Philosophy 2500 – Jaden Phan – 7:45 – 9:00 am.
The clues of mental phenomena and its mystery
Philosophy of human persons is always a difficult question for humankinds. We are the highest form of animals equipped with supreme functions. We not only have soul which is the principle of life, but we are also believed to have mind or consciousness which is much more functional, divine and peculiar to the soul. But often times, we are unaware of what we are having and how our body operates in our daily life. Therefore, many philosophers, psychologists, religionists or even mathematicians, and sciences have been actively trying to define the nature, attributes and affections of our brain/soul. There are many different views and perspectives on the soul and the mind-body problem, such as materialism, physicalism, dualism, mysterianism and so on… So, how exactly do we understand humankinds, and all living beings as a whole? How exactly do we understand our own self? Do both material and immaterial parts exist? If so, how do they relate to each other? Although most of these questions have convincing answers, I believe we are still in the mystery of defining the true nature of mental phenomena.
(1) Thomas Nagel said that: “Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. It occurs at many levels of animal life, though we cannot be sure of its presence in the simpler organisms...” His main thesis is that fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is to be that organism – something it is like for the organism. We can say that consciousness is basically what makes living creatures perceive and think. Without consciousness, we are unable to think and perceive, and also unable to know what it is like to be like us. If so, we will also never understand or at least be aware of the mind and body relationship. Therefore, consciousness plays an important and indispensable role in helping us get closer to the mind-body problem. However, it is just “getting closer” not “getting to solve the problem”, because with consciousness, it seems hopeless to find any solutions for the mind-body problem. The reason has something to do with the fact that consciousness cannot be associated with any kind of reductionism which is a move in the direction of greater objectivity, toward a more accurate view of the real nature of things. Nagel believes that there are some experiences which are completely beyond human understanding. Although we have the capability to imagine being an organism such as a bat, it is just what it is like for US to be a bat, not what it is like for a BAT to be a bat. For example: We are able to imagine having poor vision, perceiving the external world primarily by sonar, or echolocation, flapping our arms to fly, eating insects, and perhaps hanging ourselves upside-down in an attic. But, without changing our fundamental structure, our experiences would not be anything like the experiences of the bat. Therefore, it was reasonable for Nagel to say that even if we imagine ourselves transforming into a bat, that will not be any good. It just reduces the whole thing to the point that if we want to get closer to the real nature of experience of other organism, we need to stop being us, stop being subjective. But in reality, we can’t stop being us, because if we did, it would not be us anymore. Continue from the previous points, if an organism has any sort of conscious experience, there must be some sort of subjective character of the experience for that organism. By being conscious, the organism is experiencing a wide range of awareness of surroundings and perceptions of emotion, sensation, and thought. There is something it is like to have a conscious experience of being in pain; an organism in pain experiences a dimension of subjective character that cannot be left out in a complete theory of the mind. Reductive arguments always seek to give an explanation in objective terms. In other words, every reductive analysis of the mental is logically compatible with the absence of the subjective character of experience, but the essential point about conscious experiences is that they are subjective. Therefore, any reductive analysis of the mental would fail to capture the subjective character of experience. Besides, since experience is always connected with a particular point of view, it is unlikely that we will get closer to the real nature of experience by leaving behind the particularity of that single point of view. Therefore, again, experiences will always be irreducible. All of these above fit what Nagel explains why reductionism does not really work: “It is useless to base the defense of materialism on any analysis of mental phenomena that fails to deal explicitly with their subjective character.”(436)
(2) Based on the twofold method, we can come to know the attributes of something through scientific demonstration, and since the principle of all scientific demonstration is the essence of the object, we can also come to know the nature of a thing if we already know its attributes. Therefore, we may investigate the nature and essence of the soul first, and then it’s attributes. By the definition of Aristotle, the soul is the first principle of living things. Soul is basically that by which an organism lives, and for higher levels of living beings like animals and humans, soul is by which an organism perceives, and thinks. Aristotle shared the view of multiple souls which are: nutritive soul (plants, animals, humans) sensitive soul (animals, humans) and rational soul (human beings). Aristotle divides substance into three categories: matter-potentiality, form-actuality, and compound of both. The soul is also the form of a living thing - not its shape, but its actuality, that in virtue of which living things have life. Aristotle also claims that the soul is the first actuality of a natural body that is potentially alive. Since the first actuality is a sort of potentiality which is a capacity to engage in the activity, soul is a capacity. Thus, a living being’s soul is its capacity to engage in activities that include: self-nourishment, growth, maturity, decay, movement, perception, and intellect. So anything that nourishes itself, grows, decays, moves on its own, perceives, or thinks is alive. In short, the soul is responsible for the life activities of a living being.
Simply, Aristotle divides all living beings into two different categories. One consists of plants, and the other comprises creatures. The second category which includes creatures can also be divided into two subcategories, namely animals and humans. If we are about to examine the difference between plants and humans, or animals and humans, we are very certain that there is a significant difference, but what is exactly the difference? Basically, plants seem to live without sharing locomotion or perception, but some animals and humans certainly do have perceptive, and sensitive faculties. When Aristotle divides natural phenomena into various categories, one of his criteria is the object's characteristics. To be more specific, it is based on what the object does, and what it can do. As I mentioned earlier, all living creatures like animals and humans have the ability to perceive, move. But the true difference between them is that all humans have in addition the ability to think - or in other words, to order their perceptions into many logical categories. We observe revolutions and transitions of a simple plant or a simple animal turning into a more complicated one. According to Aristotle, at the top of these transitions is a man who lives the whole life of nature. A man grows and absorbs nourishment like plants, he has sensations, feelings and the movement faculty like animals, but apart from that, he also has the peculiar characteristic of humans, which is the ability to think rationally. In short, Aristotle was also using the three degrees (nutritive, perceptive, and intellective) soul as a criterion to determine the distinctive functions of all living beings and then divide them into categories.
Both Thomas Nagel and Aristotle seem to have some similar views on the mind-body problem. They both agree that the mind is fundamentally different from the material brain/body. This is the concept of dualism which was founded by Plato – well-known Greek philosopher and mathematician – teacher of Aristotle (Standford). Aristotle has the own definition of the mind: when the body - living organism dies, the soul perishes, but there is something within the soul called “mind” that is more divine than the rest of the soul, and will survive the body and live on. If only taking Aristotle’s definition of the mind into consideration, he seems to be a real dualist. However, as I can see, Aristotle is not actually a dualist because he believed although the soul is not material and not identical with the brain/body, it is attached to, and depends upon, the body. So, the soul here is not fully distinct from the body like the concept of dualism. Additionally, since he claims the soul as the form, and the body as the matter of living beings, he is neither a dualist nor materialist. Instead, he focuses more on the relationship between the soul and body, and his definitions and views create a new philosophical conception. He said: if any affection of the soul is peculiar to it, the soul can be separated from the body. Vice versa, if there is nothing peculiar to it, the soul cannot be separated from the body. Thomas Nagel, he seems to focus more on the subjective character of experience. His view is actually the examination of the consciousness not the soul like Aristotle. Nonetheless, his view of consciousness is more or less similar with soul and mind. He claims that any efforts to explain the mind is just impossible, incomprehensible, or inadequate. He asserts that science will never be able to reduce consciousness or mental phenomenon to physical explanations, because subjective view and experience are irreducible. Therefore, he said that with the consciousness, the mind-body problem is intractable, and hopeless. Whereas Aristotle said that the soul has functional characteristics and causes behaviors, Nagel does not have any views or arguments on this. The only point Nagel tried to make is that he denies that conscious mental states and events exhausts their analysis. His view of the mind-body problem seems similar to mysterianism of Colin McGinn. (Colin McGinn) (3) The three basic faculties of living beings are nutrition, perception, and intellect. Aristotle latter develops to locomotion, sensation, imagination, and desire which are considered as subordinate faculties. Aristotle gave us a vivid example of the triangle in the square. This example means that plants show up with only the nutritive soul, animals have both perceptual and nutritive faculties, and humans like the outer square have all three nutritive, perceptual and intellective faculties. Aristotle describes the nutritive soul as the first and most common capacity of soul, in virtue of which life belongs to all living things. Nutrition comprises three components: the primary soul - what nourishes; the body - what is nourished; and nourishment (.i.e. food) - by which it is nourished.” Here, Aristotle means that whatever is food is such as to be necessarily related to living beings. Common stages that are involved with nutrition are growth, maturity, reproduction and decay. Secondly, Aristotle talks about locomotion, senses, imagination, and desire in the concept of perception. Perception is what distinguishes animals from plants, and having a perceptive faculty is definitive of being an animal. Perception is about an organ’s being changed or affected, so it is more or less a kind of alteration. Regarding the intellective soul, it is basically the mind which is the part of the soul by which it knows and understands. There are 5 senses: touch, sight, hear, taste, and smell. Aristotle claims that every animal has at least touch, whereas most have the other sensory modalities as well. When having perception or at least one sensation, there will be imagination and desire. For where there is perception, there is also pleasure and pain, and where there are these, there is appetite. The sense of touch is the most important because it is also the sense of appetite, and nourishment (.i.e. food). So we can see that the sense of touch is an important connection of all these things above. Aristotle explained sensation as external motion that was intercepted by the sensory organs. He believed that sight was the effect of the distance and movement of light, hearing and smelling was the effect of the movements of air, and taste and touch was the effect of movements in the flesh/body. Basically distance, light, air, and body are the mediums which are some sort of channels that help make objects of sense perceived by sensation or the organ of sense. So what is the objects of sense? According to Aristotle, objects of sense are those perceived by sensations, so they are closely related. Aristotle also divides objects of sense to three types, the first two types are directly perceived in themselves. One is perceived by only a single sense, the other is perceived by multiple sense like numbers, movement, rest, shape, etc… The last type of objects of sense is the one which is perceived indirectly or incidentally in themselves.
In conclusion, to some extent, I somewhat agree with both Aristotle and Thomas Nagel. I believe although they are not arguing on the same topics, problems and relationships, their views on the soul/consciousness are contributing to each other. The only thing I see in common is that they both agree the soul by Aristotle, and consciousness by Nagel are not rationally the same kind of thing with body. From here, given Aristotle’s theory of the soul, including his implications for the nature of the mind, Aristotle’s views cannot be assimilated into the strict either-or choice between materialism and dualism that often characterizes contemporary debates about philosophy of mind. Nagel supports the mysterianism by heavily focusing on the refutation of reductionism on the consciousness. In short, although we have strong and convincing clues about essence and attributes of the soul and other immaterial things, we may never truly understand the physical nature of mental phenomena. Consciousness may not be anything magic or insoluble, but the operations the human mind can carry out are incapable in principle of taking us to a proper and true appreciation of what consciousness is and how it works according to our understanding of physics.

Works Citation
Robinson, H. (2003, August 19). Dualism. Retrieved February 11, 2015, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/ Colin McGinn: The New Mysterian and cognitive closure. (n.d.). Retrieved February 11, 2015, from http://www.consciousentities.com/mcginn.htm