Dear Terry,
Thanks for your post. I have seen Steve Pinker advance a similar view
to the one you promote. However, I don't think it is new, nor is it
particular to neuroscience, nor dependent on recent empirical findings
(though it may be responsible for some of the particular
interpretations of those findings that we have been discussing).
Wittgenstein actually addressed a remarkably similar view in the Blue
Book, written in the 1930s.
The differences between the position I am defending and the one you are
advancing are many, and I won't address them all. Perhaps the level at
which we disagree is deep enough that we will continue to talk past
each other. To counter the things you say I feel I would have to repeat
arguments I have raised already. Let me just raise one point.
You argue that our experience of the world, and our ability to
understand the world through language and reflection are illusory,
misleading and untrustworthy. If one seriously entertains this
position, I fail to see how this applies any less to the reflections on
mind and body made (in language) by cognitive neuroscientists than it
applies to myself. Their interpretations of empirical investigations
are, on this view, just as prone to be merely illusory. I wonder
whether the radical epistemological tenuosness of this position is
seriously entertained by those who find it compelling.
Claims of truth and falsity, and their arbitration, demonstration and
resolution are only possible within and by reference to the very
'worlds' (experience, language, reflection) whose existence is (on this
view) being undermined. I fear that we are again traversing the bounds
of sense, and beginning to use language in misleading ways.
I do not expect that I have convinced many members of the list of the
validity of these (wittgensteinian) views, but I do hope that this has
gone some small way towards demonstrating that there is a coherent and
largely neglected alternative to cognitivism in coming to an
understanding of issues relating to 'mind' and human experience.
Kind regards,
Ben
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