Logic of the Mind

Modern logic employs an apparatus of quantifiers and variables. The variables are assigned a domain consisting of discrete individual objects such as dogs and houses—substances, in traditional terminology. Logical laws are formulated against the backdrop of this conception—an ontological conception. Logic is thus tied to an ontology of substances, in particular material substances. Logical necessity is defined by reference to such an ontology. What else could constitute the domain over which we quantify? We need an ontology to form the domain of quantification. No ontology, no logic. But does this ontology apply to the mind? What domain are we quantifying over? As I have argued elsewhere, there is no substance-accident ontology of the mind, or even event ontology.[1] There is no mental counterpart to the ontology of material objects in space. So, we cannot define logical truth with respect to the mind by reference to such an ontology. That would be fine if logical truth did not apply to the mind, but it does. We can use “all” and “some” about the mind and state logical truths, but there is no domain of quantification of the kind commonly presupposed. The situation is analogous to the logic of stuffs: we can speak of “some milk” and “all coal” and say “no milk is coal”, but it is doubtful that such locutions can be paraphrased by reference to glasses of milk and pieces of coal. A fortioriwe can’t paraphrase quantified statements about consciousness by reference to chunks of consciousness or lumps of experience. For example, you can say “All pain is worse than any pleasure” without supposing that pain and pleasure form a domain of objects: there need not be a value of a variable that ranges over a set of objects. Nor do we have to suppose a well-defined domain of selves or persons to accommodate “I am not you” or “Everyone is someone”. Logic as such is not committed to a specific type of ontology—essentially an ontology of substances. Modern logic was formulated with such an ontology in mind, forgetting that not all logical truths concern such an ontology. It follows that this formulation is inadequate to capture the full range of cases. The syntax and semantics of modern logical symbolism is too narrow to do justice to logic in general. The very idea of a variable comes under suspicion of ontological bias. It is typically explained by reference to ordinary material objects without a thought to other sorts of ontology or the lack thereof.[2] The operative notion of a domain is too restricted. Modern logic does not apply to the logic of mind, as mereological logic does not.

[1] See my “Ontology of Mind”.

[2] Another problem case is truths about fictional objects: such objects don’t exist to form a domain. And this is the very reason that many logicians don’t like quantifying over properties. If all quantification is “objectual”, how do we explain quantifying over non-objectual things?

Sent from my iPhone

Sent from my iPhone

As you say, Colin, “so many things to choose from, so many traits to cultivate and exploit!” What we want, in identifying our human essence, is something broad enough to take in the multiplicity of the radically different forms of human life—something that covers the “manual workers, artists, scientists, priests, musicians, entrepreneurs,” not to speak of the autocrats, saints, body builders, and pickup artists. What is the thing we have in common that motivates the “too-many” forms of human life? I suggest that it’s the human longing to justify, for ourselves, the self-mattering that Spinoza called conatus and that’s the organizing principle of all the instincts, baked into all of of life, biology’s answer to the entropy of physics, as Schrodinger taught us. Because we’re the creatures who can’t passively accept biology’s answer, at least in our own case—which is the only case we’re typically exercised over—we produce a cascade of behaviors that can’t be explained using the usual Darwinian mechanisms. 

The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us amazon.com

Rebecca 

In other words, the book you know so well that I’ve been working on is soon to be published.

Human Nature Philosophy

According to Aristotelian tradition, every species has a specific nature. Every natural kind has a unique defining form. Chemical substances provide the model: each chemical element has a constitutive atomic structure. Natural kinds have determinate nominal and real essences—attributes that characterize them uniquely. The human kind is no different: it has a distinctive nature that makes it the kind it is. Thus, tradition has it that the human kind is defined as Homo sapiens; as we might say, the thinking ape. Snakes have a snake nature, cows a cow nature, and humans a human nature—a distinctive mode of existence, a form, an essence. But at this point agreement ends: for many contrary suggestions have been made about the essence of human nature. Here is a list: freedom, knowledge, thought, language, imagination, perception, reason, memory, morality, awareness of mortality, creativity, neurosis, consciousness. These traits have philosophical schools attached to them and famous names: existentialism, empiricism, rationalism, romanticism, Sartre, Locke, Hume, Descartes, Kant, Plato, Proust, Heidegger, Chomsky, Wittgenstein, Freud. Each thinks it has hit on the essence of man—what man deeply and fundamentally is. I could add a couple of less prominent proposals: technology, humor, the hands, intellectual perception. Strangely, no one ever plumps for emotion, presumably because it is too close to animal nature—though human emotions are surely in a class of their own. And there is no denying that these are central salient traits of the human animal. But which is it? What fulfills the Aristotelean requirement? What are we really, centrally, essentially? What makes us uniquely us?

I say: none of the above. Not because I have another theory up my sleeve, but because there is no unique Aristotelean essence of the human animal. We just have a plurality of important traits—we don’t have anything like a chemical real essence. We are a congeries. We are all of the above, with no overarching essence, no unifying principle. We aren’t even a family resemblance kind; we are a split kind, no kind at all, a heap. We are nothing in particular. We have no species identity.[1] We are the species with no name, no defining characteristic, nothing on which to pin our identity. Aristotle is a counter-example to himself! He refutes his own doctrine, and that of his many successors. We can’t even say which trait or traits are primary and which secondary; we overlap with other species in some of our traits, while differing in others. I think intellectual vision and the hand are neglected, but I don’t think they are especially central. We are a list, a ragbag: that is our essence, our identity. Our essence is to have no name. Homo what? And we are aware of this: we know ourselves as multiple beings composed of disparate parts. We feel no species unity inside, not even the unity of Sartrean nothingness. We aren’t a radically free nothingness; we are a bunch of different things, loosely joined. I would say our major three components are perception, thought, and language—but we are all the rest too. We are what we are, plural. We have no unitary human nature.

It is an interesting question whether we are uniquely thus. There is no necessity about this: we might not be alone in our plurality. Other animals (or aliens) might be in the same case. It would still be our situation. But I rather doubt it is the general case; I suspect we are alone in lacking a unitary nature. I think there is a snake nature and a walrus nature, even a chimpanzee nature—though I hesitate to describe it. There is even a Vulcan nature (cool, rational, imperturbable). But there is no human nature, save the congeries outlined. The Aristotelean framework may apply to everything in the natural world except us. Our nature is not neat and orderly but various and messy. We are a bit of everything (like an everything bagel, complete with a hole in the center). There is so much going on inside us, pulling us in different directions. Animals in general are simpler beings with a clear animal nature: elephants are not swamped with language and imagination, freedom and abstract knowledge. They are not in doubt about what they will be when they grow up—manual workers, artists, scientists, priests, musicians, entrepreneurs. So many things to choose from, so many traits to cultivate and exploit! We are too multifaceted for our own good; our given nature doesn’t incline us in a fixed direction. Our lack of a unitary nature is the bane of our existence. We are not so much a blank slate as a crammed slate. Existentialism thought we are a nothingness; in fact, we are a too-muchness. We have no clear idea what we are, because there is no single thing we are—not free agents, not thinkers, not speakers, not knowers, not imaginers, not rememberers, not fearers of death, etc. We are all those things, but none of them in particular. In the beginning was the multiplicity (not the deed or the word or the image). How many natures do I have? Let me count the ways.[2]

[1] This isn’t to say we have no biological identity, i.e., physical identity. The human body has as much of a unitary essence as any animal body. It is the human mind that lacks such an essence—our species of mind. When people speak of human nature, they chiefly have in mind the type of mind we have. This is connected to the question of the criterion of the mental (it is hard to find one)

[2] The reason kinds of object are thought to have a unitary real essence is that they have a unitary nominal essence. In the case of animals this is largely a matter of behavior (as well as physical appearance). This works well enough for most animal species, given their uniformity of behavior; but in the case of humans, we have enormous plasticity and variety of behavior. It is hard to pin down a fixed and limited nominal essence, because of all the psychological complexity of the species (all those coexisting faculties). Thus, there is no characteristic human nominal essence consisting in a single central behavioral pattern; we have many real essences, i.e., well-defined psychological capacities. We are not just accomplished speakers but also wide-ranging knowers and tremendous imaginers and great rememberers and vociferous moralists. We are not specialized enough to have a single human nature, not confined enough. We are many things simultaneously. We could be called Homo pluribus. We are like an all-purpose toolbox.