Does that which is mental actually exist?

Philosophy of Mind
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In this forum, I’ve encountered a thread of belief that I haven’t seen before. Some commentators seem to believe that the physical, but not the mental, has actual existence. They almost dismiss thoughts or thinking with the observation that most humans believe that these things are somehow based on/in physical platforms. And let’s assume they are, for the purposes of this discussion.

Even though the mental is based on physical platforms, does this preclude it from existence? We could go farther, and maybe consider the reality of Sherlock Holmes, but let’s hold back from that to start with. :folded_hands:

Do my thoughts exist? Are they real?

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For myself, I have the feeling that my physical and mental aspects are indivisibly linked into an integrated whole that might be conveniently called my “bodymind” (as I often do). But maybe this, too, is a distraction to our beginning discussion? :thinking:

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I don’t know what it means to be actually (as opposed to potentially or probably) existent (which is not existent), but “exists” typically means physical existence. The only people who talk about non-physical “existence” are philosophers.

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They are real. But they are instantiated in neurons. The content of thought can also be captured in image or speech. In all cases, they have one or more physical realisations.

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I think we need to be fair to those who lean towards physicalism/materialism. The way you post the question somehow doesn’t do justice to the view. I, myself, have commented on how thoughts must have physical infrastructure for it to be real.

When we say existent, it can be something that’s tangible. But shapes do not necessarily have tangibility, but they do exist.

Other things like thoughts can be argued as emergent. Emergent exists. Consciousness is emergent because without the physical structure of the brain and the nervous system (which the BIV skips altogether), there will be no consciousness.

So, to answer your question: non-tangible things exist. I think the confusion is between “existing” and “real”. I want to mention this distinction briefly. There shouldn’t be one. All physical and emergent things are real and existing.

A good example of an emergent that cannot exist without the physical infrastructure of the brain is dream. In medicine, general anesthesia hijacks your brain so that you lose consciousness. You don’t fall asleep. Lack of consciousness means you wouldn’t have dreams during the time you were unconscious.

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I don’t think the terms “exist” and “real” are helpful in philosophy, usually. The problem, put simply, is, How do we tell if “Does X exist?” is a question about the world or about the right way to use language?

We all know that “exist” gets used a dozen different ways, many of them “correct” or “incorrect” depending entirely on context. So when we ask “Does X exist?” do we know what we ought to mean in order to be “really talking” about existence? My suggestion is that we don’t, we can’t, because there are too many plausible and useful ways to employ the word. There’s no glossary we can point to as providing the correct use – though many people seem to think they have access to such a volume. No, all you or I can do is stipulate which one we’re using, the one that makes the most sense to us. And thus the debate morphs into something like, "Well, if that’s what you mean by ‘exist’, then . . . " – in short, an argument about words.

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I’ve done a lot of research and writing about this topic. My firm conviction is that all of us, the whole culture, is ‘labouring under the shadow of Descartes’. This applies to a great many people who have never heard of Descartes, because his ideas have entered the ‘grammar of culture’.

Recall that Descartes posited two substances - first being res cogitans, literally ‘thinking thing’. It has no extension (that is, size) and is basically like cognition pure and simple. The other there is res extensa, extended matter, which has absolutely no intelligence, but has size and mass. The human is somehow a composite of these two substances - body and spirit, if you like — although Descartes was never really able to describe how cogitans affected extensa — he thought it might be via the pineal gland, a small gland in the centre of the brain.

Bear in mind, ‘substance’ has a completely different meaning in philosophy than in everyday use. In philosophy substance is the ultimate subject—the underlying thing or kind of being is real in its own right —whereas things like colors, shapes, and sizes (properties) cannot exist independently and inhere in a substance.

So I’m saying that discussions of body and mind nearly always reflect the Cartesian division, even if the speakers aren’t necessarily aware of Descartes. When I studied philosophy, Descartes was the first unit I did, and the title of the course was Descartes—the first modern philosopher. And we’re all living in a culture of which he was a forefather.

Whereas I think it’s an argument about metaphysics, and what really exists, which is ontology. But as analytical philosophy has largely abandoned //classical// metaphysics (except modal metaphysics) then such debates can only be about words, as there is nothing corresponding to the category of ‘metaphysics’.

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To be clear: My beef is with the terminology, not with the idea that there are true things to be said about metaphysics and ontology. I’m suggesting that time-honored (or time-worn) terms such as “exist” and “real” should be avoided when possible, on two grounds: First, that they so often provoke unresolvable verbal disputes and thus sidetrack more important discussion, and second, because, as I said above, no one can really justify a correct use of a phrase like “what really exists” without valorizing some particular philosophical tradition. I’d prefer to keep the concept that I imagine you’re matching up with “what really exists,” but call it something else, depending on the precise nature of what you have in mind.

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If I define “exist” as “to be mind independent”, then thoughts do not exist. Can you think of a plausible definition of “exist” where thoughts exist?

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I agree that philosophy as now understood has vitiated discussions of questions about reality and existence. Better to stick with concrete examples.

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The only way of talking about existence that works in a range of cases is when it is treated as the subject of a quantification.

Working through “Does the mental exist”, first drop the scare word “actual”. Now, are there things that are mental? Well, thoughts, beliefs, doubts, and so on are mental; so we conclude that there is something that is mental, the quantification. So yes, that which is mental exists.

Back to “actual”, and related words such as “real”. These are comparative. Is it a real van Gogh, or is it a forgery? Is it an actual photo, or is it AI generated? Back to our question: is the mental actual, or is it…? Well, what? The questioner is trying to use the comparative “actual” without specifying the comparison. So the use misfires.

Sitting in the background is a usually vague notion that only physical things are real; this gets worked into a bit of a muddle. To be sure, only physical things are really physical - a tautology. But not all things that can be quantified over are physical. The questioner is trying to say “Is that which is mental actually physical?” But thoughts and beliefs are not like chairs and trees, so the question again misfires.

Good. That hopefully shows an intuitive grasp something’s being amiss with “actual”; I hope seeing it as a comparative show you how it is amiss.

In the way I showed, yes. Your emergent qualities are subject to quantification, while real things are subject to comparison.

Not without a bit of formal logic, no. Quantification cuts out some of the odd ways of understanding “exists”.

Hmm. There it is again. As opposed to… what? …you want to know what really exists, as opposed to what is…? What you want is what sorts of things we might best talk about; and that is a question about what language we should use. Metaphysics is about language use.

Yep. straight into an absurdity. Quantification takes care of that.

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I see this dualism of “mental cream” on “top of” a “physical platform” as something that the “tradition” has moved beyond. Way back in 1909, more than a century ago, we had Lenin defending this already old-fashioned dualism against “empirio-criticism.” One of the great “post-dualist” works that Lenin was reacting against was written in 1886.

I mention Mach because great translations are available, but quite a few forgotten thinkers were also working in this “post-dualism” space. For instance, Schuppe is totally forgotten.

In keeping with these requirements, Schuppe developed the notion of conscious immanence (Immanenz, Bewusstsein, Ich ) in which subject and object form a unity. This immanence of consciousness, or ego, is a fact (Tatsache ) that is given with certitude and can therefore serve as a starting point for epistemology. Only abstractly can the ego be divided into subject and object; concretely it is a correlation of the two. This is not to say that the object is a psychic entity, but merely that there is no being not related to a subject. To ignore the correlation would be to incur a contradiction because a supposed unthought entity is nevertheless implied in the thought of the epistemologist.

I use “presentism” for this tendency of people to “go along with the fads of the day.” To “live in this presentism” is to take for granted that Today’s famous talking heads are “cutting edge.” Reading old books suggests instead that communities forget, that the communal discourse can regress. As long as people “live” a “casual idolatry” via a need to signal their respectability by citing Today’s “experts,” there’s not much of a motive to dig in old books.

I realize that this may feel like a digression, but I don’t think it is. The “taken for granted dualism” is a “small town phenomenon,” where the news is running a century late. Weirdly even the mighty internet can be a “small town” like this, especially given the motives of those who control the algorithms.

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Now, are there things that are faerie? Well, gnomes, pixies, elves, and so on are faerie; so we conclude that there is something that is faerie, the quantification. So yes, that which is faerie exists.

This is the meaning of ‘real’ and ‘actual’ whose opposite is ‘counterfeit’. We are talking about the meaning whose opposite is ‘imaginary’.

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It fits right in with the movement away from mind-body dualism. Also agrees with Judaism’s non-differentiation of soul and body. The 2 were always together, never each by itself, independent of the other. It helps to know that soul meant breath. So a person = soul-body (mindbody) and death meant that this union was disrupted.

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Spot on. Yes, there are gnomes, pixies, elves and so on. They are, of course, not the sort of thing you meet for a coffee.

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I found it helpful to compare Dennett and Searle on this.

For Dennett, thoughts are useful illusions, but what is real are the physical processes inside the head, their adaptation and natural selection related to the fitness of the thinker. Since thoughts are illusions, they don’t have intrinsic intentionality.

For Searle, thoughts are physically real and have intrinsic intentionality. The physical processes inside the head are constituitive for thoughts, and the thoughts are just as physically real but on a biological level of description. Like digestion or photosynthesis, thoughts exist only for the one who has them, and as such they cannot be reduced to a third-person, objective description without losing what they essentially are.

I agree with Searle on this.

But from having thoughts inside the head it doesn’t follow that also the objects of thought, or meanings, are inside the head. I’m a semantic externalist.

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I believe they generally prefer dandelion tea. :hot_beverage:

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More broadly speaking: they don’t exist. They’re not real.

So then, how?

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Yes. :smiley: But are we right to do so? Is there a point to our considerations? What is it? :thinking:

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They are not physical, flesh and blood, yes, indeed.

They are folklore. Real folklore, too, with history, not the made-up stuff in fantasy stories.

No disagreement.

You point?

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I’m with you — and Heidegger — on this.

Signs are world-directed. Of course ! But we can “talk to ourselves” without making noise. I can “think of a number” without telling you. So “inside my head” has some justification as a metaphor. But this gets massively inflated.

Here I’d grant that of course the brain is involved. But then I’d insist that signs are empirical objects. Many expressions accomplish the same-enough task, so we might posit an “thought” that is “behind” or "carried by " expressions. I find this inefficient. I’d prefer to say that thoughts are chains of signs that are of course related to neurological events.