Researchers as far back as Leibniz have pointed out that if you looked into the brain with a full knowledge of its physical makeup and nerve cell activities, you would see nothing that described subjective experience. (Libet, Mind Time, p153)
This kind of argument, recurring in philosophy of mind texts, and frequently made by people who otherwise seem to have their wits about them, is quite flabbergasting, and the dogmatic fervor with which it usually is presented hints at its roots in the desire for metaphysics and transcendence. I literally groaned reading this, earning me some sideways glances in the commuter train.
So let’s see. First problem. The statement by itself is not empirical. All it is is a claim that if you looked, you would find nothing. But so far we have hardly looked at all, we barely even know how to frame the image yet. Put differently, Libet says that there is an explanatory gap between the physical and the mental, and that it can not be bridged. This may of course turn out to be true – though I doubt it – but it is not something we have very much evidence for either way. What evidence there is, however, seems to point pretty clearly to a causal relationship between brain physiology and mental processes and thus weaken the possibility of the gap being real.
But the more fundamental fallacy is that this view confuses the explained, that is, mental life, with the explanation, which is neurophysiological chatter of cells. Of course one does not look like the other. If they did we wouldn’t need a theory, for there would be nothing to explain. This is rather like opening the hood of your car, marveling at the pistons and the crankshaft and spark plugs and exclaiming “Why, there is nothing in here at all that resembles movement of a vehicle, there is just metal parts and gasoline mixture exploding! That there is such vehicular movement can not ever be explainable from these parts, because the two are so very different. There must therefore be an automotive substance in addition to the material one, and it is not governed by the laws of mechanics or physics. When cars die, they live on in their motion.” And so on.
Incidentally: what is it like to be a moving car? Mr. Nagel?
I can appreciate the spirit of wonder in that quoted text, but also understand it being a groaner, too. That’s a very stimulating observation. Thanks for sharing.
Left by docbadwrench on April 30th, 2010