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[Quotidian]

This question is not about science, so much as the application of science to the nature of human identity.

Without a proper understanding of science we cannot determine whether it has been properly applied or misapplied.

But I don't think the nature of the mind, and the basics of human identity...

I must have missed something. We were not talking about the nature of the mind or basic human identity. We were talking about the theory of evolution, whether molecules decide to do what they do, whether doing what they do entails purpose, whether the existence of designs entails a designer. You seem to be attacking the scientific theories of nature because it does not appear to conform to your theories of mind and human identity.

From my notebook:

'The task of philosophy differs from that of science, for, unlike science, philosophy examines not our conclusions but the basic conceptual models we employ—the kind of concepts and ordering patterns we use. Philosophy concerns not the explanation of this or that but questions such as "What, really, is an explanation?"

For example, is something explained when it is divided into parts and if we can tell how the parts behave? This is but one type of explanation. It works fairly well for a car (although it does not tell what makes it run), less well for a biological cell (whose "parts" are not alive and do not explain its life), and very poorly for explaining personality (what are the "parts" of a person?). Or, choosing another of the many types, has something been explained when we feel that we "understand" it because we have been shown how it fits into some larger context or broader organization? These questions, philosophic questions, are not designed to determine the explanation of this or that, but to discover what an explanation is.'

So I think the point is, we are talking about 'mind' from the outset of this discussion. We're talking a philosophical stance, not a scientific theory, and there is a difference, in line with the above quote.

The natural assumption for many people - so natural as to be unstated - is that 'mind is the product of evolution'. But time and time again, we are told that 'evolution is mindless', that it is an essentially material process. (Many of Richard Dawkin's books are written on this theme - Unweaving the Rainbow, Climbing Mount Improbable, and others. I add that I haven't read all of them, but I have read a fair amount of Dawkins, and I take him as typifying the viewpoint that is the object of criticism here.) So that embodies an assumption, or an explanatory model, which is the basic assumption of philosophical materialism, namely that mind=brain, and that to understand the brain, is to understand mind. That is why the question needs to be asked at the point of origin, which in this case is the at the point of the origin of life itself. If you cede the point that the very beginning of life is no different in principle from minerals and snowflakes, then that's your model; all you need to do is work out the details.

I am questioning the model itself. 'Mind' can't be fit into that model. I think the model is that the brain develops to enable a capacity for reason, capacity for language, and so on; but reason is not 'the product' of mindlessness.

When you claim Darwin was wrong we need to look at the theory and the limits of his claims. He takes life as a given. He explains the origin of species as the cumulative effect of variation as selected by an environment. Cruse seems to have difficulty understanding the use of language and thus rejects Darwin because there is no intelligence selecting, no designer designing. If we can clear this up, and it really is quite easy, then Cruse is wrong when he says that Darwin was wrong.

I think in a lot of respects, Darwin was quite right. As I have said before, I grew up on Time Life books as a child, and didn't even know there were religious debates about 'creationism' until well into adulthood. So I don't want to make any such sweeping statements, nor am I defending intelligent design.

I think the claim here is actually very specific. Cruse quotes a particular passage from Origin of Species:

It may be metaphorically said that Natural Selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being.”

He points out that whilst Darwin says that this is 'a metaphor', it is continually thereafter refered to in his work, and is central to the theory. So what is it that 'scrutinizes', 'rejecs', 'adds up', and 'silently and insensibly works'? In fact, we are told, there is nothing that does this, because we are referring all the while to merely bio-molecular processes. So what it is a metaphor, for? That has to be central.

He notes that this gives rise to 'Designer-less design — a supposedly purposeless process going on constantly in Mindless nature, leading to the creation of purposeless organisms built out of purposeless parts, and all (functioning?) to no purpose...'

So he sees it as a pretty basic error in Darwin's thinking, which has subsequently become vastly amplified in the way the theory has been developed. And I think that is a reasonable point.

When I reproduced the passage that spells out the difference between living and dead creatures, you said that I wasn't 'pointing to anything purposeful'. I also asked, what kind of scientific law describes the process which drives evolution, to which you said there wasn't one. I think you're helping make the point.

Here's an anecdote. I was walking my (live) dog around the oval the other day, and the local afternoon radio host was having a discussion with some visiting scientist - I can't remember about what exactly, but the question of traits came up. The radio host said something along the lines, 'and people have those traits, some will say God-given, others will say because of Darwin...'. It was quite a casual mention, but I noticed it because I am discussing these questions. So in this sense, evolution has to all intents occupied the place formerly occupied by religion. It is embedded in the social fabric. And I think Cruse is basically correct about how that occured. That's why, on the one hand, I think it is perfectly possible to study Darwinian biology as an account of the origin of the human species, whilst at the same time remaining circumspect about what that means in an existential sense.

While it is true that we do not have a satisfactory natural explanation of mind and human identity it does not follow that in principle we cannot have a natural explanation of these things. Prior to every advance in science there have been those who have claimed it could not be done and spend a good deal of time and energy explaining why it could not be done.

But the question of the human mind - I am actually tempted to use the word 'soul' here - is categorically different to the questions that the objective sciences study. We are not dealing with objects, in this case, but with subjects, and what is of value to them, and what things mean.

Science makes a very big deal out of the fact that 'the Universe is without meaning'. The whole point of Darwin's Dangerous Idea was to show that darwinian theory dissolves all traditional sources of value and meaning in the 'acid' of philosophical materialism (as if this is a good thing.) I am saying: watch out! there's a clear and present danger in these philosophies (so called). They are de-humanizing. They are the philosophical counterpart to economic globalisation and the homogenization of world-culture, which proceeds by dissolving human identity and individual cultures. Dennett says we shouldn't object to being called 'robots'.

You seem to slide unnoticed between attempts to explain the natural world in natural terms, problems of materialism, and claims made by Dennett, Dawkins, and others. Or perhaps it only seems this way to me because I have misunderstood you. So, let me ask you to clarify your position. Are you claiming that natural explanations are not possible or are you simply taking issue with the theories of philosophers of science?

It is all part of a picture. A good deal of what I have written above would be quite in keeping with some of the continental philosophers' critiques.

-- Updated September 30th, 2014, 11:06 am to add the following --

Here, I'll quote it for you in toto:

A supernatural event can be a very natural occurrence which seems thoroughly excluded from our logic and our sense of what's possible and reasonable.

Here's the next sentence completing a very short paragraph.

In consequence it gets deported into the realms of the incomprehensible which only refers to the distance between us and IT.

So tell me again where is the contradiction in this definition of "supernatural"!

OK, fair enough, I did truncate your passage. Apologies for that.

So is what you're saying that what is 'supernatural' is really something that we don't yet have the natural explanation for? If so, it's not really a contradictory definition, but I don't think it comes to terms with what 'supernatural' means.

I take the term to mean 'of a different order to natural phenomena'. The web definition that I find is:

(of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature. "a supernatural being" synonyms: paranormal, psychic, magic, magical, occult, mystic, mystical, miraculous, superhuman, supernormal, hypernormal, extramundane; unnaturally or extraordinarily great. "a woman of supernatural beauty"

noun: supernatural; plural noun: supernaturals 1. manifestations or events considered to be of supernatural origin, such as ghosts. "a frightening manifestation of the supernatural"

So I think the idea is that what is supernatural is not amenable to a naturalistic explanation as a matter of principle.

But in the context of this particular debate, I think caution is warranted; you can dispute the materialist notion of mind, without asserting something supernatural; simply by arguing that 'mind' is in some real sense, irreducibly first-person, and that the first-person point of view is not itself amongst phenomena. That is the basis of many philosophical critiques of materialism (Chalmers, Husserl, Dreyfuss and others.)

-- Updated September 30th, 2014, 11:12 am to add the following --

The idea that the various attributes of a human being -- will, intelligence, sight, emotions, reason, etc. -- can be separated from the totality of the person, and that person separated from the whole of nature, is fallout from Newtonian/Carteasian dualism: it mistakes logical distinctions, which are pure abstractions, for reality itself. The various attributes of a person are not independent 'powers,' but only names for the different forms of one person's actions, actions that are inseparable from the whole of reality. Biological materialism, therefore, is but the phenomenal product of a dynamism beneath it, and when that is viewed as comprised separate factors we involve ourselves with absurdities and contradictions that give rise to debates such as this.

Well stated. That is very closely related to my line of argument in this thread. (I like Bowne a lot, he is on my to-read list)

[Fooloso4]

Quotidian:

So what it is a metaphor, for? That has to be central.

It is a metaphor for the process. Things either survive in an environment or they don’t. If they are successful they reproduce and their numbers increase, if they are not, they die off.

the creation of purposeless organisms built out of purposeless parts

You are confusing, perhaps intentionally, two different senses of purpose. The purpose of the part is how it functions within the whole organism. The organism can be said to have a purpose within its environment, for example, breaking down waste to produce nutrients for plants which can serve the purpose of preventing erosion or providing food for animals. You are not concerned with function but some end beyond existence. That is a religious or philosophical question. That science does not deal with purpose in this sense does not invalidate purpose in the sense of function. It is not an error.

So he sees it as a pretty basic error in Darwin's thinking.

That Darwin does not find religious or philosophical purpose in his description of biological processes is a basic error? You might as well say that a basic error of chemistry is that it does not reveal a greater purpose. You want to treat this case differently because biology leads to mind, and there is no mind to be found in biology. There are, I think two mistakes here: first, although we divide the sciences they all deal with one thing: the natural world. The boundaries between the sciences are dissolving as we can see, for example, with biochemistry. So, whatever error you think you find in Darwin must also be present in the whole of science. Second, just because we have a mind does not warrant the claim that it must be the result of mind. Like from like does not hold in this case any more than any other.

So in this sense, evolution has to all intents occupied the place formerly occupied by religion.

It has displaced religion if this means worshiping the intelligent designer. The Catholic Church has found a place for evolution.

I think it is perfectly possible to study Darwinian biology as an account of the origin of the human species, whilst at the same time remaining circumspect about what that means in an existential sense.

That seems reasonable but it doesn't look like what you are doing when you keep pointing to what see as an error.

But the question of the human mind - I am actually tempted to use the word 'soul' here - is categorically different to the questions that the objective sciences study.

Only because that is the way you are categorizing things dualistically as mind and body. When you use the terms mind or soul you mean something that is not physical and so by definition it cannot be the subject of an objective science which deals with the physical. What the physical is, however, has undergone significant changes over the course of the history of science. The physical is not one pole of dualist categories body and mind/soul.

Science makes a very big deal out of the fact that 'the Universe is without meaning'.

Philosophers of science may do that but I do not think you will find the leading research journals in science making a big deal out of it, in fact, they do not make anything out of it. It is not a scientific concern.

They are de-humanizing

.

It is not so simple. These ideas come to us from the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment brought us at the same time the ideas of autonomy, individualism, natural rights, and freedom. The Enlightenment overturned the authority of the Church which crushed dissent and taught that we are by nature depraved.

[Radar]

It is not so simple. These ideas come to us from the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment brought us at the same time the ideas of autonomy, individualism, natural rights, and freedom.

And the delusion of separation...the belief that the objects of thoughts are the things themselves.

[Quotidian]

Go Radar!

It is a metaphor for the process. Things either survive in an environment or they don’t. If they are successful they reproduce and their numbers increase, if they are not, they die off.

The larger point is why did 'the process' start in the first place? What drives it? Your answer is 'join a biology forum'. The point is, as we are human beings, and not simply 'survival machines', we can ask such questions. It amounts to a question very much like: why are we here? Does evolution have a purpose, beyond merely surviving? Hey, I've survived - now what? You would be amazed by the number of people who can't answer that.

That Darwin does not find religious or philosophical purpose in his description of biological processes is a basic error?

That is not what was stated, in the least. The basic error is to refer to the way 'natural selection' - which is a metaphor in itself - acts as an agent, 'selecting', 'rejecting', 'adding up', and so on.

You're not responding to the criticism, you're simply typing biolerplate neo-darwinist copy.

So, whatever error you think you find in Darwin must also be present in the whole of science...

Only when science is taken as philosophy, which I think you're doing, and which many people do.

We are not constrained, as was Descartes, to postulate a second substance when we deal with phenomena that are not expressible in terms of matter in motion, in his sense.

I don't think that Chomsky gets what Descartes meant by 'substance'. The meaning of the term 'substance' in Descartes' philosophy, was very different to what we understand by the term nowadays. We cannot help but think of 'substance' in terms of what Descartes would have described as 'extended matter'; I would guess that it is impossible to conceive of 'mind' in the sense of 'something non-extended'. Why? Because there is nothing that has no location or extent. That is why I think that we tend to characterise Descartes' notion of 'mind' as 'a ghost' (as in 'the ghost in the machine') - because the idea of a ghost is something we think we can conceive of (and do without).

But Descartes' definition of 'substance' is simply 'a thing whose existence is dependent on no other thing ¹'. In modern terms, that would be described as being something that can't be reduced, in other words, is irreducible. We can't explain it; it is the starting point of explanation, not the object of explanation. And I think that is quite apt, in the case of 'mind'. 'Mind' is *not* something 'in the world', and it is therefore not something that 'the natural sciences', insofar as they deal with phenomena in the world, is well-adapted to explain. And when they do try to explain it, they are invariably involved in circularity and question-begging, because they are trying to explain the source of explanation. (That is exemplified in the book title 'Consciousness Explained'.)

Of course that very point has been made by the phenomenologists, starting with Husserl, but also Heidegger and Merleau Ponty, which has given rise to the 'embodied cognition' approach. I think that school tries to take into account the irreducibility of mind whilst also approaching the question scientifically. But they're worlds apart from evolutionary materialism, per se, in that they refrain from the basic assumption of materialism that mind is something that can be made subject to physical explanation.

-- Updated September 30th, 2014, 12:43 pm to add the following --

It has displaced religion if this means worshiping the intelligent designer....

What I mean is, that it is widely assumed that we are what we are, 'because of evolution'. This leads to what I call 'Darwinian rationalism' - that 'evolutionary adaption' is the rationale for all manner of things about us, our minds, our traits and tendencies. I had this debate with 'Wilson' for a week and never got past square one. As far as he is concerned, it is simply the way things are, and a thing of beauty.


That's what I meant.

[Neopolitan]

As usual, the descriptions are all horribly vague, or involve pointing off in the distance and saying something like "go read this book by a questionable author, as recommended by Radar". If "supernatural" and "spiritual" really are important, one would think that their proponents would at least have a go at trying to define them clearly. Without a clear definition, it's simply not science, even if a respectable person wrote the book in question.

I must be missing something but what does mind have to do with supernatural/spiritual? I assumed the discussion was whether present neuroscience can explain the emergence of mental stuff? Or maybe I'm just misinterpreting this thread.

The thread is "A Critique of Biological Materialism" and the person responsible for the thread asked (at post #14):

Before we proceed, I should ask the question, do the readers here know what the meaning of terms such as 'materialism' or 'reductionism' is - who promotes such ideas, what problems they say they are addressing, and what the criticisms of them are?

Quotidian agreed with my tenative definitions at post #15 (emphasis added):

... for the purposes of the argument, when you use the terms, I think you mean:

• materialism - the idea that that nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications, that there is no (hidden) supernatural or spiritual element to nature
• reductionism - the idea that as you break down something into its elements, the whole will be continue to be sufficiently explained by the sum of those elements

Therefore, a critique of "materialism" seems to be a critique of viewing the universe with the inclusion of these ill-defined things: the "supernatural" and the "spiritual".

Perhaps I am wrong, but I tend to see mind-body dualism as being akin to "spirit-material" dualism, or possibly "supernatural-natural" dualism, since some people see the mind as being quite different to and distinct from the material body. Whether Quotidian sees things this way is unclear (although he did equate "mind" with "spirit" in a recent post):

But 'mind' in the general sense, as understood by idealist philosophies, is in some respects the nearest term that we will get to 'spirit' in the philosophical lexicon.

This was in the same post that he wrote:

You will find that anyone who criticizes evolutionary thinking is automatically categorized as engaging in 'magical thinking', just as you're doing in my case.

Oddly enough, he doesn't seem to notice that it is not his criticism of "evolutionary thinking" (whatever that is) that causes me to accuse him of magical thinking, but rather this apparent assumption that there are free-standing "supernatural" and "spiritual" things.

[Bohm2]

I don't think that Chomsky gets what Descartes meant by 'substance'. The meaning of the term 'substance' in Descartes' philosophy, was very different to what we understand by the term nowadays. We cannot help but think of 'substance' in terms of what Descartes would have described as 'extended matter'; I would guess that it is impossible to conceive of 'mind' in the sense of 'something non-extended'. Why? Because there is nothing that has no location or extent. That is why I think that we tend to characterise Descartes' notion of 'mind' as 'a ghost' (as in 'the ghost in the machine') - because the idea of a ghost is something we think we can conceive of (and do without).

I didn't follow this, but from your link:

Descartes specifies two attributes: thought and extension. Consequently, there are at least two kinds of created substance—extended substances and thinking substances. By ‘extension’ Descartes just means having length, breadth, and depth. More colloquially we might say that to be extended is just to take up space or to have volume.

Well even Descarte's notion of 'matter' as something being extended and localized in space has sorta been brought down with recent developments in physics. Consider the wave function, for example, which is arguably at the foundation of microphysics. It appears to defy spatio-temporality. Thus, as Chomsky points out:

There is no longer any definite conception of body [e.g. matter]. Rather, the material world is whatever we discover it to be, with whatever properties it must be assumed to have for the purposes of explanatory theory. Any intelligible theory that offers genuine explanations and that can be assimilated to the core notions of physics becomes part of the theory of the material world, part of our account of body. If we have such a theory in some domain, we seek to assimilate it to the core notions of physics, perhaps modifying these notions as we carry out this enterprise...

And that's why Chomsky also writes:

A naturalistic approach to...mental aspects of the world seeks to construct intelligible explanatory theories, taking as "real" what we are led to posit in this quest, and hoping for eventual unification with the "core" natural sciences: unification, not necessarily reduction. Large scale reduction is rare in the history of the sciences. Commonly the more "fundamental" science has had to undergo radical revision for unification to proceed...

Newton did not exorcise the ghost in the machine, as commonly believed. Rather he exorcised the machine, leaving the ghost intact. Newton demonstrated, to the consternation of scientists of the day including Newton himself, that we have no coherent notion of machine (or body, physical, material, etc.). We have no insight into nature beyond the best theories of various aspects of the world that we can devise, always looking forward to deeper explanation and eventual unification, though in unpredictable and often quite surprising ways. As historians of science have recognized, this intellectual move “set forth a new view of science” in which the goal is “not to seek ultimate explanations” but to find the best theoretical account we can of the phenomena of experience and experiment (I. Bernard Cohen). The goals of scientific inquiry were significantly lowered. It had been presumed, since Galileo, that the world itself would be intelligible to us, just as a complex artifact is. But Newton showed, to his dismay, that the expectation must be abandoned. The most we can hope for is that theories of the world will be intelligible to us, a very different perspective.

Biolinguistic Explorations: design, development, evolution
https://blogs.commons.georgetown.edu/jo ... lution.pdf

[Neopolitan]

Here's an anecdote. I was walking my (live) dog around the oval the other day, and the local afternoon radio host was having a discussion with some visiting scientist - I can't remember about what exactly, but the question of traits came up. The radio host said something along the lines, 'and people have those traits, some will say God-given, others will say because of Darwin...'. It was quite a casual mention, but I noticed it because I am discussing these questions. So in this sense, evolution has to all intents occupied the place formerly occupied by religion.

There are, of course problems with anecdotes. They aren't particularly useful in science, but this isn't science, it's "philosophy of science", so perhaps we can let things slide on that aspect of your tale here.

However ... what you have here is a radio host in your part of your nation talking to a scientist. You don't tell us much about the host (is he an amateur bible thumpin' type by any chance? or was he someone trying to point out how hopelessly science is understood by some sections of the community?), you don't tell us much about the "visiting scientist" (could it be that he was a fellow of the Discovery Institute or a supporter of the New Atheist movement? was he selected because he had a particular view that suited the program? or was he self-selected because he has a thought provoking book coming out?) and you don't tell us how the "visiting scientist" responded to the host's claim that some people think that Darwin determines who gets which traits. Going from this tiny and quite vague vignette to a claim that "evolution has to all intents occupied the place formerly occupied by religion" simply isn't justifiable. We need more data to even credit this single example of what you claim to be someone else making a claim that "others" suggest that Darwin selects traits (with the built-in assumption that this somehow means that evolution has replaced religion in the world views of some people, which isn't necessarily the case, even if the rest of your anecdote holds up - and even if we are generous and accept that there are stupid and ignorant people out there, some of whom might unthinkingly replace blind faith in some form of religion with blind faith in evolution, these people are on the lunatic fringe - they don't represent the majority of people who hold evolutionary materialism to be true).

If this were an example of how you found your beliefs, Kettle, based on snippets of what you hear on the radio, then we would need to start taking your beliefs significantly less seriously. Of course, we know that this isn't the case, since you occasionally quote books too.

[Radar]

Quotidian, if your are interested in reading Browne, you can download here and here.The first link is to his book Metaphysics; the second link to to Theism and Philosophy of Theism.

[Quotidian]

Thanks, Radar, I will look into them.

Perhaps I am wrong, but I tend to see mind-body dualism as being akin to "spirit-material" dualism, or possibly "supernatural-natural" dualism, since some people see the mind as being quite different to and distinct from the material body...

You are quite correct, I think that is just what it is.

I started trying to write a reply to the implied question, but it's an essay or two; I hardly know where to start.

Picking one possible approach: the Internet Encyc of Philosophy article I linked to above, also says this:

In contrast to contemporary philosophers, most 17th century philosophers held that reality comes in degrees—that some things that exist are more or less real than other things that exist. At least part of what dictates a being’s reality, according to these philosophers, is the extent to which its existence is dependent on other things: the less dependent a thing is on other things for its existence, the more real it is. Given that there are only substances and modes, and that modes depend on substances for their existence, it follows that substances are the most real constituents of reality.

So, in this sense, 'mind' is 'substance' - but not in the sense that we automatically conceive of the term, as something or some stuff; but something which cannot be further reduced or explained.

What you're seeing in the above quotation, is the remnants of the older style of philosophy which understood the nature of reality in terms of an 'hierarchy of being' (also known as the Great Chain of Being). So within that hierarchy, 'matter' and 'sense-perception' are generally relegated to the lower levels; 'intellectual perception and reason' are at a slightly higher level (meaning, higher degree of reality); and at a higher level, is pure 'mind' (i.e. nous), which perceives the forms of things. So, naturally, in this model, 'mind' is of a higher-order reality to 'matter' and 'sensible things'. And I think that is the background to Descartes' ideas: this is why he says, for instance, that through mathematical knowledge, indubitable ideas can be formed; that is basic to philosophical Platonism.

The problem we have is, however, that we have so much turned away from those styles of thinking that we no longer have the metaphors or ways of thinking to even conceptualize them, as I said before. (I think the 'neo-scholastics' (like Ed Feser) do have that - which is not to say I subscribe in total to their way of thinking.) But nowadays we're supposed to think that 'mind' is 'a product' - the output of matter, or an epiphenomenon of the material brain, which is itself the consequence of a material process.

So that is the direction that I am looking in - it is conceiving of 'mind' in the more traditionalist sense of 'nous'. But I'm quite aware that this thread is getting very busy, plus I have to get up and start doing something else for a few hours, otherwise risk domestic strife.

[Neopolitan]

<snip>

So that is the direction that I am looking in - it is conceiving of 'mind' in the more traditionalist sense of 'nous'. <snip>

Is there any other field of human endeavour in which we would ignore 350 years of development in order gain an understanding of the related subject? To ignore the efforts of literally thousands of people in order to return to the ideas of a single person who was largely working in the dark?

To obtain an understanding of the mind going from Descartes' ponderings, rather than drawing on modern psychology and neuroscience seems like a very foolhardy enterprise unless, of course, you want to arrive at a version of "mind" that is incompatible with what more modern research might tell us.

It seems to me that you are heading down a similar path to that of Thumorus, when I told him that (in the terms in which he seems to consider life) we are not alive. In the terms in which you seem to be wanting to consider "mind", we may well all be mindless, in the same sense that we are soulless, we are spiritless and the molecules that comprise us are not alive.

All we can truly say about "mind" is that it is a phenomenon that is experienced when the conditions are right, one condition being the presence of a brain and that we know that our experience of the phenomenon can be altered by purely physical means (a bash to the head), chemical means (introduction of psychoactive materials) and even by temperature (fevers or heat exhaustion). We know that our experience of our surroundings can be quite skewed without our noticing (blind spots, inattention, domestic blindness, face blindness, lack of true 3-d vision processing) and we know that if certain inputs are denied us, it is our physical brain that adapts and overcomes (for example, 3-D spatial processing can use input from the ears rather than the eyes in people who have eye-related blindness) and this affects our experience of "mind" - in terms of Nagel, not only can we not truly imagine what it is like to be a bat, nor can we imagine what it is like to be a person who has been blind from birth and uses sonar to image her world.

Our minds and her mind are going to be so different that the idea that we might share some sort of reasonably identical "mind-stuff" would appear to be nonsense. The other option is to suggest that we are assigned versions of "mind-stuff" that are applicable to our physical conditions - so you and I get "sighted mind-stuff" and our blind friend gets "blind mind-stuff" (a synaesthetic gets "synaesthetic mind-stuff", then there would be brands for "girl mind-stuff" and "boy mind-stuff" to account for the effects of different hormone levels, and these would change as we progress through the years).

But this causes problems, as I am sure you can work out yourself. How is the "mind-stuff" distributed, "mind-stuff elves"? Does our "mind-stuff" get changed out as we transition from child, to teenage, to young adult, to middle-aged adult, to doddering old person? How is that change-out managed? What about accidents and the on-set of mental illness? And when we get drunk, or have had too much red cordial, or haven't had our morning coffee yet? It's almost like we'd need our own member of elvish staff on hand at all times, responsible for making sure we have the right "mind-stuff" on the right day.

Perhaps the brain/body of the person involved shapes some sort of stem cell equivalent of "mind-stuff", endlessly updating it or modifying to meet the prevailing conditions, but if that is the case then "mind-stuff" would seem to be entirely subordinate to the brain/body in which case ... "mind" would be functionally identical to the emergent feature that most of us think that it is.

[Fooloso4]

Quotidian: pure 'mind' (i.e. nous), which perceives the forms of things.

This is an argument based on a Greek idea that Plato made use of while showing the thoughtful reader why it should be rejected – like comes from like. There was for Plato no noesis of the noetic realm, no seeing with the mind of the realm of the mind, no immortal soul dwelling in the Elysian Fields. This is his philosophical poetry, which as with all things in Plato functions at many levels. It inspires the soul of the philosopher to ascend to something higher (for Plato’s philosophical poetry see Nietzsche and more recently Stanley Rosen). At the same time it marks a proper skepticiism. It points to what knowledge is and thus makes us aware that we do not possess it. As to Descartes, the mind is, not as it was for the Greeks, passive seeing. The goal for Descartes is not contemplative; it is to know so that the world can be bent to our will. I will add a footnote to elaborate what I say so as not to get too far off topic.*

*Even many (but not all) highly regarded scholars today do not take proper notice of what he tells his careful reader:

“I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto 'to live well you must live unseen”, “Masked, I advance.”

What does he hide? A hint: what is the one thing most likely to put his work and his life in danger? Descartes names both God and soul: mind. We cannot understand Descartes if we only look at him sitting alone in his room. He said: “The reading of all good books is like conversation with the finest men of past centuries.” We need to listen to his conversation with Genesis and the Stoics. The Stoics taught to accept what cannot be changed. Descartes taught that with the algebraic method of solving for unknowns knowledge of all things is possible. It will no longer be necessary to accept because we will know how to change nature. This conquest of nature and the universal language of nature mark the enterprise of modern science. Its success means that man becomes a god. Descartes’ creation story has the parts that God kept from man in the Genesis story: an immortal soul and the universal language that was destroyed so that man could not do whatever it was that he willed to do. Descartes need not invent the immortal soul, it was already fundamental to Church doctrine. Together with men such as Francis Bacon the universal language was re-discovered. Thus the human mind with the aid of the universal language could perfect the will. The perfect will not only does not err (Descartes says that sinning and erring are the same thing) because it only acts on what it knows but since all that is unknown will become known man will be able to do whatever he will to do. He becomes not just like a god but a god.

[Quotidian]

This is an argument based on a Greek idea that Plato made use of while showing the thoughtful reader why it should be rejected – like comes from like.

I don't know quite what you mean. An encyclopaedia entry on 'nous' says:

In its pre-philosophical usage nous is only one among a number of terms for mind. It is chiefly distinguished from these other words by its tendency to signify 'intelligent' activity - realising, understanding, planning, visualising - rather than mental processes more generally, including the emotions. ...

In the dialogues of Plato the treatment of nous was powerfully influenced by these antecedent conceptions. In his Phaedo, Socrates favours the idea that nous has organized the universe in the best possible way (an idea, he suggests, that Anaxagoras failed to carry through). This conception of nous was fully developed in other Platonic dialogues including the Timaeus, where it is figuratively expressed in the teleological thinking of the world's divine manufacturer (demiurge). In the Republic, the three great images of sun, divided line and cave are ways of distinguishing levels of reality and modes of cognition. Common to all three images is a distinction between the visible world of...phenomena and the 'noetic' world of stable and intelligible Forms. Noesis - the highest activity of the soul's rational component - has cognition of the Forms as its objective, which it pursues by seeking understanding that is unhypothetical and absolutely secure. In ethical and psychological contexts Plato also uses nous as a term for the soul's 'rational component', with meanings that may be as broad as 'mind' in everyday English.

A.A. Long - emphasis added.

So, in pre-modern philosophy, nous was a cosmic principle and not simply an attribute of the evolved brain; the 'stable and intelligible forms' would obviously not be something subject to biological evolution. (I do wonder, however, if they provide something like archetypes towards which biological forms evolve; although such ideas might be taboo.)

Descartes need not invent the immortal soul, it was already fundamental to Church doctrine. Together with men such as Francis Bacon the universal language was re-discovered....

The relationship between the various philosophical ideas that gave rise to the modern outlook are explored in an interesting 2009 book, The Theological Origins of Modernity, Michael Allen Gillespie. Descartes' figures large in that book. (Review here.) I think Descartes had a spiritual side - according to Gillespie, he might well have been Rosicrucian - which is mainly forgotten, in much the same way this his concept of res cogitans has been. Of course Cartesian co-ordinate geometry was foundational to the formation of modern science, but I think Descartes would have thought that the way his ideas were co-opted by materialism without reference to res cogitans would have rendered them incomprehensible. Like his contemporaries, he simply assumed that the divine intelligence was essential to the whole scheme.

Stanley Rosen…

Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy at Boston!

It seems to me that you are heading down a similar path to that of Thumorus, when I told him that (in the terms in which he seems to consider life) we are not alive. In the terms in which you seem to be wanting to consider "mind", we may well all be mindless, in the same sense that we are soulless, we are spiritless and the molecules that comprise us are not alive.

I think that the higher philosophies, generally, claim that we are mistakenly identified with insentient matter, and that therefore we have a false idea of who and what we are; so 'waking up' from the attachment to the material realm is the point of the philosophy. I think that was what was originally behind spirit/matter dualism; to my mind, it is what many religious teachings are a metaphor about, although they may well have forgotten what they set out to teach.

Besides, consider the idea that if you define 'mind' as 'the function of the biologically-evolved brain', then you're really putting yourself inside a kind of biologically-determined computer in which you will only see what you have evolved to be able to comprehend.

in the summer of 1994... a group of mathematicians and computer scientists held a conference at the Santa Fe Institute on "Limits to Scientific Knowledge." The consensus was that since the human mind is, after all, an entirely physical apparatus, a form of computer, the product of a particular genetic history, it is finite in its capabilities. Being finite, hardwired, it will probably never have the power to comprehend human existence in any complete way. It would be as if a group of dogs were to call a conference to try to understand The Dog. They could try as hard as they wanted, but they wouldn't get very far. Dogs can communicate only about forty notions, all of them primitive, and they can't record anything. The project would be doomed from the start. The human brain is far superior to the dog's, but it is limited nonetheless. So any hope of human beings arriving at some final, complete, self–enclosed theory of human existence is doomed, too.¹.

How is the "mind-stuff" distributed, "mind-stuff elves"?

As I suggested, I think it is mistaken to try and conceive of the notion of 'mind' as we are discussing here, in simply objective terms, as a literal 'substance'. You're basically approaching it through asking questions about what it is in an objective sense. But mind is not only a 'that' to us. We can study it as 'that', but to do so is to be doing cognitive science and psychology - looking at how minds work. That is quite fine, but understanding mind in the first person requires a different approach. In Western philosophy, that is what phenomenology aimed at doing; Buddhist meditation is another approach. (As I mentioned, the approach called 'embodied cognition' tries to combine both; see the landmark book The Embodied Mind:Cognitive Science and Human Experience)

We are the products of a society and culture that sees in particular ways; I think a large part of philosophy is becoming reflexively aware of our own myths and metaphors, which is not easy.

Our minds and her mind are going to be so different that the idea that we might share some sort of reasonably identical "mind-stuff" would appear to be nonsense.

Well, surely it would be, but I think the real distance between people is closed through empathy, isn't it? That is the sense in which we 'become one'.

[Fooloso4]

Quotidian:

I don't know quite what you mean. An encyclopaedia entry on 'nous' says:

Nietzsche is the one who brought to our attention the difference between exoteric writing and esoteric writing and hence the need for exoteric and esoteric reading. Leo Strauss, was the leading practitioner of the esoteric art of reading in the 20th century. He was very persuasive in demonstrating that a Platonic dialogue cannot be read as a discourse. We have to pay attention to the dramatic context including who he is talking to. One of the themes of the Phaedo is how a written work must have all its parts fit together as the parts of an animal do. As Socrates says, he talks differently to different people, so we cannot pull something out of a dialogue and treat it as if it is Plato telling us what he thinks. Plato never speaks in his own name in the dialogues and suggests in his Letters that he keeps his own views hidden.

Whoever wrote the encyclopedia article mixes up noesis and dianoia – the top two parts of the divided line which separate the direct seeing with the mind of the forms and reason which can never grasp the forms because they are singular and reason or ratio is always thinking of one thing in relation to another.

In the Republic after Socrates presents the image of the Forms Glaucon wants Socrates to tell them what the Forms themselves are. Socrates responds:

You will no longer be able to follow, dear Glaucon, although there won’t be any lack of eagerness on my part. But you would no longer seeing an image of what we are saying, but the truth itself, at least as it looks to me. Whether it really is so or not cannot be properly insisted on. (533a)

There is a lot going on here but I will only point to the last statement. Why can’t Socrates insist that the truth is not as he says it is? The answer is, he does not know. As he said in the Apology, he knows nothing of the most important things. What he is presenting is an image. He does not see the Forms, only what it looks like to him. What looks like the Forms is not the Forms. What he is looking at is an image, something he imagines the truth must be like. See the importance of images and the imagination in the Divided Line.

In my opinion, Stanley Rosen’s The Limits of Analysis is the clearest and most cogent discussion of this.

Borden Parker Bowne Professor of Philosophy at Boston!

Oh, the irony!

[Quotidian]

I am aware of the differentiation between noesis and dianoia, with the former being higher than the latter, which pertains to geometrical forms and mathematics and the like. I think the vestiges of those ideas existed in the classical forms of Western philosophy up until the present in the form of the notion that knowledge of the intellectual realm of numbers and logic was a kind of aristocratic character trait, whilst the knowledge of the spiritual realms was higher again. Many such ideas passed into Christian theology through the influence of Platonism on theologians.

(I do know I ought to do a lot more study of Plato, although I think that, because of the poetic and allegorical aspects of his writing, it is possible to read him in extremely different ways. For instance, I think a lot of the 'mystical Plato' has been redacted out of many readings, better to fit him into political and intellectual models. I am looking around for one of the many free 'open university' offerings that exist nowadays for one on Platonism, having never studied it formally. Anyway that is all besides the point of this particular thread.)

-- Updated October 1st, 2014, 11:23 am to add the following --

This looks interesting.

So many books. So little time.

[Fooloso4]

Quotidian:

I am aware of the differentiation between noesis and dianoia,

But the article you cited seems to have confused them:

Noesis - the highest activity of the soul's rational component

Many such ideas passed into Christian theology through the influence of Platonism on theologians.

Right, and that’s is what got me started on this tangent. The idea of:

pure 'mind' (i.e. nous), which perceives the forms of things.

was part of Plato’s philosophical poetry, it became for Platonism something more and influential for Western thought through Christianity.

The Melzer book does look interesting. When I was in grad school looking for a thesis topic I met with Hans-Georg Gadamer, who is well known for his work on textual interpretation. I was interested in the fact that some of the greatest thinkers of the 20th century turned much of their attention to interpretation rather than original work. His response was to first spend ten or twenty years interpreting texts before addressing that subject. I never did pursue the topic but others have suggested that Strauss was using his own art of writing by way of his art of reading.

So many books. So little time.

Ha! I was going to say the exact same thing in response to your comment about studying more Plato. One of my favorites. Plato and Platonism are two different things though. For Platonism I suggest the work of Pierre Hadot.

And now back to your regularly scheduled discussion.