Q&A: The Psychophysical Problem
The Psychophysical Problem
Question
Is the psychophysical problem really unsolvable?
And more broadly, what makes a question one about which we can know that no progress—whether scientific or philosophical—will bring about its solution?
Answer
It is hard to make such a determination. As things stand, to my understanding there is not even a hint in that direction. But philosophically it is not clear what could even count as a solution. There is an influence of the mind on the body and vice versa; that is a fact. Are we waiting to find the mechanism and a scientific description of it? That may perhaps come. After all, a physical explanation for this will probably not be found, since these are not physical phenomena.
Leibowitz saw this as a paradox, whereas I see it as a scientific problem.
I do not know of a general criterion. I think no solution will be found that explains why the laws of nature are as they are, for example. For any such explanation would itself presuppose other laws of nature, and in the final analysis no explanation will be found precisely because it is the final line. This is an example of a question that probably will not be solved by scientific means.
Discussion on Answer
I hope you understand the sentences you wrote. I don't.
Does the psychophysical problem exist with respect to animals just as it does with respect to humans?
The question seems important to me in order to test whether I understand what people are talking about when discussing the psychophysical problem.
As I understand it, the problem is basically the body-soul connection, regardless of the level of the soul.
I don't know what exists in animals. If they have a non-material component (a soul, regardless of its level), then the connection between it and the body is a psychophysical connection.
Would you go in the direction of Sefer HaBrit, with the idea that there are essential ideas that build the physical world as we know it, and in that way sketch a single continuum of body and soul?