Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature: Thirtieth-Anniversary Edition (Princeton Classics)

by Richard Rorty

Since the brain is almost certainly not such a machine, the point here is one of principle, but the principle has philosophical importance. For it shows that the distinction between psychology and physiology is not a distinction between two distinct subject matters in any stronger a sense than is, say, the distinction between chemistry and physics. It might have turned out that chemical phenomena such as the formation of compounds never had anything to do with the submicroscopic makeup of the elements in question. But in fact they do, and so now whether we use physicists’ or chemists’ terms to explain a reaction is a matter of convenience or pedagogy. If it turns out that physiology has as much to do with multiplying as electrons have to do with explosions, then the psychology-physiology distinction will be equally pragmatic. So the paradoxical conclusion offered earlier—that had physiology been more obvious psychology would never have arisen—can be reaffirmed. Indeed, we can strengthen it and say that if the body had been easier to understand, nobody would have thought that we had a mind.26

December 1, 2020. Page 239.