A Disordered Mind

I have had some time to think, which is always a dangerous past time. As I leap within and beyond the parameters of sorrow and the celebration of life, I encountered this book today. John Searle's book on the Mind.

John R. Searle was famous for his analogy of the Chinese Room Argument. His repudiation of AI-as-equivalent-to-human-consciousness was drawn from his persuasive postulation that a computer's ability at algorithmic computation (even the deciphering of Chinese codes and signs) does not give it the ability to understand the Chinese language. As such, knowing how to write a grammatically perfect script does not mean that the computer understands the cultural nuances or signification of discourse. This is the very nexus and premise of postmodernism. Artificial Intelligence are machinic adepts in the production of signifiers without meaning. The machine may draw and perhaps mimic the perfect construct of an apple, but the apple means nothing to it. By lacking an anchor of meaning or meanings, the structure of an apple could be called a monkey for all the computer cares. An apple is no more and no less a combination of molecular structures or physical forms. Bringing this back to the argument of the Chinese Room, the AI machine could manipulate the physical symbols through a structure-sensitive program that 'draws' a Chinese symbol but would have no interpretative power or ontology to manipulate the meaning of the symbol in relation to context, discourse, ethics, social and cultural values.

When we ask about ontology or even begin to question the polemics of epiphenomenon, we are dealing with the mind. And the mind is a funny business that involves pain. If we were to question Descartes' famous but erroneous dictum of cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I exist), then we question embodiment and identity that are necessarily tethered to the conditions of having a mind. Searle was adamant that Decartes' Dualism between mind and body created intellectual chaos for hundreds of years. This separation between res cogitans (thinking being) and res extensa (physical, external world) split the phenomenon of Being into two separate entities. If the physical world could be reduced to an illusion of the mind, then it is postulated that the thinking self is the only truth. Thus I may repudiate all that exists but I cannot repudiate that I am repudiating. Searle taxonomised the Cartesian problem into eight segments and also into a few more brackets of solutions, but the general gist of his dispute aligns with my own thoughts. Cartesian Dualism does not take the philosophies of embodiment into consideration. Much of embodiment philosophy stemmed from existentialist movements and contends that the body and mind are not related causally but they are interconnected to perform a fluid performance of Being. The body does not touch fire first and then after introspection from consciousness deem fire to be hot and painful. The instant that body touches fire creates an unconscious reaction from both mind and body, which communicates dialogically to produce meaning and feeling from the object of fire. Affectivities cannot be understood through the split between an external, physical reality that is deemed illusionary but the mind itself capable of perceptual truth from the physical object of lies. Because we have to ask, what enables the mind to tell the truth if the mind exists independently of every other material reality?

While I agreed with much of Searle's anti-dualist contention with Descartes' work, it was not clear how his monist approach of 'biological naturalism' enables both mind and body to communicate dialogically without giving preference to either/or. If Descartes privileged the mind, Searle privileged the biological and naturalism of the body and argued that fundamentally, it is the brain that enables the mind to exist. It is thus logical to assume that if the brain ceased to function, so does the mind. This breaks down Cartesian Dualism because both mind and body (brain) are dependent on each other to exist. With the brain comes the mind, without the brain deceases the mind. But if one were to restate by privileging the mind first, then it would make no sense under the terms of 'biological naturalism'. One cannot say that the existence of the mind constructs the brain, without the mind the brain ceases to exist.

It would be absurd to suggest that the lower-neurobiological processess of the brain does not enable some of the conditions of (un)consciousness. Science has provided ample research to prove both empirically and socially that the brain is a power-source for our perceptive and motor skills. But a determination of consciousness through an essentialist view has its dangers. If the lower-neurobiological processes of the brain enables the mind to function and exist, then it presupposes also that if I were to transfer my brain to another human being, my self would still exist. (We have to take for granted that Searle sees the mind also as a causal producer of identity). To say that the self is biologically determined have been the grounds of feminist guerrilla warfare since the 1970s. If the brain is overdetermined to be the 'factory' of the mind, then our embodiment suffers.

Put it this way: if your mind is like the artisan of desires then according to Searle the brain is the collegium and factory of the mind. Let us also say that the mind is particularly fond of men and the so called gender landscape of this individual is male. So it would not be preposterous to assume that being gay means that the mind is affected by the neurological processes of the brain. It would also be true to assume that one could be made un-gay, for any particular reason, as long as those neurological pathways could be altered in the lower regions of the brain. Ah... we get the inimical picture now. I may have inferenced this particular scenario, but it is not a reductionist account of Searle's theory. Essentialism has a bad habit of cropping up even in the most unseemly of places.

It is unclear why the mind has been truncated to only the function of the neuroprocesses of the brain. I am tempted to state here that the brain is only one of many determinants of the mind. I am tempted to state that the distentions and fractures of the body are necessary for the habituation and communication of the mind, and not simply the brain. After all, would we still be us if all we had was just a brain? Would our mind be still an artisan of beingness if there were no eyes to see, ears to hear, body to touch or nails to clip? Would a prosthetic child be considered a child if all but its brain was linked and connected to machines and blinking wires that propelled the function of its life? Would that brain-child know the meaning of desire? Could it without the ability to sense heat or cold, know the sight or sound or vibration of life? Even the most disabled of individuals have a body. Could a posthuman child achieve beingness without a body? Questions, questions, questions...

Be as it may, we have a tie. Both monistic and dualistic philosophies of the mind may come head-to-head against each other but offer no conclusive terms of agreement. And tempted as I may be to mobilise a dialectic, I shall seek other epistemic avenues. After all, a solidification of contradictions might not necessarily bring about cohesion of answers. Ah... my research continues...