On Medium: Does Neuroscience Show that Mind is an Illusion?
This article is about eliminativism, Scott Bakker's "Blind Brain Theory," and whether neuroscience show that the commonsense conception of the minds is based on an illusion.
I think it's not so much our mind that is the illusion, but our conception of it. To use your analogy of the stick that is half-submerged in water: our eyes do not deceive us when we see that the stick no longer appears straight -- anymore than a mirror deceives us when it reverses our reflection; the only illusion here would be if, from that perception, we concluded that the stick was broken. Likewise, the mind itself is no illusion, but we can easily draw some erroneous conclusions about its nature from our limited perspective such as that it is constituted of some ghostly, immortal essence or that our sense of selfhood is an aristotelian essence, rather than an accident contingent upon all sorts of variables that we may not even be consciously aware of.
"Even if we stop short of this pragmatism, the eliminativist faces the awkward question of whether neuroscience is likewise explained away by physics. Is the brain also unreal as an illusion created by chemical interactions, just as the mind is supposed to be an illusion caused by the brain?"
That's a good point & it reminds me of this scene from The Big Bang Theory in which Sheldon & Bernadette are debating about who's scientific speciality is more comprehensive. Sheldon the physicist argues that the brain Bernadette studies is ultimately composed of atoms & quanta ruled by physical laws, but then Bernadette shoots back that everything Sheldon knows or ever could know about physics is really just an artefact of the workings of his brain. In a way that's the reverse of your point above, but the gist, of course, is that there may not be any 'ground' upon which we can build our knowledge. If every category of knowledge is reducible to some other category, then that's no different from saying that all knowledge is ultimately irreducible. It's a vertiginousness thought, but until someone comes up with a comprehensive theory of everything (unlikely), it remains a real possibility.
The question raised by eliminativism is whether the mind as conceived of by folk psychology is real or a misrepresentation. In short, the question is whether folk psychology is as obsolete as theistic religion. The folk concept of the mind posits a conscious, rational, autonomous self with meaningful and valued beliefs and desires. Is that self, so conceived, real or illusory? That's the question I was tackling.
I remember that Big Bang Theory episode. I believe Sheldon dismisses Bernadette's view as rank psychologism. But yes, this does raise the question of foundations. Whose theory of everything would truly be foundational and about everything? Which turf would encompass all the others, and could this be anything more than a pragmatic and therefore partly arbitrary matter?
I think the merit of Eliminativism, as you presented the view, would only be, as Sybok said, its naturalism. I don't agree that the ego or self is necessarily illusory, but that doesn't mean that there's a factor involved which ultimately cannot be explained by recourse to nature alone. I don't consider the self as an illusion fabricated by the brain, but it certainly finds a correlate in the brain.
Now, I'm not convinced that the brain is the source or cause of the self or of consciousness, I think it is better to understand it as the physical, natural, manifestation of consciousness.
One of the reasons why I don't think of the self as an illusion, is because I agree with Descartes that the cogito is pressuposed whenever we doubt the existence of anything else.
I also agree with the naturalism, but that doesn't take us very far, because nature in physics isn't what it used to be. I had a recent go at explaining consciousness in the article below.
Descartes' point about the need for certain presuppositions might have been more logical than metaphysical.
I think it's not so much our mind that is the illusion, but our conception of it. To use your analogy of the stick that is half-submerged in water: our eyes do not deceive us when we see that the stick no longer appears straight -- anymore than a mirror deceives us when it reverses our reflection; the only illusion here would be if, from that perception, we concluded that the stick was broken. Likewise, the mind itself is no illusion, but we can easily draw some erroneous conclusions about its nature from our limited perspective such as that it is constituted of some ghostly, immortal essence or that our sense of selfhood is an aristotelian essence, rather than an accident contingent upon all sorts of variables that we may not even be consciously aware of.
ReplyDelete"Even if we stop short of this pragmatism, the eliminativist faces the awkward question of whether neuroscience is likewise explained away by physics. Is the brain also unreal as an illusion created by chemical interactions, just as the mind is supposed to be an illusion caused by the brain?"
That's a good point & it reminds me of this scene from The Big Bang Theory in which Sheldon & Bernadette are debating about who's scientific speciality is more comprehensive. Sheldon the physicist argues that the brain Bernadette studies is ultimately composed of atoms & quanta ruled by physical laws, but then Bernadette shoots back that everything Sheldon knows or ever could know about physics is really just an artefact of the workings of his brain. In a way that's the reverse of your point above, but the gist, of course, is that there may not be any 'ground' upon which we can build our knowledge. If every category of knowledge is reducible to some other category, then that's no different from saying that all knowledge is ultimately irreducible. It's a vertiginousness thought, but until someone comes up with a comprehensive theory of everything (unlikely), it remains a real possibility.
The question raised by eliminativism is whether the mind as conceived of by folk psychology is real or a misrepresentation. In short, the question is whether folk psychology is as obsolete as theistic religion. The folk concept of the mind posits a conscious, rational, autonomous self with meaningful and valued beliefs and desires. Is that self, so conceived, real or illusory? That's the question I was tackling.
DeleteI remember that Big Bang Theory episode. I believe Sheldon dismisses Bernadette's view as rank psychologism. But yes, this does raise the question of foundations. Whose theory of everything would truly be foundational and about everything? Which turf would encompass all the others, and could this be anything more than a pragmatic and therefore partly arbitrary matter?
I think the merit of Eliminativism, as you presented the view, would only be, as Sybok said, its naturalism. I don't agree that the ego or self is necessarily illusory, but that doesn't mean that there's a factor involved which ultimately cannot be explained by recourse to nature alone. I don't consider the self as an illusion fabricated by the brain, but it certainly finds a correlate in the brain.
ReplyDeleteNow, I'm not convinced that the brain is the source or cause of the self or of consciousness, I think it is better to understand it as the physical, natural, manifestation of consciousness.
One of the reasons why I don't think of the self as an illusion, is because I agree with Descartes that the cogito is pressuposed whenever we doubt the existence of anything else.
I also agree with the naturalism, but that doesn't take us very far, because nature in physics isn't what it used to be. I had a recent go at explaining consciousness in the article below.
DeleteDescartes' point about the need for certain presuppositions might have been more logical than metaphysical.
https://medium.com/@benjamincain8/the-limbo-from-the-labyrinth-consciousness-and-the-brain-de363f015558?source=friends_link&sk=52d918e56d3fa533aa2a282f28c049f9