the prior two examples: Otto’s notebook and the computer systems. The

computer examples are an over complication of the computer game Tetris, where players fit

geometric shapes into allotted slots. The shapes often come in different positions and must be

rotated to fit the ideal slots, and players can either mentally rotate them (as in hypothetically

rotate in their “mind’s eye”) or use the buttons to rotate and see the different options as the

pieces falls closer to the slot. Clark cites a study, done by David Kirsh and Paul Maglio, which

showed that the physical rotation of the shapes by button takes about 300 milliseconds total,

while the hypothetical mental rotation takes 1000 milliseconds. Their study goes on to show that

21 Ibid. (70).

22 Ibid. (70). I will account for errors in memory and contingency in section §4.2 where I set out the

Reliability Criterion for extended cognition and mind.

24

the physical rotation of the shapes “is used not just to position a shape ready to fit a slot, but

often to help determine whether the shape and the slot are compatible. The latter use constitutes a

case of what Kirsh and Maglio call an ‘epistemic action’.”23 These epistemic actions are to be

distinguished from merely pragmatic actions which alter the world for the sake of function (i.e.

putting cement into a hold in a dam). Instead, epistemic actions “alter the world so as to aid and

augment cognitive processes such as recognition and search.”24 We can see how Otto’s memory

also constitutes an epistemic action, as he has altered the world with his writing in the notebook

in order to augment his cognitive process of recognition. There is a distribution of cognitive

responsibility. Our cognitive processes at the very least are extended into the world, our body

schemas alterable, and the environment is constantly “in the loop.”

§4. Extending the Mind

Our minds are composed of more than simply computations and cognitive processes. We

must now show how beliefs themselves are extended. Again we can look at the example of

Otto’s notebook to show that his behavior is justified by his beliefs, fleeting as they may be, and

that those beliefs are justified by the information in his notebook. And what is more important,

they are justified on the same level as Inga’s normal biological memory and internalized beliefs.

§4.1. Extending Beliefs and Desires

In order to show that Otto’s beliefs are equally justified as Inga’s, we must look to their

behavior. Both, after retrieving the information from their respective sources, proceed to

navigate their way to 53rd Street and enter the Museum because of their prior desire to go to the

art show and their present beliefs that the Museum is located on 53rd Street. Where someone

might say there is a difference in that Inga knows that the Museum is on 53rd Street and Otto is

susceptible to misinformation or inaccuracy of his notebook’s information, they would be failing

23 Ibid. (62).

24 Ibid. (62).

25

to account for the inaccuracy of our own biological memories. Others might say that there is an

issue of time in Otto’s case, where his beliefs are existent only after he consults his notebook and

re-learns the information. But, “to say that the beliefs disappear when the notebook is filed away

seems to miss the big picture in just the same way as saying that Inga’s beliefs disappear as soon

as she is no longer conscious of them.”25 Both Otto and Inga function on the same assumption of

the accuracy of their memory, their beliefs are justified by information that is stored by some

cognitive faculty. As Clark says, “The information in the notebook functions just like the

information constituting an ordinary non-occurent belief; it just happens that this information lies

beyond the skin.”26 Clark uses the Putnam Twin Earth example here to show that for Twin Otto,

who is the same as Otto in every way only that his notebook has the address written down as 51st

Street instead of 53rd, to solidify his point. In the Twin Earth example, “Twin Otto is best

characterized as believing that the museum is on 51st Street, where Otto believes it is on 53rd. In

these cases, a belief is simply not in the head.”27 Of course with the Twin Earth example, issues

arise and qualifications have to be made. Here is where the reliability criterion is helpful.

§4.2. Reliability Criterion

The main issues with Otto’s notebook are those of consistency and perception. Clark

handles both of these issues rather quickly by establishing a Reliability Criterion for Otto’s

notebook to sufficiently represent and extension of his memory. The criterion is that the form of

extension in question must be present and “easily available in most relevant situations” of its use,

and if so “the relevant belief is not endangered.”28 This handles the issue of consistency in

regards to Otto’s memory (and one could imagine easier ways to simply impugn the consistency

of normal biological memories, ex: intoxication, brain damage, sleep, attention deficit, &c). The

issue of perception, where Otto’s beliefs are contingent upon his perception of the notebook,

Clark claims in some ways begs the question. He clarifies that “Otto’s internal processes and his

25 Ibid. (71).

26 Ibid. (71).

27 Ibid. (72).

28 Ibid. (76).

26

notebook constitute a single cognitive system. Form the standpoint of this system, the flow of

information between notebook and brain is not perceptual at all […] It is more akin to

information flow within the brain.”29 There may be a phenomenological difference between

Otto’s actual visual perception of his “memory” and whatever neural proper neural phenomenon

occur in Inga’s brain as she remembers the address, but the causal relation of the metaphysical

beliefs can be considered the same in each case.

§4.3. Active Externalism

The other issue that the Extended Mind Theory faces is Putnam’s issue of Twin Earth.

The argument for the contingency of beliefs in terms of Otto’s notebook works to help Clark

prove that beliefs are not just in the head. However the normal example of H20 vs XYZ shows the

contingent nature of the environment itself. Clark uses this difference between forms of

Externalism, both the prior kind and what the active externalism under which we have been

functioning thus far, to add another criterion of the extended mind – an active environment. In

the XYZ case, Clark shows that “if I happen to be surrounded by XYZ right now (maybe I have

teleported to Twin Earth), my beliefs still concern standard water, because of my history. In

these cases, the relevant external features are passive” or what he also calls “distal and historical,

at the other end of a lengthy causal chain.”30 As opposed to the XYZ example, the external

features in the case of Otto’s notebook are active and present. In these cases “the relevant

external features play an active role in the here-and-now, and have a direct impact on

behavior.”31 This active externalism both accounts for our materially discursive nature – as our

subjectivity is extended equally with our agency and Body Schema – as well as the way the

present environment can have a causal role in our behavior and mental processes. What these

criteria do is qualify and solidify Clark’s account of the extension of beliefs, and as Clark says at

the end of his paper, “once dispositional beliefs are let in the door, it is difficult to resist the

conclusion that Otto’s notebook has all the relevant dispositions” of the Extended Mind.

29 Ibid. (74).

30 Ibid. (63).

31 Ibid. (72).

27

§5. Consciousness as External Interaction

Having discussed how not only our physical and cognitive responsibilities are distributed

externally, but that the mind as a whole is actually extended as well, now I take the next step of

my expansion and tackle the problem of consciousness as a whole. As I noted in Figure 1, I plan

to move step by step from brain-body Dualism to complete Immersionism. The first of three

steps has now been made as we have reconnected the mind and the body. This newly connected

and extended entity I will refer to as Schemata. In the coming section I will show that the

Schemata is interwoven in the world and environment through osmotic consciousness, where

both the subject extends into the world and the world seeps into the subject.

§5.1. Attributions of Agency

In his book, Noë advocates for the adjustment for our theories to align more closely with

our behavior and experience. Instead of skeptics and scientific realists who propose that our

experiences and perceptions are actually just inaccurate and illusory, Noë suggests that we adjust

our theories to better account for these behaviors. In a paradigmatic example, he cites our

common asking of the “why” question to explain causation or intention to individual agents in

the world. Whether or not we recognize these objects as fully subjective agents or not, we

attribute – possibly even project – a certain amount of agency to them by implying a reason

behind their actions or behaviors in the environment. This is a matter of framing what we are

actually seeing in a non-neutral and pre-established way that completely contradictions the

impersonalism of detached science. Instead, Noë looks to our usual behaviors and observations

to show that we attribute agency, and therefore mind, to many things from people to animals to

computers based on the implication of a reason behind their “behaviors,” even if we claim a

detached viewpoint while asserting these descriptions.

§5.2. Life as the Lower Limit

An impersonalized subject is not a complete subject. Noë says that this detached stance

can only help us explain some parts of what the mind is – what our consciousness is. There is

28

only psychology and behavior to an impersonalized subject. In fact that subject has been reduce

to a mechanistic behavioral object. As such, she has been made mindless by the very

impersonalism meant to help study her mind. Noë points out that “if we do take up the detached,

mechanistic attitude to human beings, then it is impossible for us to view them as friends or even

enemies; indeed, it is impossible to think of them as genuinely subjects of experience.”32 This

necessary empathy or acknowledgement of agency of a mind is not exclusive to human minds

either.

Noë keeps the parameters for mind very simple. Life is the lower limit of consciousness.

We take up the anthropocentric terminology of minds whenever we explain an acting organism

with intentions. When we examine a bacterium moving in a direction of greater intensities of

sugar, it “might seem to be geared into its environment in a machinelike way. But in fact, in thus

describing the bacterium, we have already smuggled in a non-mechanical, nonphysical

conception of the bacterium as, precisely, a unity, as one whose actions can be considered as

actions, and in relation to which the question ‘why?’ arises.”33 The very need for us to justify the

actions of an organism can be attributed to our recognition of a mind at work. Acknowledging

the unity of the organism, instead of reducing all the connected mechanisms and processes in

detached relation, implies that the bacterium “is not merely a process, it is an agent, however

simple; it has interests.”34 The bacterium may not be a complicated example of mind; it is not

self-aware nor does it understand or have control over its needs and functions, but nonetheless

the bacterium “only comes into focus for biology as an organism, as a living being, once we

appreciate its integrity as an individual agent.”35

32 Noë, Alva. 2009. Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons From the Biology

of Consciousness. New York: Hill and Wang, A division of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. (38).

33 Ibid. (39).

34 Ibid. (40).

35 Ibid. (40).

29

§5.3. Behavioral and Biological Frameworks

This example of the bacterium is very helpful, because it shows how interwoven the

organism is with its environment. It is, in a sense, geared into the world. Yes, there may be

varying levels of complexity and awareness and autonomy within that geared-in status, but all

life is in some way, shape, or form contextually geared into the world. Although Noë spends two

chapters on this point and many examples more than that, his point is actually quite simple. He is

emphasizing that, in terms of consciousness, the inclination of material reductionism to rely on

physics to explain our experience is a categorical mistake:

Physics does not catalog the existence of organisms or environments. For physics, there

are only atoms and processes operating sub atomically: you can’t do biology from within

physics. To do biology, we need the resources to take up a no non-mechanistic attitude to

the organism as an environmentally embedded unity. When we do that – and how we

come to my critical claim – we also secure the (at least) primitive mentality of the

organisms. The problem of mind is that of the problem of life. What biology brings into

focus is the living being, but where we discern life, we have everything we need to

discern mind.36

Embracing physics as the framework of explaining our experiences would leave us with a

vocabulary that describes us as clouds of atoms moving in directions, surrounded by atoms of a

slightly different nature moving in different directions. Understanding ourselves through the

scope of biology and evolution only makes sense, as we our animals of our environment at a very

fundamental level. If mind is life, it is simply important to note that animals “have minds

appropriate to their lives; they are not mere machines.”37 Having established life as the only

prerequisite of mind, our human minds must be examined. In section §6, I will examine the

different dynamics of human consciousness, of our extended minds, that shows that our alterable

and extended schematas are boundary crossing and world involving. They bring the environment

“into the loop” just as Clark says. Osmotic consciousness requires only a living schemata and an

environment to express the interaction that is itself consciousness as a whole. Our consciousness

36 Ibid. (41).

37 Ibid. (46).

30

– our minds – our agential processes, are simply specific to our schematas and the species

specific interactions of brain and body with the world.

§6. Osmotic Consciousness

Extending Cognition and contingently the Mind, we can see how the brain and the body

are truly connected and extended in the Schemata. This being the central local around which the

interaction of osmotic consciousness takes place. Having looked at the connection between box 1

and box 2 of Figure 1, we can now look at the next division, between the Schemata and world.

§6.1. Defining Consciousness

In regards to osmotic consciousness, there is an important distinction to be made between

the sum of the parts and the whole. While the three criterion are necessary for osmotic

consciousness to be present, the phenomenon itself is not derivative of those brain, body, and

world interacting. Osmotic consciousness is the very interaction itself. This theory is set forth by

Alva Noë, in his book Out of Our Heads, where he establishes the three criterion and provides

that analysis of what I call osmotic consciousness.38 Noë stresses that it is the interaction itself

that we recognize as the phenomenon of consciousness, instead of something that can be

simplified to three individual parts. There is a context-bound nature of this interaction, a

presentism and ephemerality. In its most titrated form, Noë’s thesis is that “the brain is not the

locus of consciousness inside us because consciousness has no locus inside us. Consciousness

isn’t something that happens inside us: it is something that we do, actively, in our dynamic

interaction with the world around us.”39 In this account Noë parallels the terminology of

consciousness and mind – which I will do the work of connecting. But his parameters are simple

enough: “mind is life.”

§6.2. Life Appropriate Minds

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid. (24).

31

Throughout the book Noë stresses the importance of the biological framework when

explaining consciousness. The context-bound and developmental nature of our

phenomenological faculties of experience prove why this biological framework is so accurate

and important. We can see the developmental importance of the environment in regards to

capabilities with organisms deprived of that environment. Noë points out that “the neonatal

mammal, we learn, is plastic and open; in a very real sense the environment itself produces in us

the conditions needed to experience that environment.”40 Here he cites certain cognitive science

experiments of animals deprived of certain senses during their developmental infancy. For

example: cats deprived of light during developmental infancy will never be able to see. Noë’s

theory reassess our understanding of maturation within our environment. Autonomy becomes a

far more vague term, as “maturation is not so much a process of self-individuation and

detachment as it is one of growing comfortably into one’s environmental situation.”41

§6.3. Neural vs Perceptual Plasticity

What is beginning to be panned out here is a dissonance between neural and perceptual

plasticity. Where if the two were at all times the same, there would be no issue with the brain-

body dualism I am combatting at the moment. However, if we examine the phantom limb case

again as well as the Bach-y-Rita sensory substitution example, we can see that neural rewiring is

not only insufficient for a change in the quality of experience, it is not even necessary.42

In the Bach-y-Rita sensory substitution system, a camera was wired to an array of

vibrators placed on the thigh or abdomen of subjects. The system worked in such a way that

visual information presented to the camera produced a range of tactile stimuli on the subjects’

skin. In somewhat amazing results, “by deploying the system, the blind person was able to reach

out and pick up objects, and even swat at a ball successfully with a Ping-Pong paddle.”43 In the

phantom limb example the neural pathways were altered (cut off) yet the experience of pain

40 Ibid. (50).

41 Ibid. (51).

42 Ibid. (56)

43 Ibid. (57).

32

continued, hence we see a case of neural plasticity without perceptual plasticity. However, in the

Bach-y-Rita example, the neural pathway is unaltered while visual “perception” was created on a

more or less functional level. The latter example gives a case of perceptual plasticity without

neural plasticity. This alone may be statement enough against the brain-body material

reductionism, and Noë even goes as far as to call it “the key to our puzzle.” As “what makes

experience the kind of experience it is – is not the neural activity in our brains on its own; it is,

rather, our ongoing dynamic relation to objects, a relation that, as in this case, clearly depends on

our neural responsiveness to changes in our relation to things.”44 This account of our conscious

experience explains away many phenomenon that puzzle the current paradigm of brain-body

Dualism, as it accounts for our immersion within our environment.

§6.4. Completion Myths and Contextualism

A main issue of brain-body Dualism is the heavy responsibility we bear when assigning

such absolute significance to our neural firings. It opens itself up to an intellectualism that makes

it seem as though there is a status of “completion” or decontextualized mind that can be reached.

But there is no mind outside of context. In fact, distancing oneself from the context can often

hinder one’s mental performance. We see this very often in the difference between novice and

expert. It is a known fact that when you learn a new skill you pay careful attention to the

mechanics of what you are doing. But as any master will tell you, the more adept you grow at the

skill, the less and less you think deliberately about the mechanics. This has even been confirmed

in neuroscience, where experts of certain skills display less brain activity than their novice

counterparts. The intellectualist connotation of the brain-body Dualism implies that you could

theoretically remove a master from her context and she could “think” her way to perform a skill

perfectly, but “things are just the reverse when it comes to the expert. The expert’s performance,

it has been shown, deteriorates if [she] focuses on the mechanics of the task.” 45

The ancient Greek concept of flow comes to mind here. At a certain point the master is in

flow with her environment, her conscious experiences are not isolated to her internal thoughts,

44 Ibid. (59).

45 Ibid. (100).

33

her mind is not reducible to her brain, she is engaged with the skill within the environment. Our

processes and behaviors are extended – the same goes for language and information recall.46

There is a context-bound nature to the entirety of our conscious functions and experience.

This is precisely because osmotic consciousness cannot be removed from context, without a

context – a world – to interact with, no interaction arises. And with no interaction, there is no

consciousness. Our consciousness presupposes for its existence an environment with which our

brain and body can interact. Our habits of behavior depend on this assumption. Noë references

Adrian Cussins, before moving onto to his refutations and clarifications of osmotic

consciousness, who claims that “our lives depend on […] cognitive trails and other modes of

cognitive habits that presuppose for their activation our actual presence in an environment

hospitable for us.”47

§7. Refutations & Defenses of OC

Our understanding of our conscious experiences – of our role both in and of the

environment – has for some reason been misguided to think that we are separate or independent

of our environment. We need only look to our natural behaviors to see the multiple ways in

which we not only interact and intervene with our environment, but where the environment acts

upon us as well. The recalcitrance is not an interaction between two separate entities. It is far

46 Ibid. (100-104, 121-124). In the instance of language, Noë uses the example of multi-lingual cultures that

function with a context-bound understanding of language. Instead of the definitions and rules indoctrination of

language and translation, many people understand language as a way of understanding the world itself. As Quine

said, a different language constitutes a different ontological reality. In these cases, “such a conception of languages

as inter-translatable and documentable, the very idea of translating from one to another can seem as strange as

‘translating’ football into baseball.” In the following example, he shows how “even though a person in Zinder,

Niger, is likely to speak several languages – at home she speaks Fulani; in the market she speaks Hausa; she listens

to the news in French – the question of translating between these languages does not arise. Why would you speak

Fulani in the market?” (103).

He later emphasizes the context-bound importance of memory recall by examining our navigational skills.

Navigation is an interesting topic because it implies a certain relational awareness of one’s environment – possibly

reminiscent of our previous examination of the Body Schema. But Noë uses navigation mainly as an example to

show that a certain “familiarity” with one’s environment is not carved into one’s neurons, but instead a certain

acclamation with a familiar environment (121). The use of the familiarity – and the familiarity itself – only present

themselves when geared into the correct contextual environment. Language, navigation, and our cognitive processes,

can be considered complex “habits.” These habits are geared into the environment – they are world involving – and

our lives depend on them (123).

47 Ibid. (128).

34

more accurate to say that the interaction between the two entities is consciousness itself – the self

is derivative of the three criterion as well. Clarifying osmotic consciousness in its different

instantiations, we can see that we as a schemata are constantly geared into the environment as

well. Just as the mind was connected to the extended body in the Schemata. That extendable

body is connected to the active and recalcitrant world in a way that creates a two way, reciprocal,

coupled system. And so the jump from the second to the third box of Figure 1 has now been

safely made.

§7.1. Refutations of the “Brain in the Vat”

Having taken us all the way from brain-body Dualism to our current position at Osmotic

consciousness, I would like to spend some time refuting two specific counterexamples to OC that

Noë also focuses on in his book: The “Brain in the Vat” example and the “grand illusion” of

vision. Both counterexamples, I will argue as Noë does, do not actually do any harm to OC as a

theory and actually do more to show the categorical mistakes of vision science and material

reductionists.

My first defense of OC relies on Noë’s refutation of the “Brain in the Vat”

counterexample. Any philosopher tackling the problem of phenomenological experience has

spent his time in the ring with this though experiment, and for good reason. The idea of virtual

reality – or providing a fabricated array of sensory inputs into an isolated brain in order to

stimulate the sensation of experience, would be all the proof material reductionists need to prove

themselves right. However, what the “scientists” in these experiments seem to forget accounting

for is their own influence on the isolated brain. Just because we can produce some experiences

simply by providing electro-chemical inputs to the correct neurons in the brain, it does not follow

that all experience can be reduced to this. Also, the criterion of “removing the brain from its

environment” is not even being satisfied here. The scientists’ inputs simply replace the

environment. At the very best, we can say that “it would show that the brain plus the actions of

the manipulating scientist are sufficient for the occurrence of hallucinatory events in

consciousness.”48 In short, even a brain in a vat needs a body and a world with which to interact

48 Ibid. (174).

35

– the scientist simply provides substitutions of them for these experiments, instead of

“removing” them as they claim to be doing. Neuroscience still can carry an active role in our

examination of consciousness, but we must first accept that fact that we “are not merely

recipients of external influences, but are creatures built to receive influences that we ourselves

enact; we are dynamically coupled with the world, not separate from it.”49

I feel it safe to say now that by combing the Extended Mind Theory with Noë’s account

of OC, we can see the fallacies behind brain-body dualism’s skeptical argument. The solipsistic

barrier of the skull-skin denotation simply does not provide an accurate account of how our

brains and bodies function in interaction with the world. We produce and react to our

environment in a constantly shifting context-bound interaction. A give and take. The walls

between the subject and her world have at last been broken down. As Noë says, “we are home

sweet home.”50

§7.2. Hubris of Immaculate Perception

Looking next at vision science, we must examine the idea of visual “representation” and

our model of the world. Noë identifies what he calls the “old” and “new” skepticisms of visual

science and shows how each actually goes about handling the mystery of vision in the wrong

way. The “old” skepticism of vision science attempted to account for the fact that “we see much

more than is given to us” as in our visual perceptual experience is far more extravagant than the

light waves our retina are receiving. The “new” skepticism attempts to deal with vision in the

opposite way, accounting for the fact that we actually do not build up a perfect and in focus

representation of the world within our heads, even though we think we do.51 The actuality of how

49 Ibid. (181).

50 Ibid. (186).

51 Ibid. (140). This is the main point that Noë uses to discredit both forms of the visual skepticism. The

claim that we even think that we perceive the world in sharp focus and its entirety is a false assertion. When

accounting for attention deficit, peripheral vision and sensory attention, and our ability to shift our visual focus, we

begin to see a different account of how the world actually shows up for us. Noë makes a pithy but important

comment about how seeing is technically a form of time travel – that because of the fact that by the time my retina

have interpreted the visual data and my neurons have created the image, the image is of the world nanoseconds

prior. Our brain is actually not able to represent all the detail in consciousness all at once. It is not the case that we

are under some grand, instead of vision is simply not immaculate (141).

36

the world appears to us is such: “The world doesn’t show up for me as present all at once in my

mind. It shows up as within reach, as more or less nearby, as more or less present.”52 As Noë

goes on to clarify, the fact that we are vulnerable to deception does not point to our deception as

Descartes so irrationally feared. We are susceptible to deception in many forms of perception,

not just the wax, but with sleight of hand, visual illusion, &c, &c, this “just reveals the context-

bound performance limitations of our cognitive powers. It does not show that our cognitive

powers are radically deluded!”53

§7.3. Context-Bound World and Perception

To embrace Immersionism entirely we must account for our conscious experience as

coupled with the environment. Especially using a biological framework to understand this new

theory of phenomenological experience, it makes sense that such a constitution of experience

would be incomplete by nature. Thus, our need to explain discrepancies or imperfections of our

phenomenology is hubristic and fool hardy. We do not perceive perfectly, we do not do anything

perfectly. Our being is contingent upon the world, and our understanding of the world is

contingent on our being. The three way interaction between brain, body, and world is not only

context-bound within our minds, but outside our skin as well. As I have said previously in this

paper, it is better put to say that “I am consciousness shaped into a body” than “I am a human

being that has consciousness.” However, this is only meant to describe the subject’s interaction

with the world (phenomenal world – referring you back to Figure 1). To make the final step of

the diagram, from osmotic consciousness to full immersionism, the last division between

phenomenal and noumenal world must be confronted.

52 Ibid. (141).

53 Ibid. (142).

37

§8. Dissonance of Interpretation

Yet, even though we have fully reconnected the subject with her world, there is some

sneaking suspicion, some still lingering doubt. The Skeptic still has the issue of alternative

conceptual frameworks. Osmotic consciousness may provide an account of how we are tied up in

the world, but is it true of all possible worlds? Is our individual consciousness contingent of our

individual perceptions and interpretations of the world? If so, reconnecting the subject and world

has done little to nothing in terms of solving the issue of Intersubjective Skepticism. The Skeptic

can still undermine our assertions by saying they are contingent at best – they are true only in the

case of our a priori concepts, our axioms of existence. This skepticism stems from Kant’s work

on the analytic/synthetic distinction and the given/interpreted distinction, and raises the issue of

multiple interpretations of any fact-of-the-matter.

§8.1. Kantian Distinctions and Misinterpretations

The issue of misinterpretations stems from the given/interpreted distinction that came

from Kant’s other categorical divisions. The division are as follows: given/interpreted;

necessary/contingent, analytic/synthetic, a priori/a posteriori, and metaphysical/epistemological.

Analytic propositions are true by their very meaning, and are thus necessary, and not subject to

the fallibility of sense perception. Synthetic propositions are statements which are true by their

relation to the world and so are contingent upon the world and our perception of it. This

distinction can be paralleled to the a priori/a posteriori distinction. There is a noticeable

weakness to the synthetic a posteriori claims, as they seem to rely upon an epistemological need

to interpret the world to ascertain the truth value of the propositions.

However, Kant makes another, more significant distinction here: the given/interpreted.

There is a discrepancy between the inputs we are given and our phenomenological

interpretations of them. Our sensory apparatus is rife with examples, such as light particles

invoking color, air movements creating sound, &c. In this way, Kant made a distinction between

the world as it is in itself and the world how we perceive and interpret it.54 This is what is

54 Wolff, Robert Paul. 1963. Kant’s Theory of Mental Activity; a Commentary on the Transcendental

Analytic of the Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

38

referred to as the noumenal world (the world in itself) and the phenomenal world (our interpreted

world). The skeptic can continue to undermine the accuracy of Osmotic consciousness by

trivializing it to the interpreted, the a posteriori, the synthetic and phenomenal world.

§8.2. Alternative Conceptual Frameworks

So, it would seem that even though we have reconnected the subject with her world, we

have yet to connect the subject with the world. Here, I turn to Rorty’s refutation of these Kantian

distinctions, as well as refer back to Karen Barad’s work on Agential Realism, to complete the

immersion of subject into world. By showing that our understanding of the world as indifferent

and unreachable is actually inaccurate, and that there is only one world that we not only reach –

but extend into – I will show we are fully immersed in the world. Our world.

To begin, Rorty attacks the given/interpreted distinction Kant makes in regards to our

mental faculties. This distinction can actually be traced back all the way to Aristotle, who

originally divided out mental faculties into the active and passive minds. However, Rorty points

out that this distinction is illogical and unnecessary, as “there seems no need to postulate an

intermediary between the physical thrust of the stimulus upon the organ and the full-fledged

conscious judgment that the properly programmed organism forms in consequence.”55 There is

another clarification Rorty makes that is important to the irrelevance of the distinction between

the noumenal and phenomenal world. The notion of a priori Kantian intuitions regarding the

reality of the phenomenal world, they are considered “ineffable” as they are “incapable of having

an explanatory function.”56 We see now that the given/interpreted distinction makes little sense

when considering the possibility of alternate a priori concepts as the intermediary between the

given and interpreted is so subconscious and automatic as to not be in our control. What is more

important, and more consequential in terms of our responsibility, is the distinction between

necessary and contingent truths or a priori facts. Rorty goes on to qualify that “the

55 Rorty, Richard. “The World Well Lost.” The Journal of Philosophy LXIX, 19: 649-665. (650).

56 Ibid. (650). Rorty asserts – rather astutely I might add – that to say that there is some ineffable and

unreachable causal world of which you can say nothing is essentially the same as considering that world not to exist.

Such a concept serves no use to us in philosophy.

39

given/interpretation distinction [problems] are vague and diffuse by comparison with those

which result from attacking the necessary/contingent distinction.”57 By refuting the

necessary/contingent distinction, Rorty argues that the hypothetical of alternate conceptual

frameworks is an impossibility derived from the error of the distinguishing between the world

how it is and the world as we understand it. There is only one world, and it is that world with

which we are engaged and entangled, constituted by our theories of it. .

§8.3. Untranslatable NON-Languages

To set out the problem, Rorty identifies the issue as one of meaning or truth. The truth of

our phenomenological experiences are constituted by our functioning a priori concepts – those

that some would call our widely accepted axioms of existence. These shared beliefs can be seen

as the natural laws that govern our universe, the conceptual frameworks negotiated by a priori

laws of causation and logic and natural order. However these frameworks, or ‘meaning

postulates,’ carrying such weight opens them up to the possibility of alternatives. Dissonance of

interpretation comes from “the notion of a choice among ‘meaning postulates’ […] the latest

version of the notion of a choice among alternative conceptual schemes.”58 These conceptual

frameworks are to be considered the accepted a priori concepts of functioning in the world –

those “concepts necessary for the constitution of experience, as opposed to concepts whose

application is necessary to control or predict experience.”59 In order to examine the hypotheticals

in which a person were to be functioning under different a priori concepts, Rorty examines Quine

and Davidson’s untranslatable language example.

The argument cruxes itself on the unrecognizability of a language being spoken that is

using a conceptual framework differing from our own. What Quine notes is that if one were to

search for the “meaning” of the speaker’s sentences, one would be unable to discern a properly

translatable language that did not translate into contradictions or false beliefs.60 Where Quine and

57 Ibid. (651).

58 Ibid. (651).

59 Ibid. (652).

60 Ibid. (653). The most extreme example of something like this would be “a foreigner all or most of whose

beliefs must be viewed as false according to a translating scheme that pairs off all or most of his terms as identical in

meaning with some terms of English” (653). Such that the case would be that if you were to translate his statements

40

Davidson say that this language would be impossible to translate, Rorty takes it a step further.

For it is true that “if we can never find a translation, why should we think that we are faced with

language users at all?”61Reflecting back on the example it seems more likely that if we were to

be exposed to such a foreigner, we would not want to even give him the credit of speaking an

actual language. He would simply be making random noises, with the same amount of

“meaning” or significance of the cries of a baby, the gibberish of the insane, the rustle of trees.

§8.4. Greeks, Galactics, and Personhood

Here, Rorty places us in the middle of a debate between the skeptic and the anti-skeptic,

both arguing for who shall assume the burden of proof in regards to the existence or non-

existence of alternative a priori concepts. The anti-skeptic seeks to prove that these alternative

concepts are not only unverifiable but impossible, while the skeptic seeks to prove that it is

impossible to prove their impossibility, and thus we are at any moment vulnerable to our entire

belief structure dissolving away to be replaced by entirely new axioms of reality.

The issue of proof here seems to lie in favor of the skeptic, for all he needs to do is

hypothesize some future society in which our understanding of physics and quantum fluctuation

have advanced so far as to completely alter our understanding of the world, our behavior in it,

and our explanation of it. This would insinuate a change in the language as well, which makes it

this example comparable to Quine’s untranslatable language. However Rorty is quick to answer

this hypothetical with a real world rebuttal. Just as the Galactic civilization of the future may

function off of entirely different axioms of reality, so did the Greeks compared to contemporary

civilization. If we use the allegory of Neurath’s boat to explain our a priori concepts at the

moment, the difference between the three civilizations vanishes. We can affirm that since the

Greeks, “many of the planks in Neurath’s boat have been torn up and re-laid differently. But

since (1) we can describe why it was ‘rational’ for each such change to have occurred, and (2)

many more of our beliefs are the same as Greek beliefs than are different […] we should not yet

you would get statements such as “I am not a person”, “these are not words,” “Even if I were thinking, which I am

not, that would not show that I exist.” &c. (654).

61 Ibid. (653).

41

wish to talk about ‘an alternative conceptual framework.’”62 Our understanding of the world may

have shifted or improved from that of the Greeks, but it is a grave to mistake to consider the a

priori concepts of the Greeks to be of an alternate conceptual framework as a whole.

If we are to recognize the “personhood” of the Greeks and their language, some of which

we today still have trouble translating in terms of meaning and the accuracy of their beliefs, we

must also recognize the “personhood” of the future Galactic civilization and their language. Or,

more accurately, hope that they would recognize our “personhood” and language, as it would

seem so foreign and barbaric to them, a “Galactic civilization of the future, which we may

assume to have moved and reshaped 1050 planks in the boat we are in, whereas since Aristotle we

have managed to shift only about 1020.”63 Essentially the ascription of beliefs come with the

ascription of “personhood” to these different civilizations. The question of alternative conceptual

frameworks and untranslatable languages now becomes “is it a person with utterly different

organs, responses, and beliefs, with whom communication is thus forever impossible, or rather

just a complexly behaving thing?”64 We are pushed into the corner by this question. We either

must accept that our understanding of the world – our a priori concepts – are simply not as

absolute as we treat them as and are instead fluid over the millennia, and therefore can recognize

both the Greek and Galactics as persons, or we must accept that our current conceptual

frameworks is our only possible version, and thus condemn both our brethren to blabbering

nonsense.

§8.5. Galactics or Butterflies

The alternative to our recognizing both our past and future counterparts, is instead

recognizing anything else that makes noise in a remotely patterned way. If there are such things

as untranslatable and unrecognizable languages, simply functioning off of alternate a priori

concepts, then there is no concrete justification for the denying that the sounds of butterfly wings

flapping are actually just a very complicated and untranslatable language that we cannot and will

62 Ibid. (655).

63 Ibid. (656).

64 Ibid. (659).

42

never be able to understand. Language is, after all, the ultimate framework through which we

understand the world – and hence is the key to Rorty’s argument here. We either must accept the

gradient of our a priori concepts in order to account for the alteration and adjusting of our

fundamental beliefs, or must subsume all noise making entities under the category of “belief

holding person.” 65 Rorty uses this “fork in the road” argument style to make a final distinction,

ore more accurately, a final refutation of a final distinction: the debate over the correspondence

versus the coherentism of truth.

§8.6. Neurath’s Boat and Scientific Realism

What is at stake in Rorty’s argument is our very definition of the world. As Figure 1

depicts, the connection between the subject and her world has already been established, and the

final step now is to clarify the distinction between (w) and (W), the phenomenal world and the

noumenal world. This is the distinction between coherentism and foundationalism (or the

correspondence theory of truth). The latter asserts that truth is correspondent to reality

independent from us. The first asserts that truth is simply our notion of truth that works within

our currently standing beliefs. When we look at our behavior and our interactions with the world

in those times, we can see that this is the case. In actuality, even the correspondence theory is

eventually subsumed within coherentism, as the world itself “is just the notion of ideally

coherent contents of an ideally large mind, or of the pragmatists’ notion of ‘funded experience’ –

those beliefs which are not at the moment being challenged.”66 Truth, or the world and our

understanding of it, is simply Neurath’s boat which we are riding on turbulent seas over the

millennia, fixing and replacing boards as we go.67 We not only experience and perceive the

world as we interact in it, but we actually help produce our own understanding of it as well.

Rorty establishes a coherentism that fits perfectly within osmotic consciousness and even helps

support Barad’s account of Agential Realism. As Rorty says in closing his piece:

65 Ibid. (659).

66 Ibid. (661).

67 Ibid. (662).

43

“Truth” in the sense of “truth taken apart from any theory” and “world” taken as “what

determines such truth” are notions that were (like the terms ‘subject’ and ‘object’, ‘given’

and ‘consciousness’) made for each other. Neither can survive apart from the other […]

“the world” is either the purely vacuous notion of the ineffable cause of sense and goal of

intellect, or else a name for those objects that inquiry at the moment is leaving alone:

those planks in the boat which are at the moment not being moved about.68

‘Given’ and ‘Consciousness’ were terms made for each other, one cannot survive without the

other. And with the destruction of the last inaccurate arbitrary distinction, “we now know

perfectly well what the world is like,”69 for we are immersed in it.

§9. Immersionism

And so, the road not taken ends. From brain-body dualism to complete immersionism, the

conflation or the noumenal and phenomenal world (or the nihilation of the noumenal world)

completes the reconnection displayed in Figure 1. Having now laid out this new theory of

osmotic consciousness however, we must now look at its implications, or at least the questions

that now must be asked after endorsing such a radical theory that renounces the assumptions of

modern philosophy.

I have already touched upon this notion in previous sections, however I cannot stress

their importance enough. At the beginning of this thesis I issued a called for authenticity in the

sciences. Now that the inaccuracy of the brain-body material reductionism has been proven, it is

necessary for the sciences to account for out productive and performative role in developing the

world with which we engage. The detached Impersonalism of mind science ought to be replaced

with a framework that accepts the active externalism of our environment as well as the

responsibility of our material discursivity.70 Ergo: this framework. Embracing the implications of

Immersionism not only accounts for our own ontological mysteries, but also helps us account for

68 Ibid. (663).

69 Ibid. (662).

70 This call for authenticity in the sciences is proposed in Karen Bard’s work as well as Ian Hacking’s work

in his book, Representing and Intervening.

44

our lack of Objectivity. Maybe accepting this more accurate ontology can even get us closer to a

continual status of flow with the environment, thus reaching some form of symbiotic Objectivity.

Embracing this new ontology also aids us in our account of intersubjective narrative. The

issue of never knowing another person’s inner thoughts at least begins to fade away now, as we

can see the potentiality for socially distributed cognition and extended minds into shared spaces

of the environment. Communication and intention based semantics now fall back into the realm

of helpful possibility – for the idea of shared recognition and intentions and complex systems of

interwoven and pre-established functions aligns itself perfectly with this account of the given

being necessarily tied to the conscious. We, at the very least, have silence the Skeptic once and

for all of his annoying peanut gallery remarks.

The last concept of my theory I would like to examine before setting you free, is the self. In terms

of justification or argument, I have little to offer here. Immersionism provides an account of the subject

and of the world that completely connects the two in an interwoven and dynamic two-way interaction.

However the subject as a self is not clearly denoted. For the sake of barriers and metaphors, I find it best

to define the self in fairly metaphorical terms. Much like Dennett’s account of the self as a narrative

center of gravity, I propose that the self is a central local – specified to an individual schemata of course –

within/near/around/out of which the interaction of osmotic consciousness takes place. In this way, the self

is akin to an aura or some metaphysical local of possibilities and beliefs – an accumulation of the world

within oneself and oneself within the world all at the same time. Noë uses his own poetic reference to

convey a similar sense of the mind, when he prefaces his last chapter with Saul Bellow’s quote from

Humboldt’s Gift. Bellow says that “at the center of the beholder there must be space for the whole, and

this nothing-space is not an empty nothing but a nothing reserved for everything.”71

I follow suit here in similar poetic fashion, and would go as far as to say that immersionism

carries serious ethical and deontological weight. All existential issues of the self and the other stem from a

false conceptualization that we as individuals are separate. Immersionism refutes this false assumption

and replaces it with the metaphor of ocean waves. Just as you may see a wave as an individual, a

desperate whitecap reaching outward away from the blue stillness, it is still never separate from the ocean.

We are all consciousness, all energy, merely shaped into different Schematas. After this fundamental fact,

all else becomes simply a play of form.

71 Noë, Alva. 2009. Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons From the

Biology of Consciousness. New York: Hill and Wang, A division of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. (171).

45

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STM