No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Philosophy and the Mind/Body Problem
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2015
Abstract
The thesis of the paper is that it is an illusion to think that the mind/body problem is one that philosophy can expect to solve. The basic reason is that the problem is one of determining the real nature of conscious states, and philosophy lacks the tools to work this out. It is argued that anti-materialist arguments in philosophy tend to rely on modal intuitions which lack any support. It is then argued that pro-materialist arguments, such as those of Smart and of Papineau, are dubious because they either yield a conclusion that is too conditional on what other types of research might discover, or rely on premises that anyone who is not already a materialist can simply query. Even if these points are correct the main thesis remains fairly speculative, but at least some support for it is presented.
- Type
- Papers
- Information
- Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 76: Mind, Self and Person , May 2015 , pp. 21 - 37
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2015
References
1 In Kripke, S, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar
2 See Chalmers, D., The Conscious Mind (Oxford University Press, 1996), ch. 3Google Scholar.
3 My argument is, in a compressed form, in agreement with the sort of verdict that Robert Kirk ultimately proposes about this sort of case, which in fact he invented and analysed thoroughly.
4 Another confusion in some philosophical opposition to materialism is that of confusing providing a metaphysically coherent alternative to materialism with actually assembling evidence that their alternative is true and materialism is false.
5 I may of course be wrong in how I classify the two pro-materialist arguments I consider, but that would not be a fatal error.
6 Smart, J.J.C. ‘Sensations and Brain Processes’ in the Philosophical Review 68 (1959), 141–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar
7 There is an interesting historical issue here; the description I have given of the background approach to the issue applies to the period around the Second World War and after it. It is not at all clear that the same assumptions applied to the treatment of the mind/body problem before that. If they did not it is interesting to ask what the earlier assumptions were, and why different ones came to dominate philosophical practice at about the time of the Second World War.
8 I do not here have the space to support this verdict on Smart's discussion, but I assume that most people would agree with what I say. But one example where his discussion is on the wrong tracks would be the topic-neutral analyses he proposed for psychological reports, which should strike anyone as unacceptable.
9 Papineau, D. Thinking about Consciousness (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My reason for choosing Papineau's version for discussion is not that the line of thought embodied in the argument is his sole invention, but, rather, that he provides an especially clear and thoroughly considered version of the argument. The advantage of focussing on Papineau is the thoroughness with which he presents the argument. There is, though, one disadvantage. Others expound arguments of more or less the same structure but they do not necessarily build in all the assumptions that Papineau does, some of which I shall base criticisms on, so there is a degree of loss of generality in the present discussion.
10 Papineau, Thinking about Consciousness, 15.
11 Ibid., 16.
12 These quotations come from Papineau, Thinking about Consciousness, 17–18.
13 Another feature of his discussion that I shall consider only in a footnote is that Papineau envisages a critic of materialism saying that it is evidence that the popularity of the position is, in some sense, merely a matter of fashion, that is has become popular only in the second half of the twentieth century. Papineau's response to this worry is to say that this fact has an historical explanation, which is that the position rests on the scientific principles of the completeness of physics, which is a scientific finding that has only emerged in that period. I am inclined to respond to this by remarking 1] that the fact that a view becomes popular rather late in our intellectual history is in itself no evidence at all that its acceptance is merely a matter of fashion, and so that is not a charge that needs answering, and 2] that it probably is not true that what leads philosophers to accept materialism is anything quite so general as the ‘completeness of physics’.
14 Papineau, Thinking about Consciousness, 13.
15 I try to substantiate this scepticism in Snowdon, ‘On the What-it-is-like-ness of Experience’ in The Southern Journal of Philosophy Vol 48 No. 1 (2010), 8–27 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
16 Papineau, Thinking about Consciousness, 14.
17 Perhaps I should say – only if one is already not any sort of dualist. Clearly eliminativists, who are not physicalists in the sense meant here, can endorse this premise.
18 All quotes here are from Papineau, Thinking about Consciousness, 21.
19 I am very grateful to Anthony O'Hear for the invitation to take part in the lecture series out of which this volume grew, and also to Adam Ferner for help both with the actual talk and with the paper. I also wish to thank Lucy O'Brien, Rory Madden, Penelope Rowlatt, and others who took part in a seminar at UCL at which the paper was read, and to a number of people in the audience at the talk in Royal Institute. Many thanks too to Joel Yurdin and the seniors at Haverford College for discussion of the issues raised here.