Abstract
This essay identifies two shifts in the conceptual evolution of the mind-body problem since it was molded into its modern form. The “mind-body problem 1.0” corresponds to Descartes’ ontological question: what are minds and how are they related to bodies? The “mind-body problem 2.0” reflects the core issue underlying much discussion of brains and minds in the twentieth century: can mental states be reduced to neural states? While both issues are no longer central to scientific research, the philosophy of mind ain’t quite done yet. In an attempt to recast a classic discussion in a more contemporary guise, I present a “mind-body problem 3.0.” In a slogan, this can be expressed as the question: how should we pursue psychology in the age of neuroscience?
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Notes
- 1.
It is not trivial to find explicit statements of this assumption, partly because the mind-body problem is well-known and contemporary authors seldom bother to present it in full detail. Here are some representative quotes: “[T]he persuasive imagery of the Cartesian Theater [the idea of a centered locus of consciousness in the brain] keeps coming back to haunt us—laypeople and scientists alike—even after its ghostly dualism has been denounced and exorcized” (Dennett 1991, p. 107). “The mind-body problem was posed in its modern form only in the seventeenth century, with the emergence of the conception of the physical world on which we are now all brought up” (Nagel 1995, p. 97). “What exactly are the relations between the mental and the physical, and in particular how can there be causal relations between them? (…) This is the most famous problem that Descartes left us, and it is usually called the ‘mind-body problem”’ (Searle 2004, p. 11).
- 2.
Descartes’s conception of substance was strikingly nuanced (Rodriguez-Pereyra 2008).
- 3.
To be sure, psychologists and philosophers had different agendas. To reflect this divergence, it is common to distinguish two strands of behaviorism (Fodor 1981). First, “philosophical” (also known as “logical” or “analytic”) behaviorism is associated with a thesis about the nature of mind and the meaning of mental states. Second, “psychological” or “methodological,” behaviorism emerged from an influential scientific methodology applied to psychology. For the sake of simplicity, I shall not distinguish between the two variants.
- 4.
Again, I am unabashedly clashing together several variants of functionalism, such as Putnam’s “psycho-functionalism” and Armstrong’s “a priori functionalism” (Block 1978).
- 5.
As Matteo Colombo has brought to my attention, the mind-body problem 1.0 could also be framed as a matter of reduction. On this reading, Descartes may be interpreted as providing a negative argument: minds cannot be reduced to bodies because they are altogether different substances. This is an effective strategy to bring Descartes into modern debates, finding some narrative continuity in the last four hundred years of philosophy of mind. Still, this operation should be understood, from our contemporary perspective. From historical standpoint, Descartes’ target was not reduction. He was interested in ontological questions about the nature of minds and their interactions with bodies. Relatedly, eliminative materialists prefer to talk about “elimination” as opposed to “reduction.” Yet, the former concept can be straightforwardly treated as a limiting case of the latter.
- 6.
To be sure, Nagel’s own conception of reduction was subtler, and its proper interpretation remains a matter of controversy (Fazekas 2009; Klein 2009). Nevertheless, for present purposes I am less interested in Nagel’s actual views, and more in how his model of reduction was received and discussed within philosophy (Fodor 1974; Kitcher 2003).
- 7.
An analogous, equally heated debate emerged in the philosophy of science. Putnam’s square-peg example was developed and extended to real-life scientific scenarios in biology (Kitcher 2003), psychology (Fodor 1974), and the social sciences (Garfinkel 1981). Post-positivist neo-reductionists disagreed. Authors such as Waters (1990), Sober (1999, 2000), Rosenberg (2006), and Strevens (2008) stressed that, while micro-explanations are often unnecessarily complex or anti-economical, they do emphasize crucial details that are typically presupposed implicitly or taken for granted at the macro-level.
- 8.
Chemero and Silberstein motivate their provocative claim as follows: “The two main debates in the philosophy of mind over the last few decades about the essence of mental states (they are physical, functional, phenomenal, etc.) and over mental context have run their course. Positions have hardened; objections are repeated; theoretical filigrees are attached. These relatively armchair discussions are being replaced by empirically oriented debates in philosophy of cognitive and neural sciences” (2008, p. 1).
- 9.
“The scientific practices based on the two-level view (functional/cognitive /computational’ vs. neural/mechanistic/implementation) are being replaced by scientific practices based on the view that there are many levels of mechanistic organization. No one level has a monopoly on cognition proper. Instead, different levels are more or less cognitive depending on their specific properties. The different levels and the disciplines that study them are not autonomous from one another. Instead, the different disciplines contribute to the common enterprise of constructing multilevel mechanistic explanations of cognitive phenomena. In other words, there is no longer any meaningful distinction between cognitive psychology and the relevant portions of neuroscience—they are merging to form cognitive neuroscience” (Boone and Piccinini 2016b, p. 1510).
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Acknowledgments
The author is grateful to Bill Anderson, John Bickle, Fabrizio Calzavarini, Matteo Colombo, Guie Del Pinal, Carrie Figdor, Matteo Grasso, Philipp Haueis, Mika Smith, Marco Viola, and two reviewers for constructive comments on various versions of this essay, and to Stefano Mannone for designing the image. Earlier drafts were presented at the University of Milan, Mississippi State University, the University of Turin Neural Mechanisms Webinar Series, and the University of Denver. All audiences provided valuable feedback.
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Nathan, M.J. (2021). The Mind-Body Problem 3.0. In: Calzavarini, F., Viola, M. (eds) Neural Mechanisms. Studies in Brain and Mind, vol 17. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54092-0_12
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