A portion of my response to Carrier

Here is a part of what I have written in response to Carrier. Comments
welcome.

Victor Reppert

    Carrier's Three Underlying Problems
  The first and most serious problem with my arguments is that I commit
what he calls the Possibility Fallacy, that is, I assume that having
no explanation is equivalent to not being able to have one. I mention
this objection on p. 118, in the context of discussing Nicholas
Tattersall's critique of Lewis's Miracles and Darek Barefoot's
response. I quote Barefoot's reply in my book as follows:

Tattersall here confuses logical absurdity with phenomena incompletely
known. To learn why grass is green simply involves gathering more
information. To learn how non-rational processes give rise to rational
thought is like learning how a three-dimensional object can be created
by arranging lines on a two-dimensional surface. We need not draw
lines all day long in every geometric pattern imaginable to realize
that the task is impossible. It is true that by means of perspective
drawing we can usefully represent a three-dimensional shape, such as a
cube, in two dimensions, just as human reason can be represented and
communicated usefully by computer programs and even by humbler devices
such as multiplication charts and slide rules. Nevertheless we can
identify a set of lines in two dimensions as representing a cube only
because we occupy three-dimensional space, and similarly we can
appreciate that the blind functions of a computer have been so
arranged as to accomplish a rational purpose only because, unlike the
computer, we possess genuine rationality.

Carrier gives me two options for developing my argument. Either I
prove
conclusively that a naturalistic account of reasoning is impossible,
or I conduct an exhaustive study of the finding of brain science and
find that reasoning probably cannot be accounted for in terms of brain
function. It seems to me that there is a third option available. I can
show we are dealing with a conceptual chasm that cannot simply be
overcome by straightforward problem-solving. An example would be the
attempt to get an "ought" from an "is". Moore argued that for any set
of "is" statements concerning a situation, the question of whether
this or that action ought to have been done is left open. To generate
any confidence that you can get an "ought" from an is, it simply won't
do to come up with one theory after another to show how you can get an
ought from an is. We need to be given some idea that these theories
can surmount the conceptual problem Moore and others have posed.
  Another way of putting my point is to say that reason presents a
problem analogous to what David Chalmers called the hard problem of
consciousness. When we consider seriously what reasoning is, when we
reject all attempts at "bait and switch" in which reasoning is
re-described in a way that makes it scientifically tractable but also
unrecognizable in the final analysis as reasoning, we find something
that looks for all the world to be radically resistant to
physicalistic analysis.
  So I maintain that there is a logico-conceptual chasm between the
various elements of reason, and the material world as understood
mechanistically. Bridging the chasm isn't going to simply be a matter
of exploring the territory on one side of the chasm. Now someone might
perceive the chasm and either think that some kind of paradigm shift
in our thinking will bridge the chasm, or that it while it's a mystery
to us how all this is possible, that somehow there is a bridge over
the chasm, even if we can't see one that's consistent with
materialism. In pointing out the chasm, I do not necessarily claim
that no possible considerations could persuade us to think that the
chasm has been bridged. However, we have no reason to believe that the
problem can be dissolved a way by doing just a little more science.
Without necessarily demonstrating that the problem is insoluble, I can
try to show that the problem is deep and intractable, and that an
alternative to naturalism would resolve the problem. And I should
point out that lots and lots of naturalists, like Colin McGinn, think
that there is a deep and intractable problem. The arguments from
reason, in many cases, suggest that the descriptive discourse of
physics cannot capture the normative discourse of reason. This
presents a logico-conceptual gap, which is a very different kind of
problem than pointing out something for which we don't currently have
a naturalistic explanation, and saying it must be supernatural because
science can't explain it now.
  The second fallacy Carrier says I commit is the Causation Fallacy. He
thinks that I, along with C. S. Lewis, endorse the argument that "the
presence of a cause and effect account of belief is often used to show
the absence or irrelevance of a ground and consequent relationship,"
and that therefore all cause and effect accounts prove the absence of
irrelevance of ground and consequent relationships. However, he claims
in arguing thus I commit the fallacy of Affirming the Consequent,
Hasty Generalization and Red Herring. (Quite a lot of fallacies to
commit in one argument!) But while this type of argument was used in
Lewis's original chapter, in the revised edition this is not the
primary reason for thinking that reason cannot be accounted for
naturalistically. And I don't argue that way either. The argument
against the relevance of ground and consequent relationships has to do
with the causal closure of the physical. If a physical account of the
process is causally complete, and physics is mechanistic, how do
reasons come into play? Remember, at the most basic level of analysis
physics, in order to play the role of physics in the kind of
physicalism that is under attack in my book, must be mechanistic. This
being the case, if we apply the Principle of Explanatory Exclusion and
the Principle of Causal Exclusion defended by Kim and others, a case
can be made that a comprehensive physicalistic causal explanation
excludes a mentalistic account of rational inference.
  The third fallacy he thinks I commit is the Armchair Science fallacy.
That, he says, is my failure to interact with the extensive
philosophical literature and the findings of cognitive science. Here I
would first like to reiterate that no book, especially a book that is
supposed to be readable by non-specialists, can interact with every
opposing thinker. Well, perhaps I should at least interact with the
really important stuff. But what is that? I see no interaction in
Carrier with John Searle, in spite of the fact that he is advocating
positions that Searle has quite famously criticized. Nor do I see any
discussion of Thomas Nagel, who maintains that an evolutionary account
of our capacity to reason has always seemed to him to be laughably
inadequate. Nor do I see any interaction with Lynne Rudder Baker's and
William Hasker's critiques of eliminativism, which I explicitly
reference in the book. Nor do I see any references to Jaegwon Kim's
work on mental causation and the Principle of Explanatory Exclusion.
The literature is enormous on this subject, and a comprehensive
treatment of the relevant issues would require a 12,800 page book with
a 128 page bibliography. Carrier and I are bound to differ as to what
is "really important." Of course the argument needs to respond to what
Hasker calls the "sensible naturalist." But naturalists and
anti-naturalists might very well disagree on exactly who the sensible
naturalists are.
  I do, in my book, say that naturalistic analyses of mind "invariably
fail," largely because they "sneak in" the very concepts they are
trying to explain through the back door. They also tend to re-describe
what they are trying to explain in terms that will make such things as
consciousness and reasoning more tractable to naturalistic analysis,
but this produces what I call a "subtle changing of the subject."
Instead of explaining their subject matter, they explain it away.
Since I did say these things, it simply won't do for Carrier to merely
assert that there's all this philosophical and scientific literature
out there. He needs to show evidence that these analyses of mind don't
commit the two errors listed above. Carrier's own treatment of
intentionality is repeatedly guilty of the first defect, as we shall
see.
  Further, scientific work on cognition can be illuminating without
actually solving the fundamental problems of the philosophy of mind
that my book is concerned with. I never denied that the mind is not in
many important ways dependent on the brain, it is just that the brain
story cannot be comprehensive, if I am right. So I have no problem
with the idea that scientists like Cattell can help us understand how
different mental functions are linked with different areas of the
brain. As I put it on pp. 114-115;
But again I would reiterate the claim that the arguments from reason
require only that the account of mental functioning in terms of blind
physical processes, operating in accordance with the laws of physics,
rather than in accordance with thee laws of logic, cannot be
comprehensive. It seems to me to be perfectly compatible with an
extensive dependence of the mind on the physical brain; it only says
that if mechanistic accounts of rational inference are the only
accounts you can get out of brain science, then a neurophysiological
account cannot be complete.
  Now I should make perfectly clear that the more defenders of AFR
interact with naturalistic philosophical and scientific literature,
the better. Here I would strongly recommend Angus Menuge's recent
analyses of the Churchlands and Dennett, along with the critiques of
the Churchlands by Hasker, Baker, and myself that I endorse in my
book. But if we have what David Chalmers would call a "hard" problem
of intentionality, then simply knowing about correlations between
intentional states and physical states will not solve the problem.
What science would have to provide is a successful intertheoretic
reduction, and this is something over and above what straightforward
neuroscience provides. What we need are answers to questions that are
fundamentally philosophical rather than scientific, questions that are
perhaps better addressed in armchairs rather than in laboratories.
  Here again I would just reiterate what I said earlier, that the
problem with naturalistic analyses of reasoning has to do with a
logico-conceptual gap between our ordinary conception of what goes on
when we reason, as opposed to what has to be given in a properly
mechanistic analysis of that same process. If you give an analysis of
how the brain produces some output or other, that may not do the job
if when we get does the thing that has been analyzed physicalistically
cannot plausibly be described as reasoning.
Further, many people in the philosophy of mind, even some who would be
described as card-carrying physicalists, often maintain that we have
no real understanding of how the mental and physical are related to
one another. Physics describes things from a third-person,
non-normative, mechanistic point of view, while we describe our own
thought processes from a first-person, normative perspective. Hence,
they maintain, mental events are irreducible to physical events,
nevertheless they are either token-identical to physical events or
supervene upon physical events. However, they also often say that they
perceive the relation between the mental and the physical as being
deeply mysterious.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->

On 23 Oct 2004 13:40:01 -0700, vreppert RemoveThis @hotmail.com (Victor Reppert)
wrote:

 > I can
 >show we are dealing with a conceptual chasm that cannot simply be
 >overcome by straightforward problem-solving.
What makes you assume that science is 'straightforward problem
solving'?

You do keep claiming that there is a conceptual chasm that science is
incapable of solving. Do you mean by the claim that there is also an
ontological chasm that must exist between the brain and mind? If so,
you seem to me to be begging the question.


 > An example would be the
 >attempt to get an "ought" from an "is". Moore argued that for any set
 >of "is" statements concerning a situation, the question of whether
 >this or that action ought to have been done is left open. To generate
 >any confidence that you can get an "ought" from an is, it simply won't
 >do to come up with one theory after another to show how you can get an
 >ought from an is. We need to be given some idea that these theories
 >can surmount the conceptual problem Moore and others have posed.

For the life of me, I don't get how the fact that an 'ought' is not
the same as an 'is' is meant to persuade anyone that science cannot
someday come up with an explanation for the functioning brain
producing what we call the mind.
James
--
"They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap."
Fit the Fifth of The Hunting of the Snark<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->