[lit-ideas] Re: Popper's 'Philosophy of Mind' III: Dualism and the 'Cartesian Turn'

From: Adriano Palma <Palma@xxxxxxxxxx>



>it seems essentially correct (up to and excluding physics) 
Descartes does have a real argument (see e.g. J. Perry on pre-conceived 
naturalism)

This is not enough to key me into what that "real argument" is? Or even whether 
"real" here means valid - or something less?


>most of what you say is rather well known 

Is this to 
imply it is therefore uncontroversial (or just that we've all heard it 
all [or nearly all] before)? If "uncontroversial" that would seem 
remarkable in this field.

It seems unlikely that some of Popper's
 key points were anything like accepted (never mind uncontroversial) at 
the time of his writing, and afair at least one academic review of TSAIB took 
it as defending Cartesian Dualism. A subsequent introductory text 
like Colin McGinn's "The Character of Mind", which attempts to reflect 
contemporary thinking (though Popper is not found important enough to 
bear consideration in this field), seems to take it that dualism implies a 
Cartesian mental 'substance' [though, and hardly consistently, McGinn does not 
assume a physical monism equally implies a Cartesian physical 
substance] and that the problem of causation is at the root of the 
problems of dualism. These are both contra Popper's contentions that dualism 
need not imply a mental 'substance' 
and that problems of causation do not afford a strong argument against 
dualism as problems of causation attend understanding even the 
interaction of different kinds of physical entity [e.g. physical 
monism].

> (I myself did not notice the Rylean claim that 
Descartes is original and new in his dualism, do you have a quote 
somewhere supporting the claim you made?)

Here I would suggest that it is perhaps "rather well known" that Descartes' 
specific account of dualism was "original and new". This leaves open, of 
course, whether Descartes was "original and new in his dualism" in the sense of 
being 
anything like the first dualist, rather than merely the first Cartesian. He 
wasn't, says Popper, anything like the first dualist.

This leaves open what Ryle thought. I have no "The Concept of Mind" to hand, so 
will confine myself to amplifying what Popper says 
vis-a-vis Ryle, which admittedly falls short of claiming that Ryle 
claims Descartes was the first dualist of any stripe. Ryle does, 
however, refer expressly to the "Cartesian myth" and sees this as a 
"fairly new fangled legend" [Ryle at p.77 of The Physical Basis of Mind]. The 
"Cartesian myth" Ryle rejects is actually, according to Popper, the "popular 
ancient legend" of the psyche as a shade that may survive the body - a legend 
that Descartes in fact, says Popper, "most clearly rejected".

Ryle has 16 page references in the TSAIB's "Index of Names", and there is a 
whole section, P5-30, titled "The Ghost in 
the Machine", where Popper refers to "Gilbert Ryle's views in his most 
remarkable book, The Concept of Mind." 

Now,
 in my view, it is useful to see Popper's comments on Ryle as indicating
 that Ryle's position is, in Popper's view, something of a fudge as to 
the actual metaphysics at stake, a fudge that Popper's own specific 
theory of World 12&3 is designed to avoid. For example, Popper 
writes that,"Taking Ryle's book as a whole, there seems to be a general 
tendency to deny the existence of most subjective conscious experiences,
 and a suggestion that they should be replaced by sheer physical states -
 by dispositional states, by dispositions to behave. However, there are 
many places in Ryle's book in which it is admitted that we may genuinelyfeel 
these states." [Possible fudge, as to whether these feels are sheer physical 
states]. And while Ryle notes that the general trend of The Concept of Mind 
"will undoubtedly, and harmlessly, be stigmatized as 'behaviourist'" 
[p.327], Popper comments (drily imo), "Yet Ryle is decidedly not a 
materialist (in the sense of the principle of physicalism). Of course, 
he is no dualist; but he is definitely not a physicalist or monist." So 
what is he? Something of a metaphysical fudger perhaps, and perhaps 
because his school of thought still subscribes to the anti-metaphysical 
stance of the empiricist/positivistic tradition from which it emerged 
(and to which it remains indebted, as is indicated by Ryle's views on 
self-knowledge and self-observation, which for Popper retain the imprint of 
flawed positivistic thinking in line with the traditional empiricism we can 
trace back to Locke and Hume, where all knowledge is derived 
from sense-based observation). This kind of fudge is indicated again by 
the following quotation from Ryle, which, depending on taste, might seem the 
height of philosophical good sense or simply high-sounding 
evasiveness of the underlying metaphysical issues: "Man need not be 
degraded to a machine by being denied to be a ghost in a machine...There has 
yet to be ventured the hazardous leap to the hypothesis that 
perhaps he is a man." Some might reply that the supposedly hazardous 
hypothesis that "Man...is a man" is 'rather well known' (and not much 
disputed), and this hypothesis does not tell us (but simply fudges) to 
what extent man is a machine or what is the extent and character of the 
non-machinistic aspects of man. 

Ryle, like many in the Oxford 
School, may be characterised as a 'metaphysical flat-earther' : the 
world is metaphysically flat, not layered and differentiated with 
different metaphysical dimensions. Being 'flat', it is what it is, and 
there is no need to give it some specific metaphysical character (as if 
there were some other metaphysical dimension it could be contrasted 
with) - rather we should guard against views that try to impute some 
specific metaphysical character to it (for example, views like Popper's 
theory of World123). This kind of anti-metaphysical stance can be traced
 at least as far back as Hume and was given later currency in the dogmas
 of sense and nonsense proposed by the Logical Positivists and the early
 Wittgenstein. In a less explicit form it still held sway in the school 
of Ordinary Language Philosophy or Oxford school and also in the later 
Wittgenstein.

Despite this fudge, Ryle is clear on one thing, 
says Popper: "[Ryle] also explicitly declares (p.328) 'that the 
two-worlds story is a myth'. (Presumably, the three-worlds story is even
 worse)." [TSAIB p.104].

Popper later observes [TSAIB p.116], "We learn to distinguish between bodies 
and minds. (This is 
not, as has been argued especially by Gilbert Ryle, a philosopher's 
invention. It is as old as the memory of mankind..)....Even the theory 
of the brain as the seat of the mind is at least 2,500 years old."

Popper's
 criticism of Ryle here is amplified at P5 section 44, "A Problem To Be 
Solved By What Follows", which deserves better than parsing:
"One of 
my main aims in writing on the ancient history of the mind-body problem 
is to show the baselessness of the doctrine that this problem is nothing
 but part of a modern ideology and that it was unknown in antiquity. 
This doctrine has a propagandist bias. It is suggested that a man who 
has not been brainwashed by a dualist religion or philosophy would 
naturally accept materialism. It is asserted that ancient philosophy was
 materialist - an assertion which, though misleading, contains a grain 
of truth; and it is suggested that those of us who are interested in the
 mind, and in the mind-body problem, have been brainwashed by Descartes 
and his followers.
   Something like this is suggested in the brilliant and valuable Concept of 
Mind by Gilbert Ryle...and it is even more strongly suggested in a broadcast in 
which Ryle speaks of 'the legend of the two theatres' which he 
describes as a 'fairly new-fangled legend'. He also says that 'For the 
general terms in which scientists..have set their problems of mind and 
body, we philosophers have been chiefly to blame'. For 'we philosophers' one 
must read here 'Descartes and the post-Cartesian philosophers'.
 
 Views like this are not only to be found in an outstanding philosopher 
(and student of Plato and Aristotle) such as Ryle, but they are 
widespread". 

Popper goes on to list points he wishes to argue 
that "indicate a very different view from the one which seems so 
widespread at present."
"(1) Dualism in the form of the story of the 
ghost in the machine (or, better, of the ghost in the body) is as old as
 any historical or archaeological evidence reaches, though it is unlikely
 that prior to the atomists the body was regarded as a machine.
(2) 
All thinkers of whom we know enough to say anything definite on their 
position, up to and including Descartes, were dualist interactionists.
(3)
 This dualism is very marked, in spite of the fact that certain 
tendencies inherent in human language (which originally was, apparently,
 appropriate only for the description of material things and their 
properties) seem to make us inclined to speak of minds or souls or 
spirits as if they were a peculiar (gas-like) kind of body.
(4) The 
discovery of the moral world leads to the realization of the special 
character of mind. This is so in Homer...Democritus...Socrates.
(5) 
In the thought of the atomists, one finds materialism, interactionism, 
and also the recognition of the special moral character of the mind; but
 they did not, I think, draw the consequences of their own moral 
contrast between mind and matter.
(6) The Pythagoreans, Socrates, 
Plato and Aristotle tried to transcend the 'materialist' way of talking 
about the mind: they recognised the non-material character of the psyche and 
tried to make sense of this new conception. An important speech attributed to 
Socrates by Plato in the Phaedo deals explicitly with the moral explanation of 
human action in terms of ends, and decisions, and contrasts this with the 
explanation of human 
behaviour in terms of physiological processes.
(7) Alternatives to 
interactionism arose only after Descartes. They arose because of the 
special difficulties of Descartes' elaborate interactionism and its 
clash with his theory of causation in physics.
...(8) We know that, but we do not know how, mind and body interact; but this 
is not surprising since we have really no definite idea of how physical things 
interact. Nor do we know how 
mental events interact, unless we believe in a theory of mental events 
and their interaction that is almost certainly false: in associationism. The 
theory of the association of ideas is a theory which treats mental 
events or processes like things (ideas, pictures) and their interaction 
as due to something like attractive force. Associationism is therefore 
probably just one of those materialist metaphors which we almost always 
use when trying to speak about mental events."


It seems then that, at least at 
the time of his writing, Popper's views were against certain widespread 
views and that Ryle did seem to think that dualism was a kind of 
philosopher's make-believe, with Descartes as its main (modern) author 
[hence the "Cartesian myth"].

Donal
England

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