The “Russellian Insight”
With the rise in popularity of Russellian monism and its variants, there has been much discussion of one of its central claims – that the physical sciences only investigate the relational properties of the world, thus leaving an open the question of what the world’s intrinsic properties are. This is the Russellian insight. While the Russellian insight is usually treated as one statement, it is really a cluster of three views. This paper investigates how these three views on the nature of the physical sciences impact solutions to the mind-body problem. One version of the Russellian insight is a descriptive claim about the physical sciences – that physical sciences only investigate the relational properties of the world. As it is purely descriptive, it leaves open whether the physical sciences can be adapted or changed in some way to investigate non-relational properties of objects. Thus, leaving open the idea that materialism in some guise is true. Another version of the claim is modal – necessarily the physical sciences only investigate the relational properties of the world. Due to its modal nature, one is left with two options. Either there are no properties other than the relational properties, or the physical sciences leave something out of their investigations of the world. The latter route is most closely related to the Structures and Dynamics arguments of Chalmers and other Russellian panpsychists. The former route lends itself to eliminativism about phenomenal experience. The final version of the claim is a normative one – the proper aim of the physical sciences is only to investigate relational properties of the world. This claim is most prominent in dualist discussions of the mind-body problem. Revealing these different views about the nature of scientific investigation sheds deeper insight on the different solutions to the mind-body problem.
Ignorance and the Mind-Body Problem
Conceivability arguments are important in metaphysics to establish whether two things are only contingently related. These arguments can be presented in two premises.
1) It is conceivable that the world be the same with respect to certain properties but differ with respect to certain other properties.
2) If the situation in 1 is conceivable, it is metaphysically possible.
The most influential (and controversial) area where conceivability arguments are deployed are in debates concerning consciousness. There are many responses to these arguments, but I’ll focus on one that denies P1 by saying that we are ignorant about one of the relevant properties. Panpsychists claim that we are ignorant of phenomenal properties had by fundamental physical objects. Meanwhile, some materialists claim that we are ignorant of physical properties that do not enter into current physical theory. These claims of ignorance are intended to show how the view in question escapes a kind of conceivability argument leveled against it by showing that we aren’t conceiving of the situation in P1. Thus, these conceivability arguments are unsound.
I’ll argue that while we are ignorant about many things with respect to these two kinds of property, we know enough about them to be able to conceive of the situation in P1. For the panpsychist claim that we are ignorant of certain phenomenal properties, I follow Daniel Stoljar (2020) in claiming that we must know some necessary feature of these fundamental phenomenal properties. Otherwise, what could make us so sure that these are phenomenal properties? Namely, it seems that they must consist in the awareness of other properties. If we know this about these fundamental phenomenal properties, then we know enough about them to conceive of the relevant situation. Unlike Stoljar, I argue that this is also true of his claim that we are ignorant of certain physical properties. For the same reason that we must know something about a fundamental phenomenal property in order to count it as a phenomenal, rather than physical, property, we must know something about the physical properties that don’t enter into physical theory such that we will include them in our expanded supply of physical properties. Namely, for some unknown property to count as physical, it must be causally efficacious. There seems to be only one response available to both the panpsychist and the Stoljar-influenced materialist, that we don’t (need to) know any necessary features of these property types. However, to make this reply, we would be making it impossible to fruitfully investigate these properties because we could not know whether any newly discovered property is of the relevant type. In general, I argue that the kind of ignorance required to deny P1 is precisely the kind of ignorance that would make it impossible to investigate the property in question. Thus, while ignorance can be used to show that we cannot conceive of a scenario, it is not a helpful response to someone who thinks that we can still make progress on the problem.
Conventionalism of Conventionalism: A Buddhist-Inspired Approach
Many philosophical traditions argue about whether conventionalism – the view that a set of facts are true by convention – makes sense as a metaphysical view of at least some aspects of the world. This can be seen, for instance, in arguments over Locke’s rejection of real essence, Buddhism’s denial of the self, and moral constructivism in current meta-ethical debates. In many instances, the conventionalist metaphysical position is restricted to one domain, while all other domains are considered non-conventional. In other instances, this conventionalism is unrestricted, applying to all domains. On the face of it, restricted and unrestricted conventionalism should have no conflict. Supposing that all the arguments for restricted conventionalism were to add up to all domains, agreeing with all of these independent arguments would yield a piecemeal argument for unrestricted conventionalism. However, the standard ways in which European philosophers have argued for restricted forms of conventionalism puts it in conflict with the direct arguments for unrestricted conventionalism put forth in Madhyamika Buddhist metaphysics. The conflict arises not from the positions themselves, but rather from an entailment of the positions. European arguments for restricted forms of conventionalism entail that the fact that some facts are conventional cannot itself be conventional – that is, conventionalism cannot be conventional. However, the Madhyamika arguments for unrestricted conventionalism entail that conventionalism must be conventional. In this paper, I intend to analyze this conflict and show that it results from two different ways of understanding what it means for some fact to be true by convention.
A Tale of Two Hubrises
When reading works of philosophy from traditions different from one’s own, it is often remarked (particularly by philosophers trained in the analytic tradition, but they are not the only ones) that the work is either not philosophy at all, or that it is bad philosophy. There are various reasons for this, but I’d like to focus on how the works are presented by their authors. Different traditions tend to emphasize that good philosophy must contain certain virtues at the expense of any others. When these emphases diverge, the result is that philosophers in these different traditions struggle to recognize good philosophy when they see it.
This paper details two complementary philosophical virtues which are, in different traditions and at different times, overemphasized so as to become vices. The first is the virtue of innovation and its corresponding vice, the hubris of novelty. In order to be published, present day Anglo-American philosophers tend to overemphasize the novelty of their work. It is presented as something entirely new and never before discussed or argued for. When a philosopher emphasizes that they are making a radical shift from the ideas that came before, they tend to obscure, even from themselves, how interrelated the new and old ideas actually are. The second is the virtue of inspiration and the corresponding vice, the hubris of interpretation. In order to be taken seriously, Buddhist philosophers overemphasize that their words are nothing other than the interpretation of the words of the Buddha. This can also be seen in Western philosophy when people engage in the history of philosophy. Philosophers insist that all they are doing is explaining what, for instance, Kant has written. This tends to obscure the innovative ideas contained in the work. Despite what they may say, the later philosopher is not merely giving a perfect interpretation of the target historical figure. When done well, they are inspired by the previous ideas which brings along a new development. Innovation and inspiration are both virtues on their own but without the other they tend to devolve into the hubrises of interpretation and novelty.