Subjectivist Propaganda

Click here to return to the main page

doi: 10.6084/m9.figshare.13076906

Foundations

In science, subjectivism has pejorative connotations, and then it is dissmissed so easily that it has not any chance to present its case. It is the opposite with physicalism, which is assumed without doubts.

As I am myself a subjectivist, this paper is written for you physicalists in the way that I think it will be easier for you to locate where I am wrong. Please, tell me.

Background

This paper was born while reading Philosophy of Mind, Third Edition, by Jaegwon Kim. I noticed then that he jumped from Descartes (17th century) in Chapter 2 to behaviorism (20th century) in Chapter 3 without any mention to Kant (18th century). With a quick look to the back matter of the book, I verified that Kant was not indexed. Anyway, I continued reading the book while taking note of any mention to Kant, but I found none.

To me, it was very difficult to believe that Kant was not dealt with in a book on the Philosophy of Mind, so I investigated this case further. In a file containing Kim's textbook, I searched the string Kant, resulting a “String ‘Kant’ not found” notification. Thereafter I repeated the operation, but then in case independent mode, with the same negative result. This is really unbelievable, because it means that the four consecutive letters K, A, N, and T, in that order, are not found anywhere in the book. Therefore the string is not in the main text, neither as the whole word ‘Kant’ nor in a derivative as ‘Kantian’, and it is not in the back matter, so Kant is neither indexed nor cited. In particular, the string ‘Kant’ is not in the very long References section, meaning that it is not in the title of any cited article, or book, and it is not in the name of any of the journals where the articles were published.

Something similar happens with Hume, even though he is not a continental philosopher. Hume is mentioned just twice:

• In note 12 to Chapter 3 on a moral question. The full sentence is: “The view that to generate an action both desire and belief must be present is usually attributed to Hume.”
• In a comparison by Georges Rey cited in Chapter 9, which says: “consciousness may be no more real than the simple soul exorcised by Hume.”

Neglecting Hume and Kant in an important textbook on the Philosophy of Mind was so shocking to me that I needed to understand it. The result was this paper.

Disclaimer: Below are some spoilers, including the abstract. Stop reading this, unless you want to know why Kant is not mentioned in Kim's textbook.

Why is Kant not mentioned in Kim's (2011) Philosophy of Mind? In science, the only evidence is observation, also known as first person experience. Then the question is: Can I go beyond (= transcend) first person experience? This is the transcendental problem raised by Descartes that Kant solved. However, Kim is a physicalist and physicalism gives physics, which is a theory, priority over observation, which is the evidence. And this way, by giving physics priority over first person experience, physicalism evades the transcendental problem. In summary, for physicalism the transcendental problem is rendered pointless by this erroneous reversal of priorities that gives more credit to a theory (physics) than to the evidence of first person experience, and consequently its solution by Kant is also pointless for physicalism.

Why is physicalism the default position in science and the philosophy mind? Because of a mix of good intentions with the will of applying quick and simple solutions to complex problems. Physicalism tries to repeat the success of physics in the social siences, so it imposes the (poor and causal) ontology of physics on them.

Last paragraph

Physicalism's intention of translating the huge success of physics to the social sciences, including psychology and the cognitive sciences, is laudable. Unfortunately, being a noble intention does not grant success, and in this case, as I see it, it is the opposite: because of its epistemological and ontological errors, physicalism prevents the use of intentionality, precluding the advance of psychology and the social sciences. My way out of this obstacle is to go back to the essentials, that is, to consider again the transcendental problem raised by Descartes and its solutions by Hume and Kant. After that consideration, and on top of it, we should take advantage of Darwin and Turing. It is critical, however, to extend our ontology beyond causality to include intentionality, and my proposal is problem solving. Then you could finally join me: The world is not a huge machine, as physicalism proposes, but an enigmatic problem. The world is an enigmatic problem.

References

Link to the page of my paper on the philosophical foundations of cognitive science in figshare, and direct link to the pdf file.

This is the book that triggered this paper:

• Kim (2011): Philosophy of Mind; 3rd Edition, New York: Routledge, DOI: 10.4324/9780429494857.

These are light PDF files of the classical texts by Descartes, Hume and Kant used in the paper:

• Descartes (1637): Discourse on the Method.
• Descartes (1641): Meditations on First Philosophy.
• Hume (1748): An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
• Kant (1783): Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.

And this is the light PDF file of the classical text by Darwin:

• Darwin (1859): On the Origin of Species.

Versions:

• f1 20201011
• f2 20201111
• f3 20211202
• f4 20221101
• f5 20231230