The "New" Mysterians...?

 In a recent article from the Guardian, Stuart Jeffries acquaints us with a delightfully rancorous professional squabble between two philosophers of mind, Colin McGinn and Ted Honderich. Though their personal drama is fairly salacious, some nonsense about ex-girlfriends and subsequent ad hominem invective, their philosophical disagreements are no less divisive. Colin McGinn along with public intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky and Thomas Nagel are proponents of a philosophical stance called the "New Mysterian" position. They suggest rather surprisingly that certain philosophical problems, like the one of consciousness are insoluble. There are varying degrees of insolubility, from: just currently not solvable all the way to a kind of a priori insolubility. The name of the position itself derives from a band called Question Mark and the Mysterians [pictured left with self-denigrating  possibly ironic road sign], whose most recognizable single is the lyrically uninspired but oddly creepy "96 Tears."  Just to follow the ontological suture to its origin, the band name itself is borrowed from a 1959 movie entitled, The Mysterians, which itself was originally a 1957 movie called, Chikyu Boeigun. [Tagline: They come from another World...They want 3 kilometers of land-and...FIVE of your WOMEN!] That's .6 kilometers per woman, frightening.

The central tenet of the new mysterian position holds that the problem of consciousness is either too complex or too "close" to be properly explicated. What is implied by "closeness" is that the degree to which we are imbedded in consciousness either as an individual or as a species restricts our ability to apply the analytical tools required in order to properly parse the phenomenon of consciousness. If this sounds more like an old mysterian position along the lines of a theological doctrine of omniscience and the impenetrability of the mind of God, you are likely not alone. Though it does not explicitly or even implicitly demand a manifested onto-theological structure; such a position is at worst amenable to such a concept. Moreover, those who claim this philosophical stance offer good reasons for believing that this is the case, rather than (as it might be assumed) claiming an epistemic weariness or a psychological unwillingness to go on. The mysterians allow that there is still good work to be done on this most-vexing of phenomena, but the bar of accomplishment must necessarily fall short of a complete solution to the problem of consciousness. The mysterian position as far as can be determined is rather in the minority of the academic world, and immediately a certain sort of repulsion arises at the notion that a lively philosophical position can be promulgated from the stance of necessary failure. One of the most compelling and engaging features of philosophical discourse is that it does not as a matter or course, close itself off to its horizons of possibility. Furthermore, there is a generally accepted and fortifying sense of acknowledgment of the  indefatigability of the human intellect, which serves as a basis of scientific endeavor.Scientists and philosophers are notorious for their singular obsession with what might be considered abstracta  or minutiae; it is that sort of commitment, which has yielded many discoveries about our world, and our experiences. Prima facie this so-called mysterian position seems to undermine that commitment at its very core.

There are those who would claim that there exists a Church of Science and of Philosophy, insofar that these institutions are dependent on certain axiomatic principles or beliefs which cannot be challenged, much like canonical church doctrine, except through major revolutionary processes or "paradigm shifts." If indeed these cathedrals of the intellect do exist, surely we must count these "mysterians" as their most dangerous heretics. [They have come to invade the earth, abduct its women, and level the basic suppositions of a mechanistic observable universe] They are perhaps even more dangerous than those who would carry the banner of "intelligent design." All they want (though, it is admittedly far too much) is to have their books included in the liturgy and set alongside On the Origin of Species. These mysterians would have us believe that science/philosophy does not and cannot have all the answers, that in fact, (ab)solution does not lie within that Church.  Yet, there is a residuum of inquiry that would seem heretofore contradictory to this ostensibly defeatist attitude. The mysterian position does compel its critic to wonder, at least minimally, if in reality there exists a "solution" to the problem of consciousness, how will we know we have found it? More fundamentally, what constitutes a solution to the problem of consciousness? In the typical hypothetico-inductive experimental method, either reproducibility or some other strict method of verification is required in order to establish sufficient confidence about a theory. Is it necessary in order for us to establish the authenticity of a theory of consciousness, must it provide a description sufficiently capable of reproducing the phenomenon? Will a definition of consciousness be able to properly account for every minute and variegated circumstance in which consciousness manifests itself?  From this perspective one might consider including the mysterian position in the "big tent" of Philosophy and Science, because like most other authentic or meaningful philosophical inquiries, what it leaves us with is much like what it starts us with, a....