Grandiose Reductionism and Humble Expansionism

What would be the opposite of reductionism? Expansionism? In any event, Schuon is a practitioner of the latter, writing of the

principles that by their nature elude empirical investigations but not pure intellection, intellectual intuition being rooted in the very substance of the human spirit, without which homo would not be sapiens.

So, these nonlocal and timeless principles are not to be found in the horizontal, material, empirical world, but rather, are intuited via a nonlical intellect that is ultimately of the same substance as that which it intuits. Which is not so strange if we are indeed the image and likeness -- or prolongation or reverberation -- of the First Principle. 

Back to Hart, much of the book's dialogue comes down to an argument between a rigid reductionist and a loosey-goosey expansionist, neither one convincing the other, at least so far. Which is not surprising, for reasons Nicolás made plain yesterday:

Engaging in dialogue with those who do not share our assumptions is nothing more than a stupid way to kill time.

It seems that there is a surface structure to thought that is rooted in a deeper structure of principle, and unless an argument penetrates to the latter, it will be inefficacious.

For example, Hart's materialist claims that

there's no actual mystery to consciousness to begin with, and only our own bad habits of language make us imagine there is.

Clean up your language and the mystery of consciousness is solved? Clean it up by what standard? Presumably the standard of immanence, empiricism, and materiality, so this is a circular argument, or an assumption -- a principle -- masquerading as a conclusion.  

For the reductionist, what we experience as mental properties are just the other side of material properties reducible to the latter: a "brain-state" and a "mental state" are "simply one and the same thing."

But one of these things doesn't seem anything like the other.

Doesn't matter if your first principle is that what we call "mind" is just an epiphenomenon of neurology -- that subjects are just objects in disguise. 

I know where I would go with the argument: if mental states are just a side effect of neurology, isn't your truth claim likewise reducible, and if so, why should we believe it? There can be no such thing as truth, rather, only brain states.

Hart's expansionist argues that the reductionist view "is sheer empty assertion. It answers no questions. It's just yet another restatement of the problem of mind." Surely there is correlation between the two -- brain and mind -- but why assume an identity? 

Hart's reductionist proposes an "eliminativism" whereby our commonsense view of the mind 

must be totally eliminated in favor of a more scientific, wholly impersonal neuroscientific theory, entirely purged of such mythical entities as the personal subject, intentional states, and the like...

To which the expansionist rightly asks, "how can such a view be stated without contradiction?" For "how can one take seriously the belief that there's no such thing as belief?" Is this not just "a kind of cognitive suicide?" 

Can sufficient knowledge of the brain really eliminate the mind? If so, who is the knower of this sublime knowledge?

"By that logic, taken to its end, none of the real sciences other than physics would be sciences at all." That is to say, psychology would be reducible to a neurobiology, further reducible to electrochemistry and on down to "a complete physics."

A brief word from our principial sponsor:

[W]hether he likes it or not, man is "condemned" to transcendence (Schuon).

It's not so easy to eliminate, because any truth we utter is from a transcendent standpoint. Surely matter doesn't know it is material, let alone that everything is material. That's a rather grandiose claim. It may sound modestly "reductive" but is actually insanely expansive.

Humility. We must remember humility.

man ought to show humility in relation to his own Heart-Intellect, the immanent divine spark; the proud man sins against his own immortal essence as well as against God and man (Schuon).

Free advice.

Eliminativism must be at antipodes to genuine humility, so much so that "when the theory doesn't adequately account for the phenomenon," it is the latter that is eliminated. Nevertheless,

For all its intrinsic absurdity, eliminativism is the only truly consistent physicalism. Or rather, precisely because of its absurdity. 

It's easy enough to eliminate eliminativism, but is there something positive -- and rigorous -- we can put in its place? Yes, I think so, but that's the end of this chapter.