New mysterianism, or commonly just mysterianism, is a philosophical position proposing that the
hard problem of consciousness
The hard problem of consciousness is the problem of explaining why and how humans have qualia or phenomenal experiences. This is in contrast to the "easy problems" of explaining the physical systems that give us and other animals the ability to d ...
cannot be resolved by humans. The unresolvable problem is how to explain the existence of
qualia
In philosophy of mind, qualia ( or ; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term ''qualia'' derives from the Latin neuter plural form (''qualia'') of the Latin adjective '' quālis'' () ...
(individual instances of
subjective, conscious experience). In terms of the various schools of
philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addre ...
, mysterianism is a form of
nonreductive physicalism
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addre ...
. Some "mysterians" state their case uncompromisingly (
Colin McGinn
Colin McGinn (born 10 March 1950) is a British philosopher. He has held teaching posts and professorships at University College London, the University of Oxford, Rutgers University, and the University of Miami.
McGinn is best known for his wor ...
has said that consciousness is "a mystery that human intelligence will never unravel"); others believe merely that consciousness is not within the grasp of present human understanding, but may be comprehensible to future advances of science and technology.
Name
Owen Flanagan
Owen Flanagan (born 1949) is the James B. Duke University Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus at Duke University. Flanagan has done work in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social s ...
noted in his 1991 book ''Science of the Mind'' that some modern thinkers have suggested that consciousness may never be completely explained. Flanagan called them "the new mysterians" after the rock group
Question Mark and the Mysterians
? and the Mysterians (or Question Mark and the Mysterians) are an American garage rock band from Bay City and Saginaw in Michigan, initially active between 1962 and 1969. Much of the band's music consisted of electric organ-driven garage rock a ...
.
"But the new mysterianism is a postmodern position designed to drive a railroad spike through the heart of
scientism
Scientism is the opinion that science and the scientific method are the best or only way to render truth about the world and reality.
While the term was defined originally to mean "methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to natural scientis ...
".
The term "new mysterianism" has been extended by some writers to encompass the wider philosophical position that humans do not have the intellectual ability to solve (or comprehend the answers to) many hard problems, not just the problem of consciousness, at a scientific level.
[Chomsky, Noam. "The machine, the ghost, and the limits of understanding," University of Oslo, September 2011 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5in5EdjhD0] This position is also known as
anti-constructive naturalism.
According to Flanagan, "The 'old mysterians' were dualists who thought that consciousness cannot be understood scientifically because it operates according to nonnatural principles and possesses nonnatural properties." Apparently, some apply the terms to thinkers throughout history who suggested some aspect of consciousness may not be knowable or discoverable, including
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm (von) Leibniz . ( – 14 November 1716) was a German polymath active as a mathematician, philosopher, scientist and diplomat. He is one of the most prominent figures in both the history of philosophy and the history of mathem ...
,
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson (18 September 1709 – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
, and
Thomas Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist specialising in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
The stor ...
. Thomas Huxley wrote, "
w it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the
Djinn
Jinn ( ar, , ') – also romanized as djinn or anglicized as genies (with the broader meaning of spirit or demon, depending on sources)
– are invisible creatures in early pre-Islamic Arabian religious systems and later in Islamic mytho ...
, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp."
Philosophy
In the view of the new mysterians, their contention that the hard problem of consciousness is unsolvable is not a presupposition, but rather a philosophical conclusion reached by thinking carefully about the issue. The standard argument is as follows:
Subjective experiences by their very nature cannot be shared or compared side-by-side. Therefore, it is impossible to know what subjective experiences another person is having.
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
distinguishes between ''problems'', which seem solvable, at least in principle, through scientific methods, and ''mysteries'', which do not seem solvable, even in principle. He notes that the cognitive capabilities of all organisms are limited by biology, e.g. a mouse will never be able to navigate a prime number maze. In the same way, certain problems may be beyond our understanding.
Adherents
Historical
*
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
, American philosopher, in his essay "Is Life Worth Living?" (1896). James makes the point that much human mental activity (e.g. reading) is forever closed to the mind of a dog, even though we may share the same household and have a deep friendship with each other. So, by analogy, the human mind may be forever closed to certain aspects of the larger universe. This was a concept which James found liberating, and which gave an implicit significance to certain distressing aspects of the human condition. James makes an analogy with the suffering of a dog during a vivisection: the meaning of the vivisection is inaccessible to the dog. But that does not mean that the vivisection is meaningless. So it may be with our suffering in this world.
*
Carl Jung
Carl Gustav Jung ( ; ; 26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961) was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology. Jung's work has been influential in the fields of psychiatry, anthropology, archaeology, literature, philo ...
, Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, who, in the first chapter of his last work, "Man and His Symbols" (1964), wrote: "...even when our senses react to real phenomena, sights and sounds, they are somehow translated from the realm of reality into that of the mind. Within the mind they become psychic events whose ultimate nature is unknowable (for the psyche cannot know its own psychical substance)."
Contemporary
*
Colin McGinn
Colin McGinn (born 10 March 1950) is a British philosopher. He has held teaching posts and professorships at University College London, the University of Oxford, Rutgers University, and the University of Miami.
McGinn is best known for his wor ...
is the leading proponent of the new mysterian position among major philosophers.
*
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel (; born July 4, 1937) is an American philosopher. He is the University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University, where he taught from 1980 to 2016. His main areas of philosophical interest are legal philosophy, ...
, American philosopher.
*
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modu ...
, American philosopher and cognitive scientist.
*
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American public intellectual: a linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes called "the father of modern linguistics", Chomsky is ...
, American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, and political commentator/activist.
*
Martin Gardner
Martin Gardner (October 21, 1914May 22, 2010) was an American popular mathematics and popular science writer with interests also encompassing scientific skepticism, micromagic, philosophy, religion, and literatureespecially the writings of Lewis ...
, American mathematics and science writer, considered himself to be a mysterian.
*
John Horgan
John Joseph Horgan (born August 7, 1959) is a Canadian politician who served as the 36th premier of British Columbia from 2017 to 2022, and also as the leader of the British Columbia New Democratic Party from 2014 to 2022. Horgan has been the ...
, American science journalist.
*
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
P ...
, American psychologist; favoured mysterianism in ''How the Mind Works'', and later wrote: "The brain is a product of evolution, and just as animal brains have their limitations, we have ours. Our brains can't hold a hundred numbers in memory, can't visualize seven-dimensional space and perhaps can't intuitively grasp why neural information processing observed from the outside should give rise to subjective experience on the inside. This is where I place my bet, though I admit that the theory could be demolished when an unborn genius—a Darwin or Einstein of consciousness—comes up with a flabbergasting new idea that suddenly makes it all clear to us."
*
Roger Penrose
Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, an emeritus fello ...
, English physicist, mathematician and philosopher of science.
*
Edward Witten
Edward Witten (born August 26, 1951) is an American mathematical and theoretical physicist. He is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Witten is a researcher in string theory, q ...
, American
string theorist
In physics, string theory is a theoretical framework in which the point-like particles of particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. String theory describes how these strings propagate through space and intera ...
.
*
Sam Harris
Samuel Benjamin Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American philosopher, neuroscientist, author, and podcast host. His work touches on a range of topics, including rationality, religion, ethics, free will, neuroscience, meditation, psychedelics ...
, American neuroscientist, has endorsed mysterianism by stating that "This situation has been characterized as an "explanatory gap" and the "hard problem of consciousness," and it is surely both. I am sympathetic with those who, like... McGinn and... Pinker, have judged the impasse to be total: Perhaps the emergence of consciousness is simply incomprehensible in human terms."
Opponents
*
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...
, American philosopher, who has explicitly attacked McGinn's notion of mysterianism.
[ (Corrected by ''erratum'' notice, 24 May, pg 29.)]
References
Citations
Sources
*McGinn, Colin (1991), ''The Problem of Consciousness''
*
Flanagan, Owen (1991), ''The Science of the Mind'', 2ed MIT Press, Cambridge
*McGinn, Colin (1993), ''Problems in Philosophy: The Limits of Inquiry'', Blackwell,
*Horgan, John (1996), ''The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age'', Addison-Wesley; has a discussion of mysterianism (pp 177–180).
*
Blackburn, Simon (1999), ''Think: A Compelling Introduction to Philosophy'', chapter two
*
Horgan, John (1999), ''The Undiscovered Mind'', Phoenix,
*McGinn, Colin (1999), ''The Mysterious Flame''
{{philosophy of mind
Theory of mind
Consciousness studies