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17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 6. Mysterianism

[we are incapable of explaining the mind-body link]

13 ideas
There are no secure foundations to prove the separate existence of mind, in reason or experience [William of Ockham]
     Full Idea: The existence of an immaterial 'intellective soul' ..cannot be demonstrated; for every reason by which we try to prove it assumes something that is doubtful for a man who follows only his natural reason. Neither can it be proved by experience.
     From: William of Ockham (Seven Quodlibets [1332], I Q x)
     A reaction: This is splendid honesty from a medieval monk. How would such a clear thinker have responded to modern brain research? Colin McGinn still maintains William's view, despite modern knowledge. Our ignorance produced conceptual dualism.
Thinking without matter and matter that thinks are equally baffling [Locke]
     Full Idea: It is no harder to conceive how thinking should exist without matter, than how matter should think.
     From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.32)
     A reaction: This kind of aporia is at the heart of modern 'mysterianism', exemplified by Colin McGinn, and I find that Locke fully endorses such an attitude, and should be seen as the first Mysterian.
We can't begin to conceive what would produce some particular experience within our minds [Locke]
     Full Idea: We are so far from knowing what figure, size or motion of parts produce a yellow colour, sweet taste, or sharp sound, that we cannot conceive how any size, figure or motion can produce in us the colour, taste or sound. There is no conceivable connection.
     From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.13)
     A reaction: There is a good case for naming Locke as the first mysterian, and he puts his finger here on what I think is the weirdest puzzle of the mind - why THAT experience for THAT stimulus. In the 21st century we should not give up so easily.
Thoughts moving bodies, and bodies producing thoughts, are equally unknowable [Locke]
     Full Idea: How any thought should produce a motion in body is as remote from the nature of our ideas, as how any body should produce any thought in the mind.
     From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.28)
     A reaction: Compare McGinn's Idea 2540. Locke was a thoroughgoing Mysterian, but in his case it was part of a widespread pessimism about penetrating any of the inner secrets of nature. Modern Mysterians see it as the one secret we can't get.
Why are we not aware of the huge gap between mind and brain in ordinary life? [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: Why does the feeling of an unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and brain-process not come into the considerations of our ordinary life?
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Philosophical Investigations [1952], §412)
     A reaction: Nice question. Presumably Wittgenstein has a quasi-behaviouristic answer. People don't now ignore it? They retreat into crazy spiritualism.
Consciousness seems indefinable by conditions or categories [Searle]
     Full Idea: We can't define "consciousness" by necessary and sufficient conditions, or by the Aristotelian method of genus and differentia.
     From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 4.I)
     A reaction: We may not be able to 'define' it, but we can 'characterise' it. The third approach to definition is a catalogue of essential properties, which might tail off rather vaguely.
Nagel's title creates an impenetrable mystery, by ignoring a bat's ways that may not be "like" anything [Dennett on Nagel]
     Full Idea: Nagel's title invites us to ignore all the different ways in which bats might accomplish their cunning feats without its "being like" anything for them. We create an impenetrable mystery for ourselves if we assume that Nagel's title makes sense.
     From: comment on Thomas Nagel (What is it like to be a bat? [1974]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Kinds of Minds Ch.6
     A reaction: This could well be correct about bats, but the question applies to humans as well, and we can't deny that "what it is like" is a feature of some creatures' realities. On the fringes of our own consciousness there are mental events that are "like" nothing.
We can't be objective about experience [Nagel]
     Full Idea: If the subjective character of experience is fully comprehensible only from one point of view, then any shift to greater objectivity does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us further away from it.
     From: Thomas Nagel (What is it like to be a bat? [1974], p.174)
     A reaction: We can, however, talk to one another about our subjectivity, and compare notes, and such 'inter-subjectivity' may be one approach to objectivity. We must concede Nagel's point, but we also miss something about a stone if we must remain outside of it.
Examining mind sees no brain; examining brain sees no mind [McGinn]
     Full Idea: You can look into your mind until you burst and not discover neurons and synapses, and you can stare at someone's brain from dawn till dusk and not perceive the consciousness that is so apparent to the person whose brain it is.
     From: Colin McGinn (The Mysterious Flame [1999], p.47)
     A reaction: This is a striking symmetry of ignorance, though hardly enough to justify McGinn's pessimism about understanding the mind. 'When you are in the grass you can't see the whole of England; if you can see the whole of England, you won't see the grass'.
McGinn invites surrender, by saying it is hopeless trying to imagine conscious machines [Dennett on McGinn]
     Full Idea: McGinn invites his readers to join him in surrender: It's just impossible to imagine how software could make a conscious robot. Don't even try, he says. Other philosophical experiments (involving China) "work" by dissuading readers from imagining.
     From: comment on Colin McGinn (The Problem of Consciousness [1991]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 14.1
     A reaction: I agree with Dennett. If you don't try to imagine how robots might do it, you are also denied the right to try to imagine how brains might manage it. Admittedly this is hard, but good imagination needs study, effort, discussion, time, information...
Phenomenal consciousness is fundamental, with no possible nonphenomenal explanation [Chalmers, by Kriegel/Williford]
     Full Idea: In Chalmers's non-reductive theory, phenomenal consciousness is treated as a fundamental feature of the world, that cannot be explained in nonphenomenal terms. Theory is still possible, in the regularities of interaction.
     From: report of David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996]) by U Kriegel / K Williford - Intro to 'Self-Representational Consciousness' n2
     A reaction: I can't make much sense of this view without a backing of panpsychism. How could a 'fundamental' feature of reality only begin to appear when life evolves on one particular planet? But 'panpsychism' is a warning of big misunderstandings. See Idea 2424.
Nothing external shows whether a mouse is conscious [Chalmers]
     Full Idea: It is consistent with the physical facts about a mouse that it has conscious experiences, and it is consistent with the physical facts that it does not.
     From: David J.Chalmers (The Conscious Mind [1996], 2.3.1.4)
     A reaction: No. It is consistent with our KNOWLEDGE of a mouse that it may or may not be conscious. I take this to be the key error of Chalmers, which led him to the mistaken idea that zombies are possible. The usual confusion of ontology and epistemology….
The 'explanatory gap' is used to say consciousness is inexplicable, at least with current concepts [Heil]
     Full Idea: The expression 'explanatory gap' was coined by Joseph Levine in 1983. McGinn and Chalmers have invoked it in defence of the view that consciousness is physically inexplicable, and Nagel that it is inexplicable given existing conceptual resources.
     From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 19.8 n14)
     A reaction: Coining a few concepts isn't going to help, but discovering more about the brain might. With computer simulations we will 'see' more of the physical end of thought. Psychologists may break thought down into physically more manageable components.