Concept of Mind• Do you have a mind?

– If so, where is it located?

• Concept of mind– Sense of self– Free Will– Consciousness– A little person in your head – Immaterial spirit or soul

• Biological Psychology approach to understanding mind– “.. in this book we explore the many ways in which the structures

and actions of the brain produce mind and behavior.” Breedlove & Watson 2013, Biological Psychology, page 1.

Definition of mind• No entry in the “Concise Science Dictionary”• However, Reber's Dictionary of Psychology warns

us:

“This term and what it connotes is the battered offspring of the union of philosophy and psychology. At some deep level, we dearly love and cherish it and see behind its surface great potential but, because of our own inadequacies, we continuously abuse it, harshly and abruptly pummeling it for imagined excesses and occasionally even lock it away in some dark closet where we cannot hear it's insistent whines. “

Mind – Body Problem•What is the relationship between mind and body?

•First explicitly raised by Descartes

•Dualism (Descartes’ version)

•Mind (soul) Body (brain) are distinct

•The Mind (soul) outlives the body and operates by non-physical means.

•Monism - (either Materialism or Physicalism):

•Everything that actually exists is material, or physical

•There is nothing beyond the physical world

•Mind must be some feature or aspect of the Body (brain)

Descartes’ Dualism• Animals have body (brain) and act in mechanical ways • Humans

– can use words to express thoughts– use reason to solve problems creatively – must have something special: Mind (soul)

• The Body (Brain) is a complex "machine". • The Mind (Soul)

– distinct from the body– eternal and therefore non-physical

•René Descartes' illustration of mind/body dualism.• Descartes believed inputs are passed on by the sensory• organs to the epiphysis in the brain and from there •to the immaterial spirit.•See his Meditations on First Philosophy[1]

•From Wikipedia Mind-Body Problem

•http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_problem

Concept of Mind• The Concept of Mind (1949), by Gilbert Ryle

– “Descartes Myth” • "mind" is a "philosophical illusion” hailing chiefly from Descartes

– Bodies

» Physical – obey mechanical laws

» Public – observable by others– Minds

» Non Physical – do not obey mechanical laws

» Private – are not observable by others

• a “category mistake” because mind and matter should not be placed in the same logical category as opposites

• Mind is the same as “intelligent acts” such as learning, thinking, reasoning

Daniel Dennett• Daniel C. Dennett’s explanation of Ryle’s book• Content and Consciousness, (1969)• Kinds of Minds, (1996)• concerned with providing a philosophy of mind that is

grounded in empirical research• What can research on the brain tell us about how the

mind works?• This is the main focus of Cognitive Neuroscience

Descartes’ Error• Descartes’ Error by Antonio Damasio 1994

– It is a mistake to separate Mind and Body• "These athletes are prepared both mentally and physically,"

• "There's nothing wrong with your body--it's all in your mind."

– Mind and Body (Brain) are the same thing

• Dualism is Dead - Mathew H. Gendle– Point # 4: Dualism is not a scientific construct because it is

incongruent with the scientific method.• Some current neuroscientists think there is evidence of minds changing

brains.

• But there is no evidence of a nonphysical mind

• No explanations for how nonphysical interacts with physical.

Patricia Smith Churchland– “to understand the mind one must understand the brain”– Neurophilosophy (1986)

• Argues for a co-evolution of psychology, philosophy and neuroscience

• answer questions about how the mind represents, reasons, decides and perceives

– Brain-wise: studies in neurophilosophy (2002)• “Bit by experimental bit neuroscience is morphing our conception

of what we are. The weight of evidence now implies that it is the brain rather than some nonphysical stuff that feels, thinks and decides”

• A sequel to Neurophilosophy designed to be an undergraduate textbook

• Which examines old questions about the nature of the mind within the new framework of the brain sciences

Reductionism•Related to Mind Body problem because it is often referred to as Reductive Physicalism

•A theory that all complex systems can be completely understood in terms of their components.

•The general attempt to explain and interpret phenomena by means of analysis into simpler components and principles at a different level of analysis.

•The idea that certain things might be shown to be nothing but certain other sorts of things.

•water is nothing but hydrogen and oxygen molecules

•statements about water are reducible to statements about collections of H & O molecules.

Dilbert grapples with reductionism

Hierarchy of Complex Systems to illustrate Reductionism

A Non-Reductive Physicalist Account of Human NatureBy Nancey Murphy

Levels of Analysis in Biological PsychologyWhat is wrong with the arrows on this picture?

Levels of Analysis in Biological Psychology

• “In principle, it is possible to reduce each explanatory series down to the molecular or atomic level, though for practical reasons this extent of reductionism is rare.”

• “The units of each level of analysis are simpler in structure and organization than those of the level above.”– Biological Psychology by Breedlove and Watson page 10

• There are problems with these assumptions about reductionism.– Appears that you can explain everything at the atomic level

– Is the atomic and molecular levels really simpler?

Limitations of Reductionism• Gendle, Point #2: At present reductive physicalism is

fundamentally unable to answer how basic biological, chemical, or physical processes create specific individual experience (“qualia”)– Qualia is subjective personal experience such as seeing the color blue.– Referred to as the “hard problem” of human consciousness.– An “explanatory gap” between our knowledge of neuroscience to explain

subjective experience

• Conscious awareness includes a sense of self – Humans have a very strong subjective sense of self– Which brings us back around to the concept of mind– Do you have a mind?

• If so, where is it?• If so, what is it?

• So are we stuck without an explanation for subjective experience?

Limitations of Reductionism• Gendle point #3: promissory materialism is a

provisionary position, and the inclusion of it in an empirically focus discussion of philosophy of mind is inappropriate.– Neuroscience will one day figure it all out.

– There must be a mechanism that explains how the mind works

• Gendle is being too harsh with this comment.– Speculation is okay as long as it does not substitute for

explanation.

– So, what type of explanations exists that could help explain the mind, body problem?

Limitations of Reductionism• Localization of Function Problem (see lecture four)

– Functions are located in the brain• Vision processing in the occipital lope brain circuits• Decision making in the frontal lobes brain circuits

– However, brain circuits change from experience “plasticity”• During early development• Whenever you learn something• During recovery from injury

– Reductionism assumes that cognition is based on microanatomy and chemistry of the brain

• Because everyone has a unique set of life experiences each person has a unique set of neural circuits

• So subjective experience is unique for each person• Reducing subjective experience to specific anatomy becomes very

difficult

Limitations of Reductionism• Application to Current Medical Science• Diagnosis is based on the assumption that information

about individual parts is sufficient to explain the whole• However some medical problems occur because of

interaction between parts produces behaviors that cannot be predicted by individual parts. – To understand Schizophrenia, cannot just focus on Dopamine

levels or a set of genes

– Need to take into account living conditions such as stressful environments

Limitations of Reductionism• Gendle point #1: There currently exists no one single

theoretical framework that can completely account for how mental phenomena arise from physical processes occurring in the nervous system.– Neither monist reductive physicalism nor Cartesian dualism is

acceptable.

• But other approaches such as non-reductive physicalism– The mind is an emergent property of the brain.

• Such as patterns of activity in brain circuits

– Mind is more than the sum of brain parts• i.e. not an additive process• could be a nonlinear system explained by chaos theory

– Similar to Ryle’s concept of “intelligent acts”– Or Jonah Lehrer’s example “the mind is like music”

• The Limits of Reductionism Posted by Jonah Lehrer on January 21, 2008• http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2008/01/21/the-limits-of-reductionism/

Levels of Analysis in Biological Psychology