George Weigel subjects Caritas in Veritate to Higher Criticism

Over at National Review online, George Weigel has written an odd article concerning Benedict XVI's new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate. Basically, Weigel subjects the encyclical to Higher Criticism, picking out the "authentic" Benedictine passages (to be marked in gold) from the unfortunate passages (marked in red) that don't really express the Pope's thinking, but are only sops the Holy Father allowed in to placate the Peace and Justice crowd. Weigel more or less tells the reader to ignore the red passages and pay attention to Weigel's gold passages. I don't think it is any stretch to suppose that the approved gold passages not only reflect the thinking of Benedict XVI but also... George Weigel.

It's the implicit insult that bothers me. The Holy Father signed his name to the entire encyclical (sort of like the Holy Spirit inspired the entire Gospels, not merely the parts approved by T. Jefferson or E. Renan.) A man who writes what he honestly believes and is wrong we can at least respect for being honest; the man who writes what he doesn't believe out of a misguided sense of charity or because he's too wimpy to stand up to opposition in his own camp - is not only wrong but not worthy of respect. It seems Weigel would rather us lose respect for the Pope than admit that the Holy Father might see things a little differently than he does.

Why Descartes Haunts the Philosophy of Mind

If there is a premier villain in the modern philosophy of mind, it is Rene Descartes. John Searle calls him a "disaster", Antonio Damasio devotes an entire book to exposing Descartes' Error, and Daniel Dennett has spent his career trying to put a wrecking ball through the "Cartesian Theater." Yet Descartes doesn't seem to go away. His ghost keeps rattling his chains like the Jacob Marley of the philosophy of mind.

The reason is that the modern project of the philosophy of mind is Cartesian through and through. Daniel Dennett, despite his protests, is about as Cartesian as he could possibly be. The modern philosophy of mind, in fact, never seriously challenges Descartes. Philosophers attack Descartes' dualistic conclusions, but authoritatively assert the foundational elements of Cartesian philosophy that drove Descartes to dualism. These same foundational elements set the modern philosophy of mind on a path to dualism, and like a man trying to go to Los Angeles after setting his GPS for New York, modern philosophers spend their efforts trying to avoid the conclusions their first principles dictate they must eventually accept.

In Ch. 2 of Consciousness Explained, for example, Daniel Dennett gives reasons why dualism will never work as a philosophy. The dualist won't be able to explain how the immaterial mind can interact with a physical body anymore than Caspar the Ghost can explain why he can move through walls yet hold up a house when it is about to fall down. Dennett's criticisms hit the mark, but it doesn't address the reasons Descartes became a dualist in the first place. Cartesian dualism follows directly from the methodical first principle of Cartesian philosophy:

"I thought that I should take a course precisely contrary, and reject as absolutely false anything of which I could have the least doubt, in order to see whether anything would be left after this procedure which could be called wholly certain. Thus, as our senses deceive us at times, I was ready to suppose that nothing was at all the way our senses represented them to be... But I soon noticed that while I thus wished to think everything false, it was necessarily true that I who thought so was something. Since this truth, I think, therefore I am, was so firm and assured that all the most extravagant suppositions of the skeptics were unable to shake it, I judged that I could safely accept it as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking.

I then examined closely what I was, and saw that I could imagine that I had no body, and that there was no world nor any place that I occupied, but that I could not imagine for a moment that I did not exist.... therefore I concluded that I was a thing or substance whose whole essence or nature was only to think, and which, to exist, has no need of space nor of any material thing or body. Thus it followed that this ego, by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from the body and is easier to know than the latter, and that even if the body were not, the soul would not cease to be all that it now is." 

The essence of Cartesianism is in the first paragraph, not the second, which is merely a conclusion from Cartesian first principles. Those first principles are 1) The assertion of method as foundational to true philosophy, and 2) The selection of radical doubt as the method of choice. We have become so used to the Cartesian first principles that we tend to see past them and take them as self-evident first principles of thought itself. But they are not self-evident at all; at least they were not for Descartes. He spent the first part of the Discourse on Method justifying his beginning philosophy in method and radical doubt (which, once that doubt is asserted, makes one wonder about the cognitive status of the first part of the Discourse, since it is asserted prior to and without the benefit of the method.) To the extent that we see the basic task of the philosopher as to "doubt things", or think that we need special training in order to philosophize, we have adopted the Cartesian approach to philosophy. For "special training" is nothing other than education in technical method, and that doubt should be a first principle of philosophy is itself open to philosophical doubt.

Daniel Dennett begins Consciousness Explained by introducing the "brain in a vat" thought experiment, which he admits is a modern version of Descartes' Evil Demon. You've no doubt heard this before: How do you know that you are not merely a brain in a vat, with electrodes hooked up to your neurons, making you think reality is something completely different than it truly is? It's easy to see that this is another way of posing the possibility that "nothing at all was the way our senses represented them to be." Dennett rapidly concludes that you are not a brain in a vat, arguing from scientific considerations of the difficulty of pulling off something like the brain in the vat hoax on a real brain. Of course, Dennett's destruction of the vat doesn't really work, because his argument depends on his knowledge of the way the real world really works; in other words, his argument starts with his brain outside the vat in the real world. Like David Copperfield, he only appears to have gotten himself out of the vat. He was already out the whole time.

But that is beside the point. It doesn't matter whether the brain in the vat experiment pans out. The basic Cartesian principle is that the radical falsity of experience is a possibility that must be addressed and overcome at the very outset of philosophy; Descartes himself overcomes this radical doubt, although in a way different than Dennett. The point is that any philosophy that feels it must start with the overcoming of radical doubt is starting on the Cartesian railroad. 

The second fundamental principle of Cartesian philosophy is that philosophy can only be conducted in the light of method. The point here is to undermine "folk philosophy" or the naive trading of opinions that was supposed to be characteristic of traditional philosophy. Instead of lolling around the agora engaging in idle conversation, the modern philosopher rolls up his sleeves and gets results. In Descartes' words, the ancient philosopher only argued the truth; the modern philosopher discovers the truth. 

Descartes' method of choice was that of applied universal doubt, but the selection of the particular method is not so important as the decision that philosophy itself can only begin with method. The latter principle is the distinguishing one of Cartesian philosophy. Since Descartes' time, philosophers have tried various experimental combinations of doubt and method; criticizing each other's doubt as not being real doubt, or each other's method as being poorly applied or wrongly selected, but the presumption that philosophy must begin with some form of doubt and method has been more or less tacitly assumed throughout the history of modern philosophy. 

The contemporary philosophy of mind generally begins in straightforward Cartesian terms with the assertion of method, in this case scientific method. There is nothing wrong with referring to scientific results in philosophy, of course, but what distinguishes the approach as Cartesian is that science is brought in through authoritative assertion rather than argument. This is the way John Searle does it in Mind, A Brief Introduction:

"The view implicit in this book, which I know want to make explicit, is that science does not name an ontological domain; it names rather a set of methods for finding out about anything at all that admits of systematic investigation... There is no such thing as the scientific world. There is, rather, just the world, and what we are trying to do is describe how it works and describe our situation in it. As far as we know, its most fundamental principles are given by atomic physics and, for that little corner of it that most concerns us, evolutionary biology. The two basic principles on which any such investigation as the one I have been engaging in depends on are, first, the notion that the most fundamental entities in reality are those described by atomic physics; and, second, that we, as biological beasts, are the products of long periods of evolution, perhaps as long as five billion years."

So if we are able to discover anything about the mind systematically, it must be through the methods of science, which has already established atomic physics and Darwinian evolution through the application of method. The interesting Cartesian question is: What is the relationship of the subsequent philosophy of mind to the mind that authoritatively established method and its results in the first place? Can the philosophy of mind call into question the mind that established its foundation in method? It is the same question that can be asked of Descartes, and it brings to light the inevitable tendency of Cartesian thought towards dualism.

In his Discourse on Method, Descartes proclaims his method in Part II after a preamble in both Parts I and the beginning of Part II. The method is supposed to cast all prior notions into doubt so as to find the one indubitable starting point of philosophy. But if the method does this, what happens to the cognitive status of the preamble? Is it not cast into doubt as well? The preamble consists of Descartes' reasons for abandoning the traditional approach to philosophy and inventing a new approach. It involves his views on the historical futility of philosophy and the uselessness of what he learned in school. But if we are to doubt all prior notions, should we not also doubt the uselessness of traditional philosophy and the worthlessness of what Descartes learned in school? Should not Descartes doubt that he ever was in school, or that he ever learned philosophy? Such doubt would, of course, undermine Descartes' justification for his revolution in philosophy. It would bring his project to a standstill. In fact, Descartes does not really doubt everything; he doesn't doubt his own appreciation of the history of philosophy or his confidence in establishing a radically new basis for philosophy. His assertion of the Method merely hides his earlier conclusions, which were not established by the method but are nonetheless beyond all doubt. The mind that established those conclusions, and that authorized and created the Method, is itself also hidden from view. But although it is hidden, it still lurks in the background, and will never go away because it is more certain than the Method itself. This is the ghost that reasserts itself in the form of Cartesian dualism; the Cartesian ghost is the true knower who established and underwrites the Method through which all other beings are granted existence. The Cartesian world is a world of beings who are granted existence through method; but, as Descartes realized, the Thinking Being who conducts the Method is not itself granted existence through Method, for it must already be for the Method to happen at all. So the thinking being is not a body or extensive being in the world like all others, it is an immaterial being transcending the world entirely. Thus we arrive at dualism.

The contemporary philosopher of mind follows the same path as Descartes, with the method of empirical science substituted for the method of empirical doubt. But the result is the same. For John Searle, the true "fundamental entities" populating the world are those established by the methods of atomic physics. What of the scientific mind that creates, establishes, and conducts atomic science, and proclaims in its name the true fundamental entities? This Thinking Being is clearly less dubitable than the atomic particles it proclaims, and it is also beyond the reach of the philosophy of mind, for the philosophy of mind starts with the scientific mind behind it as the authoritative voice of method. But although hidden, the scientific mind is still there, and haunts the contemporary philosophy of mind in the form of the Cartesian Ghost. Daniel Dennett won't find the Cartesian Ghost in his Cartesian Theater; he'll find him in the scientist who establishes the scientific results with which Dennett starts the philosophy of mind.

The only way to exorcise the Cartesian Ghost is to stop repeating the spell that calls him forth from the grave: The insistence on doubt and method as first principles of philosophy.

Steven Pinker, Evolution and the Mind

In this post and this post I've discussed the theory of the mind as a model-maker, and how evolutionary theory is commonly used to bridge the models from the mind into reality. Here is Steven Pinker's version of this move from The Blank Slate:

"Modernism and postmodernism cling to a theory of perception that was rejected long ago; that the sense organs present the brain with a tableau of raw colors and sounds and that everything else in perceptual experience is a learned social construction. As we saw in preceding chapters, the visual system of the brain comprises some fifty regions that take raw pixels and effortlessly organize them into surfaces, colors, motions, and three-dimensional objects. We can no more turn the system off and get immediate access to pure sensory experience than we can override our stomachs and tell them when to release their digestive enzymes. The visual system, moreover, does not drug us into a hallucinatory fantasy disconnected from the real world. It evolved to feed us information about the consequential things out there, like rocks, cliffs, animals, and other people and their intentions." (p. 412)

This example has it all. It's got the half-baked Kantianism masquerading as modern scientific insight; the confident assertion of evolutionary theory as the true savior from Descartes' Evil Demon (the hallucinatory fantasy by its original name); and the overall confident tone that modern scientists have those pesky old philosophical problems well in hand.

Pinker gives us the impression that the theory that the senses give us a tableau of raw colors and sounds was disproved by science - that's what the talk about fifty brain regions and pixels is about. Actually, this theory was blown away back in the 18th century by Kant, and Kant didn't need any neuroscience to do it. He also went a lot deeper than Pinker has gone. It's not just that our perceptual experience comes already organized into surfaces, colors and three-dimensional objects. Our entire mental life comes already organized into the basic categories of cognition; the here, there, before, after, unity, multiplicity, more, less, etc. The scientist may be able to "get behind" the perceptual experience of his lab subject, but he will never get behind the cognitive categories of his own thought. Those categories either map directly onto reality or they don't; if they don't, then science - including evolutionary science - isn't possible, at least if we want a science of the noumenal and not merely the phenomenal. If they do map onto reality, then evolution isn't needed to bootstrap the mind. Either way, the appeal to evolution is at best a distraction from the true issue.

The more I read about evolution, the more awe-inspiring it becomes. Alone among scientific theories, it seems, it is not only proven by science, but itself proves the science that already proved it. 

The Modeling Mind, Science and Post-Modernism

In this post I discussed the theory of the mind that holds that the mind is thoroughly a model-maker.

The holders of this theory generally believe that they do so in deference to science, or as a way to defend the intellectual primacy of science. In science, this view goes, we build models of the world and test them against each other. So if the mind is primarily scientific, it must primarily be a model-maker.

Unfortunately, the theory of the thoroughly model-making mind is ultimately destructive of science, at least if we want science to be about the real world, which seems to be what everyone wants. The only way to know if a model accurately reflects the real world is to compare it to the real world, so you must have some contact with the world that transcends the model if you are to have any hope of knowing if the model is true. If your verification of the model is itself an exercise in model-building (as must be the case for a thoroughly model-making mind), then there is no way to escape the world of models into reality. I know my model of an F-18 jet is accurate because I can compare it to a real F-18. If the only way I can find out if the F-18 is accurate is to build other models, then I can never find out if the F-18 is accurate. Whatever models I build to verify it will themselves need verification in terms of yet further model-building, ad infinitum. At some point there must be an end to model-building and a simple, direct appreciation of reality.

The truth of this can be found by analyzing the thought of any of these model-building-mind philosophers. At some point in their presentation, they will slip in some proposition as an absolute anchor point in reality, a point that is not itself a model of reality but is reality itself. It will not be called out as such, and is generally taken for granted in a way that makes it easy to overlook. But such an anchor point will always be there. One of the favorites is "organisms with more accurate models of reality survive better than organisms with less accurate models of reality" (which I'll call M1), which does the job philosophers want of bootstrapping the model-making mind only if M1 itself is a direct statement about reality and not a model. But then it contradicts the thesis of the thoroughly model-making mind.

The danger to science is that, in a philosophy that needs yet denies the mind any direct anchor in reality, the necessary anchor point can only be selected in an arbitrary manner. What is so special about M1? The model-making-mind philosophy cannot have an answer, since it is only hiding the fact that, according to its own principles, M1 is but another exercise in model-making. When this is realized, the theorist is free to keep the model-making mind philosophy, but select (arbitrarily) a different anchor point in reality. How about this one: "So that it may exploit the world in good conscience, Western thought hides from itself the violent and imperialistic principles that are its core", which I will call M2. In the view of M2, M1 is really just an expression of Western prejudices rather than a true reflection of reality; a convenient one at that since it maps the violent tendencies of Western man onto the core of reality. Here we have the genesis of post-modernism. And the post-modernist is right. M1 is a prejudice, for it is the prior principle that is itself not judged but in terms of which all other principles are judged.

The real answer to the foundation of science and its defense is in a philosophy that does not demand that the mind be nothing but a model-maker, and does not slip in foundational principles that are themselves not open to judgment. More on this later.

The Mind as a Model-Maker

I just finished reading The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger, which is subtitled The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self. The book joins a steady stream of books from neuroscientists and philosophers (e.g. Descartes' Error and A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness ) all of which tell more or less the same story: The mind is nothing but the brain; the brain understands the world through model-making; the conscious self is but a part of that model and is therefore an illusion or a "myth." V.S. Ramachandran says it straightforwardly in A Brief Tour of Human Consciousness:

"Our brains are essentially model-making machines. We need to construct useful, virtual-reality simulations of the world that we can act on." [p. 105]

Thomas Metzinger's version is this:

"From a philosopher's point of view, there is a lot of nonsense in this popular notion. We don't create an individual world but only a world-model. Moreover, the whole idea of potentially being directly in touch with reality is a sort of romantic folklore; we know the world only by using representations, because (correctly) representing something is what knowing is." [p. 9]

What is so fascinating about these assertions is that the authors sincerely believe they are breakthroughs based on recent advances in neuroscience, but if they are, then the only thing to which neuroscience has broken through is a poorly understood version of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. The Metzinger quote seems almost a direct lift from Kant; surely he is familiar with Kant, because he is a philosopher (and a German one at that). In fact, Kant is mentioned on page 26, but more on that passage later.

What makes a great philosopher great is his ability to plumb the full implications and meaning of a particular line of thinking, even if that line of thinking is ultimately mistaken in its foundation. Kant was a great philosopher, and if you want to understand the true meaning of the recent deluge of books on the philosophy of mind and neuroscience, read the Critique of Pure Reason and then the neuroscience books. Kant thought through this whole "mind is a model-maker" principle to its furthest implications, implications the more contemporary philosophers and scientists are still struggling to reach.

The key insight from Kant is this: If the mind is nothing more than a model-maker, if it doesn't have some direct contact with reality in its foundation, if all it knows is its representations of things, then whatever science or philosophy we construct will be a science or philosophy of those representations, not of the reality behind the representations. This is the basis of Kant's distinction between the phenomenal (things as they appear to us) and the noumenal (things as they are in themselves.) The recent philosophers/scientists of the mind, however, don't want a science merely of phenomena; they want a science of the things themselves. But they can't tell us how such a science is possible, so they just quickly brush the problem off and hope we don't notice. In the Metzinger quote above, he notes that knowledge is not merely representing something, but correctly representing it; there is a whole world of philosophy in that "correctly." How is that we can come to know that some representations are correct and others are not? The best answer Metzinger gives is this:

"Nor is it true that we can never get out of the tunnel or know anything about the outside world: Knowledge is possible, for instance, through the cooperation and communication of large groups of people - scientific communities that design and test theories, constantly criticize one another, and exchange empirical data and new hypotheses." [p. 9]

So knowledge is possible because we talk to each other and do science. This is straight question-begging, because science itself can get started only if we already are in possession of certain elements of knowledge (e.g. that mathematical knowledge reflects reality itself and not just our perception of reality. Kant held the latter position, which is why he insisted on the phenomenal/noumenal distinction.)

Metzinger discusses Plato's Cave on p. 22, but without understanding its full implications. The prisoners in Plato's Cave must be released from their chains in order to know the sunlit reality outside the cave. As long as they are chained in the cave and only watching shadows, it doesn't matter how clever their science is, how deep their philosophers think, or how much they talk to each other. Their science will necessarily be a science of the shadows, not a science of the sunlit reality outside the cave. Kant showed the limits of how far the philosophical prisoner could go: He could, through the a priori use of reason, come to know that his thought and his science was a science of shadows (the phenomenal) and not a science of real things themselves (the noumenal.) But he can't go beyond that; he can't know anything about the noumenal itself, only that it is something beyond his ability to comprehend through his science.

There is another implication of Plato's Cave that is sometimes overlooked. Even after the prisoners are released from the Cave and experience the sunlit reality outside the Cave, that experience will mean nothing to them unless their nature already has the capacity to benefit from that experience; they must be able to perceive and comprehend sunlit reality for it to mean anything to them. If their eyes are such that they can only perceive shadows (i.e. two-dimensional images of only two contrasting colors, in black and white without any gray), or their minds are such that they can only process the images of shadows, then the experience outside the cave will be worse than useless. It will be completely unintelligible and probably fatal. Plato, another great philosopher who understood the deep implications of his own thought, recognized this and so, in his story, the prisoners are initially baffled when released from the Cave. They initially refuse to believe that the world outside the Cave is the real world. It takes time for them to grow accustomed to the sunlit world, but that accommodation is only possible because the prisoner's nature already has the potential to understand it. Even while in the Cave, the prisoners have the faculties to perceive and comprehend three-dimensional, sunlit reality should they be exposed to it; those faculties are merely dormant in the Cave and need "waking up" outside the Cave. This is why Plato supposed that man was more a soul than a body, because the most significant aspect of his nature was that which enabled him to comprehend true reality when he encountered it. The soul is the part of man that is "woken up" in philosophy and begins to perceive reality as it is.

Now we may disagree with Plato's notion of human nature, but he at least understood the question and his answer is an attempt to address it. Kant disagreed with Plato about the connection of human nature with basic reality, and so concluded that man can never know more than the shadows (although he can come to know this fact itself, which was Kant's particular contribution.) The contemporary philosophers never reach the debate between Plato and Kant. They bake the Kantian cake by insisting that the mind of man is a model-maker through and through, but avoid eating the cake by insisting that their science of the mind is truly about the mind ("the brain") and not just the phenomena as they appear to scientists.

The real myth here is not the self, but the myth that a model-making mind can transcend its own models through science. Back to Metzinger's mention of Kant on p. 26 of his book:

"Philosophers like Immanuel Kant or Franz Brentano have theorized about this 'unity of consciousness': What exactly is it that, at every single point in time, blends all the different parts of your conscious experience into one single reality? Today it is interesting to note that the first essential insight - knowing that you know something - is mainly discussed in the philosophy of mind, whereas the neuroscience of consciousness focuses on the problem of integration: how the features of objects are bound together. The latter phenomenon - the One-World Problem of dynamic, global integration - is what we must examine if we want to understand the unity of consciousness."

Metzinger has gotten half of Kant but missed the other half. The blending of conscious experience into one single reality includes the empirical unity of consciousness, or the One-World Problem. But there is a deeper unity implicit, the transcendental unity of apperception, that is the unity of the thought of the scientist analyzing the empirical unity of consciousness. We might call this the One-Science Problem. Here is a concrete case: The neuroscientist examines the subjective experience of time of subjects in the lab. He notes how long they think different things have taken in different contexts, how long they think dreams are compared to how long they really are, that sort of thing. He stimulates various parts of the subject's brain and induces different time disorientations; the subject suddenly thinks it is tomorrow, or yesterday, or that lifting his hand took an hour instead of a second. The details don't matter. The point is that there is a distinction between the time experienced by the subject, and the time the scientist measures in his lab through his instruments; but both depend on structures of the human mind for their meaning. The time measured by the scientist in the laboratory, against which he judges the subjective time of his subject, has meaning only in terms of the concepts of before, now, after and duration that are basic cognitive elements of the human mind; science does not discover these cognitive elements but is constructed in their terms. What is the unity that brings these cognitive elements together into one science? It's not the empirical unity of consciousness, because the scientist is taking apart the empirical unity of consciousness in terms of his science. It is a unity that is not apparent in empirical experience, but is implied in our conduct of a science that permits us to decompose the empirical unity of consciousness. Kant called this deeper unity transcendental because it transcends empirics altogether; we know about it not through scientific analysis of empirical data but through pure reason, or thinking about what must be necessary for science to happen at all.

Either these basic cognitive elements of the mind are reflective of reality or they are not. If they are not (i.e. if our minds are model-makers through and through) then our science can't be a science of reality as such. Our construction of scientific theories to make sense of our experience may be models, but their basic cognitive elements (before, now, after, here, there, unity, multiplicity) had better not be, or we've got to eat the Kantian cake, frosting and all. If we don't want to end up with Kant, the only way is to accept that the human mind in its basic cognitive elements directly reflects reality. When we are confused about reality, it is not because our basic contact with reality is confused, or is merely a model of reality, but because we have constructed a false perception or understanding of reality through the elements of reality itself.

When reading a philosopher who starts with the principle that the mind is thoroughly a model-maker, but also wants to have a science that reflects reality itself, it is always possible to find a place where he surreptitiously slips out of Plato's Cave to find an anchor in reality, then slips back in the Cave and claims he never left. One of the favorite ways of doing this is by invoking evolutionary theory. We evolved as model-makers, you see, and we can have confidence that our models accurately reflect reality because organisms with poor models simply won't survive as well as organisms with better models. Over the millions of years of human evolution, this resulted in the very accurate models we human beings now possess.

That's a fine story, but it all hinges on this proposition: "Organisms with more accurate models of the world will survive better than organisms with less accurate models." Is this proposition a model of the world, or does it directly reflect reality? If it's merely a model of the world, then we can't use it to bootstrap all our other models, can we? It might be that, in true reality, it doesn't matter what sort of models organisms have, or they might not have models at all, or even that our model of the world as having "organisms" is itself mistaken. This tactic works only if it is granted that the evolutionary principle is an absolute anchor in the real world, not merely yet another model constructed by the model-making mind; which is what it must be if the mind is purely a model-maker. Typically, this assumption is never made explicit but is hidden in a bold assertion of evolutionary principle.

Magical perspective of science

I've been reading The Ego Tunnel by Thomas Metzinger. This is from Ch. 2:

"To form a successful theory of consciousness, we must match first-person phenomenal content to third-person brain content. We must somehow reconcile the inner perspective of the experiencing self with the outside perspective of science. And there will always be many of us who intuitively think this can never be done."

Count me among the unenlightened masses. I find these kind of statements fascinating for their frank belief in the magical ability of science to transcend the human condition. We are all trapped in the Ego Tunnel it seems, except when we do science, for then we are transported into the "outside perspective of science." Just what is this "science" that has an outside perspective? Is it composed of actual real people? If the "outside perspective of science" must be reconciled with the "experiencing self", it sure sounds like science is conducted by something other than experiencing selves. But if science is conducted by experiencing selves, then the "outside perspective of science" is really the outside perspective of science as seen and interpreted through the inner perspective of the experiencing self; in other words, it is just the inner perspective of the self kidding itself that it has transcended its own condition through science.

Science is, of course, very useful in understanding the brain and the mind. But everything mentioned in science can be traced back to first-person phenomenal content, for that's the only way any data ever gets into science. "Third-person brain content" is a confused and misleading notion, because "brain" is itself meaningful only as first-person phenomenal content.

An example of the modern expert

In this earlier post, I wrote about how modern experts serve the same cultural function that priests once did: As the interface to the mysterious powers that dominate our lives.

There is a timely example of this in the latest issue of The Atlantic. The author even explicitly compares the modern therapist to a priest or a shaman:

And yet at the end of the day—literally during a five o’clock counseling appointment, as the golden late-afternoon sunlight spilled over the wall of Balinese masks—when given the final choice by our longtime family therapist, who stands in as our shaman, mother, or priest, I realized … no. Heart-shattering as this moment was—a gravestone sunk down on two decades of history—I would not be able to replace the romantic memory of my fellow transgressor with the more suitable image of my husband, which is what it would take in modern-therapy terms to knit our family’s domestic construct back together.

Sandra Tsing Loh is talking about her decision to divorce her husband of twenty years. What is interesting is the manner in which Loh describes the situation in terms of abstract concepts and forces that have almost dictated her decision. She has committed adultery, apparently, and according to the therapist the "domestic construct" can survive only if Loh can replace the romantic memory of her lover with that of her husband. Can she do it? Well, she seems not to think so, saying that "I would not be able" to replace it. I wonder.. how does she know? Has she tried? And why does she so uncritically accept the therapeutic assertion that replacing romantic memories is the decisive act in restoring a marriage? Well, because the expert says so, and in the modern world, only experts know things, not ordinary people.

It's the fatalism of the passage that strikes me. The marriage cannot work unless Loh can peform the ritual memory replacement prescribed by the therapist. In the old days, evil spirits might roam the world looking for the ruin of souls, but there was nothing inevitable about their effect. Evil spirits ruin man through tempting him to sin, but through prayer, the sacraments, and the practice of ordinary virtue, temptation could be overcome and evil spirits thwarted. Even if man succumbs to sin - by committing adultery, for example - there was nothing inevitable about the result. Sin triumphs only if man allows it to triumph, which, unfortunately, man sometimes grants. But the inevitability of the triumph of sin, that there is a time when sin decisively undermines our freedom to overcome it and its effects, is something the modern therapist apparently accepts but the old priest would have resisted with every fiber of his being.

One difference between the old priest and the modern expert is that the priest never allowed that the mysterious powers were powerful enough to fully undermine the freedom of man. His main function, in fact, was to administer sacraments that restored man's freedom in the face of the powers that would dominate him. This includes every kind of power; the power of demons to tempt us to sin, or the power of political authorities to corrupt our conscience (see St. Thomas More and King Henry VIII). Now you may dismiss the angels and demons the priest believed in as fantasy - fair enough. But the point is that the priest always thought that man had the wherewhithal to side with angels against the demons, no matter his station or education. The wealthiest king was still as subject to the temptation to sin as much as the poorest peasant, and both had access to the sacraments that would save them both in this world and the next; in this they were perfectly equal. Not so much anymore. Now the poor peasant is the powerless victim of social and economic forces beyond his control, forces that are known only by the experts and those with the money to pay them. Only the woman with money is able to pay for the expert advice that would tell her how to knit her domestic construct together, unless she is lucky enough to get on the Dr. Phil show.

It's not just mysterious psychological forces that dominate us in the modern world, but chemical forces as well. Loh refers to a book that reveals the manner in which our romantic destiny is determined by chemistry (literally):

Why Him, Why Her explains the hormonal forces that trigger humans to be romantically attracted to some people and not to others (a phenomenon also documented in the animal world). Fisher posits that each of us gets dosed in the womb with different levels of hormones that impel us toward one of four basic personality types:

The Explorer—the libidinous, creative adventurer who acts “on the spur of the moment.” Operative neurochemical: dopamine.

The Builder—the much calmer person who has “traditional values.” The Builder also “would rather have loyal friends than interesting friends,” enjoys routines, and places a high priority on taking care of his or her possessions. Operative neurotransmitter: serotonin.

The Director—the “analytical and logical” thinker who enjoys a good argument. The Director wants to discover all the features of his or her new camera or computer. Operative hormone: testosterone.

The Negotiator—the touchy-feely communicator who imagines “both wonderful and horrible things happening” to him- or herself. Operative hormone: estrogen, then oxytocin.

Some of the combinations work and others don't. An Explorer marrying and Explorer, for example, isn't likely to work, but a Builder marrying a Builder will be boring but permanent. Loh's friend Ellen discovers through the book the reason that her marriage never did and never could work:

Exclaims Ellen, slapping the book: “This is why my marriage has been dead for 15 years. I’m an Explorer married to a Builder!” (Ron literally is a builder—like Ian, he crafts wonderful shelves and also, of course, cooks.) But what can Ellen do? Explorer-Explorer tends to be one of the most unstable combinations, whereas Fisher suspects “most of the world’s fifty-year marriages are made by Builders who marry other Builders.”

But what can Ellen do? In the modern world, nothing at all but accept the inevitability of the chemical forces that dominate her life. Dopamine and Serotonin are gods who brook no appeal.

P.S. Don't you just love the way Ellen identified herself as an Explorer? Why, I must be an Explorer, because I'm "creative"and an "adventurer." My boring old husband, however, is just a "Builder", attached to his "traditional values", his loyal but boring friends (friends, you see, are either loyal or interesting, but can't be loyal and interesting), and really is just a selfish boob, because he's mostly worried about taking care of his possessions (i.e. polishing his BMW). Fortunately for Ellen, chemistry dictates that she can do nothing but rid herself of this boat anchor of a guy.