McGinn

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McGinns Mysterianism
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This Weeks Visits

• Tuesday, April 6 Robinson, Theisen, Tierney,
  Weiland
• And Those who missed earlier visits. You know
  who you are.

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Colin McGinn (b. 1950-)

• McGinn (U. of Miami) is a full-time surfer who
  has written influential books about
  consciousness, ethics, sports, film, evil, and
  Shakespeare.
• Some of his books includeThe Mysterious Flame
  Conscious Minds In A Material World The Making
  of a Philosopher My Journey Through
  Twentieth-Century Philosophy Mindfucking The
  Critique of Mental Manipulation

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New Mysterianism

• McGinn is the leading thinker of a group of
  philosophers known as the New Mysterians (named
  after a 60s band).
• They take up the mantle of the Old Mysterians
  like John Locke who maintained that we cannot
  understand the mind-brain connection.

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Example of a mystery
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Mysteries vs. Miracles

• Clarification McGinn maintains that
  consciousness is mysterious, but denies that it
  is miraculous.
• Mystery a phenomenon that lies beyond the
  limits of our understanding.
• Miracle an action of a deity that violates a
  law of nature.

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1st Question What is mysterious?

• Question What is it exactly about consciousness
  that McGinn regards as mysterious?

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Answer

• What is mysterious is the link or connection
  between (a) what goes on in the brain (b) what
  goes on in phenomenal consciousness.
• He does not doubt that brain events are de facto
  correlated with conscious events he even
  concedes that brain events cause conscious events
  (although it is not clear he is entitled to the
  latter claim).
• But creatures with our powers of understanding do
  not and cannot understand why particular types of
  brain processes are necessarily connected with
  particular types of conscious experience.

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2nd Question Why is it mysterious?

• Question Why does McGinn think that this
  connection is necessarily mysterious to us?
• What is his argument for this claim?

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Preliminary 1 Cognitive closure

• Def. cognitive closure A type of mind M is
  cognitively closed with respect to a property P
  (or theory T) if and only if the concept-forming
  procedures at Ms disposal cannot extend to a
  grasp of P (of an understanding of T). (p. 350).

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Preliminary 2 Natural Property P

• McGinn assumes that the psychophysical link will
  consist in some natural property p. (Natural
  here just means roughly instantiated in the
  physical world.
• It is safe to say that McGinn does not feel a
  need to argue for naturalism There just has to
  be some explanation for how brains subserve
  minds (353).
• We will come back to this point later if he is
  right that naturalists cannot hope to find P,
  the question becomes whether we should prefer (a)
  his nonconstructive naturalism, or (b)
  constructive theism.

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Where is P?
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What is the structure of his argument?

• McGinn maintains that human beings cannot
  reasonably hope to discover P.
• Question What is the logical structure of the
  main argument that he presents for this claim?

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Dilemma

• P1 If we are capable of discovering P, then this
  must come either through (a) introspection, (b)
  perception, or (c) inference from perception.
• P2 (a) introspection.
• P3 (b) perception.
• P4 (c) inference from perception.
• C We are not capable of discovering P.

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(a) introspection

• Question How does/could he support this claim?

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(a) introspection

• Introspection does not present conscious states
  as depending upon the brain in some intelligible
  way. We cannot therefore introspect P (354).
• Worry It is hard to see how he could prove that
  this is the case. He can only prove that he
  cannot find P through introspection.

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(b) perception

• Question Why does he think that we cannot
  discover P through empirical investigation of the
  brain?

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(b) perception

• The crucial point is that we only directly
  perceive spatial properties of objects.
• You can stare into a living conscious brain,
  your own or someone elses, and see there a wide
  variety of instantiated properties its shape,
  colour, texture, etc. but you will not thereby
  see what the subject is experiencing, the
  conscious state itself I take it this is
  obvious (357).
• So MRIs let us perceive the neural correlates of
  consciousness but not phenomenal consciousness
  itself.

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(c) inference from perception

• McGinn maintains that we are not Humean minds,
  in the sense that perceptual closure does not
  (for us) entail cognitive closure.
• Thus, even if we do not directly perceive P, we
  might be able to conceive of P through
  inferences to the best explanation of what we
  do perceive. This is how science usually
  proceeds
• Question How does he rule out this possibility
  (pp. 358-9)? Why cannot we theoretically posit P
  in order to explain the workings of the brain?

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(c) inference from perception

• First Homogeneity constraint. If our data,
  arrived at by perception of the brain, do not
  include anything that brings in conscious states,
  then the theoretical properties we need to
  explain these data will not include conscious
  states either Everything physical has a purely
  physical explanation (358).
• Question Does this seem plausible to you? Can
  you think of a counter-example to this principle?
  

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(c) inference from perception

• Second Appeal to analogical reasoning does not
  help. This is fine for physics we can posit
  atoms they are like physical objects, just
  much smaller.
• But this does not work for consciousness the
  inferred property P would be similar in kind to
  brain properties but then it wont be able to
  explain consciousness.

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Conclusion?
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Conclusion Metaphysics or Epistemology?

• McGinn argues that the mystery is merely a
  reflection of our ignorance. The M-B connection
  is not ultimately mysterious. It is just
  mysterious to us, given our limited faculties.
• This is good enough for him. It teaches us that
  there is no philosophical problem about
  consciousness we can rest secure in the
  knowledge that some (unknoweable) property of the
  brain makes everything fall into place (362).
• McGinn seems to think that he is doing us a
  favor. We need no longer waste our time trying
  to solve the M-B problem. And we need not
  superstitiously invoke miracles to address it.

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New Mysterianism Thanks!
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Evaluation?

• Question What are the strongest objections that
  can be raised against his position and argument?