How Many Mind-Body Problems?

We tend to speak in the singular about the mind-body problem: the mind-body problem. But is that realistic? Couldn’t there be many mind-body problems depending on what aspect of the mind we are considering?  They may not present the same problem or have the same solution. How many life-matter problems are there? That depends on how many kinds of life there are: carbon-based, silicon-based, light-based, etc. In each case different explanations apply. Life on earth is just one possible way to construct living things. Is there just one function-materials problem? Functions can be performed in many ways, by different types of material—metal, glass, plastic, wood, etc. Each does it differently. The mind has several components or faculties—sensation, perception, emotion, thought, language—each with its own distinctive nature. Maybe the mind-body problem is different for each part of the mind. After all, these mental capacities evolved at different times, satisfying different needs, and the mechanisms that brought them into being might be quite different. What we call “consciousness” might itself be different in each case. Some problems may be easier than others, some soluble and some not (mind-body problems and mind-body mysteries). Perhaps we would do better to think of a plurality of problems not a single problem. This is what I shall argue.

The mind falls into a number of natural kinds. It is not clear what unifies them. Some have thought it is mere family resemblance. If you think that way about games, there is no single game-action problem, but a family of different problems: what actions make chess a game, what actions make baseball a game, etc. Likewise, there is a sensation-body problem, a perception-body problem, an emotion-body problem, a thought-body problem, a language-body problem. We need an analysis of the mental phenomenon in question and then look to see what about the body might explain it; and we might get different answers. For example, bodily sensations are characterized by their distinctive feel—their subjective quality, what-it’s-likeness; but thoughts are characterized by their propositional content—what they are about, their intentionality. How does the body (brain) produce subjective feeling and how does it produce propositional intentionality? Surely the brain does not do these different things in the same way: it employs different mechanisms or structures or procedures. The mind also contains a conscious part and an unconscious part, but these are very different, so we should expect different explanations. The unconscious mind might be easier to explain than the conscious mind (and there are different kinds of unconscious mind). Consciousness itself divides into phenomenal feel and self-awareness—these might have different cerebral explanations. Higher-order thought theories might suffice for self-awareness while subjective sensations call for something different (panpsychism?). We can tackle each subproblem separately.

I am going to suggest, boldly, that there are precisely four mind-body problems, concerning sensation, perception, thought, and meaning.[1] There is also a fifth mind-body non-problem, which concerns what we can call character traits, though the label is misleading. Suppose we are interested in aggressiveness in ants: how does the ant brain produce this trait? We investigate the brain and discover a particular chemical that is present in all and only aggressive ants. That would solve the problem of explaining aggressiveness in ants. It is a materialist solution: the trait is reducible to the chemical (compare certain types of illness). We might find this chemical to be present in other animal species if and only if they are aggressive; it would then be the solution to the mind-body problem of animal aggression. The point generalizes to other character traits—docility, sociality, sexual preference, intelligence, introversion and extraversion, etc. These dispositions all reduce to chemical properties of the brain. In principle, this seems eminently plausible, just a matter of routine science—not any kind of deep mystery. It’s just like water and H2O, heat and molecular motion. The trait is identical to its neural basis. The same may be said of memory traces: they are the same as patterns of neural connectivity (we are not speaking of mental acts of remembering but of the “engram” itself). No one ever went Cartesian dualist on behalf of aggressiveness in ants or memory traces in the vole: these are a matter of brain physiology. Fine, no problem. But things are very different when we move to sensations of pain and the like (character traits are not sensations, not feelings): here we have an eruption of subjectivity, something-it’s-likeness. Now we have a conceptual problem, well explored in the literature (bats etc.). Pain presents a real mind-body problem (indeed, a mystery)—simple materialism isn’t going to cut it. Perception then poses an additional problem: not only does it involve sensation; it also involves reference (attribution) to the external world. It involves a primitive kind of semantics (intentionality, representation). Solving this problem will require extra machinery over and above that required to solve the sensation problem. What this machinery involves is an open question and not an easy one (it’s a “pretty hard” problem). The brain had to come up with something special in order to get perception off the ground. Thought poses a further problem—the proposition problem. Not just reference but logically connected propositional content. We don’t know what propositions are, still less how brains manufacture them (or reach out to them in Frege-Plato space). The brain will need to perform some fancy footwork if it is going to bring propositional thought into the world. Even if sensation and perception are taken care of, we have a fresh challenge stemming from thought (think of it as having a grade-three level of difficulty, like a gymnastic move). Thought took a while to take hold of the animal mind long after sensation and perception had been around for many millions of years. Then, fourthly, we have meaning—language, symbolism. This has its own puzzles, again amply discussed; we don’t even know that it exists, according to some, let alone what constitutes it. Yet the brain has contrived to manufacture meaning—a kind of high tech gimmick (like a computer chip). Meaning, they say, is massive, world-changing, earth-shattering, epoch-making. It poses yet another mind-body problem, transcending those that have come before. Which is harder, language or pain? Take your pick; both are gut-wrenchingly difficult. Each of these four problems introduces a new phenomenon to the party; each poses a separate mind-body problem. Don’t say they are all instances of the consciousness problem and hence unified into a single problem. First, that problem is by no means homogeneous, unless by stipulating a limited class of cases (as it might be, sensations). But second, the problems I have enumerated are quite heterogeneous, involving subjective feeling, perceptual reference, propositional cognition, and linguistic meaning. We can’t assimilate these, like varieties of cheese. These aspects of what we lump together as “mind” are as different as limbs, blood, skin, and internal organs. They are distinct natural psychological kinds. The solution to one of them will not automatically produce a solution to the others. The mind is a plurality, so the mind-body problem is a plurality. Compare knowledge: we shouldn’t speak of “the knowledge-reality problem”, as if knowledge is all of one kind with a uniform relation to reality. Knowledge has several varieties and hence several relations to reality (as in mathematical and empirical knowledge). I am tempted to suggest abandoning the phrase “the mind” in serious scientific writing, replacing it with talk of “minds”—as in “the minds-body problems”. We have several minds, in effect, and each poses its own problem. There has never been a good terminology for this aspect of nature precisely because it lacks internal unity; but we shouldn’t let our existing terminology blind us to the variety of what it gestures at.[2]

[1] Emotion can probably be dealt with by combining elements drawn from the Big Four.

[2] We can compare the mind-body problem with what might be called the self-consciousness-consciousness problem: how is self-consciousness related to consciousness? Are they identical or distinct? Do we need three levels of reality–body, mind, and awareness of mind? We should be open to the possibility that self-consciousness is itself non-uniform: consciousness of bodily sensations, say, might not be the same as consciousness of thoughts. So-called introspection might be a congeries of different sub-faculties, each evolved at different times, with a different basis in the brain. We group them casually together but they might be significantly different. Consciousness of self certainly seems different from consciousness of bodily pain.

Cult Politics

Last night’s State of the Union was pure cult: Trump spouted a stream of lies, crazy fantasies, and groundless grievances while his Republican supporters cheered, chanted, and became teary-eyed. They would have wildly applauded anything he said no matter how ludicrous. They seemed happy in their delusions. Vance and Johnson gave whole-body Nazi salutes. It was quite a spectacle; I couldn’t help laughing. That is what America has come to: a cult of complete crap. Branch Davidians could do better.

Future of Philosophy

The future of philosophy in America looks dismal. I am not going to sugar-coat it. The root cause is job scarcity—a matter of supply and demand. There are very few jobs for too many people and it’s not going to change any time soon (probably never). Not many new people can get into the field. The result is that fewer people even try to. It just makes no prudential sense. A brilliant person with employment options will not risk a lengthy education in philosophy—he or she will go into law or tech or show business or journalism or physics. Thus, mediocrity is the likely outcome: lower quality and less quantity. Mediocrity breeds mediocrity. Mediocre teachers, mediocre researchers, mediocre writers—a general lack of spark. This mediocrity will put off brilliant people more. The public image of philosophy will suffer; it will be seen (correctly) as a sleepy dull field. No more articles about philosophy in intellectual publications. This process is already well underway: the intellectual level of the subject has dropped significantly during my time in it. At present some good people are still toiling in the vineyard, but they are old, past their prime, and ready for retirement. No one of comparable quality is there to replace them. Imagine the level in ten or twenty years from now! I also think there has been a noticeable decline in the moral quality of people in the profession—a lack of integrity, decency, courage. The field is full of cowards and moral fools (I told you I wouldn’t hold back). And morality and intellect go together. I won’t name names but I have been startled by the stupidity and spinelessness of younger members of the profession. Instead of creativity there is careerism. Academic politics has replaced hard work and inspiration. I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few years philosophy in the universities has become largely history of philosophy, or else intolerably pedestrian. The subject is just not what it was in the old days—up till about the turn of the century. But my point is that this will only get worse because of the job problem. No doubt other factors are at work such as a decline of intellectual standards, the forces of conformity, the lack of real literacy, the sheer brainlessness of culture at large. People are just not interesting anymore, not worth knowing. Dim, dull, depressing. Do I care? Not really—I’m no longer part of it.

Mental Ontology

A certain way of conceiving mental ontology has become entrenched: there are mental tokens and mental types, and token identity does not entail type identity. In other terminology, there are mental particulars and mental properties, and the former may be identical with physical particulars in the brain without there being an identity of mental and physical properties. These entities are generally thought to be events—hence event tokens (particulars) and event types (properties). According to the token identity theory, mental event tokens are identical with physical event tokens, but mental event types are not identical with physical event types. Logically, it’s like saying that all colored objects are identical with shaped objects, but colors are not identical to shapes. That proposition is obviously true and provides a model for the mind in relation to the brain. But how good is the analogy?  Does it make sense of the thesis of token identity? Clearly, that thesis requires that mental events (particulars) can have multiple non-identical properties: a single event can be both a pain and a C-fiber firing, where these two properties are not identical (like red and square). Is that true of events in general? Not according to one plausible account of the metaphysics of events—the property exemplification account. I won’t go into the details of this but merely note that it does not allow for the kind of token identity theory commonly proposed. In short: no single event can have multiple intrinsic non-relational properties, because an event is an exemplification of a specific property.[1] Thus, if the property of pain is not identical to the property of C-fiber firing, then a particular event of pain cannot be the same event as a particular event of C-fiber firing. That is intuitively correct: events are occurrences or instances of a single (non-relational) property at a given time and place. Type distinctness therefore implies token distinctness. There cannot be a token identity theory without a corresponding type identity theory. The relationship between a particular mental event and a particular physical event cannot be identity if the instantiated properties are distinct. What then is it? We can call it by several names—dependence, realization, supervenience, implementation, constitution. The idea is that a mental event occurs in virtue of a numerically distinct but correlated physical event in the brain; it is because of that event that the mental event happens. So, the correct formulation of the intended physicalist claim is that every mental event occurs in virtue of a correlated physical event—though not necessarily of the same physical type (it could be D-fibers not C-fibers). This is not an identity theory but it is a version of a token physicalist theory (there are no mental events that lack such a physical correlate, as in disembodied minds). We can dispense with the ontology of multiply exemplifying token events and replace it with an ontology of singly exemplifying token events plus a relation of correlation (dependence, realization, etc.). This degree of dualism is mild and anodyne, nothing like the full Cartesian Monty (there are no “naked” mental events).

Is that the end of the story? Unfortunately, no: for the question is immediately raised as to what explains the correlation. The names for the relation are really just names of a mystery. That is the mind-body problem: how and why are the mental and physical properties related as they are? Is the mental property reducible to the physical property on which it evidently depends? If not, what is this relation of emergence, generation, creation, or what have you? If we knew that, we would have solved the mind-body problem to all intents and purposes. Let’s consider a well-worn analogy—the ethical and the descriptive. There are ethical events—events of generosity or cruelty, say. They are clearly related to physical events—bodies moving etc. How is this possible, given that the ethical and the physical are such different domains (discourses, facts)? It’s because ethical events are actions, i.e., movements of bodies. It is in virtue of these movements that events can be ethical or unethical. Ethical events are the kind of thing that can be intelligibly related to the body, because they are bodily actions in their very nature. But what can we say about mental events that renders them intelligibly related to the body and brain? We clearly cannot say that they are bodily actions: the “token identity” (physical realization) is not grounded in the very nature of mental events as movements of the body. So, the physical correlate in the brain does not follow from the mental event as such; it isn’t simply the basis of the bodily action that a mental event manifestly consists in. Mental events are not bodily movements. Therefore, we cannot explain their dependence on the brain by invoking their manifest nature; it’s like trying to explain red by square—as if being red were a type of shape. Clearly, ethical types are not identical to physical types (ethics can’t be reduced to physics), but we can easily understand how ethical tokens are related to physical tokens—since they are bodily acts. But in the case of mental tokens, we can’t even do that: the mental ontology fails to mesh with the physical ontology, so even token physicalism is a mystery. Doing wrong is performing a physical action, but feeling pain is not a physical action (as it might be, writhing); so, we have no bridge to the body and brain. Token physicalism might be true (I think it is), but it is not intelligible—transparent, evident, self-explanatory. It is brute, opaque, and baffling. Thus, mental ontology is not conducive even to very weak forms of physicalism—that is, as an intelligible, explicable theory. Mental tokens are not intelligibly linked to the brain states that must underlie them. We have what might be called unintelligible physicalism.

And there is a deeper problem: it is not even clear that the ontology of types and tokens, properties and particulars, applies to the mental realm. Sure, we have analogies, hopeful parallels; but are they accurate models of what is really going on with the mind? Is a mental event even an event (is a belief a state)? We explain the customary ontology by comparing the mental “thing” to something with which we are already familiar–types and tokens of letters of the alphabet, or objects with color and shape. But does the mind really conform to those models? All we can say is that things happen in the mind and these things can be similar or dissimilar to other things that happen in the mind; but that falls short of discerning a genuine shared ontological structure with letters of the alphabet and colored objects. We have analogies without insight. We try to force the mind into preconceived categories; we don’t observe it to merit these categories. Neural complexes exemplify mental properties, we say—but what does that mean? (Ryle would say it’s a category mistake.) Is it like a soldier exemplifying bravery or a flower exemplifying beauty? We can talk the talk, but can we think the thought? What are we thinking exactly? I think we are thinking it’s kinda like those other things but also kinda different. Wittgenstein would say we are in a muddle; I say we are in a puddle—a murky medium in which clear vision is impossible. I am a mysterian about token identity (let alone type identity), or about the dependence relation between token mental events and token physical events (if we drop talk of token identity). Mental ontology is an obscure business, even at the level of abstract structure. We inherited the particular-universal distinction from Plato and it works well for ordinary perceptible objects, but even Plato did not (to my knowledge) generalize it to the soul (consciousness, thought); he didn’t suppose that the mind is populated by particulars and universals, objects and properties, tokens and types. That is surely an imposition from outside not a matter of casual observation. We regiment (in Quine’s sense) our thought about the mind according to these traditional categories, but it is not at all clear that such regimentation is not a form of deformation (or even defamation). We might be ontologically blinkered, or blind. The mind is rooted in the brain, no doubt, but all the talk of tokens and types, particulars and universals, objects and properties, looks like so much wishful thinking, analogies masquerading as analyses.[2]

[1] Old hands will know that this is the debate between D. Davidson and J. Kim.

[2] The role of space in fixing our notions of particulars and universals is often remarked, but it is a stretch to carry it over to the mental realm. The problem is that without it our thought becomes clouded, shapeless. The “language game” of the mind is not a species of space-dependent discourse denoting spatially individuated particulars. Some have thought it is not denoting at all–hence mental expressivism and the like. The mind and the body don’t have the same ontological logic, if I may put it so. At any rate, we have trouble applying that logic.