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Justin Chen The Role of the Subjective in the Search for the Human Mind In John Searle’s essay, “What’s Wrong with the Philosophy of Mind,” he argues that the current debate over consciousness is plagued by a misleading vocabulary that represents the remnants of an outdated Cartesian tradition. Specifically, he asserts that most philosophers are trapped in their thinking by the language of binary oppositions—“‘physical’ versus ‘mental,’ ‘body’ versus ‘mind’” (Tyco, 281)—and that “implicit in these oppositions is the thesis that the same phenomena under the same aspects cannot literally satisfy both terms” (Tyco, 281). (1) In pointing out the deceptive nature of such rigid oppositions, Searle picks up on a crucial problem, not just for the debate over the scientific roots of human consciousness, but for one of the oldest debates of all time—that of the relationship between art and science. Indeed, the “philosophy of mind” that Searle is intent on reformulating can be seen as a remarkably representative microcosm of the more abstract philosophy that governs mankind’s highest endeavors. In both debates, a clear opposition is set forth between the scientists, who hope to utilize objective, reductionist tactics to understand the world, and the artistic camp, which prefers a more subjective approach less tied to the language of biology and chemistry. As with any good Hegelian dialectic, though, the proper way of understanding the mind-body opposition is not to be found in either polemic. Rather, one must ultimately acknowledge a subjective self that is nevertheless intimately tied to its biological roots—a paradox that can only be understood if we, like Searle, are willing to discard the traditional language of binary oppositions. The schism between body and mind is forcefully articulated in René Descartes’ treatise, Discourse on Method. His first and most famous principle, “I think, hence I am” (Tyco, 134), demonstrates a firm belief that a metaphysical state of consciousness or existence is intimately tied to the cognitive faculties which, as far as Descartes knew, were only to be found in humans. (2) He writes even more explicitly, “I was a substance whose whole essence or nature consists only in thinking” (Tyco, 134), a statement in which the first traces of a Cartesian dualism are already apparent. Descartes attempts to define an existence derived entirely from the ability to reason and, by implication, entirely separate from the mere possession of a heartbeat or a physical body. Indeed, it is also in this essay that Descartes establishes the very vocabulary which Searle, several centuries later, is to find so troubling. He asserts: “‘I,’ that is to say, the mind by which I am what I am, is wholly distinct from the body” (Tyco, 135). In choosing to isolate the concept of ‘I’—which can alternately be understood as consciousness or the soul—Descartes sets the stage for a number of powerful binary oppositions, including the physical versus the mental, and body versus mind. Nowhere in this language does there appear to exist the possibility of finding any common ground between the two sides. Thus, Cartesian dualism effectively wrenches human thought and consciousness away from the vulgarities of the physical body and into the realm of the unexplainable—that is, the divine. Though Descartes might be willing to study and attempt to explain the biological functioning of the human body, he is patently unwilling to do the same for man’s ability to reason, which he views as a gift from the Creator that cannot be reduced to the earthly language of science. This early desire to believe that thought cannot be explained completely by biological or chemical phenomena is essentially an impulse away from scientific reductionism. And though Descartes’ reasoning is primarily religious, there are also strong grounds from an artistic standpoint to share in the desire for dualism. Indeed, the notion that human thought is nothing more than the interplay of neurons as dictated by the stimuli of physical phenomena is anathema to basically any field of creative thought, including literature, that attempts to explore the more transcendent themes inherent to the human condition, and must assume the existence of a subjective, creative self. It is not surprising, therefore, that a common literary trope is the expression of a fundamental distrust of science as an objectifying, reductionist attempt to strip man of his creative agency. One literary work that deals with these themes is Honoré de Balzac’s novel, The Quest for the Absolute, in which the scientist Balthazar Claes is consumed by a fierce and destructive desire to find the “Philosopher’s Stone” (Balzac, 42)—that is, the “single element” to which “all natural productions might be reduced” (Balzac, 75). (3) So caught up is Claes in his scientific endeavors that he ultimately forgets his own family and loses touch with all aspects of the real world. Interestingly, the concept of simplifying life itself down to a single common denominator is a central feature of reductionism, and as such, Claes can be seen as an early proponent of the drive toward a single unified theory that can explain all earthly phenomena. Yet Balzac himself is anything but a reductionist. He portrays Claes as a madman whose lust for his science eventually resembles a devastating drug habit—Claes is forced to sell many of his possessions and deceive his family in order to satisfy his own almost pathological craving for scientific discovery. Indeed, the novel’s unhappy conclusion reveals the author’s essential distrust of Claes’ search for some sort of Absolute—Claes dies without being able to “leave to science the solution of the Great Enigma revealed to him too late, as the veil was torn asunder by the fleshless fingers of death” (Balzac, 226). The final chilling lines of Balzac’s tale serve as a warning that the quest for a reductive scientific unification can only end in tragedy and death. More important than the simple fact of Claes’ death, however, are the arguments Balzac makes through the voices of his various characters against the search for the Absolute. Specifically, Josephine, Claes’ wife, tries until her death to dissuade her husband from his destructive pursuit of science. At one point she argues, “Claes, God wields a power which will never be yours…The one sole force—Movement” (Balzac, 82). Josephine’s reasoning is guided by the same basic principles as Descartes’—she expresses a strong aversion to the thought that everything about life is scientifically reducible to a collection of particles because such a view seems heretical in its implications. She goes on to argue, “Possibly by dint of effort you could collect those [fundamental] elements together, but would you make flowers, or fruit, or Malaga wine from them?,” concluding desperately, “Decomposition is one thing, creation is another” (Balzac, 82). This telling speech introduces another binary opposition—that of the parts versus the whole. Josephine argues that though science may well discover the single common element of life (as indeed some might argue particle physics already has), this knowledge alone is insufficient for understanding elements of the real world objects as they actually are. Thus, with an argument almost Cartesian in its evasiveness, Josephine attributes the mysteries of life and nature to a metaphysical power of creation or Movement that somehow causes natural objects to equal more than the sum of its parts. This power can, of course, belong only to God, the ultimate Creator and Prime Mover. Indeed, Josephine accuses Balthazar of committing “the sin of pride by which Satan fell” and “encroaching on God” (Balzac, 82). The sprawling domain of objective science abruptly ends in the face of a divine creator. Josephine elaborates on her charge against her husband when she asserts, “Believe me, Balthazar, nature made us to feel; and though you will have it that we are nothing but an electrical mechanism, your gases and etherealized matter will never account for our power of foreseeing the future” (Balzac, 85). In this case, Josephine does not need to appeal to a divine force to defend her case, but instead argues that science’s explanations of the biological components of life are not sufficient to account for human faculties of complex thought. Again, she does not provide specific proof for her assertion, but instead seems to take for granted the sheer lunacy of any attempt to equate the abstract and theoretical products of the quest for the Absolute with mankind’s amazing creative reasoning abilities. Josephine has hit a wall in her ability to explain the pitfalls of scientific reductionism, and like Descartes, she is forced to create a binary opposition—in this case, between the abstract nature of biological explanations for life and the immediacy of human cognitive faculties—to argue her case. Balzac’s novel is just one example of literature that attempts to combat the so-called “tyranny of ideas” (Balzac, 145)—an oppressive system of objective ontological discovery that leaves no room whatsoever for the subjective and creative realm of art. In a sense, then, Balzac and Descartes’ works represent an impulse away from the idea of objective science as a rigid, self-sustaining entity that overpowers the subjective agency of those investigating it. As Josephine warns her husband, “Science is stronger in you than you yourself; you have soared too far and too high; you can never drop to earth again” (Balzac, 82). Furthermore, Josephine’s inability to accept the notion that every aspect of life can be expressed as an accumulation of subatomic particles reflects a distinct discomfort by Balzac for what the physicist Stephen Weinberg has called “the bleakness of modern science” (Tyco, 165). (4) Ironically, those actually in the field of science would not entirely disagree with such accusatory characterizations of their work. In his essay, “Two Cheers for Reductionism,” Weinberg states, “The reductionist worldview is chilling and impersonal. It has to be accepted as it is, not because we like it, but because that is the way the world works” (Tyco, 165). For Weinberg, reductionism should not be construed to mean that the only important science takes place in the field of elementary particle physics. Indeed, he writes, “I do not think that biologists should stop thinking about whole plants and animals and think only about cells and DNA,” adding, “Reductionism is not a guideline for research programs, but an attitude toward nature itself” (Tyco, 165). Claes, therefore, must be seen more as the caricature of a scientist who has taken reductionism to its illogical extreme, rather than as a true representative of his field. When viewed in any sort of reasonable context, his burning desire to discover the Philosopher’s Stone seems misguided and inappropriate. Weinberg goes on to argue that “what makes some work in science interesting is that it takes us closer to the point where all our explanations converge” (Tyco, 169), establishing the reductionist desire for a unification of all the various fields of science that Patricia S. Churchland, among others, has called an “intertheoretic reduction” (Tyco, 278). (5) If this attempt to establish a sort of theoretical scientific pecking order were truly all that comprised reductionism, then it is doubtful that the topic would provoke such strong reactions from such a wide variety of people. In fact, in choosing to focus on his hope for a unified theory, Weinberg conveniently glosses over his original characterization of the “bleakness of modern science,” perhaps expressing an unwillingness to pursue the profoundly troubling philosophical implications inherent in the belief that life can truly be simplified into aggregates of subatomic particles. One scientist who does attempt to argue a much more standard reductionist viewpoint is Francis Crick, co-author of the revolutionary paper that first identified the structure of DNA as a double helix. In the introduction to The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul, Crick presents a belief that “our minds—the behavior of our brains—can be explained by the interactions of nerve cells (and other cells) and the molecules associated with them” (Tyco, 290). (6) While Crick’s wording is innocuous enough, the message behind his statement is much more insidious. He expresses the very belief that Descartes and Balzac so adamantly opposed—that is, the notion that human thought can be explained by neurobiology or other purely scientific theories. Crick himself phrases his view even more bluntly at the opening of the novel in response to a Roman Catholic catechism about the soul: “‘You,’ your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules” (Tyco, 288). Here, in stark terms, is presented a view of reductionism which, while perhaps better articulated and more scientifically reasonable than Claes’, nevertheless expresses the same sort of extremism that so offends the sensibilities of Balzac and Descartes. The tone of this particular passage is in fact intended to be shocking, for it takes a number of aspects of human consciousness that most would consider to be the highest subjective expressions of the self, and deliberately associates them with the rather inglorious image of biochemical pathways and interneuronal firing. A major component of Crick’s defense of reductionism is his assertion that there is nothing mystical about the idea that a collection of simple elements, such as neurons, can be combined to create something much more complex and dynamic than each of the individual components might suggest. He writes, “It is curious that nobody derives some kind of mystical satisfaction by saying ‘the benzene molecule is more than the sum of its parts,’ whereas too many people are happy to make such statements about the brain and nod their heads wisely as they do so” (Tyco, 292). Crick’s analogy is a compelling one, for it is true that the aromatic benzene molecule has completely different properties than its six-carbon straight-chain equivalent, hexane, but that these differences can easily be explained by chemical theories about ring compounds and p-electron delocalization. As Crick puts it, “Apart from its mass, the properties of a benzene molecule are not in any sense the simple arithmetical sum of the properties of its twelve constituent atoms” (Tyco, 292). As such, it does not seem entirely unreasonable to suppose that neurons, like the individual atoms in an organic molecule, can be combined in a wide variety of ways to produce a virtually unlimited number of possible arrangements and functions. Crick’s arguments seem to respond directly to the earlier discussion of Josephine’s inability or unwillingness to accept the notion that human thought, so rich and varied in its numerous forms and manifestations, might ultimately be reducible to just a few biological particles or phenomena. Whereas Josephine argues that “decomposition is one thing, creation is another,” and appeals to the existence of a divine force that somehow unifies the raw materials of life into recognizable forms (“flowers, fruit, or Malaga wine”), Crick’s discussion of benzene implies that one need not bring any such divine force into the picture in order to understand how the mysteries of thought might be explained by purely biological phenomena. Rather, says Crick, one ought to recognize that the whole can be more than the sum of its parts for entirely natural reasons. Yet Crick’s reductionist views must ultimately seem at least partially dissatisfying to anyone who reads them. While rhetorically effective, the boldness of his statements may actually do him a disservice, for his equating of “your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will” with mere chemical signaling in the brain is inherently grating to more than just those involved in the arts. Not only is such a conclusion not very helpful for understand the actual cognitive abilities that Crick mentions, it is also, as Weinberg might say, an extremely bleak outlook, and one that most people would be inclined automatically to reject. While it does seem reasonable to expect that the actual functioning of the brain must be understood biologically, it is much less clear that human thought can ever be entirely captured by scientific theories. In fact, Crick’s arguments assume a general over-optimism about the capabilities of science—he writes of the quest to understand brain processes, “I do not share the pessimism of some who think that our brains are inherently incapable of grasping such ideas” (Tyco, 293). As Balzac’s Josephine might say, Crick has “mounted the winged steed of science” and is “far from the actual world” (Balzac, 80). He has entered the realm of scientific reductionism, a place consisting solely of objectively determined characterizations of the natural world, and possessing no room for any sort of subjectivity whatsoever. Furthermore, Crick is absolutely convinced that this objective scientific inquiry will eventually explain every aspect of the human mind, when such a conclusion is not nearly as obvious or intuitive as he makes it out to be. This complete reliance or faith in the capabilities of objective deduction appears to be a hallmark of scientists at the extreme of their field. Such irrational faith is mocked by Oscar Wilde in his satirical piece, “The Decay of Lying.” In an interesting inversion, Vivian, the main character, rejects Nature outright in favor of the power of imagination—an impulse that is essentially the opposite of the reductionist agenda. He states, “Art finds her own perfection within, and not outside of herself…She has flowers that no forests know of, birds that no woodland possesses” (Tyco, 107). (7) Here, Wilde establishes the existence of an entirely independent and constructed realm, much like that occupied by science in Balzac’s novel. Unlike Claes’ world, though, Vivian’s is obtained not through pursuit of objective reality, but in fact quite the opposite—a complete reliance on subjectivity. After all, the human imagination is ultimately an expression of the subjective self, and a reliance on it therefore represents an epistemology directly opposed to the scientific method. Vivian goes on to criticize, “If…we regard Nature as the collection of phenomena external to man, people only discover in her what they bring to her. She has no suggestions of her own” (Tyco, 104). This provocative statement supposes that “Nature”—that is, the realm of science—cannot be characterized objectively, because the nature of man’s interaction with it is necessarily subjective. Vivian seems to anticipate Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle and its shift of emphasis onto the unavoidable presence of the observer in any seemingly objective scientific experiment. While Wilde most likely did not have relativity theory on his mind when he wrote this text, his decision to topple the primacy of Nature and move man to the central position is a conscious one, and reflects an impulse away from the bleakness of scientific reductionism. Wilde’s characterization of Vivian is certainly ironic. Throughout Vivian’s discussion of his fanciful theories, the reader, like the unfortunate Cyril, is often amazed at the sheer audacity of his claims. Yet if one reads Wilde as a thoughtful objector to the reductionist agenda of scientists like Crick, his arguments no longer seem all that far-fetched. As Lionel Trilling aptly points out in his essay, “Freud: Within and Beyond Culture,” the “willing suspension of disbelief” that Coleridge uses to describe poetic faith “constitutes scientific faith too, or scientific method” (Tyco, 247). (8) He goes on to add, “Science is organized improbability, or organized fantasy… The willing suspension of disbelief is an essential part of scientific thought” (Tyco, 247). Trilling’s claim that both science and poetry depend upon an initial investment of faith suggests that science is no more privileged a subject matter than art, religion, or indeed any field that requires some form of irrational belief. In other words, the scientific method, which holds that objective truth may be obtained by repeated and independent observations of the same phenomena, is no more epistemologically sound a philosophy than Vivian’s, which argues that beauty (or even more ironically, truth) derives only from falsehoods. Thus, if Balzac’s Claes represents scientific objectivism taken to its reductionist extreme, then Vivian is the artistic establishment’s subjectivist response. Like the scientific method, which places ultimate emphasis on objective repeatability, Vivian’s philosophy has a perfectly consistent standard: “Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things,” he tells us, “is the proper aim of Art” (Tyco, 112)—and only those poets who have been “absolutely unreliable” can be said to “have been really faithful to their high mission” (Tyco, 106). Like Claes, then, Vivian envisions a world entirely divorced from the “world as we know it.” In direct opposition to Claes, however, Vivian’s realm of beauty and deception is based solely on the creative capacities of the subjective self, and leaves no room whatsoever for impositions of objective truths. As Vivian puts it, in his own formulation of a binary opposition, “Nature hates Mind” (Tyco, 101). Clearly, both Vivian and Claes are exaggerated caricatures of a poet and a scientist carried to their respective extremes. And just as Claes’ ultra-reductionist views ultimately end in futility, Vivian’s philosophy about lying is just as self-defeating. For even if mankind can never get past the epistemological barrier which prevents it from proving that the scientific method is true, the fact remains that the scientific establishment continues to make advances using its paradigm of repeatability and verifiability. Practically speaking, then, the notion that we can study the world around us objectively is a useful one. To fall sway to Vivian’s seductive reasoning would be to discard centuries of scientific progress for purely epistemological reasons. Thus, the extreme cases of both objectivity and subjectivity are intuitively dissatisfying to any reasoned observer. The views of Vivian and Claes must somehow be combined into a philosophy that recognizes the merits of both subjective and objective interpretations of human thought. One such solution to this seeming paradox is offered by Searle when he writes, “The claim that all of reality is objective is, neurobiologically speaking, simply false. In general, mental states have an irreducibly subjective ontology” (Tyco, 283). Searle’s statement seems to lean toward Josephine and Vivian’s world view, insofar as he expresses skepticism about the possibility that reality can be understood in a purely objective sense. But unlike Josephine and Descartes, who argue that the capabilities of science must pale in relation to the divine, Searle asserts that the limitation of the scientific method lies in its flawed assumption that reality is “equally accessible to all competent observers” (Tyco, 282). In fact, there is no way of knowing whether reality is accessed equally by every observer because of the “irreducibly subjective ontology” that Searle describes. There is simply no way of knowing whether any two given people even see the same image when looking at the same object. Rather, an initial “willing suspension of disbelief” is required to believe in the objectivity of perception and the scientific method. The implication of all this, according to Searle, is that “consciousness and subjectivity are essential to the mind” (Tyco, 283). Thus, Searle’s argument hinges upon the deconstruction of the binary opposition represented by Claes and Crick on the one hand, and Vivian and Josephine on the other. As Searle puts it, “The fact that a feature is mental does not imply that it is not physical” (Tyco, 281). Thus, the oppositions of art and science, mind and body, or any of the other dualities that have been constructed in relation to this topic, are simply not useful for the purposes of discussion. Rather than invoke these oppositions, it is crucial to realize that subjectivity and objectivity are both essential components of human thought. As Searle so acutely pointed out, the discussion about the existence of the human consciousness has been dominated by the use of a Cartesian vocabulary that supposes mind and body to be mutually exclusive. As such, distinct sides have formed on each side of the debate to alternately defend or question the possibilities of objective science. Writers like Descartes and Balzac have expressed a fundamental skepticism for the notion that human thought can be explained biologically, while scientists like Crick and Weinberg have argued that the objective principles of science are the only tools by which reality can be explored, and that every seemingly subjective aspect of human cognition is ultimately a manifestation of objectively verifiable neurobiological phenomena. At a more extreme level, scientific parodies like Claes are depicted as bent on reducing the entire world to a single common element, while artistic parodies such as Vivian proclaim the supremacy of the human imagination over all of nature. Ultimately, however, it is fruitless to think in these terms of opposition and conflict, for the idea that “science is objective because reality is objective” (Tyco, 279) is only a heuristic. Though much of the brain’s functioning can be characterized biologically, the dismantling of human thought eventually leads to an irreducibly subjective core beyond the reach of objective science.
Sources Cited 1. Searle, John R. “What’s Wrong with the Philosophy of Mind.” The Rediscovery of the Mind. The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA. 1994. Citations are page numbers from the Tyco course packet. 2. Descartes, René. Discourse on Method. Paquin Printers. Chicago, IL. 1962. Citations are page numbers from the Tyco course packet. 3. de Balzac, Honoré. The Quest of the Absolute. E.P. Dutton & Co. Inc. New York, NY. 1936. Citations are page numbers from the novel. 4. Weinberg, Stephen. “Two Cheers for Reductionism.” Dreams of a Final Theory. Random House, Inc. New York, NY. 1994. Citations are page numbers from the Tyco course packet. 5. Churchland, Patricia. “Reduction and the Mind-Body Problem.” Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain. The MIT Press. Cambridge, MA. Citations are page numbers from the Tyco course packet. 6. Crick, Francis. The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul. Scribners, Inc. New York, NY. 1994. Citations are page numbers from the Tyco course packet. 7. Wilde, Oscar. “The Decay of Lying.” Citations are page numbers from the Tyco course packet. 8. Trilling, Lionel. “Freud: Within and Beyond Culture.” Beyond Culture. Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. New York, NY. 1965. Citations are page numbers from the Tyco course packet. |