My last post was a tad misunderstood or at least misrepresented by the Evangelical Outpost. I agreed that Naturalism is at the end of the day self refuting. However, the tone was uncharitable, and the mistakes of Naturalistic thinking are far too complex to, without serious argument, dismiss so lightly. To the credit of the Evangelical Outpost, he has recanted (mostly?) of this tone. On the other hand, the details of the problems are often so abundant that it is difficult to write a readable post that contains any robust argumentation without either writing a book or being overly condensed by technical philosophical terminology. What is more difficult is that at the very bottom, philosophical intuitions may be running around.
This post is an attempt to offer the first of a couple simpler posts that zero in on some grounding points of the debate which can easily fly away into problems. I am happy to support my arguments more robustly to any who post questions, and ground more deeply this or any other argument as I am able to do so.
The Discovery scenario: Imagine and discovery is made about x, y, and z…
a) Philosophers and religious leaders agree (which is tantamount to a miracle) that the human mind is essentially x, y, and z. Further, x, y and z have also been generally maintained for most of human history.
Do you believe it? How confident are you in your correctness (either for or against)?
b) Scientists have PROVEN that the nature of a mind is simply the brain, and further that x, y, and z are false.
Do you believe it? How confident are you in your correctness (either for or against)?
If you were leaning toward affirming b) and away from a), then you probably have a scientific naturalistic basis (which could be appropriately justified or falsified at this point). This is similar to thinking that “we” did not know anything, or very little, or had no justification for beliefs about the mind before modern science; SO, “now that science says something I can believe it!”
IF you would affirm the truth potential of a), and are skeptical of b) because it competes with the huge body of KNOWLEDGE roughly constant through human history, THEN you do not have a Naturalistic bias.
PROBLEMS: Consider the compatibility of Naturalism (the belief that all things exist in space and time (i.e. physical) and are empirically verifiable (at least in theory). How could someone PROVE that? What is proof? Is it evidence that adds up to a conclusion? What is “adds?” Where are the laws of logic? Can we stipulate them into the theory without their being physical and/or empirically verifiable? Let’s say this is possible (which seems false). How does one “use” these laws to “add” them? If it a linguistic function? (leads to) What is language? (leads to) What are words? (leads to) What are meanings? All this then leads to the possibility for mental things that exist outside space and time, and are to be understood by a rational enduring self.
This skeleton of an argument against naturalism because of the existence of minds has two forms. The Naturalist might say: 1) if Naturalism is true, minds don’t exist (see Naturalism site on self). 2) Naturalism is true. 3) Therefore, Minds don’t exist. GIVEN the soundness of the premises the conclusion follows.
However the non-Naturalist can frame the argument this way. 1) If Naturalism is true, minds don’t exist (note that this is the same). 2) It is NOT the case that mind’s DON’T exist (this is poor grammar, but good logical form). 3) Therefore Naturalism is NOT true.
Bottom line: Although it is not SELF-EVIDENT that naturalism is self-defeating, and one can certainly be rational to believe it; BUT, how could one believe it without having a mind? A similar argument is also made by Dr. Reppert with respect to the necessity of a mind for rational inference. The Dr. Seuss version: If Naturalism is true, then where is the who?
4 comments:
I think you leap far too quickly from the "Naturalism is true" to "minds don't exist."
For instance, while you may have strong reasons to believe that your mind exists, what about mine? How do you know that I am not a mere automaton? (I've deliberately made this harder on you. All you have to go on is my ability to string together a few English sentences in the body of an HTTP POST. Maybe I really am an automaton.)
The point being that, absent your ability to look inside my brain (not feasible technologically, and probably fatal to me, were it feasible), you cannot decide the proposition of whether I have a mind or am an automaton.
In other words, I pass the Turing Test. For all practical purposes, you had best treat me as sentient.
Unless you think you can improve on the Turing Test (and thus have a means of distinguishing those interlocutors who are sentient from those who are mere automata), I don't think you have any argument against Naturalism, which denies the existence of such an improved test.
As I understand it, J. Hawthorne is interpreting the statements from the naturalist website regarding mental essences and selves as effectively denying the existence of minds.
Here are the quotes:
"There exist no immaterial souls, spirits, mental essences, or disembodied selves which stand apart from the physical world."
"As strictly physical beings, we don’t exist as immaterial selves, either mental or spiritual, that control behavior."
so what needs to be settled is what is meant by "mind." I assume from Distler's comments that he would take something of a functionalist or even type-reductionist view of mind. Hawthorne is obviously taking a dualist interpretation... or at least emergentist. Maybe epiphenominalist. In any case, something that the above quotes rule out.
For the functionalist, all that is needed is that the subject fulfil all the "mental functions" which will usually be cached out in terms of input/output, and so we can just look at behavior (like the way the turing test does) and say "yeah, there's probably a mind there" or "no, probably not."
For the dualist, even looking in Distler's brain won't prove (in an absolute, Cartesian sense of "prove") that there is a mind there, since a brain with firing synapses is only contingently related to the mind.
The point is simply this: before the argument can proceed, it seems we would have to say what we mean by "mind" respectively, and argue for those construals.
Or maybe I'm just an idiot. (That's not necessarily an exclusive "or")
Since Emergentist and Epiphenomenalist interpretations of "mind" seem wholly compatible with Naturalism, I'm guessing that Hawthorne is a Dualist.
The quote pretty clearly denies Dualism. So we're reduced to a "He said, she said" unless Hawthorne can show that only the Dualist interpretation can be correct.
I took the Functionalist perspective (Turing Tests 'n all) to show what a tall order that is.
I don't think Hawthorne can prove that I have a mind, except in the weak, Functionalist sense (I pass a Turing Test, etc.). What he needs to do, to bury Naturalism, is prove that I have a mind in the strong, Dualist sense.
Or, perhaps, I misinterpret his argument...
1) JD: I grant you that I may have jumped too quickly in my form, but I was trying to capture the structure of the argument for the sake of those outside of the debate. Certainly there is more to argue for here.
2) JR/: You are correct in trying my comments back to the Naturalism site, for that was the intentional target. I am assuming that mental essences are the issue. The Naturalism site seems to take a hard materialistic view of the world, such that the Causal Closure principle is accepted and thus denies all causes outside strictly physical matter.
2.5) JR/JD: What I have in mind here are the comments and the arguments of Jaegwon Kim (Mind in a Physical World, MIT Press) that "no one can be a serious physicalist and at the same time enjoy the company of things and phenomena that are nonphysical." (p.120) I think his arguments that physicalism entails the denial of "middle-of-the-road positions “like property dualism and nonreductive physicalism. So, epiphenomenalism and emergentist positions are ruled out for me. This may be worth cashing out here, but Kim certainly does a better job. But for the sake of argument let's keep the competition at this point to physicalism vs. substance dualism.
3) JD: About proving you have a mind, well that seems a strange problem. Don't you think you have one? All kidding aside, the problem of other minds is part of the drive behind physicalism. But given dualism, I don't think that the fact that I cannot know your mental states from looking at your brain etc. is much of a problem. That just seems to be that way things are. This is to say that I DO think that inverse qualia is possible.
Second, just because I do not know HOW I know someone's mental state, does not mean that I don't know that there is a particular mental state one is having. My account of how might have functionalistic elements (I saw the pin stick, the grimace, and I assume she is in pain). The logical possibility that I don't know someone’s mental states is not sufficient justification for skepticism. Also, when I am wrong about a mental state (say my belief that my wife is enjoying the Kung-Fu movie), I think that I can be corrected various means (her less than enthusiastic response to my invitation to watch the up coming sequel, her first person report of her thoughts about it, etc.).
4) JD: I don't think the Turing machine test is all it is cracked up to be. I think a robot is not conscious, and does not have a mind in any normal sense of the word. If I programmed a robot to shout ouch and grimace when stuck with a pin, I don't think that adds up to consciousness. Here I am roughly arguing for qualia. Pains hurt and are thus more than the firing of neurofibers. Also, Searle’s Chinese Room argument persuades me that understanding and meaning is more that input output relations. (Do I need to spell this out or are you familiar?) A third problem for a functionalist is to account for the unity of a class of mental states generated by the external relations of the state with the behavior. The contingency of the pain to the behavior creates problems - imagine by some fluke I taste chocolate when stuck with a pin. I hate chocolate and grimace as if in pain.
Great comments guys, but I am out of time. I hope this post is sufficient to inspire some more quality comments!
Post a Comment