Mind – Page 14 – Maverick Philosopher

God and Evil, Mind and Matter

It is a simple point of logic that if propositions p and q are both true, then they are logically consistent, though not conversely. So if God exists and Evil exists are both true, then they are logically consistent, whence it follows that it is possible that they be consistent. This is so whether or not anyone is in a position to explain how it is possible that they be consistent. If something is the case, then, by the time-honored principle ab esse ad posse valet illatio, it is possible that it be the case, and my inability, or anyone's inability, to explain how it is possible that such-and-such be the case cannot count as a good reason for thinking that it is not the case. So if it is the case that God exists and Evil exists are logically consistent, then this is possibly the case, and a theist's inability to explain how God and evil can coexist is not a good reason for him to abandon his theism — or his belief in the existence of objective evil.

The logical point I have just made is rock-solid. I now apply it to two disparate subject-matters. The one is the well-known problem of evil faced by theists. The other is the equally well-known 'problem of mind' that materialists face, namely, the problem of reconciling the existence of the phenomena of mind with the belief that nothing concrete is immaterial.

The theist is rationally entitled to stand pat in the face of the 'problem of evil' and point to his array of arguments for the existence of God whose cumulative force renders rational his belief that God exists. Of course, he should try to answer the atheist who urges the inconsistency of God exists and Evil exists; but his failure to provide a satisfactory answer is not a reason for him to abandon his theism. A defensible attitude would be: "This is something we theists need to work on."

Conceivability, Possibility, Self, and Body

A reader sent me the following argument which he considers a good one:

1. It is conceivable that I exist without my present body (or any part of it).
2. Therefore, it is possible that I exist without my present body (or any part of it).
3. Therefore, I have a property P that my body does not, namely, being such that possibly, I exist when my body (or any part of it) doesn't.
4. Therefore, I am not my body (or any part of it).

The argument as it stands is enthymematic. The inferential move from (3) to (4) requires an auxiliary premise, one which is easily supplied. It is the contrapositive of the Identity of Indiscernibles, and so we can call it the Discernibility of the Diverse, to wit: If two things differ in respect of a property, then they are numerically diverse (not numerically identical). That is a rough formulation, but it is good enough for present purposes. With the assistance of DD, the move from (3) to (4) is unproblematic.

I should think the move from (2) to (3) is also unproblematic. The inference from (1) to (2), however, puzzles me and troubles me. I accept the conclusion: I cannot for the life of me see how I could be strictly and numerically identical to my body or any part of it. So I would like the above argument, or a reasonable facsimile, to be valid. But I stumble over the move from (1) to (2). To validate this inference we need some such principle as

CEP. For any proposition p, conceivably p entails possibly p.

CEP is what I want to discuss. The possibility in question is not epistemic but real, and is that species of real possibility called broadly logical or metaphysical. Now here is a reason why I have doubts about CEP. I accept that there is an Absolute. Now any decent Absolute (the One of Plotinus is a good candidate as is the God of Aquinas) will be a necessary being, one whose possibility entails its actuality. An Absolute, then, cannot not exist if it exists: it either exists in every possible world or in no world. To prove that an Absolute exists all I need is the premise, Possibly an Absolute exists. I may think to infer this proposition from Conceivably an Absolute exists, by way of CEP. Unfortunately, it seems I can just as easily conceive of the nonexistence of a an Absolute. To paraphrase Hume, whatever I can conceive as existent I can just as easily conceive as nonexistent. We can call that Hume's Existence Principle:

HEP. Everything (concrete) is such that its nonexistence is conceivable.

If HEP is true, then every being is contingent. But if CEP is true, then at least one being is noncontingent. This shows that either CEP is false or HEP is false. Since I am strongly inclined to accept HEP, I have doubts about CEP.

Clearly, much depends on what we mean by 'conceivable.' Trading Latin for Anglo-Saxon, to be conceivable is to be thinkable. But since there is a sense in which logical contradictions are thinkable, we must add: thinkable without broadly logical contradiction. By whom? The average schmuck? Or the ideally penetrative intellect? If an ideally penetrative intellect examines a proposition and detects no broadly logical contradiction, then there will be no gap between conceivability in this sense and possibility. But our intellects are not ideally penetrative. Suppose a person reads and understands Zorn's Lemma, reads and understands the Axiom of Choice, and then is asked whether it is possible that the first be true and the second false. He examines the conjunction of Zorn's Lemma with the negation of the Axiom of Choice and discerns no contradiction. So he concludes that it is possible that the Lemma be true and the Axiom false. He would be wrong since the two are provably equivalent. This shows, I think, that for intellects like ours one cannot in general validly infer possibility from conceivability.

Returning to our opening argument, I would say that it is plausible and renders dualism rationally acceptable. But it doesn't establish dualism. For the move from (1) to (2) is questionable.

What is to stop a materialist from running the argument in reverse? He denies the conclusion and then denies (2). If you insist that your non-identity with your body is conceivable and therefore possible, he tells you that it only seems so to you, and that seeming is not being. Or else he rejects CEP

Analogies, Souls, Harm to Souls, and Murder

Peter Lupu comments:

Bill has argued that my murder-argument relies upon a faulty analogy. I have a very general response to this charge: while the murder-argument indeed relies upon an analogy, the analogy upon which it relies is one employed by the soul-theorists themselves. Thus, I contend that if the soul-theorists are entitled to a certain analogy, then I am entitled to use the very same analogy in order to marshal an argument against this or that aspect of the soul-hypothesis. And conversely, if I am not entitled to use a certain analogy, then the soul-theorists are not entitled to it either. But, as I shall show, if the soul-theorists are not entitled to the relevant analogy, then there is an even more direct argument than the murder-argument I have given to the conclusion that according to soul-theorists murder is not a grave moral wrongdoing. [What Peter means to say is not that soul-theorists officially maintain as part of their theory that murder is not a grave moral wrongdoing, but that, whether or not soul theorists realize it, soul-theory entails that murder is not a grave moral wrongdoing.]

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J. P. Moreland on Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (Part One)

(The following review will be crossposted shortly at Prosblogion. Comments are closed here, but will be open there.)

Apart from what Alvin Plantinga calls creative anti-realism, the two main philosophical options for many of us in the West are some version of naturalism and some version of Judeo-Christian theism. As its title indicates, J. P. Moreland’s The Recalcitrant Imago Dei: Human Persons and the Failure of Naturalism (SCM Press, 2009) supports the theistic position by way of a penetrating critique of naturalism and such associated doctrines as scientism. Moreland briefly discusses creative anti-realism in the guise of postmodernism on pp. 13-14, but I won’t report on that except to say that his arguments against it, albeit brief, are to my mind decisive. Section One of this review will present in some detail Moreland’s conception of naturalism and what it entails. Sections Two and Three will discuss his argument from consciousness for the existence of God. Section Four will ever so briefly report on the contents of the rest of the book. In Part Two of this review I hope to discuss Moreland’s critique of Thomas Nagel’s Dismissive Naturalism. Numbers in parentheses are page references. Words and phrases enclosed in double quotation marks are quotations from Moreland. Inverted commas are employed for mentioning and ‘scaring.’

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Causal Interaction: A Problem for the Materialist Too!

Ed Feser has been giving Paul Churchland a well-deserved drubbing over at his blog and I should like to join in on the fun, at least in the in the first main paragraph of this post.

One of the standard objections to substance dualism in the philosophy of mind is that the substance dualist cannot account for mind-body and body-mind causal interaction. I have already quoted Dennett and Searle to this effect. Here is Paul M. Churchland repeating for the umpteenth time a standard piece of materialist boilerplate:

How is this utterly insubstantial 'thinking substance' to have any influence on ponderous matter? How can two such different things be in any sort of causal contact? (Matter and Consciousness, p. 9)

Churchland apparently thinks that a substance, to be 'substantial,' must be material. Churchland thereby betrays his inability to conceive of (which is not the same as to imagine) an immaterial substance. Note that 'immaterial substance' is not an oxymoron like 'immaterial matter.' Feser in his series of posts shows just how ignorant Churchland is of the history of philosophy, so it is no surprise that he cannot wrap his eliminativist head around the concept of substance as used by Descartes et al. But let that pass. The issue for now is simply this: How can two things belonging to radically disjoint ontological categories be in causal contact? But here again, Churchland seems to be laboring under a false assumption, namely, that causation must involve contact between cause and effect. But why should we think that this 'billiards ball' model of causation fits every type of causation? Why must we think of causation as itself a physical process whereby a physical magnitude such as energy is transferred from one physical object to another? On regularity and counterfactual theories of causation there is no difficulty in principle with the notion of a causal relation obtaining between two events that do not make physical contact.

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When Is an Identification an Elimination, and When Not? Idealism and Eliminativism not in the Same Logical Boat

A reader, recently deployed to Afghanistan, finds time to raise an objection that I will put in my own words to make it as forceful as possible:

You endorsed William Lycan's Moorean refutation of eliminative materialism, but then you criticized him for thinking that Moorean appeals to common sense are also effective against standard idealist claims such as Berkeley's thesis that the objects of ordinary outer perception are clusters of ideas. You maintained that there is a crucial difference between the characteristic claims of eliminativists (e.g., that there are no beliefs, desires, intentions, pleasures, pains, etc.) and the characteristic claims of idealists (e.g., Berkeley's thesis just mentioned, McTaggart's thesis of the unreality of time, Bradley's of the unreality of relations.) The difference is that between denying the existence of some plain datum, and giving an account of a plain datum, an account which presupposes, and so does not deny, the datum in question. In effect, you insisted on a distinction between identifying Xs as Ys, and denying the existence of Xs. Thus, you think that there is an important difference between identifying pains with brain states, and denying that there are pains; and identifying stones and physical objects generally with collections of ideas in the mind of God and denying that there are physical objects. But in other posts you have claimed that there are identifications which collapse into eliminations. I seem to recall your saying that to identify God with an unconscious anthropomorphic projection, in the manner of Ludwig Feuerbach, amounts to a denial of the existence of God, as opposed to a specification of what God is. Similarly, 'Santa Claus is a fictional character' does not tell us what Santa Claus is; it denies his very existence.

Now why couldn't Lycan argue that this is exactly what is going on in the idealist case? Why couldn't he say that to identify stones and such with clusters of ideas in the mind of God is to deny the existence of stones? Just as God by his very nature (whether or not this nature is exemplifed) could not be an anthropomorphic projection, so too, stones by their very nature as physical objects could not be clusters of ideas, not even clusters of divine ideas.

It seems you owe us an account of why the reduction of physical objects to clusters of ideas is not an identification that collapses into an elimination. If you cannot explain why it does not so collapse, then Lycan and Co. will be justifed in deploying their Moorean strategy against both EM-ists and idealists. They could argue, first, that idealism is eliminationism about common sense data, and then appeal to common sense to reject the elimination.

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Lycan’s Moorean Argument Against Eliminative Materialism

The following is from William G. Lycan, A PARTICULARLY COMPELLING REFUTATION OF ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISM:

[. . .] I contend that the Eliminativist is refuted by Moore's technique, in just the same way as was the temporal idealist. The argument will now be quite straightforward: Numerous common-sense mental ascriptions, such as that Granny wants a beer and believes there is one under the sofa, are individually more plausible, and always will be more plausible, than are the purely philosophical premises of any argument designed to convince us to the contrary. As Moore saw, purely philosophical assumptions have very weak epistemic credentials and cannot by themselves outweigh simple common-sense facts.

The Eliminativist may protest that her/his case is not purely philosophical, but rests on scientific considerations of cognitive psychology, neuroscience, connectionist modelling, and the like. Indeed, that flaunted feature is what often makes Eliminativism sound so hip. But this is to misunderstand the Moorean argument a third time. Moore would not deny that arguments for Eliminativism contain premises that are endorsed, perhaps simply established, by science. The point is that each argument also contains at least one purely philosophical premise. Make no mistake: In order to reach the staggering conclusion that there has never been a belief, a desire, or any other propositional attitude, any argument for Eliminativism will have to rest on one or more a priori principles connecting scientific truths to negative ontology. And it is terminally unlikely that any such principle could be more credible for me than that Granny wants beer. Come to think of it, I want beer.

8. Notice that my Moorean argument is immune to the customary Churchland-Churchland counterblow, a comparison to alchemy, witchcraft, and other folk but false theories. However beloved such theories were to their proponents, they do not qualify as Moorean common sense. To count as Moorean-commonsensical, a belief must be the sort of belief that every normal human being holds every day of her/his life, such as "Here is one hand and here is another" or "I had breakfast before I had lunch" or "The sun is shining." Thus, to address the Conference topic directly: Whatever science can show about the mind, it cannot show that there is none.

Lycan thinks that Moorean arguments refute Bradley and McTaggart and that there is no essential difference between the characteristic claims of the British Idealists and the claims of eliminativists in the philosophy of mind. I believe he is very wrong about that, but that's a different story. The above Moorean argument, however, does in my opinion decisively refute eliminativism in the philosophy of mind. For those of you who protest that no refutation can be so quick and easy, I will ask, Why not? The more preposterous the thesis, the quicker and easier the refutation! Lunacy can and ought to be dispatched laconically. Indeed, the simplicity of Lycan's argument makes it all the stronger. It is a case of simplex sigillum veri. He who maintains what is plainly false ought to be prepared for an unceremoniously facile reply. And please don't call such a reply 'puerile' or 'sophomoric' since the very fact that any boy or sophomore can make it is precisely what makes the objection so powerful.

Is Folk Psychology a Theory? The Case of Desire

When one is in the grip of a desire one typically knows it. He who wants a cold beer on a hot day knows what he wants and is likely to deem unhinged anyone with the temerity to deny that there are desires. Anywhere on the scale from velleity to craving, but especially at the craving end, there is a qualitative character to desire that makes it phenomenologically undeniable. If the beer example doesn't move you, think of lust. Lust is an intentional state: one cannot lust unless one lusts after someone or something. But although lust flees itself, voids itself in a rush towards its object — as Sartre might have said — there is nonetheless something 'it is like' (T. Nagel) to be in the state of lust. In this respect, desire is more like the non-intentional state of pain than it is like the intentional state of belief. There is most decidedly something it is like for me to desire X; but what is is like for me to believe that you desire X? Is it like anything? Not so clear.

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Eliminativism: A ‘Mental’ (Lunatic) Philosophy of Mind?

Arthur W. Collins, The Nature of Mental Things (University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), p. 19:

This [eliminative materialism] looms as a lunatic philosophy of mind, as behaviorism does not, because it does not merely attack the thought that beliefs and desires are inner realities . . . but it also attacks the idea that people have beliefs and desires, which seems to be an ineliminable truth and a truth which is not attacked by analytical behaviorism. The only excuse for this outrageous thesis is that it stems from a recognition that mental phenomena are not going to be identified successfully by any theory. Having accepted the mistaken preliminary notion that beliefs and the like would have to be inner realities of some kind, the eliminativist materialist heroically, if ill-advisedly, concludes that there are no beliefs at all, that no one actually believes anything.

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From Naturalism to Nihilism by Way of Scientism: A Note on Rosenberg’s Disenchantment

The rank absurdities of Alex Rosenberg's The Disenchanted Naturalist's Guide to Reality are being subjected to withering criticism at Ed Feser's weblog here, here and here. But a correspondent wants me to throw in my two cents, so here's a brief comment.

In the ComBox to the article linked to above, Rosenberg, responding to critics, says this among other things:

If beliefs are anything they are brain states—physical configurations of matter. But one configuration of matter cannot, in virtue just of its structure, composition, location, or causal relation, be “about” another configuration of matter in the way original intentionality requires (because it cant [sic] pass the referential opacity test). So, there are no beliefs.

This is a valid argument. To spell it out a bit more clearly: (1) If beliefs are anything, then they are brain states; (2) beliefs exhibit original intentionality; (3) no physical state, and thus no brain state, exhibits original intentionality; therefore (4) there are no beliefs.

But anyone with his head screwed on properly should be able to see that this argument does not establish (4) but is instead a reductio ad absurdum of premise (1) according to which beliefs are nothing if not brain states. For if anything is obvious, it is that there are beliefs. This is a pre-theoretical datum, a given. What they are is up for grabs, but that they are is a starting-point that cannot be denied except by lunatics and those in the grip of an ideology. Since the argument is valid in point of logical form, and the conclusion is manifestly, breath-takingly, false, what the argument shows is that beliefs cannot be brain states.

Now why can't a smart guy like Rosenberg see this? Because he is in the grip of an ideology. It is called scientism, which is not to be confused with science. (Rosenberg talks nonsense at the beginning of his piece where he implies that one does not take science seriously unless one embraces scientism.) Rosenberg thinks that natural-scientific knowledge is the only knowledge worthy of the name and, to cop a line from Wilfrid Sellars, that "science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not, that it is not." (Science, Perception and Reality, p. 173). That is equivalent to the view that reality is exhausted by what natural science (physics, chemistry, evolutionary biology) says exists. This is why Rosenberg thinks that, if beliefs are anything, then they are brain states. Given scientism, plus the assumption (questioned by A. W. Collins in The Nature of Mental Things, U of ND Press, 1987) that beliefs need to be identified with something either literally or figuratively 'inner,' what else could they be? Certainly not states of a Cartesian res cogitans.

The trouble with scientism, of course, is that it cannot be scientifically supported. 'All genuine knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge' is not a proposition of any natural science. It is a bit of philosophy, with all the rights, privileges, and debilities pertaining thereunto. One of the debilities is that it is self-vitiating. For if all genuine knowledge is scientific knowledge, then that very proposition, since it is not an item of scientific knowledge, cannot count as a piece of genuine knowledge. Nor can it ever come to be known.

That won't stop people like Rosenberg from believing it as they are entitled to do. But then scientism it is just one more philosophical belief alongside others, including others that imply its negation.

I think it is clear what a reasonable person must say. The (1)-(4) argument above does not establish (4), it reduces to absurdity (1). The only support for (1) is scientism which we have no good reason to accept. It is nothing more than a bit of ideology.

Like, What Does It Mean? Notes on Nagel

Thomas Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat?” (Philosophical Review, 1974, reprinted in Mortal Questions, Cambridge, 1979, pp. 165-180) is a contemporary classic in the philosophy of mind, and its signature ‘what is it like’ locution has become a stock phrase rather loosely bandied about in discussions of subjectivity and consciousness. The phrase can be interpreted in several ways. Clarity will be served if we distinguish them.

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Are the Souls of Brute Animals Subsistent? Considerations Anent the Unity of Consciousness

We have been discussing the view of Thomas Aquinas according to which (i) the soul is the form of the body, and (ii) the souls of some animals, namely rational animals, are subsistent, i.e. capable of an existence independent of matter. I have registered some of my misgivings. Here is another. If our souls are subsistent forms, then why are not the souls of non-human animals also subsistent? If that in us which thinks is a life-principle and the substantial form of our bodies, and subsistent to boot, by what principled means do we not ascribe subsistent souls to all living things or at least to many non-human living things?

A Sense/Reference Objection to the Irreducibility of Phenomenally Conscious States

I agree with Thomas Nagel, John Searle, and others that conscious experiences are irreducible to physical states. I have endorsed the idea that felt pain, phenomenal pain, pain as experienced or lived through (er-lebt), the pain that hurts, has a subjective mode of existence, a "first-person ontology" in Searle's phrase. If this is right, then phenomenally conscious states cannot be reduced to physical states with their objective mode of existence and third-person ontology. As a consequence, an exclusively third-person approach to mind is bound to leave something out. But there is an objection to irreducibility that needs to be considered, an objection that exploits Frege's distinction between sense and reference.

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Dennett’s Dismissal of Dualism

Daniel Dennett is a brilliant and flashy writer, but his brilliance borders on sophistry. (In this regard, he is like Richard Rorty, another writer who knows how to sell books.) As John Searle rightly complains, he is not above "bully[ing] the reader with abusive language and rhetorical questions. . . ." (The Mystery of Consciousness, p. 115) An excellent example of this is the way Dennett dismisses substance dualism in the philosophy of mind:

Dualism (the view that minds are composed of some nonphysical and utterly mysterious stuff) . . . [has]been relegated to the trash heap of history, along with alchemy and astrology. Unless you are also prepared to declare that the world is flat and the sun is a fiery chariot pulled by winged horses — unless, in other words, your defiance of modern science is quite complete — you won't find any place to stand and fight for these obsolete ideas. (Kinds of Mind, Basic Books, 1996, p. 24)