Experiential metaphysicsreality, language and mind as explored through Galen Strawson and Noam Chomsky

Abstract

The main thrust of this thesis has been to look at Quine’s question, “what is there?” and provide a different answer when talking about the world. By looking at the works of Galen Strawson and Noam Chomsky and taking into consideration the contributions made by some neuroscientists one can begin to find certain uniformities in nature. Galen Strawson points out that everything that exists is physical, including experience as the most certain phenomenon that human beings possess. By stating this, Strawson is trying to show just how strange the nature of the physical is relative to our conceptions of it. In fact, if one seeks an explanation of how experience is possible given what we already know about the physical, then it is plausible that at bottom reality has components that either involve or realize experience such that certain combinations of matter result in conscious experience that does not require “radical emergence” in nature. By looking at the philosophy of Noam Chomsky and the particular history he constructs, one finds out that the world is a mystery relative to our common sense understanding of it and that we no longer seek to understand the world itself but theories about the world which are different goals. Furthermore, Chomsky points out that when we talk about things in the world, our words don’t refer to objects, but human being can refer. This process is more complex than what is initially apparent. The way people recognize objects is by a process called “psychic continuity” in which one is able to pick out mind-dependent properties that are not properties of the object themselves. With Chomsky, one discovers that the world people take for granted is crucially dependent on the nature of the creature and not the nature of the world. By examining some of the works done by certain neuroscientists such as Stanislas Dehaene, Bernard Baars and others, one confirms the observations that the brain is the most complex organ that scientists could study. Experiments conducted by such neuroscientists confirm that the brain is fundamental to consciousness, but one does not see how it is possible that the brain could produce such phenomena. In the end it is argued that it is unlikely that by studying the brain one will ever discover how experience arises from organized matter and that the brain and mind are not identical. What there is, when looking to answer Quine’s question, is world of shared mental architecture in which people give meaning to things in the world, because they share in essence the same nature.