“…why should we be troubled by Leibniz’s point that if the brain were blown up to the size of a factory, so that we could stroll through it, we should not see thoughts? If we know enough neural correlations, we shall indeed see thoughts-in the sense that our vision will reveal to us what thoughts the possessor of the brain is having. If we do not, we shall not, but then if we stroll through any factory without having first learned about its parts and their relations to one another, we shall not see what is going on. Further, even if we could find no such neural correlations, even if cerebral localization of thoughts was a complete failure, why would we want to say that a person’s thoughts or mental images were nonphysical simply because we cannot give an account of them in terms of his parts?” Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, Thirteenth-Anniversary Edition 2009) 26.
As
we walk through the brain we recognize the neural correlations in such a way
that we know its possessor is typing away and periodically looking out the
window as it snows. However, what we do not see
is the exact images he sees, as he sees them. What we see are neural
correlations, which then have to be “translated” into the images. Let’s further
assume that we have the ability to make the appropriate translations. So,
having done that, we now see the exact images as the possessor sees
them.
The
key point here is that a kind of “translation” has to be made. Leibniz’s
intuition is on point, I think. We will not see the thoughts, only the neural
correlations. So then, what is wrong with having to make the translation?
Nothing. It simply means that the neural correlations are not of the same kind as the images that are
experienced by the possessor. Neural correlations and mental images are
different kinds of entities. They are different things. If they were not then
we wouldn’t see neural correlations, we would see the images that the possessor
sees. Or, to make things weird, we would be mistaken in thinking the possessor sees images.
The truth would be that there are only neural correlations.
None
of this is really a problem unless we are sold on the idea that all entities
must be physical or material. It is only when we insist on the identification
of the mental and physical that we have problems. But, someone will say, “The
mental and physical cannot be connected, so there’s one problem.” I don’t know
why that is a problem unless we begin by assuming it is one. That was certainly
an argument used against Cartesian dualism, but one need not assume the two are
not connected.
If
we begin by assuming that there are (at least) two different ontological kinds,
the mental and the physical, then it is clear they are connected. If it were possible
to translate the neural correlations into the relevant images then clearly,
they are connected. They are not of the same kind, and yet they are connected. So
far, so good. The problems, and the backflips philosophers engage in to
solve them, occur when we try to reduce the mental to the physical (it’s never
the other way around, these days).
I
have read enough cognitive philosophy to know that what I have said will be
considered by some (many?) a severe oversimplification of the problem. Maybe it
is, but maybe not. I agree with Rorty in that philosophers have a tendency to
create problems that need not be problems. I often wonder if philosophers’
problems with the mental/physical distinction have their source in impulses
that are not so philosophical. Nonetheless, I find it odd that there is this insistence
that these problems must be solved in any way possible except for allowing the
possibility that there are two distinct ontological kinds: the mental and the physical.
And, I wonder if we could make more headway by assuming the distinction and
going forward.
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