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IS Ramachandran a neutral-monist?

IS Ramachandran a neutral-monist?

TecnoTut
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Posted 08/28/05 - 11:55 AM: Subject: IS Ramachandran a neutral-monist?	#1
Comments by the famed neuroscientists Vilayanur S. Ramachandran's lecture: "Let me try to summarise in the remaining five or ten minutes what my own view of consciousness is. There are really two problems here - the problem of the subjective sensations or qualia and the problem of the self. The problem of qualia is the more difficult one. The question is how does the flux of ions in little bits of jelly in my brain give rise to the redness of red, the flavour of marmite or mattar paneer, or wine. Matter and mind seem so utterly unlike each other. Well one way out of this dilemma is to think of them really as two different ways of describing the world, each of which is complete in itself. Just as we can describe light as made up of particles or waves - and there's no point in asking which is correct, because they're both correct and yet utterly unlike each other. And the same may be true of mental events and physical events in the brain." From 'Neuroscience -- the new philsophy' lecture.
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Eriatarka
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Posted 08/28/05 - 12:13 PM:	#2
It sounds closer to perspectivalism, or perhaps to Kant's "anti-realist" claim that from the point of view of science man is determined yet from the point of view of philosophy he is free, yet there is no perspective-independent fact of the matter. Or maybe he means something more benign. I can describe a pattern in Conway's Life world by talking about entities such as gliders moving across the board. Or I can say that gliders 'are just useful fictions' because all that really exists are individual squares switching on and off according to purely deterministic laws. Its just 2 different ways of describing the Life world. Perhaps its just an elaborate way of throwing his hands in the air and admitting he doesnt have a clue how to answer the question.

Paul
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Posted 08/28/05 - 03:13 PM:	#3
It's hard to say from that, especially since there are so many different approaches to netural monism. Normally a neutral monist wouldn't phrase qualia as a "problem" (neutral monists are normally methodological solipsists who would take qualia as clearer and better known than gray brain mush or brain state data printouts) and to talk of "two different ways of describing the world" seems more of a dual-aspect-esque approach (like Nagel)... but perhaps he was trying to relate to an audience he was presuming consisted of dualists. To me he looks sympathetic toward cognative closure types, though he's putting a monistic spin on it instead of the usual dualistic spin. Normally it's the interaction problem which cognative closure is used to avoid, here it's the problem of mind-brain identity theory. Which brings me to the point that I'd guess Ramachandran is supporting identity theory, in a mysterian sort of way. He isn't saying that there's anything lacking in our conception of the mental and physical compared to the actuality of what they are -- he implies that we do know exactly what the mind and brain are like in actuality, but lack the intelligence to grasp why the two apparently different things are actually the same. You don't see him talking about superimposition there like Samkara, nor things in themselves like Kant, nor of anything analogous to Russell's logical atoms, so I wouldn't say what's been quoted of him would be typical of neutral monism even through it doesn't rule it out.

Arthur_S
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Posted 08/28/05 - 08:59 PM:	#4
Maybe it's a dual-access theory like Feigle's. You look at the box from the inside, you have such and such to say about it, you look at it from the outside, you say something else. I take it the nuetral monist thinks there are two substances in one, or rather the potential for one of two in one Substance. This doesn't seem to be implied by the quote you provided. .
The world is my will and representation.

Tobias
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Posted 08/29/05 - 03:01 AM:	#5
He seems to have something of a neutral monist in the sense that he sees the two possibilities as essentiallydescribing the same thing 'world'. It is that one substance, called world, that lays behind each of the accounts. Thing is, but that is a problem I have with new metaphysics in general, he doesn't say anything about our rerlation to the world. Ramachandran seems to speak of the world how it is in itself and not about our relation to the world and what conditions that relation. In that he is a thorough rationalist.
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Tipp-Ex
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Posted 08/30/05 - 01:54 PM:	#6
The movement of the mind of Ramachandran follows the logic of the preamble to the Brahma Sutra Bhyasa (Vedanta Sutras) of Samkara (aka Sankara/Shankara/Shankaracarya) in so far as one can in the last 10 mins of a talk. That there should be knowledge at all is a paradox because of the opposing properties of the mental and the physical but we must accept that there is for it is realized in personal awareness (qualia). Ramachandran dips into the idea of the conceptual screen between the individual consciousness and reality i.e. name and form or namarupa. The self realizes a state that is beyond conceptual grasp. He too mixes in with categorical abandon some theoretical entities, a racy touch of scepticism. All very broad brush or perhaps that should be meat cleaver given his profession. Is it neutral monism? My position this week is that Monisms must unite as it takes properties to differentiate between them and they are beyond that. The way there may be by different roads, paradox is the high road but John Heil goes by an examination of properties.

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