thesis
thesis
thesis
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there any way in which conceptual complexity could be reduced?<br />
Consider an intentional action, such as the writing of a cheque to pay for some pur-<br />
chased groceries. Consider now a second action, described as follows: moving an object in a<br />
manner that past experience has suggested will make marks on a piece of paper, where it<br />
has been understood that these marks will be interpreted by an organisation of individuals<br />
in order to transfer a certain quantity of money from my ‘pile’ to their ‘pile’, which they de-<br />
serve considering that I have taken some food from their ‘place’ to my ‘place’. Are these two<br />
action descriptions recognisably identical? If so, we have gone some way towards inten-<br />
tional atomisation – breaking down a complex thought into simpler elements. And if this<br />
could be done for all our intentions then we may have a way of reducing their tyrannical<br />
complexity to perhaps a few dozen basic principles, each of which is likely to be grounded<br />
in the fairly mundane needs or experiences of a very small child. Such a representation<br />
might afford easier matching with events as physically described, both in terms of complex-<br />
ity and linguistic description – thus weakening Davidson’s point about the “disparate com-<br />
mitments of the mental and physical schemes”.<br />
But all this is highly speculative. Even if these processes of interpolation and atomisation<br />
became effective, we would still be left with a fairly complex and anomalous representation<br />
of phenomenology and it still is not clear how this could be matched with physical events in<br />
any manner worthy of the title ‘science’. Perhaps this is one part of science which will turn<br />
out to be interminably complex – by objectifying all phenomena until now, science has put<br />
off all the truly difficult problems until it felt ready to tackle consciousness itself. And now it<br />
is beginning to rise to the challenge, it faces the resurgence of all those old explanatory loans<br />
from which it had borrowed so much time.<br />
The Theological Alternative<br />
Perhaps, then, it is best for man to admit his limits and accept that science will never ex-<br />
plain the phenomenon of consciousness. The only alternative, if we seek explanation at all, is<br />
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