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Two solutions to the neural discernment problem

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Abstract

Interactionists hold that minds are non-physical objects that interact with brains. The neural discernment problem for interactionism is (roughly) that of explaining how non-physical minds produce behavior and cognition by exercising different causal powers over physiologically similar neurons. This paper sharpens the neural discernment problem and proposes two interactionist models of mind-brain interaction that solve it. One model avoids overdetermination while the other respects the causal closure of the physical domain.

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Notes

  1. Contemporary defenders of interactionism include Collins (2011), Foster (1991), Hart (1988), Harrison (2016), Lycan (2013), Popper and Eccles (1977), Plantinga (2007, 2012), Swinburne (2013), and Unger (2007: Chs. 5 and 7); cf. Chalmers (2010: Ch. 5 fn36, 127–130).

  2. This objection traces to Elisabeth of Bohemia in her (1643) correspondence with Descartes.

  3. E.g., see Kim (2005: 74) and Wong (2007: 171); cf. Bennett (2007: 319–320) and Lycan (2009: 557–558, 2013: 537).

  4. The pairing problem was introduced by Foster (1968). It was subsequently developed by Foster (1991), Kim (2005, 2011), Saad (2018a), Shiller (2018), and Sosa (1984); cf. Kim (1973).

  5. See Audi (2011), Bailey et al. (2011), Bennett (2007: 322), Jehle (2006), Saad (2017), Plantinga (2007: 130–133), Unger (2007: Ch. 5), and Wong (2007).

  6. Cf. Fodor (1989: 59).

  7. The exclusion problem is variously formulated—e.g., see Bennett (2003, 2008), Kim (1989, 2005), Malcolm (1968), and Papineau (2002). On one simple formulation, it is the problem of explaining how irreducible or non-physical mental phenomena cause effects without objectionably violating the causal closure of the physical or inducing systematic overdetermination. Here, we can equate the causal closure of the physical with the claim that every physical effect has a sufficient physical cause. Thanks to a reviewer for encouraging me to address the dialectical role of the exclusion problem from the outset.

  8. E.g., see Chalmers (2010: 126–130).

  9. For defenses of overdeterminist property dualism, see Fumerton (2013: Ch. 7), List and Stoljar (2017), Lycan (2009), Mills (1996), Meixner (2004), Kroedel (2015: §5), and White (2018).

  10. Shiller later gives a different presentation of the neural discernment problem (ibid: 8). However, the above passage and the later presentation suggest different conceptions of what the problem is supposed to be. For instance, while the above passage accords roles to similarities between neurons and to precise control of behavior, the other presentation does not. And while the other presentation accords a role to intrinsically indiscernible minds, the above passage does not. Since I believe that the above passage lends to a better conception of the problem, I use it as a springboard for developing the problem.

  11. I will follow Shiller in using ‘mind’ as short for non-physical mind.

  12. For a textbook neuroscientific account of how the central nervous system exercises motor control, see Kandel et al. (2013: Chs. 33–34, 36–38).

  13. Cf. Kim (1998: 42–43).

  14. E.g., see Kandel et al. (2013: 337).

  15. Or at least this is so when the systematic patterns do not appear to result entirely from fundamental stochastic principles. While quantum mechanics may provide examples of systematic patterns that appear to result from such principles, the systematic patterns at issue in this paper do not appear to do so. So, I will suppress this proviso in what follows.

  16. Shiller (2018: fn6) makes a variation of this point.

  17. Cf. Byrne and Tye (2006: 253–254) and Sider (2011: 117).

  18. On Shiller’s formulation (2018: 13), the kindling hypothesis holds that “brains generate minds with just the right intrinsic properties to subsequently influence them.” He later (ibid: fn17) considers a “version of” the kindling hypothesis floated by Bailey et al. (2011: fn12) on which “a law dictates that souls causally interact with the parts of whatever structure produced them”. Against that “version” of the kindling hypothesis, he objects that “purely historical properties are not known to play roles in causation.” However, quantum mechanics provides evidence for just such a role for historical properties (Maudlin 2011: 22). To allow for this hypothesis, I depart from Shiller in formulating the kindling hypothesis without reference to intrinsic properties.

  19. There is also a companions in guilt response that maintains that the pairing problem does not tell against interactionism because it also arises for interactions between physical objects. For versions of this objection, see, for example, Bennett (2007: 320–322) and Foster (1991: 170–171); for replies, see Saad (2018a); cf. Bennett (2007: 322) and Shiller (2018: fn2). Partly for reasons I give in Saad (2018a), I think that this response to the pairing problem is untenable on its own. So, I set it aside in what follows. However, if I am wrong about this, interactionist may wish to explore extensions of this response to the neural discernment problem.

  20. For a causal argument that independently supports the non-physicality of experiences, see Saad (2018b).

  21. See Chalmers (1996: 214–215).

  22. For suggestions concerning what form the physical-to-phenomenal laws take, see Saad (2019a: Ch. 3, Ch. 4).

  23. See Hawthorne and Nolan (2006) for a defense of the coherence of fundamental teleological laws.

  24. I am here implicitly relying on the presumed solution to the pairing problem—absent some such solution, your mind and its experiences would not be associated with candidate effects involving any specific body.

  25. Shiller (p.c.) suggested that there will be other solutions of the same form that do not appeal to rationality. I agree. My reason for focusing on the teleological solution is that I believe it is an especially promising solution of this form. See Saad (2019b) for argument that appealing to Teleological Law affords interactionist dualists about experience an attractive strategy for solving the meta-problem of consciousness (i.e. the problem of explaining why we think that consciousness is hard to explain in physical terms) and the psychophysical harmony problem (i.e. the problem of explaining why experiences tend to be followed by states for which they provide normative reasons). For discussion of the meta-problem of consciousness, see Chalmers (2018). For discussion of (versions of) the psychophysical harmony problem, see Goff (2018), James (1890), Montague (forthcoming), Mørch (2018), and Pautz (2010, 2015).

  26. For defenses of Closure-violating property dualism, see Elitzur (1989), Foster (1991: Ch. 6), Lycan (2009), Stapp (1993), and Swinburne (2013: Ch. 4); cf. Chalmers (2010: 128), Libet (1994), Lowe (2003), and Merricks (2003: Ch. 6).

  27. Cf. Pautz (2010: 358), Shoemaker (2000), and Wilson (1999).

  28. To ensure that Mirroring Law does not require experiences to cause themselves, we can refine Mirroring Law to dictate that e causes whatever physical effects p causes. Mirroring Law may also need to be refined to avoid assigning e causal powers of its distal determinants, e.g. the (event of the relevant brain being such that there was the) Big Bang. That can be achieved by requiring p to be a physical state that immediately produces e. For ease of exposition, I do not incorporate these refinements of Mirroring Law in the discussion that follows.

  29. Recall from Sect. 2 that I am assuming that some such laws are available while remaining neutral on exactly what form they take.

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Acknowledgements

For helpful feedback on earlier drafts, I thank Sinan Dogramaci, Derek Shiller, and the anonymous reviewer(s) at Philosophical Studies.

Funding

This work was supported by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant to Bence Nanay nr. 726251 and the Graduate School at the University of Texas at Austin.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, USA

    Bradford Saad

  2. Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp, S.S.208, Lange Sint-Annastraat 7, 2000, Antwerp, Belgium

    Bradford Saad

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Saad, B. Two solutions to the neural discernment problem. Philos Stud 177, 2837–2850 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-019-01341-w

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