Because the brain evolved to...

If you read Darwinists tackling some social or moral issue, eventually you will find them invoking the phrase in the title of this post, as though it adds some insight to the issue at hand. It doesn't.

Darwinism proposes a comprehensive explanation of human nature. There is no aspect of human nature, not the smallest part, that is not the product of evolution. There is nothing that human beings do, or can possibly do, that doesn't have its origin in evolution. Darwinism insists that no aspect of nature transcends its own mechanisms.

So the facts, whatever they are, can always be accounted for by saying "because X evolved that way." Here is John Derbyshire explaining attitudes about abortion:

The problem is, of course, that a fetus is a rather particular kind of person: one sharing the body resources of another human being. It is manifestly not the case that we all agree the killing of this particular kind of person should not be permitted. Stamping your foot and yelling “But it’s a person! It’s a person!” doesn’t advance the argument.

Supernaturalists can of course point to divine ordinances, scripture, the Tao, and so on. That’s great, except that we are not all supernaturalists, so these appeals fall on a lot of stony ground. Since a great majority of people claim to be supernaturalists, these appeals might none the less form the basis for a consensus; but there is no sign that that is happening. The supernaturalist case seems to be unconvincing even to a lot of supernaturalists.

I’d guess that all the noise and confusion has origins within the scope of cognitive science and evolutionary psychology. Our brains evolved to cope with commonplace features of the world: physical features (water flows downhill) and social features (every human group has gradations of status). Fetuses — and embryos much less — just were not a feature of everyday experience until recently. The brain has no developed categories for coping with them, either as physical or social objects.

Yes, all that noise and confusion has origins within the scope of cognitive science and evolution. That is because everything about human nature, and all its possible manifestations, has origins within the scope of cognitive science and evolution. Our brains evolved to cope with commonplace features of the world, yes. Yet we must also deal with uncommonplace features of the world - the occasional tsunami, for example. Do we deal with them through means that escape, or even possibly transcend, evolutionary mechanisms? Of course not; nothing is allowed to escape evolutionary mechanisms, so in whatever way we deal with uncommonplace features of the world, our brains evolved to do it that way.

Why do religious believers invoke sacred scripture, the Tao, etc. in condemnation of abortion? Because their brains evolved that way. Why are some people not supernaturalists? Because their brains evolved that way. Why do some people think that tracing moral and social issues to a remote evolutionary past adds anything to the discussion? Because their brains evolved that way. Why do I think that discussions about evolutionary history add nothing one way or the other to discussions of the morality of abortion? Because my brain evolved that way. Why does John Derbyshire conclude from the fact that evolution has not lead to a moral consensus on abortion, that no reasonable case can be made against abortion? Because his brain evolved that way.

The real trick in invoking Darwinism on moral issues is the sleight of hand that turns an apparently descriptive account of human nature into a prescriptive one. Anti-abortion advocates advance all sorts of rational arguments against abortion. The fact that these arguments are made, and found persuasive by many, is a natural fact as much as any other. The only way people could find these arguments persuasive is if their brains had evolved "the categories for coping with them." Yet Derbyshire tells us authoritatively that asserting that the unborn is a person doesn't advance the argument. Why not? Well, because we haven't evolved the "developed categories for coping with them." But the people who make the arguments clearly have developed the categories for coping with them, or they couldn't make the arguments. Everything is a result of evolution.

This is where the argument turns prescriptive. Some manifestations of human nature are more equal than others. The fact that many people find anti-abortion arguments reasonable and compelling is not a fact that must be accounted for by evolution; it is an inconvenient piece of data that must be undermined. Those anti-abortion folks aren't making real arguments, you see, because our brains have not evolved the categories for dealing with them. They are just fake arguments. In a few years, when enough people have fallen for this nonsense, nobody will make those arguments anymore - then our prescriptive argument will safely collapse into a descriptive one.

How do I know this will happen? Because my brain evolved to...

The new priests: Experts

"Man has been forced to vegetate in his primitive stupidity; nothing has been offered to his mind, but stories of invisible powers, upon whom his happiness was supposed to depend. Occupied solely by his fears, and unintelligible reveries, he has always been at the mercy of his priests, who have reserved to themselves the right of thinking for him, and directing his actions."

- Baron d'Holbach, 1772

The Baron's words are just as true today as they were in 1772, but the referents have changed. The "invisible powers" offered to man today are not angels and demons, but obscure material forces. These are the forces that make him contented or depressed, form his character, and direct his life without him knowing it. In place of the priests of old, we have "experts" who dispense therapy and pills to relieve his depression, other experts who construct government education and welfare programs, without which obscure social forces will inevitably turn him into a criminal, and yet other experts who inspect his genetic code like tea leaves and tell him that he is doomed to be a loser anyway. Instead of confession, we have therapy; instead of the sacrament of baptism, we have the sacrament of abortion; instead of Calvinism, we have genetic determinism. Man still vegetates in his primitive stupidity... but I cannot help but think that vegetating in front of American Idol is a little more primitive than vegetating before the Te Deum at High Mass.

Man's happiness depends on invisible powers. Unfortunately, that's just the way it is whether you are an atheist or a Calvinist, or something else altogether. The decisive question is not whether you can get rid of the stories altogether, but which stories you will believe.

Kierkegaard's "A" on the web

Via the secular right blog, I found the interesting blog Roissy in DC. What makes it interesting is that Roissy, from my admittedly casual inspection, seems to be an unselfconscious example of person "A" from Kierkegaard's Either/Or.  For those who don't know or need to be reminded, Either/Or is written in the form of short essays that were "found" by the pseudonymous Victor Eremita. Eremita does not know who wrote the essays, but he is able to deduce that they were written by two different people whom he labels "A" and "B". "A" may be classified as an intellectual hedonist, someone for whom pleasure is the highest good, and to the pursuit of which he turns his considerable intellectual ability. The theme running through A's essays is the nature and pursuit of the erotic, since it captures desire in its most potent form. The first part of Either/Or ends with the famous Diary of the Seducer, the account of a man's quest to capture and exploit the heart of a young woman.

Roissy is reminscent of A, but he doesn't seem to have A's refinement or deep sense of the erotic. Compare, for example the 16 Commandments of Poon with the Diary of the Seducer. Johannes the Seducer would scoff at the "alpha male" stuff, not because it isn't true, but because it aims so low. Getting a girl to go to bed with you isn't that hard, or even getting her to be your "girlfriend." Getting a girl to fall in love with you, real head-over-heels traditional romantic love, then using her and breaking her heart - now that is a challenge and a game worthy of a man. It is a challenge because you must first understand the truly erotic yourself, then educate your woman in it... only then do the highest pleasures of the erotic become available. And you will never understand the erotic if you are locked into a materialist, reductive mindset.

Like A's essays, despair seeps through the cracks of Roissy's blog. Check out rule VII in the Commandments of Poon. "A" was self-aware enough to know that despair is the great enemy of the aesthetic life, and that the true aesthete knows how to keep it at bay through techniques like the "rotation method." Whether such tactics actually hold despair at bay is, of course, another question.

The Gap Between Modern Man and his Knowledge

Man as a modern scandal

 

In becoming modern, man discovered the world but lost himself. What does it mean for man to have lost himself? It means that man, in his specific difference as man, has disappeared from view. He has been lost.

 

The specific difference of man is that man, although an animal, is distinguished from other animals by his capacity to know. It is man as knower who has been lost. This might seem a paradoxical statement at least, since the glory of modern man is the modern scientific method, which provides him knowledge undreamt of by the ancients, knowledge that modern man feels gives him a decisive advantage over the ancients. But modern scientific knowledge is a peculiar thing. It is knowledge that can exist without a knower. The ancients spoke of poets, artisans, geometers and philosophers, all of whom are men. The modern man speaks of art, philosophy, math and science, which are not men but abstractions. The student in ancient Athens traveled to Plato’s Academy to become a philosopher. The modern college student goes to school to study philosophy, which is not quite the same thing as becoming a philosopher. Plato studied philosophy only insofar as it was the act of a philosopher, which is why he wrote in dialogue form in the person of Socrates. We moderns see no necessary relationship between philosophy and the philosopher, math and the mathematician, science and the scientist. In general, for modern man there is a gap between knowledge and the knower, and into this gap man has disappeared.

 

Let me write concretely. The scientist observes apes in his laboratory and sees that most and perhaps all of their behavior can be explained in terms of material cause and effect. He conjectures that all of life, including man himself, can be explained in similar fashion. So he conducts psychological experiments on human subjects, sees that their responses can be explained by material cause and effect, and considers his conjecture to be established fact. Yet the distinctively human act in the experiment, the act of knowing, is the act of the scientist himself and is not addressed by the experiment. What the scientist has actually established is that man, insofar as his merely animal nature is concerned, can be explained the same way apes are explained. Man in his knowing nature, in the person of the scientist, is untouched by the experiment. More significant for us is the fact that the scientist is blind to the significance of himself as knower. It is only because of this that he thinks that his experiment has demonstrated how all of human nature might be reduced to material cause and effect. Man the knower disappears into the gap between the scientist and his experiment.

 

Perhaps it is more accurate to say that man as knower has been excluded rather than lost from the modern world. Saying that something is lost implies that its loss was inadvertent. But there is nothing inadvertent in the way that man the knower has been excluded. The scientist in his laboratory, for example, makes no effort to hide his identity, methods and purposes from the rats and apes on which he experiments. But the same scientist may go to great lengths to deceive his human subjects about the true nature of his experiments.  This is because man the knower is not a fit subject for scientific experimentation. The subject of modern science is the passive transmitter of cause to effect. X happens, and Y is the result, every time or most of the time. But man the knower is not a passive transmitter of cause to effect; he is instead a source of creative action.  If X happens, and I know you expect me to do Y, then maybe I will do Z instead. This won’t do for science. Man the knower must be excluded from science, so that in his ignorance, he will act the part of the passive transmitter of cause to effect demanded by good scientific procedure. If I am unaware that every time X happens, I do Y, I may very well go on doing it. This is much better for science.

 

The exclusion of man the knower from scientific study is legitimate as a matter of scientific methodology. Unfortunately, modern man lives by the sophism that what doesn’t exist for science doesn’t exist at all. The absurd result is that, since we have excluded man the knower from science, we conclude his non-existence in general. Thus the nearly irresistible temptation of modern thought to reduce man to an aggregate of material causes. Man is determined by his blood, by his genes, by his environment, or some combination of them. Man the knower cannot, of course, be determined by his genes or his blood, or anything else, for once he knows what his genes have determined him to do, he may do something else. That is why education has traditionally been associated with freedom: You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. Man the knower always slips through the net of material theories, but the modern mind can only see the escape as the fault of the particular material theory at hand, and goes in quest of a new theory that will finally capture man in his totality.

 

Man the knower is, then, a scandal to the very science he created. He is a “sign of contradiction” to whoever would reduce him to his material nature, a living rebuke to the prideful notion that, in creating science, man finally found the key to unlocking nature’s deepest secrets. Man himself is nature’s deepest secret, and the more impressive becomes the science that he creates, the more mysterious becomes the man who created it, and the more of a scandal he becomes to himself.

 

The Peculiar Inhumanity of the Modern World

 

What are the consequences for man of losing himself in the gap between himself and his knowledge? One consequence is the peculiar inhumanity that characterizes the modern world. This is not to say that the modern world is more inhumane than the ancient world. In many ways, the modern world is far more humane than the ancient. But, insofar as it is inhumane, the modern world manifests a form of inhumanity peculiar to it and unknown to the ancients. The specific difference of man is that he is a knowing animal, and to exclude him as knower is to exclude his humanity. But although man the knower has disappeared from view in the modern world, he still exists in the modern world. His existence is merely suppressed. The eruption of man as knower is therefore always a threat to the modern world, and any such eruption would pose a foundational crisis for modernity in a way that it never did for the ancients. The specific inhumanity of the modern world is therefore the suppression of man as knower.

 

This suppression is most evident in modern totalitarian ideologies. Such ideologies typically style themselves as “scientific”. And while it may be argued whether such ideologies are in fact truly scientific, they are certainly scientific (in the modern sense) insofar as they explicitly exclude man in his subjectivity as a knower. For the scientist in his lab, knowledge exists only in the results of his scientific method, not in what he knows immediately as a man – for instance, that he himself is a knower who necessarily transcends whatever experiment he is performing. For the scientific ideologue, knowledge exists only in the results of the scientific ideology, not in what people know immediately as men. Thus Nazi concentration camp guards sometimes experienced the revulsion of their individual consciences, but dismissed conscience as a subjective experience of no cognitive value. The truth was understood objectively through Nazi scientific ideology, not individual conscience, and “courage” consisted in suppressing the pain of conscience in favor of what needed to be done in light of Nazism.

 

The sinister genius of modern totalitarianism is that it works primarily through getting men to themselves suppress the knower in themselves. Through propaganda, re-education, lies, and total control of all media, the modern totalitarian exploits the gap between man and his knowledge by inserting the totalitarian ideology into it. Man becomes convinced that he can know only through ideology. Anything he might think he knows independently of ideology – such as the truths of ordinary conscience – are illusions of false consciousness. Morality consists of reshaping the self in the terms demanded by ideology. Most men cannot resist the power of ideology and suppress themselves in its name. The few dissidents who don’t, men like Andrei Sakharov, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, men who remain convinced that they can, in their individual natures, know the truth independently of ideology, are dealt with in labor or concentration camps.

 

The ancient tyrant was straightforwardly brutal and propelled by obvious human motivation: The thirst for power, glory, and wealth, the satisfaction of his human appetites. His methods were not subtle or secret. If he slaughtered the inhabitants of a captured city, he advertised the fact as a warning to anyone who would oppose him. It was the truth about himself that made him powerful, the truth that he was a ruthless and ambitious tyrant. He oppressed man in his physical nature, but he did not oppress him in his knowing nature. The modern tyrant has discovered the power of the lie, the power of the suppression of man the knower. Stalin murdered millions, but also had millions convinced that he was the greatest benefactor in Russian history.

 

Moral Relativism

 

Another consequence of the gap between man and his knowledge is modern moral relativism. Modern man can either know or he can act, but he can’t know and act at the same time, which is another way of saying that for modern man, there is a gap between himself and his knowledge. When man is man he is not a knower; when he knows he is not a man, at least not in the concrete sense of man as a being who exists in the here and now and must act one way or another.  So when man acts, his reasons for acting cannot reach truth, since knowledge of the truth is accessible only in the abstract realm of the scientific method. His reasons for acting, then, are finally a matter of subjective preference.

 

Descartes created the gap between modern man and his knowledge in his Discourse on Method.  Resolved to accept nothing as known except that which was certainly established by the Method, he considered how to live until his fund of knowledge had been built up:

 

In planning to rebuild one’s house it is not enough to draw up the plans for the new dwelling, tear down the old one, and provide stones and other materials useful for building, and obtain workmen for the task. We must see that we are provided with a comfortable place to stay while the work of rebuilding is going on. Similarly in my own case; while reason obliged me to be irresolute in my beliefs, there was no reason why I should be so in my actions. In order to live as happily as possible during the interval I prepared a provisional code of morality for myself, consisting of three or four maxims which I here set forth.¹

 

What is the cognitive status of the contents of Descartes’ “provisional code of morality?” It is not knowledge, since it is not a product of the method and it is only the method that gives knowledge. Descartes cannot give us a truly reasoned defense for why his provisional code is better than another, since reason pertains to the method, and the provisional code is that by which he lives while awaiting the results of the method. At most, he can provide an account of how it was that he chose this code rather than another. And that is what he does. He describes three “maxims” that he adopted and an account of his thinking in adopting them. The account is not a matter of philosophy strictly speaking or science, but of subjective history, being the story of how Descartes the man came to adopt his moral maxims.

 

The provisional code, then, is a matter of subjective preference. It is the code by which Descartes the man lives. It is his “comfortable place to stay” while Descartes the thinker builds a magnificent new dwelling with the method.  Descartes the man, living by the provisional code of morality, does not know in the full sense of the word. Only Descartes the thinker, who participates in the method, is privileged to know. On the other hand, Descartes the thinker does not act. His existence consists of an abstract participation in the method.

 

Let us use a concrete case to flesh out the distinction between man as an actor and man as an abstract thinker. Archimedes of Syracuse, of “Eureka!” fame, was a forerunner of the modern scientist and a great mathematician. The geometry he studied was the same geometry that inspired Descartes to develop his method. When the Romans conquered Syracuse, the Roman commander gave orders that the life of the famous scientist Archimedes was to be spared. A Roman soldier came upon Archimedes drawing figures in the sand. The soldier demanded of Archimedes his name and Archimedes, absorbed in his geometrical investigation and impatient at the interruption, merely responded “Don’t disturb my circles”, whereupon the soldier slew him for his impertinence. The soldier had addressed his question to Archimedes the man, but unfortunately for Archimedes, it was Archimedes the thinker, lost in abstraction, who responded. The soldier demanded an act from Archimedes, specifically a response to his question, but in his existence as a thinker Archimedes was not an actor in the world, and indeed resented a call back to the world.

 

We in the modern world typically see the death of Archimedes as the straightforward story of the death of a martyr to science. The difference between the ancient and the modern worlds is that, while the ancient world respected Archimedes and what could be known through the mode of abstract thought, it also noticed that man as he acts in the world can know, and should know. Ancient tragedy had its source in the exposure of the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in human existence and their consequences. The tragedy of Archimedes was that Archimedes the mathematician still existed as Archimedes the man, and as a man existence put certain demands on him that could not be ignored. While coming to know, in abstraction, some wonderful new theorem of geometry, Archimedes the thinker was ignorant of what Archimedes, the man, needed most urgently to know, specifically that a Roman soldier was holding a sword over him. Archimedes paid for that ignorance with his life.

 

Now ethics pertains to man as he acts in the world. If ethics is to be a matter of knowledge, then man as he acts in the world must be able to know. Therefore the ethics of Plato is discussed through the person of the man Socrates in his concrete existence, not in abstraction. And Socrates the man is a knower, not merely a subscriber to a provisional morality while “real thinking” goes on somewhere else. The most significant thing that Socrates knows, ethically speaking, is that ethics exists only for man in his concrete existence. In the dialogue Crito, Socrates is in prison awaiting execution. His friend Criton begs him to escape, assuring him it could be easily arranged. Socrates refuses, and Criton offers a number of arguments to convince him: Public opinion will think Socrates a fool for having acquiesced to exactly what his enemies wished for him, he needs to live in order to educate his sons, money for bribing the guards is easily found.  Socrates does not respond to these arguments directly; instead he shows Criton how he is missing the point entirely:

 

My dearest Criton, your anxiety would be precious if there were any right in it; otherwise, the greater it is, so much the harder to bear. Then we must examine whether we ought to do it or not; for my way is and always has been to obey no one and nothing, except the reasoning which seems to me best when I draw my conclusions. Well, what I have said in the past I must not throw overboard now because this fortune has come to me; it seems quite as reasonable to me now, I put the same things first and respect them as I did then.²

 

Socrates calls Criton back to the fact that the subject of ethics is man in his concrete existence. It is not the discussion of abstract principles that may or may not have anything to do with those conducting the investigation. The subject of Socrates’ ethical thought has always been Socrates himself, as a man acting in the here and now. And Socrates has already come to a number of ethical conclusions; if these conclusions are not decisive for Socrates in his present moment in prison, for whom are they decisive? Socrates refuses to permit a gap to develop between himself and his knowledge. He has no “provisional morality” by which he lives while true morality is worked out in abstraction. The morality he contemplates is the same morality that informs his daily existence. Thus the subject of Socrates’ morality is action and its specific quality of justice. The moral question is always a question of the just act taken in its concrete reality and not in abstraction; specifically, the moral question for Socrates is the just act of Socrates in the present moment. Any other consideration is beside the point:

 

Then after our admissions we must examine whether it is just that I try to get out of this, or not just; and if it seems just, let us try – if not, leave it alone. But the considerations which you spoke of, about spending money and public opinion, and bringing up children, perhaps these may really be, Criton, speculations of the people – I mean the many – who lightly put to death and would as lightly bring to life again if they were able, all with no good reason.³

 

The subject of ethics since Descartes is not the man who acts, man in his concrete existence. Man in his concrete existence lives by the “provisional code of morality”. The modern subject of ethics is man in the abstract. Thus modern ethics consists of the working out of abstract systems of rules; rules of utilitarian accounting, rules when lying is permissible or not, rules by which an abstract notion of justice is constructed. Modern ethics always has a flavor of the arbitrary about it, because any system in the abstract must start with the arbitrary. Geometry, for example, starts with the definitions of point and line, but cannot justify that start itself because there is no science of geometry before they are posited. But ethics has meaning only if starts with me, and I am not arbitrary.

 

Once the gap between man and his knowledge has been opened, once it is decided that true knowledge can only be gained in abstraction, the science of ethics is doomed because it can never of itself return to man in his concrete existence as its subject. Kierkegaard saw this clearly, and saw that the closure of the gap between modern man and ethics could only be made by an arbitrary act of the will. The individual man must decide that ethics is about himself in his concrete existence, the decision itself not subject to the science of ethics since, until the decision is made, ethics pertains only to man in the abstract. Kierkegaard devoted a lot of energy to contrasting the life of the pre-ethical man with that of the man who submitted himself to ethics, characterizing the change as moving from an “aesthetic” to an “ethical” stage of existence. But as penetrating as was Kierkegaard’s analysis of the stages of existence, he could never provide a rational motive for the individual to make the leap, since he accepted the modern premise that reason only truly reaches knowledge in the methods of abstraction. Furthermore, Kierkegaard had nothing to say concerning which ethical understanding was the true one for the ethical stage of existence. The result of Kierkegaard’s efforts is the contemporary feeling that “commitment” is an important part of life, commitment being understood as an individual pre-ethical act of unspecified content.

 

And so we arrive at modern moral relativism. Every man lives in his own comfortable dwelling committed, more or less, to his own code of morality. Descartes viewed his “provisional code of morality” as merely a stopgap while the true morality was arrived at by the method. Contemporary ethicists still crank-out ethical theories by their own favorite methods, but no one believes any longer that a universally applicable ethics will ever be constructed in such a manner. Instead, newly minted ethics are added to the existing stock of ethics, increasing the variety from which the philosophical consumer may choose.

 

The Tyranny of Experts

 

Modern man in his ordinary existence is not a knower, or at any rate doesn’t believe he is. Knowledge is the privilege of the method and its practitioners, who are known in the modern world as experts, or perhaps more accurately scientific experts, since it is only science in its modern form that is thought to truly qualify as a method. (In the interests of brevity, I will refer to scientific experts as simply experts from here on out.) As the only ones privileged to know, the experts are, in the words of Walker Percy, the “princes of the age”. The rest of us are mere consumers of expert opinion.

 

The modern expert differs significantly from the ancient wiseman whom he replaced. The wiseman of old spoke from within ordinary existence and his vocation was to illuminate the ordinary existence of his fellow men. Socrates had no special method or access to any privileged information. He insisted that he was not a teacher, lest people misunderstand that he was giving them something that they did not already have. His art, he claimed, was merely to help people recall what they already knew but had forgotten. Kierkegaard pointed out that if the philosopher did his job right, he was dispensable. He was merely the “occasion” by which people came to know, and once they knew, their knowledge was ratified by their own witness and did not depend on the authority of the wiseman. The ancient wiseman liberated the individual to know for himself, such liberation being the true goal of education.

 

The modern expert is not in a position to similarly liberate individuals, even if he wanted to. Knowledge is the privilege of the method, and man in his ordinary existence does not have method. Only the scientist in his laboratory has method sufficient to reach knowledge. Of course anyone can, in theory, be trained in the methods of science themselves and become scientific experts. But such training takes them out of ordinary existence. Not everyone can be a scientist. Someone needs to be the janitors, accountants, soldiers, parents, politicians, and other types of people necessary to keep society functioning. Socrates taught that a janitor, even in his existence as a janitor, could come to know the truth. In the modern world, to truly become someone who knows, the janitor would have to become a scientist.

 

What the modern expert offers the ordinary individual is not education in the traditional sense, but expert opinion. Expert opinion is a product of the method, and the ordinary man is the consumer of the product, as he consumes any other product. And just as the seller of automobiles or sofas is always looking to expand his market, so the sellers of expert opinion are always looking to expand theirs. Since man in his ordinary existence is not privileged to know, every aspect of his existence is open to authoritative study by an expert, making the market for expert opinion potentially unlimited. This is the origin of our ever-growing army of experts on every conceivable aspect of life. And unlike the encounter with the ancient wiseman, who liberated the individual to know the truth for himself on his own witness, the encounter with the expert never liberates. The consumer of expert opinion ends up with opinion, not knowledge, and opinion is a form of dependency. The holder of opinion is dependent on the source of the opinion for its veracity. Why do I think global warming is a dire threat to the world? Not because I have done scientific studies and know for myself, but because the climate experts have told me so. The climate experts are the ones who know, if in fact they do; I am entirely dependent on their work and their honesty for my opinion.

 

The region of common sense is the region where ordinary people are granted the privilege of knowing. It has been steadily shrinking. Every time a new expert appears, whatever region he has staked out as his area of authority disappears from the region of common sense. Child-rearing, for example, was once something that every reasonable adult knew (or thought he knew) and could understand for himself. This changed in the 1960’s with the publication of books like Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care. It turns out, according to the experts, that just about everything involved in traditional child-rearing was bad. Why did anyone listen to Dr. Spock’s indictment? Because he was an expert (or, at least, said he was) and they were not. Of course, the experts did and do have many legitimate contributions to make – the point is not that Baby and Child Care is mistaken in its child-care advice. It is that the book does not educate parents from within their own experience in the manner of the ancient wiseman; it critiques that experience from the superior vantage point of the expert wielding a method. What the reader of the book learns is many fascinating and useful expert opinions of the author on child-rearing, and more deeply the fact that, as a mere ordinary layman, he has no hope of finding on his own the true way to raise children. When men came to Socrates and asked him about the best way to raise their sons, he responded by engaging them in dialogue that had the form of a shared and equal search for the truth. When modern man addresses the same question to an expert, he is given a set of authoritative answers – and a bill for services rendered.

 

As the region of common sense has shrunk, a self-reinforcing cycle has developed. The explosion of experts into every aspect of life has eroded the confidence of the ordinary man in his ability to know anything at all on his own witness. Through lack of use, his powers of common sense and analysis atrophy, making him ever more dependent on experts. There is no Socrates around to teach him to know on his own and to give him the confidence to do it. The result is phenomena like the “Dr. Phil” television show, featuring apparently intelligent people utterly incapable of understanding or managing the basic tasks of life. Dr. Phil dispenses expert advice which, while sound, would have been simple common sense a few years ago. The dysfunctional people follow the expert advice and their lives are miraculously transformed. No one notices that there is very little science in what Dr. Phil does. The “Dr.” merely certifies him as a genuine knower. An interesting experiment would be the “Steve” show, where Steve has no scientific credentials but dispenses exactly the same advice as Dr. Phil to dysfunctional families. Would anyone listen to him?

 

What the experts have figured out is how to exploit the modern gap between man and his knowledge. They widen the gap, then offer themselves as bridges across it. The ordinary man is grateful for the help, unaware that his dependency is in part artificially created by those same experts. The modern domination of ordinary men by experts is a tyranny, the tyranny of experts. The ordinary man turns his life over to the experts because they tell him he is unfit to run it – and the ordinary man believes it.

 

Closing the Gap Between Man and his Knowledge

 

Kierkegaard saw the gap between modern man and his knowledge, and his solution was to close the gap by leaping across it. But, of course, this doesn’t really close the gap. Man the abstract thinker, by leaping back across the gap to man in his concrete existence, is able to act, but he is forced to leave his rationality behind.  Kierkegaard’s great contribution was to identify and deeply analyze the situation of modern man, but he was too much a man of his time to finally transcend it.

 

A better approach is to not let the gap develop in the first place, or to show men that the gap is really an illusion. This approach was used by Pope John Paul II to devastating effect in his attack on Communism in the last 1970s and 80s. The Pope understood that the most dangerous threat to Communism was man the knower, and that modern totalitarianism survives largely by convincing men to suppress their own knowing nature. But man, in truth, even in his ordinary existence, is a knower, and the most dangerous weapon against Communism is to convincingly remind men of the fact.  Once men stop suppressing their own natures, the totalitarian regime is doomed.

 

Man is both an incarnate being and a knower. His natural mode of knowing, then, will be that of an incarnate being. There is no gap in the incarnate knower between the man and his knowledge, since his knowledge fits his mode of existence as a man. And as he comes to know in an incarnate manner, he will be fulfilled. This is the true meaning of freedom, and points to why modern moral relativism will not endure.  The freedom of moral relativism is the freedom of the arbitrary, pre-ethical act of the will. But once the pre-ethical decision is made, once a man has “committed”, the decision has no meaning unless the individual submits to the life he has chosen. This is the leap to Kierkegaard’s ethical stage of existence. And this life that he has chosen will either fulfill him or not. If it doesn’t, and if based on an arbitrary act of the will it probably won’t, it will inevitably come to be seen as a form of slavery as, in fact, it is. Kierkegaard’s solution to this instability in the ethical stage of existence is the religious stage of existence, where man finally solves his existential problem with a leap into faith in Jesus Christ, burying the absurdity of his own existence in the absurdity of the doctrine of the Incarnation. The more likely solution is a return to the aesthetic stage of existence, where man maintains a semblance of freedom by avoiding commitment, the price being the draining of any significance to freedom.

 

Man will not forever content himself with the choice between an insignificant freedom or a non-rational leap through stages of existence. He will see that either choice cannot finally satisfy him, and that there must be another alternative. He will eventually discover that alternative in a recovery of the wisdom of classical philosophy, and through that wisdom will reunite man and his knowledge, and through that reunion, once again discover true freedom.

 

1. Descartes, Discourse on Method, Bobbs-Merrill, 1960, p. 18

2. Plato, Crito, from Great Dialogues of Plato, Mentor Books, 1984, p. 450

3. Ibid., p. 453

Socrates the Orator

OK, it's a nit, but the wonderful Mark Steyn gets it wrong in the following sentence from his latest article on National Review Online:

"... but I don't think those who routinely hail him as the greatest orator since Socrates actually sit through man of his speeches."

Socrates was no orator. He didn't like making speeches himself (his most famous speech resulted in his own execution), didn't like others making speeches, and did everything he could to draw individuals out of speechifying and into the cross-examination of Socratic dialog.  Now the sophists interrogated by Socrates - Protagoras, etc. - those were orators.

Livin in the Real World

My brother wrote a song about our contemporary situation. I love the lyrics:

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Livin in the Real World - Kevin Tye

Kissed my wife, said I'd be back soon. Left a bottle in the baby's room.

Drove to work as the sun broke through. My job's leavin, don't know what I'll do.

Later came the even'n news. Said rich man's debts bein' paid by you.

But I don't care what the TV says. I'll just listen to my preacher instead.

Cause I don't buy what I can't afford. I just pay the bills and then thank the Lord.

I'm livin in the real world.

Just down the road from you, packin' up the kids for school.

I'm livin in the real world.

Tryin' to keep the Golden Rule, and I've got a mortgage due.

I'm livin in the real world.

Baby's cough's got me worried too. Health insurance just ran out in June.

Older son's got college soon. Heard tuition's goin' through the roof.

Then I heard on the even'n news, that bankers win, and poor folks lose.

But I don't care what the TV says...

I'm livin in the real world...

They say work hard and you'll achieve. But we let them steal the American Dream.

Or so it seems... Or so it seems...

I'm livin in the real world

Throwin kisses to my little girl. I've always loved her braids and curls.

She's why I'm livin in the real world.

---------------------------

You can listen to the music on his homepage. Click on the music tab.

The Mind is More Than the Brain: A consideration of Ch. 49, Book II of the Summa Contra Gentiles

The following is an essay I wrote four years ago, did nothing with, and might as well publish here.

The Mind is More Than the Brain: A consideration of Ch. 49, Book II of the Summa Contra Gentiles

All references from the Summa Contra Gentiles are from the edition published by the University of Notre Dame Press, 1975

Is modern neuroscience on the verge of a definitive proof that there is no such thing as the immaterial mind? That what we call "ourselves" is really just an illusion of brain chemistry? According to John Derbyshire of the National Review (Dec. 13, 2004), novelist Tom Wolfe thinks so. From Derbyshire's review of I Am Charlotte Simmons:

Our understanding of brain function has gone much further than most non-scientists realize. Nowhere in that understanding is there any trace of a notion of the conscious self. According to Wolfe, practically no working neuroscientist believes that such a thing exists. The "I" that is the first word of Wolfe's title may, science tells us, be an illusion; and the fate of his heroine suggests that this is indeed so.

Derbyshire himself is skeptical of the immaterial "I" and is worried about the social consequences:

The vulgar metaphysic we all carry round with us includes the vague idea of a self, an "I," imagined as a little homunculus crouched inside our heads an inch or so behind the eyes, observing and directing all that goes on in our lives. It seems probable that this is as false as the medieval notion of the sky's being a crystal sphere. Yet if the self is indeed an illusion, then what is to prevent that dissolution of all values foreseen by Nietzsche? In Charlotte Simmons's world, a world without the self, what is virtue? What is wisdom? What is responsibility?

When I read such things, I am reminded of G.K. Chesterton's criticism of modern philosophy as the sort of thing that, if indulged in persistently, leads inevitably to the insane asylum. Socrates said that flute playing implies the existence of a flute player, and I am sure he would agree that understanding implies the existence of an understander. But the modern thinker exists in a bizarre world where there can be an "understanding" but no "notion of the conscious self", in other words, no understander, which is just what the conscious self is. This is a world where we must bow reverently when "science tells us" things because the abstraction "science" is more real than the self-consciousness of the scientists who do it. Chesterton wrote that the modern mentality is less an argument that can be rationally refuted than a spell that must be snapped. Indeed, how do you argue with a man who claims that he heard on the radio that he has no ears? Or with a scientist who says he understands that he has nothing with which to understand?

There is irony in the fact that the acknowledged founder of modern thought, Rene Descartes, based his thinking on the one thing he thought impossible to doubt, the "I", the very thing now questioned by modern scientists. But have scientists answered Descartes? Descartes thought the "I" was impossible to doubt because only something that exists can be deceived. If the "I" doesn't exist, then it can't be deceived. If it does exist, then it can be deceived about many things, but not about its own existence. I might have a dream, but my dream doesn't have dreams. Only really existing things can have real thoughts about anything, whether true or false. The modern scientist says that the "I" is an illusion, but never explains how an illusion can have real thoughts, let alone come to know itself as an illusion.

A further irony is that modern thinkers like Derbyshire view the self as a medieval notion to be cast off with other outdated ideas, like the heavens as a crystal sphere. But, as already noted, the notion of the "self" the moderns wish to debunk really started with their patriarch Descartes, not Aristotle or Aquinas. Furthermore, the notion of ourselves as merely a dream of the brain is nothing but a spin on the even more ancient idea that the world is nothing but the dream of God. And the answer given by medieval philosophers is the same in either case. If we are merely the dream of God, then God might know it, but we wouldn't, or anything else for that matter. A dream is not an agent, that is, something that can do something of itself. And if the self is an illusion of the brain, then the brain might know it, but the "I" wouldn't or anything else. The "I" would be known but not know. Common sense is on the side of the medievals: Dreams and fantasies are things experienced, not things that have experiences.

But the modern scientist thinks he can trump all this common sense with "science." By plugging in supercomputers, turning on high-powered microscopes, and firing up the Bunsen burner, he thinks he can get behind the self with technology. Aquinas might politely tell him that he can no more do this than get behind his own shadow. The shadow and the "I" keep tagging along, no matter how the modern scientist twists and turns. Take, for instance, Derbyshire's suggestion that the "self" is a "vague idea", part of a vulgar metaphysic that "we" carry round. One might ask: What do you mean by "we", pale face? If the "I" is suspect, who is this "we" that carries him around and suffers so patiently his commands in directing "our lives?" Is he suspect as well? Of course, the "we" is really nothing but the "I" in disguise reflecting on itself, as can easily be seen by putting the sentence into the personal singular instead of the plural:

The vulgar metaphysic I carry round with me includes the vague idea of a self, an "I," imagined as a little homunculus crouched inside my head an inch or so behind my eyes, observing and directing all that goes on in my life.

It immediately becomes clear that the true "I" is actually the I that is the voice of the sentence, not the homunculus "I" of the vulgar metaphysic. The only thing proven by his statement is that Derbyshire has mistaken the "I" of his vulgar metaphysic for the self of serious philosophical reflection. The fact is that any statement made by anyone about anything is made by an "I", and there is no gainsaying the voice of assertion. The "I" is the ground of experience, any experience, be it climbing the Alps, dreaming of soccer glory, philosophizing, conducting scientific investigations, or claiming that the "I" itself is an illusion. Derbyshire's homunculus "I" may be an illusion, but the "I" that proclaims it so certainly can't be.

The problem for moderns is that they forget that there is no such thing as "science", except as an abstraction. There exist scientists, "I"s like you and me, who do fruitful and laudable work in empirical investigation. But the scientific method has not granted them a supernatural (indeed superdivine) power to step outside their own consciousness and judge it an illusion. From what ground does the neuroscientist announce that the self is an illusion? Anything he says, does,or thinks occurs only in the context of his self-consciousness and is a product of that self-consciousness. Thus, when the neuroscientist announces that the self is an illusion, the first thing we should wonder about is not what happens to virtue, wisdom, and responsibility, but what happens to science. If there isn't a self around to be virtuous, wise, or responsible, then there isn't a self around to make scientific judgments. Or does Charlotte Simmons's self suddenly become solid the day she gets a Phd in biology?

Why are scientists so keen to dismiss the self? Lately they have been able to map mental activity onto brain activity with increasing accuracy. A subject plays the piano and one area of the brain becomes active. He watches TV and a different area becomes active. A certain area of his brain is stimulated and he feels a particular emotion. A different area is stimulated and he feels a different emotion. Moreover, various mental activities become impossible in the case of brain injuries. One lesion makes a patient unable to read, another makes him mistake his wife for a hat. The mind is so intimately involved with the brain that the scientist suspects that the mind is nothing but the brain. There is no independent "I" in there. The flickering neurons are all there is.

To which Aquinas might say: So what? That the mind and the body are intimately involved is obvious to common sense and is a fundamental principle of Thomistic philosophy. I will my right arm to rise and the appendage on that side goes up. It does not follow that "willing my arm to rise" is nothing but the physical phenomenon of "right arm rising." I think "2+2=4" and a certain area of my brain becomes electrically active. It does not follow that "2+2=4" is nothing but the physical phenomenon of "certain part of the brain becoming electrically active." The electrical activity in the brain is the effect of thinking "2+2=4", not the thought itself, as my arm rising is the effect of willing that phenomenon, not the willing itself. Nor does it prove anything that brain lesions inhibit mental activity. It was a commonplace of medieval philosophy that a sick man can't think straight.

At this point the modern thinker says: Aha! Just like a medieval, inventing fantastical beings where none are needed. Why invent this "I" that has "effects" in the brain? We can already explain much of mental activity as electrical activity in the brain. Eventually we will explain all of it, having finally finished chasing the self through ever narrower and darker passageways of the brain, in the words of Mr. Derbyshire.

But has the modern scientist explained thoughts like "2+2=4" in terms of brain activity? Mapping thoughts to brain activity is one thing, explaining it as brain activity is quite another, and we finally come to the subject of this essay, Ch. 49 of Book II of the Summa Contra Gentiles, "That the intellectual substance is not a body." In this Chapter St. Thomas gives several arguments why what he calls the "intellectual substance" (and we would call the "mind") cannot possibly be a physical body. His arguments, as always for St. Thomas, are concise and to the point. And also typically for St. Thomas, a quick read of the chapter shows that the thrust of the argument does not depend on crystal spheres or any particular results from medieval physics. Whether true or false, the argument stands on its own and is not dependent on the vagaries of empirical science, ancient or modern. Consider the argument in paragraph 6:

Moreover, if the intellectual substance is a body, it is either finite or infinite. Now, it is impossible for a body to be actually infinite, as is proved in [Aristotle's] Physics. Therefore, if we suppose that such a substance is a body at all, it is a finite one. But this is also impossible, since, as was shown in Book I of this work, infinite power can exist in no finite body. And yet the cognitive power of the intellect is in a certain way infinite; for by adding number to number its knowledge of the species of numbers is infinitely extended; and the same applies to its knowledge of figures and proportions. Moreover, the intellect grasps the universal, which is virtually infinite in its scope, because it contains individuals which are potentially infinite. Therefore, the intellect is not a body.

One reason people are so quick to conflate the mind and brain is because of the analogy with digital computers. The billions of neural connections in the brain seem like the billions of electronic connections in a computer. And the electrical activity the neuroscientist observes in the brain seems to bear a resemblance to the electronic activity of a computer. Since computers obviously don't have an immaterial "I", maybe the brain doesn't either. The computer/brain analogy is seductive, but St. Thomas has put his finger on a fatal problem with it. A computer represents a number by using a particular electrical pattern involving high voltage (denoted by "1") and low voltage (denoted by "0"). The number "5", for example, would be represented by the electrical pattern 1-0-1 and the number "6" by 1-1-0. Larger numbers need larger patterns: The number "8" is 1-0-0-0, "63" is 1-1-1-1-1-1 and "25000" is 1-1-0-0-0-0-1-1-0-1-0-1-0-0-0. But a computer has limited electrical resources and therefore a limited number of patterns. No matter how big a computer is or how fast its circuits, there will always be numbers that are too large for it to represent. Similarly, our brains, simply by the fact of being physical, necessarily have a limited number of neural connections and so a limited number of patterns with which they could represent numbers. As St. Thomas points out, our minds are not limited in the size of the numbers they can think about. Give me any number, and I can always think of a larger one. (Don't confuse imagining a number with thinking about one. Imagining a number means forming a picture of that many things, like forming a picture of a dozen eggs in your head. Our capacity to do that is very limited, but we can think about things even if we can't imagine them. I can't imagine a million coins, but I can think about the number 1,000,000. I do so everytime I use 1,000,000 in an arithmetic calculation.) There is no limit to the size of the numbers our minds can think about. It follows that the mind that thinks about number cannot be physical.

St. Thomas also makes reference to our knowledge of "figures and proportions". I can think about triangles, squares, pentagons, etc. (Again, there is a difference between thinking about a figure and imagining one.) In fact, the number of different figures I can think about is unlimited. But if the thought "triangle" is nothing but a particular electrical pattern in the brain, then the number of figures I can think about would be limited, since the number of electrical patterns in the brain is limited, however large. This is a variation on the argument in the last paragraph and the conclusion is the same: The mind can't be physical because of the unlimited nature of its thoughts.

Consider the argument in paragraph 8:

Also, the action of no body is self-reflexive. For it is proved in [Aristotle's] Physics that no body is moved by itself except with respect to a part, so that one part of it is the mover and the other is the moved. But in acting, the intellect reflects on itself, not only as to a part, but as to the whole of itself. Therefore, it is not a body.

This argument always makes me think of computers in film. Back in the 50's and 60's, computers were cast as "Giant Brains", brilliant machines tended by acolytes in white lab coats and capable of thinking brilliant thoughts. Later, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the villainous computer HAL not only is intelligent but assumes a will of its own, taking over the space mission and killing the astronauts. This theme continued in 1983 in Wargames, where a computer attempts to start a nuclear war on its own initiative. The latest installment in this genre is the Matrix series, where computers not only take over but force human beings to live in an artificial reality. What's fascinating about these movies is how silly they look in retrospect. The "giant computers" from the 50's, for example, had less computing power than a modern handheld calculator that you can buy for $10 at Walmart. And the infamous WOPR computer from Wargames is left in the dust by a Dell desktop PC that you can buy for a couple of hundred bucks. Nobody these days would believe a movie where a handheld calculator manifests brilliant insight or your $300 desktop takes over your life. Our intimacy and familiarity with computers has demystified them. How many times have we wished our computer would show some intelligence when a day's work is lost because of a trivial operating system error? Everyday use has brought home the truth about physical bodies of which Aristotle and St. Thomas speak: It is the nature of physical beings that one part of it is the mover and the other is the moved. I move the keys on the keyboard and a program is moved to access the harddrive. The movement on the harddrive in turn moves the program to display data on the monitor. Any break in the chain and the computer doesn't work - and the longer the chain, the more opportunities for it to break, which is why computers become more frustrating with complexity, not less. We see that the intelligence attributed by people in the 60's to computers is a superstition. Computers don't have the unity necessary to intelligence. The keyboard knows nothing about the harddrive, the harddrive knows nothing about the CPU, and the CPU knows nothing about the monitor. They are just electrical components obeying the laws of physics, moving when they are moved by another. The unity of the computer is all from our perspective. We connect harddrives, monitors, keyboards and CPUs, call it a "computer" and think of it as "one thing" doing something, but this is really a reflection of the unity of our own intelligence and not a unity in physical nature. Now if the mind is nothing but the brain, from where comes the unity of our thought? The brain, like a computer, is a collection of parts. But the mind is self-reflexive, that is, the mind acts on itself. It has the peculiar characteristic that it not only knows the thing known, but itself in the act of knowing it, and that with the whole of itself. When I know 2+2=4, I not only know the mathematical truth, but the fact that I know it, and it is the same mind that knows both things. This makes the mind both the mover and the thing moved. How can this be if the mind is a physical body? It is all well and good that neuroscientists can detect electrical signals in the brain when a subject thinks 2+2=4 or 4+4=8. But if they claim that these electrical signals are thought itself, they need to explain the unity of the mind in terms of electrical signals, an impossibility to my thinking.

The argument of paragraph 9 also depends on the self-reflexive character of the mind:

A body's action, moreover, is not terminated in action, nor movement in movement - a point proved in [Aristotle's] Physics. But the action of an intelligent substance is terminated in action; for just as the intellect knows a thing, so does it know that it knows; and so on indefinitely. An intelligent substance, therefore, is not a body.

The self-reflexive character of the mind is one of those facts that is so obvious it is often overlooked. It is expressed in John Derbyshire's rumination about the "I" that "we" carry around. The "we" that is the voice of the sentence is the same "I" that is under discussion. We could write a further sentence where "we" discuss the voice of John Derbyshire's sentence, in other words, where "we" discuss the "we" that is thinking about the "I". This process could be carried on indefinitely and is implicit in any act of knowledge. What it means is that the result of the minds act of knowing is another act of knowing, ad infinitum. But no body can act in this way. Suppose, to the contrary, that thoughts really are nothing but electrical signals in the brain. Then since knowing something implies that we know that we know it, the electrical signal of knowing it will give rise to another electrical signal that is the physical manifestation of knowing that we know it. This signal will give rise to yet another one, and on indefinitely, and the brain would soon fry itself. Therefore the mind cannot be not identical with the brain.

The preceeding arguments are probably the ones most accessible to the modern mind. But it is the argument from paragraph 4 that I find most persuasive:

Again, the principle of diversity among individuals of the same species is the division of matter according to quantity; the form of this fire does not differ from the form of that fire, except by the fact of its presence in different parts into which the matter is divided; nor is this brought about in any other way than by division of quantity - without which substance is indivisible. Now, that which is received into a body is received into it according to the division of quantity. Therefore, it is only as individuated that a form is received into a body. If, then, the intellect were a body, the intelligible forms of things would not be received into it except as individuated. But the intellect understands things by those forms of theirs which it has in its possession. So, if it were a body, it would not be cognizant of universals but only of particulars. But this is patently false. Therefore, no intellect is a body.

Let us suppose that the mind is nothing but the brain. Then my thoughts are nothing but patterns of neurons firing in the brain. My idea of "fire", for example, would then be some particular electrochemical pattern in my brain. Your idea of fire would be an electrochemical pattern in your brain. Common sense tells us that we can have a conversation about "fire" and talk about the same thing. Yet how can this be so? No two physical objects are identical in every respect. Even if the pattern for "fire" in your brain is similar to the pattern for "fire" in my brain, it won't be precisely identical in every respect. The space between the neurons will be slightly different and the timing of the neural firing will be slightly different in each brain. If the idea of fire is nothing but the physical pattern in each of our brains, then our ideas of "fire" will necessarily differ as well.

Well, maybe our ideas of fire are slightly different, you argue. Isn't that why people get in arguments? If that were the case, then arguments could never be resolved because we could never get our ideas of fire to be exactly the same. But we do, at least occasionally, resolve arguments in terms of mutually understood ideas. The point can be better made with a mathematical idea, say the number "2". What would happen if scientists hooked up their equipment and monitored each of our brains while we both thought of the number "2"? Would they get exactly the same readings on both our meters, down to the thousandth decimal of brain current? Would a picture of our brain activity show exactly the same thing, down to whatever resolution the scientists cared to go? Obviously not, and surely our ideas of "2" are not just approximately the same, but identical, otherwise mathematics is impossible. The fact that physical activity from one brain to the next is never exactly identical but we can nonetheless think of identical things shows again that brain activity is an effect of thought, not thought itself.

The problem with the material mind is even deeper than this, however. Even if it could be shown that brain activity might be precisely identical from one brain to the next, this would still do nothing to account for how two different brains could think of the same thing. As St. Thomas notes, material things are divided according to quantity. This apple differs from that apple because this apple has this matter and that apple has that matter. What makes this apple this apple is the particular matter of which it is constituted. In other words, matter is by its nature a source of individuation. So if we say that our minds, and therefore the ideas resident in them, are purely material beings, then they are also purely individual beings. Your idea of “2” is not the same as my idea of “2” because the matter in your head is not the same matter that is in my head. The fact that we can hold a conversation and talk about the same number “2” shows that “2”, and the mind that knows it, cannot be material.

An opponent might respond to the above arguments with something like this: Yes, the patterns in your head are not identical to the patterns in my head, and the matter in your head is not the same matter in my head. But that’s beside the point. The fact is that the pattern for “2+2=4” in your head is functionally equivalent to the pattern for “2+2=4” in my head, and that is all that is necessary. The voltage levels and electronic chips in computers vary slightly from machine to machine, yet they are functionally equivalent because they run the same software. If we think of software as the analog of the mind, then we can talk about “2” even if our minds are nothing but matter because we have functionally equivalent representations of “2”.

The flaw in this argument can be found by analyzing more closely the notion of function. When two things fulfill the same function they answer to the same purpose. A bow and arrow and a rifle can both serve the function of killing deer. The numbers “2” and “4” can both serve the function of producing an even number when multiplied by any other integer. An airplane and a ship can both function to get you across the Atlantic. Notice that the same things can be equivalent for some functions but not equivalent for other functions. A ship and an airplane are not functionally equivalent if the function is to go deep-sea fishing. The point is that the notion of “functional equivalence” implies a process or activity whose meaning is already known and taken for granted, and that provides the context for the functional equivalence. Thus to say that the material patterns for “2+2=4” in your head and my head may be different but functionally equivalent is to take for granted that the biochemical processes in the brain are in themselves mathematically meaningful, which is the very point at issue. Here is another way to look at it: What the notion of function does is displace meaning to the function level. Meaning is shifted from the element that serves the function to whatever it is that assigns meaning to the function itself. If a certain pattern in the brain serves the function of “2+2=4”, then it is serving the purpose of some other part of the brain when it wishes to use the notion of “2+2=4”. How are those parts of the brains related in our two brains? Are they also functionally equivalent? Then their meaning, too, is displaced and they must get it from yet another part of the brain, etc., etc. At each step we don’t solve the problem of how two materially distinct beings (the patterns in your head and my head) can yet be identical, but only apparently solve it by displacing it with the notion of function. But the buck will have to stop somewhere, and unless there is some point at which the processes in two different brains are not merely functionally identical but identical pure and simple, then the previous arguments stand. What about computers? Computers are purely functional, material beings with no intrinsic meaning. Computers are functionally equivalent because we human beings assign functional meaning to them with our non-material minds. “2+2=4” is functionally equivalent but electrically different in each computer because we find it so.