The gulf between properties of brains and bodies and properties of consciousness has many features which are mirrored by the gulf between non-ethical aspects of reality and ethical commitments. One is an explanatory gap – how can ‘subjective’ properties of mind be explained in terms of ‘objective’ features of our physical embodiment? The other is a gap of justification – how can the ‘objective’ features of the world generate conclusive reasons for particular ethical commitments (e.g. altruism over selfishness)? However in each case there is a key dilemma – how can one provide a theory of the phenomenon in question (consciousness/ethics) which links it in the required way to ‘objective’ features of the world without emasculating the special features of those phenomena (the qualitative, felt nature of conscious awareness; the internal connection to preferences and commitments to act in the case of ethics)? There is much insight to be gained by exploring the commonalities and differences between these problem areas – for instance the way different kinds of responses to one dilemma match up with kinds of responses to the other.
Enactivism suggests a distinctive approach to the brain-consciousness gap which can also be usefully applied to the fact-value gap. Some apparently innocent ontological and epistemological assumptions play an important role in the way explanatory gap between the phenomenal and the physical takes on its puzzling aspect – in particular the assumption that conscious states are special kinds of facts which exist alongside other facts in the universe, and that the consciousness facts need to be tied in with the other kinds of facts through logical links of explanation. We propose a contrasting way of viewing how consciousness fits in with our ‘objective’ nature.
We suggest that the Enactive approach to consciousness allows us to rethink how the phenomenal relates to the objective or physical aspects of our nature. We will, in very broad strokes, compose a picture of perceptual awareness in which the difference between the phenomenal and the objective is rendered in terms of a difference in perspectives rather than a difference between kinds of facts . We suggest that problems about phenomenal awareness and the explanatory gap, arise from an incompatibility between two perspectives, rather than as a result of an ontological incompatibility of two subcategories of one generic ontological category of ‘fact’. We indicate that this approach can lay to rest worries about the explanatory gap: first, it allows one to diagnose the source of the tension that sustains worries about the explanatory gap; second, it shows how the ability to compare perspectives can lead to some understanding of how the objective can be imbued with phenomenal qualities.
We will also sketch how a similar approach can be adopted in the case of the gap between understanding the world objectively and the adoption of ethical commitments. Finally we outline some ways in which the areas of consciousness and of ethics are deeply interrelated – for example, to recognize a being as conscious is, we suggest, to be committed to adopting an ethical stance to that being.