Nagel's 'Mind and Cosmos'
In 2012, philosopher Thomas Nagel published a book called Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False. The sub-title sums up the thrust of the book, which criticizes the 'materialist neo-darwinian conception of nature' that is the current orthodoxy both amongst biologists, and many amongst the public at large.
Around the time of the book, Nagel also published a summary in the NY Times, called The Core of Mind and Cosmos, the first four paragraphs of which I reproduce here:
Reaction to Nagel's book was generally hostile, with one writer calling it the most despised book of 2012. Those public intellectuals most heavily invested in 'neo-darwinist materialism', including Jerry Coyne, Steve Pinker, and Daniel Dennett, heavily criticized it, even to the point of ad hominem attacks.
There was a review of the reaction to the book, from one of Nagel's sympathisers, called The Heretic, which highlighted the sense in which Nagel's book was 'heresy' from the viewpoint of the cultural mainstream.
Aside from that, Edward Feser devoted a number of blog posts to the book and reactions thereto, which can be found here.
Around the time of the book, Nagel also published a summary in the NY Times, called The Core of Mind and Cosmos, the first four paragraphs of which I reproduce here:
The scientific revolution of the 17th century, which has given rise to such extraordinary progress in the understanding of nature, depended on a crucial limiting step at the start: It depended on subtracting from the physical world as an object of study everything mental – consciousness, meaning, intention or purpose. The physical sciences as they have developed since then describe, with the aid of mathematics, the elements of which the material universe is composed, and the laws governing their behavior in space and time.
We ourselves, as physical organisms, are part of that universe, composed of the same basic elements as everything else, and recent advances in molecular biology have greatly increased our understanding of the physical and chemical basis of life. Since our mental lives evidently depend on our existence as physical organisms, especially on the functioning of our central nervous systems, it seems natural to think that the physical sciences can in principle provide the basis for an explanation of the mental aspects of reality as well — that physics can aspire finally to be a theory of everything.
However, I believe this possibility is ruled out by the conditions that have defined the physical sciences from the beginning. The physical sciences can describe organisms like ourselves as parts of the objective spatio-temporal order – our structure and behavior in space and time – but they cannot describe the subjective experiences of such organisms or how the world appears to their different particular points of view. There can be a purely physical description of the neurophysiological processes that give rise to an experience, and also of the physical behavior that is typically associated with it, but such a description, however complete, will leave out the subjective essence of the experience – how it is from the point of view of its subject — without which it would not be a conscious experience at all.
So the physical sciences, in spite of their extraordinary success in their own domain, necessarily leave an important aspect of nature unexplained. Further, since the mental arises through the development of animal organisms, the nature of those organisms cannot be fully understood through the physical sciences alone. Finally, since the long process of biological evolution is responsible for the existence of conscious organisms, and since a purely physical process cannot explain their existence, it follows that biological evolution must be more than just a physical process, and the theory of evolution, if it is to explain the existence of conscious life, must become more than just a physical theory.
Reaction to Nagel's book was generally hostile, with one writer calling it the most despised book of 2012. Those public intellectuals most heavily invested in 'neo-darwinist materialism', including Jerry Coyne, Steve Pinker, and Daniel Dennett, heavily criticized it, even to the point of ad hominem attacks.
There was a review of the reaction to the book, from one of Nagel's sympathisers, called The Heretic, which highlighted the sense in which Nagel's book was 'heresy' from the viewpoint of the cultural mainstream.
Aside from that, Edward Feser devoted a number of blog posts to the book and reactions thereto, which can be found here.
Comments (95)
If the mind isn't "physical" (again I despise using these terms, "physical" and "mental" as it is what creates the problem Nagel is pointing at), or isn't made of the same stuff as "out there", then how is it that they both interact at all? Again, we should be talking about causation, not "physical" and "mental" substances.
If an idealist says, "Everything out there is made of the same stuff as in here." and the materialist says, "Everything in here is made of the same stuff as out there.", then they are both saying the same thing. "Physical" and "mental" is a product of dualism and is what creates a problem where there isn't one.
I like Nagel, but I don't think it does follow. Or rather it does, given the condition that it must explain what it cannot explain. As if whatever I cannot see must be radically different from whatever I can see - because I cannot see it.
That different "stuff" can't interact is a nonsensical idea. It's only if you define those two sorts of stuff as incapable of interacting that the idea is supported. That the mental and physical can't interact is not supported by the concept of "causation" unless you limit causation to efficient cause. However, the concepts of will, intention, and final cause, demonstrate that such a restriction is unjustified.
This doesn't work, because we have experiences of things which aren't out there, and the things out there can't fully explain the things in here.
Let's go with this and go a bit deeper. Can you give a specific example of something that cannot be explained in this respect? Is it your position that the lack of explanation is a problem to a materialist interpretation? If so, can you explain why that lack of explanation is so fundamental in your view that a materialist interpretation is no longer possible (instead of, for instance, not yet possible)? Thanks.
By making the argument that science can NEVER explain the mind, you are implying that they don't interact, for if science can explain the stuff out there, which interacts with the stuff in here, then why can't it explain the "in here", too?. When science does a good job of explaining all the other stuff, then why can't it explain the mind too? What makes it different? What is it that science will never get at? Is it that a "physical" explanation isn't good enough? What makes an explanation physical as opposed to something else?
I'm trying to get at how the things which aren't out there interact with the things that are out there. Do you deny that your thoughts have an effect on things out there and vice versa? How is that possible? How is it possible that we can have a system of explanation for that stuff out here that doesn't apply to the things in here, if they both interact?
Yes, science will never be able to explain "first person" experience in "first person" terms, but then it doesn't, and cannot ever, given its methodology, do, or even aim to do, that.
And we will never accept that any "third person" explanation of the "first person" is adequate if it leaves out the first person (which it does, by definition).
Objectification of human beings is a problem, but I don't believe it is caused by the proliferation of scientific understandings; rather I think that the fact that people want to think about themselves in "third person" terms is a symptom of a loss of self, along with the tendency to be absorbed with self-gratification, material accumulation, constant entertainment, and so on.
Trying to find an explanation for this loss of self in the rise of science is really just another attempt tp explain what is happening to us in third person terms, ironically. That is the last thing that is needed, as far as I can see.
How dare a mere philosopher question the scientific consensus.
Quoting Harry Hindu
It never ceases to amaze me, the ease with which people seem to assume that 'we're just animals', when the difference between h. sapiens, and every other creature is so manifestly and entirely obvious. It's kind of a cultural blind spot, an inability to recognise the obvious.
Quoting unenlightened
What kind of theory would be 'more than a physical theory'? I think, perhaps, an example would have been Husserl's conception of phenomenology, as a rigourous discipline which encompassed first-person experience.
In any case, one metaphysical proposition that comes out of Nagel's book, and an idea I've sometimes entertained, is that life is the process of the Universe becoming self-aware.
That general tendency of thought is called 'orthogenetic', the idea that evolution has a direction or tendency. And you know, this actually against the current dogma:
* All extant species are equally evolved. — Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, 1995 (11)
* There is no progress in evolution. — Stephen Jay Gould, 1995 (12)
* We all agree that there's no progress. — Richard Dawkins, 1995
It's interesting to ask yourself whether this dogma, which strikes me as manifestly absurd, is itself a scientific hypothesis at all, or if it has to be maintained, purely as a defense against any kind of teleological suggestion in evolutionary biology.
Science eliminates the notion of inherent telos because it cannot, and does not pretend to be able to, deal with any form of intentionality.
That's not true. The scientific method is a very specific empirically based method. If two things are interacting, and only one of them can be observed empirically, then "scientific understanding" can only be extended to that thing which can be observed. One could make predictions about how the unobservable thing would influence the observable, and these predictions may or may not be reliable, but since this could produce no statements about what the unobservable thing is, it doesn't qualify as an explanation of that thing.
From Nagel’s book:
(pp. 35-36)
By this move, the mind is to all intents declared out of scope for science, right at the outset.
I think it's more the case that the scientist cannot help describing nature in terms that make her (see!) sound purposive. This is especially the case with accounts of animal behavior. There may or may not be some "higher purpose" behind nature (they are simply the two logical possibilities) but science cannot concern itself with that question. No higher purpose is manifestly obvious, and science only deals with what is observable, and causal explanations induced from, and in terms of, observable phenomena.
The issue of interaction is even more complicated than you might think. Plato proposes a tripartite person, such that interaction between the mind and body is carried out through a third thing, spirit, or passion. This third thing, which is a medium between body and mind, makes it even more difficult for science to get to the mind. Science cannot even get a grasp on the emotions, which are proper to that third thing, the medium, the spirit, because it has no access to the influence of the mind on the spirit.
This might be a start. Protein synthesis is a requirement for long term memory, which is involved in learning.
Thank heavens for supervenience physicalism, eh? One less thing to clean off your windscreen.
Epiphenomenal ectoplasm is where I draw the line on meaningful philosophical discussion, but that's just me.
I kind of like the sound of it, though.
I agree. Sure, for a biologist we are animals. But since when is biology the most fundamental word in our self-interpretation? In short, it's scientism. One might argue that humans are never sufficient finished to be defined in the first place. And who's doing this defining if not the unfinished human? I'm not saying that we are not (also) animals, but stressing that there's something complacent in such a reduction. The idea that we are only clever monkeys is "faithful" and "religious" in a generalized sense of the word. It isn't neutral or objective away from its narrower employment. It interprets existence.
I'm not sure that's fair. Shouldn't the point be that an explanation should be possible instead of an explanation being complete for the idea of physicalism to at least not be absurd? Also, I'm not sure explanations and proof have much to do with a metaphysical theory. The success of science has increased the intuition that physicalism is true and a lot of research into biochemistry and neurobiology is pursued assuming these things can be quantified. Regardless of that success, there could be more reasons why that endeavour could fail than "obviously physicalism isn't true".
Thanks, I read the Stanford entry on this which I had trouble with understanding. As I understand experiences, they are about something. So an experience that does not causally interact with the world seems a contradiction in terms to me.
Quoting t0m
Oh, since about the middle of the 19th century.
Good point. For me this notion of explanation itself is also insufficiently analyzed. What is an explanation? https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-explanation/ Is this the "deeper" kind of explanation that we vaguely have in mind in the first place? I don't think so. But this kind of thinking threatens a certain kind of scientistic metaphysics, too. How satisfying can any explanatory abstraction really be here? What does it really accomplish?
In a broader context, why do we assume origin determines the meaning of the situation we find ourselves in. How we got here is not necessarily significant. Do certain configurations of non-conscious "parts" become conscious if put together a certain way? That seems to be the case. I wasn't here. My mother conceived and converted her food into the bodily foundation of my consciousness which seems to have "faded" into this body --or so it seems.
Did life as a whole "erupt" this way from swirling non-conscious stuff? Did a hard-to-find God stuff a soul into a fetus? Are there millions of possibilities that haven't occurred to me? How is this origin significant? If that hard-to-find God is still around to help, then maybe it is. But the significance flows from the still-around-ness. In short, what is the situation now? Are we limited by our origin, whatever it was? Is the argument about origin "really" aimed at cultural criticism? If so, do we need the origin apart from the questionable general sense of the origin's centrality?
And the success of philosophy is found in exposing this intuition as nonsense. As for assumptions, I'm sure every scientist knows what they say about you and me.
Never mind the rest of my post, eh? Where has philosophy definitely relegated physicalism to the nonsense bin? I'm not aware of it.
Also, not sure what you think scientists are doing but if scientists don't assume science can say something about the mind they wouldn't be pursuing research in those fields. So far all you're doing is putting a burden of proof on people who think physicalism could work, without really having made a coherent point yourself. It's only assertions so far.
You said: "If materialism is true, human learning should also be explained in the literature of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics."
I more or less replied that it should read: if physicalism is true, human learning could also be explained in the literature of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics.
Do you agree? If not, why not? Why are such explanations fundamental to the truth of physicalism according to you? And even if such explanations aren't possible, why can't there be other explanations as to why science cannot explain it than "obviously physicalism doesn't work"?
It hasn't.
Such as immaterial explanations? I would be willing to consider such an explanation if you have one to offer (or refer to).
I'm still waiting for citations of explanations of human learning written strictly in terms of Biology, Chemistry, and Physics. The reason why this is important was explained in the OP's The Heretic link, to wit:
"If materialism is true as an explanation of everything—and they insist it is—then psychological facts, for example, must be reducible to biology, and then down to chemistry, and finally down to physics. If they weren’t reducible in this way, they would (ta-da!) be irreducible. And any fact that’s irreducible would, by definition, be uncaused and undetermined; meaning it wouldn’t be material. It might even be spooky stuff."
Or, you can provide any other explanation which you think validates materialism. Your choice.
That's funny, Wayfarer, because a few months ago, you said this about those that deny the scientific consensus of global warming:
Quoting Wayfarer
If climate change deniers shows up their basic inability to correctly interpret scientifically-established facts, then how is it that you aren't doing the same thing when denying the useful theories of evolutionary psychology and sociobiology?
Quoting WayfarerWhat an odd argument this is. As I was growing up, what I recognized is how similar we are to animals, with all animals sharing many features like having eyes, mouths, hearts, blood, and brains.
Every animal is different from each other. If humans are special because they are different, then every animal is special because each species is different from another.
Now you seem to be confusing the term, "observable". How is it that I'm not observing the external influences on my body, which includes my mind? When I observe a bee stinging my arm, I feel it in my mind. Observing is done with eyes looking out on the world and a brain processing that information. Are you saying that you can observe your own mind and that is the only thing you can observe? Doesn't that lead to the infinite regress of the homonculus in the Cartesian theater? What is an "observation"? What does it entail?
This third person makes it more difficult for science only because this third thing hasn't been clearly defined in order to be falsifiable. Not only that but it is more complicated in general. Proposing a third thing that isn't necessary makes things more complicated and goes against Occam's Razor.
Finally, there is some work on memory and learning and the biochemistry and neurobiology involved. It isn't my field of expertise though but this is interesting:
https://www.ted.com/talks/ed_boyden
and there's the work of David Freedman as well.
Thanks by the way. Not sure I really understand it yet but it's food for thought.
It may be possible at some point in the future to establish causation between levels of abstraction, but third person observation/measurement of subjective experience is not possible (as others have already noted).
Nagel suggests two ways of modifying materialism to account for mental phenomena (i.e., deny that mental is irreducible, or deny that mental requires a scientific explanation).
He concludes: "It makes sense to seek an expanded form of understanding that includes the mental but that is still scientific — i.e. still a theory of the immanent order of nature."
As I understand it, the philosophical understanding of 'substance' has never been allied to its common understanding as "stuff", so it's not at all clear what you are actually referring to here with your " But it’s all a colossal mistake, a category error, a misreading".
I'm not denying that such theories can't be useful, but that they often occupy a position of exaggerated importance in the landscape.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You make my point for me.
What I'm referring to, is the fact that the meaning of 'res cogitans' is often interpreted in line with the vernacular understanding of 'substance' - hence the absurd Wiki quote I posted about 'ectoplasm' - which was derived from the work of actual academic philosophers.
You premise that your mind is part of your body, so you're just begging the question. I can't answer that question because your premise is not something I'm willing to accept. And I do not agree with your use of "I feel it in my mind". Any time a bee has stung me (many times I might add), I have felt it in the part of my body where it stings me, not in my mind. Do you not recognize a distinction between the conclusion you make with your mind, "a bee is stinging me", and the observations which lead you to that conclusion?
Quoting Harry Hindu
The third aspect is necessary, because it gets us beyond the common materialist complaint, which you have brought up.
I can't see this. If you mean to say that the meaning of 'res cogitans' is often interpreted by philosophers (and really who else bothers to interpret it at all?) in line with the common understanding of substance as shown in expressions such as "chemical substance", I just don't think this is right.
For instance if, presuming physicalism, humans are exhaustively physical beings consisting only of structured physical matter, and human beings think; from that it does not follow that matter per se must think. In other words it does not follow that there is "thinking matter", simpliciter.
Similarly, if fire is an exhaustively material phenomenon, and fire is hot, it does not follow that matter, per se. must be hot. Or if water is nothing more than physical matter, and water is wet, it does not follow that physical matter is wet, and so on.
But I don't like when the target is extended to include the theory of evolution, and his writing is co-opted by young Earth creationists, intelligent design advocates and fundamentalists to try to support their wacky counter-theories. They imply that to accept the theory of evolution is to be a reductionist and a materialist and that is simply wrong.
It is indubitable, in my opinion. If you're familiar with Ryle's criticism of the 'ghost in the machine', that is very much based the problem of treating res cogitans as purportedly objective. Husserl said, in the Crisis of European Sciences:
Husserl's Crisis of the European Sciences and Transendental Phenomenology, Dermot Moran, emphasis added.
Quoting andrewk
According to Jerry Coyne, Daniel Dennett, and Steven Pinker, anyone who raises even philosophical objections of the kind that Nagel does, must ipso facto be on the side of creationism. There are only two possibilities in their view: materialist or creationist. You either believe and accept the materialist account which they subscribe to, or you've gone over to the other side, even if you profess to be atheist. The 'jealous God' of Christian monotheism dies hard.
I don't know much about Coyne, but I like and agree with some of Dennett's work, and ditto for Pinker - particularly 'The Better Angels of Our Nature' (again based on secondary sources - TLDR). But I can't agree with them on that. It's not just my worldview that they are summarily dismissing, but also that of the very many religious or spiritual people who work in evolutionary biology. They may be a minority in that field, but there are still very many of them, and they're generally very clever people.
Aesthetically too, I just really dislike that 'If you are not with me you're against me' attitude. It reminds me of George W Bush and the second gulf war. I don't think we need another war.
But the philosophical idea of a thinking substance has never been the idea of a thinking substance, where substance is thought of as in "chemical substance", because to interpret it that way would not be dualistic, but panpsychistic; it would be to say that matter (substance) thinks.
Descartes' notion of a mental substance cannot be thought of to be anything but quasi-analogous to physical substance. Also even Descartes' notion of physical substance cannot be anything like the common idea of " a chemical substance" because a chemical substance is a particular kind of substance. To think that way might be more akin to Aristotelian ideas of substance; where substances are individuals or kinds (according to Aristotle you and I would be substances, for example).
The objectification of human beings is inherent in the whole Western tradition, as I see it; it is not uniquely the result of modern science. It has accelerated and intensified since the Industrial Revolution, due to various influences including explicitly thinking of humans as resources to be exploited (Capitalism) (which is not to suggest that humans were not exploited previous to this) and the rise of commodification and consumerism. It is a massively complex and interwoven dialectic which you seem to want to oversimplify; that is what I disagree with in your approach.
Along these lines, I'd stress that "thinking substance" tempts us to think of a being among beings, when far more significantly we have the openness of being itself. Through us the world is. We aren't a thing but 'the there' itself, the field in which there are things.
Ideas like "thinking substance" are themselves entities in this 'there' that they aim at. "Thinking substance" does recognize the "productive-creative logic" of or in the there. Ordinary practical life understands this 'there' as a person in a body among bodies. Descartes' forgets to doubt the sense of being trapped in an individual 'mind' that may or may not be right about the non-mind. He's insufficiently 'behind' the inherited pre-interpretation to get the job done, one might say.
In short, the 'subject' tends to be conceived as a view on the object and neglected as the condition of possibility of the object. But this subject-object distinction itself depends on an opening that it tends to obscure in a greed for correctness. Wanting-to-prove-something is an 'attunement' that may constrain what becomes conspicuous. Aren't the so-called subject and the so-called object given radically together? For the most part I "am" what I look at and do. There's a voice in one's head, too, of course. But isn't it interesting that existence or the presence of the there is overlooked in a focus on this 'voice' and its accuracy?
Through us the world is for us, (where 'world' is taken to denote 'the collection of things and their relations); the world is always already externalized, it is never my living experience, but merely a conceptualization. So, I can't agree that we are the "field in which there are things" because that field is precisely the world; and we are not the world.
Surely Aristotle’s concern for “thaten” does reflect the folk metaphysics search for an ur-stuff. Substance became defined hylomorphically as in-formed matter. So substance is a stuff with inherent properties or potential.
I would agree that there also lurks a more sophisticated reading of Aristotelian substance.
If instead the focus is on individuation, then the substantial can be taken to mean simply the individuated. Substance is about unbounded potential becoming concretely constrained.
So drill down to the root of being and - if existence is pure individuation - then the ur-stuff is the radically unindividuated. The Apeiron.
So there is the conventional definition of substance - the ur-stuff debate that leads to ectoplasmic dualism or panpsychism. Then there is the flip version of hylomorphism where existence is the individuated, and thus quite a different story of constraints on unbound freedoms needs to be told.
The problem is that ur-stuff cannot be any particular stuff, because if it were it would already possess some particular form, and so then could not be pure primordial stuff. So, the idea of substance as prior to form seems to be akin to an idea like 'being', which has no form except as it is instantiated in beings. As Hegel pointed out pure being or substance must be thought to be akin to nothingness (no-thing-ness) or your (and Anaximander's) Apeiron.
So, as you say being is indeed the undifferentiated.
Well, Descartes himself theorised that res cogitans interacted with the body (which was purely material) through the pituitary gland. So it inevitably came to be thought of as something like a 'spiritual substance', rightly or wrongly (mostly, wrongly.) I’m not saying I think it’s a valid idea, I’m saying it’s a very widespread misconception. That wiki article I found on ‘epiphenomenal ectoplasm’ wasn’t actually ironic or humorous; people, even philosophers, really do entertain such ideas.
(Actually I am very sceptical of the philosophical idea of ‘substantia’ - ‘what stands under’ - right from Aristotle forward. I don’t *think* there’s an equivalent idea in Plato, and that it really came to the fore with Aristotle’s Metaphysics. That is something I need to reseach a bit more. )
Quoting t0m
That is close to Husserl’s criticism of naturalism.
I think it is something that coincides with and may be causally related to the modern period, and that this aspect of Cartesian dualism is a pretty central part of it, as discussed in this quote from Nagel’s text. One of the consequences of this development is that the very faculty which makes it possible, namely, the human mind, is itself denied by the science that it has created, as for example in the from of ‘eliminative materialism’. Something similar to biting the hand that feeds you, or sawing off the branch that you’re sitting on.
I don't object to "through us the world is for us." But I don't agree that the world always already externalized. We can think of TLP Wittgenstein's 'metaphysical subject.' It is not 'in the world.' It is the world. Anything that you know about you is 'for you,' an object for this subject that therefore vanishes to a point. And yet this point is the 'there' itself, a synonym for the being of beings. The subject inasmuch as it is an entity for itself is no longer the subject. It is 'world' or 'object.' But the subject-object distinction breaks down if all that is left of the subject is the 'there' of all the things within the there that are not the there.
*I don't at all deny the everyday sense of being a body or of carefully steering this body through the world. Somehow the being of the world is tied to a brain within the world. Yet the world remains after others die. A Mobius strip comes to mind.
Maybe Hegel missed something, though, when he focused on the what-it-is as opposed to the that-it-is of being. His being is just a pure thing, an entity about which nothing can be said. He images this being 'already there.' So his being is not the being of beings in a stronger sense but only an abstraction of what they all have in common, which is bare or indeterminate unity.
[quote=Hegel]
Being, pure being, without any further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself. It is also not unequal relatively to an other; it has no diversity within itself nor any with a reference outwards. It would not be held fast in its purity if it contained any determination or content which could be distinguished in it or by which it could be distinguished from an other. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate, is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.
[/quote]
The 'thereness' of entities can only be 'nothing' in a dry conceptual sense, simply because the that-it-is of an entitiy is not its what-it-is But this that-it-is of entities in the field of the there is the condition of possibility for asking after the what-it-is of entities.
I don't read Hegel as asserting that being is a "pure thing"; rather it is no-thing. This is Hegel's preemption of Heidegger's ontological difference. I also believe Hegel is concerned with the "what-it-is" of being, but rather with unravelling the logic of the concept of being. That-it-is is a given; Hegel would echo Spinoza in declaring that there is no possibility that there could be nothing. Being is no-thing, ( insofar as we cannot say anything really determinate about it) but it obviously is not nothing at all.
I would say that being is certainly not an abstraction for Hegel. In a way Hegel's notion of being equates with his idea of spirit. the world of beings is the dialectical manifestation of spirit.
I don't agree that the subject is the world for Wittgenstein.
He says in the Tracatatus: "The subject does not belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world. (5.632).
He also says: "I am my world. (The microcosm.)" (5.63) (Emphasis mine.)
I think he refers here to the world as experienced. He was no solipsist.
In any case I disagree that we experience the world or that we experience ourselves as being my world. We undergo affects, which we experience as events, people, places, things and so on; along with emotions, thoughts and desires that are occasioned by our experience of these. We think of this as my life, in which we are engaged with these things, the totality of which we think of as my world. But the shared inter-subjective world is always already externalized insofar as it is objectivized as a world of events and objects that are publicly available to experience.
I'm a panpsychist who agrees with this conception of substance. If I understand you, of course, which I probably don't.
I respect your disagreement. I don't pretend to be sure of what he meant, and I also don't want to be mistaken as trying to argue from an authority I don't believe in. I quote some of the lines relevant to what I am imperfectly aiming at.
[quote=W]
Here it can be seen that solipsism, when its implications are followed
out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to
a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with
it.
Thus there really is a sense in which philosophy can talk about the
self in a non-psychological way. What brings the self into philosophy is
the fact that 'the world is my world'. The philosophical self is not the
human being, not the human body, or the human soul, with which psychology
deals, but rather the metaphysical subject, the limit of the world--[u]not a
part of it.[/u]
[/quote]
Note that you left out a key part when you quote the line above. "Not a part of it." So what is this self that the world is for?
[quote=W]
So too at death the world does not alter, but comes to an end.
[/quote]
I agree with you that the world is 'my' world in an important sense. As I read Heidegger it is death that most clearly reveals to the 'Dasein' that it is the there itself. But this is the there of being-in, of being-with-others.
[quote=W]
It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it
exists.
To view the world sub specie aeterni is to view it as a whole--a
limited whole. Feeling the world as a limited whole--it is this that is
mystical.
[/quote]
This 'that it exists' is central for me. I can't be sure what 'feeling it as a limited whole' meant to Witgenstein, but I speculate that we have to grasp all that exists as a unity to open up the strangeness of its being there. It's one thing to wonder at a particular thing and another to wonder at the there itself.
[quote=W]
When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be
put into words. The riddle does not exist. If a question can be framed at
all, it is also possible to answer it.
Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it
tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt can exist
only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and
an answer only where something can be said.
[/quote]
I read this in terms of the brute fact of the world, of the senselessness of the question 'why is there anything rather than nothing?' It's a lyrical pseudo-question with respect to the way we usually understand explanation in terms of necessary relationships between entities within the world. Yet this pseudo-question opens up 'the mystical.'
[quote=W]
There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make
themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.
[/quote]
This is less clear to me. I find it plausible to read this in terms of either feeling or the that-it-is-there.
Quoting Janus
We probably roughly agree. I acknowledge that being-with-others and being-in-the-world (Heidegger) is pretty close to the pre-theoretical given. But what throws me off is 'objectivized,' because that makes it sound more explicit and theoretical than the 'given' I have in mind. Wittgenstein is a little scientistic in the TLP. He doesn't examine spatiality and time as they are experienced but adopts physics space and physics time unquestioningly. I think Heidegger does a good job of showing just how 'deworlded' the physics versions of time and space are. They are learned abstractions.
I very much agree with concerned engagement as primary, though. But do we not largely disappear into this engagement? The subject is largely an abstraction that is there, itself a usetool, 'for' the metaphysical subject, which is to say 'in the there' which it therefore cannot be.
Again, I can't claim to know what Hegel had in mind, but only share what I make of his text. I underline what inspired me to understand being as bare or pure unity.
[quote=Hegel]
Being, pure being, without any further determination. In its indeterminate immediacy it is equal only to itself. It is also not unequal relatively to an other; it has no diversity within itself nor any with a reference outwards. It would not be held fast in its purity if it contained any determination or content which could be distinguished in it or by which it could be distinguished from an other. It is pure indeterminateness and emptiness. There is nothing to be intuited in it, if one can speak here of intuiting; or, it is only this pure intuiting itself. Just as little is anything to be thought in it, or it is equally only this empty thinking. Being, the indeterminate immediate, is in fact nothing, and neither more nor less than nothing.
Nothing, pure nothing: it is simply equality with itself, complete emptiness, absence of all determination and content — undifferentiatedness in itself. In so far as intuiting or thinking can be mentioned here, it counts as a distinction whether something or nothing is intuited or thought. To intuit or think nothing has, therefore, a meaning; both are distinguished and thus nothing is (exists) in our intuiting or thinking; or rather it is empty intuition and thought itself, and the same empty intuition or thought as pure being. Nothing is, therefore, the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as, pure being
[/quote]
I realize that Heidegger was probably inspired by this connection of being and nothing, but I don't see the ontological difference here at all. It looks like concept analysis.
As I do yours. We each read these philosophers differently, and I am not wanting to say there is one correct way to read them. So, I am just telling you how I read them, just as you are telling me how you do.
Quoting t0m
Again,I see the ontological difference (that being is not a being) as implicit in Hegel's understanding that being is akin to nothing, meaning it is not a thing, or in Heidegger's parlance, not a being.
Ummm, yeah. So, some theory that explains the mind and how it came to be, which includes whatever theory you have on the subject as well, isn't important, and doesn't need to be useful to be important. Okay, Wayfarer.
Quoting Wayfarer
Perfect. Then we finally agree on something. We finally agree that humans are just another species of animal and that differences doesn't make one special, because every species, and every individual within that species, is unique, and would make every one of them special, which would then just dilute the meaning of "special".
That is my perspective - of being inside the head of a body. If our minds are not processes of our bodies, then why does it seem that way? Why is it so brute? This isn't a rhetorical question. I expect an answer, MU. Please don't try to wiggle your way out of it.
It is you who is wiggling. Last post you said your body "includes my mind", implying that the mind is a part of the body. Now you say that the mind is a process of the body. Which are you claiming? If the former, I cannot agree, as I've already explained. If the latter, then I need an explanation from you as to how something which is referred to with a noun, "the mind", can be said to be a process, an activity. All I see is category error on your part, attempting to make something (the mind) which is understood as a thing engaged in the activity of reasoning, into a process, the activity itself.
Why don't you just come out and say what you are alluding to? You believe that the mind is the brain. I don't believe that at all, because contrary to what you are saying, it doesn't seem to me, to be that way at all. Nor does it seem like the mind is a process of the body, because the mind is the thing which is carrying out this process of reasoning, it does not seem to be the process itself.
But doesn't that impossibility result if you insist experience is something more than (a pattern of) neurons firing? A map isn't the terrain either. Chemical equations aren't the reactions either. So I'm not sure how this is an argument against. Can you elaborate?
Theoretically it's possible to record a brain pattern and activate it by stimulating another brain with the same pattern, allowing that other person to experience the same thing in the same way (assuming 2 different brains are sufficiently similar). There have also been test to project the images people dream on screen. I'm not sure what else should be observed or measured.
This is exactly what is referred to as ‘the hard problem of consciousness’.
Congrats, MU. You win the award for the most pathetic attempt to avoid answering a direct question. What is it with you "philosophers" that like to question the basis of some scientific theory, but then don't question any "philosophical" theory that you hold and then have to perform these mental gymnastics in order to avoid answering the questions. It's quite pathetic to watch what I thought were intelligent people, behave as if they are delusional.
To get back at what you're saying, because I always answer questions and address all arguments made against my statements, unlike yourself, it isn't a contradiction to say that the body includes my mind and that that mind is a process. This is no different than saying that my body includes the process of digestion.
Science itself has shown that there aren't things, but only processes. Every "thing" is just an amalgam of smaller interacting "things", which is itself an amalgam of smaller interacting "things", all the way down. Things are just processes. Everything is a process.
Now, are you going to provide an answer that will show why we appear to be inside bodies? If you aren't going to answer it, MU, then don't waste your time posting a reply because I won't be continuing this conversation with you if you can't show me the same courtesy that I have shown you in answering your questions.
Is the mind a model of the brain, or is the brain a model of the mind? When we look at another brain, why don't we see their experiences instead of neurons firing? Is the brain we see just the way our mind models their mind? Or is the mind a delusion of the brain?
For the very simple reason that experience requires a subject, and ‘the subject’ can’t be an object of perception.
When you look at fMRI data, you don’t see experience - you see a graphic representation of neural activities. But it’s not until those activities are integrated into a meaningful unity, that it becomes an experience; and the faculty that performs that integration isn’t seen in the fMRI data. That is not hyperbole - it’s an aspect of the neural binding problem.
Brains don’t have delusions. Actually brains don’t have or do anything; they only operate meaningfully embodied in the body, in the nervous system, in the environment.
Yes, I think this is a good reason to think that consciousness is not a property of anything by virtue of its differentiated structure. I think the binding problem is a strong reason to think consciousness is a property of reality-as-continuum.
I was arguing that the Aristotle's hylomorphic story on substance can be read two ways. And the radical one here would be the "top-down" individuation version.
The panpsychic version would instead be the more familiar bottom-up story where substance is a stuff with properties. The only difference with panpsychism is that all stuff comes with two distinct classes of property - the material and the mental.
The top-down story is instead "mind-like" in stressing the role of formal and final purpose in the act of individuation. So Being is the result of constraints imposed on potentiality. Concrete material stuff is produced by acts of individuation that limits formless "material" potential. And material is in quotes as ultimately the notion of potential - Aristotle's prime matter - has to be as matterless as it is formless.
As I explained, your questioning was nonsensical. You shifted from the assumption that the mind is part of the body, to the assumption that the mind is a process of the body. And I explained why it was nonsense to speak of the mind as a process. That's why I couldn't answer your question, it really didn't make any sense to me.
Quoting Harry Hindu
"The body" doesn't include the process of digestion, that is something that the body is doing. It is this type of category mistake which makes discussion with you very difficult. See, in the act of digestion, something which is not part of the body becomes part of the body. Since this process necessarily includes something which is not part of the body, we cannot properly say "the body includes the process of digestion". You continue with your nonsense.
Quoting Harry Hindu
As soon as you can explain to me how there could be an activity, or process occurring, without a thing, or things, which are carrying out that activity, then I might take what you say seriously. And by the way, science has shown no such thing. That is a metaphysical principle, which assumes that there are only processes. Science has gone in the opposite direction, attributing everything to fundamental particles. Look at light for example, it is described as photons, things.
Quoting Harry Hindu
What's wrong with being inside a body? I don't see any problem with this. I would say that most likely we appear to be inside a body because we are. Does that answer your question? The problem that I have with what you have said, is that you have proceeded from the assumption "My mind is inside a body", to two distinct and equally invalid conclusions. 1, My mind is part of a body, and 2, my mind is the process of a body.
So, then how is it that you can even talk about your mental processes and feelings if you aren't aware of yourself, or your own mind? How is it that you can talk about being aware of being aware, if the "subject" can't be an object of perception? How can you talk about your own perceptions?
Quoting Wayfarer
This doesn't answer my question at all.
When you look at fMRI data, or just look at someone's brain, WHY can't we see their experiences? Why is our mind cut off from other minds? WHY do we see brains/bodies instead of experiences? Is what we experience a model of their experiences? What I'm asking is, is there really a brain filled with neurons there, or is it experiences there and the brain only exists in our mind as a model of their experiences? There is no binding problem if brains don't really exist except in minds. The binding problem would be a problem of the model itself. That was my initial question: Do brains only exist in minds as models, or do minds exist in brains?
Quoting WayfarerWhat does "operate meaningfully embodied in the body" even mean, and what does that have to do with my question?
You tried to explain but failed. It isn't nonsensical. You merely took one small meaningless difference in a part of my post, that wasn't part of the question, and focused on that, rather than answering the question.
Quoting Metaphysician UndercoverSo, something the body is doing isn't a process? Who's being nonsensical?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I never said anything was wrong with being a body. Sheesh, MU. You are all over the place, jumping through impossible hoops in your mind - all in an attempt to not answer a simple question. Well, it's simple for me, but not for you because you assume that the mind isn't part of the body when that is how it forcefully appears. I'll tell you what, MU. I'll make a post with the question all by itself, so you can't get side-tracked with other stuff, that has nothing to do with the question, that I said. You can continue to respond to this post, but I'll just ignore it, as I'm only concerned with the answer to my question in the following post:
For the reasons I provided.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Obviously, there is a brain. The philosophical question is, whether experience, and mind, can be understood as a product of the brain, and the brain as a product of material causes. That is the view of philosophical materialism, which is what Nagel's book is criticizing. But neither Nagel, nor I, would deny that the brain is obviously central to the nature of experience - if you have a brain injury, or take an intoxicant, then the nature of experience, and the operation of your mind, is affected. But that is not the whole story, as there is also a feedback loop in the other direction - the mind can affect, even 'reconfigure', the brain (which is one of the findings of neuro-plasticity). So the nature of the mind, and its relationship to the brain, is still an open question, it hasn't been definitively solved by neurobiology or evolutionary science.
Didn't you read my post? I said:
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Further, I said that if the mind is inside a body, this does not lead to the conclusion that the mind is part of a body, nor does it lead to the conclusion that the mind is a process of the body.
Here's a question for you HH. What do you think it means "to be inside a body"?
It means that it is part of my body and not yours or anyone else - just like your nervous system is part of your body and not part of mine.
Saying that the mind can exist apart from the body is like saying the nervous system can exist apart from the body, and goes against the medical knowledge that we have in that when parts of the brain are damaged, parts of the mind are missing or non-functional, like being able to speak your native language or recognize faces.
Now it's my turn to ask a question(s):
How does a mind see, hear and feel without eyes, ears and a nervous system? What is the point of having a body if a mind can do these things without one?
Being inside a body means to be part of that body? Since when? Does being inside a box mean that you are part of the box? How about a car, or a house, does being inside one of these mean that you are part of it?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Why would you say this? The mind and the nervous system are two distinct things. Unless you have a principle which makes them comparable, your comparison is like comparing apples and oranges. In the case of apples and oranges there is a common principle, they are both fruit. In the case of the mind and the nervous system we could say that they are both properties of life. But this does not make what is true of the nervous system also true of the mind, just like what is true of an apple is not necessarily true of an orange. Clearly your comparison is meaningless.
Quoting Harry Hindu
A mind doesn't do these things without a body. Obviously.
When inside the car and the car moves, do you not move with the car? A radio is inside the car and can be removed. Does that make the radio not part of the car? Do you even think before typing and submitting a post, or are you simply trying to pull my leg?
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
What happens in an apple doesn't happen in the orange. Apples and oranges aren't a good comparison. When something happens in the mind, we can point to some event in the nervous system. The nerves in your arm are connected to your brain. This is why you feel, or aware, of the bee sting in your arm.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
Then I don't know what it is that we are disagreeing on here. What does a mind do without a body? Can it exist without a body? Can digestion exist without a body?
OK, so when you are inside your car you believe that you are part of your car. I don't, so we have a difference of opinion on that.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I know what we are disagreeing about, it's stated right above. You think that because a mind is inside a body it is part of a body. I do not. You don't see a difference between a mind and a body. I do. So we disagree.
When I first engaged you in conversation, it was because I didn't agree with your claim that if the mind and the body are two distinct things, they couldn't interact. Is that why you claim that you a part of your car when you are inside it, because you believe that if you were not part of your car, you wouldn't be able to interact with it?
I understand your perplexity. The dualism of body and mind - the idea that these are separable - goes back to Descartes. He depicted the human as a composite of the physical, res extensia, which has size but no intelligence, and the mental, res cogitans, which is intelligent but has no extension.This can be depicted as body and mind, physical and mental, body and spirit, and so on.
Descartes himself couldn't really say how the mind and the body interacted although he believed it did so through the pineal gland. But regardless of its strengths and weaknesses, Descartes' philosophy, and the reactions and criticisms of it, gave rise to the modern 'mind-body' problem, as described by Thomas Nagel in the book we're discussing here.
Underline added.
I have noticed that you often refer to the 'cause and effect' relationship between objects and perception - that objects cause perceptions - and that your view is very similar to what is described in the above passage. And it is the common-sense view which I think many people would naturally accept. Part of this view, is that the fundamental constituents of being, are the physical elements which comprise objects, namely atoms. In this view, everything, including the mind itself, is ultimately atoms and can be ultimately explained in terms of physics. Evolution itself can be understood in similarly physical terms, although in that case higher-level factors are said to supervene on the physical, so as to give rise to living organisms and eventually the evolved intelligence of h. sapiens even though these might seem not to be purely physical. However, the only real entities are physical entities.
So that is the view of the 'neo-darwinist materialism' which Thomas Nagel is setting out to criticize. But it might be helpful to spell all of this out so it is clear what is being criticized by this book, and on what grounds.
The point is, materialism, or physicalism (which for these purposes are the same) is an all-or-nothing proposition. It is the idea that ‘everything real is physical’, or, put another way, that ‘only the physical is real’. So it can’t be a little bit wrong - it’s either entirely correct, or it’s not. That’s why when an eminent philosopher like Nagel comes out and challenges it, the wagons are circled, and he’s set on by a Darwinist mob.
Perhaps my memory is playing tricks on me, but I thought that the main source of negative reviews of Nagel's book was that in it he gave credence to some Intelligent Design advocates. Decrying Intelligent Design as pseudo-science and claiming that 'everything is physical' are two very different things, even if there is a correlation. I see Intelligent Design (meaning the claim that complex life forms were separately designed and implemented, not evolved, NOT the much more benign idea held by many Christian scientists that the process of evolution was planned and set in place by a deity, or that the universe itself was somehow planned) as mind-rotting rubbish that needs to be fought at every opportunity, but certainly do not subscribe to statements like 'everything is physical' (which is, in my view, not even wrong).
But that's mainly because of the 'if you're not with us, you're against us' attitude that is typical of 'philosophical Darwinism'. You know that when the UK Astronomer General, Martin Rees, accepted the Templeton Prize a few years back, Richard Dawkins exclaimed that he was 'a compliant Quisling'! That gives you an idea of the depth of the animus.
Nagel explains in his book that he lacks a 'sense of the divine' ('sensus divinatus'), and that he really is a convinced atheist; although it is also true that he has said that intelligent design arguments have been treated unfairly by their opponents, and that they at least deserve consideration on their philosophical merits. But that is not what caused the reaction against him. (Actually, if you haven't read Andrew Ferguson's summary of the book and the issues, I urge you to have a look).
Sure. And Darwin did not espouse it. So please don't call it Darwinism, philosophical or otherwise.
Be as rude as you like about radical reductionists and I won't complain. I may even tacitly agree. Just don't conflate radical reductionism with acceptance of Darwin's theory of evolution. The two have nothing to do with another. If Nagel conflated the two (and I don't know whether he did) then I can understand his receiving an angry reaction. In fact, apart from Coyne, Dennett and Pinker, some of the people who were angry with him may have been Christian biologists - incensed that he gave support to those that seek to undermine the teaching of evolutionary biology in US schools.
There were several questions above that you avoided. I'm trying to get at WHY you think that your mind isn't part of your body. You simply saying that we disagree doesn't answer my questions or improve my understanding of your position.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
I never said that I don't see a difference between a mind and a body. The mind is not the body. It is a process of the body.
Quoting Metaphysician Undercover
There were more questions that you ignored, yet Wayfarer quoted them and took a stab at trying to answer. Go figure. If you can't answer questions, MU, then don't bother striking up a philosophical conversation with me. I'll continue this once you have answered my questions.
My position isn't dualism. It wasn't me that was saying the mind and body are separable. It was MU. I was asking those questions of MU to get at how a mind can exist independent of a body, as if the mind isn't caused by the body and it's interaction with it's environment.
My point was that the mind and body are made of the same substance, whether you want to call that substance "physical", "mental", or something else, it doesn't really matter in the end. Both idealists and physicalists are saying the same thing but don't seem to realize it - that the mind and body interact, and if they interact they must be of the same substance, the same reality of cause and effect.
Quoting Wayfarer
To say that everything is composed of atoms is off the mark. Atoms themselves are the interaction of protons, neutrons, and electrons. Protons are the interaction of quarks, and who knows what quarks are the interaction of. It seems that science doesn't describe objects at all, as there isn't anything object to point to - only interactions, or processes. If everything is a process, which includes cause and effect, then there really isn't any substance at all, only processes, or another term we could use is, information.
I studied philosophy for many years. It would be very difficult for me to recount here, under these conditions, why I don't think my mind is part of my body. Generally speaking, I believe in the freedom of the will, and this means that the decisions made by the mind are not caused by the body.
Quoting Harry Hindu
As I explained before, this doesn't make sense to me. The mind is a thing which thinks and makes decisions. Therefore it is a thing which is active, involved in processes, it is not itself a process. To this objection, you simply said that everything is reducible to processes. Again, I explained why this doesn't make sense, every description of an occurring process describes something which is carrying out the process. So in the case of thinking and making decisions, you can describe this as the body carrying out this process, or as the mind carrying out this process, and these would be two different ways of describing the same process, thinking and making decisions. But what sense would it make to say that the mind is a process of the body, and making decisions is a process of the mind? Why not just say that making decisions is a process of the body? Where does this leave the mind?
Quoting Harry Hindu
I explained to you why I couldn't answer some of your questions. They did not make sense to me. And you never proceeded to straighten them out. Others I answered, and you just didn't like the answers. Maybe you could describe more clearly what you are asking.
This is where you seem to be lost. Why do you think that if two things interact they must be of the same substance. Vinegar and baking soda interact, right? How are those two the same substance?
Quoting Harry Hindu
Have you not heard of fundamental particles? Physicists reduce all processes to a number of fundamental particles, it's called particle physics. It is really not true to say that science doesn't describe objects. Each fundamental particle is a different type of object.