Noam Chomsky on Mind/Body Problem

[Cory Duchesne]

Chomsky asserts:

"There is no such thing as the mind-body problem. For there to be a mind-body problem, there has to be some characterization of body, and Newton eliminated the last conception of body anybody had. Newton is supposedly the progenitor of the mechanistic, materialist worldview that gave rise to the mind-body problem. But Newton's own theory on gravity, which showed that objects can influence each other in non mechanistic way, actually shattered the materialist worldview. Materialism presupposes that the world consists of objects that interact through direct contact with each other. But Newton, by discovering gravity - action at a distance - showed that materialism doesn't work even for phenomenon as simple as a ball rolling down a plane. The world consists not of material objects influencing each other through direct contact but rather, consists of immaterial properties. These properties include gravity, electromagnetism and yes consciousness. It's an interesting element of the history of human irrationality, that people continue to talk about the mind-body problem.

This snipet was from an interview with Chomsky by Journalist John Horgan. It's from his book "undiscovered mind", on pg. 248.

Horgan, on Chapter 8 (titled: the consciousness conundrum), introduces various scientists and philosophers who believe consciousness can be explained mechanistically. He then contrasts those thinkers with those who believe consciousness will never be entirely explained and will always be a mystery. Horgan, borrowing from Owen Flanagan who coined the term, calls these people "mysterians". Chomsky, according to Horgan, is a mysterian. Horgan writes:

In defending their position, mysterians often borrow a line of reasoning from Chomsky. The MIT linguist has distinguished between problems, which seem solvable at least in principle through conventional scientific methods, and mysteries, which seem insoluble even in principle. Chomsky noted that all organisms have certain capacities and limitations that result from their particular biology. Thus, a rat might learn how to navigate a maze that requires it to turn right at every juncture or to alternate between right and left; but no rat will ever learn to navigate a maze that requires it to turn left a every juncture corresponding to the prime numbers. That talent exceeds it's cognitive capabilities. In the same way, certain problems addressed by science may lie forever beyond our capacity for understanding. These are mysteries, now and possibly forever. Chomsky has implied in various writings that he considers consciousness, free will and other aspects of the mind to be mysteries. Yet in a conversation with me, Chomsky once took issue with a fundamental tenet of the mysterian position. "There is no such thing as the mind-body problem. For there to be a mind-body problem, there has to be some characterization of body, and Newton eliminated the last conception of body anybody had. Newton is supposedly the progenitor of the mechanistic, materialist worldview that gave rise to the mind-body problem. But Newton's own theory on gravity, which showed that objects can influence each other in non mechanistic way, actually shattered the materialist worldview. Materialism presupposes that the world consists of objects that interact through direct contact with each other. But Newton, by discovering gravity - action at a distance - showed that materialism doesn't work even for phenomenon as simple as a ball rolling down a plane. The world consists not of material objects influencing each other through direct contact but rather, consists of immaterial properties. These properties include gravity, electromagnetism and yes consciousness. It's an interesting element of the history of human irrationality, that people continue to talk about the mind-body problem." Chomsky added, "I should say i haven't convinced a lot of people".

Horgan continues later in the chapter:

Mysterianism is becoming a mainstream position. Among those who have publicly embraced mysterianism is Steven Pinker. At the end of "How the Mind Works", which otherwise epitomizes scientific triumphalism, Pinker concluded that consciousness, free will, the self and other riddles posed by the mind are probably unsolvable.

"Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life and death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness or to answer any question we are capable of asking. We cannot hold ten thousand words in short term memory. We cannot see in ultraviolet light. We cannot mentally rotate an object in the fourth dimension. And perhaps we cannot solve conundrums like free will and sentience" - SP

First of all, I really recommend all of Horgan's books. Undiscovered Mind, Rational Mysticism, and End of Science are all fascinating. He's, for the most part, good at not imposing his own views and politics, letting all of the best and brightest minds he gets to interview share their skepticism and enthusiasm, which Horgan then compares and analyzes, he's a good journalist, very irreverent and provocative. Entertaining reading.

Secondly, It's really hard to know what to make of Chomsky here. He has a confused way of debunking mechanistic materialism, I would not limit myself to just gravity and electromagnetism as he does, but focus on the very nature of causality itself, as it erodes the notion that action happens through collision of one material boundary against another.

As for gravity, I don't see why it should be any more mysterious than anything else. Yes, it is a bit more remarkable in regards to the unusual way it effects things, but surely there are causes that currently elude human perception, and nothing more. And how the mysteriousness of gravity and electromagnetism relates to consciousness I have no idea, aside from it being hard to scientifically model, that's about the only similarity I see.

Myself, I do not subscribe to the idea that any effects in nature, whether it's consciousness, or something as simple as a seed sprouting or rain falling is the result of boundaries colliding with other boundaries. If that's the issue Chomsky is trying to tackle, then I can sympathize at least with his efforts, as there is indeed no Descartian mechanistic materialism.

[Ryan Rudolph]

what is meant exactly by the mind/body problem?

is it the idea that the mind is somehow distinct and separate from the body? isn't it the flawed imagined idea that the mind is immaterial and the body is material, and philosophers create unnecessary problems for themselves such as how does the material interact with the immaterial?

I agree that Chomsky chose a very odd way of debunking materialism, he could have also debunked this problem by focusing on what modern biology has discovered about the organism - how the complex interactions between the body and brain give rise to the state of the mind. IE: hormones, urges, genetic conditioning,, cognitive patterns rooted in environmental conditioning, and so on.

I suppose he would have been more clear minded if he focused on how the whole movement of the organism with its environment creates the health of the mind.

[Nick]

Chomsky, as insightful as he can be about social issues and the sciences, has never struck me as a sage or one who is conscious of absolute truth. This to me explains why he uses the methods and provides the explanations that he does about "the material v non-material" debate, of which the "mind/body problem" seems to have came from. Intuitively he senses there need not be a "material v non-material" debate, but his lack of wisdom keeps him from being able to be more accurate and thorough in articulating why he feels this way.

[Ryan Rudolph]

I agree Nick,

Chomsky is a great moral historian, but a bad philosopher of the infinite. It is almost as if he put far too much energy studying the particulars of the small, and not enough time studying the big picture of things.

For instance: He can cite from memory any atrocity committed in remote areas of the world, and what parties were involved, what the date was, how each side perceived the event, and recorded it, but when it comes to basic universal truths, he can't find the logic to describe what his intuition is telling him is the case.

A powerful mind, but a mind that dedicated far too much neural resources to a very narrow specialized area of particular instances of immorality, but very little mind power to understanding absolute morality.

Noam Chomsky is basically a memory machine of the finite.

[David Quinn]

He definitely has mental blocks about deeper stuff. I happened to see "Manufacturing Consent" recently and in it he was saying that he couldn't discern any "logical connection" between his two roles in life - namely, his work as a linguistic pioneer and his anarchistic politics. I was amazed. And this was just a few minutes after the film was lording him as the greatest intellectual of his generation!

The way mainstream intellectuals deal with issues like mind/body and free will is so clumsy and juvenile that you just have to poke yourself to see if you are dreaming.

But I suppose they get punished in their own way. Watching Chomsky having to put up with the insufferable Michel Foucault was priceless!

-

[Cory Duchesne]

what is meant exactly by the mind/body problem?

It stems from the sense most of us have that mind and matter are distinct. It becomes a philosophical and scientific problem when we ponder the causal influence one has over the other. How can the natural processes we observe in the body and brain generate this experience we have of our minds? It is very difficult to fathom, and to me, it is a mystery and a valid problem. Although, if the problem is ever given a really good theory that allows us to produce Artificial Intelligence that can rival our own, the theory will still be a mere model that generates profound unknowns. Of course, all science is limited in this way.

is it the idea that the mind is somehow distinct and separate from the body? isn't it the flawed imagined idea that the mind is immaterial and the body is material, and philosophers create unnecessary problems for themselves such as how does the material interact with the immaterial?

I think it's correct to distinguish between inward conscious experience and the outward impressions we have of our brains. I also think it's quite unnecessary to believe in abstract things like material and immaterial, or any abstractions for that matter. Modeling is useful because it does "approach" reality, but it will always come up short of the truth.

I agree that Chomsky chose a very odd way of debunking materialism, he could have also debunked this problem by focusing on what modern biology has discovered about the organism - how the complex interactions between the body and brain give rise to the state of the mind. IE: hormones, urges, genetic conditioning,, cognitive patterns rooted in environmental conditioning, and so on.

All of those things are mechanistic models that would appear to only bolster the validity of the worldly processes Chomsky is trying to undermine. He doesn't want to limit something as mysterious as consciousness to causal processes that can be demonstrated to our senses. If he did that, then the mind body problem would be valid, but he insists that it is not.

There is a wise way to debunk materialism and reveal the limitations of scientific modeling, but Chomsky seems rather clueless about how to go about doing this. His main mistake is that he does not even remotely attempt to see through the boundaries between ordinary, everyday things, which suggests he believes in material things. He then gives special significance to gravity and electromagnetism, suggesting to us that they are not material, which means that he has, likely unwittingly, created a duality between the physical world of everyday things and the immaterial world of EM and gravity. So by trying to escape the mind body problem, he creates a new duality which somewhat mirrors the problem he tried to escape.

I suppose he would have been more clear minded if he focused on how the whole movement of the organism, with its environment, creates the health of the mind.

But if he focused on that, then the mind/body problem would turn out to be a valid problem, and hence he would have no reason to doubt the validity of the problem to begin with.

[Ryan Rudolph]

Cory wrote:

It stems from the sense most of us have that mind and matter are distinct. It becomes a philosophical and scientific problem when we ponder the causal influence one has over the other. How can the natural processes we observe in the body and brain generate this experience we have of our minds? It is very difficult to fathom, and to me, it is a mystery and a valid problem. Although, if the problem is ever given a really good theory that allows us to produce Artificial Intelligence that can rival our own, the theory will still be a mere model that generates profound unknowns. Of course, all science is limited in this way.

It is incredibly complex, but I think with increasingly powerful computers, along with the current acceleration and accumulation of scientific data, combined with an enhanced understanding of cellular behavior, we will begin to get a realistic picture of the essential processes within the organism needed to give birth to machine consciousness.

Some of the questions I have pertaining to A.I.

1.How to duplicate the performance cellular respiration in electrical systems, rather than biological ones to sustain high energy needed for complex brain function.

2.A useful brain theory that explains how the brain collects, gathers, transmits and interprets sensory information, leading to higher functions such as decision making, perception, motor reactions and so on.

3.Improving that theory to enable machines to learn, meaning creating a plastic machine neural system, a system that constantly transmits information back to the environment to check for accuracy and consistency, allowing the machine to learn.

Jeff Hawkins theory of how the brain works is ok, as not many scientists have ever tried before, but it opens up a lot of new questions, and raising new concerns about how to engineer what he is taking about.

A.I research is a mind blowing field, and an exciting one, but it will take a lot of understanding from many disciplines to pull it all together. A group of polymaths are the only ones capable of creating the first A.I.

[Blair]

Come on Ryan, Nature beat you to the punch.Humans are A.I.

[Ryan Rudolph]

Prince,

you have a point, but I bet humans will do both - meaning use the human body as a template to improve upon, thus enhancing the human species beyond recognition, but also engineers might create an entirely electrical machine consciousness that will have a 'nature of its own'.

Both are in the realm of possibility.

[Tomas]

He definitely has mental blocks about deeper stuff. I happened to see "Manufacturing Consent" recently and in it he was saying that he couldn't discern any "logical connection" between his two roles in life - namely, his work as a linguistic pioneer and his anarchistic politics. I was amazed. And this was just a few minutes after the film was lording him as the greatest intellectual of his generation!

The way mainstream intellectuals deal with issues like mind/body and free will is so clumsy and juvenile that you just have to poke yourself to see if you are dreaming.

But I suppose they get punished in their own way. Watching Chomsky having to put up with the insufferable Michel Foucault was priceless!

I think he's just plain bullshit, to abstract and a Jewish rapist of the magic of language. He tries to analyze language as a universal thing able to be molded in a few rules, definitions and grammar... (clauses, tenses, ambiguity, etc...)

Noam Chomsky: Controlled Asset of the New World Order
The following analysis will show that Chomsky, a deep cover agent for the New World Order, a master of black propaganda who true motives become clear with a sober and honest examination.
The Pied Piper of the Left >> http://www.modernhistoryproject.org/mhp ... =NoamAsset

[Ryan Rudolph]

Tomas,

The new world order is a fiction only valid in your own paranoid imagination.

Noam Chomsky has openly criticized governments and officials from every party, in almost every region of the world. He considers himself more liberal minded in ideology, but he doesn't seem to favor or show bias to anyone. This is true based on how no leaders are exempt from his critiques. His political knowledge and understanding of politically motivated atrocities in history far surpasses any intellectual I know of.

This new world order stuff is such garbage for your mind. It can take over your life until you perceive every person and every event through the filter of this imaginary boogie man.

My advise to you: lay off the whiskey, and throw away that Alex Jones special collection ultra secret dvd collection you have...

Btw, you realize that any decent psychologist would diagnose Alex Jones as being hyper-hysterical, schizophrenic, delusional, and therefore without a firm grip on reality. He makes a decent living being crazy, and getting others in a mental place where they are crazy too.

[Tomas]

.

-Ryan Rudolph-
The new world order is a fiction only valid in your own paranoid imagination.

-tomas-
You haven't done or been anywhere of significance. Even your butt buddy, Fidel Castro, is backing off of socialism.


-Ryan-
Noam Chomsky has openly criticized governments and officials from every party, in almost every region of the world.

-tomas-
Name a few..

Geezus Ryan, I've managed to criticize at the federal, state, county, city governments on all levels here in the US. Been to so many anti-right or anti-left sit-ins, megaphones galore. War protests of every stripe in Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, France, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, West Germany, Israel, Lebanon, India, Spain to name a several few.


-Ryan-
He considers himself more liberal minded in ideology, but he doesn't seem to favor or show bias to anyone.

-tomas-
Cut out the generalities, give me some red meat.


-Ryan-
This is true based on how no leaders are exempt from his critiques. His political knowledge and understanding of politically motivated atrocities in history far surpasses any intellectual I know of.

-tomas-
Then you haven't been much of anywhere.


-Ryan-
This new world order stuff is such garbage for your mind. It can take over your life until you perceive every person and every event through the filter of this imaginary boogie man.

-tomas-
Tell me, Ryan, why are there Canadian soldiers still in Afghanistan?


-Ryan-
My advise to you: lay off the whiskey, and throw away that Alex Jones special collection ultra secret dvd collection you have...

-tomas-
An occasional beer every six months or so. Besides, the kidney dialysis prevents me from cracking a second beer ;-)


-Ryan-
Btw, you realize that any decent psychologist would diagnose Alex Jones as being hyper-hysterical, schizophrenic, delusional, and therefore without a firm grip on reality. He makes a decent living being crazy, and getting others in a mental place where they are crazy too.

-tomas-
Not heard a podcast or seen a video of Alex Jones. Come across his site every year or so. Wouldn't be able to pick him out of a photo lineup.

Just hop back up on Chomsky's lap and keep purring away...

BTW Ryan, I've sat in on, at the very least, 10 live Chomsky lectures - dating from before I was in Vietnam to a couple years ago. David Quinn pegged him straightaway..

Note: Edited for spelling miscue

[Loki]

Chomsky did make some good comments on 9/11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwZ-vIaW6Bc