Thomas Nagel on the Mind-Body Problem

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[Elliott]

Thanks for the post, Bill. The subject interests me, and I'm with you and Nagel. I accept (1) and (2) and reject (3). And for me, (2) is nearly as evident as (1).

Moreover, it seems to me that even from a non-religious perspective, (1) and (2) are more plausible than (3).

[BV]

All the best, Elliot. Glad we agree.

[Elliott]

Thanks, Bill.

(2) is divisible into two propositions:

(2a) Conscious experience has an essentially subjective character;
(2b) This subjective character is such that purely physical processes do not and cannot share it.

For me, (2a) is just about as obvious as (1). (2b) seems much more plausible than (3). For example, the physical process of neurons firing does not and cannot have an essentially subjective character. There is no what-it-is-like for a neuron to fire. It seems evident that a neuron is not a subject and has no subjective experience. Or take another physical process: water freezing. There is no subjective character of water freezing.

Granted, I might be wrong. Perhaps panpsychism is true. But even so, if the panpsychist conception of 'mind' is of something non-physical, then (3) is false.

I suspect one might affirm (3) on mere faith, i.e., a faith in naturalism. But then one might reject (3) because of a commitment to religious faith.

Would you disagree with anything I said so far?

[BV]

Here again is the trio of propositions:

1) Conscious experience is not an illusion.

2) Conscious experience has an essentially subjective character that purely physical processes do not and cannot share.

3) The only acceptable explanation of conscious experience is in terms of physical properties alone.

Elliot adds (2b) to the mix: This subjective character is such that purely physical processes do not and cannot share it.

Elliot finds (2b) much more plausible than (3). Now Elliot, is that because you think panpsychism might be true? I am not following the last part of your comment.

[Elliott]

Bill, you asked:

>>Elliot finds (2b) much more plausible than (3). Now Elliot, is that because you think panpsychism might be true? I am not following the last part of your comment.<<

I find (2b) more plausible than (3), not because I think panpsychism might be true, but because: (a) there is insufficient evidence that purely physical processes have an essentially subjective character; (b) there is defeasible evidence that purely physical processes lack essentially subjective character; (c) given what we understand about subjective experience, it hardly makes sense to think of physical processes as having experiences; and (d) the language of (3) is too exclusive.

The claim of (3) is that “The *only* acceptable explanation of conscious experience is in terms of physical properties *alone*.” I grant that, epistemically, conscious experience might be explainable in terms of physical processes. There is a lot that we don't know, and perhaps we will discover something that would underpin such an explanation. But is a physicalist explanation currently the *only* acceptable explanation? I don’t think so.

I’m not a panpsychist. I mentioned panpsychism because a panpsychist of a materialist sort (one who thinks mind is a wholly material thing) might accept (3). But if the panpsychist takes mind to be an immaterial thing, then he should reject (3).

[Elliott]

Maybe I should add a bit about panpsychism.

According to the panpsychist, all things have a mind or mindedness. But panpsychism, as far as I can tell, does not provide a unified theory of mind, nor does it commit one to any particular theory about the nature of mind. One can be a panpsychist and hold that mind is an immaterial thing. One can be a p-ist and hold that mind is a material thing. Or one can be a p-ist and remain uncommitted on the nature of mind.

[BV]

>>According to the panpsychist, all things have a mind or mindedness.<<

So every rock has a mind? A sophisticated panpsychist would not say this but maintain instead that the ultimate constituents of everything, including rocks, tire irons, septic tanks, etc. are mental in nature. SEP: "So whilst the panpsychist holds that mentality is distributed throughout the natural world—in the sense that all material objects have parts with mental properties—she needn’t hold that literally everything has a mind, e.g., she needn’t hold that a rock has mental properties (just that the rock’s fundamental parts do)."

>>One can be a p-ist and hold that mind is a material thing.<<

How?

[Elliott]

Good questions, Bill.

>>So every rock has a mind? A sophisticated panpsychist would not say this but maintain instead that the ultimate constituents of everything, including rocks, tire irons, septic tanks, etc. are mental in nature.<<

Well, with respect panpsychism, before one starts a-cookin’, it’s prudent to ask how wide the ‘pan’ is!

I agree that there are sophisticated panpsychists who maintain that the ultimate constituents are mental in nature, but things like stones and baseball bats are not. Yet there are panpsychists who seemed to have held that all things, even rocks, have mental qualities. (For example, Bruno, Cardano, Campanella, and Schiller.) Campanella held that all things, even stones, have power, wisdom (capacity for sensation), and love (will). And consider this line from Schiller: “A stone, no doubt, does not apprehend us as spiritual beings… But does this amount to saying that it does not apprehend us at all, and takes no note whatever of our existence? Not at all; it is aware of us and affected by us on the plane on which its own existence is passed… It faithfully exercises all the physical functions, and influences us by so doing. It gravitates and resists pressure, and obstructs…vibrations, and so forth, and makes itself respected as such a body. And it treats us as if of a like nature with itself, on the level of its understanding…” (As cited by David Skrbina in the IEP article on panpsychism)

https://iep.utm.edu/panpsych/#:~:text=Panpsychism%20is%20the%20view%20that,psyche%20(soul%20or%20mind).

>>How can one can be a panpsychist and hold that mind is a material thing?<<

How indeed! I don’t know how the physicalist panpsychic would explain this problem. It seems to me that the difficulties of physicalist theories such as type-type identity, token-token identity, functionalism, and eliminativism are still present if one assumes panpsychic physicalism.

And yet, according to Skrbina, panpsychists can affirm any theory of mind. “Thus panpsychism can apply, in principle, to virtually any conventional theory of mind. There could exist, for example, a panpsychist substance dualism in which some Supreme Being grants a soul/mind to all things. There could be a panpsychist functionalism that interprets the functional role of every object as mind ... One could argue for a panpsychist identism in which mind is identical to matter; or a panpsychist reductive materialism in which the mind of each thing is reducible to its physical states.”

Skrbina proceeds at the end of the article to note Galen Strawson as a supporter of physicalist panpsychism, highlighting his 2006 article “Realistic Monism: Why Physicalism Entails Panpsychism.” Strawson apparently holds (or held, as of 2006) that physicalism entails panpsychism and that panpsychism is “only possible form of physicalism.”

[BV]

Here is a paper worth a look: https://www.revue-klesis.org/pdf/Klesis-41-Nagel-08-Sam-Coleman-The-Evolution-of-Nagel-s-Panpsychism.pdf

[Elliott]

Thanks for posting the article, Bill. I have skimmed it, though I hope to read it again more thoroughly.

I’m familiar with Russell’s neutral monism, and I read Nagel’s "Panpsychism" years ago in his "Mortal Questions." (By the way, "Mortal Questions," along with Nagel’s "What Does It All Mean" and Plato’s Republic, were among the first philosophy books I read.)

It seems to me that one might reasonably doubt that mind can emerge from a (non-mental) neutral thing. Coleman makes this point. “For, one might think, the problem Nagel’s argument captures is that consciousness simply cannot derive from the non-conscious, and the neutral is no better off than the merely physical in that regard.”

Coleman cites Nagel as saying: “Panpsychism is, in effect, dualism all the way down.”

Interesting statement. I am very inclined to hold that the mental cannot come from the non-mental. If Nagel’s monism maintains that the fundamental constituents are mental, then he doesn’t face the gap between non-mind and mind.

[BV]

I'd be up for discussing Strawson with you, but at the moment I have neither the energy nor the time for panpsychism.

[Elliott]

No worries, Bill. There are too many topics and not enough time. I commented on your "Galen Strawson on Nicholas Humphrey on Consciousness."