Epiphenomenalists and physicalists believe that there are regularities of consciousness. In order to explain these regularities they are forced to invoke laws of consciousness due to the following reasoning:
_If consciousness is the result of natural selection, then there are laws of consciousness dependent on the arrangement of matter which cause consciousness.
What this does is it simply relocates all the powers of consciousness to laws. The powers that I believe consciousness has are ability to believe and realize beliefs, ie, move bodies where it wants in accord with its belief. Now instead of consciousness believing and moving bodies, it is these laws that are doing it. This leads to the positing of unnecessary entities.
{If something causes, then it knows}
_If there is a thing that causes, then it must be able to identify the thing it causes and identify the things that it does not cause.
_If it identifies things, then it knows how to identify things.
_Laws of motion and laws of consciousness cause.
_Therefore laws know.
_Whatever knows is conscious.
_Therefore laws are conscious.
For example, say you are the law which causes a photon to move at 300,000 km/s. You need to be able to know what a photon is in order to cause that photon to move regularly.
_Bodies obey different laws of motion under different conditions.
_Therefore laws must know what conditions exist.
_Therefore laws are conscious of conditions.
When we posit laws of consciousness, the problem becomes even worse.
_Not all subjects obey the same laws of consciousness, therefore some subjects instantiate law X and others law Y.
_Therefore, if there are laws of consciousness, then these laws must be able to distinguish subject X from subject Y.
_Therefore, laws of consciousness are conscious of who is subject X and who is subject Y.
_Subjects instantiate different laws under different conditions.
_Therefore laws are conscious of conditions.
The physicalist must decide:
_Either there is one law that is conscious of which subjects obey which law or there are many laws, one law for each condition.
_If there is one law, then it is hard to not identify this as God.
_If there are many laws, then they are a transfinite number.
Let’s prove statement 3 more rigorously.
_That which determines what conditions follow present conditions is a mixture of randomness and law.
_If randomness exists, then the number of possible conditions is transfinite.
_If there must be laws for all possible conditions, then there are a transfinite number of laws.
(We now have the counterintuitive situation where not only is there a law which dictates what I do if there is a paper clip located at 1.1111 cm from my hand, there is also a law that dictates what I do if it is 1.1112 cm from my hand. The physicalist will then face the following dilemma:)
_Either there are a transfinite number of laws or laws categorize bodies into groups.
_If laws categorize bodies into groups, then they must be conscious of these groups.
_Therefore, reducing the number of laws does not eliminate the problem of conscious laws.
The physicalist must also answer when these laws were established. If they do not come into existence during the first second after the Big Bang, then they must have an explanation as to what causes them to come into being at a later point in time. Whatever they answer, they are sure to answer that the law that causes Shakespeare to write Hamlet exists before Shakespeare existed.
_If there are laws of consciousness, then there is a law that causes Shakespeare to write Hamlet.
_The laws of consciousness were established before Shakespeare existed.
_Therefore, the law that causes Shakespeare to write Hamlet existed before Shakespeare existed.
_In order to cause Hamlet, one must have an aesthetic taste.
_Laws of consciousness caused Hamlet.
_Therefore, laws have aesthetic taste.
Not only must there be laws for conditions that actually exist but also for all possible conditions, this includes laws for all the possible languages that humans never spoke, a huge number.
_The vast majority of laws of consciousness are never instantiated.
_Therefore, the physicalist posits a vast number of useless entities.
As always the physicalist is forced to give an explanation of why everything is physical. They never offer a justification but in this particular case it is very hard to justify these laws as being physical.
_Laws of consciousness are not made of anything and do not exist in three-dimensional space.
_Therefore there is no justification of their physicality.
The physicalist has no explanation as to why some subjects are smarter than other subjects.
_If there are laws of consciousness, then there are laws which force a consciousness to consistently fail to determine truth.
_Intelligence is the ability to determine truth.
_Therefore laws of consciousness are responsible for the variation of intelligence in humans.
It makes much more sense that it is simply a property of consciousness that it varies in intelligence. Instead what we have is the situation where laws are responsible for the stupidity or genius of humans. The physicalist also has a very difficult time justifying that laws of consciousness are not a type of demigod.
_A demigod influences the affairs of humans, does not exist in three-dimensional space and did not cause the Big Bang.
_Laws of consciousness influence the affairs of humans, do not exist in three-dimensional space and did not cause the Big Bang.
_Therefore laws of consciousness are demigods.
In positing psychological laws, the physicalist has simply created a vast number of unnecessary entities. Clearly consciousness does have some regularities. We feel hunger-pangs when we haven’t eaten for a long time. Certain smells are always repugnant. Certain materials always appear to individuals as the same color. Panpsychism has an explanation for this: consciousness is conscious of bodies and consciousness decides what regularities will govern its own behavior. If it turns out that their decisions lead to death, then they will be weeded out of the population. In the physicalist ontology we have bodies which are conscious but their consciousness is governed by laws which are conscious of the conscious bodies. So instead of having one type of consciousness we now have two. One way out for the physicalist is to deny the laws of consciousness exist and simply assert that regularities are due to coincidence. This can be refuted as follows:
_Either there is a (C)ause of why the subatomic particles have the same properties each time we measure them, or there is not a cause.
_If there is not a cause, then the name for that is (CO)incidence.
_If there is a cause and if one is an atheist, then the name for that is (L)aw.
_If there is a cause and if one is a (T)heist, then the name for that is (G)od.
_If there are (L)aws which cause certain bodies to be electrons and other bodies not to be electrons, then laws (K)now that body x is body x.
_If laws know, then they are (CON)scious.
_Therefore, we have not eliminated the problem of consciousness, we have just relocated it.
C v ~C, ~C ⊃ CO, C & ~T ⊃ L, C & T ⊃ G, L ⊃ K, K ⊃ CON, ∴ (~C & ⊃ CO) & (C & ~T ⊃ CON)
Some mechanists are willing to accept that laws do not exist and that it is a coincidence that regularities exist. This leads to extremely negative results.
_If coincidence explains regularity, then either coincidence explains all regularity or not.
_If coincidence explains all regularity, then it explains how humans regularly produce meaningful sentences.
_If coincidence does not explain all regularity, then there must be a cause for those non-coincidental regularities.
_Non-coincidental regularities are explained either by law or by consciousness.
_Therefore, if coincidence explains all regularity, then one has no reason for believing that, for example, Barack Obama does not understand English.
For example, it could be the case that Obama does not know English, he’s just getting lucky when he opens his mouth. Those who believe that coincidence explains regularity would have no method for falsifying the thesis that Obama is just a lucky poser. I need not go into the details of the argument that positing laws of consciousness makes morality absurd. Plenty of other authors have analyzed that debate. Not wishing to posit an infinite number of laws and wanting conscious agents to be responsible for their actions, the orthodox philosopher will then start transferring the properties of laws back on to consciousness and will say something along the lines of: some behavior is due to conscious free will and some behavior is due to laws of consciousness. Even with this qualification we still have the problem that we have two conscious entities and that laws are indistinguishable from demigods. Not only that, it also leads to a violation of Ockham’s Razor:
_If consciousness can decide what regularities will determine its behavior, then there is no need to posit the existence of laws of consciousness to explain regularities of behavior.
There is one final way out for the orthodox philosopher, they can simply refuse to be falsified and declare by fiat that laws of consciousness exist but the laws themselves are not conscious and that there are only a few basic principles which govern conscious behavior. First, to assert this is to simply contradict our intuitions regarding the link between knowledge and causation. Second, the orthodox philosopher can come up with no explanation as to how there are a few basic principles which govern conscious behavior.