Clarifying the Clarification
Part of an ongoing conversation. A reader with the obscure yet tenebrous name of The Shadow voices reservations about my claim that there is no conflict nor paradox when the mind and the body are regarded as two aspects of one underlying reality.
Now if brain states follow deterministic physical laws – and I’ll admit that I’m not as sure as I used to be that even classical physics is deterministic – then it seems we have a problem. For if my brain states are determined *entirely* by physical factors (and it seems this is what you are claiming), then it would seem that they cannot be expressing my thoughts. Just as if I wrote a program to produce text by a set of rules, even the rules of English grammar, it would express my thoughts, or anyone’s, only by accident.
So it would seem that either you haven’t really addressed the mind-body problem, or else that some unknown means arranges for your brain states to have that minimum correlation with your thoughts in order to think them. And the only means that readily come to mind would be either 1) your own mind, or 2) God or some secondary cause ordained by him (other than yourself).
My philosophy might be labeled “harmonist” since I do conclude that, despite appearances, determinism and indeterminism are out of harmony with each other.
I have also heard this philosophy called “methodological dualism” since I hold that, in speak, we are forced to deal with deterministic statements about the mechanical causes of matter being moved by using the category of cause and effect, or mechanical cause; whereas we are likewise forced to deal with indeterministic statements about the meaning and purpose, morality and beauty and truth of living things moving themselves by using the category of ends and means.
The fact that living things are things creates a nearly inescapable ambiguity.
The question is one our language and the categories of our thinking is particularly apt to leave mysterious. Let me try again.
Look at the example of the book and the story in a story book.
The book has empirical properties that can be measured: the mass, the height and breadth of the cover, the number and thickness of pages, the chemical properties of the glue binding and ink, the ink color, the number of ink marks on each page, and so on.
The story has properties that can be judged: the coherence of the plot, the appeal of the characters, the insight of the theme, the lyricism of the text, the wit of the dialog, whether the ending is tragic or comic, whether the plot twists are logical yet unexpected and so on.
If you burn the book before finishing reading it, there is nothing to read, and so the whether the story ends tragically or happily is beyond your knowledge.
If I say “the book follows deterministic laws” why would this lead to any question about the plot? The molecules in the ink marks on the paper page in the book do not “cause” the letters.
Letters are symbols of sounds that are parts of words. Symbols are arbitrary. They are manmade. Men select what symbol to use for what. Therefore letters, properly so called, are not material, and do not follow deterministic laws.
Letters have meaning. Ink-marks have no meaning. Ink-marks follow deterministic laws.
Can letters be read if no ink-marks are written? No. Do the ink-marks “cause” the letters? The ink-marks are a mechanical cause, yes. The ink-marks are not a formal nor final cause no.
Please notice that I did not use the phrase “brain-states” or anything like that. It is a confusing term, and confusion results from it.
“I could have *precisely the same brain state* on two different occasions and be thinking a different thought.”
Can I use *precisely the same word* on two different occasions and be communicating a different thought? Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
“I’ll admit that I’m not as sure as I used to be that even classical physics is deterministic”
I submit that if no effect exists without a cause sufficient to create it, the universe is deterministic, regardless of model.
“For if my brain states are determined *entirely* by physical factors (and it seems this is what you are claiming), then it would seem that they cannot be expressing my thoughts.”
The very axiom under question here has stealthily tiptoed back in to your assumptions. If the storybook is determined *entirely* by physical factors such as the position of ink marks and the number of pages of paper, then the story cannot be written by an author.
In the case of the brain, the brain, without violating any principle of cause and effect, without creating matter out of nothing, without time travel, without reversing entropy, does what the thinker thinks as he thinks. The motion is set in motion by the mover, in this case, the brain itself.
Nutrition, created ultimately by sunlight, is necessary as part of a biological process to allow the brain to stay alive and awake inside the skull. And, even as there is no story to read if the physical book is burned, there is no knowing a man’s thoughts if he is dead, his brain is cold and motionless, and he cannot speak. So far so good.
But sunlight does not cause the man to have an opinion on bimetallism or the Caledonian war. Strong drink might inhibit his ability to concentrate and express those opinions, but do not cause them because they have no material cause.
If I blush with anger, what “caused” my face to turn red? Was it the increase of my blood pressure due to signals from my brain stem? Or was it the fact that I was caught in a shameful act, and my natural desire to bluster my way out of it made my anger boil up in me, even before I know why?
You know the difference between talking about the material cause of the material aspect of a material thing, and talking about the imponderables such as ends and means, aim and purpose. So I sort of do not see where the confusion come in.
“So it would seem that either you haven’t really addressed the mind-body problem”
It does not seem so to me. My point is that there is no problem.
Or, rather, the problem is that we use the same words in English to refer both to the material and nonmaterial aspects of anything that has both.
If I say “book” you do not know if I mean the story or the hardback. If I say “word” you do not know if I mean the concept or the ink-marks. If I say “brain” you do not know if I mean the physical organ or the seat of the soul.
My point is that if one distinguishes the physical from the non-physical, mechanical cause from final or formal cause, the confusion evaporates.
“….some unknown means arranges for your brain states to have that minimum correlation with your thoughts in order to think them.”
I fear I do not understand what this statement is trying to say.
If an unknown means arranges the physical properties of my brain states so that my brain neither breaks any laws of thermodynamics, nor moves any brain atoms without a mover, while the mental properties of the thoughts I am thinking arise from mental aims and formal properties of concepts, where is the paradox?
There is a correlation in eyesight between the objects shedding photons in my back yard, and the ideas and images in my mind, forming my knowledge and opinion about what is in my back yard. I see no paradox here. It is not confusing to me, I do not grasp a paradox here either.
Please note my eye must be healthy for this perception to occur.
Again, there is a correlation between my desire to raise my teacup to my lip and sip a sip of tea, and the mental image I make as I will this act to happen. Again, I see no paradox here.
Again, my hand and arm, nerves and muscles, are organs of action. They must be health for this arm-motion to occur.
The brain is in one sense an organ of perception. I imagine images that exist in the world of images much the same way, albeit not as clearly, as I see the cat and the tree and the birdfeeder in my back yard.
The brain is in another sense an organ of action. I will images into being by means of my willpower, influenced perhaps by memories and desires and inspirations from elsewhere. As the image is formed, it is placed it into the realm of images where my faculty of imagination can imagine it.
Again, this assumes a healthy imagination. I am a cartoonist and a creative genius, so my imagination is particularly vivid and detailed. Like the nerves and muscles in the arm of a tea-drinker, or, for that matter, a weightlifter, the organ of the imagination can be trained.
Again, with the conscience I can perceive moral realities. We all know what the sensation of guilt or innocence is like. The conscience is also an organ of action. I can by an act of will think through the moral calculus of both hypothetical and real situations.
Again, we all know small children and morally retarded pundits whose consciences are ill formed, and whose moral perceptions are inverted or blind, and whose powers of moral calculus do not extend past jejune self interest.
Again, the brain is an organ of perception of ideas that exist in the realm of ideas. We all know what truth, justice, and beauty are, and we all know that putting this knowledge into words is slippery and inexact at best, impossible at worse.
The brain is an organ of action when we try to put these contemplated mental objects into verbal formula, to define our terms, and to run through syllogisms.
And yet again, we all know children, and an alarming number of childlike adults, who have not exercised this skill and lack the ability, either partly or wholly, to manipulate abstract thoughts or verbalize concepts or construct syllogisms.
The brain is an organ of perception when it perceives revealed inspirations from the muses, or from other heavenly spirits, and contemplates the sublime. The brain is an organ of action when it is used to find fit words, nuanced and delicate yet strong, to capture the elusive vision in the images of a poem or song or story.
And, yet again, we know poets richly blessed with this skill, and seen and read songs and stories where the elusive seemed to elude. And there are sublime poems, for example, whose beauty I cannot see, because either they are not fitted for my perceptions, or my prejudices interfere, or I make not the effort, or I turn my eyes away, and so on.
Now, if there is nothing paradoxical about organs of perception nor organs of action, then there is nothing paradoxical about the brain.
A scientist can explain the action of a photon on the chemicals in the eyeball, and a biologist can identify the actions of the optic nerve and even identify the region of the brain stimulated. At no point is there a violation of mechanical cause and effect. All is determined.
The meaning of the image, on the other hand, is based partly on interpretation, partly on the image itself, which is a symbol. When you look at a stop sign, you are looking at a symbol in your mind.
If the sign is written in Chinese, or some a language you do not read, the photon motions in the material world are the same, but the image is not the same, as your brother next to you who reads Chinese.
Unless you have an eidetic memory, you probably will forget the exact shape of the ideograms a moment after you see them. Your memory works by the association of meaningful images and symbols. But he will remember the sign.
If you ask whether and how the photon, which has such and such a rest mass and moves at such and such a velocity and such and such a wavelength, can create a different image in the soul and memory of your brother, as opposed to yours, you are asking an incoherent question.
The photons physically move the physical chemical molecules in the eye which move the physical neural electrons in your physical occipital lobe of your physical nervous system. No effect arises without cause. The laws of nature are not violated.
The photons do not physically move your thoughts, which are immaterial and nonphysical. The meaning of the image inspires or informs your thoughts. Your mind sees the stop sign. Technically speaking, you do not see the photons, and you are unaware of them, you “see” only the image the photons are communicating to your eye.
Communication is a non-physical act. It is meaning carried by a form.
It does not take place without a physical substrate, a book with a story, a word with a meaning, a brain with a thought, but the mechanical causes are not the same as the ends and means.
The story is represented in the book, not physically determined by it. The meaning is represented by the word, not physically determined by it. The thought is represented by the brain, not physically determined by it. The perception is represented by the object perceived, not physically determined by it.
As far as I know, no one has proposed that whether a sentence is grammatical or ungrammatical is an emergent property of the particular geometry of the ink molecules staining the page of the book in which the sentence is copied or represented.
Is this any clearer?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
