NS: Your men are shallow!

APPEARANCE vs REALITY

“I can’t get over the picky men around here who overestimate themselves.” No Guy Here For Me

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: Daniel Abraham (02/06, 7:22PM)

No Daniel, you didn’t “scare me away”. In addition to the question being incoherent – no one scares Montrealman away – I have been busy beavering away of a couple of other sites. Now to work.

The problem “No Guy” addresses has long been a classic in philosophy. It is the problem of Appearance vs. Reality. What does that mean?

“No Guy” is making a generalization, possibly a confused one, based on her perception that the men around here are picky because they overestimate themselves with the reality of the case, whether it is factually true that the men around here are picky because, as it happens, they do overestimate themselves. Both “No Guy’s” perception of things – in philosophical terms this would be called “Appearance” – does not conform to what may in fact be the case – in philosophical terms this would be called “Reality,” that which subsists independently of any particular perception. Of course, both Appearance and Reality cannot both be simultaneously true. How, then is the issue to be resolved?

Sadly, it cannot be resolved. One cannot, by means of some boot-strap operation, levitate oneself above one’s own perceptions as they are delivered in one’s personal experience. One cannot, in other words, win through to a pristine, unconceptualized Reality. Does this mean, “mutatis mutandis” (that’s Latin for, roughly, “other things being equal”) that we are, in effect, prisoners of Appearance? Yes, it does.

Next.

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!

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: Good dog Molly (02/07, 10:45AM)

Good afternoon Good dog.

“if you become ‘pure mind’, does ‘all that’ slough away?” Good dog Molly

Since I don’t know what “astral travelling” means – indeed I’m not sure if it has any meaning at all if it is to be understood as suggesting a state of affairs in which sensation no longer exists which, you must admit, is by no means obvious based on the phrase itself – I will by-pass it to engage your second claim, that relating to “pure mind,” that which remains after bodily sensations – indeed perceptual experience generally – has been sloughed away.

There is a common and as far as I am aware generally accepted saying in philosophy which goes as follows: “There is nothing in the mind which is not first in the body.” But what does that mean?

It means that we are, by our very nature, “embodied” entities. It means that we are, by our very nature, corporeal beings. It means, therefore, that the concept of “pure mind” is incoherent, that it cannot possibly exist unless, of course, some appeal is made to a supernatural theological entity like “the soul”. But philosophy makes no such appeal. While it may speak of the “res cogitans,” (literally, “the thinking thing”) as part of our being, this is not to be understood in some autonomous sense, as being apart from the body. It is a distinctive part of the body but a part of the body nonetheless. To be “embodied” then, means both that we act on the world by means of our body and, in turn, are acted upon by that same world. To speak of “pure mind” is therefore incoherent.

So your question, “if you become ‘pure mind’, does all that slough away” is, “in actu exercitu” (as we say in Latin meaning “in the very act of uttering it”) is incoherent and is not to be entertained.

Next.

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!

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: Good dog Molly (02/07, 4:43PM)

“Does that mean that mind is matter, i.e., stuff?” Good dog Molly

Good morning Good dog.

An excellent question and, of course, one which is foundational to philosophy itself. What is that question? That question is, “What is the nature of consciousness?”. More specifically, the question concerns the manner in which an immaterial consciousness – the mind – can arise from matter or “stuff” – the brain. There are three broad approaches to this question which require a brief commentary.

The first approach involves the reduction of the mind to the brain. It can take the path of neurophysiology, that is, reducing mind-states to brain-states. In my view this is mistaken. The reason is that the approach cannot explain intentionality, the essential ingredient of consciousness. For example, I form the intention of raising my arm. I then proceed to do so. Neurophysiology can never explain this because – wait for it – mind-states can never be explained in terms of brain-states. Brain scans, for example, can detect “activity” in certain parts of the brain. but that is all. Such “activity” might consist of anything – my intention to raise my arm or of Shakespeare’s neurological activity in writing Hamlet. Neurophysiology is unable to discriminate between the two.

The second approach is that of behaviourism. The mind is reduced to its overt, observable behaviours. This is the approach, generally speaking, of psychology and which in my view renders that pursuit vacuous. The reason for this is that behaviourism does not explain the REASON for such behaviours and reason – wait for it – resides at the level of consciousness, not behaviour. There is a philosophical counterpart of psychological behaviourism most famously held by Gilbert Ryle whose “the ghost in the machine” (a title of one of his books in which the mind was the “ghost” and the “machine” was the body) was a failed attempt to overcome what is known as Cartesian mind-body dualism. In other words, it simply ignores what it purports to explain.

The third approach, the one which I support, recognizes that mind-states cannot be reduced to brain-states or behaviours but it does not posit a dichotomy or a dualism between the two which, if it existed, would indeed amount to a “ghost in the machine”. Instead, it is based on the concept of “tacit knowledge” which informs and directs all our conscious activities. For example, you are reading this commentary and understanding what is being written. But such understanding relies tacitly of the meaning of my words and involves a projection of your mind to engage the meaning of what is written. This has been described as the process of “sense-reading” while, in writing this, I am engaged in the process of “sense-giving.” They are inter-related activities – the one necessarily involves the other – but neither is reducible to a simple objective description of neurological brain-states or behaviours. It is an approach to consciousness from the perspective of the intentional, conscious agent herself, and not merely a descriptive account by some impartial third party.

However, and this is crucially important, the brain is necessary for the functioning of the mind. Consciousness cannot exist without it. It is what is called a “necessary condition” for the existence of consciousness. But the brain cannot account for the CONTENTS of that consciousness. It cannot distinguish my raising my arm from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In other words, it is not a “sufficient condition.”

Well, I’ve gone on a bit but this, at least for me, is THE central question of philosophy, that is, what is the relationship of the mind to the brain.

A pleasure as always,

Cheerio!