Emergentism: Does the mind emerge from the brain?

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In this video, I explore the idea of emergentism as exposited by John Searle.

NOTES

  1. Four assumptions are made in the mind-body problem that must be jettisoned
    1. Assumption: ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ name mutually exclusive ontological categories
      1. Descartes: physical = matter = spatially extended
        • O1: excludes things modern physics accepts as matter
      2. Searle: physical  =
        1. located in space and time
        2. causally explainable by microphysics
        3. function causally
      3. On Searle's definition, there is no reason mental cannot be physical
    2. Assumption: there is only one kind of reduction
      1. ontological reduction: x is ontologically reducible to y = x is real, but is identical to some more fundamental entity, y
      2. causal reduction: x is weakly/causally reducible to y = x is not identical to y, but all of the intrinsic facts about x are explained by (or caused by) facts about y
      3. emergent properties/system-level functions = novel properties of a system that the parts lack which emerge when the system is properly organized
    3. Assumption: causation is always a relation between discrete events ordered in time, where cause precedes effect
      1. discrete causation = occurs between two discreet objects and is ordered in time where cause precedes effect
      2. nondiscrete causation = emergent properties causing and being caused by parts in an arrangement
        1. bottom-up = parts cause the emergent property
        2. top-down = emergent property affects something about the parts
    4. Assumption: identity is unproblematic; everything is identical with itself and nothing else; paradigms of identity are object identities and identities of composition
      1. object identity = two objects are actually just the same one object
      2. identity of composition = a thing is identical to the parts that compose it
      3. Emergent things can be totally dependent on their parts without being identical to them
  2. biological naturalism = sensations and thoughts are system-level features of neurophysiological processes in the CNS
  3. So, sensations and thoughts are causally reducible to and emergent from neurophysiological processes in the CNS
  • C1: frees naturalist from problems of reduction, supervenience, or elimination of psychological phenomena that fly in the face of common experience
  • O1: ad hoc
    • R1: the same emergent properties are found in all kinds of natural systems
  1. Conscious states match Searle’s criteria for physicality
    1. They are located in space and time (i.e., the brain)
    2. They are causally explainable by microphysics (i.e., reducible to neurophysiological processes)
    3. They have physical effects (i.e., downward causation on the brain)
  2. Conscious states are not strictly identical to neurophysiological bases, but all their powers are extensions of the latter, so they are not independent things
  3. So, this is only a pseudo-problem
  4. The only questions left are how the brain does this, which is the job of neuroscience
  • O1: the problem of psycho-physical emergence
    • When any other property of an object emerges, it makes sense how it does so
      • Structural emergence
        • The particles that make up a tire aren't round, but when they come together the property of roundness emerges
        • However, when you look at the laws of nature and the particles, you can understand why the particles cause roundness to emerge
          • You can see how they necessitate it
      • Quantitative emergence
        • Consider a kid’s choir, where each kid is singing softly, but the whole choir is very loud. Has this brought something into reality?
        • Is this mysterious at all?
        • What causes the new property?
    • The emergence of consciousness from brain matter does not make sense
      • We have made tremendous progress in neuroscience
      • By now, we should have some semblance of an idea, but it's not even close
    • The emergence of consciousness from brain matter isn't even intelligible
      • Galen Strawson
      • What makes emergence intelligible is this
      • Take the thing that emerges and that which it emerges from
      • You should be able to characterize them both--describe them both--using conceptually homogeneous concepts
        • Shape of the atoms and shape of the tire
        • Motion of the atoms and motion of the tire
      • No set of conceptually homogeneous concepts could capture both the experiential and the non-experiential
        • Shape of the brain and…what? Shape of consciousness?
        • Electrons in motion and first person experience of red?
    • O1: brute emergence
      • R1: We can't say "It just does"
        • We want to say one thing emerges from another,
        • There must be something about the thing it emerges from which is sufficient for the thing to emerge
        • But this is something would be our explanation that we’re lacking

Further Reading

Mind, Matter, and Nature: A Thomistic Proposal for the Philosophy of Mind" by James Madden

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