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Concept
Cognitive closure (philosophy)
Summary
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 acknowledging the possibility that solutions may be knowable to 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.
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