I am the first to admit that it is extremely unusual to be handing out another Face-in-Palme d’Or award when the confetti hasn’t even been cleaned up from the last awards ceremony. But folks, I simply had to recognize the unique accomplishment of Piero’s comments.
First some background. It all began when Piero commented in my article “Is Daniel Dennett a conspiracy wingnut?” on the lack of intellectual integrity pertaining to the discipline of theology. Why? He explains:
“As far as I know, any reputable discipline ending in -logy has as its object of study something the existence of which is not in dispute. Could theologists follow the logical path and prove the existence of at least one deity before proceeding to describe them?”
I responded:
“Piero, I take it that your real concern is not with disciples that have a suffix ending in “logy” but rather with various forms of public knowledge discourse simpliciter. So let’s take one of them with which I have some familiarity: the philosophy of mind. This is a reputable public knowledge discourse, I assure you. And this is despite the fact that some of the participants in this discourse (and some people who are not) actually doubt there is such a thing as a mind.”
Now we come to Piero’s award winning reply:
Surely there must be people who doubt there is such a thing as a “mind”. After all, we are seven billion, so within us you’ll find every imaginable nutcase.
But the analogy fails on several counts.
1. It is obvious that we have a brain. 2. It is obvious that when the brain dies our “self” dies with it (there is no evidence of a mind surviving the death of the brain). 3. It is obvious that when the brain is damaged some parts of our “selves” are damaged too (Alzheimer’s disease, for instance) 4. It is obvious that our brain can enter a state we would describe as “unconsciousness” (sleep, coma) 5. It is obvious that several chemicals can alter our perception of the world and even of our “selves” (heroin, LSD) 6. Hence, it is reasonable to assume that “mind” is simply a shortcut for “the firing of synapses within my brain”.
Besides, what philosophers call “philosophy of mind” is destined to be subsumed within neuroscience. As you should know, philosophers can only occupy the spaces that science leaves open to them. For example, there is no “natural philosophy” anymore: what we currently have is physics, chemistry and biology.
Nothing intelligible can be said about deities. Phrases such as “the ground of all being” are just syntactic constructs which ignore semantics altogether. Until theistic or deistic philosophers can agree on what they mean by God, the field of theology is barren.
This passage is a treasure trove of whoppingly bad argument. How bad? Well take the sentence “Nothing intelligible can be said about deities.” It is not every day that people commeting here produce self-refuting statements (unintentionally no less!), so I was really impressed with that one. (In case you missed it, Piero seems to assume that he made an intelligible statement about deities.) Indeed, that unintentionally self-refuting statement would probably have been sufficient for Piero to win an award.
But folks, there’s more!
Next shift your gaze up to the opening sentence: “Surely there must be people who doubt there is such a thing as a “mind”. After all, we are seven billion, so within us you’ll find every imaginable nutcase.” Apparently Piero views people who doubt that a mind exists as “nutcases”. With that statement Piero’s unintended irony comes into view. To make that clear, note that as a philosopher of mind Dennett has defended eliminative materialism, a position that denies that the mind, as such, exists. So whether or not Dennett is a conspiracy theorist, by Piero’s own admission he is a nutcase!
In between the irony and self-refutation we have a combination of several claims, some of which are trivially true (e.g. events in our brains affect our minds) and others which are very much contended (e.g. “‘mind’ is simply a shortcut for ‘the firing of synapses within my brain’.”)
But it gets worse yet. Piero’s description of the mind as “simply a shortcut” for the popping off of neurons firing sounds a whole lot like the denial of mind that Piero attributed to nutcases. In other words, Piero appears to round things out with a form of cognitve hari-kari!
So there you have it. Self-refutation, unintentional irony, triviality, and cognitive hari-kari. If the Face-in-Palme was an awards show rather than a single honor, Piero would have swept the categories.
Congratulations Piero!
