Abstract
By way of critical engagement with naturalist philosophy of mind and Jacques Lacan’s theory of subjectivity, this chapter argues that the mind-body problem, or rather the inner-outer split, is rooted in moral-existential dynamics. The diagnosis of the naturalist mind-body problem suggests that the ‘problem’ itself is a charade, and locates in it an underpinning tension between the inner and expression in the relationship to the other. With the support of Wittgenstein’s considerations on ‘private language’, I go on to suggest that Lacan’s theory ultimately faces the same impasse as the naturalists and consequently hints at the same underlying, constitutive, tension or difficulty. The chapter ends with an attempt to flesh out the moral-existential dynamics identified throughout.
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When I speak of naturalism, I will exclusively be referring to so-called hard or scientific naturalism, of which I give an outline in the text. This form of naturalism can, to some extent at least, be differentiated from so-called soft naturalism (e.g. McDowell, 1994). See Wallgren’s chapter in this volume for a critical discussion of the problems of naturalism.
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It should be noted that the naturalist field also divides along another axis than the reductionist-non-reductionist one. For instance, the non-reductionist John Searle who holds that the mind cannot be reduced to an objective third-person account nevertheless agrees with Dennett’s aspiration to elaborate a rigid scientific theory of how the brain causes mind because, he says, since ‘we know in fact that brain processes do cause our states of consciousness’ we ‘have to assume that it is at least in principle discoverable how it happens’, although he at the same time admits that we are currently completely ignorant of what such a theory should look like (Searle, 1997, p. 197). Non-reductionists like Nagel and McGinn, on the other hand, argue that while we know that the brain causes mind, we seem, due to a kind of ‘cognitive closure’ (McGinn, 1999, p. 51) that characterises the human (epistemological/cognitive) condition, to be incapable of giving a scientific (objective) explanation of how it does this.
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Note that the so-called soft naturalists share the ‘existential naturalist’ commitment with the hard naturalists. Nevertheless, we should add that soft and hard naturalist might have different views on how ‘nature’ is to be defined or described. Wallgren’s chapter in this volume is, among other things, an excellent attempt to challenge the rationale of such ‘existential naturalism’. Charles Taylor’s (2007) A Secular Age is an elaborate attempt to illustrate the historical and ideological forces that have given birth to existential naturalism.
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My suggestion is, then, that ‘the world’ in the mind-world dichotomy is originally the relationship to the other, and not the ‘world of objects’. This is a notion we can find developed by thinkers such as Martin Buber (1996) and Emmanuel Levinas (1969), but in a way closer to my own stance by Hannes Nykänen (2002) and Joel Backström (2007). See also Nykänen’s and Backström’s chapters in this volume.
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It should be noted that Wittgenstein does not cite this section in the opening remark of the Investigations. I do not claim that Wittgenstein reasoned the way I do.
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In remark 147 of the Investigations, the preliminary structure of a private language, of a reactive defence against the totalitarian authority of the Other, saving the ‘real’ of the individual, is expressed as follows: ‘But how can it be? When I say I understand the rule of a series, I am surely not saying so because I have found out that up to now I have applied the algebraic formula in such-and-such a way! In my own case at all events I surely know that I mean such-and-such a series; it doesn’t matter how far I have actually developed it’ (Wittgenstein, 1958, §147, p. 58e).
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Lacan’s equation of the real with ‘Nature’, inverts, arguably, in a kind of Nietzschiean (Nietzsche, 1996) fashion, the Platonic-Cartesian dualistic idea that it is the body or nature that alienates the soul from its real home, namely reason. Lacan’s theory suggests that the individual—its real—is originally the body, although not of course the object body, but rather the ‘living body’, while it is reason, meaning and so on that constitutes the organism’s split into self and body, inner and outer, that is, constitutes the subject.
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Compare this point with remark 249 in the Investigations: ‘Are we perhaps over-hasty in our assumption that the smile of an unweaned infant is not a pretence?—And on what experience is our assumption based? (Lying is a language-game that needs to be learned like any other one)’ (Wittgenstein, 1958, §249, p. 90e). In what sense could the infant’s smile ‘always’ be a pretence? How could we know, distinguish, it as ‘pretence’ as opposed to a genuine/true smile? Such ‘pretence’ would lack its own conditions. One might also think of remark 251:
What does it mean when we say: ‘I can’t imagine the opposite of this’ or ‘What would it be like, if it were otherwise?’—For example, when someone has said that my images are private, or that only I myself can know whether I am feeling pain, and similar things. Of course, here ‘I can’t imagine the opposite’ doesn’t mean: my powers of imagination are unequal to the task. These words are a defence against something whose form makes it look like an empirical proposition, but which is really a grammatical one.
But why do we say: ‘I can’t imagine the opposite’? Why not:
I can’t imagine the thing itself? (Wittgenstein, 1958, §251, p. 90e)
My point here is similar: If ‘misplacement’, ‘lack’ and so on, like pretence, is all that is the case, it loses its own conditions for being what it (phantasmatically) professes to be/mean.
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By this I mean, more specifically, that here we find a conflict between expression and meaning: what relevance could the ‘inner’ as the true meaning have if it cannot reach beyond being more than a source or reason for expression; if it cannot go any further, travel with the expression: if my expression cannot embody the meaning?
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Whether one can desire such a thing is what Wittgenstein’s Investigations keeps on attempting to find out—or combat. In this sense, one might read the Investigations as a succession of indefinitely repeated—and failed—attempts to again and again—after every failure—find a home for this narcissistic desire (for a more detail account of this, see Toivakainen, 2017).
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I want to note here that I have not said much about how exactly the discussion in the Investigations, and particularly in remark 293, has ‘done the job’. Rather, I have simply tried to pinpoint ‘the conclusion’ as it were. For a slightly more detailed discussion of the structure of the treatment, see Toivakainen (2017) and also my unpublished draft ‘Problems with grammar—problems with oneself’ available at: https://www.academia.edu/35435346/Problems_with_grammar_problems_with_oneself.
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This is something I believe St. Augustine captures well in his interpretation of Original Sin. Namely, as he notes, the only true source of Adam’s and Eve’s fall from Paradise was their will to ‘live for themselves’ (Augustine, 1952b). The devil, disguised in the form of the serpent, could only draw upon this trait and utilise it but could not create it. It was already, originally, there in humans, as part of their free will.
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There obviously remains the question as to why a given culture has certain norms and not others, and what the inherent problems with these norms are, a question that cannot of course be reduced to a singular child’s relationship to his/her parents. Nevertheless, my point here is simply that any given socially/collectively upheld norm establishes its effects and affects in the individual through his/her relationship to others.
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Here I am more or less referring to the type of trait in humans that Lacan identifies in what he calls the ‘mirror stage’ (Fink, 2016; Lacan, 2004). That my account differs on a fundamental level from Lacan’s should be evident by now. Nevertheless, this does not mean that I do not appreciate Lacan’s work and his many illuminating and sharp observations and analyses.
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Hannes Nykänen’s and Joel Backström’s chapters in this same volume discuss this issue in more detail.
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Here again see Nykänen’s chapter in this volume.
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Importantly, I would like to add, this means that the parent’s focus should not simply be on his/her own child, fixated on having him/her apologise. For what the child then comes to see is that the parent is first and foremost concerned with how the child behaves (what principle it abides by) and not at all directly with the suffering of the other. So the parent had best be concerned directly with the one who suffers, that is to say, care for the one wronged, in conjunction with the admonishment (i.e. the admonisher him/herself had best be concerned with the other and not with the ‘Law of the Other’).
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Obviously, what also makes apologies hard is the shameful light one is inevitably cast in by accepting that one has something to apologise for. Yet, while shame might make it hard because one is seen in a bad light by the authority one wants to be affirmed by, I believe that this does not reduce the immanent pang of conscience which one’s moral understanding causes in the face of an evil deed. Rather, if this is the right way of putting it, these two—shame and bad conscience—work in parallel in the split mind and desire of the wrongdoer.
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I would like to thank the Academy of Finland and Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth foundation for financial support enabling the research for this chapter. I also want to thank Joel Backström, Hannes Nykänen and Thomas Wallgren for their comments and support.
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Toivakainen, N. (2019). So Much Fuss About Nothing: The Moral Dynamics of the Mind-Body Problem. In: Backström, J., Nykänen, H., Toivakainen, N., Wallgren, T. (eds) Moral Foundations of Philosophy of Mind. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18492-6_10
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