American philosopher Owen Flanagan uses this argument and takes it one step
further to claim confidently that consciousness has no function. He says: ‘Con-
sciousness did not have to evolve. It is conceivable that evolutionary processes
could have worked to build creatures as efficient and intelligent as we are, even
more efficient and intelligent, without those creatures being subjects of experi-
ence’ (Flanagan, 1992, p. 129). He calls this version of epiphenomenalism ‘con-
scious inessentialism’ and claims that its main thesis – that consciousness has no
function – is both true and important.
Scottish psychologist Euan Macphail applies the same thinking to the painfulness
of pain:
there does not in fact seem to be any need for the experience of either
pleasure or pain. [. . .] What additional function does the pain serve that
could not be served more simply by a direct link between signals from
the classificatory system and the action systems?
(Macphail, 1998, p. 14)You will probably have noticed something familiar about this argument. Yes, it is
the zombie all over again (Chapter 2). If you believe in conscious inessentialism,
then it follows that ‘We might have been zombies. We are not. But it is notoriously
difficult to explain why we are not’ (Flanagan and Polger, 1995, p. 321). Or, to put it
another way, ‘it is hard to explain why evolution produced us instead of zombies’
(Moody, 1995, p. 369). The idea that we could so easily have been zombies is so
intuitively appealing that we must take it slowly and work out whether it really
makes sense or not. In Chapter 2, we met some powerful reasons to reject the
possibility of zombies, but for the sake of argument let us assume for now that
zombies are (in principle, if not in fact) possible. This allows us to tell the imagi-
nary tale of zombie evolution.
ZOMBIE EVOLUTION
As evolution proceeds, animals compete with each other to survive and repro-
duce, and traits like accurate perception, intelligence, and memory spread. One
‘there does not in fact
seem to be any need for
the experience of either
pleasure or pain’(Macphail, 1998, p. 14)‘Consciousness did not
have to evolve. [. . .]
We might have been
zombies.’(Flanagan and Polger, 1995,
p. 321)PRACTICE 11.1
AM I CONSCIOUS NOW? DOES THIS AWARENESS
HAVE A FUNCTION?As many times as you can every day, ask yourself ‘Am I conscious
now?’ If you have been practising, you will know that asking this question
seems to make you feel more conscious for a little while. Take this time to
watch and wonder. Ask yourself, ‘Does my awareness have any
function of its own?’ Would my behaviour be any different without
consciousness? If so, is this the kind of difference that natural selection
could work on?