Introduction
The philosopher of mathematics Hao
Wang once observed that certain human inquiries reveal more about ourselves—for
example, our interests and obsessions—than about the object inquired into. Wang
made the suggestion as follows.
Einstein’s brain turned out to be no bigger than normal. What
do these findings reveal about the origin of genius? The most important
question may be why we perform these analyses at all, and what we really hope
to find. Just as Einstein captured the essence of energy and matter in his
famous equation, so we seek to capture the essence of genius. Our pursuit perhaps reveals more about
ourselves than about the nature of genius (Hao Wang, 2000, emphasis added).
In such cases, the possibility remains
open that the inquiry is pursued relentlessly even if there is no object to be
investigated. This may be characterised as ‘Wang’s Puzzle’: why do serious
inquirers spend so much effort on possibly nothing?
While
Wang posed the issue for the concept of genius, I will argue that a very similar
suggestion is likely to hold for what some philosophers and psychologists characterise
as mentalistic concepts. In
particular, I will suggest that the concept of consciousness, as commonly
envisaged, is something we need even if nothing in the world falls under it. In
subsequent essays I will show that similar remarks apply to the concepts of
belief and knowledge. In the context of contemporary philosophy, the suggested
shift in the form of inquiry arises as follows.
The contemporary
discipline of philosophy of mind, as the name suggests, may be viewed as
a conceptual investigation of the mind in terms of its ‘mentalistic’ aspects.
These mentalistic aspects include consciousness, perception, knowledge, belief,
and intentionality. Sometimes some of these concepts are examined in terms of
analysis of the linguistic contexts which appear to exhibit the need for these
concepts. For example, putative mental states like belief and knowledge are
examined via what have come to be known as ‘propositional attitudes’ like Galileo
believed that the earth is round. It is thought that a detailed
understanding of what such linguistic expressions mean in their standard
contexts of use will throw light on the character of the corresponding mental
states.
It
might seem that the suggested philosophical study of mind, especially the study
of ‘mentalistic’ language, falls under the study of what maybe called the linguistic
mind, the mind as shaped by, and represented
in, language. With the focus on language, the study of mind becomes
species-specific, as desired in the Cartesian angle on this topic (Mukherji
2000; see this volume, Essay 2).
Also, since the proposed philosophical study is focused on ordinary, daily uses
of the listed mentalistic concepts, it might appear to throw light on the
common, universal—folk psychological—aspects
of human nature.
However, such
linguistic approaches do not exhaust the philosophical study of mind. Even
though consciousness as a mental state is often studied via analysis of (first
person) reports of experience such as I am in pain, the concept is seldom
viewed as language-related. Sometimes mental concepts are studied more directly
through introspection and analysis of specific states of experience, and
reflections, including behavioural experiments, on the role of these concepts
in human thought and action. In recent decades, some of these
concepts—especially the concept of consciousness—have been vigorously studied
via experimental investigations on the brain. These approaches appear to hold
the promise of a genuine science of the mind.
Despite
these appearances, my contention is that such philosophical and scientific
studies, focused on ordinary mentalistic concepts, cannot really be viewed as a
naturalistic study of the mind. I will suggest that a biologically-anchored,
theoretical concept of mind requires the mind to be a (genuine) property of
every individual mind/brain of a species—often known as the requirement of
methodological solipsism (Fodor 1981).
In contrast, the philosophical concepts of consciousness, belief and knowledge
are primarily interpersonal social devices; these are more likely to be
normative concepts for that reason, on par with concepts used in enquiry of
values such as ethics and aesthetics, rather than in naturalistic enquiry like
physics and biology.
(To be continued)
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