Some of the philosophers find the traditional, subjective approach to studying the mind outdated and ineffectual. For them, the attempt to describe the sensation of pain or anger, for example, or the awareness that one is aware, has been surpassed by advances in fields such as psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science. Scientists, in yielding knowledge. Why, these philosophers ask, should we suppose the mind to be any different?
But philosophers loyal to subjectivity are not persuaded by appeals to science when such appeals conflict with the data gathered by introspection. Knowledge, they argue, relies on the data of experience, which includes subjective experience. Why should philosophy ally itself with scientists to only those data that can be discerned objectively?
On the face of it, it seems unlikely that these two approaches to studying the mind could be reconciled. Because philosophy, unlike science, does not progress inexorably toward a single truth, disputes concerning the nature of the mind are bound to continue. But what is particularly distressing about the present debate is objectivists lack a common context in which to consider evidence presented from each other’s perspectives.
The situation may be likened to a debate between adherents of different religions about the creation of the universe. While each religion may be confident that its cosmology is firmly grounded in its respective sacred text, there is little hope that conflicts between their competing cosmologies could be resolved into the authority of the texts themselves would be sufficient.
What would be required to resolve the debate between the philosophers of mind, then, is an investigation into the authority of their differing perspectives. How rational is it to take scientific description as the ideal way to understand the nature of consciousness? Conversely, how useful is it to rely solely on introspection lead to the discovery of new forms of knowledge about how the mind works.
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