Knowledge of Mind (and the Mind-Body Problem)

Knowledge of Mind (and the Mind-Body Problem)

I have the distinct feeling that the root of the mind-body problem is the nature of self-knowledge. If we could figure that out, we would be halfway to solving the problem. But that problem—the problem of what we call introspection—is deep and infuriatingly elusive. However, I think I have a new way to think about the problem, which I propose to sketch. First, let’s look at our knowledge of the external world, including perception. Many words have been used to describe this relation; for my purposes, conversion is a good word.[1] Our epistemic systems convert a physical stimulus, distal or proximate, into a mental item—a belief, a sense-datum, an experience, a concept, a mental representation. The external physical thing is transformed into something of a different order for which we have various names (none altogether satisfactory). The process is a kind of transmutation or metamorphosis—related things, but distinct and modified. Think of the external stimulus as a larva and the internal response as a butterfly; the former is colorless and curiously abstract; the latter is vividly colored and startlingly concrete. The two are correlated and causally connected, but by no means identical or even similar. They are distinct entities, distantly related; one is outer, the other inner. The outer we call objective; the inner we call subjective. There is a fundamental duality at work. It is through grasping this duality that we understand knowledge of the external world. The epistemology proper to this kind of knowledge is predicated upon the duality in question. We thus have a fairly clear picture of the structure of the fact. We can compare it to other structures: spatial relations, linguistic reference, biological metamorphosis, energy transfer, family relations. One thing here, another thing there, but related intelligibly. Let’s call this “epistemic dualism”. It is essential to our epistemological outlook. It is rather like metaphysical dualism in relation to mind and body–different things somehow connected. The knowing and the known, related by an act of conversion (translation, transmutation).

But this whole way of thinking, of conceptualizing, falters when it comes to self-knowledge—knowledge of sensations, thoughts, emotions, etc. For we have no clear conception of any such relation at the heart of this kind knowledge—no idea of a spatial relation or a generative relation or a non-mental causal relation. Above all, we can’t think of introspective knowledge as a kind of conversion of one bit of the mind into another—say, pain converted into a belief about pain. We have no model of the conversion operation; the two seem too close for that kind of conception to get a grip. The model of metamorphosis seems unavailable here; it is nothing like the alteration of one physical thing into another. We might invoke a causal relation, but we don’t know how this relation is supposed to work—for one thing, it doesn’t hold across space. So, epistemic dualism doesn’t apply to introspective knowledge—we have no conception of what it is supposed to consist in. But then, we don’t have a conception of introspective knowledge we can work with, get our minds around. Actually, the model struggles even with respect to knowledge of the external world, but when it comes to knowledge of the internal world it doesn’t even get off the ground. Hence, the tendency to deny introspective knowledge altogether and go for an expressivist approach, or an outright denial of the mental as an object. We are unable to form a picture of the duality in question, so the idea of duality is brought into question. Yet surely pain and the knowledge of pain can’t be identical! We are in a muddle (as Wittgenstein would say). The putative relation seems completely opaque. Thus, we have no adequate epistemology of self-knowledge. We have no conversionist epistemology of self-knowledge comparable with our conversionist epistemology about external knowledge. We have no conception of the knowledge-forming process.

This means that one sort of knowledge does not map onto the other sort as a matter of deep principle. The way we know one doesn’t apply to the way we know the other. How, then, can we map one thing onto the other? Of course, we can find correlations, but we can’t find an explanation of mind in terms of matter or vice versa; the two are differently conceived (constituted)—one subject to epistemic dualism, the other not. Logically, it is a bit like the subjective-objective distinction, but now we are saying that mind and body differ with respect to their epistemic character. Starkly put, we have the beginnings of an epistemology for knowledge of the external world, but nothing for the epistemology of knowledge of the internal world. So far as we can see, it has no epistemology—no half-way decent theoretical articulation. It has the null epistemology. How can something with no epistemology emerge from something with someepistemology? How is introspective knowledge possible in a world governed by conversionist epistemology? The simple fact is that the physical world, including the brain, has an intelligible epistemology, but the mental world has noepistemology worthy of the name. Our knowledge of pain is really nothing like our knowledge of physical objects. Nor do we seem capable of constructing such a unified epistemology, leaving the mind-body problem in a state of paralysis.

Suppose we could contrive such an epistemology for the mind: we come to see how the mind and our knowledge of it could stand in a conversion-like relation, analogous to perception and the physical stimulus—adding to it but also preserving it. Then, we would have brought mind and brain closer together; they would at least exist in the same conceptual territory. We would still have many of the same old problems, but we would have a clearer vison of what’s going on. However, that seems quixotic and well-nigh impossible, because no such epistemology seems on the cards: how can a belief about pain be a reconfiguration of pain? How can my knowledge that I am conscious be like liquid water turning into ice or a caterpillar turning into a butterfly? What internal sensory system transforms a mental state into another mental state, related but distinct? How can a mental state act as a distal stimulus in relation to knowledge about it? The only way this could happen is if the mental state were quite different from how it appears to us, but that looks impossible (for well-known reasons). The mind-body problem is so hard because the two have totally different epistemologies. It is like trying to reduce ethical facts to physical facts while accepting that the two have completely different epistemologies. The main obstacle to solving the mind-body problem, on this view, is that the mind lacks a dualist epistemology, or one that we can imagine contriving. Neither can we conceive of a null epistemology of the external world, specifically the brain. That is why we are in such a pickle (or one of the reasons). Contrast explanatory reductions of the usual kind—say, water to H20 or heat to molecular motion. In such cases the reduced and the reducing have the same kind of epistemology, viz. the dualist kind; it isn’t that water or heat have a non-existent epistemology (you simply know “directly” that you are drinking water or that the radiator is hot). But with pain and C-fiber firing, the latter is known by means of physico-psychic conversion (i.e., perception), while the former is known in the mysterious “direct” way. That makes the situation very different in the two cases.[2]

[1] Carl Jung spoke of the senses “translating” outer physical stimuli into psychic phenomena, and he was also fond of the idea of one sort of energy being “converted” into another. These are stronger notions than mere causation. Causal theories are really too weak, as the plethora of counterexamples to them shows.

[2] Thus, the standard models of the psychophysical identity theory are seriously flawed, as others have pointed out. I am merely adding to the asymmetries. It was always obvious that these models were misleading, but they were essential to the case for the identity theory. They are deeply disanalogous to the mind-brain relation. The epistemology of the mental is not the same as the epistemology of the physical, so the two are not identical. We have epistemological dualism as well as metaphysical dualism to contend with. That is the essence of the mind-body problem.