We are conscious automata: the locomotive's steam-whistle

Epiphenomenalism, the conscious automaton

Thomas Henry Huxley 1825 · 1895He coined the word 'agnostic': not claiming to know what cannot be known.

What it claims

In us too, the feeling of willing is not the cause of a voluntary act but the symbol of the brain state that causes it: consciousness accompanies the brain as the whistle accompanies the locomotive, and we are conscious automata.

Why

The body is fully explained by mechanism and nothing shows consciousness acts on it: it merely accompanies it.

The same idea through history

Julien Offray de La Mettrie1747Man is a machine: everything he does is explained by his body.

Shadworth Hodgson1870According to William James, Shadworth Hodgson gave the earliest and ablest exposition of this theory, in The Theory of Practice.

Thomas Henry Huxley1874Huxley states it at Belfast, for animals first, then for man: consciousness is a product of the brain that does not act on it.

Frank Jackson1982Frank Jackson takes it up for qualia ("Epiphenomenal Qualia") and answers the evolution argument.

In short

"We are conscious automata: the locomotive's steam-whistle" is an argument by Thomas Henry Huxley ("On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata", Belfast, 1874, 1874) on the question "Is the mind the brain?" (answer: the mind comes from matter). Its claim: In us too, the feeling of willing is not the cause of a voluntary act but the symbol of the brain state that causes it: consciousness accompanies the brain as the whistle accompanies the locomotive, and we are conscious automata. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 4 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

"On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata", Belfast, 1874

Valid with an implicit premise

A frog whose front brain has been removed still walks, hops and swims. Huxley draws a dizzying idea from this: what if consciousness served no purpose? It would be produced by the brain, as a locomotive's whistle is produced by the engine, without ever moving the train. In 1874, at Belfast, he applies this first to animals, then dares to extend it to man: we are "conscious automata". Note the nuance: this is a special kind of materialism, epiphenomenalism. Consciousness really exists, and depends entirely on the brain; but it has no effect on it. Huxley himself refuses the label of materialist.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where the brain causes consciousness, the mechanism suffices to explain movements, there is no proof of an effect of consciousness, and yet consciousness acts on the body. For example, an electric wire can produce light without the light changing anything in the current; but nothing prevents another system from having a light that in turn regulates the current (like a thermostat). Having no proof is not having proof of the contrary.

The argument is valid with the hidden premise P4. Everything rests on it. P3 only says we have no proof; to conclude that consciousness does not act, we need a rule of economy: do not suppose a cause when the mechanism suffices. This is what James will contest: for him, lack of proof is not enough, and there are signs that consciousness acts. Note that the conclusion is not that consciousness does not exist (that is eliminativism, another argument), but that it does not act. As for the word "materialism", it fits only halfway: everything the body does is physical, but consciousness remains a reality of its own, without causal power.

Analogy. In a locomotive, steam moves the train and whistles at the same time. The whistle is perfectly real, you can hear it to the horizon, but if you plugged it the train would move in exactly the same way. For Huxley, our consciousness is that whistle: real, produced by the machine, but with no grip on the wheels.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Objection Huxley anticipates ("the drums") 1874 · attacks the conclusion

If what holds for animals holds for man, the logical consequences are fatalism, materialism and atheism.

Huxley replies

Huxley 1874 · Huxley's reply (same text)

He refuses the label: he does not rank himself among materialists, since he is utterly incapable of conceiving the existence of matter if there is no mind in which to picture it. He also says that only the truth of a doctrine matters, its consequences being secondary.

The debate goes on (our summary) That is why it is called "epiphenomenalism" rather than "materialism". We place it here in the camp "the mind comes from matter" because, for Huxley, consciousness is entirely produced by the brain and does not modify it. But a strict materialist would say that consciousness, if it has no effect, is one more ghost (our summary).

William James 1879 · attacks premise 4

If consciousness is useful, it can be so only through its efficacy. And the study of how consciousness is distributed among living things shows it to be like an organ added to steer a nervous system grown too complex to regulate itself. So the conscious-automaton theory must give way to the theory of common sense.

Huxley replies

Frank Jackson 1982 · Modern reply from an epiphenomenalist (not from Huxley)

The theory of evolution says only that an evolved trait is either useful for survival or a by-product of one that is. Polar bears have a thick, warm coat, which is useful, but also heavy, which is not: the weight is a by-product. Likewise, qualia would be a by-product of highly useful brain processes.

The debate goes on (our summary) The debate goes on. James would answer that if consciousness were a mere by-product, it is hard to see why it is so well tuned to what is useful: pleasure for what keeps us alive, pain for what kills (see the next objection). The epiphenomenalist can reply that this tuning comes from the brain, which is the thing selected (our summary).

William James 1879 · attacks premise 3

It has long been noticed that pleasures are generally associated with beneficial experiences, pains with detrimental ones. If pleasures and pains have no efficacy, one does not see, without a pre-established harmony that the automaton-theorists would scout, why burning might not give a thrill of delight, and breathing, agony.

no reply

We have not yet found a direct reply by Huxley in the texts.

The debate goes on (our summary) Huxley did not answer this precise point (James writes five years after Belfast). One possible reply from epiphenomenalists: the brain is built so that the states that ruin the body produce pain sensations; pain is the effect, not the cause, of the flight (our summary).

The other-minds objection (presented by Jackson) 1982 · attacks the conclusion

If consciousness causes nothing in the body, other people's behaviour cannot give us a reason to believe they are conscious: Friday's footprint proves Friday because it is the effect of his foot.

Huxley replies

Frank Jackson 1982 · Jackson's reply

A reader of The Times who learns that Spurs won can conclude that The Telegraph also reported it, though neither caused the other: one goes back from an effect to its common cause, then down to another effect. Likewise, from someone's behaviour one goes back to their brain, then to their qualia.

The debate goes on (our summary) Jackson himself admits that this reasoning is shakier than its model, and that it is the general problem of other minds, not one specific to epiphenomenalism. The first-person question remains: if consciousness never acts on the brain, why would our words about it be true (our summary)?