New Mysterianism - Name

Name

Owen Flanagan noted in his 1991 book Science of the Mind that some modern thinkers have suggested that consciousness may never be completely explained. Flanagan called them "the new mysterians" after the rock group Question Mark and the Mysterians. “But the new mysterianism is a postmodern position designed to drive a railroad spike through the heart of scientism”. The term "new mysterianism" has been extended by some writers to encompass the wider philosophical position that humans do not have the intellectual ability to solve many hard problems, not just the problem of consciousness, at a scientific level. This position is also known as anti-constructive naturalism.

According to Flanagan, “The ‘old mysterians’ were dualists who thought that consciousness cannot be understood scientifically because it operates according to nonnatural principles and possesses nonnatural properties.” Apparently, some apply the terms to thinkers throughout history who suggested some aspect of consciousness may not be knowable or discoverable, including Gottfried Leibniz, Samuel Johnson, and Thomas Huxley. Julian Huxley wrote, "How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djinn, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp."

The consciousness of brutes would appear to be related to the mechanism of their body simply as collateral product of its working, and to be completely without any power of modifying that working, as the steam-whistle which accompanies the work of a locomotive engine is without influence upon its machinery. Their volition, if they have any, is an emotion indicative of physical changes, not a cause of such changes… The soul stands to the body as the bell of a clock to the works, and consciousness answers to the sound which the bell gives out when it is struck… To the best of my judgment, the argumentation which applies to brutes holds good of men… We are conscious automata.

— Thomas Huxley, “On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata, and its History”, 1874