Excerpt: First, one is impressed by the successes of science, endorsing materialism about everything and so about the mind. Second, one is moved by problem of consciousness to see a gap between physics and consciousness, thereby endorsing dualism, where both matter and consciousness are fundamental. Third, one is moved by the inscrutability of matter to realize that science reveals at most the structure of matter and not its underlying nature, and to speculate that this nature may involve consciousness, thereby endorsing panpsychism. Fourth, one comes to think that there is little reason to believe in anything beyond consciousness and that the physical world is wholly constituted by consciousness, thereby endorsing idealism. Some recent strands in philosophical discussion of the mind–body problem have recapitulated this progression: the rise of materialism in the 1950s and 1960s, the dualist response in the 1980s and 1990s, the festival of panpsychism in the 2000s, and some recent stirrings of idealism. In my own work, I have taken the first two steps and have flirted heavily with the third. In this paper I want to examine the prospects for the fourth step: the move to idealism.

The consideration of the relation of mutual specification between a distinguished whole and the parts distinguished in it, and of their specification of two nonintersecting phenomenal domains, constitute the starting point for a radical constructivist redefinition of the ‘mind-body problem’ (MBP), where the opposition between mind and body turns into a relation of complementarity between components of a larger (social, ecological) whole. The implications as to the traditional views on the MBP are outlined, stressing in particular the overcoming of the holism/reductionism and parallelism/interactionism dualities.

Topics addressed include: constructive alternativism and the knowledge–reality relation; anticipation, self-organisation, and structural determinism; constructs, systems, and complementarity; identity, sociality, and the mind–body problem; acceptance, orthogonal interaction, and the psychotherapeutic relationship; and person-as-scientist and the narrative approach.

Die Erwiderung nimmt den Anspruch R. Gehrkes ernst, im Namen aufklärerischer Prinzipien den radikalen Konstruktivismus, die Autopoiesetheorie und die Empirische Literaturwissenschaft zu kritisieren. An Gehrkes Ausführungen zur Leib-Seele Problematik wird gezeigt, daß er faktisch eine gegenaufklärerische Position vertritt. Die in seiner Kritik enthaltene politische Denunziation wird zurückgewiesen und der manipulative Gebrauch von Zitaten deutlich gemacht. \\The rejoinder takes seriously Gehrke’s claim to criticize radical constructivism, the theory of Autopoiesis, and empirical studies of literature from an enlightenment position. Taking up Gehrke’s remarks an the mind-body problem, it is shown that he in fact argues from an anti-enlightenment position. The political denunciation contained in Gehrke’s critique is rejected and his manipulative use of citations is demonstrated.

Several alternatives vie today for recognition as the most plausible ontology, from physicalism to panpsychism. By and large, these on- tologies entail that physical structures circumscribe consciousness by bearing phenomenal properties within their physical boundaries. The ontology of idealism, on the other hand, entails that all physical struc- tures are circumscribed by consciousness in that they exist solely as phe- nomenality in the first place. Unlike the other alternatives, however, idealism is often considered implausible today, particularly by analytic philosophers. A reason for this is the strong intuition that an objective world transcending phenomenality is a self-evident fact. Other argu- ments – such as the dependency of phenomenal experience on brain function, the evidence for the existence of the universe before the origin of conscious life, etc. – are also often cited. In this essay, I will argue that these objections against the plausibility of idealism are false. As such, this essay seeks to show that idealism is an entirely plausible ontology.

Key words: idealism, physicalism, panpsychism, cosmopsychism, mind-body problem.

Second paragraph: Every reductionist has his favorite analogy from modern science. It is most unlikely that any of these unrelated examples of successful reduction will shed light on the relation of mind to brain. But philosophers share the general human weakness for explanations of what is incomprehensible in terms suited for what is familiar and well understood, though entirely different. This has led to the acceptance of implausible accounts of the mental largely because they would permit familiar kinds of reduction. I shall try to explain why the usual examples do not help us to understand the relation between mind and body – why, indeed, we have at present no conception of what an explanation of the physical nature of a mental phenomenon would be. Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless. The most important and characteristic feature of conscious mental phenomena is very poorly understood. Most reductionist theories do not even try to explain it. And careful examination will show that no currently available concept of reduction is applicable to it. Perhaps a new theoretical form can be devised for the purpose, but such a solution, if it exists, lies in the distant intellectual future.

Open peer commentary on the article “Conflating Abstraction with Empirical Observation: The False Mind-Matter Dichotomy” by Bernardo Kastrup. Upshot: Based on epistemological considerations, the author of the target article proposes an idealist solution to the mind-body problem. But is such a transition from epistemology to ontology justified? This commentary briefly asks about the historical motives underlying the dichotomy of mind/matter and argues that science requires metaphysical commitments. This gets illustrated with respect to some of the material mentioned at the end of the target article.

Excerpt: The radical constructivist philosophy serves as an epistemological framework for a discussion of the role of feedback in theories of behavior and for the application of operational analyses to cognition. It posits that biological organisms build their “realities” or “environments” and respond to those constructions. The environment, then, is a model which is internally organized and which cannot be directly known. The philosophical origins of this position lie in Bishop Berkeley’s rationalist dissociation of sensible object and material object (which is unknowable). As an epistemology, radical constructivism cannot be defended with “evidence” derived from empirical findings since evidence is itself the product of the constructor. Rather, the test of constructivism lies in the generation of a system of formal descriptions of the psychological processes by which the organism constructs a world. As will be shown, these formal descriptions are subject to tests.

Key words: Solipsism, feedback, mind-body problem, purposiveness

Excerpt: There are two basic requirements for any paradigm in cognitive science: it must provide a genuine resolution of the mind-body problem, and it must provide for a genuine core articulation between a multiplicity of disciplines – at the very least between psychology, linguistics and neuroscience. Cognitive science owes its very existence to the fact the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM), whatever its defects and limitations, does fulfill these two requirements. In order even to get off the ground, any candidate for the role of an “alternative paradigm” must do at least as well as CTM in both these respects. The aim of this text is to explain how the proto-paradigm of enaction does just this.

This paper has two parts. In the “Notes on Dialectics” I develop some ideas that apply to dualities quite generally. In the “Epilog,” I have stated my ideas on the Mind-Body Problem from the perspective taken in the notes. Briefly stated, my feeling is that if there is going to be a change be our perception of the Mind-Body relation, there has to be a change in the context in which the problem is seen to arise. This implies, at least, a change (i) in the logic used to understand that dialectics and wholes are; (ii) in the scientific ideas about what mind is, (moving away from the brain-secretion image, towards an understanding of mind as conversational domain); and (iii) in the cultural conceptions about mind, (which restrict the kind of experience that are socially and individually accessible).