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 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 29/5/2021, SPi

Vagueness and the Evolution

of Consciousness
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 29/5/2021, SPi
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 29/5/2021, SPi

Vagueness and the

Evolution of
Consciousness
Through the Looking Glass

MICHAEL TYE

1
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2021, SPi

3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Michael Tye 2021
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021937352
ISBN 978–0–19–886723–4
Printed and bound in the UK by
TJ Books Limited
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 29/5/2021, SPi

Contents

Introduction 1
1. A Paradox of Consciousness 4
1.1 The Paradox Explained: Part A 6
1.2 The Paradox Explained: Part B 13
2. Russellian Monism to the Rescue? 19
2.1 Versions of Russellian Monism 24
2.2 Objections to Reductive Russellian Monism 25
2.3 Objections to Primitivist Russellian Monism 28
2.4 A Final Concern 31
3. Transparency and Representationalism 32
3.1 The Transparency Thesis 32
3.2 Qualia Realism 34
3.3 Two Arguments from Transparency Against
Qualia Realism 35
3.4 How Does Transparency Support Representationalism for
Visual Experience? 39
3.5 Blur 41
3.6 Extending Transparency: Bodily Sensations 43
3.7 Emotions and Moods 48
3.8 Conscious Thoughts 55
3.9 More on Property Representationalism 58
3.10 Objections and Clarifications 62
3.11 An Argument for Property Representationalism 69
3.12 Moore and the Missing Ingredient 71
4. Representationalism and Panpsychism 73
4.1 The Problem of Undirected Consciousness 75
4.2 The Problem of Combination 80
4.3 Poise and the Global Workspace 85
4.4 More on the Problem of Combination 88
4.5 The Problem of Tiny Psychological Subjects 91
4.6 The Causal Efficacy of Consciousness 93
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 29/5/2021, SPi

vi 

5. The Location of Consciousness 100

5.1 A Hypothesis by Crick and Koch 100
5.2 Decorticate Children 103
5.3 The Prefrontal Cortex and Working Memory 105
5.4 Where in the Animal Realm Is Consciousness Located? 107

Bibliography 117
Index of Names 127
Index 129
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2021, SPi

Introduction

As you may recall, when Alice stepped through the mirror, she encountered
a very peculiar world in which many of the people she met were chess pieces
or characters from nursery rhymes. Everything was inside out, upside down.
So it is with consciousness.
Reflection upon the appearance of consciousness in living beings suggests
that there are just two alternative views. Either consciousness appeared
suddenly so that its appearance is like that of a light switch being turned
on or it arose through intermediate stages, not yet definitely involving
consciousness but also not definitely not involving it. On the former view,
consciousness is an on/off matter, but once it arose, it became richer and
richer through time rather as a beam of light may become brighter and
broader in its sweep. On the latter view, consciousness is not an on/off
matter. There are shades of gray. There is no one moment at which
consciousness appeared. It arose gradually just as life did, becoming richer
through time as animal brains became more complex.
The latter view seems more plausible at first glance; for if consciousness
suddenly appeared out of the blue, as it were, then what was responsible for
its sudden emergence? Presumably the occurrence of some suitable neural
state. But neurological states themselves admit of borderline cases, so the
relevant neural state cannot itself have arisen suddenly. Instead it must have
appeared gradually through various intermediate neurological stages. So, if
consciousness originally appeared suddenly without any borderline cases, it
cannot be identified with any such neurological state; nor for similar reasons
can it be identified with any complex functional or informational state
supported by the neurological architecture. It seems, then, that if conscious-
ness appeared suddenly, it must be something special and new, totally
different from the physical properties of the underlying neural and func-
tional architecture. But if this is the case, what could consciousness be? It
appears that we are driven to think of consciousness as something nonphy-
sical in nature that suddenly emerged in certain animal brains without any
further explanation. This is very hard to accept.
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2021, SPi

2 

On the other hand, if consciousness arose gradually then we should be

able to describe borderline cases of consciousness just as we can for life.
Unfortunately, as I shall argue, that we cannot do. Putative borderline cases
of consciousness are all cases in which there is indeterminacy in what is
experienced, and not in experience or consciousness itself. So, a kind of
paradox arises. Consciousness cannot be sharp or precise, but equally it
cannot be vague.
The paradox is laid out fully in the first chapter. One possible response to
this paradox is to say that it is based on a mistaken assumption about the
origins of conscious states. Conscious states did not arise with neurological
complexity. Instead, they are fundamental features of microphysical reality
(panpsychism) or at least they are grounded in such fundamental features.
Chapter 2 lays out the standard version of this view: Russellian Monism.
I argue that the view, in either of its two standard elaborations, faces
overpowering objections.
In the next two chapters, I discuss the relationship between conscious
states and consciousness itself. I argue that the basic tenet of the represen-
tationalist view of conscious states can be preserved within a framework that
takes consciousness itself, or rather a central element of consciousness I call
“consciousness*”, to be sharp but conscious states vague. Consciousness*,
I claim, is indeed a fundamental feature of micro-reality, and thus it did not
evolve, but conscious states are not. Conscious states evolved gradually, as
did life, through a range of borderline cases. The view with which I end up
presents novel solutions to three important problems (the problem of
undirected consciousness, the problem of combination, and the problem
of tiny, psychological subjects). It also takes up the question of how con-
sciousness can be causally efficacious with respect to animal behavior.
That I am prepared to embrace a position that has something in common
with the panpsychist world view will come as a surprise to many, given my
past writings on consciousness, but as John Perry quipped: “If you think
about consciousness long enough, you either become a panpsychist or you
go into administration,” and I haven’t gone into administration. I cannot say
that the transition has been an easy one. But, to repeat, I am still a
representationalist about consciousness. I am also still a physicalist. And it
is consciousness*, not consciousness, I maintain, that is to be found in the
micro-realm. So, the change is not quite as radical or dramatic as it may
first seem.
Chapter 5 turns to the question of where in the brain macro-
consciousness is located and which animal brains so evolved as to support
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 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2021, SPi

 3

conscious states. It is suggested here that even though conscious states

appeared gradually, on the account I am offering, it may well be true that
in human brains and those of many other species, there is a trigger for
conscious states that typically (though not always) turns such states on or off
and so functions in the same general way as a light switch.
The world is a strange place, if you look into it deeply enough, not as far
removed from the world Alice encountered through the looking glass as lay
people suppose. We know that already from theories in physics which tell us
that microphysical entities are both waves and particles, that there can be
action at a huge distance (one so great that there cannot a causal connection,
as in quantum entanglement), and that time is dependent on a frame of
reference. Perhaps it is only fitting that consciousness should turn out to be
strange too.
I am grateful to audiences at talks in the USA, the UK, and China for
comments and discussion. I would like to thank specifically Derek Ball, Zack
Blaesi, Paul Boghossian, Jane Chen, David Chalmers, Alex Grzankowski,
Keith Hossack, Cheyenne Howell, Jon Litland, David Papineau, Simon
Prosser, Connor Quinn, Mark Sainsbury, Henry Shevlin, and Jonathan
Simon. I am also indebted to two referees for Oxford University Press,
who gave me much food for thought in their detailed reports.
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 4/6/2021, SPi

1
A Paradox of Consciousness

Some philosophers and scientists have likened the appearance of conscious-

ness in living beings to that of a light switch being turned on.
Consciousness, on this view, suddenly appeared and then it became richer
and richer through time rather as a beam of light may become brighter
and broader in its sweep (see, for example, Searle 1992). On such a picture,
either consciousness is present or it isn’t. There are no shades of gray.
But once consciousness has emerged, there are different degrees of
consciousness.
Others have said that the light switch model for consciousness is funda-
mentally misconceived. Consciousness is not an on/off matter. Rather con-
sciousness arose gradually just as life did (see, for example, Lycan 1996;
Dennett 2004). Advocates of this view deny that consciousness is an all-or-
nothing phenomenon, even in our own case.
One way to put the disagreement here is in terms of vagueness. Typically
vagueness is understood in terms of borderline cases. Here are some repre-
sentative quotations:

However borderline cases should be characterized, it is a datum that vague

concepts give rise to them. (Wright 2003, p. 93)
It is better to define a predicate as vague if and only if it is capable of
yielding borderline cases, where the notion of borderline cases is intro-
duced by examples. (Williamson 1994, p. 171)
What does it mean to say that ‘bald’ is vague? Presumably it means that the
predicate admits borderline cases. (Field 1994, p. 410)

Notice that in the above quotations, predicates and concepts are classified as
vague. This is part and parcel of the common view that vagueness is
ultimately a linguistic or conceptual phenomenon. But we can also sensibly
ask whether, for example, the property of being bald or the property of
being red admit of borderline cases and are thereby vague. And the answer
to these questions seems clearly ‘yes’. The boundary between red and orange
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is fuzzy. Objects having a color in that region are neither definitely red nor
definitely not red, and so are borderline red. Likewise, some people with
small patches of hair on their head do not have sufficiently few hairs to
count as definitely bald but then neither are they definitely not bald. They
are in the gray area.
We can now put the disagreement about consciousness in terms of the
following question. Is consciousness like being bald and being red in being
vague, that is, in allowing borderline cases or is consciousness like being an
even number in being sharp, that is, in not being capable of having border-
line cases? Searle holds that consciousness is sharp, as do McGinn (1982),
and Simon (2017).¹ Dennett and Lycan hold that consciousness is vague as
does Papineau (2002) and as did I previously (Tye 1996).
There is one further point of clarification needed. Consciousness, for
present purposes, is experience. Experiences are mental states such that
there is inherently something it is like subjectively to undergo them.
Examples are feeling pain, feeling an itch, visualizing an elephant, experien-
cing anger, and feeling fearful. In each of these cases, it is incoherent to
suppose that the state exists without there being some phenomenology,
some subjective or felt character. Thus to say that a state is conscious in
the present context just is to say that it is an experience; and to consider
whether consciousness is vague is to consider whether there can be border-
line cases of experience.
In understanding the term ‘consciousness’ in this way, I do not mean to
suggest that the term has not had other uses both in science and philoso-
phy. Sometimes, for example, it is held that a mental state is conscious just
in case it is one of which its subject is introspectively aware. This is
sometimes called ‘higher-order consciousness’. My claim is simply that
among the various mental states we undergo, many of which are intro-
spectively accessible (but arguably not all), are experiences and feelings, and
these states, unlike beliefs, for example, are inherently such that they feel a
certain way. Different experiences differ in how they feel, in their subjective
character, and that is what makes them different experiences. In being this
way, experiences are conscious mental states by their very nature. This
point is sometimes put by saying that experiences are phenomenally
conscious.²

¹ Antony (2006) has a complex view which allows that consciousness may turn out to be
vague even though our current concept of it is sharp. More on this below, pp. 19–20.
² In various places in this book, I adopt this usage myself.
OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2021, SPi

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The paradox I wish to discuss is a paradox about phenomenal conscious-

ness. It can now be stated as follows:

1) Consciousness is either sharp or vague.

2) If consciousness is sharp, then it isn’t a (broadly) physical phenomenon.
3) Consciousness is a (broadly) physical phenomenon.
4) Consciousness is vague (from 1, 2, 3).
5) If consciousness is vague, then there are possible borderline cases of
consciousness.
6) There are no possible borderline cases of consciousness.
7) Consciousness is not vague (from 4, 5, 6).
8) Consciousness is both vague and not vague (from 4, 7).

A contradiction!

1.1 The Paradox Explained: Part A

Premise (1) of the paradox is an instance of the logical law of the excluded
middle. Either consciousness is sharp or it is not sharp, that is, it is vague.
Premise (2) is sometimes taken to be an obvious, nonlogical truth. Colin
McGinn, for example, says:

Whatever the explanation [of the all-or-nothing character of conscious-

ness] is—whether indeed the all-or-nothing character of consciousness can
be explained—this seems to be a feature that any account of consciousness
must respect. And there are theories of the mind, such as materialism and
behaviorism, that will find this feature problematic, since the concepts in
terms of which they choose to explain mental phenomena do not exhibit
this all-or nothing character. (1982, p. 14)

This seems to me too fast; for why should we accept that all the concepts
available to the physicalist for giving an account of mental phenomena are
vague? (2) is surely better based on a consideration of the various alter-
natives open to the physicalist about the nature of consciousness.
Consider first the type identity theory and the hypothesis put forward by
Crick and Koch that consciousness is one and the same as neuronal oscil-
lation of 40MHz. It is evident that Crick and Koch did not intend this
hypothesis to rule out every neuronal oscillation that is not exactly 40MHz.
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2021, SPi

  :   7

What about a neuronal oscillation of 40.1 MHz? Or 40.01MHz? Or

40.000001 MHz? Their proposal is that consciousness is one and the same
as neuronal oscillation of approximately 40MHz or neuronal oscillation
sufficiently close to 40MHz. But these formulations of the hypothesis bring
out its inherent vagueness, and not just from the use of the terms ‘approx-
imately’ and ‘sufficiently’; for the term ‘neuron’ is vague too.
Neurons are complex physical entities with diverse components. Each
neuron has a cell body, dendrites, and an axon. Electrical impulses come in
along the dendrites and go out along the axon. Imagine removing atoms one
by one from a given neuron. Eventually, as one does so, there will be no
neuron left. But along the way, there will surely be a range of borderline
cases—entities that are neither definitely neurons nor definitely not neurons.
So, the property of being a neuronal oscillation is vague. It admits of
borderline cases. In general, neurophysiological properties are highly com-
plex. The idea that the relevant neural properties for consciousness are sharp
is extremely implausible.
What about representational or functional role or behavioral properties?
The proposal that there cannot be borderline cases here is again very
implausible. Borderline cases of representational properties are easy to
specify. Take the property of representing meat. Historically, the word
‘meat’ meant being edible: through time, it came to mean being flesh. It is
very hard to accept that the transition was sudden. More plausibly, there was
a gradual drift and thus a period of time at which the word neither definitely
meant one nor definitely meant the other. This was not because being edible
and being flesh are vague (though they are). Rather it is because the property
of representing itself admits of borderline cases. For a nonconventional
example, consider a neuron in the visual cortex, the firing of which repre-
sents the presence of an edge. Natural representation is usually taken to be a
matter of tracking under normal conditions. Since the concept of normality
is vague if it is cashed out statistically (what typically happens) and also
vague if it is understood teleologically (what is supposed to happen if the
relevant system is operating properly), natural representation is vague too.
Turning to functional role properties, there are physical inputs and out-
puts and these will admit of borderline cases whether they are at the level of
activity on sensory and motor neurons or at the level of environmental
inputs and behavioral outputs. Furthermore, functional role properties are
properties that involve normal conditions, so the points just made with
respect to natural representation carry over. Similar points apply to any
direct appeal to behavioral properties.
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8    

So far, then, it seems that if consciousness is taken to be a broadly physical

phenomenon, it is vague, as premise (2) asserts. But perhaps there are
further plausible physical candidates for identification with consciousness
that aren’t vague, candidates not to be found in neurophysiology or func-
tional roles or behavior or representation. Might such candidates be found
within microphysics? Once again, this is implausible. We are conscious;
rocks and plants are not. But if we are physical beings, then we and rocks
and plants are built of the same basic stuff. So, why are we conscious and
rocks and plants not?
The obvious answer is that we have brains. Consciousness requires a
brain. So, the relevant physical properties, if any there be, for identification
with consciousness should be of a sort found in neurophysiology or in
functioning or representation at a level of complexity that requires a brain.
And such complex properties I have argued are not sharp.
Perhaps it will now be suggested that we should look to the chemistry of
brain processes for the relevant physical properties. Take the feeling of
anxiety, for example. That is associated with a decrease in serotonin and
dopamine levels in the brain. Again, however, inevitably vagueness will arise.
How large a decrease in serotonin and dopamine? To put a numerical value
on the decrease is to invite the response that a very tiny amount more or less
would surely not make a difference. To say that the decrease must be
sufficiently large is to introduce vagueness right away. It is also worth noting
that the appeal to decreased serotonin and dopamine in the brain brings
vagueness with its use of the qualifier “in the brain”; for the brain lacks sharp
boundaries and so there are borderline cases of changes in the brain. It does
not help to drop the qualifier “in the brain,” I might add, since serotonin is
produced widely throughout the body, but it is only the serotonin that is
produced in the brain that matters directly to feelings. There is no reason to
think that these points are not applicable to consciousness generally.
Suppose it is now proposed that integrated information holds the answer.
What it is for a physical system to be conscious is for it to have a large amount
of integrated information (Phi) in it (Tononi et al. 2016). This view, which can
be taken to be offering a high-level physical account of consciousness, has
some extremely counter-intuitive consequences. For example, as noted by
Scott Aaronson (2014), it predicts that if a simple 2-D grid has ten times the
amount of integrated information as my brain, the grid is ten times more
conscious! What exactly is meant by one system being more conscious than
another has also not been made fully clear by advocates of the theory, but for
present purposes, it suffices to note that what it is for an amount of integrated
 OUP CORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FINAL, 2/6/2021, SPi

  :   9

information to be large is patently vague and thus the view is of no help to

those who want to hold that consciousness is sharp and broadly physical.
A response to this difficulty is to say that some degree of consciousness
goes along with any amount greater than zero of integrated information. So,
consciousness is sharp, after all. This requires us to agree that thermostats
are conscious as are speedometers, since they contain some integrated
information, and that seems a line to be avoided, if at all possible! But
even if you disagree here, as noted above, there remains the question as to
what it is for one system to have a greater amount of consciousness than
another. And since advocates of integrated information theory accept that
certain 2-D grids are more conscious than human brains, it cannot have to
do with the number of experiences or the intensity of the experiences; for
surely no one wants to hold that the relevant grids have more experiences or
more intense experiences than our brains (Pautz 2019). What is meant by
saying that they are more conscious then?
An alternative strategy is to accept, for the reasons given, that conscious-
ness is not to be reduced to properties found in the physical sciences or to
functional properties having inputs and outputs built up from such physical
properties or informational properties but to insist that consciousness is
broadly physical nonetheless, since it is metaphysically grounded in lower-
level physical properties. This needs a little explanation. Following Fine
(2012), to say that a property P is metaphysically grounded in a property
Q is to say (a) that it is metaphysically necessary that whenever Q is
instantiated, P is too, and (b) that the nature of P explains why P is
metaphysically necessitated by Q. As an illustration, consider the disjunctive
property of being red or square. That is metaphysically grounded in the
property of being red. It is so since it is metaphysically necessary that
whenever the property of being red is instantiated the property of being
red or square is instantiated and the nature of the latter property explains
why this relationship of necessitation obtains.
The point to be made now is that if consciousness is held to be grounded
in lower-level physical properties then there are two possibilities. The first is
that the relevant lower-level properties are vague in which case yet again
consciousness will be vague; for how could a sharp property have a nature
that explains its being metaphysically necessitated by a vague property?
Sharp properties are sharp by their nature. They are necessarily sharp. So,
the nature of a sharp property P has no room for vagueness within it and
thus that nature cannot explain the presence of P in every possible world in
which the preferred vague property is present.
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Perhaps it will be replied that this is too fast. However puzzling it may
initially seem, we can actually give examples of sharp properties that are
metaphysically grounded in vague ones. Consider the property being col-
ored. That is metaphysically grounded in the property of being red. But
being red is vague whilst being colored is sharp.
It is not clear that the property of being colored really is sharp. But let us
put that to one side. This case of metaphysical grounding is unproblematic
because the property of being colored is just the second-order property of
having a color and it is a priori that red is a color. So, it is a priori and
necessary that anything that is red is colored. But nothing like this obtains in
the consciousness case; for suppose that consciousness is metaphysically
grounded in vague physical property P. Then, on the model of being colored
and being red, there will have to be some second-order physical property of
having Q such that consciousness is one and the same as having Q, where
having Q is sharp, and P has the property Q and further it is a priori that
P has Q. But there is no suitable sharp candidate for the (broadly) physical
property of having Q. Furthermore, it is a crucial feature of the physicalist
metaphysical grounding proposal for consciousness that consciousness not
be reducible to some broadly physical property. And this is being denied
with the claim that consciousness is one and the same as the second-order
physical property of having Q.
The conclusion to which we are driven is that consciousness cannot be a
sharp property that is metaphysically grounded on vague lower-level phys-
ical or functional properties. This brings us to the second possibility with
respect to the metaphysical grounding of consciousness, namely that the
relevant lower-level properties are complex configurations of sharp micro-
physical properties³, in which case there will be a really huge number of
grounding laws linking consciousness to the microphysical realm. But even
if it is supposed that complex configurations of sharp microphysical proper-
ties metaphysically necessitate consciousness, no account has been offered
(or even seems possible) of how the nature of consciousness explains why it
is so necessitated. Consider one such case. Call the relevant configuration
‘C’. Now consider a minimally different configuration, C* that doesn’t
metaphysically necessitate consciousness. Microphysically, C and C* are
almost the same. Yet C necessitates consciousness and C* doesn’t. If

³ On the issue of sharpness in the microphysical realm, see note 4 below.

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consciousness itself does not have a physical/functional nature, it is a total

mystery as to why C does the job but C* doesn’t.
Of course, it could now be held that the grounding is brute. But leaving aside
the issue of whether the relation is appropriately called “grounding”, the
suggestion that consciousness is brutely grounded in the physical is very
unsatisfying. Indeed, it puts the physicalist about consciousness in the uncom-
fortable position of replacing the dualist’s brute psycho-physical laws of nature
(about which more later) with a host of special, inexplicable, metaphysically
necessary pseudo-laws. That surely is to be avoided, if possible.
There is one final way in which premise (2) might be put under pressure.
Perhaps consciousness is a physical property that is not to be found in the
physical sciences nor is metaphysically grounded in any such property. If this
is the case, the possibility opens up that consciousness is a sharp, physical
property after all. On the face of it, the suggestion that consciousness might
be physical and yet not lie within the physical sciences nor be grounded
(only) upon properties referred to therein is incoherent. But there is a view—
Russellian Monism—under which it makes good sense. Since Russellian
Monism is a complex view which deserves extended discussion, I put it
aside for now. I shall return to it in Chapter 2. For the present, I simply
note that there is good reason to deny that Russellian Monism, in either of its
two standard forms, ultimately can be used to overturn premise (2).
I turn next to premise (3). Consider the origin of the universe and the
emergence of more and more complex properties. Take water, for example.
Water emerged once hydrogen and oxygen atoms combined in a certain
way. Further, there is an explanation as to why they combined in the way
they do to form water. Oxygen needs two more electrons to become stable. If
oxygen atoms were to go to two hydrogen atoms and take away two
electrons from them (one from each), the result would be an O₂ oxide ion
and two H+ ions. These ions are not fully stable. So, instead oxygen atoms
share electrons with hydrogen atoms by forming two O-H bonds. The result
is H₂O, which is fully stable.
What about properties like being a mountain or being a river? Again,
these properties seem reducible to fundamental physical and topic neutral
properties arranged in the right ways. So, there is no special or inexplicable
emergence in these cases.⁴ The case of consciousness is radically different if

⁴ It might be supposed that there is a puzzle even here, if it is accepted that these macro-
properties are themselves vague. But the puzzle arises only on the assumption that reality at the
level of microphysics is sharp. This assumption is highly contentious, however. The simplest
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consciousness is a sharp, nonphysical property that emerged out of certain

brain structures. Here there is no reducibility and relatedly no explanation as
to why it emerged as it did. So, uniformity in nature is lost. Phenomena
gradually get more and more complex and then suddenly out of the blue
something radically different just occurs. Why? There is no explanation. It is
just a brute fact that once certain vague physical structures are in place,
something sharp and nonphysical emerges. But that is very difficult to accept
or even comprehend. The worry here is related to the one J.J.C. Smart was
expressing in the following passage which gives his reaction to the dualist
view that there are fundamental phenomenal-physical laws:

I cannot believe that ultimate laws of nature could relate simple constitu-
ents to configurations consisting of perhaps billions of neurons (and
goodness knows how many billion billions of ultimate particles) all put
together for all the world as though their main purpose in life was to be a
negative feedback mechanism of a complicated sort. Such ultimate laws
would be like nothing so far known in science. They have a queer “smell” to
them. I am just unable to believe in the nomological danglers themselves,
or in the laws whereby they would dangle. (1959, p. 143)

The term “nomological dangler” that Smart uses in this passage is due to
Feigl (in an essay not itself published until later, as a short book, in 1967).
My concern about consciousness is similar to that of Smart’s. The idea that
consciousness just suddenly emerges without any explanation from certain
neural configurations, themselves wholly without consciousness, is puzzling
indeed. One wants to ask: why did this nonphysical phenomenon just
suddenly appear out of the blue, given these physical states? Why wouldn’t
other prior physical states have done just as well? But if the laws connecting
consciousness to certain physical states are fundamental, then these seem-
ingly sensible questions are illegitimate. And that makes the view that
consciousness is a nonphysical phenomenon “frankly unbelievable”.
There is also a further dimension to the worry. It is not just that con-
sciousness is nonphysical and tied by a brute law to the physical realm that is
difficult to accept. It is also that consciousness is sharp whereas the relevant

interpretation of quantum mechanics has it that micro-reality is vague or fuzzy, that properties
of micro-entities lacking theoretical values in quantum mechanics are vague properties.
Examples would include energy, spin, polarization, and spatio-temporal location. For more
here, see Chibeni 2006.
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underlying physical states are vague. Why should vague states generate a
sharp one?⁵ If anything cries out for an explanation, this does. But none is
forthcoming—or even possible—if consciousness is nonphysical and so
linked only by a brute law to the physical domain.
So, premise (3) seems very plausible. And once premise (3) is accepted
along with (2), the first intermediate conclusion of the paradox is estab-
lished: consciousness is not sharp.

1.2 The Paradox Explained: Part B

However, if consciousness is not sharp, it is vague and, in being vague, it

permits borderline cases. Are there any? Here is a possible case. Suppose
I have only just woken up, and I am still groggy, I am not yet fully conscious.
Isn’t this a borderline case of consciousness?
It is certainly a fact that I am more conscious of the world around me
when I am fully awake than when I first groggily open my eyes. What
I experience is initially indefinite and impoverished. As I become fully
awake, what I experience gets richer and richer. But this doesn’t show that
experience or consciousness itself has borderline cases. Here is how
Papineau puts the point:

If the line between conscious and non-conscious states is not sharp,

shouldn’t we expect to find borderline cases in our own experience? Yet
when we look into ourselves we seem to find a clear line. Pains, tickles,
visual experiences and so on are conscious, while the processes which allow
us to attach names to faces, or to resolve random dot stereograms are not.
True, there are ‘half-conscious’ experiences, such as the first moments of
waking . . . . But, on reflection, even these special experiences seem to
qualify unequivocally as conscious, in the sense that they are like some-
thing, rather than nothing. (1993, p. 125)

Try to think of other clearcut, objectively borderline cases of consciousness,

that is, cases such that it is objectively indeterminate whether consciousness
is present. Obviously, with some simpler creatures, we may not know
whether they are conscious. But that is not germane to the issue. You can

⁵ For more here, see pp. 9–10 earlier.

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