Cognitive closure (philosophy)

In philosophy of science and philosophy of mind, cognitive closure is the proposition that human minds are constitutionally incapable of solving certain perennial philosophical problems. Owen Flanagan calls this position anti-constructive naturalism or the new mysterianism and the primary advocate of the hypothesis, Colin McGinn, calls it transcendental naturalism because it acknowledges the possibility that solutions might fall within the grasp of an intelligent non-human of some kind. According to McGinn, such philosophical questions include the mind-body problem, identity of the self, foundations of meaning, free will, and knowledge, both a priori and empirical.

It cannot be simply taken for granted that the human reasoning faculty is naturally suited for answering philosophical questions: the questions and their subject matter are one thing; and rational faculty, as a human trait, is another. From the fact that it is the best faculty we have… for doing philosophy it does not follow that it is a remotely good or adequate faculty for that purpose.

When human minds interact with philosophical problems, especially those of the form 'How is X possible?', they are apt to go into one of four possible states. Either (i) they try to domesticate the object of puzzlement by providing a reductive or explanatory theory of it; or (ii) they declare it irreducible and hence not open to any levelling account; or (iii) they succumb to a magical story or image of what seems so puzzling; or (iv) they simply eliminate the source of trouble for fear of ontological embarrassment... The topics on which it imprints itself, and which I have discussed in some diagnostic detail in the aforementioned book, include: consciousness and the mind-body problem, the nature and identity of the self, the foundations of meaning, the possibility of free will, the availability of a priori and empirical knowledge... Basically what we find, quite generally, is the threat of magic or elimination in the face of the theoretical obduracy of the phenomenon that invites philosophical attention. The phenomenon presents initial problems of possibility... Free will, for instance, looks upon early inspection to be impossible, so we try to find some conception of it that permits its existence, but this conception always turns out to be dubiously reductive and distorting, leaving us with the unpalatable options of magic, elimination or quietism... so we hop unhappily from one unsatisfactory option to the next; or dig our heels (squintingly) into a position that seems the least intellectually unconscionable of the bunch... Science, then, might be aptly characterised as that set of questions that does not attract [these] options – where our cognitive faculties allow us to form the necessary concepts and theories. The distinction between science and philosophy is, on this view, at root a reflection of the cognitive powers we happen to possess or lack, and is therefore creature-relative: it does not correspond to any interesting real division within objective reality... It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that our brains would have to be made of something other than neurons in order for us to have the kinds of cognitive powers needed to solve the problems philosophy poses; at any rate, this is the sort of diagnosis [transcendental naturalism] offers for our philosophical retardation... The hardness of philosophy is thus an upshot of the particular way that natural selection has built our thinking organ, not an objective trait of the subject-matter of philosophical questions.

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