First person and third person perspectives
We can look at a person in two different ways depending on whether that person is oneself or someone else. If we consider ourselves, we are first aware that we are a conscious subject with a perception of the world around us with which we can interact and influence and be influenced by. We feel pain, joy, hope and various other emotions which depend in a complex way on our environment, our character and our choices. We are also aware that we have at our disposal an array of automatic systems which help us to navigate through and interact with the outside world. For instance, one such system enables us to walk without thinking about how we are doing it, another enables us to recognise different faces without having to analyse each individual feature. We can learn skills which program new automatic systems which allow us to, for instance, play the piano without having to consider every hand movement. Nevertheless, it is generally our perception that these automatic systems are under our control in an analogous way to the autopilot in an aircraft being under the ultimate control of the human pilot.
When we look at another person, we have no direct awareness of their inner feelings, motivations or their sense of agency. What we first see is a set of behavioural responses to stimuli from the outside world. We see the sort of automatic systems which we are aware of in ourselves but not what, or who, is in ultimate control. Starting from this point of view, analysis of brain architecture would indicate a hierarchy of control systems which could lead to the belief that a person is simply an automaton. The only reason we have for believing otherwise is by analogy with ourselves. We imagine that they feel the same as we would given the same circumstances and responses. Indeed, our brains are equipped to do that by virtue of “mirror neurons”[i] which allow us to form a model of what is going on in another person’s brain.
However, from the point of view of an alien, the behaviour of individuals and society could be analysed, modelled and possibly reproduced without having to include Phenomenal Consciousness or Agency in the model at all. Velmans[Velmans 2003] wrote: “From a third person perspective, phenomenal consciousness appears to play no causal role in mental life while from a first person perspective it appears to be central.” [Velmans 2009] If it was not for our own first person experience of consciousness, there is no reason to include it in a theory of the world. The alien looking at the systems on Earth would have little, if any, way to distinguish a person from a complex robot.
Starting from the third person perspective alone, the key features of phenomenal consciousness and agency would not be seen or needed in the description of a person. Starting from the first person perspective, this clearly indicates that something is missing.
Some attempts to explain this situation, coming under the headings of Dualism, Physicalism and Idealism, are described in the next Chapter. The reality is that none of these hypotheses, at their current state of development, have provided an answer to the difficult questions, or the “hard problem” of consciousness and, so far, there is no indication of how they could ever do so. Dualism leaves many questions unanswered and has been criticised for its lack of explanatory power. However, physicalism is not compatible with the existence of free-will and it tends to ignore or deny the existence of phenomenal consciousness completely. Gray [Gray 2004], a dyed in the wool materialist, says this in the conclusion to his book: “No theory yet proposed is up to the mark as a solution to the Hard Problem. But some of the right questions are now being asked. And relevant data are beginning to come in” ([Gray 2004], p323). At this stage no door can be prudently ignored.
ihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron