Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle) / quote 92 of 138
Mud, Beethoven and surface features
So consciousness differs from other phenomena such as liquidity and solidity that have surface features, in that we are reluctant to carve off the surface feature and redefine the notion in terms of the causes of the surface feature, because the point of the concept is to identify the surface features. There are lots of concepts where the surface features of the phenomena are more interesting than the microstructure. Consider mud or Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Mud behavior is molecular behavior but that it not the interesting thing about mud, so few people are anxious to insist: “Mud can be reduced to molecular behavior,” though they could if they really wanted to. Similarly with Beethoven. Performances of the Ninth can be reduced to wave motions in the air, but that is not what is interesting to us about the performance. The music critic who writes, “All I could hear were wave motions,” has missed the point of the performance. Analogously you could do a reduction of consciousness and intentionality, but you would still need a vocabulary to talk about the surface features. Consciousness and intentionality are unique only in that they have a first-person ontology.