Knowledge of Matter and Mind

We don’t naturally know the nature of matter. We can’t know it just by looking. We had to figure it out over a long period of time. It wasn’t easy to discover the atomic theory. But the same is not true of the mind: here we do naturally know whereof we speak. We know what consciousness is; we don’t just point to it from afar. We may not know how it works, but we know what it is. We know what it is because it is as it appears: and we know how things appear to us. It seems to us that consciousness has objects (intentionality), and it does. By contrast, it seems to us as if matter is continuous, but it isn’t; we would never have thought that matter is mostly empty space punctuated by tiny particles. We know how things feel to us and that is what consciousness is. But matter is not the same as how it feels to us—we know that perfectly well. Matter is not consciousness of matter, but consciousness is consciousness of consciousness; there is no gap between consciousness and itself. We thus naturally know our own consciousness. This is a deep epistemic dualism. On the face of it, it implies an ontological dualism. We can therefore mount an “ignorance argument” against the identity theory: matter is something we are naturally ignorant of, whereas mind is something we naturally know; therefore, they cannot be identical.

Political Violence

Understandably, people are anxiously and angrily discussing the causes of our current spate of political violence. Is it caused by being of one political persuasion rather than another, as it might be right-wing political ideology? Well, do right-wing people from other countries exhibit the same levels of political violence? Evidently not. Same for left-wing people. The answer is obviously that America is an unusually violent country, especially given its state of economic development. This is not explained by there being a large number of mentally disturbed people in the country compared to other countries. So, what is it? We need to ask what gives rise to violent behavior in the first place and see whether there is a lot of that in America. Again, the answer is not far to seek: violence is generally committed by nasty, unintelligent, morally deficient people—violent types. It is not generally committed by kind, gentle, compassionate, intelligent people. Therefore, America has an unusually large number of nasty, unintelligent, morally deficient people—proportionately larger. The people here are worse than other people on average. But why are they worse? Now things get murky, but we can be confident that history, culture, and education (in the broadest sense) play a causal role. The violent past, the competitive ruthless capitalist culture, the lack of proper education. In other words, America has a violent psychology. I have seen this even in philosophy: nasty competitive stupid people (I could names names). It is obvious just from watching people arguing on cable news. The problem is general not confined to politics. The average American’s idea of a good person is one who kills bad people, where badness is a floating commodity and a matter of taste. So, the solution to our current political violence is to change the American psyche. Good luck with that! I have a sneaking suspicion that Americans secretly love violence: they love to hear about it on TV and practice it in their own lives (one way another—bullying, verbal attacks, legal violence, etc.). They can’t live without it. They enjoy a good hanging (they still have capital punishment in many places). It’s in their DNA (not literally). Political violence is just a special case. Americans need to start by looking into their own souls.

Inside Knowledge

Let’s try to recover some of the insights of seventeenth century philosophy which have been obscured by twentieth century philosophy.[1] I am referring to instrumentalism, operationalism, positivism, phenomenalism, and behaviorism. I offer for your consideration the following two propositions: we don’t know the nature of matter, and we do know the nature of mind. I want to understand why these propositions are true. We know matter by means of perception, particularly vision; we know mind by means of what is called introspection. The thesis, then, is that perception doesn’t reveal the nature of matter, while introspection does reveal the nature of mind, specifically consciousness. Perception is a way of knowing about a wide variety of things, such as animal bodies, but it doesn’t get to the bottom of what it knows; introspection on the other hand is a way of knowing about a relatively narrow band of things, such as human minds, but it does tell us the true nature of what is known. Thus, we know about bat bodies as well as human bodies, but we don’t know about bat minds as we know about human minds. We know what bat bodies are like, but we don’t know what bat minds are like (in respect of echolocation). But we do know what we know of minds extremely well, while we only graze the surface of bodies: we know the essence of consciousness, but we don’t know the essence of matter. Perception is weak vertically but strong horizontally; introspection is weak horizontally but strong vertically. I really know what the essence of consciousness is, but I don’t really know the essence of matter—I just know how it appears to me. Matter is a mystery deep down; but mind is not a mystery when it comes to its nature as mind. I know very well what it is to be conscious, but I don’t know at all well what it is to be material. That is the bit of seventeenth century philosophy I want to retain, alien though it may sound to the twentieth-century (and later) mind. I know myself better than I know the world outside of me. Inside knowledge is superior to outside knowledge in point of depth, if not breadth. The reason is that introspection perspicuously reveals its object whereas perception does not. We might say that perception purports to reveal matter while not delivering the goods, but introspection makes good on its promise. Perception gives putative knowledge while introspection gives perspicuous knowledge.

Before going further let me dispel a possible line of objection. This is the idea that the essence of matter (bodies, physical substances) is extension and perception represents matter as extended; thus, it delivers knowledge of the essence of matter. Accordingly, there is no asymmetry such as I have alleged. Just as introspection reveals the mind as characterized by thought, so perception reveals the body as characterized by extension (as Descartes contended). There are a number of problems with this line of objection, however. First, it is not clear that extension is the essence of matter or body: space is also extended, and there are other theories such as cohesiveness and solidity. Second, it is doubtful that we perceive actual objective extension, as opposed to mind-generated phenomenal extension, which is not the essence of matter as it objectively exists. Third, do we really know what extension itself is? To know that we would need to know what matter and space are, which takes us back to our original question. Fourth, there are illusions of extension in which no existing object is really extended: would this make hallucinated extended objects into matter? The obvious point is that when we see extended objects this does not tell us the essence of matter as it objectively exists: matter is what constitutes extended objects not (perceived) extension itself—but what is that? Simply perceiving objects doesn’t tell us. So, we are in the dark about the nature of matter, i.e., the non-mental physical world. We don’t know its real essence, as Locke would say, only its nominal essence. We don’t know what that stuff is (note the demonstrative).

Perception brings together mind and matter (or purports to): the mind of the perceiving subject and the matter of the external object. These are different kinds of things. But introspection brings together the mind with itself, since its objects are mental. The mind doesn’t need to apprehend anything alien to itself. Perception, though, is an attempt by the mind to transcend itself—to reach out into the non-mental world. In this it is only partially successful (if that)—it strikes a glancing blow. The heart of matter, so to speak, remains out of reach as far as brute perception is concerned. This can no more be seen than consciousness can be seen in another mind. That is why we have the feeling that the essence of matter might be anything, because perception doesn’t preclude different hypotheses (e.g., Berkeley’s idealism). But we don’t think consciousness allows for various hypotheses, e.g., materialism or behaviorism, because such hypotheses strike us as violating its very nature—they strike us as unacceptably reductive. Perception is more metaphysically neutral than introspection. Perceptual experience doesn’t preclude being a brain in a vat, but introspective experience does preclude there being no inner life. Perception is not as closely connected to its objects as introspection is to its objects. The latter is more intimate, revelatory, finely tuned. Perceptual knowledge is relatively lacking; it doesn’t provide a transparent account of what matter is. It doesn’t have the authority that introspection has. The eyes don’t see into matter. These are the two fundamental truths of epistemology: we know mind, but we don’t know matter. A philosophically satisfying physics is thus harder than a philosophically satisfying psychology. In this sense matter is more mysterious than mind (very seventeenth century). Our knowledge of the external world is more remote and dubitable than our knowledge of the internal world, because of the very nature of our epistemic faculties (this is not the usual skeptical argument from justification). It leads to such startling doctrines as that the mind can only truly know itself; the rest is conjecture, speculation, blind faith. In other words, the mind can only have acquaintance with itself; it cannot be acquainted with matter as it is in itself.

This epistemological point has a bearing on the mind-body problem. For how can something truly knowable by introspection be reducible to something not knowable—how can the introspectable be identical to the perceptible? That would make the mind essentially unknowable, granted that its mode of existence coincides with the mode of existence of matter. But the mind is knowable in its real essence, as we all can see. It would be as mysterious as matter if identity held. In the seventeenth century, it was generally accepted that matter is fundamentally unknowable, though its behavior could be mapped to some degree; and it was also accepted that the mind, by contrast, is fundamentally knowable, i.e., in its defining real essence. The problem lay in physics not psychology (theory of mind). The mind-body problem was at bottom the matter problem. This is a problem located in our epistemic faculties: our perceptual faculty fails to disclose the true nature of matter, while our introspective faculty provides an accurate picture of (our) mind. It isn’t a metaphysical problem—a problem in the ontology of matter. Matter might well be the basis of mind, as Locke famously conceded, but we have no means of knowing, because perception doesn’t tell us everything we need to know about matter (specifically, the brain). For all we know, the brain is up to the task, but we lack the perception-based knowledge to be sure. The basic point in all this is simply that perception, and the ideas derived from perception, is unable to penetrate to the real essence of matter. We don’t have the necessary knowledge, and never will if empiricist epistemology is correct (nor will rationalism help). In the end it is not deficiencies in our knowledge of the bat’s mind that poses the problem but deficiencies in our knowledge of its brain and matter in general. Perceptual knowledge is the wrong kind of knowledge to provide the materials for a solution to the mind-body problem. The difficulty is already apparent in our ordinary visual perception: how does that provide information about the ultimate nature of the material world? This is the problem as it was conceived in the seventeenth century, and it can’t be said to have been solved (rather, ignored).[2]

[1] For background see Michael Ayers, Locke and Knowing and Seeing.

[2] The question of why perception is so limited is not difficult to answer: it’s because perception is an evolved cost-cutting adaptation and there is no pressing need to build in metaphysical eyes (cf. Locke’s “microspical eyes”). Do you think our animal ancestors needed to see the ultimate constitution of nature? And why should light be able to carry the requisite information? Compare our perceptual knowledge of the stars.