The mind-body problem

The relation between mind and body is a truly dreadful mystery.

There are many aspects to the mystery but the one that focuses it all for me is the simple problem of seeing.

How do our eyes and brain conspire to enable us to see?

We know that objects reflect light into our eyes and signals are then sent to our brain. And then our brain does something very complicated, and then we see. But how does seeing emerge from all that complicated brain activity? How could such a thing as the seeing of colours (for example) arise out of vigorous cellular activity in the head, however complex?

It seems incomprehensible.

Some people believe that the mystery will resolve itself as we find out more about the brain, so there is nothing for it but to let neuroscience progress. My own feeling, however, is that we are victims of a conceptual confusion.

The problem is that we have no clear idea of what we are even looking for when we examine the brain to discover how it enables us to “see”. The extant attitude is to keep looking and see what turns up, but that is not going to help, because the root of the problem is that we lack a clear conception of what this “seeing” is supposed to be, that we have confidently declared to be the causal result of brain activity.

Forget about the brain for a while and think of our everyday concept of seeing. What is the concept? What do we normally mean when we say that someone sees something?

Do we mean that a movie starts to play inside his head of the thing being seen? Do we mean that something shoots from his eyes and grabs whatever it is that he sees? Does a large bubble emerge from his skull in order to envelope the object in question? Surely none of these things. If we supposed seeing to be any of these, we’d know what to look for find inside the brain.

But then what do we ordinarily mean when we speak of someone seeing something? What does the man on the street suppose to be going on when he opens his eyes and sees? He is not frightened when he sees. It is a completely familiar phenomenon and he knows what it is. But what is it? At least, what does he take it to be?

We imagine that we know what seeing is, but we have great difficulty articulating what it is. Just like Augustine’s time. The last refuge is to say that we know what seeing is from personal experience, which is like hiding under a blanket.

Look at what J. J. Valberg says in The Puzzle of Experience:

Imagine I am looking at a man who is looking at a tree. The tree, I assume, is reflecting light to his eyes. It seems natural to conceive of the man’s experience as the result of this process. What do I mean by ‘the man’s experience’? Well, I am not too clear about that, but, whatever it is, it is something occurring in (on the part of) the man. Perhaps I vaguely think of it as occurring in his head. (p. 139)

Valberg speaks of the “man’s experience” but it’s quite clear that he’s talking about seeing. And he’s quite right that it is “not too clear” what the phenomenon is supposed to be. This should be disconcerting, since seeing is a phenomenon that is entirely familiar to us. But the fact is that seeing is something that we take for granted: we never think to ask what our conception of it really is.

From this point of view, the question of how seeing could possibly arise from the brain is somewhat premature. No wonder we cannot comprehend the matter: we are not even clear (to begin with) on what the raw phenomenon of seeing is supposed to be.

We should pay more attention to the everyday concept of seeing and try to spell out what it amounts to. My sense is that this is the correct way to approach the mind-body problem. Once we are clear on this, everything else should fall into place, including the relation between seeing and brain activity.

The beauty of the mind-body problem is staggering. The more I study the problem, the more I realize how amazing it is that such a thing as seeing is even possible.

[2009]