Drawing the boundary between subject and object: comments on the mind-brain problem.
Physics says that it cannot deal with the mind-brain problem, because it does not deal in subjectivities, and mind is subjective. However, biologists (among others) still claim to seek a material basis for subjective mental processes, which would thereby render them objective. Something is clearly wrong here. I claim that what is wrong is the adoption of too narrow a view of what constitutes 'objectivity', especially in identifying it with what a 'machine' can do. I approach the problem in the light of two cognate circumstances: (a) the 'measurement problem' in quantum physics, and (b) the objectivity of standard mathematics, even though most of it is beyond the reach of 'machines'. I argue that the only resolution to such problems is in the recognition that closed loops of causation are 'objective'; i.e. legitimate objects of scientific scrutiny. These are explicitly forbidden in any machine or mechanism. A material system which contains such loops is called 'complex'. Such complex systems thus must possess non-simulable models; i.e. models which contain impredicativities or 'self-references' which cannot be removed, or faithfully mapped into a single coherent syntactic time-frame. I consider a few of the consequences of the above, in the context of thus redrawing the boundary between subject and object.
Rosen
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Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
D055592:Biophysical Phenomena; D001703:Biophysics; D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology*; D015984:Causality; D003243:Consciousness; D006801:Humans; D008433:Mathematics; D008606:Mental Processes; D008959:Models, Neurological; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009446:Neurobiology; D009484:Neuropsychology; D011789:Quantum Theory; D013598:Systems Theory