Saturday, April 29, 2006
(12:17 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Cognitive Science: From Augustine to Zizek
Augustine, De Trinitate, book X, para. 14:But we were concerned now with the nature of mind; so let us put aside all consideration of things we know outwardly through the senses of the body, and concentrate our attention on what we have stated that all minds know for certain about themselves. Whether the power of living, remembering, understanding, willing, thinking, knowing, judging comes from air, or fire, or brain, or blood, or atoms, or heaven knows what fifth kind of body besides the four common elements; or whether the very structure or organization of our flesh can produce these things; people have hesitated about all this, and some have tried to establish one answer, others another. Nobody surely doubts, however, that he lives and remembers and understands and wills and thinks and knows and judges. At least, even if he doubts, he lives; if he doubts, he remembers why he is doubting; if he doubts, he understands he is doubting; if he doubts, he has a will to be certain; if he doubts, he thinks; if he doubts, he knows he does not know; if he doubts, he judges he ought not to give hasty assent. You may have your doubts about anything else, but you should have no doubts about these; if they were not certain, you would not be able to doubt anything.Slavoj Zizek, The Parallax View, pp. 177-78:
Generally, this multitude [of positions in cognitive science] can be reduced to four main positions:It seems to me that positions 2-4 are anticipated in Augustine. #2 would be the position that thought is grounded in "heaven knows what fifth kind of body besides the four common elements." In a nice coincidence, just as there were four elements in Augustine's time, so for us there are four fundamental forces (gravity, electro-magnetic, weak, and strong). Position #3 would be akin to Augustine's own more modest position, where he doesn't claim to know exactly how the mind is related to its physical basis -- although arguably it is saying something more than Augustine's, claiming not just that we don't know, but that we can't. By contrast, #4 would be an example of those who insist on one particular model of the mind-matter relationship.
- Radical/reductive materialism (Patricia and Paul Churchland): there simply are no qualia, there is no "consciousness," these things exist only as a kind of "naturalized" cognitive mistake. The anti-intuitional beauty of this position is that it turns around subjectivist phenomenalism (we are aware only of phenomena, there is no absolute certainty that anything beyond them exists)--here, it is pure phenomenality itself that does not exist!
- Antimaterialism (David Chalmers): consciousness-awareness cannot be accounted for in terms of other natural processes; it has to be conceived as a primordial dimension of nature, like gravity or magnetism.
- The position of "cognitive closue" which asserts the inherent unknowability of consciousness (Colin Mc Ginn, even Steven Pinker): although consciousness emerged out of material reality, it is necessarily unknowable.
- Nonreductive materialism (Daniel Dennett): consciousness exists, but it is the result of natural processes, and has a clear evolutionary function.
The position that represents a real advance over Augustine is #1: at long last, thanks to cognitive science, we can finally go all the way and doubt that we're doubting.
(If Zizek is totally wrong about this typology, I'd be interested to learn -- he's my only source on this cognitive science thing so far, and that makes me nervous.)
