There are two positions one can take in the
ontology of mind; emergentism and pan-psychism. Emergentism is the view that
the world is made up of non-experiential matter and in certain cases
experiential properties emerge from this matter. Pan-psychism is the view that
the fundamental matter is itself experiential. Pan-psychism has been largely
discredited (many see the view itself as a reductio) and so the majority of
discussion in the ontology of the mind concerns itself with emergentism.
Galen Strawson has recently argued that
pan-psychism is the most complete materialist position one can take. Probably
the main reason that pan-psychism has been discredited is that it appears
unscientific but Strawson argues that this is not true. Physics is the study of
the relations between particles, not what they are made off, and so is agnostic
on this question. It appears pan-psychism was discredited because of an intuition,
the assumption that fundamental matter could not be experiential.
Within emergentism there are two positions one
can take; materialism (there exists only one type of matter, the physical) or
dualism (the mental substance that emerge from physical substance is a
different type of thing). With a few notable exceptions aside[1], the
vast majority of emergentists are physicalists of one stripe or another. Yet
even these exceptions agree with the physicalists to a certain extent.[2] Henry
Stapp argues this base agreement ignores the findings of quantam mechanics,
which he suggests entail that dualism is in fact the correct theory of the
mind.[3]
I have brought up these points not to argue
for any particular position but to show how, at the fundamental level, a lot of
these disagreements rest on intuition and not facts or arguments. It seems the choices
are made on hunches or guesswork more than anything else. When deciding what
position to take in the ontology of mind it appears we have little more to work
with than intuitions, assumptions and base preferences.
Some materialists argue that their position is
better because it is ontologically parsimonious (offers the simplest
explanation of the effect). This belief is itself an intuition because we don’t
have any reason to believe that simplicity is a virtue of a position. The
answer to the question of how many substances make up the world should in no
way reflect the human maxim that the simplest theory is usually the better one.
The number of substances which make up the world will be the number of
substances that in fact make up the world (whether that number is one, ten or
five hundred). Even if humans see a theory about the world as a better one
because it is simple this will have no effect on whether it is true.
I feel that there are many such cases within
philosophy. In the Chinese Room thought experiment John Searle argues against
the possibility of strong AI (artificial intelligence capable of
understanding). He argues that just as there is no individual point in which
understanding occurs in functional systems, so there is no understanding
occurring in functional systems as a whole. Many of the critics of this thought
experiment argue that although Searle is right that there is no one place where
understanding occurs; understanding does occur when we look at the system as a
whole. At this point there appears to be no avenue for the disagreement to be
reconciled; it seems that in such a case it is really just the intuition that
the system doesn’t understand pitted against the intuition that the system does.
And I feel both sides are within their rights to argue that the other is begging
the question when stating their view.[4]
The point I have been trying to make is that
philosophy, which appears at surface to be a rigorous and structured analytic
system, is at base little more than the presumptions or preferences of the
individual who postulates them. The rationality comes in alright, but only
after the decision of what to believe that has already been made. As I have
argued earlier it does not appear that we have any real justification in making
these assumptions. In the Chinese Room example both sides of the dispute agree
that there is no understanding in individual parts of the system. Searle and
his supporters argue that if no part of it understands then the system doesn’t.
His opponents argue that although no individual part understands the system
when taken as a whole does. At this point there appears to be no argument which
can be made that has the force to propel someone to either position; it seems
that one just decides who they agree with. There is no reasoning involved
here.
Anton’s syndrome is a pathological condition
in which, despite objective evidence of visual loss, patients deny that they
are blind. They will even confabulate to support this belief. Maddula, Lutton
and Keegan describe an eighty-three year old patient with this condition. This
patient, when asked what tie the doctor was wearing, would give an (incorrect)
answer, in spite of the fact she was blind (Maddula, 2009) . A cursory glance at
the evidence from a range of other pathologies (e.g. split-brain syndrome)
highlight the same type of thing happening. Subjects who are unaware of their
deficiency for one reason or another will often confabulate and rationalise
their actions nonetheless.
I have argued that we appear to make our
philosophical judgements based on intuitions or judgements and that these are
not rationally founded. I have also argued that we do not appear to have any
real justification for making them. Arguably when we do philosophy we are behaving
a lot more like the eighty-three year old with Anton’s syndrome than we may
think. Perhaps we are doing nothing more than confabulating our unfounded and
baseless intuitions in much the same way that the eighty-three year old
confabulated about her choice of what colour the tie was. It could be the case
that rather than getting to any fundamental truths of the world, we as
philosophers are merely suffering from the effects of a human wide pathology. We
may believe in what we are doing but, as sufferers of this pathology, in
reality we are just deluding ourselves (and are perhaps biologically
constrained to do so).
[1]
David Chalmers, a dualist, and John Searle, who argues that he is neither a
dualist or a physicalist
[2]
David Chalmers believes that science must be extended in order to accommodate
the mental and so in a sense he agrees with the characterisation of science as
studying only the physical. John Searle argues that there exists only one thing
in the world, physical particles contained in fields of force.
[3]
“In view of the turmoil that has engulfed philosophy during the three centuries
since Newton cut the bond between mind and matter, the re-bonding achieved by
physicists during the first half of the twentieth century must be seen as an
enormous development, a lifting of the veil. Ignoring this huge and enormously
pertinent development in basic science, and proclaiming the validity of
materialism on the basis of inapplicable-in-this-context- nineteenth-century
science is not a rational judgement.” (Stapp, 2010)
[4]
David Chalmers’ ‘Zombie Argument’ and Frank Jackson’s ‘What Mary Didn’t Know’
are other arguments which immediately spring to mind that I think follow the
same type of format.
No comments:
Post a Comment