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Mind, Brain, Monism, Dualism
Nathan Jacobson » Reflections on Invictus and Freedom
Central to the plot of Clint Eastwood's Invictus is William Ernest Henley's short poem of the same name. Though the role of the poem suffers some historical revisionism in
the film, its role in the life of Nelson Mandela is worth consideration. The film recounts the remarkable story of Mandela's efforts at national reconciliation through his embrace of the South African rugby team, which at the time remained a symbol of Apartheid's ethnic segregation. In 1996, when I returned for the first time to South Africa, my childhood home, some old friends shared with me how meaningful it was when Mandela appeared at Ellis Park donning the Springbok green and gold. I'm gratified that this remarkable story of reconciliation has made it to the screen, especially while Morgan Freeman is still with us. He was born to play Mandela. During Mandela's long internment on Robben Island, Henley's poem adorned a wall of his cell, a constant reminder that though his freedom had been taken from him, he remained "the captain of his soul". The words of this poem, and their significance to Mandela, underscore a central point of contention in the debate about human free will. It seems to me that one problem with some arguments for compatibilism, the idea that determinism and human responsibility are compatible, is the conflating of freedom and free will. Mandela's story is a powerful reminder that there is freedom beyond freedom. That is, it matters whether we are captains or merely observers of our souls.
David Chalmers (Oxford University Press: October 1997)
Chalmers analyzes the
mind-body problem in terms of that elusive relationship between the
physical brain and conscious events. Focusing on subjective experience
as such, he rejects all reductive (materialist) explanations for
conscious experience in favor of a metaphysical framework supporting a
strong form of property dualism. His theory is grounded in natural
supervenience, the distinction between psychological and
phenomenological properties of mind, and a novel view of the
ontological status of consciousness itself. Chalmers uses thought
experiments (e.g., zombie worlds, silicon chips, a global brain, and
inverted spectra) and discusses such issues as causation,
intentionality, and epiphenomenalism. Even so, the critical reader is
left asking, How can physical facts be relevant to the emergence of
consciousness beyond an evolutionary naturalist worldview. Ongoing
neuroscience research may provide a sufficient explanation of
consciousness within a materialistic framework. Nevertheless, as a
scholarly contribution to modern philosophy, this is suitable for all
academic and large public libraries.~ H. James Birx, Canisius Coll.,
Buffalo, N.Y.
Jeffrey M. Schwartz and Sharon Begley (HarperCollins Publishers: October 2003), 432 pages.
A groundbreaking work of science that confirms, for the first time, the independent existence of the mind–and demonstrates the possibilities for human control over the workings of the brain. Conventional science has long held the position that 'the mind' is merely an illusion, a side effect of electrochemical activity in the physical brain. Now in paperback, Dr Jeffrey Schwartz and Sharon Begley's groundbreaking work, The Mind and the Brain, argues exactly the opposite: that the mind has a life of its own.Dr Schwartz, a leading researcher in brain dysfunctions, and Wall Street Journal science columnist Sharon Begley demonstrate that the human mind is an independent entity that can shape and control the functioning of the physical brain. Their work has its basis in our emerging understanding of adult neuroplasticity — the brain's ability to be rewired not just in childhood, but throughout life, a trait only recently established by neuroscientists. ~ Product Description
Ned Block, Owen J. Flanagan, and Guven Guzeldere (MIT Press: Aug 1997), 873 pages.
Intended for anyone attempting to find their way through the large and confusingly interwoven philosophical literature on consciousness, this reader brings together most of the principal texts in philosophy (and a small set of related key works in neuropsychology) on consciousness through 1997, and includes some forthcoming articles. Its extensive coverage strikes a balance between seminal works of the past few decades and the leading edge of philosophical research on consciousness. As no other anthology currently does, The Nature of Consciousness provides a substantial introduction to the field, and imposes structure on a vast and complicated literature, with sections covering stream of consciousness, theoretical issues, consciousness and representation, the function of consciousness, subjectivity and the explanatory gap, the knowledge argument, qualia, and monitoring conceptions of consciousness. Of the 49 contributions, 18 are either new or have been adapted from a previous publication.
J.P. Moreland (SCM Press: Jul 31, 2009), 224 pages.
Materialistic naturalism has, for some years, been the received wisdom
in philosophy, as well as amongst much of the educated public. Many
serious philosophical arguments have been brought against this
ideology, but usually in a series of separate controversies. Professor
Morelands great service is to bring all these objections together,
whilst adding his own original contributions, in a very effective
anti-naturalist polemic. He shows us that the materialist world picture
cannot accommodate the most basic phenomena of human life: It has no
place for consciousness, free will, rationality, the human subject or
any kind of intrinsic value. Materialism does not disprove these human
realities, it is simply incapable of accounting for them in any
remotely plausible way. I would add to the list of its failures that
naturalism lacks even a coherent account of the physical world itself.
Professor Moreland makes a very good case for saying that, as a serious
world view, naturalism is a non-starter: more traditional, theistic
philosophies fare much better in the face both of the phenomena and of
argument. ~ Howard Robinson, Central European University
John R. Searle (Bradford Books: March 1994)
Searle stridently rejects current physicalist orthodoxies in the philosophy of mind, but instead of considering dualism, he offers his own monistic solution, "biological naturalism." More than anything else, he argues, it is the neglect of consciousness that results in so much barrenness and sterility in psychology, the philosophy of mind, and cognitive science: there can be no study of mind that leaves out consciousness.
Mark C. Baker and Stewart Goetz, eds. (Continuum: December 16, 2010), 304 pages.
Experts from different fields argue that there are good reasons to believe in the existence of the soul as distinct from the physical body. What do we mean when we speak about the soul? What are the arguments for the existence of the soul as distinct from the physical body? Do animals have souls? What is the difference between the mind and the soul? The Soul Hypothesis brings together experts from philosophy, linguistics and science to discuss the validity of these questions in the modern world. They contend that there is an aspect of the nature of human beings that is not reducible to the matter that makes up our bodies. This perspective is part of a family of views traditionally classified in philosophy as substance dualism, and has something serious in common with the ubiquitous human belief in the soul. The Soul Hypothesis presents views from a range of sciences and the resulting big picture shows, more clearly than one author could with one area of expertise, that there is room for a soul hypothesis.
Robert C. Koons and George Bealer, eds. (Oxford University Press: May 2010), 440 pages.
Twenty-three philosophers examine the doctrine of materialism and find it wanting. Their case against materialism comprises arguments from conscious experience, from the unity and identity of the person, from intentionality, mental causation, and knowledge. The contributors include leaders in the fields of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, who respond ably to the most recent versions and defenses of materialism. The modal arguments of Kripke and Chalmers, Jackson's knowledge argument, Kim's exclusion problem, and Burge's anti-individualism all play a part in the building of a powerful cumulative case against the materialist research program. Several papers address the implications of contemporary brain and cognitive research (the psychophysics of color perception, blindsight, and the effects of commissurotomies), adding a posteriori arguments to the classical a priori critique of reductionism. All of the current versions of materialism — reductive and non-reductive, functionalist, eliminativist, and new wave materialism — come under sustained and trenchant attack. In addition, a wide variety of alternatives to the materialist conception of the person receive new and illuminating attention, including anti-materialist versions of naturalism, property dualism, Aristotelian and Thomistic hylomorphism, and non-Cartesian accounts of substance dualism. ~ Synopsis
The View from Nowehere (Oxford University Press: 1986), 51.
What is needed is something we do not have: a theory of conscious organisms as physical systems composed of chemical elements and occupying space, which also have an individual perspective on the world, and in some cases a capacity for self-awareness as well. In some way that we do not now understand, our minds as well as our bodies come into being when these materials are suitably combined and organized. The strange truth seems to be that certain complex, biologically generated physical systems, of which each of us is an example, have rich nonphysical properties. An integrated theory of reality must account for this, and I believe that if and when it arrives, probably not for centuries, it will alter our conception of the universe as radically as anything has to date.
Thomas Nagel on Cosmic Authority said...
The Last Word (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 130-1.
My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition
and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism
of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse
of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including
everything about the human mind. Darwin enable modern secular culture
to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a
way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and desiring as fundamental features
of the world. Instead they become epiphenomena, generated incidentally
by a process that can be entirely explained by the operation of the
nonteleogical laws of physics on the material of which we and our
environments are all composed. There might still be thought to be a
religious threat in the existence of the laws of physics themselves,
and indeed the existence of anything at all, but it seems to be less
alarming to most atheists.
"Conceiving the Impossible and the Mind-Body Problem" in Philosophy 73:285 (1998), pp. 337-52.
I believe that the explanatory gap in its present form cannot be closed — that so long as we work with our present mental and physical concepts no transparently necessary connection will ever be revealed, between physically described brain processes and sensory experience, of the logical type familiar from the explanation of other natural processes by analysis into their physico-chemical constituents. We have good grounds for believing that the mental supervenes on the physical — i.e. that there is no mental difference without a physical difference. But pure, unexplained supervenience is not a solution but a sign that there is something fundamental we don't know. We cannot regard pure supervenience as the end of the story because that would require the physical to necessitate the mental without there being any answer to the question how it does so. But there must be a "how," and our task is to understand it. An obviously systematic connection that remains unintelligible to us calls out for a theory.
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, by Thomas Reid (Phillips, Sampson, and Company, 1855), p.6.
To body we ascribe various properties, but not operations, properly so called; it is extended, divisible, movable, inert; it continues in any state in which it is put; every change of its state is the effect of some force impressed upon it, and is exactly proportional to the force impressed, and in the precise direction of that force. These are the general properties of matter, and these are not operations; on the contrary, they all imply its being a dead, inactive thing, which moves only as it is moved, and acts only by being acted upon. But the mind is, from its very nature, a living and active being. Every thing we know of it implies life and active energy; and the reason why all its modes of thinking are called its operations is, that in all, or in most of them, it is not merely passive, as body is, but is really and properly active. In all ages, and in all languages, ancient and modern, the various modes of thinking have been expressed by words of active signification, such as seeing, hearing, reasoning, willing, and the like. It seems, therefore, to be the natural judgment of mankind, that the mind is active in its various ways of thinking; and for this reason they are called its operations, and are expressed by active verbs. It may be made a question, What regard is to be paid to this natural judgment? May it not be a vulgar error? Philosophers who think so have, no doubt, a right to be heard. But until it is proved that the mind is not active in thinking, but merely passive, the common language with regard to its operations ought to be used, and ought not to give place to a phraseology invented by philosophers, which implies its being merely passive.
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, by Thomas Reid (Phillips, Sampson, and Company, 1855)
We have no reason to ascribe intelligence, or even sensation, to plants;
yet there appears in them an active force and energy, which cannot be
the result of any arrangement or combination of inert matter. The same
thing may be said of those powers by which animals are nourished and grow, by which matter gravitates, by which magnetical and electrical bodies attract and repel each other, and by which the parts of solid bodies cohere.
Thomas Reid on the Mind said...
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, by Thomas Reid (Phillips, Sampson, and Company, 1855), p.5.
By the mind of a man we understand that in him which thinks,
remembers, reasons, wills. The essence both of body and of mind is
unknown to us. We know certain properties of the first, and certain
operations of the last, and by these only we can define or describe
them. We define body to be that which is extended, solid, movable, divisible. In like manner we define mind to be that which thinks.
We are conscious that we think, and that we have a variety of thoughts
of different kinds; such as seeing, hearing, remembering, deliberating,
resolving, loving, hating, and many other kinds of thought, all which
we are taught by nature to attribute to one internal principle; and
this principle of thought we call the mind or soul of a man.
Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, by Thomas Reid (Phillips, Sampson, and Company, 1855), p. xi-xii.
The mind of man is the noblest work of God which reason discovers to
us, and therefore, on account of its dignity, deserves our study. It
must, indeed, be acknowledged, that although it is of all objects the
nearest to us, and seems the most within our reach, it is very
difficult to attend to its operations, so as to form a distinct notion
of them; and on that account there is no branch of knowledge in which
the ingenious and speculative have fallen into so great errors, and
even absurdities. These errors and absurdities have given rise to a general prejudice against all inquiries of this nature;
and because ingenious men have, for many ages, given different and
contradictory accounts of the powers of the mind, it is concluded that
all speculations concerning them are chimerical and visionary. But
whatever effect this prejudice may have with superficial thinkers, the
judicious will not be apt to be carried away with it.