What is the solution to the mind-body dichotomy?

Metaphysics and Epistemology
21

The reason why I accept that there is interaction between material objects is becuase of the fact that there is direct perceptual evidence for this being the case, along with leagues of scientific evidence as well.

To perceive something is to be conscious of it. You accept the material world as a given because you are conscious of it, but you don’t accept your consciousness as a given because … ? :slight_smile:

Neither of you have given me a reason to conclude that there is a mental existent (consciousness) that has the ability to cause certain physical events to happen.  Unless you can demonstrate that there is a causal connection between the two, doesn’t that view seem absurd? 

RationalEgoist, would you be so kind as to raise your right arm?

When you saw my above request, what happened? Did you actually raise your right arm to comply with my request and demonstrate to yourself that you can actually cause your right arm (a physical entity) to rise if you want to? Or did you leave your arm down to try and prove wrong whatever I was going to say next?

Or perhaps you pretended to want to raise your arm and focused on it, thinking, “OK, so I want to raise it, will it now go up?” but your arm remained motionless. Maybe after a while you stopped focusing and continued reading without ever raising your arm. Or perhaps, when you got bored of contemplating, you concluded, “OK, now I’ll really raise it,” and then your arm got lifted in the air.

Whatever happened, what you wanted happened. What you didn’t want, didn’t happen; what you only pretended to want, didn’t happen either; but what you wanted for a reason, did happen. When you managed to convince your brain that it was really in your interest to raise your arm, your arm got raised.

This is how it works all the time: There is a certain existent (your mind) that can somehow “talk” to your body and tell it what it should do. When it “talks” convincingly enough–when there is a serious amount of volition–the body will comply. There you have it, a mental entity causing physical events to happen.

22

What I am confused about, is how we know that consciousness is a mental existent as opposed to being purely physical

Your consciousness has something quite distinct about it: It’s yours. You can perceive it in a way you cannot perceive anybody else’s consciousness. You actually see what you see; you actually hear what you hear; you actually feel what you feel; you can even “hear” your thoughts.

This is something very special and unique. There are billions of other brains in the world like yours, but you do not see what those other brains see, you do not hear what they hear, etc. However, there is one brain whose perceptions and thoughts are actually yours. You own this brain unlike any other brain in the world.

But how can you own that brain if there isn’t a “you” ? :slight_smile: Clearly, if the brain is “owned” by some entity, there must exist an entity that owns the brain.

Now, whether you consider that entity physical is up to your definition of “physical.” Clearly, the entity cannot exist without the brain, so it makes sense to think of it and the brain–or the body as a whole–as one integral unit. Only this “unit” is special in that it is not just an ordinary, plain-vanilla, everyday collection of particles whose actions are completely determined by the rules of physics, but is a conscious being.

and how we know that our consciousness is volitional as opposed to determined.

You can believe that all your actions are completely determined if you choose to.

:wink:

23

Why is it that it rains from the sky on some days, but on others the sky is clear? Oh I know, the gods who are in charge of the weather get angry on some days and SOMEHOW make it rain, but on the days when they are happy the make it clear.

This is how it works all the time: There is a certain existent (your mind) that can _ somehow _ “talk” to your body and tell it what it should do. When it “talks” convincingly enough–when there is a serious amount of volition–the body will comply. There you have it, a mental entity causing physical events to happen.

Clearly these two examples differ in degree. However, I believe they still remain similar. What I am concerned with here is demonstrating how exactly consciousness is supposed to communicate with physical objects. It seems that unless you can demonstrate how this supposed mental existent has causal efficacy on physical existents, you are positing supernatural causes to human actions.

Please keep in mind, that I am playing devil’s advocate for the purpose of coming to a firm answer on this issue.

Secondly, keep in mind that I do not want to reject consciousness AS SUCH. It is self-evidently clear that human beings have a means of perceiving reality. What I am unsure of is the exact nature of this means. Is the human means of perceiving reality a mental existent, a purely physical one, or a combination of the two? And, for whatever answer is chosen, there must be valid reasons for choosing that answer above the others. Based on the evidence that I have seen so far, there is very little physical evidence for the existence of this mental entity that SOMEHOW has causal efficacy of physical events; whereas leagues of scientific research has been done on the physical workings of the human brain.

When you saw my above request, what happened? Did you actually raise your right arm to comply with my request and demonstrate to yourself that you can actually cause your right arm (a physical entity) to rise if you want to? Or did you leave your arm down to try and prove wrong whatever I was going to say next?

Or perhaps you pretended to want to raise your arm and focused on it, thinking, “OK, so I want to raise it, will it now go up?” but your arm remained motionless. Maybe after a while you stopped focusing and continued reading without ever raising your arm. Or perhaps, when you got bored of contemplating, you concluded, “OK, now I’ll really raise it,” and then your arm got lifted in the air.

Whatever happened, what you wanted happened. What you didn’t want, didn’t happen; what you only pretended to want, didn’t happen either; but what you wanted for a reason, did happen. When you managed to convince your brain that it was really in your interest to raise your arm, your arm got raised.

Couldn’t a materialist/determinist reply that when I saw your particular request, certain physical events took place in my brain that caused me either to move my arm up or to leave it where it was? It seems that you are “begging the question.”

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Re: the weather example… When someone says that the mind can “somehow” “talk” to the brain, they are not positing a supernatural cause; they posit a natural cause that they don’t know the nature of.

Re: is consciousness mental… You say: “What I am unsure of is the exact nature of this means. Is the human means of perceiving reality a mental existent, a purely physical one, or a combination of the two?”

What would it even mean for consciousness to be physical? I can’t imagine what the claim would be unless it was something like I analyzed in my last post, where consciousness is a brain process considered from the perspective of consciousness, which is viciously circular (I think that’s the proper terminology).

Re: The determinist’s claim… Yes, he would say that it was just physical events, and the experience of volition is an illusion. But that does not mean that the advocate of volition is begging the question. He is assuming that his experience is not an illusion, and that the shoe is on the determinist’s foot to prove that it is. In reply, the determinist would probably make similar arguments to what you are making, i.e., that we know scientifically a lot about the brain and about the universe in general, and that consciousness (as non-physical and causally efficacious) doesn’t square with that. Is this pretty much your line of thinking?

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Just to expand a bit on what Matt said in his last paragraph–

Since volition is self-evident–specifically, directly experienced by you–i.e., metaphysically given–the burden of proof is on those who claim it to be an illusion. Before this discussion can progress any further, you must answer the question, do you think any of the determinists’ arguments are valid? (If so, which ones, and why?)

Otherwise, you are dismissing volition without rational grounds, and then asking us to prove it to you. But volition is a precondition of proof. If volition did not exist, we could hardly convince you to change your beliefs about something (and as such, this conversation would be pointless). But since it does, and is self-evident, it is irrational to try to debate it. As long as you deny it, this conversation is pointless. You are asking us to provide you with evidence to convince you of its reality, while ignoring the very evidence we keep pointing to. All we can do is further explore the nature of volition, but we have to accept that it is real first. Until you do that, there’s really nothing more to say on the matter.

26

Couldn’t a materialist/determinist reply that when I saw your particular request, certain physical events took place in my brain that caused me either to move my arm up or to leave it where it was?  It seems that you are “begging the question.”

This is a technical point, but events do not cause things; entities cause things. What events do is affect entities (which entities may then in turn react to the events).

I believe Matt and Ash have pretty much addressed your questions. I would like you to try and address my little intimation, though: “You can believe that all your actions are determined if you choose to.” Wouldn’t it be rather inconsistent to choose to believe that you are unable to make choices?

27

Sorry I haven’t answered all of your questions, I would definitely like to, but I recently came down with a pretty bad bug. I just wanted to let you all know that I’m not ignoring your questions, but I’m going to wait until I’m well so I can use my mind properly.

28

Yet more evidence of mind-body unity :wink:

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Now that I am feeling better, I can address your questions and comments.

Re: The determinist’s claim… Yes, he would say that it was just physical events, and the experience of volition is an illusion. But that does not mean that the advocate of volition is begging the question. He is assuming that his experience is not an illusion, and that the shoe is on the determinist’s foot to prove that it is. In reply, the determinist would probably make similar arguments to what you are making, i.e., that we know scientifically a lot about the brain and about the universe in general, and that consciousness (as non-physical and causally efficacious) doesn’t square with that. Is this pretty much your line of thinking?

It is not personally my line of thinking, but it is the line of thinking that I am having trouble refuting.

Since volition is self-evident–specifically, directly experienced by you–i.e., metaphysically given–the burden of proof is on those who claim it to be an illusion. Before this discussion can progress any further, you must answer the question, do you think any of the determinists’ arguments are valid? (If so, which ones, and why?)

Otherwise, you are dismissing volition without rational grounds, and then asking us to prove it to you. But volition is a precondition of proof. If volition did not exist, we could hardly convince you to change your beliefs about something (and as such, this conversation would be pointless). But since it does, and is self-evident, it is irrational to try to debate it. As long as you deny it, this conversation is pointless. You are asking us to provide you with evidence to convince you of its reality, while ignoring the very evidence we keep pointing to. All we can do is further explore the nature of volition, but we have to accept that it is real first. Until you do that, there’s really nothing more to say on the matter.

Ok Ash, I think I agree that the burden of proof is on the determinist’s foot to demonstrate that volition is an illusion.

However, I am going to disagree with your statement that volition is a precondition of proof. Determinism (hard determinism) states that every human action is determined by antecedent causes, but does not reject that human beings deliberate in some form. There is some course of action picked by a given individual, but the difference between the advocate of volition and the determinist is that the former will say that the individual had the choice to pick that course, whereas the latter will claim that the indvidual’s choice was determined by antecedent causes.

It seems that your claim that volition is a precondition of proof is based on the idea that one must deliberate about a particular thing in order to determine it to be true or false. (If I am incorrect, please correct me.) However, it seems pretty clear to me that I can be determined to arrive at a particular conclusion, but that does not in itself negate such a conclusion from being correct.

“You can believe that all your actions are determined if you choose to.” Wouldn’t it be rather inconsistent to choose to believe that you are unable to make choices?

CF, this seems like begging the question to me. I do not understand why volition must be an axiom, nor do I understand why consciousness existing as a mental entity must also be an axiom.

For all three of you, again, keep in mind that I am playing devil’s advocate here. I am trying to understand how to completely defeat the arguments of the determinist and the materialist. Thanks.

30

I’ve had the same problem with volition and causality as you guys are having, and I think it stems from our Humean concept of causality of only events causing other events.

The law of causality states that an entity acts the way it does because it is what it is. The law of causality directly follows from the law of identity. This is a key that is often overlooked: the actions of entities are caused by their nature, their identity–not by antecedent events.

Any massive object within a gravitational field will by nature “fall” towards the center of gravity because it has mass. The object’s being in the gravitational field is NOT the cause, but the necessary CONDITION. The cause is both the nature of the gravitational field and the nature of the object–i.e., the cause is their IDENTITY.

Likewise, all my voluntary and conscious acts are caused by me , because it is my nature as a human being, as an animal with volitional consciousness. My choosing to think does indeed depend on a variety of conditions/events–such as my being awake and focused, my being sufficiently well; but again, those conditions are NOT the cause. My volition is the cause. Those necessary conditions/events may be present for any entity, but if that entity is not human–specifically me–they will certainly not cause it to choose to think. In fact they won’t cause anything, they will only restrict what actions are possible or inevitable to a certain entity under the given conditions.

Let’s take another very common example: the billiard balls example. When two billiard balls collide, they deflect each other’s course. The balls’ COLLISION is often assumed to cause the balls’ deflection. What is often ignored is the nature–the identity–of the billiard balls: that they are round, of certain shape, made of certain type of material, have a specific size, mass, weight, etc… THESE are the cause of the balls’ deflection. The collision is but a necessary condition/event.

The collision of entities does not cause their course to deflect. When a bullet collides with an animal, its course is not deflected. Rather, it pierces through the animals flesh and often kills it. The collision is but a condition, the cause is the nature of flesh and the speeding bullet. Notice that we would say: the bullet pierced the animals flesh BECAUSE the animals flesh is easily penetrable by a small projectile traveling at a certain speed and having a certain force. That is, we attribute the cause to specific characteristics/properties of both the the animal and the bullet and indicate the conditions (italicized clause).

Antecedent events only create the CONDITIONS that restricts what actions are possible or inevitable to a given entity. They do not cause it to act. It is the nature of the entity that causes it to act. And an entity with volition will have alternatives–several possible courses of actions under the given conditions.

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What would it mean for consciousness to be a physical entity? I’m very unclear on this. Could you concoct a brief devil’s advocate argument?

(I think the self-refuting nature of determinism will be fairly easy to grasp when it has been explained thoroughly. I don’t have the time to do that right now, so I thought I’d try to address this first.)

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What would it mean for consciousness to be a physical entity? I’m very unclear on this. Could you concoct a brief devil’s advocate argument?

(I think the self-refuting nature of determinism will be fairly easy to grasp when it has been explained thoroughly. I don’t have the time to do that right now, so I thought I’d try to address this first.)

When we look into the human body, particularly at the brain, we do not perceive any ethereal, immaterial entity that fills and controls it. We see only matter acting the way it does when so organized and maintained–alive and functioning according to its nature. Yet we know that within it is a consciousness–a mind that is self-conscious and volitional. We know that the nervous system is the means by which the mind is conscious of itself and the external world, the means by which it feels, thinks, imagines, perceives. All of its functions are performed through the brain: from muscle movement and coordination by sheer conscious will to complex logical reasoning by sharp focus and concentration.

We can perceive the action–the brain waves and the active areas of the brain–but we do not perceive the actor, which is presumably that immaterial entity called consciousness. What makes us think that consciousness is immaterial? The fact that it is conscious and volitional? We have never observed inanimate matter possessing such faculties. But we do see them in animals–particularly in ourselves and in each other. And we’re certainly physical entities. We also know that when physical entities are so organized and structured into complex forms they can posses incredible properties: they can live and reproduce.(!) Even more astonishing is the fact that the more advanced and complex their physical structures/systems are, the more complex, varied and advanced their behavior and faculties become; this is especially manifest in animals–from the simplest eukaryotic cell to the adult human being.

Yet why is it so incredible for us to believe that when matter is so organized and structured into forms as complex as our brains, it can posses such faculties as self-consciousness and volition? Why must we postulate the existence of an immaterial entity that possesses the said faculties?

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This issue is often known as the “explanatory gap”. Physicalists have a lot of trouble explaining consciousness. (I think it’s impossible for them to do so.) Let’s make it a little less abstract than consciousness itself: take concepts.

You open a brain. You poke around, you pull things apart, you finally find the precise parts that are activated when one uses a concept. Does that mean you’ve found the concept? Or: take emotions, another mental entity. You find the exact neural structures that are involved in emotions. You find the ones that are activated when one feels love. You learn everything there is to be learned about them. Now here’s the question: do you now know about love?

Frank Jackson (I think his name was) wrote a famous thought experiment on a related topic. Take a girl, Mary. Put her, from birth, in a room where everything is black and white. (Make her wear black-and-white clothing, perhaps, or whatever you need to do to make the scenario complete.) Now give her a complete library of knowledge about the world. She learns physics, optics, neuroscience, psychology of perception. She catches on quick and has a lot of time on her hands, so eventually she knows everything there is to know about the physical aspects of perception. One day, you open the door and let Mary outside into the world. She sees colors for the first time. If you hold a physicalist position, that the physical world is *all there is* – that consciousness is *nothing but* a brain state, perception is *nothing but* a brain activity – you’re in the position of having to claim that she learns *nothing* when she sees colors. But obviously she DOES. Even though she knew every physical aspect of color perception before, she didn’t really know what it is to perceive colors. Now she does.

(If you’re not trying to make a reductivist claim, by the way, the above won’t apply to you… it’s not a proof that there’s something immaterial about color perception, because you could just say that it depends on specific types of changes to the brain – learning abstractly is different than experiencing. But I think, indirectly, it does show that. If you’re not a reductivist, you either have to say that the mind is “the brain seen from the inside” – in which case, you run into the “seen by WHAT???” problem. Or, you have to say that consciousness is an emergent property, and I’ve never seen a coherent account of what a physical emergent property would be.)

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If you’re not a reductivist, you either have to say that the mind is “the brain seen from the inside” – in which case, you run into the “seen by WHAT???” problem.  Or, you have to say that consciousness is an emergent property, and I’ve never seen a coherent account of what a physical emergent property would be.

Yes! That’s a very concise and exact summary of the problem of considering consciousness a physical entity.

35

Frank Jackson (I think his name was) wrote a famous thought experiment on a related topic.  Take a girl, Mary.  Put her, from birth, in a room where everything is black and white.  (Make her wear black-and-white clothing, perhaps, or whatever you need to do to make the scenario complete.)  Now give her a complete library of knowledge about the world.  She learns physics, optics, neuroscience, psychology of perception.  She catches on quick and has a lot of time on her hands, so eventually she knows everything there is to know about the physical aspects of perception.  One day, you open the door and let Mary outside into the world.  She sees colors for the first time.  If you hold a physicalist position, that the physical world is *all there is* – that consciousness is *nothing but* a brain state, perception is *nothing but* a brain activity – you’re in the position of having to claim that she learns *nothing* when she sees colors.  But obviously she DOES.  Even though she knew every physical aspect of color perception before, she didn’t really know what it is to perceive colors.  Now she does.

I find that argument very flawed.

The environment in which Frank has placed Mary to live and grow is an impossibility.

If all her life she had only been in that room, had seen only those which are the room (herself, her black and white clothes, and the black and white walls, floor, and ceiling and the lights therein, the bed with the black and white sheets and pillow, the black and white toilet, the black and white sink), had never seen human beings nor interact in any way with them, had never heard anything but her own voice and the sounds that she can make in the room, all the while assuming that somehow she had only eaten black and white food that is flavorless, shapeless, etc… and that she had obtained such food without ever having contact with human beings), that she had survived in that room all by herself from the moment she was born, is a impossible theoretical situation that ignores so much about human nature and human life.

Such a situation is IMPOSSIBLE. Mary would die immediately. And even if she managed to survive long enough to be able to observe the room and everything in it, she would never learn anything, no concepts, no language, nothing.

This argument blatantly ignores how a child learns concepts and language–how a child learns anything at all. It assumes that Mary–who is psychologically and mentally stunted if not dead–can learn complex scientific concepts such as the physics and biology of neurological processess, can know all there is to know about the nervous system (never mind that she can’t even read text and conprehend all the pictures, diagrams charts etc…given to her, let alone understand that what has been given to her is a book of knowledge; never mind that learning to read anything is only possible after learning concepts and language, which are impossible to acquire in her situation; never mind that she would never be able to understand anything presented to her at all until she learns how to use her fundamental tool of cognition–her mind–by actually using it to perceive, reason and conclude where there is something to perceive reason and conclude; never mind that she is a human being who could never live and grow and learn in such a situation) let’s just ignore the fact that she is what she is–a human being.

Let’s assume that she can survive without any other human being to care of her for the first few months or years of her life. Let’s assume that she will never see the color of her skin, her hair, her urine and feces. Let’s assume that she can form concepts without the percepts or concretes necessary to differentiate and integrate them into concepts. Let’s assume that she can learn how to read even though she knows no language. Let’s assume that she can comprehend complex, derivative, scientific concepts even though she has never formed even the most rudimentary concepts. Let’s assume that she can reason logically although she has never learned (and can never learn) how to do so in the environment in which she can presumably live.

The thought experiment of the Hypothetical Mary is not even possible in theory.

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Likewise, all my voluntary and conscious acts are caused by me, because it is my nature as a human being, as an animal with volitional consciousness. My choosing to think does indeed depend on a variety of conditions/events–such as my being awake and focused, my being sufficiently well; but again, those conditions are NOT the cause. My volition is the cause. Those necessary conditions/events may be present for any entity, but if that entity is not human–specifically me–they will certainly not cause it to choose to think. In fact they won’t cause anything, they will only restrict what actions are possible or inevitable to a certain entity under the given conditions.

Tom, I agree with your statements about the Humean concept of causality, that is not what I am unsure of. You say that your nature is such that all of your actions are caused by you. You are making a statement about human nature. My question is not, why does this human nature result in a certain action, but, why do we define volitional consciousness as a part of human nature?

Also, I agree with the impossible nature of Frank Jackson’s hypothetical Mary.

37

The thought-expirement about Mary is just that: a thought-expirement. Most thought-expirements proposed by today’s philosophers are pointless and stupid (often because they are indeed impossible, even in theory). But for this one, it doesn’t matter whether or not it is in fact impossible (which I think is debatable). The point is simply that there is a qualitative difference–for which materialists can’t account–between knowing the physical causes for some state of consciousness and experiencing it for oneself. You can object to that particular example, but then you’re just missing the whole point, and your objection is irrelevent. Take another example that is obviously possible: A person blind from birth learns about all of the physical events taking place in the external world, sense organs, brain, etc. involved in sight. Eventually, he is able to have an operation that restores his sight. On the materialist account, he learns nothing new upon opening his eyes for the first time after his operation. Now try objecting to the actual content of the thought-experiment.

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What I don’t understand is how could the blind man learn about the concept of “sight”, let alone the science behind it, when he can’t even see? That was essentially my objection to the Mary thought-experiment: that (assuming that she is even capable of learning in her hypothetical situation) how could she possibly form the concept of “color”, let alone learn anything about the science of color-perception, when she has never supposedly seen color herself?

Are you implying that the concept of “sight” can be formed by one who does not possess the faculty of sight, that the concept “color” can be formed by one who does not perceive “colors”?

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That I have never advocated at all. I am not a materialist. I have merely stated in previous posts that I see nothing incredible about the complex human brain having the faculty of self-consciousness, reason and volition. Perhaps the mind is immaterial and the brain is only the means by which it operates. But that leads to a lot of confusion. I suppose it stems from the premise that only matter and energy can causally influence matter and energy.

—edit—

I am going to read into this so-called “emergent property”…But if you can, would you recommend some sources from which I can learn more about it?

40

“‘Color’ occurs when rays of light acquire varying wavelengths by refracting off objects and then striking the retina. The nervous system/brain then transforms the wavelengths into various hues. Red is the lower spectrum, green the middle, and blue the upper. Above and beyond these frequences, the eye cannot detect light.” etc., etc.

Perfectly scientifically sound, materialist, physical account of color that a blind man could understand abstractly. But it does not give us the conscious experience of color, which is something completely different (i.e., mental).

Anyway, I think this is getting off track. I want a coherant account of a physical consciousness.