Psychoanalysing Philosophy — Further Thoughts
A few weeks ago I wrote some articles on Medium about the relationship between philosophy, psychoanalysis, and by implication science, which is always based on the philosophical understanding of the scientists involved. This was partly a conversation between Paul Austin Murphy and myself, inspired by an article by him. The important theme was that of hidden, therefore unconscious, factors in philosophy, thus how some philosophers and scientists might be led astray by psychological factors of which they are unaware. I posed the question of whether philosophers ever psychoanalyse themselves in order to understand why they believe the things they do.
It is a basic rule of philosophical logic that, if one’s starting assumptions or preconceptions are flawed, then one’s conclusions are likely to be erroneous. My main interest in this topic is that many scientists (and philosophers) work unquestioningly from the assumption of the truth of philosophical materialism, otherwise known as physicalism.
On the whole Murphy was critical of my point of view, saying that I was placing too much emphasis on the role of unconscious factors, and that a philosophical argument is capable of standing on its own merits. While I broadly accept his point when stated in those terms, I remain committed to my position that valuable insights can be made, if an argument can be shown to be faulty through an analysis of the underlying psychology.
Since I wrote those articles, I’ve come across two interesting quotes which seem to be in agreement with my position, or at least share my concerns. The first comes from the philosopher Albert North Whitehead who wrote: “There will be some fundamental assumptions which adherents of all the variant systems within the epoch unconsciously presuppose. Such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them”¹. The second quote comes from Friedrich Nietzsche, who wrote: “Most of the conscious thinking of a philosopher is secretly guided and forced into certain channels by his instincts”².
Here is one excellent example of what I’m talking about. In 2016, neuroscientist David Eagleman presented a series for BBC television called The Brain. During the series he made the following statements:
- “For the past 20 years I’ve been trying to understand how what happens in three pounds of jelly-like material somehow becomes us”.
- “Somehow all this weird biological stuff results in the experience of you being you”.
- “Who we are can only be understood in terms of the three-pound organ in our heads”.
In essence, Eagleman has been trying to solve the Hard Problem of Consciousness from a neuroscientific perspective. It is generally agreed by philosophers that this problem is insoluble, but that does not seem to have deterred him. It would seem that he has never stopped for one moment to consider the possibility that the brain might not be responsible for the self or consciousness.
Let’s pause and merely hypothesise that he might be wrong. Apart from stating the obvious that he would have wasted his life in pursuing an illusion, there is also the issue of how much money has been invested — the whole research project, his salary and that of any assistants, and expensive equipment. This would all have been pointless if the brain does not generate consciousness. He has assumed without hesitation, however, that this is the case. He cannot help himself because, as Whitehead said, “such assumptions appear so obvious that people do not know what they are assuming because no other way of putting things has ever occurred to them”. In other words, Eagleman has assumed the truth of materialism, apparently without ever noticing that he has done this.
I personally believe that he has got this completely wrong, and that the true explanation for the relationship between consciousness and the brain is what is known as the Transmission Model, that the brain is an organ which limits or filters consciousness. Whether I am right or wrong is not the issue. The point is that Eagleman has never once examined his preconceptions, in order to establish their validity before embarking on his project. Wouldn’t it be worthwhile to do this?
As an aside, it’s worth mentioning that nothing has changed since that series of programmes. Eagleman was interviewed earlier this year for New Scientist magazine. The title of the article was ‘How our brains could create whole new senses’³.
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I hope you have enjoyed this article. I have written in the past about other topics, including spirituality, metaphysics, psychology, science, Christianity, politics and astrology. All these articles are on Medium, but the simplest way to see a guide to them is to visit my website (click here and here).
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Footnotes:
1. Science and the Modern World, Free Press, 1967, as quoted by Michael Talbot, Mysticism and the New Physics, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, p6
2. §3 of Beyond Good and Evil, as quoted by James Cussen in this Medium article
3. Magazine issue 3334 , published 15 May 2021
