Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Overview

I think I shall have to write a number of posts on this exciting and idea-rich book by one of our best philosophers.  Here is the first.

Short (128 pp.) and programmatic, Thomas Nagel's new book explores the prospects of an approach in the philosophy of mind that is naturalistic yet not materialistic.  His approach is naturalistic in that he locates the source of the world's intelligibility in it, and not in a transcendent being such as God outside it.  As Nagel rightly observes, "Theism pushes the quest for intelligibility outside the world." (p. 45)

Nagel's  approach is also naturalistic in that he views mind as a biological phenomenon as it could not be if substance dualism were true.  But while naturalistic, Nagel also rejects "psychophysical reductionism" or "reductive materialism."  Thus he rejects naturalism as currently articulated without embracing any form of anti-naturalism such as theism.  Nagel, we might say, seeks a middle path between theistic anti-naturalism and materialistic naturalism. The latter is just materialism which Nagel defines as follows:

Materialism is the view that only the physical world is irreducibly real, and that a place must be found in it for mind, if there is such a thing.  This would continue the onward march of physical science, through molecular biology, to full closure by swallowing up the mind in the objective physical reality from which it was initially excluded. (37)

This is a useful definition.  Materialism is either eliminativist or reductivist.  Now obviously there is such a thing as mind, so eliminativism is not an option. (41)  My arguments against it here.  So the materialist must try to show that mind  belongs to objective physical reality and that everything about it is understandable in the way everything else in objective physical reality is understandable.  In this way materialism closes upon itself, explaining not only the world the mind engages, but the engaging mind itself.  I agree with Nagel that reductive materialism is untenable.

Treading his via media between theism and materialism,  Nagel reopens the case for neutral monism and panpsychism. How does he get to these positions?  This is what I will try to figure out in this post.

Mind is a biological phenomenon.  We are organisms in nature, not Cartesian egos contingently attached to physical bodies.    But we are conscious organisms.   We are subjects of such qualitative states as pleasure and pain, and we are  individuals with a subjective point of view.  If psychophysical reductionism fails, as both Nagel and I maintain, then physical science, even if it can explain our existence as organisms adapted to an environment,  cannot explain our existence as conscious organisms.  We are not just objects in the world, we are subjects for whom there is a world.  Even if the first fact can be adequately explained by physical science, the second, our subjectivity,  cannot be.

Given the failure of psychophysical reductionism, and given that mind is a biological phenomenon encountered only in conscious organisms that have evolved from pre-conscious organisms, evolutionary theory cannot be a purely physical theory. (44)  The 'makings' of conscious organsims must already be present in pre-conscious life forms.  In this way the mind-body problem spreads to the entire cosmos and its history.  Thus "the mind-body problem is not just a local problem" that concerns such minded organisms as ourselves. (3) 

Inanimate matter evolved into pre-conscious life forms, and these evolved into conscious life forms.  Since conscious organisms qua conscious cannot be understood materalistically, the same is true of pre-conscious life forms: the reduction of biology to physics and chemistry will also fail.   This is because life must contain within it the 'makings' of consciousness.  That is my way of putting it, not Nagel's. 

Turning it around the other way, if we are to have an adequate naturalistic explanation of conscious organisms, then this cannot be "a purely physical explanation." (44)  And so Nagel floats the suggestion of a global (as opposed to local) neutral monism "according to which the constituents of the universe have properties that explain not only its [mental life's] physical but its mental character." (56)  Conscious organisms are composed of the same ultimate stuff as everything else is.  For this reason, neutral monism cannot be kept local but goes global or "universal." (57)  The idea, I take it, is that even the merely physical is proto-mental, the merely living being even more so.  When conscious organisms arrive on the scene, the proto-mental constituents achieve an arrangement and composition that amounts to mental life as we know it.

Now how do we get from this universal neutral monism to panpsychism?  Well, a universal neutral monism just is panpsychism: the ultimate constituents of nature are all of them proto-mental.  Mind is everywhere since everything is composed of the same proto-mental constituents.  But it is equally true that matter is everywhere since there is nothing mental or proto-mental that is not also physical.

Thus we arrive at a position that is neither theistic nor reductively materialistic.

Let me now try to list the key premises/assumptions in Nagel's argument for his panpsychistic naturalism.

1. Consciousness is real.  Eliminativist materialism is a complete non-starter.

2. Naturalism:  Consciousness occurs only in conscious organisms, hence cannot occur without physical realization.  Mind is a biological phenomenon.  No God, no Cartesian minds.  No substance dualism, no theism.

3. Reductive Materialism  (psychophysical reductionism) is untenable.

4. Consciousness cannot be a brute fact.  Mind is not an accident but "a basic aspect of nature." (16) It cannot be that consciousness just inexplicably occurred at a certain point in evolutionary history when organisms of a certain physical complexity appeared.  The arrival of conscious organisms needs an explanation, and this explanation cannot be an explanation merely of their physical character.  It must also explain their mental character.  But this materialism cannot do.  Hence "materialism is incomplete even as a theory of the physical world, since the physical world includes conscious organisms as its most striking occupants." (45)

5.  Nature is intelligible.  Its intelligibility is inherent in it and thus not imposed on it by us or by God.  The intelligibility of nature is not a brute fact: nature doesn't just happen, inexplicably, to possess a rational order that is understandable by us. I take Nagel's position to be that intelligibility is a necessary feature of anything that could count as a cosmos.  Thus it needs no explanation and surely cannot have a materialist one: it cannot possibly be the case that the intelligibility of nature arose at some time in the past via the operation of material causes.   The universe is so constituted as to be understandable, and we, as parts of it, are so constituted as to be able to understand it.  (16-17)

I accept all of these propositions except (2).  So in a subsequent post I must examine whether Nagel's case against theism is stronger than his case for his panpsychism. 

Comments

[Bilbo]

I'm still working my way through Mind and Cosmos. Either I missed it or I haven't yet come to Nagel's argument for (2).

[David Marrufo]

Dr.Vallicella,

Thank you for the summary of Nagel's latest book. I have been excited about it ever since hearing that it would come out soon. I am surprised that he takes a panpsychist approach; however, I am reminded of an interview with J.P. Moreland in which he stated that the debate in the philosophy of mind should be between pansychism and dualism. Perhaps we are starting to see the beginnings of the shift in the debate.

Does Nagel ever address the combination problem that plagues panpsychism? Even if it is granted that particles are conscious or proto-conscious, how can an aggregate of such particles form a conscious being with a unified center of consciousness? David Barnett, in his article "You are Simple" in the book The Waning of Materialism argues that anything composed of parts cannot be conscious. He provides a series of examples to explain this intuition, namely that since two people holding hands do not constitute a third conscious being, then neither does a combination of any other two kinds of things. He then argues that no other combination of things can make a conscious being even when we increase the amount of things, their arrangement, the kinds of things they are, and so on.

Best,

David

[Bill Vallicella]

Bilbo,

The argument for (2)is by way of his rejection of theism about which I hope to say something shortly.

[Bill Vallicella]

Mr. Marrufo,

You're welcome. Given the hopelessness of materialism, it is reasonable for J. P. to see the debate as between panpsychism and dualism.

Arguments from the unity of consciousness, which go back to Kant at least, are very serious. If they tell against materialism, as I think they do, then I suspect they will also tell against panpsychism. Nagel doesn't address this problem in the book in question, but he may in one of his articles.

As long as there is whole --> parts reduction, the problem should arise even if the parts are proto-mental. Nagel rejects psychophysical reduction but not whole --> parts reduction.

Here is an analogy. Manny, Moe, and Jack can cooperate in changing a tire. One guy does one thing, another another, etc. But they can't cooperate in thinking the thought 'Tires are heavy' with Manny thinking 'tires,' Moe 'are' and Jack 'heavy.'

This should be explored in a separate post. Thanks for bringing it up.

[frequent reader]

http://www.brocku.ca/MeadProject/Whitehead/Whitehead_1938/1938_08.html

"the energetic activity considered in physics is the emotional intensity entertained in life"

energy-particles;

emotion-sentient beings;

varieties of emotion (pleasure, sadness, disgust...) each represent a specific affective tone -- each a specific "what it feels like to";

consciousness is what it feels like to monitor what appears w/r what is actually there.

[Elliott]

Bill,

Thanks for your clear synopsis. I am working through Mind and Cosmos; it is shaping up to be a solid contribution from a careful and fair-minded thinker. But questions arise:

First, one could make a distinction between consciousness and rationality. If we use consciousness in the way Nagel has used the term in other works, and we use rationality to include the capabilities of reason, understanding, making inferences, forming beliefs, having forethought, etc., then there seems to be a difference between consciousness and rationality. A being can be conscious but not rational (a bat or a squirrel, for example).

With this distinction in mind, propositions 2 and 5 appear inconsistent. If naturalism is true (proposition 2), then how do human beings understand nature (proposition 5)? In other words, if mind is the product of unguided evolution and the unguided interaction of proto-conscious matter, then why should we trust that our minds are so constituted as to have sufficient rationality to understand the intelligibility of nature? Consciousness alone is insufficient to understand the universe; for that task, rationality seems necessary.

If we do have the rationality to understand nature, then where does rationality come from? Does it emerge from proto-conscious matter? Does it evolve from proto-conscious matter? How would such emergence or evolution occur, given that consciousness is not the same as rationality? Pan-psychic naturalism (I’ll call it PN) might explain consciousness, but it does not seem to adequately explain rationality.

Second, although Nagel recognizes objective values (in morality, logic, and math, for example) and notes the inability of materialism to account for such values, it is not clear how PN alone can explain them. What if such values are eternal and not derivable from nature? What would be the source of ultimate value? If such values exist, it would seem that PN would need to be underpinned by some sort of theism or Platonism to account for them.

Of course, these questions are not sufficient to remove PN from the debating table, but they do suggest that PN is missing something. Nagel is hopeful that nature can ultimately account for rationality, value and purpose, but the door appears to remain open for a non-naturalistic explanation as well.

[Bill Vallicella]

Frequent Reader,

Thank you for reading frequently. Yes, Nagel is in the Whiteheadian ballpark.

Elliot,

Rationality is discussed later in the book, and of course N. distinguishes cs. from rationality. I'll discuss that later.

[joel hunter]

Bill,

Thanks for this helpful review. As we discussed earlier, I think you'll find Hans Jonas articulating an ontology of life very much along Nagel's lines you've described here. He describes "modern materialism" as a "partial monism" because it evades the problem of living being and subjectivity. Near the conclusion of the first essay in The Phenomenon of Life, Jonas asks, “Where else than at the beginning of life can inwardness be placed?” From a quite different philosophical orientation and approach he does seem to arrive at a comprehensive hypothesis very much like Nagel's global neutral monism.

[Bill Vallicella]

You're welcome, Joel. What you say about Jonas whets my appetite. Unfortunately, the book is not in the ASU library.