INTRODUCTION
This script is a collection of a variety of works written over a period of thirty years: segments of papers read at public conferences, sparse notes utilized in lectures, papers started and never completed. My first intention was to unify them, having in common the same subject viewed from different perspectives, by using the technique of dialogues where two or more people hold opposite or different views. But, on a second thought, I decided it was not necessary. The main unifying element, even where opposite views are defended and pursued, is that these ideas spread from the same mind and the fact that they spread from the same, although subject to change, mind, make them a more genuine representation of what goes on in a philosophical mind over time. I believe that expressing opposite view exhibits a more natural way of doing philosophy, because when we think with an honest goal in mind, we try to consider both sides of the coin. In philosophy there are no arguments that are not biased; they may be internally consistent, but they depend always on arbitrary assumptions. So I tried to glue them together in a sort of diary, showing the development of my thoughts, doubts, pursuits of opposite directions, over a number of years. This may help other people to shorten the time to reach similar conclusions or, by contrast, they may find good reasons not to follow my path and mistakes.
However, there are a few ideas I have never given up throughout my life, and I am referring mainly to those that may label my doctrine (if calling it a ’doctrine’ is not a way of dignifying my thinking behind its merits and limits) a form of idealism, or empiricism, where ontology depends in large part on the structure of the mind. In trying to be convincing I tackle this problem over and over again, from different points of view and by expanding on the same issue. I often apply a rhetorical technique that can be compared to that of the so called princes of the forum.
In the country where I come from, these ‘princes’ were lawyers, very magniloquent orators who, just to mention one aspect of their techniques, would challenge the patience of the jury by repeating the same argument several times. When finally the jury (all judges in my country in those days) would make clear they had had enough of it, the prince of the forum would base his next argument on the universal human tendency to lose the temper. The difference between a respectable jurist and the defendant, who had committed his/her crime for a loss of temper, was thus minimized. I have no defendants of course; my search for reasons to accept an indisputable reality—in which I firmly believe, like everybody else— independent of the mind, is a failure. This failure is a via negativa to my conception of reality, which inevitably becomes a metaphysical construction.
My background in philosophy is analytic and therefore for a large part the language in which this essay is written reflects my background. But in the course of many years the narrowness of that discipline has forced me to depart from it and move around in a larger space of speculation. In short, I have become unsatisfied with analytic philosophy and I have conceded myself a certain freedom.
The reader may judge if I have gone astray. The freedom
consists primarily in not to take sides with this or that doctrine (up to a point), and to express and present possibilities that sometimes are in conflict with one another, though none of them can be dismissed on the basis of what we know.
The first chapter is a paper on personal identity read at a conference at West Chester University. A previous version of it was read at the University of Torino, in Vercelli, Italy for a ‘Convegno di filosofia analitica’. Here I try to set my view in a historical background as I have assimilated it. This point of view is propaedeutic to my point of view on knowledge and ontology.
The second chapter, titled ‘the mind/body problem’ is an antireductionist stance toward the mental while nourishing an underlying empathy for reduction. An abstract of it was read at
Siena, at a conference titled “Consciousness Naturalized Workshop,” which included presentations by Michael Tye, Ullian Place, and other supporters of reductionism.
The third chapter is a collection of reflections on language. It is based on a novel rejection of meaning altogether, as it is variously present in the analytic tradition, and a rejection of the notions of reference and conventionality. In its original form it was a paper on meaning read in Paris, at the University of Sainte Anne.
The fourth chapter is a kind of psychoanalysis of certain beliefs, coherent with my notion of personal identity and the place of mind within the notion of a person. Here, religious beliefs are dealt with as generated by a structure that is common to other fields of knowledge. The fact that religious beliefs are different from scientific beliefs in many respects - for instance, the role of evidence played in the latter is completely absent in the former- is irrelevant to the problem of their original matrix; the mental structure of believing is the same, only the object of belief makes a difference. These are considerations that underlie a large acceptance of biological innatism. These ideas were never discussed before any public audience.
The fifth and last chapter is an attempt to reconcile opposite beliefs that I am sure are present on each of us, irrational beings. Irrationality is seen not as opposite to the notion of rationality but as the utmost expression of rationality, to be perhaps explained within a future development of physics and natural laws, where certain apparent contradictory statements may find their solution in a semantic symmetry, a candidate to the ultimate essence of reality.
In scanning all the possible answers to the Mind-Body Problem I hint at some aspects of natural science, like biology and in particular neuroscience, physics, and finally artificial intelligence, according to two different reasons: 1) Science may contain the answer to some problems, like the majority of us believe, 2) or the constraints operating on the human mind may tell us not so much about truth and reality, but rather about the reasons why we often reach conclusions, in different fields of knowledge, that are similar in structure.
It should also be mentioned that none of the topics within science and philosophy outlined above are introduced in a self contained mode, nor are they explored as deeply as they would deserve. Such an enterprise is above my abilities and my intentions. A complete introduction by me to these topics would necessarily be less appealing than a biologist’s, a physicist’s, or a computer scientist’s explanation. And, since nowadays if you want to know what a ‘fermion’ or ‘genetic code’ are, all you need to do is to go on the internet and find good quality explanations, I did not worry about this shortcoming of my work. So my partial introductory statements are shaped according to the reasons I want to mention them in my writing rather than a satisfactory complete explanation that exceeds my competence. Finally, none of the issues are explored in depth. There are too many and a large part of them would require an independent treatment in order to be exhaustive.
What kind of message does this convey to the reader? Perhaps a positive skeptical message. Positive, in so far as it opens to science as the only source of knowledge. Still, it is a form of skepticism. Although we may find more and more about the nature of the human mind, we have no hope for knowledge of reality independent of the structure of the mind itself.
Since a presupposition that there is a reality out there is seriously contemplated, but suffers from a lack of scientific evidence, magnified by philosophical considerations, the conclusion, it seems to me, is that reality is chaos, and truth is a parochial property of organized minds governed by constraints that we may come to know. Knowledge is knowledge of thyself.
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