Abstract
Stephen Morse seems to have adopted a controversial position regarding the mindbody relationship: John Searle’s non-reductivism, which claims that conscious mental states are causal yet not reducible to their underlying brain states. Searle’s position has been roundly criticized, with some arguing the theory taken as a whole is incoherent. In this paper I review these criticisms and add my own, concluding that Searle’s position is indeed contradictory, both internally and with regard to Morse's other views. Thus I argue that Morse ought to abandon Searle’s non-reductive theory. Instead, I claim Morse ought to adopt a non-eliminative reductive account that can more easily support his realism about folk psychological states, and the existence of causally effective mental states in a purely physical world.
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Notes
Morse says “I am a thorough-going, matter-up materialist who believes that all mental and behavioral activity is the causal product of lawful physical events in the brain.” Morse (2006), p. 398.
Morse says “I am a compatibilist who believes that moral and criminal responsibility are compatible with determinism or universal causation.” Ibid., p. 398.
For Morse, “…folk psychology is alive and well.” Morse (2008), p. 4.
Morse quotes Searle on this issue, claiming that “When we say we are following rules, we are accepting the notion of mental causation and the attendant notions of rationality and existence of norms….”. Ibid., p. 5.
Morse says “I am a non-reductive materialist who believes, roughly, with John Searle and many others, that conscious mental states are real, that they are caused by lower level biological processes in the brain, that conscious states are realized in the brain—the mind-brain—but not at the level of neurons, and that conscious states can be causally efficacious.” Ibid., p. 5.
For example, just because at one time people didn’t know that H20 was identical with water, or the evening star was identical with the morning star, this is no reason to assume an ontological gap between H20 and water, or the evening and the morning star. Some, including Searle, have argued that because a scientific description will necessarily leave out the phenomenal feel of a mental state, this case is different than the water H2O example, because science can indeed describe all the properties of H20. However, the requirement that one have special epistemic access to phenomenal properties—by being the holder of the state that instantiates the properties—doesn’t necessarily indicate an ontological gap. Ontological identity theory is compatible with the idea the “greeness” is identical to the what-it-is-like to undergo a particular neural pattern of activation in response to the stimulus of the color green.
Note that it doesn’t matter to my argument what the nature of this content is: it can be conceptual, or non-conceptual, etc.
Morse thinks consciousness is important to criminal responsibility in particular: “Criminal law typically defines an act as an intentional bodily movement performed by an agent whose consciousness is reasonably intact. Mental states have their ordinary language, common-sense meanings. If the agent does not act at all because the bodily movement was not intentional or the agent’s consciousness was substantially compromised, the agent is not prima facie responsible.” Morse (2006), p. 400.
I won’t go into detail regarding the problems with over-determination here because Stephen has indicated to me he does not support the idea. Very few philosophers support the view because it is at best “extremely odd to think that each and every bit of action we perform is over-determined in virtue of having two distinct sufficient causes” (Kim 1993). For a fun review of the various objections to over-determination, see Sider (2003).
I owe this formulation of the problem to my colleague Ty Fagan.
I owe the framing of this thought to an anonymous reviewer for this journal.
I owe this thought to an anonymous reviewer for this journal.
I owe this formulation of the thought to an anonymous reviewer for this journal…it should be obvious that he/she was a very helpful reviewer.
Mechanistic descriptions are often thought to be both physical and deterministic descriptions. I’m not going to get into the free will debate here, because I don’t have the space, and also because Morse is a compatibilist. Morse (2006, 2008, 2012). Thus a reductive theory of the mind does not run counter to his theory of free action.
For a detailed account of the folk structure of criminal responsibility, and a defense of this structure in light of scientific psychology, see Sifferd (2006).
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Acknowledgments
The author is grateful to Stephen Morse, Michael Moore, and other attendees of a conference on Stephen’s work at the European University Institute in Florence for their comments on an early draft of this paper. Tyler Fagan and two anonymous reviewers for this journal provided valuable feedback on the penultimate draft.
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Sifferd, K.L. What does It Mean to be a Mechanism? Stephen Morse, Non-reductivism, and Mental Causation. Criminal Law, Philosophy 11, 143–159 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-014-9329-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11572-014-9329-y