Nagel, Thomas - Cognition

01/04/2012

Mind And Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False, Ch 4, Oxford University Press, 2012

This chapter focuses on cognition, specifically the use of reason, as a feature of mind that is incapable of being considered valid by an evolutionary account of how it evolved. The general argument leveled by author is as follows:
1) modes of getting at true facts (that have been developed by evolution) are prone to certain kinds of errors, and/or are adaptations that are useful only in some local conditions (e.g. perception)
2) use of reason is not prone to error when used, and is not contained to only local applications (pg81)
3) Therefore, for reason to be a mode developed by evolution for getting at true facts, it is extraordinary.

Author starts by setting aside the possibility that computers can have knowledge, or that "higher-level cognitive capacities" can be done without consciousness. (pg71) Author then proceeds to take a common-sense approach to epistemology: there are true, objective facts about the world and most of the time perceptual and primitive minds have access only to how those facts appear, not their objective features (pg72-3). (This contrasts with some instrumentalist or nominalist 'anitrealist' theories of science and epistemology (pg74-5)) For author, appreciating the difference between appearance and reality is a higher-level cognitive capacity and is a rare ability in the animal kingdom (pg73), possibly partially attributable to language use. Author raises two questions: (pg74)
1. is it likely that evolution could have created a faculty that gets at the objective truth of the world using the faculty of reason?
2.  can the faculty of reason be understood as an evolved mechanism?

Author first sketches out what an answer to the first question might be (pg76-78), with emphasis on language use, theory of mind, and cultural transmission of knowledge. What is distinctive about author's "just-so" story is that author is a realist: the objective facts of science and morals are there to be discovered and thus the faculty that develops in humans is one that reaches "discovers" those facts.

Author then moves to the second question: is the faculty of reason at all similar to other evolved faculties? Surely there are biases and distortions with our perceptual apparati, as there are also with emotional responses and intuitive probability calculations and value judgments (pg79). And yet the appreciation (and correction) of these distortions is not further subject to bias or distortion: it is taken as valid and justified. Further, the authority of reason isn't due to cultural history (pg70-80). A key difference for author here is that beliefs formed about objective truths using perceptual nodes are done through inference, while beliefs formed using reason are 'grasped directly' (pg80, pg82-3). Because of this, author asserts the inferential truth of evolutionary theory is only backstopped by reason, not the other way around, and thus cannot independently give validity to reason. (pg81) Author claims that the attempt to understand ourselves as creatures of evolution must "bottom out" in something recognized as "valid in itself" (pg81), which can only be reason and not evolutionary theory since that theory is itself held to the standards of reason.

The ability to reflect on modes of perception and intuition using reason is a kind of freedom (pg84), and one that author claims is not compatible with a "purely physical analysis". Author also wonders aloud as to whether language use is also not a radical development that is difficult to account for using evolution (pg84-5). Author reiterates the call that a historical explanation for the emergence of reason not show it to be "a complete accident" (pg86-8). Author then talks about the possibilities for a constitutive account (using the same language as in previous chapters: a call for a constitutive account and an historical one). Author is skeptical that a reductive account of reason is possible, thus a holistic or emergent one is more likely (pg87-8).

In the last two sections of the chapter, author explores the possibility of a teleological explanation as one for the development of mind. For author, this is a third option to a Darwinian physicalism or a theistic intentionalism. For author, the world would have to be probabilistic, not deterministic, and of the probabilities, one would have to be more likely than the rest based on its outcome fulfilling some sort of value or telos (pg92-3).