04 mind

Philosophy of Mind

What is the place of minds in a physical universe?

George MatthewsSpring 2016

The Mind Body Problem


“Thinking meat! You’re asking me tobelieve in thinking meat!”

“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat!Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat isthe whole deal!”

Terry Bisson, “They’re Made out of Meat”


What is the place of minds in the physical universe?



Minds are real butnon-physical things.

dualism




dualism

F Dualists claim there are two basickinds of stuff in the world, matter andminds.

F This view of the mind has ancientroots – the concept of a soul as animmaterial entity separate from thebody is a version of dualism.



“Minds” are really justways of talking about whatintelligent creatures do.

behaviorism




behaviorism

F Behaviorism was the dominantapproach to psychology in the firsthalf of the 20th century.

F Behaviorists wanted to make thestudy of the mind scientific by gettingrid of all reference to a private “inner”world and talking only aboutpublically observable and measurablephenomena.



Minds are nothingbut brains.

mind/brain identity theory





F The 20th century also saw enormousadvances in the study of the brainwhich continue to this day.

F Mind/brain Identity Theory is anexample of a “reductionist” theory inthat it tries to reduce statementsabout minds to statements aboutbrains.



Minds are programsrunning on brains or someother kind of hardware.

functionalism




functionalism

F Functionalism arose in tandem withthe development of contemporarycognitive psychology which looks atthe mind in terms of informationprocessing.

F According to functionalists, there isno reason why machines ornon-human organisms might not haveminds, as long as their mentalprocesses are of the right kind.




dualism


behaviorism




functionalism

The Case for Dualism


Rene Descartes1596 – 1650



Minds and bodies areso fundamentallydifferent that they mustbe made of entirelydifferent kinds of stuff.



Minds and bodies areso fundamentallydifferent that they mustbe made of entirelydifferent kinds of stuff.

Although dualism is an ancienttheory, Rene Descartes is itsmost well-known defender. Hedid not just take for grantedthe existence of an immaterialsoul (also called a mind) butargued for it explicitly.



Whatever we can conceive of as beingseparate can actually exist separately.

We can conceive of minds withoutbodies and bodies without minds.

Thus minds and bodies can existseparately and hence dualism is true.

Descartes’ first argument


Whatever we can conceive of as beingseparate can actually exist separately.

We can conceive of minds withoutbodies and bodies without minds.

Thus minds and bodies can existseparately and hence dualism is true.

Descartes’ first argument

Descartes argues that sincehe can doubt the existenceof his body but not of hismind, the two must bemetaphysically distinct.


Material things take up space, arepublicly accessible, interact with eachother in physical ways.

Mental things don’t take up space, areprivate, and interact with each otheraccording to their meanings.

It is completely unclear how thesedifferent kinds of things could possiblybe unified.

Thus minds and bodies are reallydistinct kinds of things.

Descartes’ second argument


Material things take up space, arepublicly accessible, interact with eachother in physical ways.

Mental things don’t take up space, areprivate, and interact with each otheraccording to their meanings.

It is completely unclear how thesedifferent kinds of things could possiblybe unified.

Thus minds and bodies are reallydistinct kinds of things.

Descartes’ second argument

Does the fact that wecannot conceive of howmental and material thingsmight relate to each otherentail that they are reallymetaphysically distinct?

Objections to Dualism


Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia1618 – 1680



If minds and bodies exist inseparate realms and share nocommon features, how can theyinteract, which they obviouslydo?



Elizabeth Palatine, Princess of Bohemia,was one of many people with whomDescartes exchanged letters. She is mostwell-known for taking his dualisticphilosophy of mind to task in her letters tohim, by pointing out that on his view therewas no easy way to explain how minds andbodies could possibly interact.



F It is clear that minds and bodies interact.

F I may, for example, see a bear whenwalking in the woods, feel fear, and thenplan and execute an escape.

F Dualism has no way of accounting forsuch an obvious and everyday interactionbetween mind and body.












Gilbert Ryle1900 – 1976



A mind is best understood notas another “thing” in the worldalongside of the physicalthings we we experience, butas a pattern of activityexhibited by organisms like us.



Gilbert Ryle was a British philosopher andan early advocate of what has come to beknown as “analytic philosophy” one of themajor contemporary approaches tophilosophy. He set out to show how manyphilosophical puzzles resulted from themisuse of language and how a properanalysis of language could dissolve thesepuzzles.



F Descartes has made a “category mistake”in granting the mind the status of aseparate thing alongside of and somehowmysteriously connected with the body.

F This is similar to looking for the thingcalled “a desert” alongside the rocks,sand and cactus in Death Valley.

F A mind, like a desert is not a separateentity, but a higher level pattern made upof particular things.











The Case for Behaviorism


J.B. Watson1878 – 1958


J.B. Watson1878 – 1958

“Psychology as thebehaviorist views it is apurely objectiveexperimental branch ofnatural science.”


J.B. Watson1878 – 1958

J.B. Watson was one of the founders ofmodern psychology, although after he wasfired from an academic job on account of apersonal scandal he spent the rest of his lifeworking for an advertising agency.Behaviorists claimed that we need not talkabout minds from an “internal,” first-personstandpoint, but instead can study mindsexclusively by watching how various animalsand humans responded to stimuli incontrolled experiments.


J.B. Watson1878 – 1958

Inner mental states are unnecessaryfor talking about what organismswith “minds” actually do.

Furthermore there is no publiclyaccessible evidence for such innerstates.

So minds are not sets of inner states,but are instead patterns ofobjectively describable behavior.

an argument for behaviorism


Inner mental states are unnecessaryfor talking about what organismswith “minds” actually do.

Furthermore there is no publiclyaccessible evidence for such innerstates.

So minds are not sets of inner states,but are instead patterns ofobjectively describable behavior.

an argument for behaviorism

This argument is not validsince from the fact that weneed not mention “innerstates” to describe minds,it does not follow thatsuch states do not exist.

Objections to Behaviorism


Hilary Putnam1926 –



Is being in some mental state orother really the same thing asexhibiting certain behaviors?



Hilary Putnam is an influential Americanphilosopher who is highly critical ofbehaviorist approaches to the mind. He alsohas done important work in philosophicallogic and the theory of meaning.



F We can imagine a race of Super-Spartanswho have trained themselves not torespond to bodily injuries.

F Clearly they may very well be in paineven though they exhibit no behaviorsnormally associated with being in pain.

F Therefore we cannot entirely eliminatereference to inner states in talking aboutminds.













F Someone might exhibit all of the signs ofbeing in love such as talking aboutsomeone all of the time, buying themflowers, etc.

F And yet this person could be faking it,wishing only to marry the person theyare courting for their money.

F Once again behaviorists would miss thisimportant difference – they confuseoutwards signs of a state with the stateitself.











The Case for Mind/Brain Identity Theory


J.C.C. Smart1920 – 2012


J.C.C. Smart1920 – 2012

“There does seem tobe, so far as science isconcerned, nothing inthe world butincreasingly complexarrangements ofphysical constituents.”


J.C.C. Smart1920 – 2012

J.J.C. Smart was a British philosopher whowanted to explain the mind in purelyphysical terms, since he thought it absurdthat everything except minds had such aphysical explanation.


J.C.C. Smart1920 – 2012

Neuroscience reveals that particularmental states are correlated withparticular brain states.

There is no reason to think thatmental states are somethingnon-physical.

Thus mental states are nothing butbrain states.

an argument for mind/brain identity theory


Neuroscience reveals that particularmental states are correlated withparticular brain states.

There is no reason to think thatmental states are somethingnon-physical.

Thus mental states are nothing butbrain states.

an argument for mind/brain identity theory

This argument is an appealto Ockham’s razor, or theprinciple that ourexplanations should notrely on extra entities thatdo no explanatory work. Ifwe do not need to talkabout mental states inaddition to brain states, weshould just eliminate talkof the former.

Objections to Mind/Brain Identity Theory


Jerry Fodor1935 –


Jerry Fodor1935 –

Can’t it be the case that manydifferent particular brain statesmight realize one and the samemental state?


Jerry Fodor1935 –

Jerry Fodor is an American philosopher whohas greatly contributed to the philosophy ofmind. He opposes attempts to reducemental phenomena to somethingnon-mental and so defends the autonomyof psychology and its independence fromneuroscience.


Jerry Fodor1935 –

F The brains of individuals differ in theirsmall-scale structure, even if the overallanatomy of the brain is similar inhumans.

F Yet in spite of these differences we canthink the same thoughts such as “

p2 is

an irrational number,” which means thesame for all of us.

F So mental states cannot be identical withbrain states, and thus minds and brainsare not identical things.


Jerry Fodor1935 –



p2 is




Jerry Fodor1935 –



p2 is




Frank Jackson1943 –



No matter how much we knowabout minds and brains fromoutside, without knowledge ofwhat it is like to have certainexperiences from inside, ourpicture of the mind will not becomplete.



Frank Jackson is an Australian philosopherwho argues against “physicalism” or the ideathat we can account for everything there isin the universe in purely physical terms.



F Imagine a neuro-scientist named Marywho knows everything about color vision,but who herself lacks color vision.

F Even though Mary knows everythingabout the physical brain states involvedin color vision she lacks some knowledgeabout it – what it is like to see color.

F Thus mind/brain identity theory is false,since there is something missing in amerely physical account of the mind.











The Case for Functionalism


Jerry Fodor1935 –


Jerry Fodor1935 –

Mind is to software asbrain is to hardware.


Jerry Fodor1935 –

What distinguishes minds, according toFodor and other functionalists, is not somuch what they are made of but what theydo – they process information.


Jerry Fodor1935 –

Having a mind enables an organismto respond intelligently to stimuli.

Intelligent responses are sensitive tothe informational content of stimuli.

Thus minds are best understood interms of their ability to processinformation and mental states arecomputational states.

an argument for functionalism






Like behavioristsfunctionalists claim thathaving a mind is to beunderstood as havingcertain capacities. Unlikebehaviorists, functionalistsclaim that “inner mentalstates” can’t be dispensedwith in a scientific study ofthe mind.






Functionalists claim thatminds are “multiplyrealizable” in that the setsof functions performed byour brains and senses couldin principle be carried outby a suitably programmedmachine made of othermaterials.

Objections to Functionalism


Ned Block1942 –


Ned Block1942 –

It makes no sense to say that amind is nothing but a set offunctions running in the brain.


Ned Block1942 –

Ned Block is an American philosopher whohas argued against the adequacy of thefunctionalist conception of the mind.


Ned Block1942 –

F Suppose the population of Chinamimicked the human brain with eachperson playing the role of a single nueronin communication with others viawalkie-talkie.

F Suppose that all of these people modeledthe activity of a real brain.

F Such a functional equivalent of a brainwith a mind clearly lacks a consciousmind, and so there must be more tohaving a mind than performing a set offunctions.


Ned Block1942 –





Ned Block1942 –





Block’s China brain intends to show thatthere must be more to a mind than itsprogramming. What might this extraingredient be?


David Chalmers1966 –



No matter how much we knowabout minds and brains fromoutside, without knowledge ofwhat it is like to have certainexperiences from inside, ourpicture of the mind will not becomplete.



David Chalmers is an Australianphilosopher who has written extensively onthe difficulties involved in explaining one ofthe distinctive features of minds –consciousness. He often argues that allattempts to explain minds in purely physicalterms must fail to leave consciousness outof the picture.



F Imagine a being just like me in terms ofits behavior and the way it processesinformation, but with no consciousness –a philosophical zombie.

F If such a being is conceivable, thenfunctionalist accounts of minds leavesomething out.

F Such beings are conceivable, even if theydo not actually exist, so functionalismleaves something out of our account ofthe mind.











The Case for Artificial Intelligence


Alan Turing1912 – 1954



A computer is a universalmachine, which can in principlebe programmed to carry out anyfinite task.



Alan Turing was one of the pioneers of thecomputer age. He proved the possibility ofa machine that could be programmed tocarry out any task that could be describedas a series of individual steps, and hehelped build computing machines to crackGerman codes during WWII.



F In principle there is no reason a computercouldn’t be programmed to behaveintelligently.

F To see whether a machine is intelligentwe give it a simple test, “The TuringTest:” if a person cannpot tell thedifference between its answers to ourquestions and humans answers it shouldcount as intelligent.



F In principle there is no reason a computercouldn’t be programmed to behaveintelligently.

F To see whether a machine is intelligentwe give it a simple test, “The TuringTest:” if a person cannpot tell thedifference between its answers to ourquestions and humans answers it shouldcount as intelligent.



If intelligence is nothing but a kind of fancyprogramming carried out by human brains,there is no reason we shouldn’t be able tobuild an intelligent machine at some point.

Against Artificial Intelligence


John Searle1935 –


John Searle1935 –

Merely manipulating symbols isnot the same thing as thinking.


John Searle1935 –

John Searle is an American philosopher whohas written extensively on the philosophy ofmind and the philosophy of language. Hehas always been critical of the idea that amachine can have a mind.


John Searle1935 –

F Imagine a room in which there is aperson who does not speak Chinese, butwho has an instruction manual forresponding to Chinese symbols passed inthrough a window.

F This manual is like a program, designedto make the person using it look like sheunderstands Chinese to a Chinese speakerpassing written symbols into the room.

F From outside it looks like the roomunderstands Chinese, but this is absurdsince neither the person inside nor theroom as a whole understands anything.


John Searle1935 –





John Searle1935 –





Searle’s Chinese room example is intendedto show that Artificial Intelligence isimpossible – since a system like the ChineseRoom, with an information processor likethe person with the manual, that isprogrammed to respond to language like acomputer might be programmed lacksunderstanding, an important part ofintelligence.

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04 mind

Education