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Thomas Nagel, a famous philosopher if there is such a thing in America, has written a book a bold title: Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. The main title invites you to settle into your armchair for an evening of speculative meditation; the subtitle orders you to the barricades, in preparation for the coming intellectual revolution. The title as a whole seems to be premised on the good cop, bad cop theory of naming. When you write a book with a title like this, you better be able to deliver.
Nagel doesn’t deliver.
Not only doesn’t Nagel deliver: he strikes out three times, with three distinct arguments as to why we should reject natural selection in its current, materialist form. Each of the book’s three main thrusts – involving consciousness, theoretical knowledge, and morality – begets a unique species of error.
Nagel’s critique of natural selection is in part an extension of an argument that helped establish his reputation, one that most philosophy students will know from his classic 1974 paper, “What is it Like to Be a Bat?” Here he argues that mental states, while caused by brain states, cannot be adequately explained by them. That’s because we can make no inferences from specific brain states to what it is like to have the subjective experiences associated with them, a point well illustrated by the case of echolocation in bats. We’ll never know what it’s like to be bats, no matter how much we can say about bat brains. But science is in the business of such inferences, and Nagel is correct to say that the fact that we cannot make them in this case is a prohibitive challenge to any attempt to explain consciousness by reducing it to matter. We call this the “mind-body problem.”
In Mind and Cosmos, Nagel claims that the failure of a materialist reduction of mind to matter has implications for science in general, including natural selection. Since the brain does not adequately explain consciousness, neither can natural selection, even if it adequately explains the brain. The mind-body problem becomes the mind-evolution problem.
Nagel supplements his argument from consciousness with two others, to the effect that natural selection is incompatible with the possibility of theoretical knowledge and the objectivity of ethical judgments. But he also more generally entertains the notion that natural selection is too implausible to explain much of anything. Nagel finds it “highly implausible that life as we know it is the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the mechanism of natural selection.” He seems to doubt that there could be enough time in the world or available mutations to produce something as remarkable as a squirrel, much less human beings and consciousness. Nagel realizes that he cannot provide a definitive argument in favor of this general skepticism about the plausibility of natural selection; which is why the bulk of the book is focused on the arguments from consciousness, theoretical knowledge (or “cognition”), and value.
Nagel’s argument from consciousness suggests to him that the problem with natural selection is its materialism. And so his solution is to amend natural selection to incorporate a non-materialist explanation in which mind is a basic feature of the universe. Of a number of non-materialist alternatives, the explanation that Nagel favors is teleological (pan-psychism and monism have certain drawbacks, and Nagel admits to being biased against theism’s appeal to explanations outside of nature). Nagel’s teleological principle works such that the available mutations upon which natural selection operates must be determined in part by a pre-existing tendency of the universe – itself not reducible to physics or chemistry or another other causal explanation afforded by materialist natural science – to produce beings that are capable of consciousness, theoretical knowledge, and objective judgments of value.
In other words, evolution is rigged: not by God, but by some non-material yet natural cause.
To see why Nagel reaches this conclusion, it is important to understand that he is motivated by his search for a workaround to the mind-body problem that saves it from its seeming intractability. Nagel believes natural selection provides him with an opportunity for such a workaround. Along the way, he will assume that the world must be maximally intelligible to us. So when it comes to choosing between admitting to the intractability of the mind-body problem and modifying natural selection with a teleological principle, however strange that might seem, teleology wins the day.
It will help to review the three prongs of Nagel’s argument in more detail. After summarizing them, I offer some criticisms showing how each of these prongs misses its mark.
Summary
Consciousness
The mind-body problem is a problem of the contingency of brain-mind causation. This contingency means that knowing everything there is to know about the structure of the brain and the laws of physics and chemistry, it would not be possible to demonstrate that mental states must follow from brain states; or what kinds of mental states follow from what kinds of brain states; or what it is like to have such mental states. We can imagine a world in which brain states do not cause the mental states at all.
Scientists do better in their attempts to explain more obviously physical phenomena, such as water. That’s because water is reducible to the molecule H2O, the structure of which provides a satisfying explanation of why water has the properties it has (water is clear because of the way H2O interacts with light in the visible spectrum). In this case, we have a physical or scientific reduction: water and H2O are identical, and the properties of water are the necessary results of the structure of H2O. Because mental states do not follow necessarily from brain states in the same way, the brain cannot explain consciousness in the satisfying way that H20 explains water.
The upshot of all this is that mind is not scientifically reducible to the brain. Nor is it, according to Nagel, conceptually (or logically) reducible: which is to say, we cannot show that language referring to mental states is reducible to language referring to brain states or behavior. That’s because language referring to mental states tells us what it’s like to have those mental states, and language referring to brain states or behavior does not. (Often, philosophers use conceptual reduction in the service of physical reduction, for example by attempting to explain the identity of mind and brain in terms of a relation between brain states and physical behavior).
For Nagel, natural selection will explain consciousness only if it saves us from the seeming contingency of brain-mind causation. This means that it cannot be the case that the brain just happens to cause consciousness – that this causation is an inexplicable, contingent, brute fact. Consequently, consciousness cannot simply be an accidental evolutionary byproduct of the brain (in the way that the redness of vertebrate blood is the byproduct of the selection of hemoglobin – not for its redness-conferring but for its oxygen transporting properties). For natural selection to explain consciousness, it must show why it was more likely than not to be the result of the evolutionary process.
Teleology saves the day by rigging natural selection to produce beings that are capable of consciousness.
Cognition
Nagel is also worried that natural selection undermines cognition, or theoretical knowledge in the domains of language, science, logic, and ethics. While there is a clear adaptive value to the accuracy of sense perceptions (and so no need to doubt ordinary perceptual knowledge), there is no adaptive value to theoretical pursuits such as science. And any attempt to argue otherwise, according to Nagel, would be circular: to say that logical judgments have adaptive value, for instance, is to rely on an evolutionary account that itself presupposes the accuracy of logical judgments. Reason must involve a direct access to truths unqualified by whether such truths enhance fitness.
Teleology saves the day be rigging natural selection to produce beings capable of a transcendent grasp of objective reality.
Value
Finally, Nagel is worried that materialist natural selection undermines moral realism, or the view that moral propositions (for example “murder is wrong”) purport to objectively describe the world. This is to say that they fall into the same category as our everyday empirical factual claims (“the cat is on the mat”), and like them are true or false based on what’s going on the in world, not based on the opinions of human beings. In fact, for some moral realists they are true independently of the cognitive constitutions of human beings – of their physiology and psychology and resulting evaluative and motivational dispositions. In this case, the wrongness of murder is independent of the psychological and social forces that generally lead human societies to frown upon murder.
According to Nagel, moral realism is incompatible with natural selection because there is no adaptive value to recognizing evaluative truths. Where the accuracy of our perceptual judgments is critical to survival, the “real badness” of pain irrelevant. Here Nagel relies heavily on Sharon Street’s “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value,” which argues that natural selection must have a “purely distorting” influence on evaluative judgments in the sense that it selects the evaluative tendencies underlying such judgments based on whether they are adaptive, not on whether their corresponding value judgments are true or false. (You can read my full account of Street’s argument here). Where Street takes this incompatibility of natural selection and moral realism a reason to reject moral realism, Nagel takes it as a reason to reject natural selection in its materialist form, unmodified by teleology (he admits that he is merely assuming here that moral realism is true).
Teleology saves the day be rigging natural selection to produce beings capable of objective ethical judgments.
Criticisms
Consciousness
Nagel’s argument from consciousness gives a helpful overview of the mind-body problem, and it is the most useful part of his book. But his attempt to extend the mind-body problem to natural selection depends on two flawed assumptions. The first is that the world must be comprehensively intelligible to human beings. The second is that intelligibility involves some very idiosyncratic criteria involving probability – namely, that an explanation must show that its explanandum was more likely to occur than not (and relatedly, that consciousness is not an evolutionary byproduct or relatum of a brute fact).
Nagel’s second assumption, regarding probability, is puzzling. Some events are actually improbable, and as Eliot Sober points out in his review of Nagel’s book, something’s being improbable does not make it unintelligible. Genetics explains, in some sense, why a couple might have two daughters, despite its Mendelian probability of 25 percent. It doesn’t tell us that this result was more likely than not – although it does tell us that a certain sexual distribution overall is inevitable. (The same point goes for Nagel’s general sense about the improbability of “life as we know it”: my winning the lottery is unlikely; someone’s winning the lottery is likely; life arising on earth may have been improbable; we can currently say little about the probability of life arising somewhere in the universe after billions of years).
Natural selection explains consciousness in the same way that genetics explains a specific sexual distribution, insofar as it provides a general set of principles applicable to various specific causal sequences. This is a weaker sense of explanation than Nagel would like. He demands that natural selection explain consciousness in some more robust sense – seemingly in one similar to the way in which H2O explains water via a necessary physical identity.
This is not something that natural selection can do, and it is not something we should demand of it or any contingent historical account (Jerry Fodor’s What Darwin Got Wrong seems to rely on the same sort of mistaken demand). Even if the universe is deterministic, and causal chains turn out to be in some sense necessary, that doesn’t give us necessary correlations between types of causes and effects (I happened to stub my toe because I tripped on a tree branch; but there isn’t some universal correlation between tree branches and toe stubbing). Some explanations – like natural selection leading to the development of consciousness – are a matter of contingency. Contingent causal chains cannot do the work of necessary physical identities. Natural selection cannot solve the mind-body problem; nor should we ask it to do so.
But it is Nagel’s first assumption – that the universe is maximally intelligible – that has forced him into the position of making a contingent historical account perform the work of scientific necessity to which it is so unsuited. The world must be maximally intelligible, yet attempts at saying how the brain causes consciousness have gone nowhere. Nagel thinks he has found a workaround, a breach in a different part of the philosophical defenses than those to which philosophers of mind are accustomed to focusing their efforts. If we cannot say directly how the brain causes consciousness, then natural selection perhaps can be made to account.
But the way that Nagel makes natural selection account for consciousness is no more satisfying then our current mind-body predicament. How is teleology more satisfying than a brute, inexplicable relation between brain and mind? Suppose that, like Nagel, we felt compelled to accept teleology. Would we feel any better about the mind-body problem? Any less puzzled? Teleology can tell us nothing about how the brain produces consciousness. Like monism and pan-psychism, it introduces mind as a basic feature of the universe in a way that is interesting and suggestive. But while mind may in fact be a basic feature of the universe and irreducible to matter, it is still the case from the human standpoint that a) mind and matter are related and b) this relation is puzzling. Teleology doesn’t make mind any less puzzling: it merely grandfathers it in to assure us that in some sense it was there all along, from the beginning of time, before there were brains. But by grandfathering in mind, we introduce the problem of its relation to matter at an early historical point and in a different form: how does mind accomplish its ends? How does teleology work? We know even less about the relation between mind in general and the world it is supposed to guide, than we do about the relation between specific minds and specific brains. We can seek a way out of this predicament via idealism (to which Nagel hints that he is sympathetic), in which case world and mind in general are made identical. But it is unclear how this would solve any of these puzzles, which can be reformulated within the idealist framework (how are individual minds and mind in general related?). I happen to agree with Nagel about the irreducibility of consciousness; but I don’t think the concept of teleology makes consciousness any less baffling.
Cognition
The charge of circularity that Nagel levels in his argument from cognition is based entirely on the kind of misunderstanding that is surprising for a philosopher of his caliber. It is not circular to argue that logical judgments have adaptive value via an evolutionary account that depends on the accuracy of logical judgments. This charge of circularity presupposes that we appeal to an evolutionary account in order to ground the accuracy of logical judgments (that is, that we are setting out to demonstrate their accuracy). In fact, one appeals to the evolutionary account not to ground the accuracy of logical judgments, but merely to show that their accuracy is possible. We assume that logical judgments are accurate (we’re forced to make this assumption – logical judgments cannot be grounded). We appeal to the notion that they are adaptive only to show that their accuracy need not be undermined by their evolutionary origin – to show that they need not be inconsistent with such an explanation.
Value
Nagel’s argument concerning value relies heavily on an argument by Sharon Street to the effect that natural selection and moral realism are incompatible. I have outlined elsewhere why I think that Street’s argument is not as compelling as Nagel thinks it is. But even if we grant that moral realism and natural selection are incompatible, Nagel gives us no reason for choosing moral realism at the expense of natural selection (beyond the flawed case against materialist natural selection that he has made in the previous sections of the book). Why not accept, as Street does, a constructivist account of morality?
Conclusion
A bad book like this, by philosopher with a good name, gives philosophers in general a bad name. Beyond the more fair-minded critiques of Nagel’s book by fellow philosophers, it’s not hard to find intemperate online posts and comments citing this book as a reason to scorn philosophy in general. Such critics cannot articulate precisely what’s wrong with the book, beyond their general conviction that it must involve an ignorance of the sciences typical of the barbarous humanities.
In fact, Nagel’s errors are philosophical and logical, which is why these firebrands are relatively helpless in their attempt to craft a relevant response. Teleology is certainly possible, and Nagel is not wrong to ask us to set aside our materialist presuppositions to consider radical alternatives. But he also needs to provide us with good reasons for believing that such radical alternatives are necessary. Nagel is unconvincing on this score, because it is not clear that the we must amend scientific theories to solve philosophical problems, in such a way as to guarantee the maximal intelligibility of the world; or that intelligibility must be linked to probability; or that an evolutionary origin for cognition is self-undermining; or that moral realism and natural selection are incompatible (and if so, that it is the latter rather than the former that must be amended). These criticisms go regardless of where we stand generally on such issues as naturalism and materialism, or whether we think the natural sciences can be made to answer all of the sorts of questions that we find interesting. Nevertheless, Nagel’s book will unfortunately serve as a source of comfort not only to those who deny evolution for religious reasons (although Nagel himself is not making such a denial); but to members of the cult of scientism, who will wrongly see the flaws of a book like this as a vindication of their views.
-- Wes Alwan
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nice, you should leave a link over @ the NYT:
http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2013/02/ny-times-on-the-critical-reception-of-nagels-mind-and-world.html
Excellent review. Clear, logical, to the point. I hope this gets very wide audience in the academic community.
It won’t. Careers are at stake and this is America before-the-fall.
“Why not accept, as Street does, a constructivist account of morality?”
Does Nagel even attempt to give an explicit defense of moral realism in this tome, or is he just relying on the old table-pounding “there must be objective moral facts because deep down we all know there are”?
Thanks dmf — I left some links here and there; and thanks Alan, me too; staircaseghost — it’s the latter.
Wes this was excellent. I would love a regular book review on the blog, or your own website. You can even do older books (I would like to hear more from you on Freud and Lacan and Civ. and its Disc., etc etc) along with new releases.
On an unrelated note, I also was very pleased with many of your comments (as well as those of Seth and Mark) during the Marx podcast. But you in particular were talking about Marx in a way I appreciate and agree with. Specifically, the discussion of technology and its capacity to reduce work and increase freedom is one I take very seriously. I dont know if you are interested in this debate to do further reading, but Murray Bookchin wrote a book called “post-scarcity anarchism” that addresses this very issue. More importantaly, he founded the “Institute for Social Ecology” in Vermont in which the priniciples and ideas he explores are actually put into action.
You might want to give it a quick look. Dont be turned off by the term “Anarchist” BTW, it is a far cry from typical “anarchism” and vocal anarchists seem never to evoke his name.
Dominic
Great post.
There is a series of posts by Ed Feser who has been reviewing and critiquing Nagel’s book and its reviewers but interestingly from a teleological perspective.
http://edwardfeser.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/nagel-and-his-critics-part-vi.html
I can’t help thinking of Nietzsche’s idea that a man’s philosophy is usually nothing more than a means of justifying of his morality.
Maybe I should read this book. But I doubt I will. Are there any positive reviews outside of the people who would rejoice in his conclusions no matter the worth of the arguments?
Great review. For anyone interested in discovering more of the brain physiology behind consciousness, see Antonio Damasio’s, SELF COMES TO MIND. This neuroscientist has written a couple of other philosophically informed books: Descartes’ Error, and Looking for Spinoza. You can find a review of the book on SELF by John Searl on the Philosophy of Mind school blog as an uploaded document.
Wouldn’t striking out three times require at least nine arguments? [groan].
This is great — especially the beautifully concise argument against Nagel’s contention of circularity.
Excellent and incisive review (best one I have read yet on this book). A philosopher who so brazenly seems to misunderstand science is every bit as problematic as a scientist who discards the inherent value of philosophy.
Thanks everyone; and Domonic, I’ll check out Bookchin .
God damnit Wes. Way to ruin my podcast’s next topic. Admittedly, we did a livestream before this but didn’t record it as a dry run. Now everyone is gonna call us posers and say “PEL did it first F*GG8T$”… or something like that.
Terrible review. Usual nonsense about philosophers whose disagreement with particular scientific theories is represented as misunderstanding. Philosophers generally know a good deal about science; it is scientists who are woefully ignorant of philosophy.
Nagel has devoted his life to the consideration of these questions. When did he become ignorant? When he dared to disagree with the tyranny of orthodoxy?
Given that Wes is known for his critiques of scientism, and the multiple months of effort that I am aware of in which he carefully read this, recorded a discussion on it, and carefully wrote this, you are selling him short.
http://blog.kennypearce.net/archives/the_web/blog_carnivals/philosophers_carnival_149.html
One thing that I think can be shown is that evolutionary materialism (EM) does not suffice to fully explain logic itself, if logic is considered as a realm of truth that does not depend on human cognition of it. Even if it can be shown that EM explains how humans come to know logic, it can’t ground logic, as you seem to admit in saying this:
“In fact, one appeals to the evolutionary account not to ground the accuracy of logical judgments, but merely to show that their accuracy is possible. We assume that logical judgments are accurate (we’re forced to make this assumption – logical judgments cannot be grounded).”
A = EM is sufficient to explain everything
B = EM grounds everything, including logic
If A, then B.
Not B.
Therefore, Not A. (modus tollens)
Insofar as logic really is a truth of being into which we have insight, and not just some production of our brains that arguably serves a survival function, EM does not suffice to explain it, and so EM is not a theory of everything. Indeed, since EM can’t ground logic, and thus fails to explain logic as a truth of being, neither can it explain our insight into logic thus considered. EM is only sufficient to explain an appearance of logic as a mental phenomenon, not logic as really true. Nagel, I take it, wants to believe that logic is a realm of truth.
I think what Nagel shows at the very least is the failure of EM as a theory of everything, and the need to open our minds to some more satisfactory account of human and cosmic origins. For if logic is only a production of our brains, arguably with survival benefits, and not a necessary truth of being, EM (which is a product of logical inference) is no better off, and can’t tell us about the way things really are (as Kant would say, it only gives us appearances). And there would be circularity if we tried to use EM to ground logic, as I think you admit. Modern science is more robust if we accept the truth of the logical insights upon which it is founded, even though materialistic science can’t explain their truth. And we are going to have to look for another way of explaining those ultimate truths if we want to preserve the integrity of science as giving some access (even if limited) to truth about the things themselves.
I offer these thoughts for your consideration, incomplete and deficient as they may be.
David — I think you’re right here; EM certainly can’t be a theory of everything, and it would be a mistake to try to use it to ground logic.
I think Wes’s review doesn’t deal enough with the starting argument of Nagel’s account – that for random mutation to provide the advantageous mutations it has is hugely improbable.
Wes is right that Nagel himself doesn’t do nearly enough work here, but this is where teleology gains its first foothold in his account. He thinks it has been a bad mistake of Neo-Darwinists to believe that the reason evolution gives the appearance of being teleological is because of natural selection.
This needs more attention in any critique and I’d appreciate any pointers on where to look for an account of the probabilities involved in genetic mutations.
HFW,
Basically, the answer to your question can be found in any textbook dealing with evolutionary biology. But to give you a quick rundown, beneficial mutations appear in a population about as often as deleterious mutations. Mutations appear in roughly a normal distribution: most mutations are neutral, some are beneficial, some are deleterious, and comparatively few are either strongly beneficial or lethal. There is a way of fixing both neutral and weakly beneficial (not to mention weakly deleterious) mutations, namely genetic drift. Overstating the role of natural selection and ignoring drift is one of Nagel’s most persistent failures. Nagel also ignores mechanisms like sexual recombination which have been shown (e.g. Rice WR and Chippindale AK. 2001. Sexual Recombination and the Power of Natural Selection. Science, 249: 555-9.) to bring beneficial alleles together and increase the power of selection. Another aspect that has to be factored in is that neutral mutations can become fixed by drift but subsequently beneficially act in concert with a new mutation, so it’s not just that natural selection fixes beneficial mutations, but it also acts to spread formerly neutral mutations that have become beneficial. An example of this was seen this year in Richard Lenski’s E. coli experiment, where thanks to the fixation of a neutral allele, it set up the conditions that later allowed one strain to metabolize citrate in the presence of oxygen (E. coli‘s inability to do this is a defining characteristic of the species).
To sum up, what you need to understand is that beneficial mutations happen frequently, neutral mutations being exapted into beneficial molecular processes is also common, evolution doesn’t solely proceed by the fixation of beneficial mutations by natural selection, and there are natural mechanisms that boost the efficacy of selection. Pretty much any textbook will give you more information on this, with (naturally) textbooks on molecular evolution and population genetics being the most detailed on the existence and frequency of beneficial mutations and the ways mutations can be fixed in a population.
Great Review Wes. I am largely sympathetic with your response to Nagel. But just one thing: are you sure you have Nagel right on the “maximally intelligible” issue?
Before I say more, I want to lay out my cards just as Nagel, thankfully, does as well: I am agnostic as far as religion and recognize at least the ontological irreducibility of consciousness (not so sure about causal reducibility yet), and I am a voracious reader of evolutionary psychology (Cosmides, Bloom, Pinker, Ruse, Dennett, Atran, Sober, etc.).
Nagel explicitly appeals to the principle of sufficient reason when trying to transform consciousness qua brute fact into consciousness qua an unsurprising result of random mutations and natural selection (though I could not figure out what he means by “unsurprising”). He never says that the universe must be maximally intelligible like say, John C. Lennox or William Craig seem to believe because of their Christianity. I think we need to keep in mind how different Nagel’s atheistic assumptions are from theistic assumptions as they relate to the universe’s intelligibility.
With that said, he does make the claim that the PSR is assumed in science, which after Darwin, is clearly not universal any longer. He also ties the PSR to “common sense,” a move that many other critics have observed as unexplained by Nagel. As a student of evolutionary psychology, I consider the human search for reasons for everything as a hyperactive survival tool, not as a guide into the secrets of the universe. However, I still appreciate the fact that our curiosity has indeed led to the great scientific understandings of the world we have today and it seems Nagel is only making his appeal to PSR for its utility in producing fruitful results; he does not make appeal to it because of its metaphysical ontology.
If I am reading him correctly, he uses the PSR as a way of philosophically and scientifically demanding more for an explanation of consciousness and its natural history and then wonders via the teleological explanation if mind and cosmos are not entirely knit together. So I don’t think he begs the question, as you observe he would indeed be doing, if he starts with the universe being maximally intelligible, and concludes that the universe must be maximally intelligible. Rather, he uses PSR much like scientists use hypotheses to reach a genuine conclusion (or speculation?) about maximal intelligibility. Thanks for your review again, everything else seems to me spot on!
Your critique is nothing more than an admission of the very failure Nagel is discussing. “Contingent causal chains cannot do the work of necessary physical identities. Natural selection cannot solve the mind-body problem; nor should we ask it to do so.” Nor should we expect Cartesian science to solve the mind problem at all, given that the physical universe projected could only be projected by specifically removing mind in the first place. Nagel’s major point is that a developmental theory cannot account for something it must assume. In this case what must be assumed is the rationality of natural history prior to that history having given rise, through any means whatsoever, to rationality itself. Not to mention that natural selection remains inherently teleological, as Darwin himself pointed out. A related point is that science cannot simply ignore the nature of consciousness in favor of observed evidence, since that evidence is only available through conscious experience and thus its own validity is based on the validity of conscious rationality. If consciousness is merely advantageous, or merely a circumstantial happenstance, the truth claims for the very evidence upon which that claim is made is greatly lessened.
In any event, natural selection by itself doesn’t survive Gould’s critique. Ex-aptation is non-teleological, but creates the problem that the disruption involved to the processes of natural selection render natural selection largely irrelevant in the long view. Worse, any completely non-teleological theory of evolution is no longer a theory of evolution, but simply of change. That in itself is not an issue, but it doesn’t correspond to the evidential record of natural history, which demonstrates a fairly consistent trend towards greater degrees of freedom despite revolutionary disruption. Essentially we have two contradictory processes, yet both evidentially are part of the historical record, and so must in some way not be contradictory.
Globus has a more promising solution to the brain/mind problem in looking at the brain from a quantum field perspective, where although the brain in a sense produces the mind, and the mind simultaneously determines changes in the brain, each is transparent to the other. They belong-together, i.e. neither can exist without the other, but the brain worlds, i.e it creates the world that the mind experiences from the abground, or background of irruptive possibilities, but has no experience of the world it produces, a world that includes every observation of the brain itself. The mind, for its part, is the experience of reality through and as that world, but doesn’t experience any brain processes involved in producing it. Experiences though are stored as traces of brain states, and thus are part of the next brain state which produces the world at the next moment.
Unfortunately for neo-Darwinism, in relying on quantum field theory that solution also implies the de-materialization of matter inherent in quantum mechanics, and the impossibility of direct causality also inherent in quantum mechanics. The combination of those would force a complete rethink of biology were it understood by any mainstream biologists , since the mechanistic causality inherent in mainstream biophysics is based on notions of classical physics that are nothing more than superstition from a quantum perspective. Only by ignoring physics after 1900 can neo-Darwinism continue to posit the very causality on which it is reliant.
Hmmm so one way to comment on what Nagel is saying is, that he is arbitrarily claiming that given how much we know, we must by this time have God-like omniscience and if we haven’t been able to figure all these things out, then we have permission to make any claims we want about it, including claiming that since evolution and science haven’t figured it out, we have permission to say they can’t and substitute our own wishes.
I’ve read lots of the great western philosophers and gave up metaphysics because the first rule of metaphysics seems to be, you have to agree with me because I’m right, while at the same time most of what the writer presented were personal preferences or were eventually proven unrealistic. There’s no archetypal chair out there in the universe somewhere, and dialectics unnaturally restricts possible viewpoints to only two.
Circular arguments, huh? Well, there’s nothing like fallacies to destroy a reputation.
As usual, it will be up to the physicists to change everybody’s mind and drag everyone kicking and screaming into the future. Thankfully, we’ll just do it through demonstration of a fact instead of argument and rhetorical flair.
Your excellent review is linked at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_and_Cosmos
I have commented at http://www.booktalk.org/nagel-mind-and-cosmos-t25858.html
Thank you.
Very comprehensive review, but I think you are unfair to Nagel’s project & its instructive to see how much furious indignation “Mind & Cosmos” generated overall, especially among advocates of scientism (which I know you oppose). I see Nagel as a modern day Galileo challenging the entrenched Orthodoxy of our time – always a dangerous activity!
So, what was his project? I believe he is tentatively thinking through the consequences of the irreducibility of consciousness for our Weltanschauung, currently dominated by a reductive materialism and by neo-Darwinian explanations. It is the incompleteness of Science as a total description of the world, which excludes our experience, not faults in Science or Evolutionary Biology itself, which he is attempting to point out in order to expand.
So, having settled on panpsychism as more credible than emergentism as an explanation of consciousness, he confronts the problem that mechanistic neo-Darwinian explanations of consciousness, rationality and value (at least realist versions) are far from satisfactory. Survival and proliferation are necessary but not sufficient as explanations.
How does teleology help? He is changing the metaphor of the Universe from a clockwork machine, to something more like an organism, which incorporating experience as a basic property, seeks to grow & expand in complexity. On the micro level this cashes out as ‘experience’ which co-ordinates an organisms attraction towards ‘the good’ eg. food, and aversion to ‘the bad’ eg. predators, toxins etc. In humans, it gives us the ability to look ahead, and visualise possible futures, seeking states of Eudaimonia towards which we can then work to realise. Classic neo-Darwinism is blind to the future.
Finally, one way of thinking about this might be to invoke Wheelers “Participatory Universe” model, combined with the Anthropic principle. Being here, looking back, the Universe we see might appear to be teleological, because it necessarily resulted in conscious beings like us. Perhaps that’s where Nagel’s teleology might be seen as acceptable to orthodox materialist neo-Darwinians.