The Aristotelian Argument in a Modern Form

The Aristotelian Argument in a Modern Form

Putting his anti-materialist argument outlined above, in section 1, in very general terms, Aristotle's worry was that a material organ could not have the range and flexibility that are required for human thought. His worries concerned the cramping effect that matter would have on the range of objects that intellect could accommodate. Parallel modern concerns centre on the restriction that matter would impose on the range of rational processes that we could exhibit. Godel, for example, believed that his famous theorem showed that there are demonstrably rational forms of mathematical thought of which humans are capable which could not be exhibited by a mechanical or formal system of a sort that a physical mind would have to be. Penrose (1990) has argued that Turing's halting problem has similar consequences. In general, the fear is that the materialist monist has to treat the organ of thought as, what Dennett (1987:61) calls, a syntactic engine: that is, as something that operates without any fundamental reference to thepropositional content of what it thinks. It works as a machine that only shadows the pattern of meaning. But it is hard to convince oneself that, as one, for example, reflectively discusses philosophy and struggles to follow what is being said, that it is not the semantic content that is driving one's responses. But if we are truly semantic engines, it is difficult to see how we can avoid at least a property dualism. These issues are, of course, connected with problems raised by Brentano, concerning the irreducibility of intentionality. Despite the interest of the arguments for dualism based on the irreducible flexibility of intellect, most of the modern debate turns on arguments that have a Cartesian origin.

5. Problems for Dualism

We have already discussed the problem of interaction. In this section we shall consider two other facets of dualism that worry critics. First, there is what one might term the queerness of the mental if conceived of as non-physical. Second there is the difficulty of giving an account of the unity of the mind. We shall consider this latter as it faces both the bundle theorist and the substance dualist.

5.1 The Queerness of the Mental

Mental states are characterised by two main properties, subjectivity, otherwise known as privileged access, and intentionality. Physical objects and their properties are sometimes observable and sometimes not, but any physical object is equally accessible, in principle, to anyone. From the right location, we could all see the tree in the quad, and, though none of us can observe an electron directly, everyone is equally capable of detecting it in the same ways using instruments. But the possessor of mental states has a privileged access to them that no-one else can share. That is why there is a sceptical ‘problem of other minds’, but no corresponding ‘problem of my own mind’. This suggests to some philosophers that minds are not ordinary occupants of physical space.
Physical objects are spatio-temporal, and bear spatio-temporal and causal relations to each other. Mental states seem to have causal powers, but they also possess the mysterious property of intentionality—being about other things—including things like Zeus and the square root of minus one, which do not exist. No mere physical thing could be said to be, in a literal sense, ‘about’ something else. The nature of the mental is both queer and elusive. In Ryle's deliberately abusive phrase, the mind, as the dualist conceives of it, is a ‘ghost in a machine’. Ghosts are mysterious and unintelligible: machines are composed of identifiable parts and work on intelligible principles. But this contrast holds only if we stick to a Newtonian and common-sense view of the material. Think instead of energy and force-fields in a space-time that possesses none of the properties that our senses seem to reveal: on this conception, we seem to be able to attribute to matter nothing beyond an abstruse mathematical structure. Whilst the material world, because of its mathematicalisation, forms a tighter abstract system than mind, the sensible properties that figure as the objects of mental states constitute the only intelligible content for any concrete picture of the world that we can devise. Perhaps the world within the experiencing mind is, once one considers it properly, no more—or even less—queer than the world outside it.

5.2 The Unity of the Mind

Whether one believes that the mind is a substance or just a bundle of properties, the same challenge arises, which is to explain the nature of the unity of the immaterial mind. For the Cartesian, that means explaining how he understands the notion of immaterial substance. For the Humean, the issue is to explain the nature of the relationship between the different elements in the bundle that binds them into one thing. Neither tradition has been notably successful in this latter task: indeed, Hume, in the appendix to the Treatise, declared himself wholly mystified by the problem, rejecting his own initial solution (though quite why is not clear from the text).

5.2.1 Unity and Bundle Dualism

If the mind is only a bundle of properties, without a mental substance to unite them, then an account is needed of what constitutes its unity. The only route appears to be to postulate a primitive relation of co-consciousness in which the various elements stand to each other.
There are two strategies which can be used to attack the bundle theory. One is to claim that our intuitions favour belief in a subject and that the arguments presented in favour of the bundle alternative are unsuccessful, so the intuition stands. The other is to try to refute the theory itself. Foster (1991, 212–9) takes the former path. This is not effective against someone who thinks that metaphysical economy gives a prima facie priority to bundle theories, on account of their avoiding mysterious substances.
The core objection to bundle theories (see, for example, Armstrong (1968), 21–3) is that, because it takes individual mental contents as its elements, such contents should be able to exist alone, as could the individual bricks from a house. Hume accepted this consequence, but most philosophers regard it as absurd. There could not be a mind that consisted of a lone pain or red after-image, especially not of one that had detached itself from the mind to which it had previously belonged. Therefore it makes more sense to think of mental contents as modes of a subject.
Bundle theorists tend to take phenomenal contents as the primary elements in their bundle. Thus the problem is how to relate, say, the visual field to the auditory field, producing a ‘unity of apperception’, that is, a total experience that seems to be presented to a single subject. Seeing the problem in this way has obvious Humean roots. This atomistic conception of the problem becomes less natural if one tries to accommodate other kinds of mental activity and contents. How are acts of conceptualising, attending to or willing with respect to, such perceptual contents to be conceived? These kinds of mental acts seem to be less naturally treated as atomic elements in a bundle, bound by a passive unity of apperception. William James (1890, vol. 1, 336–41) attempts to answer these problems. He claims to introspect in himself a ‘pulse of thought’ for each present moment, which he calls ‘the Thought’ and which is the ‘vehicle of the judgement of identity’ and the ‘vehicle of choice as well as of cognition’. These ‘pulses’ are united over time because each ‘appropriates’ the past Thoughts and ‘makes us say “as sure as I exist, those past facts were part of myself”. James attributes to these Thoughts acts of judging, attending, willing etc, and this may seem incoherent in the absence of a genuine subject. But there is also a tendency to treat many if not all aspects of agency as mere awareness of bodily actions or tendencies, which moves one back towards a more normal Humean position. Whether James' position really improves on Hume's, or merely mystifies it, is still a moot point. (But see Sprigge (1993), 84–97, for an excellent, sympathetic discussion.)

5.2.2 Unity and Substance Dualism

The problem is to explain what kind of a thing an immaterial substance is, such that its presence explains the unity of the mind. The answers given can be divided into three kinds.
(a) The ‘ectoplasm’ account: The view that immaterial substance is a kind of immaterial stuff. There are two problems with this approach. First, in so far as this ‘ectoplasm’ has any characterisation as a ‘stuff’—that is, a structure of its own over and above the explicitly mental properties that it sustains—it leaves it as much a mystery why this kind of stuff should support consciousness as it is why ordinary matter should. Second, and connectedly, it is not clear in what sense such stuff is immaterial, except in the sense that it cannot be integrated into the normal scientific account of the physical world. Why is it not just an aberrant kind of physical stuff?
(b) The ‘consciousness' account: The view that consciousness is the substance. Account (a) allowed the immaterial substance to have a nature over and above the kinds of state we would regard as mental. The consciousness account does not. This is Descartes' view. The most obvious objection to this theory is that it does not allow the subject to exist when unconscious. This forces one to take one of four possible theories. One could claim (i) that we are conscious when we do not seem to be (which was Descartes' view): or (ii) that we exist intermittently, though are still the same thing (which is Swinburne's theory, (1997), 179): or (iii) that each of us consists of a series of substances, changed at any break in consciousness, which pushes one towards a constructivist account of identity through time and so towards the spirit of the bundle theory: or (iv) even more speculatively, that the self stands in such a relation to the normal time series that its own continued existence is not brought into question by its failure to be present in time at those moments when it is not conscious within that series (Robinson, forthcoming).
(c) The ‘no-analysis' account: The view that it is a mistake to present any analysis. This is Foster's view, though I think Vendler (1984) and Madell (1981) have similar positions. Foster argues that even the ‘consciousness’ account is an attempt to explain what the immaterial self is ‘made of’ which assimilates it too far towards a kind of physical substance. In other words, Descartes has only half escaped from the ‘ectoplasmic’ model. (He has half escaped because he does not attribute non-mental properties to the self, but he is still captured by trying to explain what it is made of.)
Foster (1991) expresses it as follows:

اقتباس :: …it seems to me that when I focus on myself introspectively, I am not only aware of being in a certain mental condition; I am also aware, with the same kind of immediacy, of being a certain sort of thing…
It will now be asked: ‘Well, what is this nature, this sortal attribute? Let's have it specified!’ But such a demand is misconceived. Of course, I can give it a verbal label: for instance, I can call it ‘subjectness’ or ‘selfhood’. But unless they are interpreted ‘ostensively’, by reference to what is revealed by introspective awareness, such labels will not convey anything over and above the nominal essence of the term ‘basic subject’. In this respect, however, there is no difference between this attribute, which constitutes the subject's essential nature, and the specific psychological attributes of his conscious life…
Admittedly, the feeling that there must be more to be said from a God's eye view dies hard. The reason is that, even when we have acknowledged that basic subjects are wholly non-physical, we still tend to approach the issue of their essential natures in the shadow of the physical paradigm. (243–5)

Berkeley's concept of notion again helps here. One can interpret Berkeley as implying that there is more to the self than introspection can capture, or we can interpret him as saying that notions, though presenting stranger entities than ideas, capture them just as totally. The latter is the ‘no account is needed’ view.

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The Aristotelian Argument in a Modern Form

The Aristotelian Argument in a Modern Form

5. Problems for Dualism

5.1 The Queerness of the Mental

5.2 The Unity of the Mind

5.2.1 Unity and Bundle Dualism

5.2.2 Unity and Substance Dualism

The Aristotelian Argument in a Modern Form :: تعاليق

The Aristotelian Argument in a Modern Form

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