Objectivism, Biological Naturalism and Searle
Rafael E. Núñez[1]
CSLI, Stanford University
Abstract
A widespread belief exists that in explaining human cognition it is necessary to postulate a level of analysis wholly separate from the biological (or neurological) and the sociological (or cultural). Moreover, there is a strong belief that the idea of computation is central to any understanding of the mind. The inadequacy of these assumptions in explaining mental phenomena and animal (and therefore human) cognition is addressed. I focus on the challenge to these assumptions made by John Searle, in particular those that concern the profound non-biological orientation which mainstream cognitive science holds. Mental phenomena and cognition should be considered genuine biological phenomena as much as digestion or mitosis.
Although Searle has proposed a view through which he addresses these issues (Biological naturalism), he does not consider some important entailments relative to essential features of the living phenomenon. These entailments, on one hand, are in conflict with the objectivistic tradition on which Searle's work rests, and on the other hand, point to the interactive and co-determining nature of biological systems beyond the level of the individual. This reveals a more serious problem underlying basic assumptions of cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, which is related to the inadequacy of Objectivism. I claim that much of what is said about these entailments is unwittingly entrapped in unfortunate long-lasting western philosophical dogmas. These dogmas concern the very nature of disciplines such as Epistemology and Ontology, as well as the views derived from them such as Realism and the Objectivism-Subjectivism dichotomy.
Biological naturalism ignores the very interactive and co-determining nature of biological systems that take place beyond the level of the individual. As a consequence it is incomplete in its foundations and limited in its ability to account for sociocultural processes as inseparable constituents of the mind. To overcome these difficulties a theoretical framework compatible with the work done by some non-objectivist biologists is proposed. This view, that I call "Ecological naturalism," gives a coherent account of the mind and cognition without endorsing Objectivism. Ecological naturalism emphasizes the non-separation between the mind and the medium in which it evolves, their biological co-determination, and the supra-individual nature of the biology of mental phenomena. Arguments are illustrated by examples taken from the life and social sciences qua disciplines of Ecological naturalism's realm.
1.- Introduction
Within the scientific community, conceptions of the mind have substantially evolved in the last decades. Since the failure to achieve the enthusiastic predictions made in the fifties by the leading scholars in Artificial Intelligence (Dreyfus, 1979), both in the realm of theoretical cognitive modeling as well as in the application of experts systems (Winograd, 1991), the conceptions of the mind seem to have gradually shifted. They have moved from views in which mind and cognition are conceived in terms of purely abstract, rational, transcendental, culture-free, formal, unemotional, universal, decontextualized and disembodied processes towards views that conceive them in terms of more contextualized, every-day-like, culture-dependent, situated and embodied ones. Much of this passage has been triggered by significant empirical evidence about mental phenomena gathered in disciplines of Life and Social sciences, which being as diverse as neurobiology, linguistics, cognitive psychology or anthropology, demanded new formulations of the traditional views of the mind. This passage, however, has been neither discrete nor absolute, such that it is possible to find a degradé of residual ideas in the various successive new formulations that have emerged. Of particular interest is the role played by biology in this process, which starting only about two decades ago, came to have a major influence in the study of the mind far beyond the scope of its own boundaries. Unlike the discourse held half a century ago, today almost no scholar seriously committed to the study of the mind would ignore the extreme importance of the role of biology in the field- from evolution to neurophysiology, and from biochemistry to sociobiology.
Thanks to a deep and indefatigable investigation of the brain undertaken in the last lustra, various sub-disciplines of biology such as cognitive neuropsychology, psychopharmacology, or neuroanatomy, began to give important clues about what is significant in explaining the mind. These advancements in biology give rise to a first source of fundamental questions. On the one hand, isn't it time to consider mental phenomena and cognition, themselves, as genuine biological phenomena in the way that, digestion, for instance, is considered? Or shall we remain with the idea that biology merely provides a substrate to study underlying mechanisms to mental phenomena[2]? On the other hand, what does it mean to explain the mind and cognition in biological terms, when the explanations proposed by the explainer him/herself take place through the very biological phenomena he or she is trying to explain? What does this entail? To what extent can these advancements challenge philosophical dogmas about reality that have lasted for centuries?
Besides, in the last decade, remarkable advances in computer technology materially allowed computer-metaphor oriented approaches to the study of the mind to regain force getting inspiration from the stimulating advances in the study of the nervous system. The computer metaphor for the mind reincarnated this time in a more provocative approach motivated by both the astonishingly dense network of connections of the nervous system and the massive distribution of its processes: Connectionism. Since then there has been not only a close fruitful collaboration between computer science and neuroscience but also a mutual influence in the creation of common paradigms and conceptual frameworks used to develop their research programs. This apparent close relation, sometimes indistinguishable for many scholars, between brain and computer, and in general, between living phenomena and computation, has produced neologisms such as "neural networks," "computational neuroscience," "neurocomputation," or "computational brain," and in related disciplines even others such as "genetic algorithms" or "artificial life." This gives rise to a second source of fundamental questions. On the one hand, consider these neologisms, step back and think: Is biology a metaphor here? Or is biology taken with all that the living phenomenon entails? Is the nature of the living phenomenon being redefined after computer technology? And on the other hand, how clear is the distinction made between the natural phenomena studied in biology and their simulation run in computers? And in particular, how clear is this distinction is when mental phenomena are concerned?
I claim that much of what could be said about both sources of questions is unwittingly entrapped in unfortunate long-lasting western philosophical dogmas we have inherited which impede the proposition of satisfactory answers. These dogmas, I believe, concern themselves with the very nature of disciplines such as Ontology and Epistemology, as well as the views derived from them such as Realism and the Objectivism-Subjectivism dichotomy. In this paper I shall attempt to analyze why this is so, and how it is possible to study the mind while fulfilling the requirements of a scientific inquiry but without being committed to these dogmas. In order to address these issues and the questions mentioned above, I intend to concentrate on the recent work done by the philosopher John Searle for it provides an excellent example of the kind of issues I wish to examine. Several reasons lead me to take this choice. First, throughout his work on philosophy of mind, Searle has already addressed several questions of the latter source mentioned above. Second, following the tendencies of the conceptual evolution about the mind mentioned at the beginning, he has extensively and, in my opinion successfully, challenged the foundations of the traditional views in philosophy of mind and of mainstream cognitive science[3], which are influenced in various degrees and forms by materialism, substance dualism and computer functionalism. Third, he gives to biology a crucial role in his vision of the mind-body problem, conceiving cognition and mental phenomena as genuine biological phenomena, as much as digestion, for instance. Fourth, his work, like the work done in mainstream cognitive science, lies in the objectivist tradition of philosophy and science I wish to analyze, and provides clear operational definitions of objectivist terminology. And fifth, the straightforwardness of his claims and the clarity of his arguments facilitate the analysis of these issues. Let me now turn to his work.
2.- Approaching Searle's mind
In his recent book "The Rediscovery of the Mind," John Searle addresses the centrality of consciousness in the philosophy of mind and in cognitive science. He argues that in order to give an account of the mind it is essential to address the phenomena of neurophysiological processes and consciousness (Searle, 1992). Among other objectives, he attempts to criticize and overcome the dominant traditions in the study of the mind, both "materialist" and "dualist;" and "to put the final nail in the coffin of the theory that mind is a computer program" (Searle, 1992, p. xi). He says, contrary to the mainstream in cognitive science, that underlying mental states there is no rule following, no information processing, no language of thoughts, no mental models, and no universal grammar. At the very beginning of the book he presents a solution to the mind-body problem which, being a major starting point for the rest of his arguments, states that mental phenomena are caused by neurophysiological processes in the brain and are, themselves, features of it. These mental events and processes, he says, are as much part of our biological natural history as those concerning digestion, mitosis, meiosis, or enzyme secretion (Searle, 1992, p. 1). He calls this view, "Biological naturalism."
I agree with most of these ideas. In particular, I agree with Searle's criticisms of different forms of materialism in the study of the mind, such as behaviorism, identity theories, and functionalism, which are product of the dichotomies we have inherited from the Cartesian tradition (e.g., monism-dualism and materialism-mentalism). But above all, I very much agree with his criticisms of computer functionalism, which has been, and still is, extremely popular among scholars. In the last decades, this form of functionalism has fed with conceptual frameworks, analytical tools and metaphors much of the work done in the study of the mind, inspiring approaches such as strong Artificial Intelligence (AI), cognitivism, and Parallel Distributed Processing (PDP) forms of connectionism.
Nevertheless, adopting a view such as the one he describes as Biological naturalism implies the acceptance of some entailments relative to essential features of the living phenomenon that, in my opinion, Searle, like many scholars in the field, does not consider. Moreover, I believe these entailments, on the one hand, are in conflict with the objectivistic tradition on which Searle's work rests, and on the other hand, point to the interactive and co-determining nature of biological systems that are ignored by Biological naturalism. In this paper I hope to accomplish three things. First, I intend to analyze in the light of the solution to the mind-body problem Searle proposes, an important notion of his recent book, namely, what he calls the "intrinsic features of the world." I shall attempt to show why the Objectivist tradition in which this idea is immersed, is untenable in the perspective of the biological naturalistic view[4]. Second, although I don't have objections to what Biological naturalism suggests, I shall analyze why this view is in its foundations incomplete if we want to study the mind. My arguments will focus on the fact that Biological naturalism ignores the very interactive and co-determining nature of biological systems that take place beyond the level of the individual, and as a consequence it is seriously limited in its ability to account for sociocultural processes as unseparable constituents of both the mind and cognitive activity. Based on the work done by some non-objectivist biologists, I shall propose a theoretical framework compatible with this perspective that might give a coherent account of the mind and cognition without endorsing Objectivism. If I'm asked to give a name to this view, I would call it "Ecological naturalism"[5] to emphasize, the non-separation between the mind and the medium in which it evolves, their biological co-determination, and the supra-individual nature of mental phenomena's biology. And third, in order to illustrate my arguments, I shall analyze some examples taken from the life and social sciences qua disciplines of Ecological naturalism's realm. Through this path I hope to address, directly or indirectly, the more general and fundamental sources of questions mentioned at the beginning.
3.- Searle's Objectivism and Biological naturalism: Le beurre et l'argent du beurre[6]
In this section I shall try to show why Searle's objectivistic position is in conflict with what Biological naturalism holds. I will start analyzing what Searle, and I presume many scholars also, sees as one of the most important (and hardest) tasks of philosophy. That is, "to make clear the distinction between those features of the world that are intrinsic, in the sense that they exist independent of any observer, and those features that are observer relative, in the sense that they only exist relative to some outside observer or user" (Searle, 1992, p.xii). This extremely important distinction he makes merits an analysis on its own, because in my opinion the unambiguous manner in which it has been defined provides an excellent arena to study why an objectivistic position impedes the commitment to basic and essential principles of the living phenomenon that Biological naturalism should be committed to. Afterwards I shall get into the problem of why Biological naturalism is untenable in the objectivist tradition, which could be shortly paraphrased as: either one takes "le beurre" or one takes "l'argent du beurre," but not both. And this, of course, irrespective of my own choice: if Objectivism is "le beurre," I take "l'argent du beurre."
3.1.- The intrinsic and observer relative features of the world à la Searle: IFOWs and ORFOWs
Searle's distinction between intrinsic and observer relative features of the world (hereafter, IFOWs and ORFOWs, respectively), is essential to understand many of his arguments. As he clearly states in The Rediscovery of the Mind, "one of the themes that runs throughout this book is the attempt to get clear about which of the predicates in the philosophy of mind name features that are intrinsic and which observer relative" (Searle, 1992, p. xiii). In particular, this distinction allows him to describe the fundamental difference between the very nature of mental states and computation. According to the author this difference, based precisely on this distinction, evinces how false and misleading the assumptions of the traditional computational approaches are for studying the mind. He even considers this argument much stronger than his classic objections, made more than ten years ago, to the assumptions of cognitivism and strong AI (extended later to Connectionism[7] as well). As we may remember, those objections presented in the so-called "Chinese room argument," were centered in the fact that the syntax of a symbolic manipulation device, such as the one implemented in a digital computer, is not sufficient for semantics (Searle, 1980, 1982, 1990). This argument led to an agitated debate among scholars in the field, and as Searle accurately said, it "clearly touched some sensitive nerve" (Searle, 1990, p. 29).
This very essential distinction of the features of the world I'm referring to comes up at the beginning of the book and states the following (Searle, 1992, p. xiii):
F1) IFOWs exist independent of any observer, and
F2) ORFOWs only exist relative to some outside observer or user.
Thus, "mountain" and "molecule" are expressions that name features of the world that are intrinsic. Searle says: "If all observers and users cease to exist, the world still contains mass, gravitational attraction, and molecules" (Searle, 1992, p. 211). On the other hand, expressions such as "nice day for a picnic," "bathtub," and "chair" name objects by specifying some feature that has been assigned to them, which is relative to observers and users. They do not name intrinsic features of reality. In some of his talks, he has explained this distinction using the example of a one dollar bill. The fact that a piece of paper represents money, he says, is due to complex social and cultural phenomena, which, in other words, are relative to the users or observers. At the same time, the bill is formed out of cellulose, ink, a bunch of molecules of a certain kind, etc., which are IFOWs. If there is no human being left on the planet, Searle argues, what remains of this bill are IFOWs: cellulose, ink, molecules, and so forth. He says that an easy way to understand what the IFOWs are, is thinking on what remains if we remove all what is human.
I would like to make clear that IFOWs don't refer to a "certain way" objects in the world are (in a kind of non-referring sense) that are independent of human "representations." They are not about things in themselves inaccessible to any view either. Rather, as defined above, IFOWs refer to well-defined features of the world, such as M-O-U-N-T-A-I-N-S or M-O-L-E-C-U-L-E-S, that are supposed to exist independent of any observer and that are believed to be actually intrinsic as such.
For Searle the distinction between IFOWs and ORFOWs is essential and its influence is spread throughout the book. It is by means of this distinction that he shows how erroneous the dominant view in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science is. This view sees computation as an intrinsic feature of the world, and consciousness and intentionality[8] as something either eliminable (because they are observer relative) or reducible to more basic processes such as computation. Searle concludes exactly the opposite, that consciousness and intentionality are intrinsic and ineliminable, and computation is observer relative. The power and importance of his distinction can be appreciated when he says: "The aim of natural science is to discover and characterize features that are intrinsic to the natural world. By its own definitions of computation and cognition, there is no way that computational cognitive science could ever be a natural science, because computation is not an intrinsic feature of the world. It is assigned relative to observers" (Searle, 1992, p. 212). And in order to stress the fact that this is a more fundamental argument than those presented in the past, he adds: "This is a different argument from the Chinese room argument, and I should have seen it ten years ago, but I did not. The Chinese room argument showed that semantics is not intrinsic to syntax. I am now making the separate and different point that syntax is not intrinsic to physics" (Searle, 1992, p. 210).
3.2.- IFOWs and Objectivism: the perfect match
Objectivism is a view impregnated in the very roots of our Western culture, remaining for centuries (and still does) at the foundations of science and philosophy. It carries a whole cosmology and conceptual apparatus that deeply influences the way we make sense of the medium[9] in which we as organisms live. Objectivism follows the "unquestionable" dogma which says that by means of a branch of philosophy called metaphysics it is possible to deal with the first principles of ultimate reality. More precisely, thanks to a discipline called Ontology, this view assumes, it is possible to study the essence of the being, the being as such; to study the basic characteristics of all reality and how things and objects are in themselves. According to this view, there is one Truth about The Real World, which is completely independent of our existence and understanding, and, depending on the approach taken, is completely independent of the fact that we might or might not have access to it, or that we might or might not have the appropriate "representations" of how the world ultimately is supposed to be. Epistemology is nothing but the discipline which studies the origin, nature and limits of knowledge about this preexisting Real World. As Searle clearly says, "in the study of the mind, as elsewhere, the whole point of epistemology is to get at the preexisting ontology" (Searle, 1992, p. 23). In these terms, no epistemic considerations can address metaphysical issues. Consequently, cognition is seen as a mental process by which knowledge of preexisting objects in the Real World is acquired. These preexisting objects are well-defined and totally independent of any understanding or observer. To put it shortly,
P1) Objectivism assumes that there are preexisting objects in the Real World that exist independent of any observer.
Now, as we may recall, Searle's notion of intrinsic feature affirms that:
F1) IFOWs exist independent of any observer
This idea, then, assumes the existence of the real objective world to which Objectivism refers: THE external world in which preexisting well-defined objects happen to exist. From P1 and F1 follows
C1) The idea of IFOWs is immersed in the objectivist tradition.
From this perspective, "mountain" or "molecule" are expressions that name preexisting objects of the world, features of the world that are intrinsic and that exist independent of any observer. In order to develop a theory of the mind in this tradition, Searle would say that our minds have an essential feature- intentionality- by which mental states are directed at, or about, or refer to these objects and states of affairs in this preexisting world.
An explanatory proposal of the mind based on an objectivist view which asserts that there would still be mountains and molecules had we never existed, implicitly supposes the presence of an entity, the existence of some ideal external observer who would be able to observe the world as it is, if we were not here (or had we never existed). This entity, known as Mind in situ or God's-eye is supposed to really see the Real World with all its IFOWs and preexisting objects, if we don't exist. The God's-eye then, is the witness that there would still be mountains and molecules had we never existed. As far as Searle's account of intentionality is concerned, it is implicitly through the Mind in situ that it is possible to examine the conditions of satisfaction of intentional states. That is, it is through the God's-eye that we are able to determine whether THE world matches or not the content of the intentional state. In the case of perception (what Searle calls the "primary form of intentionality"), it is through the God's-eye that it is possible to examine the conditions of satisfaction that determines whether a person is perceiving or hallucinating an object. Thanks to the God's-eye view, we can determine whether our perceptions or our beliefs are true if they match the way the world is, or false if they don't; whether our desires will be fulfilled or frustrated, and our intentions carried out or not.
I presume that Searle would argue that to think in terms of God's-eye view is a mistake because the very idea of view is epistemic. And as I mentioned above, from the objectivistic perspective, no metaphysical issues can be addressed through epistemic considerations. But, this is exaclty one of the points I wish to address, that is, the foundations of the traditional distinction between Ontology and Epistemology. So let me continue.
To summarize these ideas:
P2) Objectivism implicitly assumes the existence of a God's-eye view
P3) The IFOWs are defined in the way the God's-eye sees them
The objectivistic view, then, assumes that objects in the world are independent of any understanding; that there is an ultimate observer, an atemporal, omnipresent and omniscient witness, who does perceive the existence of the IFOWs, the existence of the very "mountains" and the very "molecules." In this Mind in situ dwells the ultimate objective Truth, the ultimate objective Falsehood.
3.3.- IFOWs and Biological naturalism: unveiling the mismatch
There is no doubt about how important for Searle is the role played by biological phenomena in the explanations of mental and cognitive activity. He has clearly said that "cognition is a biological phenomenon" (Searle, 1990, p. 29) and has been very explicit in criticizing views such as strong AI for being "profoundly antibiological" (Searle, 1990, p. 29). Moreover, the solution of the mind-body problem that he suggests is based on a view he calls Biological naturalism. Yet, precisely from a biological view, the objectivist tradition in which much of Searle's work lies upon has been challenged by other critics of the dominant views in cognitive science (Edelman, 1987, 1989, 1992; Freeman and Skarda, 1990; Maturana, 1978; Maturana and Varela, 1980, 1987; Thompson, Palacios, and Varela, 1992; Varela, 1979, 1989). In the light of these non-objectivistic views of the biology of cognition, I will analyze some fundamental entailments of Biological naturalism that in my opinion Searle ignores. I shall briefly refer to Biological naturalism's claims and address, firstly, some of the entailments related to the recursive nature of the explanatory proposal about the mind and cognition, and secondly, the entailments related to the objectivistic entity of the Mind in situ or God's-eye.
Biological naturalism states that:
BN-1) Mental phenomena are caused by neurophysiological processes in the brain
BN-2) Mental phenomena, are themselves, features of the brain
And, as a kind of corollary, proposes that
BN-C) Mental events and processes are as much part of our biological natural history as those concerning digestion or mitosis.
According to BN-C, mental phenomena, that is, one believing, desiring, thinking, explaining, saying, feeling, observing and dreaming, are as much as part of our biological natural history as, say, the healing process of my poor left ankle which I sprained badly yesterday in a soccer game, and as much as the digestion of the tempura I had for lunch today. Let me explain what I mean.
At this very moment there are many interrelated biological processes going on in my biological structure that are intimately related to my biological natural history. Among others, there is the healing process of my left ankle, which is part of the natural history of my ankle and body: it is constitutively and intimately related with facts such as how long my body has been functioning as such (i.e., how old I am); whether I have sprained the ankle before in my ontogeny; the kind of usage my ankle has been exposed to, such as the sports I have practiced in my life and at what age I did it, and so on. This suggests that there is no actual abstract disembodied healing-process-of-sprained-ankles, no healing-process-of-sprained-ankles per se. Healing-process-of-sprained-ankles must take place in the ongoing biological natural history of an organism with ankles.
In the same manner, the digestion of the tempura is part of the biological natural history of my body: it is related to how much food (and what kind) I ate along with tempura; whether I was eating for the first time after having fasting for ten days; whether I was in the middle of the Sahara desert when I ate it, or at 5000 meters above sea level somewhere in the Andes, or in the Japanese restaurant next-door. There is no actual abstract disembodied digestion-of-tempura, no digestion-of-tempura per se. Digestion-of-tempura takes place in the ongoing biological natural history of an organism with digestive system.
In the very same way, the process of thinking, for instance, how to explain and write the ideas I'm trying to type in the computer at this very moment is, according to BN-C, part of the biological natural history of my brain and body: is intimately related with events that took place in my ontogeny such as how I was fed when I was a baby; how well I have been sleeping in the last months; the processes that I undergo in my nervous system due to the fact that right now I'm not writing in my native language; the way in which my brain functioned when I studied philosophy of mind and cognitive science; or how much whiskey I have been drinking while writing this text. As in the other two previous examples, there is no actual abstract disembodied thinking-what-to-write-in-this-article, no thinking-what-to-write-in-this-article per se. Thinking-what-to-write-in-this-article takes place in the ongoing biological natural history of an organism with a nervous system, like me.
According to Biological naturalism, all three examples, belong to the same realm: they take place as part of the biological natural history of the organism in which the event happens (BN-C). Moreover, following BN-2, to-heal-an-ankle, to-digest-tempura, and to-think-what-to-write-in-this-article are instances of phenomena which are themselves features of the body. According to BN-1, the difference between these three examples resides just in the part of the body, so to speak, that causes the event. In the last of these, the event to-think-what-to-write-in-this-article happens to be caused mainly by neurophysiological processes that take place in the central nervous system, whereas the other two, are caused by processes that take place mainly in other parts of the body, namely, the left ankle and digestive system, respectively.
So far, so good. Now it is time to analyze why the idea of IFOWs and the objectivistic tradition in which is immersed, does not fit into this conceptual framework.
3.3.1.- Explaining cognition as cognizing explainers: the forgotten recursion
Searle has unambiguously formulated strong AI's main thesis: "of all known types of specifically biological processes, from mitosis and meiosis to photosynthesis, digestion, lactation, and the secretion of auxin, one and only one type is completely independent of the biochemistry of its origins, and that one is cognition" (Searle, 1980, p. 450). He considers the idea of the Turing test, so venerated in the AI community, as a residue of behaviorism because it states that if something behaves as if it had certain mental processes, then it actually has those mental processes. Moreover, he argues in mainstream cognitive science this residual behaviorism is tied to a residual dualism: "nobody thinks that a computer simulation of digestion would actually digest anything, but where cognition is concerned, people are willing to believe in such a miracle because they fail to recognize that the mind is just as much a biological phenomenon as digestion. The mind, they suppose, is something formal and abstract, not a part of the wet and slimy stuff in our heads" (Searle, 1990, p. 31).
In fact, I very much agree with these ideas. Cognition is indeed a biological phenomenon like any other, and the mind is indeed part of the wet and slimy stuff in our heads. However, in my opinion, Searle (like any objectivist oriented scientist or philosopher in the field) ignores an important fact that distinguishes cognition, and mental phenomenon in general, from other biological processes such as digestion, mitosis, or photosynthesis. What is ignored here is the very recursive nature of the idea "cognition is a biological phenomenon." Unlike the idea "digestion is a biological phenomenon," the idea "cognition (and mental phenomena) is a biological phenomenon" is realized in an organism (the person who states it or conceives it) mainly through the very biological processes of cognition itself, not through digestion or mitosis. Consequently,
P4) Cognition (and mental phenomena in general) is present at two nested levels in the idea "cognition is a biological phenomenon:"
P4.1) explicitly, as part of the subject matter of the idea, and
P4.2) implicitly, as the biological phenomenon through which the very idea is realized (which is a consequence of what the idea suggests).
Hence its recursive nature. From this it follows that, when cognitive and mental phenomena are considered as biological phenomena, there are entailments that derive from the fact that this very view itself is realized through cognitive and mental phenomena which are, themselves, biological phenomena. This recursive nature is not present in the cases of digestion, mitosis, meiosis, photosynthesis, lactation, or the secretion of auxin. In fact, no actual digestive or photosynthetic entailments derive from the idea that digestion or photosynthesis are biological phenomena. Accordingly, a scientist or philosopher, who endorses a view such as Biological naturalism, and who is willing to address issues regarding the biological nature of mental phenomena and cognition (as Searle does), must take into account the fact that every single aspect of his or her reflections, down to the most elementary particles of his or her explanations, descriptions and predictions, are themselves biological phenomena that are realized in his or her biological structure qua organism that he or she is. Can the objectivistic idea of IFOWs fit into this view?
According to Searle, the aim of natural science is to discover and characterize features of the world that are intrinsic to the natural world. Biological phenomena are part of this natural world, and according to Biological naturalism, so is cognition and mental phenomena. Consequently, cognition and mental phenomena are describable in terms of IFOWs. In other words:
1) The natural world is describable in terms of IFOWs
2) Biological phenomena are part of the natural world
From 1) and 2) follows that
3) Biological phenomena are describable in terms of IFOWs
Besides, Biological naturalism states that
BN-1) Mental phenomena are caused by neurophysiological processes in the brain
BN-2) Mental phenomena, are themselves, features of the brain
Accordingly,
4) Mental phenomena (including Cognition) are biological phenomena
From 3) and 4) follows that
5) Mental phenomena (including Cognition) is describable in terms of IFOWs
Now, according to what Biological naturalism claims, the very idea expressed in (5) is the result of someone's cognitive and mental phenomena, and it must have been caused by neurophysiological processes in the brain of this person (BN-1), that are themselves features of the brain of this person (BN-2). Thus,
6) (5) itself is realized through mental (and therefore biological) phenomena.
According to what (5) says
7) (6) itself is describable in terms of IFOWs
But again, according to BN-1 and BN-2, it follows that
8) (7) itself is realized through mental (and therefore biological) phenomena
therefore, according to (5),
9) (8) itself is describable in terms of IFOWs
...
k) (k-1) itself is realized through mental (and therefore biological) phenomena
therefore, according to (5),
k+1) (k) itself is describable in terms of IFOWs
... and so on.
This reveals two major problems.
A) The first problem comes up if we analyze what happens when we move from step 5) to step 7), that is, when we encounter the first nested situation in terms of IFOWs. In other words we have that, "'Mental phenomena (including Cognition) is describable in terms of IFOWs,' is realized through mental phenomena," being this very idea itself describable in terms of IFOWs. So we have IFOWs at two levels: at a level of what is caused and realized by biological phenomena through mental activity, and at a level of the ultimate features of the natural world by means of which mental phenomena are supposed to be describable. While the latter is perfectly coherent with the definition of IFOWs, the former level is not because it says that IFOWs depend on the biological phenomena of the organism in which they are realized. Therefore they are not ultimate features of the natural world, which contradicts
F1) IFOWs exist independent of any observer
B) The second problem concerns the endless nature of the nested recursive process. On the one hand, due to what Biological naturalism states, and on the other hand due to the fact that we intend to reach an appropriate level of description in terms of IFOWs independent of biological structures, we generate a potential infinite process, nesting each time at a new level, one into a superstructure defined by the other. Obviously, this situation posses a problem if one's goal is to explain mental phenomena. From a purely formal view, the solution to this problem would be to avoid the potential infinite process by either stopping it at the very beginning (i.e., ignoring the recursion), or by defining the process in terms of actual infinity. If we do the latter, we face problem (A). Whatever case, as far as the subject matter being addressed here is concerned, both imply assuring the ultimate status of IFOWs by means of an ultimate entity, a Mind in situ or God's-eye. In the realm of Biological naturalism this carries other problems that I shall address in the next subsection.
Although I agree with Searle's criticism of strong AI for being profoundly antibiological, I'm afraid that his conception of biology does ignore essential features of the very recursive nature of explaining the mind and cognition as living phenomenon while being the explainer him/herself a living system. That is, the very recursive nature of the biology of the observer observing the mind, the biology of the explainer explaining the mind, the biology of the scientist doing cognitive science, and the biology of the philosopher doing philosophy of mind.
3.3.2.- Minds in situ and God's-eyes: forgetting, ignoring or avoiding recursion
The recursive nature of the fact that we intend to explain the mind as a living phenomenon while being a living system, is often forgotten or avoided, or simply unwittingly ignored by assuring the ultimate status of IFOWs by means of a Mind in situ or God's-eye. Here, I shall show what are the problems that this situation carries if we are committed to Biological naturalism.
Previously it has been seen that:
F1) IFOWs exist independent of any observer
C1) The idea of IFOWs is immersed in the objectivist tradition
P2) Objectivism implicitly assumes the existence of a God's-eye view
P3) The IFOWs are defined in the way the God's-eye sees them
If we adopt a biological naturalistic view, as stated in BN-1, BN-2, and BN-C to solve the mind-body problem and explain mental phenomena, and want to respect the commitments to F1, we should address the question of the nature of the mental phenomena that takes place in the agent whose existence is assumed in P2 and that by virtue of P3 define the very objects mentioned in F1. In other words, we should address the question of how the brain of the Mind in situ and how the brain in which the God's-eye operates allows the agent to see, discriminate, make the distinction of, and define the IFOWs. In biological naturalistic terms, the question is: What are the properties of the God's-brain in which mental phenomena related to IFOWs such as a "mountain" or a "molecule" are caused by its own neurophysiological-processes and that are themselves features of this God's-brain?
Brains are of many different kinds. So, from the perspective of Biological naturalism, questions such as whether God's-brain is like a bat's brain, or a 5-year-old child's brain, or the brain of a 3-million-year-old Australopithecus Africanus, or a brain of an Alzheimer's disease patient, are absolutely legitimate and must be addressed if the God's-eye view is taken into account to assure the existence of the IFOWs (i.e., if we adopt an objectivistic view). The objects to which F1 refers will depend on the type of brain of the agent assumed in P2, and that by virtue of P3 define the very objects in F1. In other words, the so-called IFOWs might be defined very differently depending on the nature of the "brain" of the Mind in situ or God's-eye. Here we encounter another serious problem, because the objects in F1 (i.e., the IFOWs) are not supposed to be defined by anyone due to the fact that they are just out there in the real world. So, on the one hand, if now we decide not to endorse a God's-eye which sees the features of the world, we can't say anything about the world whatsoever. On the other hand, if we support the idea that there is this God's-eye which sees the features of the world, we face again the question of how is his/her/its brain and body in which the vision of these features and the related mental events are realized. An extension of this problem follows:
C2) There can be as many sets of IFOWs as conceivable God's-brains.
However, the objectivistic tradition doesn't pay attention to this because it says that there is only one set of IFOWs, the "real ones," the one defined by the "Real God's-brain." So again, what is this brain? Presumably, in Searle's objectivistic conception (as in most of those in the objectivistic tradition) the real God's-brain is simply an implicit, eternal, atemporal and static brain that happens to have the same characteristics of the brain of a well-educated, healthy, western male adult from the late 20th century. Not only does this anthropocentric realism seem to me very disputable, to say the least, but here we are in the presence of one more serious problem: we are dealing here with a Brain in situ which violates BN-C because it does not have the very biological natural history that Searle claims mental states are part of (BN-C). Moreover, this brain in situ violates also BN-1 and BN-2 because is a totally nonbiological brain.
Therefore, according to what has been discussed throughout this section we can conclude that
C3) The idea of IFOWs is untenable if one is committed to Biological naturalism
The idea of IFOWs, as well as the conceptual objectivistic background in which it is immersed, simply do not have a place in the realm of Biological naturalism because they completely deny the biological and embodied nature of mental processes and therefore the biological natural history and embodied nature of understanding. Hence, I believe that Biological naturalism should not base an explanatory proposal on an objectivist ideology; rather, it should base it upon the very biological natural history of the observer, the user, the scientist or the philosopher. I believe that Biological naturalism must be reinterpreted in a non-objectivistic way respecting the recursive nature of the explanatory proposals about cognition and the mind that we make as biological cognizing organisms. How to accomplish this is the topic of the next section.
4.- From Biological naturalism to Ecological naturalism
While in the previous section I showed why the idea of IFOWs and the objectivist tradition in which it is immersed is untenable with Biological naturalism, in this section, I shall defend most of Biological naturalism's claims. To be consistent with the arguments presented in the previous section, I shall do this without recalling any Mind in situ or God's-eye. Without endorsing Objectivism, I shall provide a theoretical framework capable of giving an account of the mind that is compatible with Biological naturalism's claims. However, in order to accomplish this I will have to refer to some fundamental features of the living phenomenon that in my opinion are lacking in Biological naturalism's claims, namely, the very interactive nature of biological phenomena that take place beyond the level of the individual as being a constituent part of mental phenomena. I shall argue that there are Supra-Individual Biological processes[10] (hereafter called SIB processes) that are inherent to mental phenomena and therefore are irreducible to one individual's biology (e.g., an isolated brain). Afterwards, from this richer perspective, I shall provide an answer to some questions that might arise once the task of showing the inconsistencies between Biological naturalism and the objectivistic tradition is completed: Would there still be mountains and molecules had we never existed? Where are the features of the world we believed were intrinsic? Where is the mountain and the molecule then?
When Searle describes Biological naturalism's claims, he does it under the shelter of the Mind in situ. He implicitly assumes that there is a God's-eye which validates and watches over BN-1, BN-2 and BN-C such that descriptions, explanations and predictions about mental phenomena in terms of IFOWs are possible. Although, as it was shown before, the idea of a God's-eye is untenable in the biological naturalistic view as an explanatory proposal of mental phenomena, Searle implicitly counts on it to describe Biological naturalism because he claims that mental phenomena are indeed characterizable in terms of IFOWs; in terms of features that are intrinsic to the natural world, therefore validated by the Mind in situ. In my opinion this fact explains much of why Biological naturalism is an individual oriented paradigm of the mind and cognitive activity. If objects in the world exist prior to the individual who is perceiving them and thinking about them, then the mind is conceived as separate from the environment and separate from other minds. An individual's mind, as such, is self-contained.
In fact, when Searle introduces Biological naturalism in his book, he rightly says that this view raises a thousand questions of its own. "What exactly is the character of the neurophysiological processes and how exactly do the elements of the neuroanatomy- neurons, synapses, synaptic clefts, receptors, mitochondria, glial cells, transmitter fluids, etc.- produce mental phenomena? And what about the great variety of our mental life-pains, desires, tickles, thoughts, visual experiences, beliefs, tastes, smells, anxiety, fear, love, hate, depression, and elation? How does neurophysiology account for the range of our mental phenomena, both conscious and unconscious?" (Searle, 1992, p.1). Nevertheless, none of these questions addresses the issue of the interactive nature of biological processes beyond the level of the individual, and the role that they might play in the causation of mental phenomena. None of these questions addresses issues such as how mental phenomena might be realized through the interactive biological processes of communities of organisms like us (e.g., SIB processes (cultural) underlying desires, depression, and thoughts, for instance).
Biological naturalism deals only with single, isolated agents having mental processes independently, and being realized in independent epistemic brains. Interactions between subjects' mental phenomena are secondary, are reducible, to these more basic individual ones. These interactive processes are not seen as constituent and indissoluble parts of the biological nature of mental phenomena, rather they are seen as a consequence of them. From this single-agent perspective, mental phenomena of, say, an agent A can be described in terms of IFOWs, and so does the mental phenomena of agent B. If we intend to study, the mental phenomena that occur in the interactions of these two agents from an objectivistic view, we take for granted that is through the God's-eye view that objectivity is assured. It provides a common currency that can be used to analyze these interactions. This common currency is assured precisely by the IFOWs, by means of which mental phenomena of both agents are described. That is the way to close the circle, that is the way how to achieve objectivity, and that's the way interactions between agents can be explained. According to this perspective, if we want to study interactions between individuals, all we have to do is to study them in terms of how the independent agents react to each other with respect to the objective reality. Mental phenomena as such, taking place in individuals that are interacting, are considered to be separate phenomena realized in independent brains. Interactions between subjects having mental phenomena appears to be an epiphenomenon when these mental phenomena are concerned. These interactions are not themselves constituents of the very mental phenomena, rather they are considered as mere extensions of them. To put it in simplistic terms, the situation is analogous to the idea that the essential computational properties of, say, a personal computer can be analyzed and explained in terms of properties that take place in single individual personal computers. The fact that personal computers might be connected into a network composed of other personal computers and printers is irrelevant in respect to the study of their essential computational properties.
Biological naturalism seems to consider the very dynamic and interactive nature of biological phenomena only at specific levels of the living organization, namely, from the microscopic level (e.g., synapses, biochemistry of neurotransmitters, etc.), up to the level of the organism of one individual only. The interactive biological processes related to mental phenomena that might occur beyond the individual level, such as culture, are ignored. It is true that this is not a crucial issue when we are confident that reality is already provided; it is not important when we are committed to the claim that objects in the real world preexist and that they don't depend on anyone. But if we do not endorse Objectivism, this issue becomes a fundamental one.
If we want to remain committed to biological naturalistic ideas while rejecting Objectivism, we need, on the one hand, to find somehow the stability lost with the abrupt disappearance of the Mind in situ, and on the other, to avoid diving in the obscure and turbulent ocean of Subjectivism. But how to do this? Precisely by considering what Biological naturalism ignores, that is, by including the very interactive nature of biological phenomenon at levels beyond the individual. That is, by considering a multi-agent, co-individual oriented paradigm of mental processes. A view in which the very interactive nature of biological phenomena- from microscopic levels to macroscopic supra-individual ones- are considered as essential and irreducible constituents of mental phenomena. A view claiming that mental phenomena, as such, qua biological phenomena are realized through biological processes that go beyond the level of the individual. A view that does not lie on the Subjectivism-Objectivism dichotomy, that is, a view whose claims are not necessarily subjectivist because they are not committed to Objectivism. I will call this view, Ecological naturalism in order to emphasize the non-separation between the mind and the medium in which it evolves, their co-determination, and the supra-individual biological nature of the processes through which the mind is realized (SIB processes.) To summarize, Ecological naturalism suggests the following:
EN-1) Neurophysiological processes in the nervous system are necessary for mental phenomena to occur
EN-2) Mental phenomena are realized through a history of recurrent co-ontogenic interactions between individuals
EN-3) Mental phenomena, are themselves, features of the network of processes that take place through recurrent interactions between co-determined individuals and their medium
And, as a kind of corollary, proposes that
EN-C) Mental events and processes are as much a part of our biological natural history as those concerning epidemic diseases, language accents, digestion or mitosis.
As Biological naturalisms does, Ecological naturalism also raises a thousand questions of its own. What is the character of the neurophysiological processes and how is the dynamic of changes realized through SIB interactions that undergo the elements of the neuroanatomy- neurons, synapses, synaptic clefts, receptors, mitochondria, glial cells, etc.- to produce mental phenomena? How do neurophysiological and SIB processes account for the range of our mental phenomena, both conscious and unconscious? and so on.
4.1.- A theoretical framework
The task now is to describe a theoretical framework compatible with an Ecological naturalistic view. That is, a view which being consistent with Biological naturalism, is committed neither to Objectivism nor to Subjectivism, and that is rich enough to incorporate social and cultural dimensions at the very foundations of mental phenomena through the realm of the interactive nature of biological phenomena at levels that go beyond the individual. In order to do this, I shall refer to the work done by some scholars who have criticized the objectivistic tradition from a biological perspective, in particular the work by Humberto Maturana (Maturana, 1978; Maturana and Varela, 1980, 1987), starting with some considerations about the nervous system.
According to Maturana, the nervous system emerges in the phylogenic history of living beings in the form of a network of interacting neurons which works in terms of internal correlations and patterns of coherence: "with respect to its dynamics of states, the nervous system is a closed system" (Maturana, 1978, p. 41). The organization of the nervous system, at the level of the ontogeny of the individual, is defined by ongoing historical processes, such as natural selection of groups of neurons based on developmental and experiential selection and by dense reentrant interrelations between larger specialized group of neurons (Edelman, 1992). Thus evolution, at the level of the species, at the level of the individual and at a neuronal level, plays a central role in the emergence of our minds. This emphasizes the idea that brains are in a state of permanent dynamism, down to the synaptic level; always existing in an ongoing unfolding process.
The organization of the nervous system is such that, if there are changes in the state of the relative activity of a group of neurons, they produce changes in the relative activity of other or the same group of neurons. Accordingly, the perturbations that may affect the system trigger changes of state in the nervous system, but it is the structure of the perturbed nervous system which specifies what configurations of the medium can perturb it (Maturana and Varela, 1987). From this perspective, an explanatory proposal of mental phenomena should be focused on the fact that the network can be perturbed by structural changes in the network itself and not, as the traditional (and still dominant) views in cognitive science suggest, on the distinction of how incoming "information" containing data from the "real" external world might determine new states in the system. Actually, the idea of information supposes that a certain feature of the external real world is predistinguished independently of any observer, such that it is identifiable by itself. However, the distinctions in terms of "information" made by an external observer are, from the point of view of the system, arbitrary, because the attribution of causality is made in terms of what is meaningful for the observer. This consideration is essential, for it means that the perturbations don't determine what happens in the nervous system (what the notion of information stresses), but rather they only trigger changes of state. Therefore, the nervous system does not process information picked from an external environment. Rather, while interacting in its medium it is the structural state of the nervous system that specifies what perturbations are feasible and what changes trigger them. Hence, the nervous system does not operate in terms of instructional processes. This point of view could be considered a solipsistic one, for the nervous systems of each of us could actually be leading us to experience totally independent views of the medium in which we exist. How, then, do we all distinguish the regularities the world seems to have? How do tennis players interact in a game, hitting the same ball successively? How do we all distinguish the shapes of the letters in this text? How do we all see the "mountain"? Here we ought to move to the next step.
Through the recurrent interaction between organism and medium, they are co-determined. Now, the sources of perturbation for an organism in the medium include other similar or different organisms as well, such that recurrent interactions between the organisms also co-determine them. As a result of these recurrent interactions between the mutually perturbed organisms there is structural coupling of the organisms, that is, a history of mutually congruent structural changes (Maturana and Varela, 1987). To an observer, this process, specified through such ontogenic recurrent interactions, appears as a sequence of interrelated patterns of conduct, as a set of coordinated actions. This biological phenomenon occurs at cellular levels, meta-cellular levels, and at higher levels that go beyond the level of individuals as well. An example of coupling at a higher level is what an ethologist would describe as courting behavior: At a particular place and time a male individual and a female individual of a particular species interact in an interwoven process of mutually triggered congruent structural changes, that are seen as coherent patterns of conduct by the observer. In social insects, like ants or bees, much of their structural coupling takes place through the interchange of chemical substances, and their cohesion of social unity depends on this. The lineage of the hominids, in particular our species Homo Sapiens happen to have developed an extremely dense and sophisticated nervous system, such that this outstanding complexity sustains one of the most peculiar and sophisticated forms of structural coupling, which is the one that takes place through human language. The social unity in our case is based on the permanent linguistic flow between individuals, that is, a linguistic domain constituted as a domain of ontogenic coordinations of actions.
From this view, language is a biological phenomenon that emerges in the interaction between individuals during their individual histories, in recurrently making distinctions of events and regularities in the medium, and in learning them in an interactive manner (which progressively leads to the formation of relations between semantics and phonology). In the ongoing process of these SIB interactions, language emerges when the operations in a linguistic domain result in coordinations of actions about actions that belong to this domain (Maturana and Varela, 1987). Thus, the concept "mountain" coordinates actions with respect to the actions we realize when we deal with what a posteriori we call a "mountain." Accordingly, this does not correspond to a description of how the concept of "mountain" emerges in our language as a result of the interactions with the "real" mountain which is supposed to be out there in the external world, because this is a distinction made a posteriori in a certain language that has already emerged by these very SIB processes (e.g., the distinction of mountain I'm using at this very moment). Rather, the "mountain" is enacted by an organism as a result of the ongoing coupling with the medium; as a result of recurrent interwoven co-individual biological processes in which it is involved along with other organisms (such as perception, memory, speech and operations in language with these organisms), that are realized in its biological structure and through its ongoing interrelation with the medium. This is a result of an operation in a domain of congruent co-ontogenic structural coupling with other organisms (individuals), and not as a result of the interrelations with a pre-existing mountain in the a real world. What leads us to have the impression that there is an objective reality independent of our existence is the impressive stability of the space of commonalties we experience in our every day life that emerges through our co-ontogenic structural coupling with the medium- from chromatic and gravity experiences, to pain and hunger. Nevertheless, as soon as the space of commonalties shrinks, we refer to the distinctions we make in this domain as things that are not objective, such as religion, racism, or issues about abortion.
I believe that the view briefly outlined here is neither subjectivist nor objectivist, neither solipsistic nor representationalist, and further that it does not deny Biological naturalism's claims. Indeed, mental phenomena are seen as caused by internal correlations of neurophysiological processes in the brain and in the nervous system in general (BN-1) and as being themselves features of it (BN-2). Moreover, because of the important role played by phylogeny and ontogeny (through structural coupling of the organisms) in the process of causing mental phenomena, they are considered as much part of our biological natural history as those concerning digestion or mitosis, as Searle argues (BN-C). However, there are three major differences between this view and the one proposed by Searle. First, this view does not make any reference to a Mind in situ or God's-eye view at all. There is simply no need to do it. Second, the issue of the recursive nature of the biological cognizing cognitive scientist or philosopher explaining cognitive science or philosophy of mind in biological terms, respectively, is fully addressed in this view. And third, in order to truly follow the commitments to the idea that mental events and cognition are a fundamental part of our biological natural history, this view does not focus on a single-agent paradigm, rather it does it on a multi-agent, co-individual one that respects the very idea of interacting organisms immersed in an ecological medium which is realized in an ongoing dynamic evolutionary process as it is suggested by the idea of structural coupling. Consequently, in the very same way that no single ahistorical cell can provoke digestion, or no single ahistorical neuron can provoke mental states, no single ahistorical person can provoke human cognition or human mental phenomena. What is human is a mode of living sustained by structural coupling and realized through language in an ongoing process of maintained SIB cohesion among Homo Sapiens organisms.
4.2.- Answering the remaining questions
Now that the wanted theoretical framework has been described, we are able to address the questions mentioned at the beginning of this section, namely
Q1) Would there still be mountains and molecules had we never existed?
Q2) Where are the features of the world we believed were intrinsic? Where is the mountain and the molecule now?
These questions have absolutely trivial answers from the perspective of the objectivistic tradition. Problems start when we do not endorse Objectivism. Had humankind never existed, questions such as whether there would still be mountains, cellulose, molecules, gravitational attraction, or mass, must be studied carefully because, on the one hand, we no longer can count on the Mind in situ to answer them, and on the other hand, if such is the case there wouldn't even be any question. Much of the feeling of bewilderment we might experience attempting to answer these questions after rejecting Objectivism may be caused by the fact that we have broken with the source of Ultimate Truth so rooted in our western tradition. There is certain dubiousness and incertitude underlying these questions because it seems that no real ultimate answer may be given. Actually, much of this uncertainty can be attributed to the manner in which the question is posed: the question implicitly invokes a Mind in situ which is supposed to validate or invalidate whatever the answers to these questions might be. This reveals a sort of residual Objectivism. We have to keep in mind that these questions arose through the path of analyzing the inconsistencies between Biological naturalism and Objectivism, and that much of the problem is due to the fact that the questions are made in the objectivistic tradition so they make sense within this tradition. In order to abandon the residual Objectivism we must reinterpret the questions in terms of the new conceptual corpus we are endorsing. A good starting point would be to analyze what is meant by the objectivistic idea of IFOWs in the light of Ecological naturalism. More concretely, we ought to start examining from this view what is meant by mountains or molecules as preexisting objects.
The first thing we must do is to make a distinction between the statements we make about objects or facts, and the objects or facts stated through this process. In terms of Searle's definition of IFOWs, had we never existed, what would still exist are the objects named by our expressions, that is, the objects or facts stated by the statements we make. This is so, because under the objectivistic assumptions these objects or facts stated are believed to be completely independent of any biological observer and remain unaffected by one's existence (and trivially it follows that there wouldn't be statements about the objects or facts in the world because nobody would be in the world to make them.) Accordingly, under this terminology, IFOWs such as mountains or molecules, are these pregiven objects; these objects or facts stated.
This distinction allows us to see that, on the one hand, there is our more or less consensual idea of "mountain," which according to Ecological naturalism has emerged through structural coupling from our SIB history and is embodied in our biology (which leads to the statements we make a posteriori, such as the one I'm making at this very moment.) And on the other hand, there is what is in the medium in which we exist and interact with, that perturbs our nervous system producing changes of state in it such that when the necessary SIB cohesion is maintained, allows the realization of the operation of the distinction "mountain" leading to the act of naming the fact or object stated in a posteriori statements. From this it follows that, objects and facts stated depend on the history of SIB processes through which these statements emerge; they depend on the realization of language as a SIB process. Therefore, no object or fact stated can exist "statementless." In the same manner as Searle once said "mental sates are always somebody's mental states" (Searle, 1992, p.20), statements are always somebody's statements.
Consequently, we can conclude that IFOWs are in fact relative to our very natural, SIB human condition. This relativistic condition is different though from the one which applies to ORFOWs as such. In the latter the distinctions we bring forth about the world, say "chair" or "book," are conceived as being dependent on one's existence. Whereas, on the contrary, the so-called IFOWs, such as "molecule" or "mountain," are conceived as if they were independent of one's existence. In the domain of a cognitive explanatory proposal, they are indeed dependent on the living condition of the observers. The fact that our neurophysiological structure and SIB interactive nature permit us through body and linguistic experiences to make distinctions of such a peculiar nature (i.e., features conceived as if they were independent of our existence) is such that we can extend our operations in language to a space of distinctions in which we believe that we don't play any role at all. Thus, we are able to address in our own bodily grounded and consensual meaningful terms (without even noticing it) phenomena such as the extinction of the dinosaurs, marine life or the origin of the universe. But notice, both categories of features, IFOWs and ORFOWs, are relative to the observer. Both are conceptual organizations relative to the realization in our biological structure and social cohesion. The paramount difference is, that ORFOWs refer to distinctions conceived as depending on our existence, whereas IFOWs refer to those conceived as if they were independent.
With these considerations, we are now able to address the questions from the view of Ecological naturalism.
Q1) Would there still be mountains and molecules had we never existed?
If there had never been human beings on earth there would be nobody that could humanly experience, perceive, distinguish, name, or refer to the "mountain" or the "molecule." There would be no organism which as a realization of its living condition co-determined by its biological structure and by the medium in which is immersed, its evolutionary drift, its history of ongoing SIB processes, could enact such an experience. This does not mean that the so called IFOWs, such as mountains or molecules, depend on us, or that they are an illusion, or that the material world doesn't exist. It does not mean either that mountain and molecule are mental "representations" we have of what occurs out in the external world. It means that there would be nobody that could bring forth his or her flesh-based way to make distinctions of regularities and invariants in the medium; to organize and to conceptualize the medium in which he or she takes part. There is no one to make the statements, so there are no objects or facts stated either. There would be no-BODY in which the "mountain" or the "molecule" could be embodied.
Accordingly, the answer to this question is, for short, no: No human beings, means no mountains, no molecules, no cellulose, no gravitational attraction, no mass. If we remove what is human à la Searle, there would be no organism in which the biological natural history of the necessary processes to which Ecological naturalism refers to could be realized; no organism in which there could be realized the history of ongoing SIB processes that makes the enaction of the "mountain" and the "molecule" possible.
Q2) Where are the features of the world we believed were intrinsic? Where is the mountain and the molecule now?
According to Ecological naturalism, a mountain is a mountain not because the observer or user perceives it out there in the world. Instead, a mountain is the actualization of a whole process accomplished in a history of biological and social phenomena. The operation of distinction "IFOWs" is realized in ongoing evolutionary and interactive SIB processes in which the living condition of the observer actively and permanently takes part, and from which the mind arises. These processes allow particular organisms with a peculiar kind of biological structure, plasticity, and recurrent patterns of interaction (i.e., human beings) to make distinctions in terms of features that are conceived as if they were independent of their existence. If there are no interacting organisms of this kind enacting spaces of commonalties and consensus through their processes of living, there cannot be neither "mountain" nor any kind of IFOWs. "Mountains," "molecules," and IFOWs are realized in the ongoing evolutionary and interactive process in which we as organism take part. Is in this domain of phenomena that the "mountain," the "molecule," and IFOWs in general, are found.
Perhaps these answers seem bizarre, elusive or counter-intuitive because our common sense tells us that even if our great-great-great-great-parents are all dead, the world still exists independently of them; that the mountain is still there even though our ancestors are dead. This may lead to the temptation to believe that the same case would occur if we all die now (or if we had never existed on earth). However, there is an extremely important difference between these two cases. In the former, the social cohesion and SIB processes have been maintained, being realized in the ontogenies of individuals through generations long after our ancestors' death such that the distinctions we make now about objects and what we say about them (which are distinctions that emerged in this process) are possible regardless of the fact that now they are all dead. This is not the case if we all die now, for the SIB cohesion necessary to maintain the distinction "mountain" alive collapses such that there is no longer any "mountain" (and had we never existed, such distinction simply would have never emerged.)
So what would remain, if we all cease to exist? Again, this question has to be addressed without letting residual Objectivism slide into it. As was mentioned earlier, due to the fact that our neurophysiological structure and SIB interactive nature permit us through body and linguistic experiences to make distinctions such that features are conceived as if they were independent of our existence, we can extend our operations in language to a space of distinctions in which we believe that we don't play any role at all. This is precisely the case if we take into account the situation in which we all cease to exist but still want to answer the question of what would remain in such a case. Consequently, this allows us to propose an answer like the following: what would remain is the rest of the medium in which the structures of other organisms immersed in it might specify as feasible the fact that a particular configuration of the medium can potentially trigger changes of states in the structures of these organisms such that they might lead to the realization of the necessary operations of distinction (e.g., "mountain") in at least some of them, if the necessary history of SIB processes between such organisms are realized.
5.- A brief look at the life and social sciences: Making sense in Ecological naturalism's realm
In the previous sections I have explained why the idea of IFOWs, and the objectivistic tradition in which it is immersed, is untenable with Biological naturalism, and I have explained why despite the interest of its claims, this view is in its foundations incomplete due to the fact that it does not consider the very interactive nature of biological phenomena beyond the level of the individual as a constituent part of the SIB nature of mental phenomena. I have proposed a view, Ecological naturalism, which being compatible with Biological Naturalism does not endorse Objectivism and does consider the biological interactions beyond the level of the individual as an inseparable constituent of mental phenomena (SIB processes). In this section I shall illustrate the arguments I have given so far with examples taken from the life and social sciences, fields of Biological naturalism and Ecological naturalism's realm par excellence.
It is important to keep in mind two things. First, as we saw in the previous section, the IFOWs are realized through human language, emerging from an ongoing history of SIB processes. This means that a single-agent-cognizer paradigm is not an adequate one to grasp the richness of the very biological interactions between meta-organisms, and a fortriori when one is no longer committed to Objectivism. The following examples focus on a multi-agent, co-individual paradigm, emphasizing the interactive nature of the biological processes that take place beyond the level of the individual. When the situation is not an interactive (social) one, which is central in the phenomena we are dealing with, I propose some gedankenexperimente in order to imagine what would happen if it were. Second, the following examples are stories told by someone in a particular language. The reader must keep in mind that the distinctions made of objects and actions in the process of telling the story, are realized in the ongoing SIB process in which you and I are involved and therefore are made a posteriori. Because of this we might have the illusion of playing the role of the Mind in situ while referring to the distinctions used in the examples (e.g., mountains). When it comes to explain mental phenomena and cognition this should be taken into account.
5.1.- Ongoing evolution
According to Biological naturalism's claims, mental phenomena such as beliefs, desires and thoughts are caused by processes going on in the brain and are themselves features of it. So, a belief such as "sulfur has a bad smell because of x" is produced by mental states caused by and realized in the brain. In order to make the operation of distinction "sulfur" however, the structure of the nervous system must specify the configurations of the medium that can perturb it in such a way that it allows this to occur. The individual must be capable of having the bodily grounded experience from which the distinction will arise.
Now, we have substantial evidence that life on earth is under an ongoing process of evolution. This, of course, includes our brains. Consequently there are unnoticeable changes that are taking place in our biological structure that will specify the biological structures of our descendants. It's very likely thus that the brain of our descendants in a million years will have some characteristics of one of these changes in a greater (or lesser) degree, to the point that the brain of our descendants might not be capable of making basic distinctions that we can do now (or vice-versa) in such a way that the belief "sulfur has a bad smell because of x" will be no longer possible. For instance, it seems that, due to important evolutionary changes, the structure of our nervous system responsible for the sense of smell has specified a domain of perturbations that is considerably reduced if compared with that of our ancestors. As a consequence, we are loosing the ability to make distinctions in the domain of smelling experiences.
In our society, the organization we make of our medium and the explanations we build about the world in terms of odors and smell features are extremely limited, if compared to visual experiences, for instance. We are not even aware that other odors might "exist" because our biological structure doesn't enact such experiences. In the same way, maybe, as evolution goes on, our descendants will not be able to make any olfactory distinctions at all. In a society where no one for generations could smell anything olfactory descriptions of the world would gradually disapear. From the point of view of bodily experiences and SIB processes, which Ecological naturalism claims mental states emerge from, the supposed IFOWs related to odors wouldn't exist at all, simply because they can't be enacted. In this imaginary future society, the delicious smell of a tangerine could not constitute an intrinsic feature of the world. Only the God's-nose would be the lonely witness of it, ... as long as it operates in a brain like ours (omniscient observers), which as we saw is not possible since it is a totally nonbiological "brain" and it doesn't have the very natural history our brains have.
5.2.- Evolutionary continuity across species
This point is very much related to the previous one, with the difference that this one goes far beyond the lineage of hominids. But the questions are similar: Why is it specifically our neurophysiology that validates the "objective reality" when there are thousands of other species interacting with the medium and thus enacting their own experiences. What are, from this perspective, the IFOWs? If we are committed to the idea the real objective world is defined by our particular biology (i.e., adult, well-educated-western-XX century-male), what we are doing is freezing the ongoing evolutionary process at a given time (now) and focusing on just one particular species (Homo Sapiens). In doing so, the very core of what we know about the living phenomenon is violated.
Let's take an example. We know that the biological structure (in particular the nervous system) of some animals specifies certain configurations of the medium that can perturb it that are very different from those that our biological structure specifies. For instance, we believe that certain birds can perceive the electromagnetic field of the earth as a mean of orientation, or perceive sound waves of extremely high frequency that we don't perceive. The question then is, are these features IFOWs? Is that particular high sound an IFOW? According to the objectivistic point of view, there is no doubt that the answer is yes, because the sound is completely independent of our existence and understanding, as well as that of the birds. But in fact, the objectivist's view is based on a mere deduction that there is this high sound by extrapolating from our experience and knowledge of other sounds of lower frequency ("perceivable" by us) and the behavior of the birds. This deductive process and the mental states related to it emerge from already existing bodily experiences and from the activity of the human brain which has already a specific structure. These deductions constitute already a part of the organization we make about the world in terms of our bodily grounded experiences and that are realized through SIB processes. We actually don't know how such sound "really sounds". The question has no meaning in our experiential world. To affirm that our perception of the world is the right one is to ignore the continuity of the evolutionary process, both at synchronic and diachronic levels. The more we share neurobiological structures with other individuals, the greater will be our range of common experiences. Consequently, we are led to believe (without even noticing it) that our world is objective and that the objects we enact are independent of us. With individuals from other cultures, or younger ones, or those considered mentally sick, the consensual space is a little smaller, but is still very large relative to the rest of the animals in the biosphere. With dogs our space is considerably smaller, and with snails very small indeed. Our Judeo-Christian tradition, upon which much of the culture of science rests, happens to see the human being as the climax of creation and as having features that are intrinsically different from the rest of the animals. This belief creates a gap in the evolutionary process, and is so powerful that the evolutionary continuity is very often completely ignored even in the scientific community. Therefore, it is not a surprise that among the thousands of millions of possibilities in which structurally different biological bodies can interact with the medium, it is our and only our human experience about the world which defines how the real world is and what the IFOWs are (without even being aware of how relative to our biology this view is).
5.3.- Anatomy and neurophysiology: Phantom limb sensation
It has been reported in the specialized literature that patients who have suffered a limb amputation still feel their limb after it has been removed. This phenomenon is known as phantom limb sensation (to be distinguished from the less frequent phenomenon of phantom limb pain). These sensations, feelings and perceptions are reported as extremely vivid and real, as if the patient still actually had the limb (Melzack, 1989, 1992). Recently, evidence has been found showing that when a patient looses an upper limb, shortly afterwards a quite clear mapping is established between specific parts of the missing limb (e.g., fingers) and precise isolateral zones in the face (Ramachandran, Rogers-Ramachandran, and Stewart, 1992). Very similar evidence has been found also in adult macaques which have suffered limited sensory deafferentations (Pons, Garraghty, Ommaya, Kaas, Taub, and Mishkin, 1991). Moreover, this mapping is modality specific (at least known in humans), that is, the patient identifies in the missing limb the quality of the sensation produced when a light touch, a deep pressure or warm water is applied to the mapped zone of the face. It seems that a massive cortical reorganization takes place as a consequence of the amputation, in which the reference fields are somatotopically organized. Thus, after the amputation, cortical areas normally devoted to upper limb sensations are taken over by the neighboring groups of neurons that are also devoted to the face sensation. As a result, when the patient is stimulated on the face, he or she experiences sensations both in the face and in the missing limb.
Although a comprehensive explanatory proposal of the phenomenon of phantom limb sensation has not yet been suggested, it has been described well enough to devise a thought experiment. Imagine a situation in which due to a social ritual all human beings have their left hand amputated when they reach puberty (something comparable to circumcision in the Jewish or some Moslem communities, or clitoridectomy in some African tribes). Thus, from the moment this ritual is adopted there is never again a single adult with a left hand on earth. Until puberty, all individuals' bodies would develop propioceptions and other complex neurophysiological processes more or less in the way the bodies of their ancestors did before the adoption of the ritual. Because of the qualitatively different way in which the right hand would be used, and in general, because of the way in which the whole body would be used in the ongoing process of living, adults of the new generations would have "modified" bodies (what is a distinction only noticeable to us, omniscient beings) such as a stronger right hand than the one of their predecessors, for instance. This would lead to a different every-day-life social organization. But the important fact for our thought experiment is that the "real" and extremely vivid experiences of the missing left hand (missing for us, omniscient beings) would be incorporated in their daily natural bodily grounded experiences, very much as the chromatic experience of blue or the taste experience of sweetness. Through their ongoing process of structural coupling these embodied concepts, in which their underlying sensations would emerge in the ontogeny of the individuals but that would be realized in a SIB space of consensus, would rise in language such that the individuals of this society eventually could refer to "real" objects such as "the-mental-thumb" or "the-close-to-the-mouth-midfinger-nail." Perhaps in this society, vision wouldn't play such an important role in conceiving "reality" as it does in our society, because the vivid propioceptions of the missing limb to the detriment of visual experiences would be in a consensual space of permanent social validation. Accordingly, there wouldn't be place for such concept as "phantom" or "missing" limbs in their experiences, because they are in the domain of the disembodied, omniscient God's-eye. Consequently, other "IFOWs" would exist in this society, relative to their embodied minds and SIB processes. This contradicts the very notion of intrinsic feature since it is no longer independent of the observer.
5.4.- Cognitive neuropsychology: Cortical lesions
There is substantial evidence that specific injuries in the brain cause specific alterations in mental activity. For example, recent studies have shown that damage in specialized regions of the visual cortex can cause types of blindness in which the patients no longer experience specific attributes of the visual phenomenon, such as color, form or motion (Zeki, 1992). More specifically, lesions in area V4 of the cortex lead to having visual experiences only in terms of shades of gray (achromatopsia). It is also known that a patient with a lesion in area V5 doesn't experience motion and therefore doesn't understand it (akinetopsia). Furthermore, certain lesions in area V1 lead to a great difficulty in understanding forms. When this is the case, the patient is able to copy a drawing with great detail but has no comprehension of what he or she has drawn.
Clearly, what these patients "see" is qualitatively different from what we "see," or better, their visual experience is qualitatively different from ours. But is this because they don't have access to predefined features of the real objective world? Following Ecological naturalism's claims, the visual experience of these patients is different because the structure of their nervous system is such that it specifies a domain of possible perturbations in which attributes such as what "normal" people a posteriori name color, motion or form (and here we assume the role of the Mind in situ), do not exist. Therefore they enact a different world. With respect to the issue of "access to reality," this could be considered analogous to the case in which the structure of the nervous system of a connoisseur of wines specifies peculiar configurations of the medium that can perturb it. So when he is tasting wines he can makes distinctions in terms of flavor, fumet (aroma), body, bouquet, palais (palate), robe (colour), etc., that allow him to precise not only whether the sample he is tasting corresponds to table, sparkling or fortified wine, but also to know its grape variety, vineyard and vintage. These differential experiences simply can't be enacted by those who have a "normal" nervous system like mine and probably yours. Something similar happens with the distinctions "motion" or "color" we make, with the difference that in this case we would be the "connoisseurs." The point is that when we are dealing with "patients," we are implicitly invoking criteria that define what is normal and what is abnormal, based on the consensus that are realized through the SIB processes in which we are involved.
Besides the extraordinary relevance of these findings to neuropsychology, I think we can learn something about the nature of the IFOWs, and about why we think they are independent of our existence and understanding. Let us imagine a situation in which due to a huge environmental accident, the whole population on earth is exposed to a certain amount of carbon monoxide, which is known to produce cortical lesions that affects area V1. As a result, the whole population starts seeing "the" world in terms of different visual experiences, very much in the way the patient described above did (i.e., not having the ability to make distinctions in terms of forms). For the purposes of the example, life goes on, and the population manages to cope with the environmental disaster. New generations grow up with "cortical lesions," or better, with different brains such that there is not a single person in the society capable of experiencing what we (external in situ observers) call "form." As a result, in their ongoing SIB process of living, they organize the world in terms of other experiences and distinctions, other consensus and spaces of commonalties, in terms of other bodily grounded conceptualization of "the" world. Then, the form of what we, God's-eye external observers, call a posteriori the "mountain" couldn't be an intrinsic feature of the world anymore.
5.5.- Biochemistry and nervous system: Psychoactive drugs
One of the revolutions of the scientific study of the mind has been the development of drugs that produce extraordinary effects upon it. Thanks to the extensive research done during the last decades we know today much more about how we can experience a different "world" if we alter the neurochemistry that takes place in our body. Just think of what happens if we drink too much whisky or smoke a couple of marijuana cigarettes. In these cases the activity of the neurotransmitters at the synaptic level is altered and as a consequence what we experience is different. We know that specific psychoactive drugs interact with specific neurotransmitters in our body provoking correlated changes of mood, perceptions, or alertness, depending on the drug. Drugs can alter the process of synaptic transmission in a number of ways: by blocking the receptors of the neurotransmitters in the post synaptic neuron; by blocking the reuptake inactivation process and therefore facilitating the transmission; by interfering with the storage of the neurotransmitters; or by impeding the synthesis of the neurotransmitter. Taking into account all these possibilities, all the different neurotransmitters we have and, above all, the density and complexity of the interrelations between neurons, we can imagine the huge number of potential ways in which the biochemistry of our nervous system may be altered.
When the Swiss chemist Albert Hoffmann synthesized the psychedelic drug LSD in 1943, he tried the drug on himself but he didn't know yet how powerful the drug was. Everyone who has read the descriptions he made after being intoxicated is able to get an idea of how radically this drug alters one's perception and understanding of the world. It is often reported that psychedelic drugs produce states in which the boundaries between self and non-self vanish (Snyder, 1986). Also, one of the most astonishing perceptual alterations these drugs produce is known as synesthesia, that is, a phenomenon in which the senses become transmuted, so sound may be experienced also as vision, touch also as sound, and so forth (Snyder, 1986).
Now, let us imagine an isolated society that lives in a polluted environment such that a very low amount of some psychedelic drug is released slowly and nobody notices it. For the purposes of the thought experiment, imagine that gradually the biochemistry of the neurotransmitters in the individuals' nervous systems changes, so the whole population slowly starts experiencing the world in a different way (different to us, external observers). As the unity of their social cohesion is maintained through structural coupling, language continues to flow in coherence with their bodily-grounded experiences. At a certain point the synesthesia-like experiences realized in their ontogenies, would be a phenomenon so natural in their every-day life that they would identify and communicate with each other in terms of features such as "noisy-green," "bad-smelling-horizon" or "gravitational-sweetness." These distinctions would seem truly "IFOWs" for them, as mountains or molecules are to us.
But, for the purposes of our example, the individuals don't necessarily have to be permanently under the effect of the drug. Think of those Mexican and Central American Indian communities that for centuries have consumed mescaline (psychedelic drug obtained from the Peyote plant) or psilocibin and psilocin (obtained from a mushroom). These plants have played a very important role in the way in which these groups experience and understand the medium in which they live, in the way they enact their world. This process has been realized through the SIB cohesion that has been maintained for generations. This fact is clearly seen in their religious practices in which not only do they consume the drug, but their effects contribute to maintain their beliefs about how the world works, and how their medium is. The consensual experiences related to the effects of the drug is a constituent part of the way they elaborated their cosmology. This in turn, is built up in terms of their own "IFOWs" that are partly possible because of the peculiar neurochemical processes that take place when they consume the drug.
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[2] This idea is implicit in many leading scholars in neuroscience. Consider the following citation: "It would be very convenient if we could understand the nature of cognition without understanding the nature of the brain itself (Sejnowski and Smith-Churchland, 1993, p. 343). Somehow the idea seems to have meaning for the authors. On the contrary, for those who support the idea that cognition is a biological phenomenon if one replaces "cognition" by "digestion," and "brain" by "digestive system" the obtained statement is as meaningless or ill-founded as the original.
[3] Cognitive science understood as a scientific discipline in a larger sense, not only as the scientific activity and research program developed by the Cognitivist school, as it is usually connoted (p.e., Gardner (1985), Posner (1993)).
[4] I would like to make clear, however, that I do not pretend to criticize Realism or Objectivism here. That constitutes a subject matter on its own and has to be treated as such separately.
[5] Redundant as it may seem, I keep the noun "naturalism" to avoid any attempt to consider this view as equivalent to "artificial," "virtual," or computation-oriented approaches.
[6] This alludes to the French expression on ne peut pas avoir le beurre et l'argent du beurre. It means literally "one can't have the butter and the money for the butter."
[7] In my opinion these arguments (Searle, 1990) were only against PDP forms of connectionism, and not against connectionism in general. In that article Searle doesn't make any distinction. For a brief explanation of different forms of connectionism, see Skarda (1992).
[8] According to Searle, intentionality is a "feature of certain mental states by which they are directed at or about objects and states of affaires in the world. Thus, beliefs, desires and intentions are intentional states; undirected forms of anxiety and depression are not" (Searle, 1980, p. 424).
[9] In order to refer to the space in which an organism exists, the idea of medium is used rather than environment. The former emphasizes the idea that the organism exists as a part of the space, whereas the latter stresses a separation between the organism and the space in which exists.
[10] The idea of "supra-individual biology" is used rather than "biosocial" in order to avoid the temptation of considering the social component of mental phenomena as belonging to a non-biological realm and thus approachable mainly from the perspective of the so-called humanities.