Physical Dualism

Language and the Lascaux paintings mark the birth of the meaning system, a fairly autonomous ‘second’ environment humans are logged into. The permutation of meanings radically complexifies the neurobiological organization of our feelings. It renders the content of consciousness unpredictable and primary; decentres the brain, nurture or learning, to instead locate human consciousness in ‘the now’, that is, in the actual moment of interaction with the two environments. Natural selection explains the neural functions shared with other animals, but to understand phenomenal content we should turn to cultural selection. The seeming incompatibility explains the disconnection of social anthropology from the scientific study of the human (anthropos). This paper argues that an interdisciplinary definition of human consciousness will require to restore the link. Can we carve out a third position in the debate between physicalism and dualism? The first subsumes feeling under 'meaning' (concept). The second subsumes meaning under 'feeling' (qualia). Neither can account for ‘the feeling of meaning’ we call consciousness. Three sets of ethnographic data are illustrative. Why do humans need to not only physically heal but also symbolically, by getting at the meaning of their affliction (as in the universal practice of divination)? Why do non-western communities fear zombification when embracing the objectivism of modern economy and education? Joining the current discussion of how neural traffic synchronizes to form consciousness (Baars, Freeman, Hameroff, Koch, Varela), I seek what crosscuts and bundles neurobiological, psychological and intersubjective levels into a particular state of consciousness. Of all the levels, from micro to macro, the intersubjective may reveal most on this crosscutting ‘wave’, because unlike neurons it speaks our language. In the age-old Chwezi spirit cult the ritual symbolically enacts a quaternary structure for the body to synchronize with something as external as the spirit. What interests us here is not if it works but to hear first-hand from culture itself how the synchrony proper to consciousness is supposed to arise (which may not be unlike what happens on the micro-level of neurology). Returning to the neurobiological discussion, I conclude on an anthropo-logical position that combines the Penrose-Hameroff hypothesis with Lévi-Strauss’ structuralism. I propose as the most simple hypothesis respecting the diverse data (e.g., gamma synchrony, quantum theory, development psychology, Descombes' objective mind) that the meaning system physically exists, as a parallel order of oppositions and possibilities that allow for the laws, symbolics and language without which there would simply be no world for us to be conscious of. This 2D space gives physical input to be 'known', just as the four-dimensional world does to be perceived