Dark Mind

Dark Mind

It is a melancholy thought that one’s internal organs live out their life in complete darkness.[1] They never see the light of day or feel the warmth of the sun upon them. Sunlight is unknown to them; no photons reach their surface. The brain is only centimeters from the sun-bathed head but it receives no light; it is thoroughly nocturnal in its habits. But what about the mind—does it ever enjoy a place in the sun? You might think it follows the brain in sun-avoidance, since it is the brain. But then it could be bathed in light: after all, the skull can be opened up and light rays flood in. That sounds wrong: the mind is the wrong kind of thing to be exposed to the sun, in principle. It makes no sense to suppose that the mind could be subject to illumination—you can’t shine a light on it to see it more clearly. So, does it spend its life completely in the dark, necessarily so? Is it super-nocturnal, a creature solely of the night? Does it have no idea of the sun or light in general?

You might reply that the Cartesian res cogitans exists neither in the light nor in the dark—that it is a category mistake to talk this way. Immaterial substances cannot meaningfully be said to exist in the light or the dark. That is one theory, the other being that they exist in the dark (presumably they don’t exist in their own kind of light). But I am inclined to go for the darkness theory, since darkness just is the absence of light—and the mind certainly lacks incident light falling on it. The truth is that most things in the universe exists in the dark, since light does not reach them: the interior of stars and planets, dark matter, things completely in the shade, shadows. It is quite unusual, and entirely contingent, to have light reaching you; there could have been a universe that was completely dark with no suns at all. It isn’t part of the essence of matter to receive light rays from suns. If it weren’t for the moon, the earth would be pitch black at night. The mind is just another light-free object. Moreover, it is necessarily lightless; in no possible world does it get lit up for all to see. There is no logically possible flashlight that shines on the mind in some possible world. Can light even fall upon light? If not, light exists in darkness.

I thus arrive at a metaphysics of darkness. Numbers exist in darkness, so do universals, so do moral values, so does modality, so do forces, so does time, so do propositions, so do fictional characters. They are all surrounded by the blackest of nights, enveloped in utter darkness. Some objects and properties are bathed in light, but by no means all. Do all extended objects exist in light—the paradigms of the lit? What about geometrical figures—aren’t they also light-deprived? I rather think so: the extended objects of geometry are creatures of the night too, with not even moonlight falling on them. The class of unlit entities is large and heterogeneous. Darkness ontology is the indicated doctrine. Isn’t this surprising, and mildly disturbing? We never normally think this way, but it appears to be true: all these things are surrounded by darkness. Numbers don’t just exist outside space and time but outside light cones—they are dark abstract objects. The mental and the abstract are covered in darkness, necessarily so. It is perpetual night where they live, far away from any sun. We live a sunny life; their life is sunless. No photon reaches them. If they can be seen at all, say by intellectual intuition, it is not by means of light (streams of photons). We thus have two metaphysical natural kinds in the universe: the light and the dark.  The light things are necessarily light; the dark things are necessarily dark. The light things can become dark temporarily, but the dark things can never become light. The latter have a boring existence light-wise (try to imagine what it’s like to be one).

Does this metaphysical picture have any bearing on the philosophy of mind? It does suggest that minds might have more in common with the dark world than the light world—in particular, with what we call the abstract world. Not the world of light interacting with matter, but the world of zero light; light is not part of the constitution of mind, its inner essence. Consciousness is not a photon-sensitive substance. Possibly, though this thought doesn’t move us any closer to solving the mind-body problem. We might, however, describe this problem as the dark-light problem—dark being the mind and light being the body. If the brain were actually exposed to the sun’s rays for the duration of its existence, it would be a light object, with the accompanying mind being a dark object. How does the dark emerge from the light? How does the darkness of the mind follow from the lightness of the brain? How do we get light-avoidance from light-attraction? How does a dark self emerge from a light body? This, at least, gives us a different way of talking.[2]

[1] If you are lucky.

[2] Here is a paradox of mind and light: how can an experience of light exist in total darkness? You see a bright bonfire, but your seeing it exists in the dark, like a nocturnal animal. It is bright but there is total darkness all around—a bright spot on a dark night (like a firefly). The darkness of the night does not preclude the brightness of its denizens. Experience has an affinity for light but declines itself to be illuminated. It displays light but refuses to be displayed by light. It loves light but shuns it. Experience has an internal light but no external light. It is light in dark.