On The Impossible Possibility of Progress in The

Philosophy of Mind: A Post-Postscript to “Merleau-Ponty

Meets The Kripke Monster Redux”

Robert Hanna

It is conceptual and necessary truth that each conscious state has the phenomenological
properties that it has. And it is non-conceptual but necessary truth that each conscious
mental state has the physiological properties it has. (Nagel, 2000: p. 450)

Analytic a priori truths are conceptually necessary truths, and synthetic a priori truths are
non-conceptually necessary truths; analytic a priori falsehoods are conceptually necessary
falsehoods, and synthetic a priori truths are non-conceptually necessary falsehoods; analytic a
priori possibilities are conceptual possibilities, and synthetic a priori possibilities are non-
conceptual possibilities; analytic a priori impossibilities are conceptual impossibilities, and
synthetic a priori impossibilities are non-conceptual impossibilities. Now, the modal scopes
of analytic a priori or conceptual necessity and of synthetic a priori or non-conceptual
necessity are categorically distinct: analytic a priori or conceptually necessary truths obtain
in every logically possible world, but synthetic a priori or non-conceptually necessary truths
obtain in all and only humanly-experienceable worlds, and are never false otherwise, because
they’re truth-value gaps in all the logically possible worlds that aren’t humanly experienceable.
Of course, all these claims are controversial; nevertheless, I’ve argued for them in detail
and at length in my book Cognition, Content, and the A Priori (Hanna, 2015: esp. chs. 4-8).
But if these claims are intelligible and true, then this means that there are cases in which
some propositions or statements and/or their corresponding states-of-affairs are
analytically a priori or conceptually possible, yet also synthetically a priori or non-
conceptually impossible: for example, both spirits (i.e., disembodied conscious, intentional
minds) and zombies (i.e., material or physical and behavioral duplicates of conscious,
intentional animals like us that nevertheless lack consciousness) are analytically a priori
or conceptually possible, yet they’re also synthetically a priori or non-conceptually
impossible.

That all being so, then what is the nature of the relation between mental properties
and physical properties in conscious, intentional animals like us? The answer that
Michelle Maiese and I proposed almost fourteen years ago in our book Embodied Minds
in Action (Hanna and Maiese, 2009), is that in conscious, intentional animals like us,
mental properties and physical properties are mutually irreducible, yet also synthetically a
priori or non-conceptually mutually necessitating, properties, hence complementary, fused, or

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entangled properties. Hence, conscious, intentional minds like ours are essentially embodied
minds: that is, our conscious, intentional minds are synthetically a priori or non-conceptually
necessarily and completely embodied minds, and our minds and our bodies stand to one
another in a synthetic a priori or non-conceptually necessary relation of complementarity,
fusion, or entanglement. More specifically, our minds are the global dynamic activating and
causally efficacious guiding structures of our living organismic bodies, so that the mind-body
relation is essentially morphetic-hyletic, or hylomorphic.

Now, in order to defend this package of modal-metaphysical views in the

philosophy of mind, which Maiese and I call the essential embodiment theory, I’ve found it
necessary to reject an extremely widely-held conception I call the mechanistic worldview,
centered on the root metaphor of the machine (for example, in the 17th and 18th centuries,
a clock, in the 19th century, a steam engine, and paradigmatically since the full emergence
in the 1920s and 30s of what James C. Scott very aptly calls “high modernism,”1 a Turing
machine, i.e., a digital computer), which says that

everything in the world is fundamentally either a formal automaton or a natural

automaton, operating strictly according to Turing-computable algorithms and/or
time-reversible or time-symmetric deterministic or indeterministic laws of nature,
especially the Conservation Laws (including the 1st Law of Thermodynamics) and
the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, which also imposes always-increasing entropy—
i.e., the always-increasing unavailability of any system’s thermal energy for
conversion into mechanical action or work—on all natural mechanisms, until a
total equilibrium state of the natural universe is finally reached (see Hanna and
Paans, 2020; Hanna, 2022a: esp. chs. 1-2 and 4).

And as a diametrically opposed, paradigm-shifting alternative to the mechanistic

wordview, I’ve proposed the neo-organicist worldview, centered on the root metaphor of
the living organism (for example, a plant, an animal, and above all, rational, self-conscious
minded animals like us), which says:

1 See (Scott, 1998: p. 4):

[High modernism] is best conceived as a strong, one might even say muscle-bound, version of the
self-confidence about scientific and technical progress, the expansion of production, the growing
satisfaction of human needs, the mastery of nature (including human nature), and, above all, the
rational design of social order commensurate with the scientific understanding of natural laws.

And now, a century later, high modernism has hit a brick wall. Indeed, it’s not implausible to see the
2020s as the mega-crisis of high modernism, the formal and natural sciences and Analytic philosophy, and the
mechanistic worldview, alike. See (Hanna and Paans, 2020; Hanna, 2022a, 2022b).

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 (i) that everything in the world is essentially or fundamentally uncomputable,
negentropic, processual, purposive, self-organizing, time-irreversible or time–
asymmetric, and non-equilibrium thermodynamic,

(ii) that there is a basic metaphysical and ontological continuity, running from the
Big Bang singularity to uncomputable, negentropic, time-asymmetric, non-
equilibrium thermodynamic energy flows, to living organisms, to conscious
minded animals, to rational, self-conscious minded animals with free will and
practical agency, and finally to social institutions of all kinds (Torday, Miller Jr,
and Hanna, 2020b; Hanna, 2022a), and

(iii) that all mechanical systems whatsoever, whether formal or natural, are nothing
but systematic abstractions from—that is, degenerate cases of, fragments of, or
limiting cases of—fundamentally organic systems, and therefore all mechanical
systems whatsoever are logically or nomologically strongly supervenient on organic
systems (Hanna, 2022a: esp. ch. 4 and Appendices 1-4).

Presupposing the essential embodiment theory of the mind-body relation and mental
causation together with the neo-organicist worldview, I’ve also argued for a doctrine in
the metaphysics of free agency (i.e., free will + practical agency), that I call natural
libertarianism, which says

(iv) that even though rational human animals never violate any general causal
laws of nature and/or mathematical laws of probability and never bring any new
matter or energy into the natural world, it remains really possible for us, in context,
to choose and do some things we want to, in purposive, creative, and morally-
empowered ways, by spontaneously locally re-organizing and re-structuring the
total quantity of matter or energy that’s always already available then and there.

For further details about this overall line of thinking, from the essential
embodiment theory, to the neo-organicist worldview, to natural libertarianism, you can
consult my co-authored book, Embodied Minds in Action, my essay “Minding the Body,”
my book Deep Freedom and Real Persons, my book, The Philosophy of the Future, and
especially my essay “Merleau-Ponty Meets The Kripke Monster Redux: The Essential
Embodiment Theory Now” (Hanna and Maiese, 2009; Hanna, 2011, 2018a, 2022a, 2022c).
Moreover, lest you think that this overall line of thinking is completely contrarian, crazy,
and shared by no big-name philosophers, you need only read Thomas Nagel’s “What is it like
to be a bat?,” “The Psychophysical Nexus,” and Mind and Cosmos, in order to discover a

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remarkably parallel and similar line of thinking (Nagel, 1970, 2000, 2012; Hanna, 2021,
2022c).

But although I’ve learned much from Nagel ‘s work, alas, I’m absolutely certain
that he’s never read a single word of mine. Such is the existential condition of the
philosophical nemo, no-name, or nobody, whose leading ambition is ironically realistic,
posthumous, and retrospective, namely, for their work to have been unjustly neglected during
their own lifetime. It sounds odd at first, but when you think about it, it’s actually
existentially win-win. The more they unjustly neglect your work while you’re alive, the
more you satisfy that posthumous and retrospective ambition (win 1); and then after
you’re actually dead, nothing will matter to you anyhow, so it can’t ever bother you that
your work is still being unjustly neglected (win 2).

In any case, and moving right along, in this post-postscript to “Merleau-Ponty

Meets The Kripke Monster Redux” (since that essay already has what I call a “concluding
semi-autobiographical quasi-Whiteheadian postscript”) I want to offer a different, yet at
the same time closely-related, line of argument about philosophical, sociocultural, moral,
and sociopolitical ideology and its modality. More specifically, I think that there’s a viciously
triangular ideological relation between:

(i) materialist or physicalist views in the philosophy of mind and the metaphysics of
free will, especially including reductive materialism or physicalism, eliminative
materialism or physicalism, non-reductive materialism or physicalism, and strong
artificial intelligence (see Chalmers, 2002; Kim, 2005), universal natural determinism,
universal natural indeterminism, hard incompatibilist universal natural
determinism or indeterminism, and soft compatibilist universal natural
determinism or indeterminism (Hanna, 2018a: esp. chs. 1-5),

(ii) the mechanistic worldview, and

(iii) the social-institutional framework consisting of technocratic mega-capitalism

together with its social-institutional matrix, neoliberal democratic or non-democratic
coercive authoritarian nation-States and the military-industrial-university-digital
complex, and their governing elites, including, for example, technocratic mega-
capitalist enterprises like the Tesla Corporation, technocratic multi-billionaires
like Elon Musk, neoliberal so-called democratic coercive authoritarian nation-
States like the USA, and leading professional academic philosophers and scientists
at the world’s top-ranked universities: for terminological convenience, and
borrowing a famously evocative term from Thomas Hobbes’s highly influential

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 1651 treatise, Leviathan, let’s call this social-institutional framework the mechanistic
leviathan.

Now, here’s how that ideological vicious triangle modally plays out. Let’s suppose
for the purposes of argument that the essential embodiment theory of the mind-body
relation and mental causation, natural libertarianism, and the neo-organicist worldview,
are all true. Then all materialist or physicalist views in the philosophy of mind, all
incompatibilistic or compatibilistic universal natural deterministic or indeterministic
views in the metaphysics of free agency, and the mechanistic worldview, are false. But,
all beliefs in materialist or physicalist views in the philosophy of mind and in
incompatibilistic or compatibilistic universal natural deterministic or indeterministic
views in the metaphysics of free agency, are grounded in belief in the mechanistic worldview.
Therefore, no one who’s committed to a belief in any materialist or physicalist view in
the philosophy of mind and/or to a belief in any incompatibilistic or compatibilistic
universal natural deterministic or indeterministic view in the metaphysics of free agency,
will ever change their minds about those beliefs, unless they change their minds about the
mechanistic worldview. Nevertheless, on the one hand, publicly professing belief in
materialism or physicalism in the philosophy of mind, and/or in incompatibilistic or
compatibilistic universal natural determinism or indeterminism in the metaphysics of
free agency, and therefore in the mechanistic worldview, and on the other hand, the
mechanistic leviathan, are effectively and ever-increasingly ideologically symbiotically
related, as follows:

necessarily, the more that leading professional academic philosophers and scientists
at the world’s top-ranked universities publicly profess their belief in materialism or
physicalism in the philosophy of mind, and/or in incompatibilistic or
compatibilistic universal natural determinism or indeterminism in the
metaphysics of free agency, and therefore in the mechanistic worldview, then the
more funding, high social status, and other ever-increasing professional academic
incentives they’ll get from the mechanistic leviathan; and again necessarily, the more
that the mechanistic leviathan is ideologically validated by the leading professional
academic philosophers and scientists at the world’s top-ranked universities who
publicly profess belief in materialism or physicalism in the philosophy of mind,
and/or in incompatibilistic or compatibilistic universal natural determinism or
indeterminism in the metaphysics of free agency, and therefore in the mechanistic
worldview, then the more secure the mechanistic leviathan’s sociocultural and
sociopolitical control and dominance over everyone else in the world will be.

Therefore, it’s going to be ideologically impossible to make any progress in the philosophy
of mind, no matter how false materialism or physicalism in the philosophy of mind, and/or
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incompatibilistic or compatibilistic universal natural determinism or indeterminism in
the metaphysics of free agency, and therefore the mechanistic worldview, actually are,
and, even more importantly for humankind more generally, no matter how rationally
unjustified and immoral the mechanistic leviathan actually is, and no matter how disastrous
and malign its sociocultural and sociopolitical control and dominance over everyone else
in the world, actually is (Hanna, 2018b, 2022a).

As a case in point, consider Thomas Nagel again, who, even though he’s been a
leading Analytic philosopher at some of the world’s top-ranked universities for decades
and decades, officially “confessed” to idealism and rational teleology in Mind and Cosmos
(Nagel, 2012: pp. 17, 123), and therefore is now widely regarded by other Analytic
philosophers as having “lost it,” and, as a consequence, has paid a significant price in
damaged professional academic reputation and status (Hanna, 2021). In short, even Nagel
has absolutely failed to change the mind of anyone who belongs to the mechanistic
leviathan.

Is there any way out of this ideological vicious triangle? I’d been cudgelling my
brains about this for weeks, when finally something occurred to me that’s closely related,
oddly enough, to the existential condition of being a philosophical nobody. Recently I’ve
been reading Engels’s The Condition of the Working Class in England (Engels, 1845/1958), a
truly brilliant sociopolitical study and a literary masterpiece in the same league and mode
as Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (Gaskell, 1848/1997) and Charles Dickens’s Hard Times
(Dickens, 1854/2003), that captures the essence of real socialism, without either the
mechanistic ideology of later Marx’s and/or Engels’s dialectical materialism or the
coercive authoritarian totalitarianism of Leninist, Trotskyist, or Stalinist communism. By
analogy with Engels’s argument, I think it’s arguable that there’s an independent genuine
alternative to the ideological vicious triangle, that will have its philosophical, scientific,
moral, and sociopolitical origin and energy-source in some contemporary 21st century
social-institutional analogue of the horribly oppressed industrial proletariat in the mid-to-
late 19th century.

Let’s call this contemporary 21st century social-institutional analogue of the 19th
century industrial proletariat, the nemos, the no-names, or the nobodies. Unlike the 19th
century industrial proletariat, the social institution of the nobodies isn’t constituted by a
single socioeconomic class; and only some but not all of the nobodies are horribly
oppressed; but in any case the social institution of the nobodies brings together all those
who don’t belong to the mechanistic leviathan, i.e., all those who don’t belong to the social-
institutional framework consisting of technocratic mega-capitalism together with its
social-institutional matrix, neoliberal democratic or non-democratic coercive
authoritarian nation-States and the military-industrial-university-digital complex, and
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their governing elites. So everyone who isn’t a major or even a minor big-name, that is, who
isn’t a somebody, is a nemo, no-name, or nobody. Above all, the nobodies are, as
individuals, sociopolitically obscure and weak; hence they’re all commonly and derisively
branded “losers” by the big-winning but also robotically conformist members of the
mechanistic leviathan. The social institution of the nobodies comprises people of all ages,
genders, ethnicities, and races, including not only the contemporary lumpen
proletariat—for example, homeless people (including people who live in their RVs or
cars), and petty criminals—but also millennials and Gen Z-ers who don’t have or even
really want jobs and are living off their parents, often enough in their parent’s basements,
and ordinary jobworkers of all kinds below the management levels, usually without
college degrees or much higher education—they may have started, but then dropped out,
as well as some professional academics who aren’t leading scholars at the world’s top-
ranked universities, but perhaps only members of the professional academic precariat,
i.e., “adjunct” or “contingent” faculty, or even full-time tenured faculty, but working only
at “no-name” colleges or universities—and also retired people from various
socioeconomic classes, mostly living off social security, together—if they’re lucky—with
some modest personal savings or modest pension income.

So, my world-historical idea is that humankind’s only hope for philosophical,

scientific, moral, and sociopolitical progress beyond the ideological vicious triangle is for
the nobodies to develop an independent set of genuine alternatives, and therefore for
fundamental philosophical, scientific, moral, and sociopolitical progress to have its origin
and energy-source outside the mechanistic leviathan and inside the social institution of the
nobodies. Individually, the nobodies are obscure, weak, and “losers.” But collectively,
the nobodies can change the world for the better and perhaps even the best. Nobodies of the
world unite! You have nothing to lose but your no-names!

In turn, as specifically applied to the seemingly impossible possibility of progress

in the philosophy of mind, this means that we philosophical nobodies should simply
ignore materialism or physicalism about the mind-body relation and mental causation,
and incompatibilistic or compatibilistic universal natural determinism or indeterminism
about free agency, precisely because they’re profoundly false, and also simply ignore the
leading professional academic philosophers and scientists at the world’s top-ranked
universities who publicly profess these profoundly false views, precisely because even
though they’re big-winning members of the mechanical leviathan, they’re also robotically
conformist, so that while we’re still alive and kicking we nobodies can both individually and
also collectively do our own philosophical thing, and then after we shuffle off this mortal

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coil, we can simply let the posthumous and retrospective chips of unjust neglect fall
where they may.2

2I’m grateful to Dennis Earl for thought-provoking correspondence on and around the main topics of this
essay.

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(Engels, 1845/1958). Engels, F. The Condition of the Working Class in England. Trans. W.O.
Henderson and W.H. Chaloner. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

(Gaskell, 1848/1997). Gaskell, E. Mary Barton. Harmondsworth, Middlesex UK: Penguin.

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