Excerpt from: Approaches to the Self: Interplay Between the Subjective and the Objective J.S.R.L. Narayana Moorty, 2022
“Phenomenological Deconstruction (or Dissolution) of the Mind-Body Problem”
Descartes postulated the mind (actually my mind) as a thinking substance from the fact that I think. I know for sure that I think, therefore, I must exist as a thinking substance, i.e., the mind, of which my thoughts are attributes. He jumped to the idea of the material object “out there” on the basis of his clear and distinct ideas (about material objects) and on the basis of his belief that God wouldn’t deceive him. Once the existence of these two substances – mind and matter -- is established 1 then it would become a problem for Descartes as to how these diametrically opposed substances could be related, as they seem to in our day-to-day experience, as for instance, when my foot strikes a chair’s leg (an occurrence in the physical world), I feel the hurt (a mental phenomenon), and when I want to raise my arm (a thought, as it were), lo and behold, it goes up (a physical phenomenon). It’s interesting that the mind-body problem never figured either in Buddhist philosophies or Hindu philosophies. In them there is no clear opposition between the mind and the body. The Subjective and Objective Approaches: Problems of philosophy, especially in the philosophy of mind, have been approached without always distinguishing between these two approaches. Let’s first consider what these approaches are: The Objective Approach: By looking at the world objectively, I investigate material things, living things and human beings. My investigations utilize observations, scientific instruments such as telescopes, microscopes and voltmeters, experiments, hypothesizing and verification, and theorization upon observed facts, which when subjected to analyses and 1 I am not going into a detailed discussion of Descartes’ ideas of substance and attribute and or into his notions of clear and distinct ideas – those do not, for my purposes, matter 1
deductions could yield to further observable, verifiable or falsifiable facts. Through this sort of investigation, I could undertake the study of the mind and sciences such as psychology that have yielded philosophical theories such as physicalism, behaviorism or epiphenomenalism and so on, all these being attempts to understand and explain not only human behavior but consciousness and mental phenomena such as thinking, feeling and willing. Philosophers, ever since Plato or the Upanishadic seers, have not been entirely satisfied with this approach. Their investigations into the human mind have utilized or at least theorized upon phenomena known primarily through introspection or internal observation, which could be characterized as the subjective approach. However, their pronouncements were not limited to reporting what they observed about themselves personally, but they applied them to human beings in general, as though their statements were about something ‘objective’.Contemporary philosophers take the help of brain neurophysiology and neuroscience discoveries to theorize not only about mind-body relationship, but also about mental phenomena in general, consciousness and the self. Unfortunately, all the theories that they come up with fall short of their goal, because consciousness and self have subjective aspects which cannot be captured by any philosophical theory based on the objective approach. For example, John Searle’s theory of consciousness as caused by the brain does in no way capture the subjective aspect of consciousness, nor does Daniel Dennett’s theory that the self is the ‘gravitational pull’ of mental phenomena. The Subjective Approach: This is not generally well regarded by scientists as they tend to take more or less an empirical approach in their investigation. The mind-body problem in my view is generated through the confusion between the subjective and objective points of view of the human person. Looked at objectively, the human being is nothing but a biological being in the universe, with life, a nervous system, and capable of superior functions such as reasoning and thinking enabled through his capacity for manipulating symbols and language. Subjectively speaking, the same person or human being is a mind with a self, and the world from that point of view is constituted by the mental functions one possesses, given the basis of impressions of what is outside of him. From either point of view, there wouldn’t be strictly speaking a mind-body problem. Looked at objectively, the mind-body problem would be reduced to behaviorism, different varieties of materialism, and consciousness; mind and the self are explained as emergents of the brain in the process of biological evolution. Looked at subjectively, there wouldn’t be a mind-body problem either. The so-called mental phenomena being caused by physical objects, or effects in the physical world created by mental volition and so on is explained by saying there are causes and effects of different sorts and they can affect each other. There is no opposition between them, only difference. Hitting a stone and feeling pain are both phenomena of my world where one can cause the other. In other words, the mind-body problem is insurmountable only in the ‘objective view’, in which mind and matter have diametrically opposite properties. In the ‘subjective’ or ‘intentional’ world that I experience, both mental and physical events are relatable to each other, although
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they are different events, much like a computer algorithm can cause events in the realm of things, like a computer shutting itself off, or closing a garage door and so forth. My solution below may appear phenomenological, or it may appear to be subjective. But it is not purely subjective; it is “inter-subjective,” as something of the sort can be repeated by other people: In the basic levels of experience, there is neither body nor mind: there are just images and sounds which can be interpreted2 as thoughts and things. To understand this, assume for a moment you are nothing but a baby. How does the world appear? Lights, shadows and movements -- not all that different from how an animal would look at the world. The ability to discriminate between these stimuli and organize them as objects, attributing to them, colors, shapes and solidity – all those are later additions. Of course, we don’t know where these abilities come from. If, with the scientists we say that the brain does all the work with its neurons, nerve impulses, synapses and all that, then the problem is that we don’t really know how exactly the brain does it. We know changes in these processes and we know the results. But we don’t quite know the connections between the two. The organization is what we impose on the world we perceive. 3 It has its grammar4 and syntax as well rules of logic (e.g. Kant’s categories). It’s like Kant’s synthesizing and includes arranging all external stimuli in terms of space and time, and the internal experiences in terms of time alone by means of such categories. Kant would call these categories a priori, but I understand them as a way our past imposes our previous experiences on the present experiences.5 The point is that the world is something constituted by us. 6 I don’t know ‘myself’ either, except through such a constitution. As for instance, I put together various experiences, sensations, impressions, ideas, thoughts or feelings and attribute a subject to them, i.e. my self: I see, I feel, I think all these things. In other words, when I view the world, I have to synthesize the things in the world from my impressions of them.7 Or it is much simpler to say that I see things in the world as things, but 2 See above the discussion of intentionality. 3 See below, p. 157 for a discussion of ‘synthesis’, ‘organization’ and ‘constitution.’ 4 For example, the grammar of ‘substanceattribute’, ‘causeeffect’, ‘spatial and temporal relationships’, and so on. 5 When we are taught names of things, and the same name is applied to more than one thing, then it’s only a natural process of imposing a previous experience of a thing to the present, turning the word (or sound) into a concept, which is applicable to classes of things. Classification, like many other mental abilities, is innate. Tokens like sounds or images are the vehicles for concepts, but become concepts through application. 6 I am not implying that this is done consciously or deliberately. It’s automatic. More like Kant’s transcendental synthesis. 7 We normally think we see the world of objects as the world of objects, and not just that we have impressions of it. To get to the impressions, we only need to abstract from the way we see the world normally, imagining ourselves to be a baby and then we can see how we impose or rather superimpose our past knowledge or experience on the given. That is what I 3
the basis for my seeing is my impressions of them. We could also call this intentionality, but the idea of intentionality extends not to just to the world of objects, but to myself, myself as a mind thinking, feeling and experiencing. The thoughts and impressions, once they are experienced as such, also present the subject-object dichotomy; along with the opposition, we not only have the idea that we are experiencing the world, but also that “we (as the subject self)” are experiencing the world.8 A parallel synthesis or organization is made on the object side of the thoughts and impressions: then we have the material objects. From there it’s only one more step to the further abstraction of “matter”. Matter, of course, would have extensible properties. There is no inherent opposition between the feelings or experiences, thoughts, or ideas I go through and the sensations arising from the ‘outside world’. The distinction we normally make is that of my personal feelings and experiences, and what I experience as the sources or causes for them, which one could say are ‘objective’, in the realm of the ‘world’. It is this that seems to be the source or basis of the mind-body division. If we assume that both the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ world are results of organization, the mind-body problem takes a different shape. The question now is how does a ‘rock’ which seems to be solid and material ‘out there’ cause the ‘pain’ experience which is ‘mental’? The mindbody problem, in my opinion, boils down to this question. Here two impressions follow one another repeatedly (in the Humean fashion), and we set correlations or causation between them: for example, “wanting to raise my hand causes it rise” or “hitting a stone causes the pain sensation or feeling”. There is nothing more to causation than that. We don’t need to establish any further relationship than this correlation: just as when you probe an area in my brain with an electrode in a laboratory, I get the sensation of being pricked, or I see an image or I have a dream. Unless we establish by abstraction other entities such as a specific area of the brain as a material thing and my pain sensation as a mental thing and ask how these are related, there is no problem of relationship between mind and body. The question here really how two such disparate experiences seem to cause one another? For sure they are different. But unless we assume that there is ontologically a fundamental opposition between the mental and physical, there shouldn’t be a problem. Descartes’ designation of these is that the essential quality of one is extension and of the other is thought, and that these attributes are diametrically opposite. But let’s look at the matter a bit more closely: what I have is a pain experience and also the experience of what I believe is a rock. If the rock is something I constitute from my experiences of touch such as hardness, a rough shape and solidity, then the problem is how something which is so seemingly indurate and brute causes pain. Much like the hardened heart of a person whom I love and who doesn’t respond to my overtures, this rock does not yield! Both the rock and the lover cause pain! Still there is another basic difference: the rock is an ‘object’; it’s on the object-side of my experience, while the pain is my experience, or the subject-side of my experience, i.e. it’s mean here by ‘synthesizing.’ 8 Berkeley’s notion of the self (as based on a “notion”) is probably based on such an experience. 4
something that I experience. Rocks don’t have pains, although my lover might, for the sheer reason that a rock doesn’t have a body like I do. Unless I somehow think that there is some fundamental opposition between me as subject and my body as an object, there is no obstacle to think that rocks can cause pain much as other bodies (or whom I regard as persons) can cause pain. By virtue of the nervous system I have I feel the pain. Rocks don’t have the nervous system. So where exactly is the problem, then? You say that you can’t simply assume that the other body is a person; just the same way I can’t simply assume I’m simply not my body. The connection between me and my body (as I experience it) is so intimate that we do identify ourselves with our bodies in more contexts than we are aware of. My body and my mind I don't consider as two separate things: when I my body feels the pain, I feel the pain.9 Am I not, then, reduced to a Berkeley sort of idealist position here? Notice, Berkeley had the problem of answering how there can be a tree, say in wilderness, when I am not looking at it, or when no one is looking at it. Actually, I don’t know that it is there, but I extrapolate. And I could very well be deceived, although normally the deception may not occur. Of course, I retract my assumption if I am proven mistaken. An objection here would then be: I may be synthesizing objects out of my impressions (and matter out of material objects), but we know they are not mere impositions of objectivity, for we believe (and other people believe too) that they exist independent of our impressions. Then, what is it to know their independent existence? If you accept my thesis, nothing would count as knowing. Ontologically, you are left with nothing but impressions and awareness of them; everything else is a construction or constitution out of them 10. Does it mean that all science is a concoction and has no validity? What about all the results of science and its technology? We do believe in them, don’t we? The answer to this lies simply in the idea that ‘objectivity’ is itself a property of what is constituted as an object in my experience, and to ask questions about what’s beyond experience is to look for objectivity ‘outside’ of this, as if that would make much sense. * * * The notions of ‘constituting’, ‘synthesizing’ or ‘organizing’ needs to be made clear. Here are some examples: When I hear sounds coming from another person, by being in the intentional mode, I understand them as speech coming from him as a person. The same movement of becoming intentionally engaged also creates me as a person. I don’t just make sounds: through my talk, I make sense to myself and also hopefully to the other person. Thus there is communication and conveying of information and experiences,. Once I am in the dialogue, I have no less evidence to conclude that the other person is a person than to conclude that I, who am making these sounds, supposedly coming from my 9 See the next chapter on Other Persons. 10 To repeat, we don’t believe that we only see impressions or sensation. We actually believe we things ‘out there’, but the impressions are our basis for believing so. And part of the belief is that things are ‘out there’, not just that I believe that they are. 5
consciousness and body, am a person. In other words, the attribution of meaning is all implied in the intentional movements. It establishes me and other people as well as the world as independent entities. With such constitution, there are no metaphysical problems. Yet we really don’t know that there are other people; nor do we know that we exist either, nor that the world exists. But believe we know until something casts doubt on our belief or proves we are mistaken. That’s essentially what my solution to (or, rather, the dissolution of) the mind-body problem is. * * * This thesis doesn’t seem all that much different from Vijnanavada of Buddhism which maintains that the subject-object duality is created out of consciousness. My thesis is similar to Vijnanavada, except that in my thesis the subject and object are not just that; many of the objects have material properties, while my thoughts have mental properties. The mind-body problem arises because of taking each side as objective, and as material or psychological. Thus my thesis offers a solution to the mind-body problem. My interest is to show how the mind-body problem is generated from our experience; it doesn’t necessarily imply that other people don’t generate the mind-body problem from their experience. I am not necessarily arguing for a solipsistic position, namely, that all I know is nothing but my own sensations and impressions. What I am saying is more like phenomenalism, or rather like a phenomenology which shows how epistemological problems are constructed. It’s more like Kant’s transcendental argument (deduction) which asks what must be the case in order for us to experience such and such. I am asking, in the lines of Kant, what must be the case in our experience for the mindbody problem to be generated. I am showing the presuppositions on which the problem is based. I am not saying that I have any privileged access to these sensations or impressions. Rather, I am saying that from my point of view the public is constituted from the private; my mind is constituted from the sensations or awareness or impressions or what-have-you. Then how is my solution different from that of Hume? Hume assumed that there was a problem in the first place and he offered his solution to that. But then his thinking ended in skepticism with regard to knowledge. My solution, whatever it is, must allow for some sort of relativistic knowledge without landing in skepticism. How is it possible? The idea behind constitution or synthesis is just to say that if we go into our experience below the level of objects, to impressions, and the awareness which is even prior to them, there need not be a mind-body problem. We are not saying, like Berkeley, that we have a notion of the self, or, like Hume, that the self is a bundle of impressions without a core. We are saying that the self is the result of a synthesis11, much like the material object is.12 11 I am not implying that these processes are done by ‘somebody’. They are just layers of ‘puttogethers’ without there necessarily being someone who puts them together. 12 The idea of synthesis may be akin to ‘superimposition’ (adhyasa) in Advaita, which presupposes a prior knowledge of the object somewhere else to superimpose on the impressions.
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One of the things that are the result of synthesizing is imposition of permanence (or substantiality) to particular, fleeting sensations, impressions or images. By adding time, or rather freezing in time, a third dimension and solidity is added to material objects as well as substantiality to the self. Just as solidity is assigned to objects, the status of a state is assigned to our experiences, and thus they are placed in time. How is this done? It seems that this occurs as our memory and past come to bear upon the present, although as an automatic process. First, an image or “sound” becomes a thought when it captures my attention and past experience recognizes it. Similarly, an impression (of an object) is viewed as an object. Second, when in perception an object is recognized as such, i.e., as an object, it too is like an object of thought with its subject pole. Then I have the further awareness that “I” am seeing the object. Third, I have yet another awareness that the object exists out there, independent of me. No further abstraction is needed here. The question of whether the object exists truly out there as I perceive it is a separate question and is answered, in cases of doubt, by appeal to further impressions of the same object at a later time or impressions of other objects which I take to be more reliable, and so on. A similar approach can be made to answer whether the object I perceive is truly an object out there or it is merely my hallucination or an illusion. Fourth, when I perceive several of these objects, I can then abstract the idea of a material object or thing as such13, as opposed to my thought of it or my perception of it. At the same time, I have the idea that I am thinking these thoughts. I have the idea that I am behind all my thoughts and perceptions, much like matter is behind all material objects. Fifth, then I start thinking about the relationship between my perception of the object and the object as such; or between my thought and the object (correspondence); or the relationship between my perceptions and thoughts and myself, as well as my relationship between my body and my thoughts, the body itself being also a material thing, although a lived, biological being (I seem to be within it, having it), and so on. Sixth, I think about how I feel what happens to my body, and how I am able to move my body according to my thoughts and feelings. What is the relationship between my thought and my body, then, except that from my point of view they are both something which I perceive, and that there seems to be a correlation between them? Mind-Body Relationship Revisited: The problem of mind-body relationship may still appear in my perceived world. For myself there is no problem, because the thoughts or sensations or feelings as well as the body are mine. I am not two separate things to be somehow related. There are two sets of things happening in me or to me, if you wish. There is only a succession, as far as I am concerned. No other relationship needs to exist, because they are both mine. The question of my being two separate entities called body and mind doesn’t arise except in abstraction. I move my 13 Of course, the terms ‘material object’, ‘thing’ etc. are learned as part of our language acquisition. 7
arm and once I have an abstract notion of the body, then the same event is interpreted as the arm of my body moving, as if I were something apart from my body. Same goes with my thoughts. Although they are not separate from me, I can feel that they are separate from me. The problem of the relationship comes into question when one item of the pair, body and mind, doesn’t go along with the other: as for instance: when I want to stop doing something, and my body, against my will, keeps doing it or when my mind is willing and my body is not, or when something happens to my mind (I lose awareness like in anesthesia) and my body seems to function on its own (for other people) without my awareness. Then a clear separation is made between my mind and my body and I ask the question of how these two are related. But the proper expression here, in order to avoid the mind-body problem, is that I am willing (or I like to do something), but I cannot do it, or my body doesn’t obey or some such thing. Notice that even here I talk as if I am two separate things, I and my body, as if my body is separate from me. Or, we wonder about how thought, which is not material (not extended in space) can cause changes in the body (which is extended), such as when I will to move my arm, I can do so. There is no mystery about this except that we have started with the spurious distinction of the extended and non-extended. From the subjective point of view, thought as well as parts of my body are all parts of my world of ‘intention’, in which causation exists as succession of events. Only when I vacillate between the two points of view, i.e. a) the subjective point of view, assuming that thought, which I can observe in myself, is non-extended, and b) the objective point of view, is that the body, which I can see and measure, especially in other people, as extended, the dichotomy between mind and matter arises. From the purely subjective point of view, my body is felt, and is neither extended nor non-extended. I may use a ruler to measure my arms’ length, but then I am switching to the objective point of view. Similarly, it may be said that when I go crazy, my mind is gone. 14 But if I am not there, my mind cannot be mine anymore, because nothing is mine without me being there. Others may say it is mine, but I can’t. In fact, there may be a wide array of images, feelings or thoughts going on, but there is no putting them together nor is there is an constitution of myself as a person or a mind. (I realize that there are all sorts of variations of psychoneuroses and 14 Susan’s comment: But people with mental illness do have an abstraction of themselves as a person, even if they use that phrase. … As you point out there are many forms of mental illness, but self consciousness is I would say most often there. Severe psychosis can assume a new "abstraction" with a new identity, e.g. in the case of grandiosity or even paranoia, split identity, multiple identity (very rare), or also a sense of intrusion like hearing voices, or thought intrusion (someone is putting thoughts in my head). Assuming that there is no mind/body split, perhaps the problem is thinking of a mind as a unit, rather than something that is multi-layered, so that the malfunctioning "component" is perceived by the "self". … In severe, untreated schizophrenia, you can have "word salad" where words cannot string together to have a coherent thought -- in which case you don't know whether they have selfconsciousness or not; with language breakdown, perhaps not. 8
psychoses, but I think they could all be dealt with in a similar fashion.) Much of what we describe as self-consciousness is probably missing in these cases. Conclusion: The mind-body problem is generated not as much out of a misuse of language, but out of certain natural assumptions and abstractions I make from my immediate experience. Once, these assumptions are questioned, there should be no problem remaining. We can also say the problem results from confusing the first and third person points of view, i.e., the subjective and objective points of view. If we stick to the first-person point of view, we will end up with some such answer as mine. If we stick to the third person point of view, you tend to be materialist, behaviorist or logical behaviorist. It’s the confusion between the two points of view or the attempt to reconcile the two points of view that generates the seemingly insurmountable problem of mind-body relationship. * * * To sum up: I think the mind-body problem is based on a false dichotomy between mind and body. We never perceive ourselves as two, although we know we have our minds and our bodies. We are aware of our mental contents as well as features of our bodies, and more often than not, we connect them one way or another. We do see sometimes a conflict between the two, such as in the case of “the mind is willing, but the flesh is weak.” *
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