Egnor Confounded
by rsbakker
Once again, in midst of all the ad hominem nonsense coming from the Trump-Newscorp-Combine, we find another theorist, this time neuroscientist (and creationist) Michael Egnor, embracing an ad hominem dismissal of eliminativism on the Mind Matters podcast, which has been partially transcribed and posted under the title, “Why Eliminative Materialism Cannot Be A Good Theory of Mind.”
Where Trump hews to what is called the ‘abusive ad hominem,’ Egnor espouses the tu quoque, the argument that intentional eliminativism is self-refuting because eliminativists themselves use intentional terms. This is essentially the same argument my old highschool girlfriend’s mother would use to refute my atheism: every time I uttered the word “God” she would cry, “See! You believe in Him!”
The same way God doesn’t have to exist for the term “God” to do a tremendous amount of work, terms like “beliefs” or “reasons” and so on don’t need referents to do a tremendous amount of work.
The story is a good deal more complicated than this when it comes to intentional idioms, of course: one needs to explain, among other things, why so many theorists run afoul this particular confound. But the tu quoque, as applied against eliminativism, at least, is every bit as bankrupt.
Enter Egnor:
[Identity Theory has] been discarded because its logical nonsense. Every attribute of the mind, reason, emotion, perception, all of those things are completely different from matter. That is, one describes matter as extensions in space; one describes perceptions and reason and emotions in completely different ways. There’s no overlap between them so mental states can’t be the same thing as physical states. They actually don’t share any properties in common. They’re clearly related to one another in important ways but they’re not the same thing.
Eliminative materialists go one step further. They actually say that there are no mental states, that there is only the brain. Which is kind of an odd thing to say because what eliminative materialists are saying is that their ideas are mindless.
How can you have a proposition that the mind doesn’t exist? That means propositions don’t exist and that means you don’t have a proposition.
Let’s go through this sentence by sentence…
[Identity Theory has] been discarded because its logical nonsense. Simply not true. Identity Theory has fallen out of favour because, like Egnor, it possesses no compelling account of intentional phenomena. As we shall see, the “logical nonsense” here belongs entirely to Egnor.
Every attribute of the mind, reason, emotion, perception, all of those things are completely different from matter. Because, Egnor thinks, these things are exceptional, somehow distinct from the natural world as we have come to understand it. It’s important to keep in mind who’s making the more extraordinary claim here: The eliminativist is saying intentional properties only seem exceptional, much the same way celestial properties once seemed exceptional, because we lack perspective. Egnor is say they really are exceptional.
That is, one describes matter as extensions in space; one describes perceptions and reason and emotions in completely different ways. Yes, heuristically, in source insensitive ways. How else are humans supposed to understand themselves and one another? Given the astronomically complicated nature of the systems involved, our ancestors had to rely on hacks to communicate facts pertaining to their brain states, which is to say, ways to report brain states absent any knowledge of brain states. Egnor, on the other hand, would have us ignore this rather obvious cognitive dilemma, and argue that in addition to brains, we also evolved this secondary, exceptional ontological order, the extension of our intentional vocabulary.
There’s no overlap between them so mental states can’t be the same thing as physical states. They actually don’t share any properties in common. There’s (almost) no overlap between them because intentional cognition is heuristic cognition, a system that neglects the high-dimensional facts of the systems involved, relying instead on cues systematically related to those systems. Those cues appear to possess an exceptional nature because we lack the metacognitive resources required to high-dimensionally source them, to intuit them as belonging to nature more generally. Given biocomplexity, its hard to imagine how it could be any other way.
They’re clearly related to one another in important ways but they’re not the same thing. And this, of course, is the million dollar question, the one that ecological eliminativism, at least, actually answers. Egnor would lead us into the exceptionalist labyrinth, and brick up all the exits with his fallacious tu quoque.
Eliminative materialists go one step further. They actually say that there are no mental states, that there is only the brain. Which is kind of an odd thing to say because what eliminative materialists are saying is that their ideas are mindless. Intentionalists are forever telling eliminativists what they “really mean.” Intentional cognition is mandatory: we simply have no way of reporting biological systems short its heuristic machinations. But one can agree that the hacks belonging to intentional cognition are mandatory without likewise asserting that intentional exceptionalism is mandatory. As with “God,” I can assert that “mind” is a useful hack in certain cognitive situations without automatically asserting that minds (as Egnor theorizes them) are real.
How can you have a proposition that the mind doesn’t exist? See above.
That means propositions don’t exist and that means you don’t have a proposition. No, that means I’m employing a hack that works quite well in certain problem-solving contexts. Cognitive neuroscience, unfortunately, isn’t one of them, as Egnor’s utter inability to solve any of the problems of consciousness and intentionality attest.
For me, the most egregious thing about the post lies with Mind Matters, not Egnor. They actually quote William Ramsey’s excellent SPEP article on eliminativism, but they remain utterly mum on the devastating critique Ramsey provides of tu quoque counter-arguments such as Egnor’s. If I argue that intentional terms have no extension, that only various metacognitive confounds make it seem that way, then arguing that my position is absurd because I use intentional terms clearly begs the question. It is, to use Egnor’s phrase, logical nonsense.
Three Pound Brain 