Answer One Of The Following Questions In The Form Of A 4-5 P

Answer One Of The Following Questions In The Form Of A 4 5 Page Essay

Answer one of the following questions in the form of a 4-5 page essay. There are two kinds of essays that you may choose. TYPE A. This kind of essay involves writing an extended version of the sort of essay you wrote for Assignment 3. Essays of Type A should contain three parts.

The first part should be a reconstruction of the relevant view. The second part should be a reconstruction of either (a) a competing position, or (b) a criticism of the position in part one as is called for by the question. If the paper calls for (a), then the third part should contain a critical assessment of one of the views in favor of the other.

Question! THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM (TYPE A).

In The Mind-Body Problem, John Searle argues that mind-body dualism can be avoided. What is Searle's alternative, and how does he argue for his position? Thomas Nagel argues that there are facts about "what it's like" to be a particular sort of creature that a view such as Searle's cannot account for. How does Nagel arrive at this conclusion? Is Nagel right that such facts cannot be accounted for by Searle's position?

Paper For Above instruction

Introduction

The mind-body problem has been a central issue in philosophy of mind for centuries, questioning the relationship between mental phenomena and physical reality. John Searle offers a notable perspective by proposing an alternative to traditional mind-body dualism, emphasizing the primacy of biological naturalism. Conversely, Thomas Nagel contends that subjective experiences—'what it is like' to be a particular creature—pose insurmountable challenges to Searle’s stance. This essay reconstructs Searle's alternative position, explicates Nagel's critical viewpoint, and provides a critical assessment of whether Nagel's claims about irreducible subjective facts hold against Searle's biological naturalism.

Part I: Searle’s Alternative to Mind-Body Dualism

John Searle rejects Cartesian dualism, which posits mind and body as fundamentally separate substances. Instead, he advocates for 'biological naturalism,' asserting that mental phenomena are higher-order biological features of the brain. According to Searle, mental states are real, causal, and describable as biological processes occurring within the brain's neural structure (Searle, 1992). He emphasizes that consciousness and mental phenomena are caused by neurobiological processes and are, in turn, causally efficacious, dismissing the dualist notion of a separate non-physical mind.

Searle argues that mental states are 'ontologically reducible' to neurobiological processes but are 'organizationally irreducible' because they possess causal powers not reducible to mere neurological descriptions. He relies on the empirical success of neuroscience, suggesting that understanding mental phenomena as brain processes provides a comprehensive framework that avoids dualism's metaphysical commitments. This view is rooted in the idea that mental states are both caused by and realized in neural activities—functionally dependent on physical processes but uniquely characterized by subjective experience.

Furthermore, Searle challenges philosophical dualism by pointing out that it leads to logical and empirical difficulties, such as the interaction problem—how a non-physical mind could causally interact with physical matter. His biological naturalism sidesteps this dilemma by positing that mental phenomena are brain processes that are entirely physical in nature, rooted in natural biological laws.

Part II: Nagel’s Critique and the Challenge of Subjective Facts

Thomas Nagel, in his seminal paper "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (Nagel, 1974), argues that Searle's biological naturalism and similar physicalist theories cannot fully account for the subjective aspect of consciousness—the 'what it's like' factor. Nagel contends that conscious experience has an intrinsic, subjective quality that resists reduction to neurobiological explanations.

Nagel arrives at this conclusion by highlighting the epistemological gap between objective scientific descriptions of the brain and the subjective experience of being a particular creature. He emphasizes that no matter how much we learn about the physical processes in a bat’s brain, we cannot truly grasp what it is like to have that experience—this subjective 'what it is like' remains inaccessible to purely physical explanations (Nagel, 1974). This introduces the notion of 'qualia,' the raw feels associated with consciousness, which Nagel argues are fundamentally different from physical phenomena.

Nagel's critique hinges on the idea that conscious experience has an immediately apprehensible, subjective quality that cannot be fully captured by third-person scientific descriptions. For Nagel, the physicalist approach fails to address this aspect because it treats consciousness as an epiphenomenon or as reducible to physical processes, neglecting the essential subjective perspective.

Part III: Is Nagel Correct in His Critique?

The core of Nagel’s argument raises important questions about the explanatory limits of physicalist theories and whether subjective experience can be fully integrated within a scientific worldview. Critics of Nagel, including Searle, argue that his emphasis on irreducible subjective qualities overstates the insurmountability of physical explanations.

Searle’s biological naturalism asserts that consciousness arises from neurological processes, and while subjective experiences are real and causally effective, they are entirely rooted in biological functions. From this perspective, Nagel’s emphasis on 'what it is like' overlooks the potential for future scientific breakthroughs to fully explain subjective phenomena once neurological intricacies are understood (Searle, 2004). Advances in neurotechnology and studies of neural correlates of consciousness provide evidence that subjective states can be mapped and understood as brain processes, even if the 'first-person' perspective remains inherently inaccessible to external observers.

Furthermore, some philosophers posit that the phenomenon of qualia, while elusive, can be approached through new theoretical frameworks, such as functionalism or emergentist theories, which posit that subjective experiences emerge from complex neural arrangements. These theories suggest that Nagel’s dichotomy between physical processes and subjective experience might be a false opposition; understanding the physical basis could potentially explain all aspects of consciousness in principle.

However, critics acknowledge that Nagel’s challenge underscores a genuine difficulty in fully translating subjective experience into objective scientific terms. The 'hard problem of consciousness,' as David Chalmers (1996) calls it, highlights the difficulty in explaining why and how physical processes give rise to the qualitative aspects of experience. Thus, Nagel's critique remains influential, emphasizing that current scientific theories may be incomplete in addressing the full scope of conscious experience.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Searle’s biological naturalism offers a compelling alternative to traditional dualism, grounding mental phenomena in neurobiological processes while acknowledging their causal efficacy. Nagel’s critique, centered on the subjective 'what it is like,' exposes significant challenges for physicalist theories and underscores the gap between objective neuroscience and subjective experience. While Searle’s position is robust and supported by scientific progress, Nagel rightly emphasizes that the explanatory depth of subjective phenomena remains unresolved. The ongoing debate highlights the philosophical complexity of the mind-body problem, suggesting that a complete understanding of consciousness must reconcile scientific insights with the inherently subjective nature of experience.

References

• Chalmers, D. (1996). The conscious mind: In search of a fundamental theory. Oxford University Press.
• Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435–450.
• Searle, J. R. (1992). The Rediscovery of the Mind. MIT Press.
• Searle, J. R. (2004). Mind: A Brief Introduction. Oxford University Press.
• Crane, T. (2013). The Oxford companion to philosophy. Oxford University Press.
• Davidson, D. (1980). Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford University Press.
• Jackson, F. (1982). Epiphenomenal qualia. The Philosophical Quarterly, 32(127), 127–136.
• Seager, W. (2006). The Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings. Oxford University Press.
• Lycan, W. G. (1996). Consciousness and Experience. MIT Press.
• Block, N. (1995). On a confusion about the content of consciousness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 18(2), 227–247.