What is the mind, and how do we address the hard problem?
My links: https://linktr.ee/frictionphilosophy.
1. Guest
Joseph Mendola is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. His work covers a range of topics, including ethics, metaphysics, and mind.
Check out his book, "The Neural Structure of Consciousness!"
2. Book Summary
Joseph Mendola’s The Neural Structure of Consciousness tackles the “hard problem” by asking how phenomenal features of experience (especially sensory qualia) relate to the physical features of the nervous system, aiming for a physicalist, internalist account that uses color experience as the central test case. The guiding idea is that the rich apparent structure of what we experience—e.g., the way colors stand in relations of similarity, opposition, and inclusion—can be explained by the real modal structure of the neurophysiology that makes those experiences possible: which neural states are available as alternatives, how they exclude or entail others, and how that “space of possibilities” is built into our visual system. Mendola frames this as a “MOUDD” approach: explaining sensory qualia by matching the modal structure of experience to the modal structure of the underlying neurophysiology, while treating many of the “properties” experience seems to present (like phenomenal colors “out there” on objects) as in significant respects illusory.
A core commitment of the book is a version of the “whole nervous system” model: rather than locating consciousness in some sharply bounded neural correlate, Mendola argues (with qualifications) that the relevant nervous-system-wide organization bridging sensory receptors and action is what constitutes sensory phenomenality. In detail, he proposes that each particular quale (e.g., a specific red-at-a-location) is constituted by a distinct “modal filament” that links stimulation to action within a fixed background, where the filament is individuated modally (by how it can vary and what alternatives it rules in/out), not necessarily by a single spatial pathway or by representational “information content.” This framework is then used to make sense of introspection and the feel of experience without leaning on standard representationalist machinery, by stressing how actual neural states and their “real possibilities” can be dynamically relevant to what we do and say.
The later chapters broaden the application: from color to other senses, then to the layered structure of visual space (including the way experience can attribute properties both to a “visual field” and to robust external objects), and finally to temporal experience, causal experience, and the sense of robust particularity. In discussing time, Mendola engages Husserl-style retentional structure (retention/primal impression/protention) and argues that any adequate view must respect the phenomenology of motion and temporal content in experience. The concluding material confronts familiar anti-physicalist challenges (the “explanatory gap,” bats, zombies, inverted spectra, and Mary) and responds in part by emphasizing differences in concepts and cognitive access: e.g., Mary’s “new knowledge” is cast as acquiring an experience-based concept and learning a coreference claim rather than learning an extra nonphysical fact.
3. Interview Chapters
00:00 - Introduction
00:54 - The hard problem
06:51 - Dualism
10:06 - Panpsychism
12:44 - Panpsychist rejoinders
15:28 - Modal structure
24:13 - Modal structure of neurophysiology
27:22 - Description-sensitivity
32:00 - Identity
34:52 - Type identity theory
36:27 - Boltzmann brains
39:17 - Correlations vs. identity
43:54 - Phenomenal concepts
45:56 - Zombies and inverts
50:07 - A priori reasoning
51:47 - Color experience
57:38 - Are colors real?
1:02:39 - Other senses
1:04:41 - Unity of consciousness
1:09:41 - Unconscious mental states
1:12:29 - Animal consciousness
1:15:48 - Vagueness
1:16:55 - Functionalism
1:20:48 - Artificial intelligence
1:21:28 - Paul Thagard's approach
1:25:51 - Progress
1:27:11 - Value of philosophy
1:28:32 - Conclusion
