Consider the
following quote by Lee Siegel, as cited at various occasions by Daniel Dennett
(for example here):
"I'm writing a book on magic." I explain, and I'm asked, "Real magic?" By real magic people mean miracles, thaumaturgical acts, and supernatural powers. "No." I answer: "Conjuring tricks, not real magic." Real magic, in other words, refers to the magic that is not real, while the magic that is real, that can actually be done, is not real magic.
This short
dialog reflects an important feature of our conceptual capacities as human
beings that seems to be the source of some wide-spread confusions: We can
conceive of things that are impossible. In fact, we can conceive of things as
impossible, i.e. we are capable of entertaining concepts that are
essentially - by definition - impossible. Confusion arises when we take
their conceivability as evidence for the claim that they are real or possible or that they exist. All too often, it seems, we
take the conceivability of X to support some sort of naïve realism about X.
If we look
at the dialog as exploring the concept of 'magic', addressing the question
"What does 'real magic' refer to?", the puzzling conclusion that
'real magic' is not real and the magic that is real is 'not real magic' becomes
much less puzzling. It simply means that people's concept of 'real magic' involves
some necessary, 'magical' ingredient, something that is not actually possible.
On that reading, we can rephrase the dialog as follows:
I'm writing a book on magic.
- Do you mean the kind of magic that is not possible?
No. Conjuring tricks, not the kind that is impossible.
The question
"Real magic?", then, reflects the kind of naïve realism described above: naïve realism about magic. It is based on (and
coherent only in conjunction with) the assumption that 'real magic' exist,
despite the fact that this is conceptually impossible because the very concept
of 'real magic' implies non-existence. So what? Not many people believe in
'real magic' anyways! Maybe not. But what about other allegedly 'magical'
concepts, such as consciousness or free will?
Most people
believe that consciousness is real. In fact, some people claim that their
immediate conscious state is the only the thing they can be certain of. At the
same time many people are inclined to reject a priori any explanation of how
consciousness works as incomplete at best, because they believe that there is
something 'magical' and inherently unintelligible about consciousness. In other
words, they are naïve realists about
consciousness, endorsing the claim that it is a real phenomenon, while retaining
the ‘magical’ component that makes it unintelligible.
If we reject
the position of naïve realism as incoherent, are we necessarily anti-realists,
do we have to deny the existence of things like consciousness? Daniel Dennett,
for one, claims that we don’t, proposing a form of mild realism about consciousness, which holds that consciousness is
real, that it can, in principle, be fully explained, and that any intuitions to
the contrary are a function of the conceptual defect described above. Consciousness,
he argues, is real if the concept is stripped of its necessarily incoherent ‘magical’
component and it is identified with or reduced to certain biological processes,
which are real. More generally, then, mild realism about X is really realism
about X-as-Y; it is essentially the negation of the claim that X is anything
over and above Y and Y is real. For example, Dennett's mild realism about
consciousness is equivalent to realism about consciousness-as-neurophysiology,
which in turn is equivalent to realism about particular biological processes
conjoined with the identification of consciousness with, or its reduction to,
those processes. In other words, mild realism about X is the claim that X is,
or is reducible to, Y, and Y is real. This said, consider the following
adaptation of our initial example:
I've built a machine that has consciousness.
-Real consciousness?
No. Biological processes, not real consciousness.
Real consciousness, in other words, refers to the consciousness that is not real, while the consciousness that is real, that actually exists, is not real consciousness.
Or more
generically:
X.
-Real X?
No. Y, not real X.
Real X, in other words, refers to the X that is not real, while the X that is real, that actually exists (as Y), is not real X.
This approach
not only provides a neat way out of the confusions about reconciling 'magical'
concepts with an explanatorily adequate scientific world view. It also points
to a promising 'division of labor' between philosophy and the empirical
sciences: finding meaningful empirical explanations for ‘not real magic’, such as
consciousness, requires the conceptual demystification of common-sense explananda,
which remains an inherently philosophical task.
