Cognitive closure (philosophy)
 | This article contains too many or overly lengthy quotations. (December 2015) |
In philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, cognitive closure is the proposition that human minds are constitutionally incapable of solving certain perennial philosophical problems.<ref>Leslie Marsh (ed.), Hayek in Mind: Hayek's Philosophical Psychology, Emerald Group Publishing, 2011, p. xv.</ref> Owen Flanagan calls this position anti-constructive naturalism or the "new mysterianism" and the primary advocate of the hypothesis, Colin McGinn,<ref>Harris, Errol E (2006), Reflections on the Problem of Consciousness, p. 51, McGinn's stance, while he denies the possibility of ever understanding the causal connection, may be regarded as "naturalistic" in the sense that he does not reject the validity of neuro-physiological theory, and does not doubt that brain activity accompanies conscious states.
.</ref><ref>Ross Wilson (ed.), The Meaning of "Life" in Romantic Poetry and Poetics, Routledge, 2009, p. 88: "[McGinn] calls his stance "transcendental naturalism..."</ref> calls it transcendental naturalism acknowledging the possibility that solutions may be knowable to an intelligent non-human of some kind. According to McGinn, such philosophical questions include the mind-body problem, identity of the self, foundations of meaning, free will, and knowledge, both a priori and empirical.<ref name="McGinn1994">McGinn, Colin (1994). "The Problem of Philosophy". Philosophical Studies. 76 (2–3): 133–56. doi:10.1007/bf00989821. S2CID 170454227. It combines deep epistemic transcendence with the denial that what thus transcends is thereby non-natural.
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Colin McGinn
Colin McGinn
— Problems in Philosophy: The Limits of Inquiry
Colin McGinn
— "Problems in Philosophy" in Philosophical Studies
Friedrich Hayek
For Friedrich Hayek, "The whole idea of the mind explaining itself is a logical contradiction"... and "takes this incompleteness—the constitutional inability of mind to explain itself—to be a generalized case of Gödel's incompleteness theorem... Hayek is not a naturalistic agnostic, that is, the view that science currently cannot offer an explanation of the mind-body relationship, but in principle it could."<ref name="Butos2010">Butos, W.N. (2010). The Social Science of Hayek's The Sensory Order. Advances in Austrian Economics. Emerald. pp. 127–128. ISBN 978-1-84950975-6. 1. Explanation is delimited by the apparatus of classification (the mind)... 2. An apparatus of classification cannot explain anything more complex than itself... 3. Therefore, the mind cannot fully explain itself...
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John Tyndall
[The] passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought, and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from the one to the other. They appear together, but we do not know why. Were our minds and senses so expanded, strengthened, and illuminated, as to enable us to see and feel the very molecules of the brain; were we capable of following all their motions, all their groupings, all their electric discharges, if such there be; and were we intimately acquainted with the corresponding states of thought and feeling, we should be as far as ever from the solution of the problem, "How are these physical processes connected with the facts of consciousness?" The chasm between the two classes of phenomena would still remain intellectually impassable. Let the consciousness of love, for example, be associated with a right-handed spiral motion of the molecules of the brain, and the consciousness of hate with a left-handed spiral motion. We should then know, when we love, that the motion is in one direction, and, when we hate, that the motion is in the other; but the "Why?" would remain as unanswerable as before.<ref>Tyndall, John (1871), Fragments of Science, Adegi Graphics LLC, pp. 86–87, ISBN 9781402171277.</ref>
— John Tyndall (1871), Fragments of Science
Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky argues that the cognitive capabilities of all organisms are limited by biology and that certain problems may be beyond our understanding:
A Martian scientist, with a mind different from ours might regard this problem [of free will] as trivial, and wonder why humans never seem to hit on the obvious way of solving it. This observer might also be amazed at the ability of every human child to acquire language, something that seems to him incomprehensible, requiring divine intervention.<ref>Chomsky, Noam (1988), Language and problems of knowledge, p. 152.</ref>
— Noam Chomsky, Language and problems of knowledge
Phenomena and noumena
As argued in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, human thinking is unavoidably structured by categories of the understanding:
Quantity – Unity, Plurality, Totality.
Quality – Reality, Negation, Limitation.
Relation – Inherence and Subsistence, Causality and Dependence, Community.
Modality – Possibility or Impossibility, Existence or Non-Existence, Necessity or Contingence.
These are ideas from which there is no escape and thus they pose a limit to thinking. What can be known through the categories is called "things for us" and what is outside the categories is unthinkable, called "things in themselves".
New mysterians
In his (famous) essay "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" Thomas Nagel mentions the possibility of cognitive closure to the subjective character of experience and the (deep) implications that it has for materialist reductionist science. Owen Flanagan noted in his 1991 book Science of the Mind that some modern thinkers have suggested that consciousness will never be completely explained. Flanagan called them "the new mysterians" after the rock group Question Mark and the Mysterians.<ref>Flanagan, Owen (1991). The Science of the Mind. MIT Press. p. 313. ISBN 978-0-262-56056-6.</ref> According to McGinn, the solution to the mind-body problem cannot be grasped, despite the fact that the solution is "written in our genes".
Emergent materialism is a similar but different claim that humans are not yet smart enough to determine the relationship between mind and matter.[citation needed][dubious ]
See also
- Epistemological nihilism
- Dialetheism
- Inquiry
- Mystical experience
- Münchhausen trilemma
- Pyrrhonism
- Reductionism
- Strong agnosticism is a religious application of a similar position.
- Uncertainty
- Vertiginous question
