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Topic Series
Eric Schwitzgebel
Saleem Ali on Natural Laws and Human Life
Coming Soon: What is Philosophy of Scientific Breakthroughs?
Coming Soon: What are Scientific Breakthroughs in Biology?
What Are Scientific Breakthroughs In Physics?
Tim Palmer on Doubt: From Quantum Physics to Climate Change
Manil Suri on How to Build the Universe with Math
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- Eric, the classic mind-body problem has been I guess a lodestar for my life. You've defined it as how can a physical organism have beliefs? Which is an interesting way to typify this very broad concept. Help me understand what you mean by that.
- Eric Schwitzgebel
- So, when I think about belief, I think about two main things that are involved, right? One is that you have a stream of experience, and the other is that you're inclined to react to the world in certain kinds of outward ways. So, belief captures a really important aspect of our minds, in both of those two dimensions; the behavioral dimension, and the experiential dimension. So the mind-body problem is the question of, how is it that a being can have both patterns of outward behavior and a stream of experience?
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- And it's a being that is physically embodied.
- Eric Schwitzgebel
- Well, we assume it is. I'm inclined to think that it is, but I don't rule out the possibility that we're not in fact physically embodied in the way that we think we are.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- What would that mean?
- Eric Schwitzgebel
- One possibility that's on my map, although I think not generally accepted in contemporary philosophy, is idealism. On an idealist view, are there are are minds, and bodies are just kind of constructions of our minds. And so it'd be misleading in a certain way to say that minds were physically embodied. It would be more like bodies are enminded or something like that.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- And what would push you in that direction, or at least give you reason to think that that should be on your map, as opposed to in the intellectual trash bin?
- Eric Schwitzgebel
- I haven't seen really a good argument against it. We know for sure that we have minds. So how is it that we know that there also are physical bodies? What's the proof that there's anything more than minds? It's not entirely clear what that proof is. In a famous episode in history, Samuel Johnson kicked a stone, he says, "Thus I refute Barclay!" Barclay thought that all there were were minds and the ideas and all coordinated by God. That proof is not going to… anyone who has any sympathy for idealism is not going to be convinced by Johnson's kicking the stone. But in a way I think the only – that's the only argument we really have against it, is this kind of intuitive sense that we have. That well, of course there are physical objects that are independent of our minds. This is common sense.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- The prevailing view, if there is one in philosophy, among philosophers, is exactly the opposite; that the construction of minds is an illusion. That it's the composition of different competing thought processes in the brain, and maybe each one selected by a certain system, reticular activating, that focuses your attention, and then somehow these are bound together and you have this illusion of a unity, but in fact they're all these disparate parts, and indeed in some brain injuries, those things can be separated.
- Eric Schwitzgebel
- Right. Yeah, so, I'm pretty sympathetic with that. My first instinct is in that direction. And when I'm not kind of pausing and thinking about it, I find myself drawn in that direction. But I'm hesitant about it because I think that the kind of common-sensical refutation of idealism that you see in Johnson, and that is basically the only ground there really is for rejecting idealism, I think. The idea that we would rely on common sense to refute idealism is problematic, I think, for materialists because I think materialism also ends up with some violations of common sense. One view I've been defending recently is the idea that any answer to the mind-body problem is going to sharply violate common sense in some important respect.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- I like that. I think that's right. And what does that then say about the mind-body problem as a question, and what does it suggestion about a solution?
- Eric Schwitzgebel
- Well, I think there are basically three epistemic tools we have to address the mind-body problem. One is, we can think about what our common-sense intuitions are about it. Another is we can look at science. And then a third is that we can think about issues like theoretical elegance and simplicity. And I think all of those tools are really fundamentally impoverished with respect to the mind-body problem. So common sense as I was just saying, it seems like all of the solutions to the mind-body problem violate it in some important respect. So you can't just trust common sense. Science, I think that's basically Johnson's kick, right? You kick a stone or you put someone in a brain scanner or you measure a mountain; all of those scientific things don't seem to decide between, say, idealism; this view that there are only minds and the idea there's a physical world. The idealist is not going to be surprised, as Carnap says, idealists and a materialist both measure a mountain, they're going to come up with the same answer. And so science I think also does not decisively settle these questions. So that leaves you with something like theoretical elegance. But there's really a lot of beauty I think in lots of these different options. Barclay's idealism; the idea that there are just minds interacting with each other and with God has a kind of beauty it, but so also the materialist view has a kind of beauty to it. And so also I think do several other options. So I don't think that right now we have, or maybe ever will have, the tools to really settle with a lot of confidence on an answer.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- Some would say that if you follow along your argument, you come to the conclusion that if every answer doesn't make sense, maybe there's something wrong with the question.
- Eric Schwitzgebel
- Right. I think that's also possible. But that's…
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- I still have the question. I can't get rid of it.
- Eric Schwitzgebel
- You could say, I think one option on the map, along with materialism and idealism and dualism, the idea that there are both minds and bodies and they're fundamental distinct, yeah.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- That are both real.
- Eric Schwitzgebel
- Another option is to reject that trichotomy. But I think that also violates common sense, because common sense tells us…
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- It has to be something.
- Eric Schwitzgebel
- Either there's an immaterial soul, or there isn't. And if you say well that question doesn't make sense… it seems like it does make sense. Maybe it doesn't, but I think that's another position out there that has its advantages and disadvantages in terms of scientific credibility, in terms of intuitiveness or unintuitiveness. In terms of its theoretical elegance.
- Robert Lawrence Kuhn
- I don't like it though. It's still a real question for me.
- Eric Schwitzgebel
- Yeah. I mean I think… I don't think you have to… I'm not a radical skeptic in the sense that I think we should just be completely indifferent among all the options. Right? So, if there's an option that has no epistemic virtues by any of these means; so let's say here's a view. On your 18th birthday, for exactly 17 seconds, you have an immaterial soul. There's no common sense in there. It doesn't have any scientific merit. It doesn't have any merit by theoretical simplicity. Right? So you can reject that on I think. So I think there… different views have – you can appeal to all of these tools that we have to kind of say, well, this view has more credit by common sense but less by this. So you don't have to be completely indifferent. But I do think that it would be a mistake to feel a large confidence about any one of the options.