The Implicit Problem of Mind

Gilbert Ryle’s Challenge to Substance Dualism and the Possibility of Aristotelian Revival

The mind, so immediately available to our experience, somehow escapes us. Is the mind the brain? Can we reduce the mind to the activity of the brain? What of mental phenomena like thoughts, sense experience, or reasoning processes? Some have claimed, like panpsychism, that all of reality is fundamentally mind. Materialists have swung to the other extreme claiming that the phenomena of mind, intentionality, consciousness, and free will are merely emergent illusions or reducible to material causation understood in mathematical, quantitative terms. What can be measured is real and the rest is at best an accident or at worst an illusion! Is it possible that the problem lies deeper than the post-Cartesian discourse implies? Must we assume that the choices are (1) everything is mind; (2) everything is matter; or (3) mind and matter are intractably and mysteriously interacting in the human person? I am inclined to believe that mind and body is an invented problem, an infectious side-effect from Galileo, Descartes, and the Newtonian view of matter (Feser 2020).

Defining matter as only having mathematical qualities like motion, mass, etc., sets up an implied dualism from the start. When you reduce matter to those primary qualities, what then do we make of the qualia like the redness of red or the sweetness of fruit in the experience? They must be in the mind or byproducts of the brain, but, as Dennett so pithily pointed out, you will never find consciousness, the subjective experience of qualia, there in the brain if you look with a scalpel and tweezers (Blackmore 63). By critiquing the foundation of Cartesian dualism according to a category mistake, the prominent extremes of materialism, idealism, and metaphysical dualism can be rejected in favor of an Aristotelian-Thomistic concept of the human person. A concept of the whole person, not dissected into two, accounts for phenomenal experiences of the “mind” and “body” and the seemingly intractable problems left by Descartes.

The Intractable Problem of Mind

What do we do with this seemingly intractable problem of mind and body? Above the many problems that have been pointed out by philosophers since Descartes, Gilbert Ryle offered a critique that sits above the rest in its simplicity and directness toward the root of the faulty Cartesian system. Descartes formulation of a dualist conception of mind and body is clear and concise with the mathematical precision he is so well known for in the Discourse on the Method. Proceeding with a well-defined criterion of certainty, Descartes presents the phenomenal experience of mind and body.

We, with certainty, know only one thing, namely, that we are a thinking thing, the famous Cartesian “cogito”. By contrast, our bodies, as distinct from our minds, are extended things. This is the shorthand understanding of Descartes’ Dualism that asserts first an epistemological difference in our understanding of mind and body, and therefore there is an ontological difference between mind and body. Hence, mind and body are entirely distinct substances, one a thinking thing that is immaterial and indivisible and the other an extended thing that is material and subject to division. This has led to two notable ramifications on Western philosophy regarding the mind and body. Firstly, matter is conceived of as anything that can be mathematically described in quantitative terms, while secondary attributes like qualia are not proper to the extended things themselves but are rather mental phenomena. Secondly, the human body is a machine governed by the laws of physics and the mind is something entirely different inhabiting the body like an immaterial pilot.

Rethinking Descartes

Critiques of Cartesian Dualism like Ryle’s have provided an impetus and call to revisit the problem before it began to unfold. Descartes has made a categorical mistake in his appraisal of the mind and body. He has supposed that because the mind is epistemologically different from the body, they are in fact two distinct Substances in his substance dualism. The brutal truth is that mind and matter are not of the “same logical type” (Ryle 1949, 12). Ryle was very clear on his intentions and wanted to show that it was not a problem of details within the theory of Descartes that were wrong, but rather it was the entirety that was wrong because of its principles. To illustrate the category error of the Cartesian dualist, Ryle employed the analogy of a university. If one were to go to a university, visit all the buildings, speak with the students and faculty, and at the end of the tour ask in bewilderment when the tour would see the university, this would be a categorical error. The visitor has assumed that there is something above and beyond the parts of the university that can be visited and seen that is still something rather similar to the parts that constitute the whole (17). The Cartesian has supposed that minds and bodies are similar things that have causes and effects in a mechanistic view of reality. He has supposed that:

Minds are things, but different sorts of things from bodies; mental processes are causes and effects, but different sorts of causes and effects from bodily movements. And so on. Somewhat like the foreigner expected the University to be an extra edifice, rather like a college but also considerably different, so the repudiators of mechanism represented minds as extra centres of causal processes, rather like machines but also considerably different from them. Their theory was a para-mechanical hypothesis. (Ryle 19).

There are no longer the tenuous counter positions of mind annihilating matter or matter annihilating mind. When there are two things of the same logical type, we are forced to either reject dualism in favor of materialism or live with the problems that dualism invites. Ryle then points the reader in an interesting direction when he says, “First, the hallowed contrast between Mind and Matter will be dissipated but dissipated not by either of the equally hallowed absorptions of Mind by Matter or of Matter by Mind, but in quite a different way” (Ryle 22). How might this different way be interpreted? While Ryle takes it in the direction of materialism, there is a sound alternative. Thomas Aquinas, a deeply Aristotelian thinker, can help guide the philosopher in a refreshingly old direction. Aristotle proposed a theory of metaphysics and mind that can dissipate the problems modern philosophers face because of the Cartesian mire. Mind and the brain, mind and body, are parts of an identifiable whole of one substance. By denying the extreme views that the problems of consciousness, intellect, and intentionality elicit, we are left with a view of mind that is distinctly Neo-Aristotelian.

It must be acknowledged that avoiding metaphysical dualism by critiquing a Cartesian view of matter will surely not solve all the problems regarding the mind. Such a project would be outside of the scope of this argument. What is being said is that it is possible that by rejecting the extremes there is only one coherent possibility that can be recognized as a Neo-Aristotelian and Thomistic idea. This will help to avoid many of the problems that post-Cartesian thought has left us with. We might also say that a mere critique of Cartesian dualism is not sufficient grounds for dispelling the insights of Descartes or his mechanistically minded contemporaries or successors. This argument is a presentation of another view, an alternative with great promise, that may help alleviate the pains of the beleaguered theorists in the philosophy of mind from a strictly post-Cartesian framework.

The Aristotelian/Thomist Alternative

What Aristotle and later Thomas Aquinas proposed as solutions to the phenomenal features of human experience, can be reformulated with only slight variance to account for the evidence of science and avoid the problems of modern discourse around the philosophy of mind. The commonsense ideas about matter having not only the primary qualities of Newtonian physics, but also having the secondary qualities of human experience allows for a less dualistic conception of the world which at the same time does not reduce to materialist conceptions. Embodiment is the peculiar realization that humans are in some ways confined and interacting in a material world of bodies through their bodies. They are made of something tangible and experienced by the senses as differentiated from the purely formal thought about concepts. Here, the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of the soul and body relationship accounts better for the embodied experience. Aristotle stated that “It must be the case that the soul is the substance as the form of a natural body which potentially has life, and since this substance is actuality, the soul will be the actuality of such a body”, and later, “the soul is the first actuality of a natural body which has life potentially. Whatever has organs will be a body of this kind” (De Anima 2.1.412a). In this sense, the soul for Aristotle, and consequently Thomas Aquinas, is the principle of organization of body for certain functional capacities. It is therefore not reducible to the organs that make up the body while at the same time being dependent on the proper function and structure of those organs. Because it is the animating principle of the material body as a formal structure, it is not something “added to” or imprisoned by the body as Plato viewed the relationship. Rather, body and soul make up the totality of the human person in one substance. The soul then is the act or actuality of the body viewed particularly as that which holds in unity the multiplicity of matter for the performance of certain unique functions, the greatest of these being the rational capacity.

            The critique of reductive materialism is closely related to Aristotle's concept of the soul and body, particularly in its vehement denial of a dualism like Descartes or Plato had advanced. Contrary to the Aristotelian-Thomistic view of the soul and body as a single substance, materialism collapses the distinction so that all that remains is the material. What is characterized as the soul is reduced to the operations and faculties of the parts that make up the whole. There is no significant ontological status for the soul which can be reduced to the material and mechanical interactions of the body’s component parts. John Searle, more akin to Ryle’s own materialist conceptions, famously presented a softer form of this materialist concept in opposition to the more hard-lining reductionists like Daniel Dennett (Blackmore 63). According to Searle, “the surface feature is both caused by the behaviour of the micro-elements, and at the same time is realized in the system that is made up of the micro-elements.” The terms used in this line are surprisingly close to how an Aristotelian might describe an embodied soul, but his conclusion is more indicative of Searle’s physicalism, “There is a cause and effect relationship, but at the same time the surface features are just higher level features of the very system whose behaviour at the micro-level causes those features” (Searle 21). For Searle, every operation that the human possesses can be described in terms of the material processes of brains and neurons. While there is a possibility of talking about the emergent features of brain activity like thinking thoughts and solving problems, these are all essentially reducible to the parts that constitute the whole at different levels of analysis. But Thomas Aquinas, steeped in Aristotelianism, responds with a more comprehensive analysis based on the first or primary principle of the body, irreducible to its parts. He states:

Now, though a body may be a principle of life, or to be a living thing, as the heart is a principle of life in an animal, yet nothing corporeal can be the first principle of life. For it is clear that to be a principle of life, or to be a living thing, does not belong to a body as such; since, if that were the case, every body would be a living thing, or a principle of life. Therefore a body is competent to be a living thing or even a principle of life, as "such" a body. Now that it is actually such a body, it owes to some principle which is called its act. Therefore the soul, which is the first principle of life, is not a body, but the act of a body. (Aquinas 481)

For Aquinas, the powers which result as an emergent property of a body with the formal structure of a human, although dependent upon the proper functioning of the body, cannot be reduced to the powers of the component parts. They constitute a categorically different function of the composite whole. They are the qualitatively distinct abilities to rationalize abstractly from experiential data beyond the individual neurons and processes in the brain.

This is not an absolute rejection of Searle’s views, since if any view of materialism were to pose a significant problem for an Aristotelian theory of human nature, Searle’s view remains a viable contender. The power of Searle’s view is that one can use similar language with some careful distinctions. One can speak of the “higher-level” operations of a system of particles. This sounds very close to how a Thomist might talk about the emergent functions of the brain, but the conclusion of materialism lacks force. One can think about this rational capacity, a power of the Thomistic soul, like power of flight that birds have (Calhoun). While the bird is made of the same basic particles and matter found in land dwelling animals, it has a qualitatively different emergent function to fly. The functional power to fly cannot be reduced to the parts which constitute the whole of the bird’s body. A body, made of matter as a limit to a formal structure, allows as a whole for the emergent power of flight. This is also a way of looking at the human soul with its rational functions. While an Aristotelian-Thomistic view is not entirely contradicting the soft materialism of Searle, it does better account for the powers of second-order reasoning and the unified ability to make conclusions through logical premises.

            A refreshingly old alternative to the problems inherent in a substance dualist conception of mind and body can be found in Aristotle. The problems are not gone. There remain mysteries about the brain and how we can characterize personality and intentionality in bodily actions. But, since the rejection of Cartesian Dualism by way of the category mistake Ryle provides good reason to look elsewhere for a comprehensive theory of mind. There is also a significant impetus to reevaluate how we view matter as a substance itself.

Works Cited

Aristotle. DE ANIMA. Mercer University Press, 2018.

Aquinas, Thomas, and Thomas C. O'Brien. Summa Theologiae. Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Blackmore, Susan. Consciousness. Sterling, 2010. 

Dilley, Stephen, and Nathan J. Palpant. Human Dignity in Bioethics: From Worldviews to the Public Square. Routledge, 2015.

Feser, Edward. “What Is Matter? | Prof Edward Feser.” YouTube, The Thomistic Institute, 6 Mar. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQYZ2lR2B-s&t=3086s.

Searle, John R. Minds, Brains, and Science. Harvard University Press, 2003.