Could it be that we are entirely mechanical, biological beings, whilst all of our mental activity is nothing more than a by-product, or epiphenomenon?
In attempting to explain what it is to be a human person, there seem to be two features which can neither be ignored nor accommodated entirely comfortably with one another: mind and body. The French rationalist René Descartes (1596-1650) described human persons as typically being composed of two things, which were entirely different substances. However, Descartes’s theory faced a number of severe problems, such the need to account for the separation of these two substances and provide a plausible description of how they interact. After Descartes these problems eventually appeared to drive subsequent generations of philosophers further and further towards ideas of materialism or physicalism, which claimed that the world is composed purely of physical matter. At the extremity of materialism is the epiphenomenalist theory of the relationship between the mind and body.
Epiphenomenalism rests on premises from science which are paradigmatically well-established: that human beings are biological animals; that the brain is the physical organ of the mind; and that the physical world is causally closed, with no causes or effects entering into the physical world from without. These thoughts led the British zoologist Thomas Huxley (1825-95) to propose the conclusion that we humans are mechanical creatures with bodily organs and limbs and reflexes that entirely self-sufficiently run themselves; whilst the activity of the mind, all thoughts, emotions and conscious experiences, are nothing more than epiphenomena – by-products which do not have any causal role in the functioning of the body, despite the unshakeable illusion that they do rule over the body.
Epiphenomenalism offers a solution to the mind-body problem – but at the expense of the mind. It would mean that our whole comprehension of ourselves is largely delusory. It would eliminate all causal power from our beliefs, intentions, desires, and love. Furthermore, a restricted version of the theory might have some plausibility – since, as behavioural economists are discovering, we humans do tend to act automatically in many situations where one might have thought that our behavior was more deliberately guided. Are there any good objections to the possibility of epiphenomenalism?
A simple rejoinder would be that we humans have intentions, and that when we will something, we thereby do it, thus demonstrating a clear causal relationship between mind and body. However, the epiphenomenalist could explain the succession of an intention by an action by saying that this is just an example of an illusion – that the belief that one’s intention caused the actions is just another epiphenomenon.
Another more promising alternative could come from the ideas of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who had a more Aristotelian view of the relationship between mind and body. For Hobbes, the mind should not be thought of so much as a substance, but rather part of the mechanism of the human body. This theory is attractive. While epiphenomenalism is not easily refuted, is it not rather far-fetched in comparison to the idea that the mind is a deeply-embedded structural feature of the human body? Although in Hobbes’s theory, the mind and body are still squeezed together rather uncomfortably, it appears to be a more realistic, and less terrifying theory of human nature.
What do you think?
Thanks for that interesting blog post. Unsurprisingly I would side with the more Aristotelian approach, and find myself very uncomfortable with philosophical positions that seek to locate mentality somewhere (be that in the brain or in a Cartesian soul).
ReplyDeleteI think that the Cartesian invention of a mind that is locatable arose out of nominalistic tendencies in late scholasticism accompanied with a more mechanistic worldview in science that drove reflection on philosophical issues further and further inward, and reflection on scientific issues further outward. This then resulted in not only a distinction between physicality and mentality (a distinction that is found quite comfortably in various forms of Aristotelianism), but a separation of the two, so that problems about how mentality and physicality relate, if at all, became urgent. So the latter paved the way for Descartes and the Cartesian turn in philosophy wherein there is this strict divide between physicality and mentality with many either (i) opting for one at the expense of the other or (ii) trying to squeeze the two together.
I think that if one begins with the assumption that mentality is some distinct pirvate space wherein thought occurs, then one will always face problems with the locatability of mentality, and the associated choice over physicalism or some kind of dualism. So perhaps it would be best to reject that assumption and get rid of such questions of post-Cartesian philosophy that only arise when a Cartesian assumption as to the nature of mentality is made in the first place.
Hi Gaven,
ReplyDeleteYour post reminded me of the approach that John Searle takes toward the mind-body problem. John Searle argues that what has caused the mind-body problem is that participants in all sides of the debate are accepting what he calls Conceptual Dualism. Both materialists and dualists accept the Cartesian distinction between the mental and the physical and (as you pointed out) tend to opt for one at the expense of the other. Searle argues that once one discards with these outdated concepts then the mind-body problem has a fairly simple solution. I personally am not convinced by Searle's solution.
My question to you is what are we supposed to replace these Cartesian concepts with? You say that the belief "mentality is some distinct private space wherein thought occurs" is an assumption which we can reject. But I'm not too sure how this could be possible. It seems to me that mental states are intrinsically subjective, that is, can only exist as belonging to the subject that has them. And if this is so then they do occur in a private space (the subject that has them). The mental state is private because only the subject that has it can access it/know 'what it is like' to feel that particular mental state.
I guess the upshot of my post is two-fold;
a) Why do you think that "mentality is a private space where thought occurs" is an assumption which can be abandoned
b) What would you replace this assumption with?