Blog Thoughts

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Blog Thoughts

I sometimes search this blog in order to remind myself of what I have written on such-and-such a topic. I am always surprised. I have completely forgotten about this paper or that, and I read the paper with genuine interest, as if written by someone else. I find myself entering an old-new world. The coverage is enormous, obscenely so. I am always trying to get to the bottom of things, rethinking everything. I write with a kind of horrible fluency, like a philosophical Nabokov (he has his nymphet; I have my syllogism). The poetry of ideas. And very scientific: reports from the field (Voyages of the Philosophical Beagle). It seems unending. I question everything I was ever taught. Audacity is not an issue. I insult the reader. I am arrogantly humble. I view myself clinically. Someone once described me as a stickler: I accept the label. But am I not kind to the reader? I try to make it easy for him or her: I try to spare the reader pain. Yet I stir up disquiet, distrust, distress. Is it a journey? No, it’s a party, a seminar—thrown by me. It has no destination. It is ideology-free. It is egotistical in the purest sense—self-assertive, candid. I mean it to be like no other philosophical writing. Philosophy in the Garden of Eden. Not Socratic, or even pre-Socratic; more Socratic-Socratic—as if I have collared him in the market-place. I strive for naivete, innocence—but armed to the teeth. A knife-like penetration. Modesty is beside the point. There is no time for that, or place. It is easy to interpret—there are no obstacles. It is a rebuke to Wittgenstein. It is a thank-you to Russell (but goodbye Bertie). It beckons to Sherlock Holmes. It is light, like Oscar Wilde or P.G. Wodehouse. I find it funny when I skim through those old pieces, though I never laugh. It has a teasing phenomenology. Is it stream of consciousness? Not at all. That stream is murky; this is more like little blocks of ice.

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The Unconscious Body

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The Unconscious Body

We are thought to have an unconscious mind, or minds. The idea is that we have two minds (or more) only one of which are we conscious of. We are aware of one mind but not of the other; hence, we know what is going on in the conscious mind but not the unconscious mind. It isn’t that the unconscious mind is a part or aspect of the conscious mind that we don’t normally attend to; it is a separate mind. It is a mind but it isn’t one that we sense or introspect or otherwise have access to, except by means of indirect theorizing. It may have a different nature from the conscious mind, containing different elements, functioning differently. We thought we had one mind, the one we are conscious of, but it turns out that we have more than one, and this mind (or these) is unconscious, unknown by us in the normal course of events. The question I want to ask is whether we might have more than one body: we have the body we are familiar with, the one we experience every day, but might we have an additional body that we are not conscious of? This would be an unconscious body—a body we are not aware we have. It may have a different nature from the body we know about. It stands apart from our conscious body, coexisting with it, possessing different properties. It doesn’t emerge into consciousness, though it may be investigated indirectly. It is, in short, the bodily analogue of the unconscious mind.

You might say that we do, but trivially, because there are facts about our ordinary body that we don’t normally know about. I know about the exterior of my body and something about its interior, but I don’t know about the internal organs or their microstructure. I am not conscious of these facts about my body. But this is not an unconscious body in the sense I intend; it is just my usual conscious body in its hidden aspects. It isn’t another body separate from the usual one. It’s the same body. This would be like saying that my conscious mind has aspects I don’t normally know about or pay attention to. So, what would count as a separate unconscious body? Easy: a fetus in the womb but not known about. If everyone carried such a body around with them but didn’t know it, they would harbor an unconscious body in the relevant sense. Notice that this body might itself be conscious; but its carrier would not be conscious of it. Likewise, the unconscious mind might be conscious in itself and to itself, but not be an object of consciousness for the mind associated with “I”: I am not conscious of my unconscious mind, but it might be. Put that aside: the point is that one body might contain another body that the conscious mind doesn’t know about. This, surely, is perfectly possible: suppose that there is a tiny body lurking somewhere in the recesses of the body that has never been discovered—that would be a second unconscious body. Or a parasite that hides its existence particularly well.

The question, then, is whether there actually is such a thing but more hidden. May we contain a body we don’t know about, as humans didn’t know they had a second unconscious mind till quite late in their history? The mind boggles: you thought you had just one body, but it turns out there is an extra body you didn’t suspect existed. You are multiply bodied as you are multiply minded. We are going to have to get pretty recherche if we are to find such a body, but the search should be enjoyable—and we are accustomed to finding greater plurality in the physical world than we expected (atoms, stars, universes). I can think of two possibilities: dark matter and the hidden brain. If dark matter exists, then animal bodies are partly composed of it: every physical object is really a double existence—dark matter and the usual bright kind. So, we have a dark body and a bright body; the dark body is unconscious, i.e., we are not conscious of it. If matter has dimensions we don’t know about, then bodies composed of it will have a dual nature: the dark body will be the analogue of the shadowy unconscious—a different form that matter in general can take.[1] Maybe dark bodies are more primitive than bright bodies, as the unconscious mind is often thought to be more primitive than the conscious mind. The second possibility is that the brain and nervous system might have a corresponding, though distinct, brain and nervous system coexisting with them—a kind of shadow body. We might, in effect, have two brains: the one we know about and another one we don’t know about. The reason is that the brain is correlated with the mind: the mind is the second brain. As it happens, we are conscious of this mind, but not as a second brain coexisting with the usual brain; so, let’s consider the unconscious mind in relation to the brain—is that a second brain-body? Suppose this mind to be identical to a certain physical system located in the head, though not any physical system we have ever heard of; it belongs to some future or possible science not to present science. Then we could say that inside the head are two brains (like the two hemispheres): the conscious brain (the one we know about) and an unconscious brain (that we don’t know about). It isn’t a whole body, to be sure, but it has enough autonomy to count as distinct from the regular brain; accordingly, we have two brains, one of which we are not conscious of (we can’t see or touch it). Maybe dark matter is bound up with it, since only dark matter can provide a foundation for the mental. My point is that it could turn out that we have more than one body, as it has turned out that we have more than one mind—and that the extra body is not something we are conscious of having. Physics and brain science are still in their infancy, and it might turn out that the usual model of the body is too simple: it has a duality we didn’t expect. The criteria of individuation for bodies might permit multiplying the number of bodies per person (or animal): this is epistemically possible. The unconscious mind is sufficiently different from the conscious mind that we count them as distinct (we are conscious of one but not the other, to start with); similarly, the body might harbor a duality that encourages the same largesse—there are two of them! People have multiplied spaces and times in a similar fashion, and even physical objects (e.g., Eddington’s two tables); we might find ourselves theoretically driven to multiply animal bodies. It is not a necessary truth that you have only one body, epistemically or metaphysically. What if Kant is right and there are two worlds, the phenomenal and the noumenal? Then you would have two bodies as a matter of metaphysical necessity. We are not conscious of the noumenal body, but it exists nonetheless. So, let’s not close our minds to body dualism. Why should the mind be capable of duality and the body not be? Perhaps the unconscious body is necessary to keeping us alive (as the unconscious mind keeps us sane, according to some).[2]

[1] I haven’t mentioned what is called the “astral body” in certain mystical traditions, which is supposed to be constituted of some sort of subtle energy within the mortal organic body. I don’t believe in this, but I think it indicates that the idea of a second body has some appeal to the human imagination.

[2] It is perhaps necessary to say that this paper is highly speculative, indeed fantastic. It belongs to the conceptual-imaginative side of philosophy.

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Mechanism, Mystery, and Miracle

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Mechanism, Mystery, and Miracle

Locke thought that the external world is a mystery: we know there is such a world, but we don’t and can’t know how it works or what it’s like. Physics is a mysterious science (Newton agreed). But he didn’t think the mind is a mystery, specifically knowledge: he thought he knew how the mind produces knowledge, and it is really quite simple. Ideas are derived from sense impressions by an intelligible process (abstraction). Knowledge consists of mental images. He is a physical mysterian but a mental non-mysterian. Matter is mysterious, but the knowing mind is not. Descartes, on the other hand, is a mysterian about mind but a non-mysterian about matter. He thinks the external world consists of objects in space that obey knowable mechanical laws—a machine. He thus believes that we can know about the intrinsic nature of this world, in principle limitlessly. But he is a mysterian about the mind: this is because ideas (concepts) are implanted by God in the human soul at birth. Descartes has no theory of how this happens or what ideas intrinsically are (they are not mental images). Our knowledge of the world is mysterious, but the world known about is not. Locke has (he thinks) an intelligible theory of knowledge (human reason) but not of material bodies, whereas Descartes thinks he has an intelligible theory of material bodies but not of knowledge. Berkeley, for his part, is a mysterian about neither: he thinks the whole universe is intelligible to us, mind and matter. First, he doesn’t believe in matter in the sense in which Locke and Descartes do (the philosopher’s concept of matter)—though he does believe there are tables and chairs outside human minds (“finite spirits”); these objects exist in God’s mind as mental entities. His theory of knowledge is like Locke’s (and Hume’s)—an empiricist theory. He doesn’t even have a problem explaining abstract ideas, because he doesn’t accept that they exist. He gets rid of mystery altogether, which is all to the good because he thinks it leads to atheism. Thus, idealism dispels mystery (hence skepticism). In this he was broadly followed by subsequent philosophers—they are mostly idealists of one kind or another (despite their official intentions). Of course, Berkeley replaces mystery with miracle, because we need God to perform constant miracles of producing ideas in human minds (animal minds too, presumably). There could in principle be mysterians about both or non-mysterians about both: Chomsky and I are of the former persuasion; most contemporary thinkers claim to be of the latter. There is no entailment from one locus of mystery to the other: you could be a mysterian about one but a non-mysterian about the other, like Locke and Descartes; or you could be a global mysterian or a global non-mysterian. I would say, though, that mystery about one naturally leads to mystery about the other, and ditto for non-mystery, since it is probable that human intelligence is limited across the board or it is not.

How about mechanism? Locke would seem to be a mechanist about both mind and matter, though not a hardline mechanist: for his empiricist theory of ideas is quasi-mechanistic and his conception of nature follows the corpuscular philosophy of Boyle. Descartes is emphatically not a mechanist about the mind, but he is about the body and matter in general. Hence, his dualism. Berkeley is not a mechanist of any kind about the external world, but his theory of knowledge is like Locke’s and therefore quasi-mechanistic (as is Hume’s). Berkeley’s ontology, however, consists only of active spirits, so is not mechanistic. He is a non-mechanistic non-mysterian. Locke is a double mechanist, Descartes is a single mechanist, and Berkeley is a double non-mechanist. What we don’t see is someone who is a mechanist only about the mind, the body being regarded as non-mechanistic; but the position exists in logical space (maybe a behaviorist occultist about nature would qualify).  Berkeley avoids both mystery and mechanism by postulating God, but the cost is a giant miracle at the heart of things. This is the general shape of the history behind our current moment. It revolves around these three concepts.[1]

[1] Of course, I have not gone into any detail about all this, restricting myself to broad themes and summary formulations.

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Belief and Religion

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Belief and Religion

It is possible to be religious and not believe in God, or gods: you just need to have religious practices but not theistic ontology. Atheistic religion is not a contradiction in terms. But can you be a theist and not be religious? That seems a more difficult undertaking: surely if you believe in God, you must be religious. Have you ever met someone who says he believes in God but isn’t religious? Might someone be a theist anti-religionist? Actually, I think this is possible, if never actual. A person might be convinced by a putative proof of the existence of God that there is a God—he can see no flaw in the proof—but find no attraction in religious practices, or even deplore such practices. He might even believe in the existence of the Christian God and still have no religious inclinations or feelings: no church, no prayers, no worship, no desire to please, no real interest. He might say, “Sure, there is a God, but frankly I’m just not that interested”. He might regard the existence of God as like the existence of other galaxies: they exist all right, but so what? He has other interests, is a busy man, prefers art and music. Religion leaves him cold. He never even thinks about God unless someone else brings the subject up.

If this is psychologically possible, why doesn’t it happen? It is true that people can believe in God and not be very religious in terms of religious practice, but is no one ever a believer but completely non-religious? I think the reason is this: people encounter talk of God only in a practicing religious context. They form their belief in God’s existence because of the religious practices in which it is embedded. They don’t first encounter talk of God in a seminar room discussing the ontological argument, or some other argument for God’s existence. The existential belief is practice-based. The two things are regarded as inextricable. And it is true that without the institutional backing a belief in God seems pointless and empty. Why believe in God if you don’t care for the corresponding institution, especially its moral component? Logically, the belief in God’s existence is separable from the religion associated with it; but socially the two are bound together. And it is difficult to be brought to a belief in God’s existence unless this belief is embedded in a religious practice, because the alleged proofs of God’s existence are questionable at best. Still, it is instructive to learn that God and religion are separable spheres, neither entailing the other. You can be religious and anti-theist, and you can be anti-religious and theist. The Abrahamic religions are steeped in theism, but other religions dispense with that hypothesis. I know of no sect that is both theistic and anti-religious, though it exists as a position in logical space. The closest we get are religions in which there is a belief in God but not much in the way of ceremony and pageant, or heaven and hell. A super-Protestant would be someone who believes in God but thinks it is impious to claim to know what God wants or what he is like. Perhaps he made the universe, but other than that we have no idea what he requires of us and has no role in determining morality. This would be a very thin religion and people would not flock to it.[1]

[1] People do sometimes believe in supernatural entities—angels, ghosts, spirits—but scarcely give them a second thought and don’t build their lives around them. Their actual religion might make no reference to these entities, being thoroughly naturalistic. They might worship a particular mountain, say, but accept that there are spirits lurking elsewhere (their dead ancestors). The human mind is nothing if not flexible.

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Letter

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I thought readers would be interested in this.

Dear Colin McGinn,

I have been following your work for many years with deep admiration and intellectual curiosity. Your profound contributions to philosophy—particularly in the areas of philosophy of mind, consciousness, and epistemology—have significantly shaped my own intellectual path. Not only your ideas, but also the clarity and precision of your writing style, have convinced me that your work deserves a broader readership in the Turkish-speaking world.

I have read all of your books and a wide selection of your articles. Among your many works, the following have had a lasting impact on my thinking:

  • The Character of Mind
  • Mind and Bodies
  • The Mysterious Flame: Conscious Minds in a Material World
  • Basic Structures of Reality
  • Inborn Knowledge
  • Prehension: The Hand and the Emergence of Humanity
  • Knowledge and Reality
  • Mental Content

These books—especially those focusing on innate knowledge, prehension, and the metaphysical structures underlying reality—have informed much of my current research interests.

I am an independent researcher and editor working across the fields of fine arts, philosophy, and neurophilosophy. My academic journey began with a degree in fine arts, and later evolved into deep engagements with aesthetics, embodied cognition, and the philosophy of mind. I have collaborated with publishers and academics on translating and editing major works into Turkish. Some of the authors I have previously worked on include:

  • Raymond Tallis – The Hand: A Philosophical Inquiry into Human Being
  • Tim Ingold – Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture
  • Steven Mithen – Creativity in Human Evolution and Prehistory

In this context, I would be honored to contribute to the Turkish translation of your works, particularly those that have not yet been made available in Turkish. I strongly believe that your writings would resonate with both academic and general readers in Turkey. I am fully committed to pursuing this process in accordance with ethical publishing principles and copyright requirements.

Furthermore, I would be deeply honored to conduct a long-form interview with you. This would explore your intellectual biography, philosophical development, and key ideas on mind, knowledge, and reality. My goal is to publish this conversation as a richly documented and accessible book that highlights the depth and evolution of your thought.

If this proposal is of interest to you, I would be most grateful for the opportunity to discuss it further. Thank you very much for your time and consideration.

Uğur Polat

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Animal Dreams

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Animal Dreams

I have a close relationship with my pet parakeet Eloise. She likes to climb on my fingers and be enveloped in my hand; we play together every day. We are friends, companions. At night I carry her cage (with two other birds) to my study where I place it in a high place so that the cat can’t get to them. The other night I began to wonder whether Eloise ever thinks of me while in this place. Does she think of absent objects, me in particular? I concluded that she very likely does, because birds have good memories. Then I couldn’t help wondering whether she ever dreams of me. It seemed like a crazy question, but reflection suggests that she does: birds do dream, apparently, and what would Eloise dream about but her closest companion? They have REM sleep and a limbic system: they dream emotionally, no doubt visually. But what does she dream? Does she simply replay our daily playful encounters, or does she wax more imaginative? Does she dream of flying with me, or being my size, or building a nest with me? We will never know: her dreams are private. For all I know, she has wonderful warm extravagant dreams about me. What a thought! What we have here is the problem of other minds in one specific department—dreams. It’s not the problem of whether parakeets have minds at all; the problem is that animal dreams are out of bounds epistemically. Maybe she wakes with fond memories of her dreams. Maybe she has a rich dream life centered on yours truly. I’ll never know. Somehow this increases my respect for my feathered friend. It makes me more religious about animals.

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L.A.

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L.A.

I am worried that the presence of the military will provoke a confrontation in which protesters are killed. This will be a terrible tragedy, the end of human decency in America, and will deter any future protests. I can’t help wondering if that is the plan.

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Naturephilia

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Naturephilia

What kind of society is best? We have come to accept the concept of the “open society”: this is deemed better than the “closed society”. These terms were introduced by Henri Bergson in the 1930s and then popularized by Karl Popper in the 1950s. The best society is the most “open” one. But what is it for a society to be open? There is no simple definition (it isn’t like a shop being open for business). Roughly, the idea is that an open society is one that is democratic, tolerant, liberal, critical, law-governed, and allows freedom of speech—as opposed to authoritarian, intolerant, illiberal, uncritical, lawless, and prohibits freedom of speech. In an open society you can act and speak as you please so long as you harm no one thereby. If we live in such a society, we will be happy; otherwise not. Nothing in this conception includes religion, so the good society can be an irreligious society. You can be religious, but you need not be. It has been felt that this ideal is a bit on the thin side: it is largely negative and ignores various human aspirations and needs. The gap is commonly filled by religion, typically but not necessarily Christianity. So, the maximally good society has been thought to be both open and religious. The trouble is that religion has been crumbling for years (or centuries), so that all that is left in our social philosophy is the secular notion of the open society. Is that enough? Do we need a return to the religious?

Religion is typically conceived as theistic. Specifically, we are told to love God and our fellow man. This directive is not easy to obey: many find it difficult to believe in God, and man is hard to love. We are exhorted to direct our love this way precisely because it is not natural to us; punishment is therefore threatened if we don’t obey the directive. We are not born loving God and the human race. So, are we limited to the etiolated conception of the open society? Not that there is anything wrong with that—it beats tyranny—but it seems humanly insufficient. There is an existential gap; the heart is not satisfied. Life in an open society is not ipso facto a meaningful full life. We thus seem condemned to a hollow existence (as existentialism maintained, heroically).  Put simply, the question is what to love. We can’t really love an open society; but we can’t believetraditional theistic religion. We seem stuck. When religion held sway, we lived in a religious community that bound people together and provided a vehicle for their deeper aspirations; but in a merely open society nothing binds us and nothing provides the requisite emotional infrastructure. Thus, we find fleeting fashions, popular culture, art and music, esoteric hobbies, cults, mass sports, the mobile phone—anything to fend off the ennui of normal human existence. Is there a solution to this predicament?

This is where nature comes in. Theistic religions instruct us to love God above all else—not nature. We are indoctrinated in a suspicion of nature, especially our own nature. We are to praise and worship God but not the natural world (so grubby, so material). Jesus had nothing to say about the love of nature, but plenty about the love of God. Nor was our love of other people supposed to be directed to their natural condition—certainly not their “animal nature”. Nature was on the other side—opposed to the supernatural world inhabited by God. Loving nature is accordingly deemed impious, unholy, degenerate. But this is not a natural way for humans to feel—hence the reprimanding character of traditional theistic religion (we are all born sinners etc.) We must “rise above” nature—the world of beasts and beastliness. Sex becomes taboo, or deeply problematic. Animals are to be deplored or exploited. But this is not the way we naturally feel about these things—especially as children. Children must be “cured” of their natural ways—their childish passions. There is only so much love in the human heart and it must be directed correctly—to the right intentional objects. Love God not your dog. If the choice is between going to church or walking your dog, do the former. Religion is thus conceived as a battle between natural inclination and virtuous conduct.

However, there is an opposing tradition: the love of nature as opposed to a supernatural God. Thus, we have naturephilia and biophilia[1]—love of nature as a whole and love of a particular part of it, viz. plants and animals. It is easy to caricature this kind of philosophy by restricting attention to certain aspects of nature, particularly what is called “wild” nature. But the idea isn’t to encourage love of the wild, i.e., the non-human; it is to encourage love of all creation, including the non-wild. We are not being instructed to go and live naked in the forest. Nature is here construed as everything but God: art, artifacts, games, sports, music, food, friends, family, sex, clothes, study, books, cars. We have an innate disposition to love nature—the physical things around us, whether found or man-made. Life without this kind of love would be dismally thin—the abstract love of God really doesn’t cut it. We like to walk in the woods, ride our bike, swim, pet our dog, eat our food, see our friends, play a game, read, sing, etc. We are passionate about these things. Sometimes we feel the majesty of nature—the night sky, the oceans, the mountains, the beasts of the jungle. So, let us applaud these passions, encourage them, refine them—instead of declaring them ungodly or worse. We should make a religion of our inborn natural passions. Some people choose to dedicate their lives to God; why not let people dedicate themselves to apes or insects or rocks? A life dedicated to philosophy is really a life dedicated to nature—to the existing natural world. We evolved in the natural world, both wild and civilized, and we are naturally adapted to that world (we didn’t evolve in a supernatural world); no wonder we feel deeply connected to it. We want to explore it, experience it, absorb it. Our human nature is a reflection of nature. Our emotions are the results of nature. No doubt other animals love their natural environment; they don’t hanker after some supposed non-natural environment (“paradise”). We just have to accept that what we naturally love we oughtto love. We should therefore embrace naturephilia and biophilia. That is our religion.

Will it be enough? If we combine love of nature with the open society, will we have the ideal world? Will we be perfectly happy? I don’t think so, but it will produce a life that is sustainable and tolerable. There will still be death, disease, disappointment, betrayal, violence, stupidity, and all the rest; but we won’t be condemned to the spiritual emptiness of the bare open society or the absurdities of traditional religions. The open society is just a protective framework for the full expression of human nature; it isn’t what we primarily value. You don’t wake up in the morning and thrill to the prospect of free speech or the rule of law (so what, you might say); but you do wake up and feel excited about the bounties of nature (in the full sense I described). You are not thrilled by being permitted to play guitar or read a book but by actually playing guitar or reading a book. You can’t make a religion out of the open society alone, but you can make a religion out of the natural world—and there is nothing wrong with such a religion. Our politics must include the latter as much as the former.[2]

[1] The term “biophilia” was coined by Erich Fromm and taken up by E.O. Wilson.

[2] We might refer to thin politics and thick politics, or procedural politics and substantive politics. We need rules to enable and preserve human flourishing, freedom being paramount, but we also need substantive concrete goals and values. We must be permitted to bird-watch and love to bird-watch. (I include humans as part of nature, so we can love them too, in so far as we can.)

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