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Experiential Metaphysics: Reality, Language and Mind As Explored

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Experiential Metaphysics: Reality, Language and Mind As Explored FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS HUMANAS Y SOCIALES Experiential Metaphysics: Reality, Language and Mind as explored through Galen Strawson and Noam Chomsky Author: Manuel Armenteros Fernandez Supervisor: Carlos Blanco Pérez Madrid December 2019 1 2 Table of Contents Acknowledgments 5 INTRODUCTION 7 Part I) The Metaphysics of Galen Strawson 13 1.0: Introduction to Galen Strawson’s Life and Works 15 1.1: Strawson’s Conception of Philosophy 19 2.0 The Fundamental Distinction 23 2.1: The Experiential and the Non-Experiential 25 2.2: Agnostic Materialism 31 2.3: Types of Monism 37 2.4: Mentalism and Idealism 43 2.5: Immaterialism and Early Panpsychism in Mental Reality 51 3.0: Introducing Real Materialism 57 3.1: The World ‘In-Itself’: Conceiving Reality 65 4.0: Consequences of Real Materialism 73 4.1: Non-Experiential Reality in Real Materialism 75 4.2: Real Materialism and the Brain 81 5.0: The Scope of Strawson’s Panpsychism 87 5.1: Ultimates in Realistic Monism 99 6.0: Strawson’s Subjects 105 6.1: The Concept of Intentionality 109 6.2: Priestley’s Supervenience Problem 117 7.0: The Composition Problem 123 7.1: Strawson’s Reply to Goff 125 3 7.2: Revelation in Consciousness and It’s Place in Nature 127 8.0: Red and ‘Red’: Strawson and The Referential Doctrine 131 8.1: Metaphysics as a Connection Between Experience, Language and the Nature of the World 143 Part II: Noam Chomsky’s Epistemic Metaphysics 147 1.0: Noam Chomsky: Life and Works 149 1.1 Chomsky’s Conception of Philosophy 153 1.2 Chomsky Among Classical Philosophers 159 2.0: Chomsky’s on Descartes 161 2.1: Problems with Metaphysics: Peirce and Kant 165 2.2: Chomsky on Galen Strawson’s Realistic Monism 171 2.3 The Structure of the Mental World 181 3.0: Chomsky’s Naturalistic Approach on Language 185 3.1 Chomsky’s Naturalism 191 3.2: Other ‘Forms’ of Naturalism 195 3.3: The Limits of Naturalism 201 3.4: Problems and Mysteries 201 3.5 Mysterianism: The Limits of Human Cognition 205 4.0: From Naturalism to Creativity 217 4.1: Tabula Rasa and the Active Mind 221 5.0: The Referential Doctrine: Background and ‘Psychic Continuity’ 225 5.1: Identity Ascribed to Objects 237 5.2: Machines “Thinking” and Other Conceptual Confusions 239 5.3 Inner and Outer: ‘Mind-World’ Metaphysics 243 6.0 Similarities and Differences Between Strawson and Chomsky 251 4 Part III: Neuroscience and Recasting Metaphysics 255 1.0 Introduction: The Brain and Reality 257 1.1 Neuroscience: The Brain and Vision 259 1.2 Language and The Brain 265 1.3 The Brain and Consciousness 269 2.0 The Prospects of Neuroscience 273 2.1 Stanislas Dehaene and Awareness 279 3.0 Critiques of Neuroscience 289 3.1 Tallis on Neuromania 293 IV CONCLUSION: Recasting Metaphysics 307 V BIBLIOGRAPHY 325 Online Sources 333 5 Acknowledgments I begin by thanking la Universidad Pontifica de Comillas for their resources, staff and orientation. Writing a thesis is not an easy task and the first few months are particularly difficult, thanks to the support of the university, including fellow students, the transition into the actual writing of the dissertation was made considerably easier than it otherwise would have been. Carlos Blanco, my supervisor throughout this four-year project was simply fantastic, he provided me with sources, ideas and feedback that have been fundamental in organizing this work. Without Carlos, this work would not have developed the way it is today. I also need to thank my family, though especially my parents, for believing in me far beyond what common sense would allow, given that philosophy is not the optimal path to proceed into professional life, but it’s certainly the most rewarding. I also need to thank Galen Strawson, Noam Chomsky, Susan Haack and Raymond Tallis for being readily available to answer every possible question I had concerning previous philosophers as well as their own work. Galen Strawson has been kind enough to read some portions of this thesis and has given me detailed feedback which has proven to be fundamental. Out of all of these however, it was Chomsky who first introduced me to the relevant books and general ideas that led to the formulation of the ideas that have developed here. It has also been Chomsky who has answered literally hundreds of emails concerning his views on difficult philosophical topics that have helped me the most in difficult situations. Without his ‘common sense’ and encouragement, this project would have never even been conceived of in any manner. How he manages his time and covers an almost infinite range of topics with expertise is difficult to comprehend or even conceive. For all these reasons (and many more), it is to him that I dedicate this project. 6 7 Introduction: This work presented here has one primary aim, and this it to provide an answer to W.V.O Quine’s question, ‘what is there’? Though the answer he gives is straightforward (‘everything’), the time has come to ask this question anew, but with a slightly different emphasis – instead of focusing mostly on the topic of ‘ontological commitment’, the topic considered here will be that of experience or consciousness and language how they relate to the world. If consciousness is something ontologically distinct from the rest of the world (which it is not, or so it will be argued), how is it possible to interpret the world at all? Do words help clarify what things belong in the world absent human beings? To that end, two contemporary philosophers, Galen Strawson and Noam Chomsky will be discussed in relation to the question of ‘what there is’. In the works of Galen Strawson, the focus will be to see what it is the unites everything in the universe: is there a single substance - a fundamental monism - that connects everything from quarks to consciousness? Although numerous options are considered, Strawson argues that everything that exists is physical (material) and this includes ‘experience’ as the one physical phenomenon people can be sure they have. As Strawson’s philosophy evolves, he goes from believing that there are two possible epistemic categories the ‘non-experiential’ (non-mental) and the ‘experiential’ (mental) to arguing that the most realistic and simplest hypothesis that exists is that there only exists experiential reality. Furthermore, he argues that there is no good reason to believe that reality has any non-experiential being or existence. This work then shifts to the topic of reference, and through Strawson’s essay Red and ‘Red’, it will be argued that reference to colour words (i.e. ‘red’, ‘yellow, ‘blue’) plays no role in the private experience of seeing a colour. This negative role of private experience in relation to the use of words can be generalized to most types of mental states. The next section focuses on the philosophy of Noam Chomsky. Although not always labeled as a philosopher, Chomsky has studied and contributed to this field, particularly in the ‘analytic’ branch of philosophy. Chomsky’s ‘epistemic-metaphysics’ are not as clearly defined as Strawson’s own ‘realistic materialism’, though by interpreting his work, something rather like Strawson’s materialism can be extracted, though Chomsky prefers to call himself a more neutral term: ‘methodological naturalism’. One difference between Strawson and Chomsky is arguably that the latter tends to argue in a slightly more forceful manner the way the mind interprets the world, thus 8 more time will be spent exploring Chomsky’s view on the nature and tendencies of human mental capacities. What could be called Chomsky’s metaphysics will be supplemented by Immanuel Kant and Charles Sanders Peirce in a manner that attempts to show why metaphysics does not find itself flourishing in contemporary philosophy. In this respect, alongside Chomsky, instead of speaking directly about the nature of the world - as metaphysics often aspires to do - when people speak about the ‘manifest image’ (the world as given in ordinary day-to-day life), the objects people encounter are crucially mind-dependent and hence also objects of epistemic consideration which precede metaphysical facts. After discussing naturalism and the way the mind shapes reality, the topic of reference will be picked up again. Contra Quine, Chomsky argues that neither words nor proper names refer (nor do they commit us to refer) to things or individuals, what refers to them are people, not words. By arguing that people refer, not words, a rich ontology can be developed based on people’s common mental architecture. For Chomsky, one of the ways people make sense of the world around them is not through reference, but through a property of the mind called “psychic continuity”, which enables objects to be recognized as they are under human cognitive lenses. While “psychic continuity’ and other mental capacities are fundamental features people use to make sense of the world, it is currently not possible to find much relevant evidence for complex mental activities in current brain science. Nevertheless, it would be incoherent and even irrational to believe that the brain plays no role in consciousness, it obviously plays an enormous role. It would be useful to see what current neuroscience can tell people about how the brain works, even if it cannot yet explain conscious experience. Accordingly, the last part of this thesis will focus on the study of the brain as seen from contemporary neuroscience. By exploring the view certain neuroscientists have about the brain, such as Adam Zeman, Gerard Edelman and Stanislas Dehaene, one can compare how the ‘scientific image’ diverges from the manifest image.
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