Re: Philosophy of Mind Grinds to a Halt
- From: Paul Grieg <pgrieg@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2008 03:10:33 -0700 (PDT)
On Jun 21, 11:30 pm, Dave Smith <da...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 21 Jun, 10:43, Paul Grieg <pgr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jun 20, 8:10 pm, Dave Smith <da...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 20 Jun, 12:26, Paul Grieg <pgr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
From:
http://www.philosophynow.org/issue35/35blackburn.htm
... the philosophy of mind which has a central metaphysical (perhaps
the central metaphysical) focus. I think thirty years ago there was a
lot of optimism that some combination of functionalism, maybe some
ideas from Wittgenstein, some ideas left over from behaviourism, some
combination of those was really going to enable us to forge a new kind
of understanding of the nature of the mind. I think partly under the
influence of scientism, which creates an over-optimism about what
science can tell us in that area, we’ve actually gone back to a much
more primitive philosophy of mind. You get some books which are little
better than Cartesian dualist tracts or you get people like Colin
McGinn who is pessimistic about us ever understanding the mind any
better than Descartes or dualists do. You get a philosophy that grinds
to a halt on epiphenomenalism, or the inability to imagine a causal
interaction between mind and body. I think that is regressive and sad
and I think basically the subject is fairly close to ground to a halt.
Perhaps the problem for Blackburn, if he believes in mental causation
and dislikes the idea of epiphenomenalism, is that the philosophy of
mind isn't producing the answers he wants.
Where does he say he dislikes the idea of epiphenomenalism? He says he
can't imagine a causal interaction between mind and body. That doesn't
sound like belief to me. Maybe he wants to believe, but that's not
belief. With both of these position, all he says is, philosophy of
mind grinds to a halt.
Well, consider this passage:
"...You get a philosophy that grinds
to a halt on epiphenomenalism, or the inability to imagine a causal
interaction between mind and body. I think that is regressive and
sad."
Doesn't that suggest that Blackburn thinks that epiphenomenalism is
wrong?
It's ambiguous, it might mean that, but I think he means he can't
explain epiphenomenalism, not that it's a wrong explanation. I dug
around questia, and here's a quote from one of his essays that seems
to back my reading:
"There is nothing wrong with saying that the thermometer went up
because the temperature is rising, even if ('strictly speaking') what
made it go up was a succession of microscopic impingings,... We might
even take a Humean pleasure in reflecting that the ultimate causes of
things are forever obscured from us, so that all we can do is mark the
patterns they reliably create as events unfold. And it draws some of
the sting from the epiphenomenalism of the mental if its causal
inefficacy is on all fours with that of changes of temperature or
energy levels. Nevertheless, it would be good to put into place some
other route to a solution. We ought to reflect that in spite of the
shift in our understanding of causation that Hume brought about, it is
not compulsory to describe it by saying that we never identify real
causes."
You've said previously that lack of a causal connection between mind
and brain isn't a problem for you. You flick the light switch and the
light comes on, that's enough for you. Thank God that wasn't enough
for Edison! He actually worked out the wiring, vacuum technology, etc,
etc that gave the full causal explanation (or at least went down a
level) I think Blackburn is right, modern philosophy of mind has
ground to a halt (did it ever get started?) with no explanation for
how brain 'interacts/causes/is a dual aspect' of mind.
My comment about the light switch was merely intended to show that a
belief about causation might be correct, even if an underlying
mechanism hasn't been identfied. I agree that it is better to have a
valid reductive explanation, if there is one to discover.
I think the work of
Chalmers and Kim are worthy recent contributions. Also, it seems to
me that there has recently been valuable relevant work conducted by
psychologists and neuroscientists.
In what way? I've seen nothing that gets past Blackburn's complaints.
I agree there has been valuable work in neuroscience, but it's all to
do with brain structure, there's nothing that's thrown any light on
the mind-body problem. Or can you point to an argument that does? Or
are you just going to thrown names around? How *exactly* have Chalmers
and Kim contributed to the hard problem of consciousness.
It was Chalmers who got philosophers discussing "the hard problem".
He and Kim have done much to clarify which issues contribute to what
Schopenhauer called the 'world knot', and they both have argued that
consciousness is irreducible to the physical yet dependent
(supervenient) upon it. It seems to me that, as Chalmers has
claimed, a better understanding will be obtained from detailed
scientific examination of the relationship between physical and mental
processes.
Maybe Chalmers has stirred thing up recently, but surely it was
Descartes who started this discussion? Though he had some strange
ideas though about mind being a kind of substance working on the brain
through the pineal gland. So Chalmer's adoption of dual-aspect
explanations seems neater. But that wasn't his idea, it was Spinoza's
and has a long history:
http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/Dual-Aspect_Theory
"In philosophy of mind, dual-aspect [also known as double-aspect or
dual-attribute] theory holds that the mental and the physical are
different aspects of the same substance. Originally postulated by
Spinoza, dual-aspect is also theorized by Schopenhaur, Lewes, Nagel
and Chalmers. The theory holds that physical and mental states are
phases of a single phenomenon, and that neither phase is reducible to
the other."
How can a better understanding be obtained from "detailed scientific
examination of the relationship between physical and mental
processes"? Neither seems reducible to the other. And unless Chalmers
has said exactly how one might be reduced to the other he's just hand
waving and repeating Spinoza's ideas. So, what has Chalmers
contributed to the hard problem of consciousness, besides coining the
snappy phrase, but which adds nothing new to what Spinoza suggested
centuries ago?
The term epiphenomenalism also has a history, and the lates
development of this just idea seem just another way of saying what
Spinoza said:
http://moebius.psy.ed.ac.uk/~dualism/papers/brains.html
"It was Thomas Huxley (1825-1895) who coined the term
'epiphenomenalism' in an article he wrote for the Fortnightly Review
of 1874. In so doing Huxley willingly sacrificed the notion of 'free
will' as an illusion despite its deep embedment in our language and
common sense. For the epiphenomenalist, the brain was a machine, like
everything else in nature, and the mind no more than a passive
reflection of its activity. During the present century, various
attempts have been made to refine the epiphenomenalist formulation.
Thus the so-called 'mind-brain identity' theory, associated with
Herbert Feigl in the United States and with Bertrand Russell in
Britain, which flourished during the 1950s, insisted that the mental
events we associate with consciousness just are the relevant brain
events but viewed, as it were, from the inside rather than the
outside."
Makes you think that philosophers, like Magee says, should read the
great philosophers and stop re-inventing the wheel (or lesser wheels!)
.
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