Lecture 24 Biological Naturalism

About the Lecture: Biological naturalism is a philosophical theory of the . Itputs the problem of mind-body dualism and the related context of in a new perspective. It provides a broad naturalistic framework for the explanation of consciousness and other mental phenomena. The theory is based on the hypothesis that mental phenomena are caused by and realized in the brain processes.This theory is a part of a biological worldview and this worldview is based on the theory of evolution. The human life is manifested in the evolutionary process of the universe. On the other hand, the natural aspect of the theory shows that the brain, as the central part of the human organism causes mental life. The mental life is comprised of both conscious and unconscious activities of the brain. The conscious aspects include conscious and unconscious mental states along with their basic features, like , subjectivity, free will, etc. whereas the unconscious aspects of brain signify its neurophysiological functions.

Key words: Naturalism, Mind-Body Dualism, Causal Relation, Emergence, Micro and macro level.

Biological naturalism as a puts the problem of mind-body dualism and the related context of consciousness in a new perspective. It provides a broad naturalistic framework for the explanation of consciousness and other mental phenomena. The theory is based on the hypothesis that mental phenomena are caused by and realized in the brain processes. Moreover, as Searle defines his theory, “Mental phenomena are caused by the neurophysiological processes in the brain and are themselves features of the brain. To distinguish the view from many others in the field, I call it “biological naturalism”. Mental events and processes are as much a part of the biological natural history as digestion, mitosis, or enzyme secretion.”1 Let’s try to explicate the theory with its etymological meaning. The

1 John R. Searle, The Rediscovery of the Mind, The MIT Press, Massachusetts, The Bradford Book, 1993, p.1

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theory is called biological because it deals with the neurophysiology of the brain as the central part of the human organism. This theory is a part of a biological worldview and this worldview is based on the theory of evolution. The human life is manifested in the evolutionary process of the universe. On the other hand, the natural aspect of the theory shows that the brain, as the central part of the human organism causes mental life. The mental life is comprised of both conscious and unconscious activities of the brain. The conscious aspects include conscious and unconscious mental states along with their basic features, like intentionality, subjectivity, free will, etc. whereas the unconscious aspects of brain signify its neurophysiological functions. That is to say, the brain embodies a certain causal capacity to produce consciousness. And it is a part of the natural process of the brain causing consciousness and other conscious features. For instance, mitosis as a natural process in the living organism manifests the causal efficacy of a cell. That is, the continuous division of a cell helps in the very growth of a living body. And this precisely shows that there is life in the body. Similarly, the brain causing consciousness is as natural as the principle of mitosis explaining the multiple growths of cells. The growth of cells in an organism thus bears an independent function, like the brain causing consciousness. Searle’s hypothesis precisely establishes this principle, i.e., the principle of neurophysiological sufficiency. As he writes, “Whenever a mental phenomena is presented in the mind of an agentfor example, his feeling , thinking about philosophy or wishing he had a cold beer causally sufficient conditions for these phenomenon are entirely in the brain. And indeed the thesis that mental phenomena are caused by and realized in the brain has the consequence that, for any mental phenomena whatever, causally sufficient conditions are in the brain. Let us call this the principle of neurophysiological sufficiency.” 2 The neurophysiological sufficiency of the brain can be understood by taking not only one part of the brain processes into account, but also the various subsystems of the brain, that are working together to produce consciousness or any other mental phenomena. The subsystems in this regard are causally interconnected. The causal interrelationship shows only the causal sufficiency of the brain as a whole, causing and realizing mental phenomena. This is quite typical of the function of the brain insofar as other biological systems are concerned. Searle remarks, “I see the as an organ like any other organ, as a biological system. Its special features, as far as the mind is concerned, the feature in which it differs remarkably

2 J. Searle, “, Brains without Programs,” Mindwaves: Thoughts on , and Consciousness, ed. Colin Blackmore, and Susan Greenfield, Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1987, p. 229.

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from other biological organs, is its capacity to produce and sustain all of the enormous variety of our consciousness life.”3 The emergence of consciousness is a unique feature of the brain function. This feature of the brain has double functions, i.e. it both produces the mental states or conscious mental life, and at the same time it has the capacity to regenerate the conscious states. This regenerating process in the brain reveals the realization of the mental states in the brain processes. For instance, when someone is feeling hungry, he searches for food where it would be possible for him to get it. The person is not only experiencing hunger, but also that he can get relief from hunger only by eating the food he somehow manages to get. Here experiencing hunger is a neurophysiological process that causes the mind to get to form the about food. And the satisfaction that he gets after eating the food, will show the realization of his belief state. Moreover, the entire process of securing food by adopting alternative means shows the sustainable capacity of the brain. The whole, process commencing from the emergence of the mental states to its culmination in the realization states, shows that there is interdependency in the relationship between the brain and the mind. It is not just the mental and the physiological processes of the brain that are interdependent; rather the relationship is intrinsic to the very nature of the brain. The double order function of the brain has this intrinsic relationship with the mental phenomena. How does one describe this intrinsic relationship? Searle says, “The brain has an intrinsically mental level of description because in any of the given point, it is causing actual conscious events and is capable of causing further conscious events. Because the brain has both conscious and unconscious mental states we are also inclined to suppose that they are intrinsically inaccessible to consciousness.” 4 This intrinsic relationship between the neurophysiolgoical processes of the brain as a continuous source of causation of the mental states avoids mind-brain dualism. The mental and the physical do not belong to two separate realms of descriptions. Rather the neurophysiolgoical process having the capacity to generate conscious events must be understood as the higher level physical feature of the brain. There is a hierarchy in the levels of the brain function. This higher level function is accessible to the realm of mental description. In that sense, the mental is a part of the physical . The mental as the part of the physical is defined as having higher order relationship with each other. That is to say, the mind is emerging out of the higher neurological processes of the

3 Searle, John R. The Rediscovery of the Mind, The MIT Press, Massachusetts, 1992, p.227. 4Ibid., p.233.

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brain organism. Searle says, “On these definitions, consciousness is a causally emergent property of the systems. It is an emergent feature of the certain systems of the neurons in the same way as solidity and liquidity are the emergent features of system of molecules. The existence of consciousness can be explained by the causal interaction of the elements of the brain at the micro level, but consciousness cannot itself be deduced or calculated from the sheer physical structure of neurons without some additional account of causal relations between them.”5 The emergence of the conscious mental states is a causal emergence. Searle has two levels of causal explanation; they are, micro level and macro level. At the micro level we have only neurons, synapses and axons carrying some physico-chemical processes. At the macro-level we have conscious mental states. This shows the embodiment of the causal properties in the neural structure of the brain. Hence the mental phenomena at the macro level are explicated by the causal function of the brain processes at the micro level. The macro level only shows the overall system functions of the neutral system. That is, in the case of human beings, we can only know what the beliefs, desires and intentional states are at the macro level. They are all called conscious states. Consciousness arises because of the causal properties of the neural configuration of the brain. The human being as an organism has a systemic structure. The causal properties of the sub-structural parts together get manifested in a certain order. Thus consciousness as a systemic feature is manifested in the conscious behaviour of the human beings. So is involved in both the macro and micro levels of function. To give an analogy, the solidity of the table at the level of lattice can be defined through the causal structure of the molecules at the level of lattice structure. In the micro level we have only molecules, not the solidity. Solidity of an object is totally a systemic feature, which emerges out of the configuration of different molecules. Thus solidity of a table has a macro level description. To quote Searle, “In fact, such a combination of relation is very common in nature: so solidity of the table I am working on and the elasticity and puncture resistance of my car are both examples of causal properties that are themselves caused by and realized in the underlying microstructure. To generalize this point we might say that two phenomena can be related by both causation and realization provided that they are so at different levels of description.”6 Similarly, there is

5Ibid., p.112. 6 Searle, Intentionality: An Essay in the , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1983, p.266. (Henceforth, Intentionality) Searle further clarifies the macro and micro relationship with reference to the hypothesis that mental is

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a cause and effect relationship between the micro level brain processes and macro level conscious mental life. This conscious mental life as an effect of the neural processes of the brain is understood as a macro level or a higher level feature. The needs to be further explained in Searle’s biological naturalism. Searle’s interpretation of the notion of emergence has a different meaning. Though consciousness, including all the mental life, emerges from the micro order function of the brain processes, it cannot be defined by the causal powers of the neurophysiolgoical structure of the brain. This is because the causal property of the brain is different from the causal feature of the consciousness. As he says, "If consciousness is emergent2, then consciousness could cause things that would not be explained by the causal behaviour of the neurons. The naïve here is that consciousness gets squirted out by the behaviour of the neurons of the brain, but once it has been squirted out, it then has a life of its own."7 Searle makes the

distinction between emergent1 and emergent2. In the case of emergent1, if C is caused by the causal properties of B then C can be further reduced, to or can be explained by the properties

of B. On the other hand, emergent2 signifies that C may be caused by the properties of B but C cannot then be reduced to B again. It is because the properties of C logically differ from the properties of B. Thus consciousness being an emergent feature of the brain's neurological processes falls in the category of the emergent2 and not in the emergent1. And to say that consciousness has its own life, is to say that it has its own functional capacities. That is different from the functional capacity of the neurons firing in the different circuits of the brains, or their chemical processes within the neural structure itself. The basic functional features that consciousness embodies are subjectivity, intentionality, free will, mental causation, etc. These features are caused by neurophysiolgoical process of the brain whereas they don't carry any physical or chemical properties in them. Moreover, they all constitute the basic feature of the mental life. So the mental states and processes are not identical with the physical states and processes. As the neurophysiolgoical properties of the brain are intrinsic to the brain organism, similarly, the mental features are intrinsic to consciousness. Biological naturalism does not allow any sort of reduction from mind to brain. According to this theory the mental states are not the same as the brain states. Of course, there is a duality involved in the of reality. It is because the physical is causing the mental reality. The ontological problem must be resolved by the micro level and macro

caused by the brain process and realized in the brain processes in his Minds, Brains and Science, The Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1984, 21. (Henceforth, MBS) 7 Searle, RDM., p.112.

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level descriptions. What is specific about the irreducibility of consciousness? For Searle, "the point of argument is ontological not epistemic."8 Philosophers who have tried to reduce the mental to the physical have emphasized the epistemic aspects of the reality. For them, it is the epistemic aspect that can explain the objectivity of the mental states. The objectivity of knowledge must be grounded in the third-person point of view. In this connection, the objectivity of various features of conscious mental states can be determined by studying the neurophysiolgoical processes of the brain. And this is possible only through scientific observation. On the other hand, the person's feeling and sensations cannot be determined by the third persons' point of view. That is because when a person is having a good feeling he is experiencing joy at that moment. The objectivity of that person’s joy can only be felt by the person himself who is experiencing it. No doubt it embodies certain neurological process but what is important to note for defining the person's conscious feeling is his subjective experience. This is purely a macro level description of the mental life. The moment we try to reduce the subjective conscious experience of sensation or feeling to the neurological processes of the brain, we will fall into the trap of ontological reductionism. Thus he says, "The first person feeling is important. This fact has obvious epistemic consequence: My knowledge that I am in pain has a different sort of basis than my knowledge that you are in pain. But the antireductionistic point of the argument is ontological and not epistemic."9 Searle's antireductionism tries to establish the notion that subjectivity or first person experience of the mental phenomena is grounded in the of brain processes. The ontology must be correlated with consciousness, because subjectivity of mental states is basically related with the conscious states and feelings of the mental life. The above notion of Searle's antireductionism entails a dualism. Dualism is about consciousness along with other co-features and the neurophysiolgoical processes of the brain. However, Searle strongly opposes the Cartesian conception of dualism as well as the reductionism advocated by the materialistic philosophers. According to Searle, dualism and provide an incoherent theory of mind. Dualism of Cartesian variety divides the reality into two substantial categories, that is, mind and the matter are considered as independent substances. On the other hand, materialism tries to reduce the whole of the mental life into the physical processes of the brain. Searle believes that " …if you take those categories seriouslythe categories of mental and physical, mind and body as a consistent

8Ibid., p.117. 9Ibid., p.118.

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dualist, you will eventually be forced to materialism. Materialism is thus in a sense the finest flower of dualism,…" 10 Cartesianism no doubt takes the categories seriously, i.e., the explanation of the mental and the physical belong to two separate categories. However, materialism claims that the reality of the mental lies in the physical states of the brain organism. Then the question arises: what sort of dualism is entailed by Searle's theory of biological naturalism? The antireductionistic approach of biological naturalism advocates the notion of conceptual dualism. As Searle proposes, "It is customary to think of dualism coming in two flavours, substantial dualism and ; but to those I want to add a third, which I call "conceptual dualism". This view consists in taking the dualistic very seriously, that is, it consists in the view that in some important sense "physical" implies "nonmental" and "mental" implies "nonphysical". Both traditional dualism and materialism presupposes conceptualism, so defend."11 Conceptual dualism does not reject the ontology of the mental and the physical. Rather it tries to understand the reality of both the phenomena by giving a naïve explanation of the mental and the physical. The mental is the product of the higher order physical processes of the brain organism. The higher order neurophyisioloigcal processes of the brain are not completely characterized as mere physical body. The hierarchy of different levels has to be understood through their subtle functions. These subtle functions of the brain cause consciousness and other mental phenomena show the relationship between the mental and the physical. That is, at a particular state of neurophysiological processes of the brain it is difficult to determine the very nature of the mental and the physical. Therefore, conceptual dualism can only talk about interrelationship between the mind and the brain not by separating them but by relating them together. Before going to Searle's rejection of the Cartesian dualism and materialism, I would like to discuss some of the philosophical questions related to dualism and materialism.

10Ibid., p.26. 11Ibid.

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