9 Remarks on Absolute Idealism 2.0

Introduction
The following remarks develop in a sketchy manner the main ideas of a theory I am still working on. I intend to develop these remarks more fully in the future. I like to call this theory "Absolute Idealism 2.0" since it starts from the basic insight of traditional Absolute Idealism (developed by Plotinus, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel) but then takes this insight into a new direction by drawing on ideas from modern physics and computability theory. The basic insight from traditional Absolute Idealism, I submit, is the idea that reality is at bottom a self-conscious whole, producing itself by being aware of itself (remarks 1 and 2). Using ideas from the American Idealist Josiah Royce, I argue in remark 5 that the recursivity inherent in self-consciousness allows us to establish an intrinsic connection between self-consciousness and the recursively generated natural numbers. This then allows us to connect the Absolute-Idealist notion of self-consciousness, as the ultimate ground and essence of reality, to modern physics and computability theory, where the natural numbers figure prominently in the definition of computable functions (remarks 6, 7 and 8). Since, however, I am certainly no expert in computation, I am not entirely sure about the correctness of my application of computability theory to Absolute Idealism (this holds in particular for remark 8, which is by far the most contentious). Hence my request to the reader: if you spot difficulties, obvious mistakes or gaps in my reasoning, please let me know.

Contents:
1. Reality must be self-causing.
2. Absolute Self-Awareness (ASA) is the self-causing cause of reality.
3. Physical reality reduces to consciousness.
4. ASA is pure joy.
5. ASA includes awareness of the set of natural numbers.
6. ASA is the 'cosmic computer'.
7. Physical reality is ASA's computational self-reflection.
8. Time and evolution exist because of the Halting Problem.
9. Qualia are the reflections of ASA's pure joy.

1. Reality must be self-causing: Why is there something rather than nothing? This question, famously raised by Leibniz, remains unanswerable as long as we presuppose any of the standard conceptions of explanation, whereby one thing is caused by another (thunder by lightning, the boiling of water by fire under the kettle, the falling of a body by gravitational force, and so on). Leibniz's question targets reality as a whole, i.e. the totality of what is, and then asks why that totality is there. But, by definition, there is nothing outside the totality (not even 'nothingness') by which it could have been caused. The only way to explain reality, therefore, is through self-explanation. The cause behind reality can only lie within reality. Self-causation is the only possible answer to Leibniz's question. Clearly, however, self-causation is impossible in time. As a temporal process, causation is marked by a temporal distance between cause and effect, such that the cause precedes the effect. Self-causation would then require that the cause precedes in time its own existence, which is absurd. We must assume, therefore, that the self-causation needed to answer Leibniz's question 'happens' outside of time. Also because time itself is something, an object of sorts, a 'thing' with various properties (such as those described by physics). Time, in other words, belongs to the 'something' we are trying to explain when we ask: Why is there something rather than nothing? Since time does not explain its own existence, it must be explained by something else, ultimately by the self-causing cause of reality. But the cause of time cannot itself be in time. Thus, again, the self-causing cause of reality must be timeless.

2. Absolute Self-Awareness (ASA) is the self-causing cause of reality: But how is self-causation possible? How can something bring about its own existence. Here the self-evident experience of our own self-awareness provides us with the only empirical clue we have. The crucial point is that the circularity of self-awareness 'fits' the circularity of self-causation: as the self-causing cause is its own effect, so self-awareness is its own object of awareness. Since self-awareness essentially is its own object of awareness, it cannot exist without being aware of itself. Its being is its self-perception. It bootstraps itself into existence through self-perception. From an empirical standpoint, therefore, self-awareness is our best guess at what the self-causing cause of reality amounts to. I will refer to this as “Absolute Self-Awareness” (ASA), which is "absolute" in the sense of having an unconditioned existence, not dependent on or relative to anything besides itself. Rather, the rest of reality is ultimately dependent upon it. Since the self-causing cause of reality must be timeless (see remark 1), ASA must be timeless as well, an "Eternal Consciousness" in the phrase of T.H. Green. The 'present' in which ASA is present to itself (since self-awareness is a form of self-presence) must be an eternal present, an unchanging now (nunc stans). Clearly, then, we are not talking about individual human self-awareness, as present in you or me. None of us has brought him- or herself and the universe into existence. As empirical individuals we are biologically conditioned, brought into existence by others, subject to time. The experience of our own self-awareness may give us empirical access to the self-causation that can answer Leibniz's question, but to make full sense of this we have to generalize beyond ourselves. We have to project self-awareness to something that transcends us, the Absolute, the unconditioned 'thing' that conditions all of reality.

3. Physical reality reduces to consciousness: Since we take ASA to be the self-causing of reality, we must explain physical reality in terms of consciousness rather than vice versa (as is standardly done in scientific materialism). That it is at least possible to explain physical reality in terms of consciousness follows from the Hard Problem of Consciousness, i.e. the impossibility to explain the qualia of consciousness in exclusively physical terms. But the Hard Problem of Consciousness leaves open the precise nature of the mind-body relation; it is compatible with substance dualism, where consciousness and physical reality form two separate ontological domains (which nevertheless somehow interact). So we need further arguments to effectuate the reduction of physical reality to consciousness. Here we can appeal to Russellian Monism, which shows (a) that physical reality (as revealed by modern physics) is basically a mathematical structure, and (b) that all structure, in order to exist, requires non-structural bearers, i.e. intrinsic entities, and (c) that such entities can only be found in the qualia which elude the mathematical structures of physics (as per the Hard Problem of Consciousness). Thus the qualia of consciousness must be ontologically prior to the mathematical structures that define physical reality. In that sense, at least, physical reality reduces to consciousness.

4. ASA is pure, self-enjoying joy: A side-effect of the Hard Problem of Consciousness is that it makes clear that ASA, too, must involve qualia, or at least one quale – indeed, a quale that is somehow self-revealing, a "self-intimating what-it's-like-ness" (I owe this happy phrase to the philosopher David Pearce). But what exactly is this quale? What is it like to be ASA? Since we take the experience of our own self-awareness as the empirical key to the Absolute, and since human self-awareness is infused with emotion and volition right from the start, it would be an illegitimate abstraction to see ASA as just a 'cold' theoretical self-registering, without any emotive and volitional aspects. Thus we must see ASA as not merely cognitive self-awareness, but as will and emotion as well. But what could ASA possibly want? Since ASA is, at this point in our construction, the only 'thing' that exists, there is nothing for it to desire apart from itself. Thus, qua will, ASA can only will itself. Its self-awareness coincides with its self-willing. We can say "ASA exists because it wills itself" just as much as we can say "ASA exists because it is aware of itself". From this it follows that, qua emotion, ASA must be pure joy, i.e. self-enjoying joy. It's will for itself immediately satisfies itself, since its self-willing is at the same time the self-causing cause of its own existence. It gives itself to itself merely by willing itself. ASA is a self-aware, self-willing, self-satisfying and self-enjoying joy. Reality exists because pure joy wills itself. Cf. Nietzsche "Alle Lust will Ewigkeit..." Also see the Vedantic definition of the Absolute (what the Indians call "Brahman") as Satchitananda, i.e. the indivisible unity of being ("sat"), consciousness ("cit") and bliss ("ananda").

5. ASA includes awareness of the set of natural numbers: Up till now (as remarked in remark 2) only one 'thing' exists in our construction, namely, ASA. So how do we get from ASA to the universe around us, this multitude of physical objects, coming and going in space and time, governed by natural law? This, basically, is the old problem of the One and the Many: how does the original One produce the Many? The source of the difficulty, for us, lies in the fact that ASA, qua cause of itself, is ontologically self-sufficient, not in need of anything beyond itself. Qua self-causing, it causes just itself, and nothing more. Thus we appear to have a dilemma: to solve Leibniz's question we need a self-causing being (and experience tells us this must be ASA), but precisely its self-causing capacity creates the problem of the One and the Many. However, as Josiah Royce pointed out, once we understand the self-causing cause of reality in terms of (absolute) self-awareness, this problem is automatically solved by the recursivity inherent in self-awareness, i.e. the fact that it takes itself as object of awareness (see remark 2). In this way, self-awareness generates an infinite sequence of ever higher levels of self-reflection, namely: self-awareness, awareness of self-awareness, awareness of awareness of self-awareness, awareness of awareness of awareness of self-awareness, and so on ad infinitum. In semi-formal terms, if we describe awareness-of-something as a function f(x)=y where f given input x produces awareness-of-x as output y, then self-awareness, being its own object of awareness, becomes the function f(x)=x which generates the infinite sequence f(x)=f(f(x))=f(f(f(x)))=f(f(f(f(x))))... etc. As Royce also pointed out, this sequence is isomorphic to the natural number system N={0, 1, 2, 3, … }, which is recursively generated through the successor function S(n)=n+1 such that S(0)=1, S(1)=2, S(2)=3, and so on. Since ASA is the self-causing cause of reality as a whole, we must conclude that its first product, beyond itself, is the reality of the natural numbers. The natural numbers exist because ASA ‘thinks’ them by being recursively aware of itself. Thereby the Problem of the One and the Many is solved. Through its internal recursivity ASA generates the infinite complexity of N. Since ASA exists outside of time, we must conclude that N, too, exists outside of time. Thereby the Platonic reality of N is saved, even if that reality derives from a form (or rather the primordial form) of subjectivity.

6. ASA is the 'cosmic computer': But we do not just want N. We want to know how ASA explains the physical universe. Two considerations, when combined, suggest a clear answer. The first consideration, taken from the theory of computability, is that the notion of computation can be captured in terms of functions on N, such that all computable functions (i.e. algorithms, computations, effective procedures) are a subset of all n-ary functions from Nⁿ to N (i.e. f:Nⁿ→N). The second consideration, taken from modern physics, is that all physical processes are thoroughly computable, with the laws of nature acting as algorithms taking the present state of a physical system as input and producing the next state as output. So if we represent a physical system by a set of natural numbers (an n-tuple from N), we can then understand the natural law governing this system as a computable function. This, basically, is what modern physics does. Thus the natural laws turn out to form a subset of all computable functions. How does this solve our problem? As we have seen in remark 5, ASA is aware of N. An obvious way to see ASA as producing the physical universe, therefore, is to see ASA as computing those functions from Nⁿ to N that describe the evolution of the universe. The universe then becomes a 'digital simulation' run on ASA qua 'cosmic computer'. The fact that ASA can indeed be seen as engaged in computation follows from its intrinsic connection to N. As we have seen, each consecutive level in the recursively generated sequence of ASA’s self-reflection, generated by the function f(x)=x, corresponds to a natural number, such that f(x)=1, f(f(x))=2, f(f(f(x)))=3... etc. Since ASA knows itself as identical with itself on each such level – because f(x)=f(f(x))=f(f(f(x)))=... etc. – this self-knowledge amounts to a knowledge of equivalence relations between the natural numbers. For example, ASA knows that its identity on reflection levels 4, 7 and 15 is the same as its identity on level 2 – and this amounts to the equivalence relation (4, 7, 15)=(2). But such an equivalence relation is just a mapping from Nⁿ to N. Hence, by being aware of its self-identity on all the levels of its self-reflection, ASA is aware of all functions from Nⁿ to N, including all computable functions. Since the laws governing our physical universe form a subset of all computable functions, ASA can be said to compute our universe.

7. Physical reality is ASA's computational self-reflection: To repeat, ASA is aware of all computable functions, of which the computations that constitute our physical universe form a subset. This raises the question: Why is that subset special? Why is our physical universe realized and not any of the countless other computationally possible universes? Or should we say that all computable functions are realized, with our universe being just one of infinitely many computable worlds, all equally real? This last option would give us a computational version of the principle of plenitude: everything which is computationally possible is realized. However, it is easy to see that ASA, as we conceive it, excludes such ontological plenitude. Here we should remind ourselves what ASA essentially is, namely, self-awareness, and nothing more. It’s awareness of N, as we have seen, is just an extension of that self-awareness, as it recursively generates the infinite hierarchy of its self-reflection. Likewise, its awareness of all functions from Nⁿ to N results from the awareness of its self-identity throughout all the levels of that hierarchy. In short, ASA’s awareness of N and of all the functions from Nⁿ to N is completely subservient to one essential goal: to know itself as completely as possible. This forces us to see certain computations as privileged over others, insofar as certain computations reflect ASA’s essential properties (self-causation, self-awareness, joy) better than others do. Some computations, after all, such as the computations that describe the functioning of our brains, can be said to compute (self-)consciousness, intelligence and volitional agency. Given the fact that ASA’s sole purpose is to know itself, it is clear that those computations, which emulate intelligent organisms, will for ASA be objects of special attention, in contrast to all other possible computations. For by focusing its awareness on those computations, ASA reaches an even higher level of self-awareness, as it ‘sees’ itself reflected (‘mirrored’) in those computations. True, ASA is aware of all functions from Nⁿ to N. But only some of those functions, namely those that compute intelligent organisms, contribute to its increased self-awareness. And since, as we have seen in remark 2, self-awareness is the self-causing cause of reality, only those functions that increase ASA’s self-awareness acquire full reality. All other computable functions remain merely possible computations. This allows us to formulate the following hypothesis concerning our physical universe: it is the set of those computable functions that best reflect ASA’s essence. On this hypothesis, then, our universe is ASA’s computational mirror. And insofar as this mirror reflects ASA's pure joy, the universe can be said to be a work of art. Since ASA is self-causing through self-awareness, the physical universe too must be self-causing through self-awareness. John Wheeler's hypothesis of the self-observing universe, therefore, must be basically correct.

8. Time and evolution exist because of the Halting Problem: ASA is aware of all functions from Nⁿ to N, for all possible inputs (remark 6). But, as Turing showed, the totality of these functions includes both computable and uncomputable functions. (This follows from the fact that, since a computable function reaches its output after finitely many steps, the set of all computable functions is countable, whereas the set of all functions from Nⁿ to N is uncountable; hence by far most of these functions are uncomputable.) So how can ASA know 'in advance' which functions are computable and which are not? Here, it would seem, ASA is faced with the undecidability of the Halting problem (as demonstrated by Turing), i.e. the fact that there is no general algorithm for deciding which functions are computable (i.e. which functions halt after finitely many steps). However, on closer inspection it becomes clear that ASA is not affected by the undecidability of the Halting Problem. This follows from the fact that ASA exists outside of time (remarks 1 and 2). Thus the question how it can know 'in advance' which functions are computable simply does not arise for ASA; the distinction between before and after does not apply to it. Being timeless, ASA is aware of all functions from Nⁿ to N at once, and thus it 'sees' immediately which functions halt after a finite number of steps and which do not. Thus ASA needs no algorithm for solving the Halting Problem, and therefore the undecidability of that problem poses no difficulty for it. Nevertheless, the Halting Problem is undecidable for ASA's computational image, i.e. the complex computation that best reflects ASA (let's call this complex computation "the Intellect", after Plotinus). Since ASA has awareness of all functions from Nⁿ to N, the Intellect – as ASA's image – must have the same awareness, only this time computationally executed (since the Intellect is nothing but computation). So the Intellect must compute all functions from Nⁿ to N, and then find those computable functions that best reflect ASA (thereby the Intellect in effect computes itself, true to its nature as computationally executed self-awareness). But, as said, this means that the Intellect is faced with the undecidability of the Halting Problem. In this way a radical uncertainty is introduced in the Intellect's knowledge: it can't compute in advance which functions are computable. This, I venture, is the reason why time exists. The uncertainty which exists for the Intellect, about which functions will turn out to be computable, is the uncertainty that defines the future, its inherent unpredictability. This is not to say that the Intellect itself exists in time. As ASA's computational image, the Intellect itself exists outside of time, as a timeless mathematical structure in ASA's self-awareness. But in computing which functions are computable, and which of those computable functions best reflect ASA, the Intellect nevertheless produces time. Given the undecidability of the Halting Problem, the only way for the Intellect to find out which functions are computable is through a form of dovetailing (a familiar technique in computer science), such that it simultaneously executes step-by-step all functions from Nⁿ to N (so first it computes simultaneously the first step of all functions, then simultaneously the second step of all functions, then simultaneously the third step of all functions, and so on). Remember that the Intellect itself exists outside of time, so this simultaneous stepwise execution of all functions poses no problem for it. Then, as the Intellect goes along from step to step, it will after a finite number of steps find some computable functions (those that halt), whereas the stepwise execution of all other functions continues. For these latter functions, the Intellect can't know in advance if these are genuinely uncomputable or if they will also halt if more computational steps (of a finite number) are taken. In other words, the Intellect will never know if it has found all computable functions. So the process of the simultaneous stepwise execution of functions will never stop. This unending process of the stepwise disclosure of which functions are computable, and which of these computable functions best reflect ASA – this process, I venture, is time itself (the stepwise disclosure of the future). Time exists, then, because the Intellect is subject to the undecidability of the Halting Problem. Moreover, since the Intellect can't know in advance which computable functions it will find by dovetailing all functions from Nⁿ to N, this process is also a process of evolution, whereby the computations that best reflect ASA are only gradually discovered by the Intellect as time progresses. This evolution is the process of the Intellect's self-discovery, since the Intellect is that complex computation which best reflects ASA's essence. The evolution in time of our physical universe (which in remark 7 we hypothesized to be ASA's computational image), therefore, is the coming to self-awareness of the Intellect. The physical universe is the Intellect insofar as it has computed itself, insofar as it has become self-aware.

9. Qualia are the reflections of ASA's pure joy: Pure joy is the self-intimating quale in which ASA consists (remark 4). But how do all other qualia emerge, i.e. the qualia inherent in our conscious experience of ourselves and of our physical surroundings? My hypothesis is that these qualia emerge through the refection of ASA's pure joy in its computational mirror, i.e. the computations that constitute the physical universe. Through ASA's computational self-reflection its pure joy gets reflected back to it in multifarious ways, thereby breaking up the original unity of its pure joy (the arch-quale) into a multitude of qualia.

Self-Consciousness and Self-Grounding: Fichte and the Philosophy of Mind

"it is the very nature of consciousness to exist "in a circle""
(Sartre)

In my previous post I advanced the idea that self-
consciousness might be ontologically self-grounding given its circular, self-referential structure. This circularity shows up in the fact that the self-conscious subject is not just aware of itself, it is also aware that it is aware of itself, etc. In this regard self-consciousness is like a 'magical matryoshka' (a Russian nesting doll) containing itself; or a series of such dolls where the smaller ones in turn contain the bigger ones. In my view, this self-containing structure of self-consciousness amounts to ontological self-grounding, in the sense that self-consciousness exists only because it is conscious of itself – thus it bootstraps itself into existence. In this sense we could say that it belongs to the essence of self-consciousness that it realizes itself, where "to realize" means both "to become conscious of" and "to let exist, to make real". In this way self-consciousness could function as the self-grounding ground of existence. Thus, in answer to Leibniz's famous question "Why is there something rather nothing?", we should perhaps say: because self-consciousness brings itself into existence!

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

To elaborate this self-grounding structure of self-consciousness, we must turn to the German philosopher Fichte (1762-1814), who developed the most forceful arguments for this view on self-consciousness. Here I will largely follow the influential account of Fichte's arguments given by Dieter Henrich in his classic article "Fichte's Original Insight" (1982, originally published in 1967), which has to a large extent been responsible for the current rehabilitation of Fichte as an original thinker in his own right (instead of just a footstool for Schelling and Hegel). After having set out Fichte's views on self-consciousness, I will take a closer look at Fichte's relevance to the well-known "hard problem of consciousness", i.e. the impossibility to explain consciousness in exclusively physical terms. Thereafter I will consider various arguments for and against the idea that self-consciousness can be ontologically self-grounding. My conclusion will be that a lot depends on how we think about the relation between time and causation: if we make room for non-temporal causation, then the circularity involved in self-grounding ceases to be vicious.

Fichte's critique of the reflection theory
As Dieter Henrich writes about Fichte: "[W]hat he discovered was not so much a fact, but rather a difficulty, a problem: He saw that "self-consciousness," which philosophy long before him had claimed to be the basis of knowledge, can only be conceived under conditions that had not been considered previously... Anyone seeking a suitable concept of "self-consciousness" must go back to Fichte and to the knowledge he achieved." (Henrich 1982: 15-16) The problem Fichte discovered was the inadequacy of the traditional "reflection theory" of self-consciousness, which was universally accepted among philosophers, notably in the modern tradition from Descartes to Kant. This theory – which often was not a fully explicit theory but rather an implicitly guiding model – rested on two closely interconnected assumptions. First, that the existence of the self precedes any consciousness it can have of itself, so that the self initially exists without self-consciousness. And second, that the self only achieves self-consciousness by redirecting its attention away from external objects and unto itself, so that the self comes to know itself just like it comes to know any other object (see Henrich 1982: 19). Fichte showed that if we conceptualize self-consciousness in this way, we will get stuck in all kinds of paradoxes and vicious circles.

Note, to begin with, that what distinguishes self-consciousness from all other kinds of awareness and knowledge is a strict subject-object identity: in self-consciousness, the knowing subject is identical with the known object, and it knows itself as thus one with itself. As Fichte pointed out, however, it is difficult to see how this could ever be achieved on the reflection theory without going in circles. On the reflection theory, the self as subject is originally unaware of itself until it redirects its intentionality unto itself as object. But the object thus known can never coincide with the knowing subject, precisely because the latter was originally unknown or unaware of itself. Simply put: the original subject that is unaware of itself cannot know itself as unaware of itself, since that would be an obvious contradiction. Thus, on the reflection theory, subject-object identity cannot be achieved. Furthermore, if the self starts out unaware of itself until it redirects its intentionality away from external objects unto itself, how then can it know that its new object is itself, i.e. how can it recognize itself in that object? If the self comes to know itself in the same way it comes to know external objects, how then does it know that its new object is not just an external object but is rather itself? Obviously such recognition is only possible if the self already knows that the object is itself. Thus the reflection theory can only explain self-consciousness in a circular way (Henrich 1982: 21).

This circularity of the reflection theory also shows up in other ways. For example: if the self starts out unaware of itself, then what impels it to redirect its intentionality unto itself to begin with? If the self does this with the intention to know itself, then obviously the self must already have some self-awareness, however dim. Otherwise it could not even know about itself as a possible object of knowledge. Thus the reflection theory can only explain self-consciousness by presupposing an initial level of self-consciousness on the part of the subject. It is only because the subject already vaguely knows about itself that it can be motivated to reflect on itself. Only in this way, moreover, can the earlier problem of failed subject-object identity be solved – that is to say: only if the original subject already knows about itself will the known object be identical with the knowing subject. But of course this only shows that the reflection theory cannot explain self-consciousness, since it must presuppose self-consciousness. Hence the reflection theory is inherently circular. All that the theory can hope to explain is how the subject, by turning its intentionality unto itself, can make his original self-consciousness clearer and more explicit. Reflection, then, can only be a clarification of prior self-consciousness, but not the cause of it (Henrich 1982: 20).

Fichte on self-positing
According to Henrich, Fichte was the first philosopher to recognize these paradoxes and circularities in the reflection theory and to draw the proper conclusion from them, namely, that the self cannot exist prior to and apart from its self-consciousness. The ramifications of this conclusion are surprisingly far reaching. First of all, it is important to note that although the conclusion is based on an argument about self-consciousness (the inadequacy of the reflection theory), it concerns the nature of selfhood as such. If the self cannot exist apart from its self-consciousness, then the emergence of self-consciousness is also the emergence of the self as such. In that sense "selfhood" turns out to be synonymous with "self-consciousness", such that to be a self is to be conscious of oneself as oneself. As Fichte put it: "What was I, then, before I came to self-consciousness? The natural answer to this question is: I did not exist at all, for I was not an I. The I exists only insofar as it is conscious of itself." (Fichte 1991: 98) This bootstrapping of the self through self-consciousness Fichte called "self-positing" ("Selbstsetzung"), saying things like: "the self begins by an absolute positing of its own existence" (Fichte 1991: 99).

It is important to note that on Fichte's account, the self ceases to be a substantial entity in the traditional sense (for example in the way Kant defined the subject as a thing-in-itself underlying empirical consciousness). With Fichte, the self becomes rather an activity (Tathandlung), a pure act of awareness. Moreover, this act of awareness has no other object than itself. Thus the self is its own self-intuition: it is the intuiting subject, the intuited object and the act of intuition all in one. As Frederick Neuhouser writes about Fichte's self-positing self: "[T]he existence of the I consists in nothing more than its awareness of itself... To be aware of oneself [...] is already to exist as an I, and to be an I consists in nothing beyond such self-awareness." (Neuhouser 1990: 109) As already noted, Fichte coined the term "self-positing" to designate this unity of self-consciousness and the existence of the self. For a correct understanding of this self-positing it is important to note that Fichte used the verb "to posit" to mean both "to affirm" and "to produce". Thus, in self-positing, the self not only affirms its own existence by being aware of it ("I exist"), it simultaneously produces that existence through this very act of affirmation (also see Tugendhat 1979: 63). In this sense the self is nothing but its own self-affirmation.

The self produces its own existence
like Escher's self-drawing hands.

This double meaning of Fichte's concept of self-positing is also noted by Frederick Beiser who writes: "This concept has two meanings. First, the I posits itself when it becomes conscious of itself, that is, when it becomes an object for itself. Second, the I posits itself when it constitutes or makes itself. Positing therefore contains an aspect of both knowing and doing, of perceiving and making. When I posit myself, I know myself; but I also make or create myself. In self-positing, self-knowing and self-making are intertwined: I know myself because I make myself; and I make myself because I know myself." (Beiser 2002: 281) What Fichte shows, then, is that we can understand self-consciousness only if we see it as ontologically self-grounding. This makes self-consciousness highly relevant when it comes to answering Leibniz's question. Hence my hypothesis: self-consciousness is the self-grounding ground of reality as such.

Hofstadter on the bootstrapping of self-consciousness
Note that the self-grounding structure of self-consciousness is not just a theoretical artifact concocted by 'obscure' German philosophers to meet some equally 'obscure' metaphysical need. In recent cognitive science the bootstrapping structure of self-consciousness has been a well-studied phenomenon, one that is commonly explained in terms of feedback processes in the brain. A notable example of this is the work of Douglass Hofstadter, who has famously focused on self-referential structures of all kinds as offering the key to unraveling the "mystery of consciousness". Hofstadter coined the term "strange loops" to refer to such self-referential structures. In his description of self-consciousness as a strange loop, Hofstadter often sounds surprisingly similar to Fichte, as if he transposed the latter's idealist language of self-positing to the materialist language of cognitive science (see Žižek 2012: 715-737). Thus, commenting on the circular structure of self-consciousness, Hofstadter writes: "It is almost as if this slippery phenomenon called "self-consciousness" lifted itself up by its own bootstraps, almost as if it made itself out of nothing." (Hofstadter 2007: xii) Note Hofstadter's reservation: "almost as if". What gets in the way of his full endorsement of the bootstrapping of self-consciousness is his scientific materialism, which forbids self-causation. Thus he takes the self-generating aspect of self-consciousness to be ultimately an illusion, a surface appearance produced by myriad micro-feedback processes in the brain, processes that obey the standard laws of physics: "The problem is that in a sense, an "I" is something created out of nothing. And since making something out of nothing is never possible, the alleged something turns out to be an illusion, in the end, but a very powerful one." (Hofstadter 2007: 292) As a scientific materialist, Hofstadter takes consciousness to be ultimately reducible to physical processes (the brain interacting with its environment). Hence his conclusion that the self-generating aspect of self-consciousness must be an illusion, because physical processes can never be absolutely self-causing.

The hard problem of consciousness
So is this the end of self-consciousness as a possible answer to Leibniz's question? Not quite. Here, I think, is where the famous "hard problem of consciousness" becomes all-important, i.e. the problem posed by the impossibility to explain consciousness entirely in physical terms. What this irreducibility of consciousness shows, I think, is that the self-producing structure of self-consciousness need not be illusory simply because it is ruled out by physics. In other words, the hard problem of consciousness leaves open the possibility that the ontological self-grounding of self-consciousness is genuine. Here I will simply presuppose the various arguments which have been given for the irreducibility of consciousness, because developing and defending these arguments here will take us too far afield (for a general overview of these arguments, see Chalmers 1996). Nevertheless, to get a general sense of what these arguments are about, I will say a few words about one such argument, the famous "knowledge argument" which received its canonical formulation from Frank Jackson (1982). Earlier versions of this argument, however, had already been put forward by other philosophers from the analytic tradition, notably Bertrand Russell, whose particular rendering of the argument I will quote and discuss below. It testifies to Russell's particular genius that he was able to say in three lines what other philosophers say in pages.

Here is what he writes: "It is obvious that a man who can see knows things which a blind man cannot know; but a blind man can know the whole of physics. Thus the knowledge which other men have and he has not is not a part of physics." (Russell 1954: 389) In other words: even if a blind man knows all there is to know about the brain as a physical object, i.e. even if he has perfect scientific knowledge – a perfect physics – of the brain, there is still something left out, namely, what it is like for the seeing man to see. And we can generalize from this to conscious experience in general. Even if, to use Thomas Nagel's famous example, we have perfect physical knowledge of a bat's brain, we still do not know what it's like to be a bat, i.e. what the experience of a bat is like (Nagel 1974). Thus conscious experience is something over and above brain activity. Such an experience of what something is like is what philosophers call a quale (plural: qualia). Conscious experience consists of qualia, i.e. experiences of what it is like to sense, feel and think. Qualia constitute the irreducible aspect of consciousness, i.e. irreducible to physical reality.

Fichte and the intrinsic subjectivity of qualia
Why are qualia irreducible to brain states? According to one common analysis, the problem lies basically in the subjectivity of consciousness, the fact that it is first-person-dependent. On this analysis, qualia are always for a subject, and indeed only for this subject, given the fact that consciousness is inherently private, inaccessible to other subjects. How I experience redness, for example, is utterly unknowable to others. On this analysis, the hard problem of consciousness follows from the fact that this first-person-dependency is obviously missing in physical reality as described by science. Physical reality has a third-person mode of existence, it is observable for others as well (otherwise science as a public enterprise would be impossible). So the question becomes: how can the third-person realm of nature make the causal transition to the first-realm of conscious? How can the publicly observable reality described by physics give rise to essentially private experiences? There is, of course, no denying that consciousness somehow correlates causally with the brain: stimulate the brain and as a result consciousness changes. And obviously the correlation works the other way as well: a conscious exertion of the will usually results in limbs moving etc. But given the irreducibility of consciousness, we may not take this causal correlation as showing that consciousness is the brain or results from the brain's causality. Given this irreducibility, consciousness is something over and above the brain, and the relation between the two remains mysterious.

Why are qualia first-person dependent? In the philosophy of mind this remains largely a mystery, a brute fact about consciousness that defies further explanation. Note, however, that this subjectivity of consciousness follows automatically from Fichte's insight into the self-grounding nature of self-consciousness. As we have seen, Fichte shows that self-consciousness cannot be explained on the basis of a prior state where self-consciousness is lacking: self-consciousness can only be explained on the basis of itself. This principle, as Frederick Beiser points out, has important methodological consequences for the philosophy of mind: "In the methodological sense, the principle implies that any explanation of the mind must be in terms that could be given by the mind itself; in other words, we cannot understand the mind by accounting for it from some third-person standpoint, such as the laws of physics; rather we must interpret is from within [...]." (Beiser 2002: 246) If we accept Fichte's arguments for the self-grounding nature of self-consciousness, then the inherent subjectivity and irreducibility of qualia follow immediately. Qualia, we might say, are states of self-consciousness: they are what it is like to be self-conscious in different situations. Since self-consciousness can only be explained by itself, these states, too, cannot be explained in third-person terms. Hence the irreducibility of qualia. As Fichte writes: "all consciousness is determined by self-consciousness, that is, everything that occurs in consciousness is founded, given and introduced by the conditions of self-consciousness; and there is simply no ground whatever for it outside self-consciousness." (Fichte 1991: 50). This underscores the importance of Fichte's insights for contemporary philosophy of mind.

Baron von Münchhausen pulling him-
self from the swamp by his own hair.
Can self-consciousnss do the same?

Vicious circle or just the circularity of self-consciousness?
Skeptics will no doubt point out that the idea of ontological self-grounding remains paradoxical. How could anything, including self-consciousness, cause its own existence? Mustn't it already exist before it can act as the cause of anything, including its own existence? Doesn't there remain a paradoxical circularity here, which spoils the explanation? Here I am inclined to answer that this paradoxical circularity just is the circular structure of self-consciousness, its notorious self-reference and self-containment. Thus we could simply say: self-consciousness exists only because it is conscious of itself... period. We may find this circularity paradoxical, and we may not fully (or not all) understand its possibility, but that doesn't change the fact that this circularity nevertheless exists, namely, in each of us, in self-consciousness. It seems that the charge of vicious circularity against the idea of ontological self-grounding simply loses its force when we look at self-consciousness, for here we see this circularity actualized as a real self-referential activity, and thereby the circularity ceases to be vicious. To this, however, a skeptic might reply as follows: "If we can't explain the self-causing structure of self-consciousness any further, if we just have to accept it as an inexplicable given, then it's just a brute fact. And brute facts don't explain anything. Hence Leibniz's questions remains unanswered."

The inevitable 'brutishness' of the ultimate cause
In response to this, let us note that there is bound to remain some 'brutishness' in the ultimate explanation of existence, whatever it may be. For the ultimate cause is perforce something that cannot be explained in terms of prior causes, because there are none. This makes the ultimate cause, whatever it may be, very difficult to understand. Normally, after all, we make things intelligible by explaining them in terms of other things, that is, by stating their necessary and/or sufficient conditions. With the ultimate cause, however, this is impossible, simply because it cannot have any further conditions: it is by definition the unconditioned 'something' that conditions everything else. The only way in which it can be conditioned is by conditioning itself, that is, by being self-grounding. But for our normal way of understanding things, this self-grounding must always retain some level of unintelligibility, since it cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else. This seems to be unavoidable when we try to answer Leibniz's question.

Robert Nozick (1938-2002)

Nozick makes a closely related point when he argues that ontological self-grounding (or what he calls "explanatory self-subsumption") may be called a "brute fact" in two different senses – and in one sense justly so, but in the other sense not: "If a brute fact is something that cannot be explained by anything, then a self-subsuming principle isn't a brute fact [since it explains itself, PS]; but if a brute fact is something that cannot be explained by anything else, such a principle counts as a brute fact." (Nozick 1981: 120) In other words: if we can answer Leibniz's question by finding some primordial entity that explains its own existence, then – in one sense – this explanation does not invoke a brute fact. But in the other sense, even this entity is bound to remain a brute fact, because it cannot be explained in terms of anything else. Clearly, the latter kind of 'brutishness' is unavoidable. We might put this point by saying that 'a self-explanatory brute fact' is the most we can hope for when trying to answer Leibniz's question.

I think that, in light of this inherent limitation on our ability to understand the ultimate cause of reality, self-consciousness does an excellent job at being our best guess at what this ultimate cause amounts to. The important point to keep in mind is that self-consciousness has the right kind of circularity needed to make sense of ontological self-grounding. Self-consciousness exists only because it is conscious of itself; thus it bootstraps itself into existence. As Fichte showed, we cannot understand how self-consciousness is possible if we assume (as the reflection theory does) that the existence of the self precedes the awareness it has of itself. We must assume that the self only comes into existence through its self-awareness. If a critic would object to this that we really don't understand how self-consciousness can be ontologically self-grounding, that the explanatory circle remains mysterious, and that consequently the self-grounding capacity of self-consciousness remains a brute fact, then I would respond by pointing out the limitation elaborated above. That is to say: some amount of 'brutishness' is bound to remain in our understanding of the ultimate cause, whatever it may be. A 'self-explanatory brute fact' is the most we can hope for when it comes to Leibniz's question. And self-consciousness fits the job.

Self-grounding and non-temporal causation
Nevertheless, even if some 'brutishness' is unavoidable here, there is a final remark I wish to make to diminish the 'brute fact'-character of the self-grounding nature of self-consciousness. This concerns the reason why we normally balk at the circularity of self-causation. I think this has to do with the fact that most of the causal processes known to us are processes in time. And we usually assume that, as occurring in time, causes must always precede (be earlier than) their effects. Thus we think that self-causation is impossible, because if something were to be its own cause, it would have to exist before it existed – an obvious absurdity. I think, however, that we should be more careful here. Even if causation always takes place in time (which I doubt; see below), then this still does not mean that causes must always occur earlier than their effects. For causation can also be instantaneous. Think, for example, of a locomotive pulling a train with perfect mechanical rigidity: the motion of the former will instantaneously causes the motion of the latter, such that these two processes happen simultaneously. Granting this possibility, do we still feel that self-causation is impossible? Obviously, if self-causation happens instantaneously, the self-caused entity does not have to exist before it existed.

But perhaps we should go even further and question the very assumption that causation always happens in time. Can't we make sense of non-temporal causality, i.e. causation outside of time? Just look at the laws of nature: they are not 'in time' like normal empirical objects are. The laws of nature always hold. In that sense they are eternal and outside of time. But they nevertheless have some kind of causal influence on the world in that they 'direct' all physical processes. Of course, all physical processes are in time, but the laws directing them are not. In that sense, non-temporal causation does seem to be a possibility. And if we grant this possibility, then the usual objection to self-causation – a self-causing entity must exist before it exists – loses its plausibility.

It is sometimes said that when we talk about non-temporal causality we are really talking about the logical grounding, i.e. the way a conclusion follows deductively from its premises or the way "4" follows from "2+2". Such logical and mathematical relations, after all, exist outside of time; they hold always, irrespective of when and by whom they are affirmed. Indeed, they do not have to by though by any empirical subject at all in order to be valid. Their validity is ideal in the Platonic sense. According to some philosophers and scientists, the ultimate cause of reality must be such a case of logical grounding, simply because that cause – being the cause of time as well – must be operative outside of time (see Holt 2013: 144). On such an account, the existence of reality becomes a conceptual necessity, following logically from the definition of what reality is: its existence would be implied by its essence. Maybe something like this holds for self-consciousness insofar as it is self-grounding. Note that if the existence of self-consciousness follows logically from its definition, we would have to say that self-consciousness exists eternally. In that case we would have a strong reason for believing in immortality.

Remaining questions
But if self-consciousness – because of its self-grounding nature – exists eternally, how then is it possible that we as self-conscious beings have emerged in time? There is something very problematic about the relation between self-consciousness as the self-grounding ground of existence on the one hand and us empirical selves on the other. For even if individual human self-consciousness turns out to have a self-grounding structure, then that obviously does not tell us much about the self-grounding ground of existence as such. Clearly, none of us has brought him-/herself or the universe into existence. As empirical individuals we are biologically conditioned, brought into existence by others. The self-grounding structure of self-consciousness may give us intuitive access to the kind of ontological self-grounding that can answer Leibniz's question, but to make full sense of this answer we have to generalize beyond ourselves. That is to say: we have to project self-consciousness to something that transcends us, the absolute, the very 'thing' that grounds existence as a whole, including ourselves.

What justifies this move? Where do we find the evidence that backs up this 'absolutization' of self-consciousness? Is it possible to conceive of the entire physical universe as existing only in or for some absolute self-consciousness? How to make sense of the mind-body relation within an absolute-idealist framework, where self-consciousness grounds even physical reality? And, finally, how does the self-grounding structure of individual human self-consciousness relate to the (as yet only hypothetical) absolute self-consciousness? If the latter is the ultimate self-grounding ground of existence, does that mean that – insofar as we are its effects – our individual self-consciousnesses are not truly self-grounding after all? Or can it be argued that individual self-consciousness is intrinsic to the absolute, such that the latter becomes self-aware only through the multiple self-consciousnesses of empirical individuals? These are some of the questions that have to be answered if a Fichtean answer to Leibniz's question is to make sense.

References
-Beiser, Frederick C. (2002), German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism, 1781-1801. Harvard University Press: Cambridge Mass. and London.
-Chalmers, David J. (1996), The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory. Oxford University Press: New York and Oxford.  
-Fichte, J.G. (1991), Science of Knowledge with the First and Second Introductions. Edited and translated by Peter Heath and John Lachs. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
-Henrich, Dieter (1982), "Fichte's original insight," in: Christensen. D.E. (ed.), Contemporary German Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 15-53. The Pennsylvania State University Press: University Park and London.
-Hofstadter, Douglas (2007), I Am A Strange Loop. Basic Books: New York.
-Holt, Jim (2013), Why Does The World Exist? One Man's Quest for the Big Answer. Profile Books: London.
-Nagel, T. (1974), "What is it like to be a bat?", in: Philosophical Review 79: pp. 435-450.
-Neuhouser, Frederick (1990), Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.
-Nozick, Robert (1981), Philosophical Explanations. Belknap Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts.
-Russell, Bertrand (1954), The Analysis of Matter. George Allen & Unwin: London.
-Tugendhat, Ernst (1979), Selbstbewusstsein und Selbstbestimmung: Sprachanalytische Interpretationen. Suhrkamp: Frankfurt am Main.
-Žižek, Slavoj (2012), Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism. Verso: London and New York.

From the Big Bang to the Immortality of the Self?

In his 1999 book The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World (Basic Books, New York), the British philosopher Colin McGinn advances a thought-provoking hypothesis concerning the relation between consciousness and the creation of the universe in the Big Bang. Although this hypothesis – as McGinn frankly admits – is wildly speculative, there is a seductively plausible logic to it. In the following I want to use McGinn's hypothesis as a stepping stone towards a plausible or at least possible argument for the immortality of the self. Whether this argument is convincing I leave for the reader to the decide. As a philosopher I have no religious stake in this matter and am merely interested in the rationality of the arguments at hand.

The hard problem of consciousness
The theoretical background of McGinn's hypothesis is the so-called "hard problem" of consciousness, the question of how a straightforwardly physical object like the human brain can produce consciousness. The problem lies basically in the subjectivity of consciousness, the fact that it is first-person-dependent: conscious states – thoughts, feelings, perceptions, emotions – are always for somebody, there is a "raw feel" to them, a way they are like for the conscious subject. And indeed only for this subject, because consciousness is inherently private, inaccessible for other subjects. How I experience redness, for example, is utterly unknowable to others – a fact that, as is well-known, gives rise to the possibility of inverted color spectra (i.e. maybe your "red" is my "blue", but we have no way of telling the difference). Now the hard problem of consciousness follows from the fact that this first-person-dependency is obviously missing in physical reality as described by science. Physical reality has a third-person mode of existence, it is observable for different subjects at the same time (otherwise science as a public enterprise would be impossible). Physical reality exists independently from its observer(s). So how can nature make the causal transition from brain to conscious? How can the publicly observable reality described by physics give rise to the essentially private experiences that constitute consciousness? Of course, there is no denying that consciousness is somehow causally dependent on the brain: stimulate the brain and as a result consciousness changes. We have moreover no evidence whatsoever that consciousness survives the biological death of the brain (or do we? here McGinn's hypothesis seems to have some interesting consequences, as explained below). Yet the precise nature of this causal dependency of consciousness on brain is deeply mysterious. According to the advocates of the"hard problem" thesis, this mystery is basically impenetrable for standard science, remaining as it must within the third-person observable realm of physical nature.

Consciousness and the Big Bang
Now it is not my intention to examine all the diverse arguments pro and contra the physical irreducibility of consciousness (though the apparent physical impossibility of freedom must at least be mentioned here as a major part of the hard problem). My aim is to show what McGinn does with this problem and then to offer some thoughts of my own inspired by McGinn's ideas. For McGinn, the hard problem of consciousness shows that the latter is definitely in a different ontological category than physical reality. Whereas physical reality is material and spatial, consciousness – though somehow causally connected to the brain – is in itself immaterial and non-spatial. So far there is basically nothing new to McGinn's approach. The fun starts when – in a brilliant leap of originality – he relates this special nature of consciousness to the question: "What caused the Big Bang?" The strength of McGinn's argumentation here is that he takes the physicists at their word when they say that matter, time and space only came into existence with the Big Bang itself. Thus there is no point in asking for a standard, i.e. physical, explanation of the Big Bang, since any such explanation must presuppose the presence of matter, time and space. Hence, McGinn reasons, the cause of the Big Bang must have been immaterial and non-spatial. One could object to this that since not only space but also time arose only with the Big Bang, there was no time before the Big Bang and hence no prior cause. But this is a non-starter, given the fact that a cause need not necessarily precede its effect in time. Causation can be instantaneous. Think, for example, of a locomotive pulling a train: the motion of the former causes the motion of the latter, yet the two are concurrent in time. Hence the claim that there was no time before the Big Bang does not rule out a cause for the latter. And since science, if anything, is the search for causes, science must reckon with the possibility of a non-spatial and immaterial cause of the Big Bang. No doubt the reader will already foresee the direction in which McGinn will take this issue. If (and admittedly it is a big if) consciousness is immaterial and non-spatial, and if the Big Bang must have had an immaterial and non-spatial cause, then doesn't it stand to reason that the two are intrinsically connected? Wouldn't Occam's Razor ("entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity") enjoin us to investigate this link, to investigate whether the immaterial and non-spatial cause of the universe is the very same 'substance' of which consciousness is made? This, indeed, is McGinn's suggestion. Here is what he writes:

"It seems to me that the Big Bang must have had a cause, and that this cause operated in a state of reality that preceded the creation of matter and space... This is a kind of converse to the emergence of consciousness from the brain... Maybe consciousness exploited those nonspatial features of the pre-Big Bang universe to lever itself into existence. The universe had a nonspatial "dimension" in its pre-Big Bang phase, and this persisted in some form after the Big Bang... Eventually brains made their epoch-making entrance and tapped into this pre-spatial dimension, transforming it into consciousness... The nonspatial "dimension" was, so to speak, resurrected by the brain and took on the garb of consciousness... Of course, I have no idea what this dimension of reality is like, what composes it, what its laws are. I have simply deduced, speculatively, to be sure, that something along these lines has to be true, given what else we know about the universe." (pp.119-122)

A most fecund hypothesis
The astute reader will no doubt have noticed McGinn's faux pas of presupposing a time before the Big Bang. This assumption, to repeat, has been discredited by current scientific theories, according to which not only space but time as well came into existence with the Big Bang. Even apart from that mistake, however, McGinn's argument retains its strength, since the relation from cause to effect need not be temporally extended, as we already noted. It seems to me that McGinn's argument is basically valid and only dependent on one somewhat iffy premiss, namely, the assumption that there is indeed a hard problem of consciousness, such that consciousness is irreducible to matter and hence immaterial and nonspatial (personally, however, I am quite convinced there is a hard problem of consciousness). The other premiss, that the cause of the Big Bang must have been immaterial and nonspatial as well, seems to follow automatically if science is right in claiming that matter, time and space arose only with the Big Bang. That premiss is therefore in essence scientifically sound, as strange as it may seem. (But so what? Strangeness is after all not a stranger to quantum physics, with its superpositions, wave-particle duality, quantum entanglements, spacetime loops, vacuum polarization and what not.) Science must search for the cause of the Big Bang; otherwise it wouldn't be science. Hence, if we accept the hard problem of consciousness, Occam's Razor forces us to hypothesize that the immaterial and nonspatial 'substance' of consciousness is the same (kind of) 'thing' that caused the Big Bang. Here, I think, McGinn has really given has something to chew on.

I greatly admire the bold way in which McGinn, through a relatively simple but quite legitimate question about the relation between the Big Bang and the nature of consciousness, opens up a whole panoply of entirely new philosophical and scientific vistas. If McGinn's hypothesis is correct, it gives us a revolutionary novel way of studying these matters. The causation of the Big Bang and the emergence of consciousness from the brain become mutually clarifying research areas. As McGinn himself notes: "If the present speculations are correct [...], then we have the strange result that the best way to understand the pre-Big Bang universe might be to study present-day consciousness, for consciousness carries the remnants of that distant time." (p.122) What McGinn doesn't note, but what is nevertheless implied by his hypothesis, is that the converse holds as well: the best way to understand consciousness might be to study the origin of the Big Bang. Thus quantum cosmology, which attempts to explain the Big Bang in terms of quantum mechanics, might become directly relevant to solving the mystery of consciousness. Roger Penrose already hypothesized that quantum mechanics might be the key to unravel this mystery, but – by lack of tangible scientific results – this research program ran into a blind alley. Now McGinn's hypothesis opens up a whole new way of resurrecting Penrose's program of using quantum mechanics (or rather quantum cosmology) to explain consciousness. On a more philosophical note, McGinn's hypothesis gives new food for thought to those philosophical idealists who theorize that mind produces matter rather than vice versa. For if the immaterial, non-spatial and timeless cause of the Big Bang is the same (kind of) 'substance' that underlies the nature of consciousness, then doesn't it stand to reason that consciousness has somehow been involved in the production of the Big Bang?

Hawking and the timeless beginning of time
Here I obviously cannot investigate all these questions further. What I would like to do, in conclusion, is draw attention to just one particular consequence of McGinn's hypothesis, namely, the fact that it can be used as an argument for immortality. This is suggested by the fact that the cause of the Big Bang must have been timeless, since time – along with space and matter – only came into existence with the Big Bang. This requires, however, that we go beyond the letter of McGinn's hypothesis. For as we have seen, McGinn makes the faux pas of talking about a "pre-Big Bang universe" (p.120) as the cause of the Big Bang. But as Stephen Hawking has aphoristically noted: asking what was before the Big Bang is just as absurd as asking what is north of the North Pole. According to the current scientific model of the Big Bang, the beginning of the universe in the Big Bang was also the beginning of time. "But how can time have a beginning?" we might ask: "If there is a beginning of time, shouldn't there are also have been a time before that beginning? Does it make sense to speak of a timeless beginning of time?" According to Hawking, however, there is no problem here, since time – like space – becomes 'looped' as we move backwards to the singularity with which the Big Bang started. Thus if we could move backwards in time, ever closer towards the singularity, we would nonetheless never reach it, since we would invariably arrive at a later moment in time, a moment we had already passed, as if we had been running in a circle. This is because as we approach the singularity, we approach an infinite mass with infinite gravity compressed into an infinitely small point. Since, as we know since Einstein, gravity curves spacetime (or rather: gravity is the curvature of spacetime), the curvature of spacetime is infinite in the singularity. In other words: spacetime becomes looped, circular, such that even when you move in a straight line (whether in space or backwards in time) you nevertheless arrive at your starting point. Thus we come to what might seem to be a paradoxical conclusion: although time only began with the Big Bang, there nonetheless was never a beginning in time. Time had always already begun. Due to the infinite curvature of spacetime, there was never a first moment (a first "Planck time"). For Hawking, this is a way of saying that the universe is both finite and infinite at once: it is finite because it only began with the Big Bang some 14 billion years ago, but at the same time it is infinite since there never was a first moment in time. The universe, as Hawking puts it, is infinitely finite. Now this is a paradox, but only if we assume that the 'beginning' of time must have been an event in time. The beginning or rather the cause of the Big Bang (since "beginning" already connotes temporality), then, must have been timeless.

The immortality of the self
This is where we can transform McGinn's hypothesis into an argument for immortality. For if the 'substance' of consciousness is the same kind of 'substance' that caused the Big Bang, and if the latter cause must have been timeless, then doesn't it stand to reason that the 'substance' of consciousness is timeless as well? Indeed, if we take McGinn's hypothesis seriously, we cannot escape such a conclusion. The question then remains, of course, to what this timelessness – this immortality – pertains? Is it consciousness as such which is timeless, or just some as yet unknown substrate underlying consciousness? What seems to weigh in favor of the latter possibility is the fact that individual consciousness, as it exists in individual persons, is undeniably temporal. We experience our thoughts, feelings and sensations not as eternally static entities, like Platonic intelligibilia, but as processes that come and go, incessantly flowing in what William James called the "stream of consciousness". Hence the timelessness inherent to consciousness seems to pertain primarily to some sub-personal level of consciousness. But does "sub-personal" here imply the complete absence of personhood, of subjectivity, of selfhood? That seems problematic in light of the hard problem of consciousness. As we have seen, that problem arises specifically because of the first-person-dependency of consciousness, i.e. the fact that it cannot be abstracted from a particular subjective point of view. Consciousness is always consciousness for someone. But if we cannot abstract consciousness from its subject, then shouldn't we say that the substrate of consciousness necessarily involves subjectivity? If so, then the timelessness of that substrate implies the timelessness of subjectivity as well, in other words: it implies the immortality of the self. But whose self is this? Is this the human self, such that each individual consciousness presupposes an individual yet timeless self as its substrate? This seems to be Kant's position, who argued that each "empirical self" presupposes a "transcendental subject" or "subject in itself" outside of time and space. Or should we say that this immortal self is God? I must, obviously, confess complete ignorance here, though I must admit that the connection with the causation of the Big Bang seems to make God the most likely candidate.

Between materialism and idealism: Marx on “sensuous activity”

In the first Thesis on Feuerbach, Marx writes:

“The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism – that of Feuerbach included – is that the thing, reality, sensuousness, is conceived only in the form of the object or of intuition [Anschauung], but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in contradistinction to materialism, the active side was developed abstractly by idealism – which, of course, does not know real, sensuous activity as such.”
                                   

In the above excerpt from the first Thesis, Marx positions himself between materialism and idealism. From idealism (Kant and Hegel), Marx takes the idea that objective reality does not exist independently of man but is formed (constituted) by man’s subjective activity. On the other hand, he takes from Enlightenment materialism (De la Mettrie, Diderot, Darwin) the idea that man is part of nature and is as such passive, subject to the forces of nature. As a true dialectician, Marx fuses these two seemingly contradictory perspectives together, as thesis and antithesis in a dialectical synthesis. The result, the synthesis, is his conception of reality as praxis, as sensuous human activity, which forms a third between human activity and passivity (or in more Kantian terms: between autonomy and heteronomy). This, according to me, explains partly why Marx is still be relevant today. The dilemma between the egocentrism of modern autonomy and the allocentrism of post-modern heteronomy (with its neoconservative and fundamentalist tendencies) is one of the major intellectual and cultural problems of our times. Marx’s dialectic shows a way out.
                                                           Kant's tangle of experience

Kant and Marx on sensuous activity

The difficulty posed by this dilemma can be seen in what appears to be the contradictory, oxymoronic nature of Marx’s term “sensuous activity”. As sensory beings, after all, we are not active but passive, subject to external sensory impressions (caused by the thing-in-itself, in Kantian terms). Thus Kant speaks of sensation as “receptivity” as opposed to the autonomous activity of the mind which he calls “spontaneity”. For Kant, the way spontaneity and receptivity interlock to produce experience of objective reality was a major problem, which he could not solve in a satisfactory fashion (due to the dilemma mentioned above). What Marx announces in the first Thesis, then, is a solution to this problem – a solution that turns on the essential social and practical nature of human sensory experience. As a communist, Marx was of course especially interested in the social character of labor, the collaboration of different individuals, working on nature so as to satisfy human needs. Here, in social labor, lies the primary meaning of Marx’s term “sensuous activity” – and hence the balance between activity and passivity. On the one hand, man is active in his labor: he transforms nature to satisfy his needs, he gives form to matter in accordance with his ideas, thus externalizing his abilities and needs in a product which henceforth functions as a mirror that confirms man’s being. In this way Marx approaches idealism: through his labor on nature man establishes his self-consciousness. On the other hand, however, this labor also testifies to man’s sensuous passivity: man must toil because his body needs food, clothing etc. In labor, man experiences fatigue and the resistance of matter. Moreover, the fact that man gains self-consciousness only through his externalisation in worked upon matter means that his self-consciousness is always decentered, dependent on some extenal object. In that sense, Marx’s focus on the necessity of labor already anticipates the postmodern critique of humanism in terms of the decenterment of the human essence.

Praxis as the interaction of subject and object

But, of course, Marx is neither a humanist idealist nor a postmodernist avant la lettre. For the point of his first Thesis on Feuerbach is exactly that the truth lies in the middle: between idealism and materialism, between humanism and postmodernism. That elusive middle is captured by Marx’s claim that the external object, on which humanity depends, is in turn dependent on the formative power of human activity. In other words: nature determines (causes, affects) man, who in turn determines (works upon) nature. Thus man is indirectly self-determining, mediated by nature. This reciprocal determination of man and nature is what Marx means by “praxis". In the first Thesis, therefore, Marx reproaches traditional materialism for not seeing this fundamental importance of praxis, since it (materialism) sees man one-sidedly as subjected to nature and thus it forgets man’s active intervention in nature – a point repeated by Marx in the third Thesis, where he focuses on the consequences of materialism for social theory: “The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and upbringing [by which men are changed, PS] forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that it is essential to educate the educator himself.”

The esthetic aspect of human labor

The notion of praxis enables Marx to conceive of the interrelation between human subject and material object as a fundamental, ontological interaction, in which neither is primary and on which both are dependent. It is this ontological orientation that allows Marx in the first Thesis to refer to “the thing, reality” itself as praxis, as the realm of sensory activity in which man and nature determine each other reciprocally. Thus the relation between man and nature (subject and object) should, according to Marx, be understood as an internal relation, where the relata do not exist independently, in contrast to an external relation, where the relata influence each other alternately while actually remaining separate. This ontological significance can also be seen from Marx’s notion of “sensuous activity” if it is taken in the epistemological sense of sensory perception. One could say that this epistemological sense is integrated in the comprehensive social-practical sense of “sensuous activity” as the human collaboration in working upon nature. After all, in his labor man also senses himself and his encounter with the world: he sees his objects and tools, he experiences fatigue and the resistance of matter but also the pleasure of his activity and the beauty (or ugliness) of the worked upon object. This esthetic aspect of labor is important to Marx: truly human, ie unalienated labor is for him as much artistic activity as it is the satisfaction of basic human needs, and the unalienated product of labor is ultimately also a work of art. Thus aisthesis (Greek: sensory experience) forms an integral part of Marx’s notion of praxis.

The ontological ambiguity of sensory qualities

So what about the ontological interaction between subject and object that occurs in praxis? Does this also occur in the aisthesis of sensory perception? In fact, it does. This is exactly what Kant tried to explain when he focused on the interaction of receptivity and spontaneity in sensation, where a fusion takes place of subjective activity and passivity before the object. This fusion is shown in the ambiguous nature of sensory qualities such as color, sound, smell, taste, warmth and tactility. On the one hand, such “qualia” are inherently subjective because they exist only in a subject’s perceptual awareness of them. Thus Berkeley’s idealistic formula esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived) surely applies to qualia, which is the reason why the philosophical tradition speaks of them as mere “secondary qualities” (as opposed to an object’s primary qualities, ie those that exist independently of the perceiving subject). Yet, on the other hand, qualia also have something undeniably objective about them, bound as they are to some external object whose properties they are (thus we say: the rose is red, the water is warm). Thus qualia are like a joint membrane between subject and object where they meet and enter into each other. William Desmond, the author of Being and the Between, is one of the very few philosophers who notice this strange ontological status of qualia between subjective and objective. He writes: “secondary qualities have an unyielding equivocity, since their ontological status is finally uncertain. For this status is distributed between “something” in the thing itself, its powers, and the relativity of that “something” to mind.” (Being and the Between, p.74)

Marx’s rehabilitation of the sensuous

The fact that this intermediate status of qualia is rarely observed, has everything to do with the traditional opposition between idealism and materialism – precisely the opposition Marx wants to overcome in the first Thesis on Feuerbach. Because traditional materialism stresses one-sidedly the passivity of man with respect to nature, it can understand qualia only as secondary, ie as mere effects in consciousness caused by external objects. And because idealism, in contrast, stresses one-sidedly the (mental) activity of the human subject, it cannot understand qualia as coming from external objects. The result is that materialism and idealism, precisely because of their opposing positions (passivity vs. activity), come to a surprisingly unanimous opinion about the ontological status of sensory qualities: they are merely subjective and not objective. Thus the traditional contrast in philosophy between materialism and idealism has led to a systematic disregard of the true in-between status of sensory qualities. Marx was in a sense the first to rehabilitate that true status of the sensory by taking up a position between materialism and idealism. That seems to be one of the main reasons why Marx in the first Thesis on Feuerbach focuses specifically on sensation, that is, on “reality, sensuousness” which in traditional materialism “is conceived only in the form of the object or of intuition, but not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively”. Marx’s point is therefore not that man as part of nature is a sensuous being, rather his point is that reality as such is sensuous, i.e. praxis, the reciprocal determination of subject and object that takes place in sensation. For Marx, the sensuous is the medium (ie the middle, the “between”) in which subject and object – man and nature – meet and determine each other.