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Related: Self-Actualization / Expanding Consciousness / Personality Theory / Philosophy / Research / Forum

CONTENTS :    

Introduction
Behaviorism
Identity Theory
Functionalism
Causal Functionalism
Mental Causation
Consciousness
Mental Content
Physicalism
Structural Identity Theory

Introduction

 Minds as Souls: Mental Substances

• Mind & mentality:
• a basic "natural" distinction between haves & nots
• like between living & not
• male & female
• Differences of attitude
• towards sentient things
• things possessed of sensations or feelings
• owed some measure of concern or nonabuse on that accord
• towards intelligent things
• things possessed of reasoning abilities
• owed some measure of respect on that accord
• owe some measure of respect & concern on that accord
• The higher on the scale of intelligence the more psychological characterization gets a useful grip
• sensations: pleasure, pain, itches, sensory experiences
• emotions: anger, fear, frustration, love
• perception: seeing, hearing, etc.
• memory
• learning
• Rheostat (dimmer switch) comparision
• Question 1: is there an off point?
• Question 1a: If so, where is it?

Mental Properties, Events, and Processes

• Minds as souls
• our very selves
• possibly immortal
• Soul as life-force, the motivating form of a living body (Aristotle)
• vegetative: plants live
• animative/sensitive: animals move and sense
• rational: humans think, exercising intelligence or reason
• incapable of disembodied existence
• Soul as immaterial intellect
• Plato
• simple, divine, and immutable (unlike bodies)
• capable of independent existence
• before birth: learning is remembrance
• as well as after: survival
• argument for the indestructibility of souls (Phaedo)
• souls are simple (not having parts)
• destruction is decomposition (coming apart)
• therefore, souls are indestructible
• Descartes: "I am, then, in the strict sense, only a thing that thinks, that is, I am a mind, or intelligence, or intellect, or reason."
• Cartesian Substance Dualism
• Substance v. Attribute
• Every attribute or feature (smiling, standing, being red)  is necessarily an attribute of some substantial thing (e.g., a face, a cat, a fire hydrant).
• accidents: features that the thing can either have or lack (e.g., smiling, standing)
• essences: features that the thing must have to make it the (kind of) thing it is
• e.g., for a table
• its color is an accident
• its having a top is essential
• e.g., for a person:
• accidents: smiling, standing, being tan
• essence: rationality, sensitivity, life
• Descartes: Two kinds of substances & their essences
• matter: spatial extension
• mind: thinking or consciousness
• Interaction problem
• Interactionist Dualism
• body -> body causation: the sunlight causes electro-chemical changes in my retina
• body -> mind causation: my retina goes on and I see the light
• mind -> mind causation: I see the light and think "UV radiation causes cataracts"
• mind -> body causation: I think "UV radiation causes cataracts" and reach for my sunglasses
• Trouble about mind <-> body causation: where the twain shall meet
• thoughts are in consciousness, not in space
• bodies are in space, not in consciousness
• Aggravating observation: the intimacy of the mind-body connection as we know it
• "I am not in my body like the pilot of a vessel"
• but am "intimately conjoined" with it: feeling hungry is unlike seeing the gas gauge on E

Philosophy of Mind

• Three issues
• What are minds or what constitutes mentality?
• How are various mental phenomena related?
• How are mental and physical phenomena related?
• How could mental phenomena have physical effects?: Causal Closure.
• Why should physical phenomena have mental effects?: Explanatory Gap.
• Additional issue: what things think (or have mentality)?
• humans
• (which) other organisms?
• computers?
• collectives?

Supervenience, Dependence, and Minimal Physicalism

• Three principles
• Mind-body supervenience
• No difference without a physical difference.
• ". . . any two things (objects, events, organisms, persons, etc.) exactly alike in all physical properties cannot differ in respect of mental properties.  That is physical indiscernibility entails psychological indiscernibility." (10)
• Anti-Cartesianism
• No immaterial substances.
• "There can be no purely mental beings (for example, Cartesian souls).  That is, nothing can have a mental property without having some physical property and hence without being a physical thing." (11)
• Mind-body dependence
• The physical is more basic than (and explains) the mental.
• "What mental properties a given thing has depends on, and is determined by, what physical properties it has.  That is to say, the psychological character of a thing is wholly determined by its physical character." (11)
• Varieties of physicalism
• minimal physicalism
• defined by these three principles
• affirms the complete & assymetric dependence of the mental on the physical
• reductive physicalism:
• beyond superveniece & dependence: mental phenomena are physical
• pain = C-fiber activation
• visual experiences = 40hz ocillations in the visual cortex
• identifies types of mental phenomena with types of physical phenomena
• eliminative physicalism: denies the existence of the mental

Varieties of Mental Phenomena

• Two "pure" types: sensations & attitudes
• sensations distintinguished by their "qualitative" or "phenomenal" feel
• bodily sensations: itches, pains, etc.
• perceptual experiences: color-experiences, sound-experiences, etc.
• propositional attititudes or intentional states distinguished by their propositional contents
• propositional contents are what the sentences we use to ascribe the attitudes assert
• attitude: believe, doubt, wish
• content: that Engler was a good governor.
• immediate issue: do propositional attitudes have distinctive feels?
• usual suppositions
• propositional attitudes are the basic variety of intentional state
• Ponce de Leon sought the Fountain of Youth
• =? Ponce de Leon sought that he should find the Fountain of Youth
• belief and desire are foremost among the attitudes
• commonsense psychology sometimes called "belief-desire" psychology
• reflecting the centrality of belief & desire in practical reasoning or rational explanation of behavior
• Various "impure" types
• emotions
• e.g., embarrassment, annoyance, elation
• prima facie: mixed intentional-phenomenal character
• distinctive feels
• but also content: I was annoyed that Bush was elected.
• volitions: choices, decisions, intentions, etc.
• characteristically take infinitive VPs as objects
• I chose not to meet on Sunday.  I decided to show a movie on Monday.
• close connection with action
• I'm trying to make this point clear -- here the attitude spills out into the world
• If I intend to do A now then I do it now (if not prevented).

Is there a "Mark of the Mental"?

• Proposed criteria of mentality
• Brentano said intentionality was the "mark of the mental"
• by "mark of the mental" we mean a criterion C such that M <-> C
1. M -> C: C is necessary for mentality: only C-things are (or can be) mental
2. C -> M: C is sufficient for mentality: all C-things are (or can be) mental
• example: if the brain does it, it's mental (Ba's approach)
1. too broad (fails to suffice: some C aren't M): brains cool the blood but cooling the blood is not a mental process
2. too narrow (not necessary: some M things (or could be) not C)
• would-be counterexamples
• actual: the nose, the retina, digital electronic computations?
• possibility: brainless ETs, future digital electronic computations?
• profitless trick solution
• define whatever organ produces mentality as "the brain" of that organism
• so Commander Data's positronic "brain" is a brain in the relevant sense
• and whatever organ or brainless ET uses counts as the ETs brain
• and the computer's CPU is it's brain
• etc.
• why profitless:
• the point of C (a brain process) was to enable us to identify M's (mental processes)
• but now we would identify C's (brains) on the basis of whether their processes are M (mental)
• adequate definition must capture the essence
• must be necessary & sufficient in principle
• proof against even possibility counterexamples
• Epistemological criteria: we are aware our own mental phenomena in distinctive ways
• Initial reservation (LH): since the criterion appeals to characteristics of something external to the the phenomena themselves -- knowledge thereof -- it is a bad candidate for being essential  and definitive
• if the mind is perfectly epistemically transparent
• then we want to know why -- what is it about mentality that makes it transparent
• though might still be adequately discriminatory (compare the litmus test for acidity)
• Direct (or immediate) knowledge
• expositons
• direct means not evidence based or inferential
• illustration: my awareness of the toothache pain v.
• my awareness of the tooth decay
• of the flat tire
• of your tooth ache
• possible complaint: direct access to sensible things or qualities, e.g., the white of the chalk
• Privacy or priviledged access: an assymetry between 1st & 3rd person awareness
• the whiteness of the chalk is equally directly accessible to all who can see: publically accessible
• my toothache is directly accessible only to me: privately accessable
• Infallibility and self-intimacy.
• exposition
• infallibility (can't be mistaken) [or incorrigibility (can't be overruled)]
• a property of our judgments concerning our own mental states
• if you think you're experiencing M then you are
• if you think you're experiencing pain then you are
• if you think you're seeing a white piece of chalk, you still might not be
• self-intimating (can't be uninformed)
• a property of our mental states (their openness to introspection)
• if you're experienceing M then you know it
• if you're experiencing pain then you know you're experiencing it
• if you believe Bush is President then you know you believe it
• joint criterion: "the doctrine of the transparency of mind"
• all mental states are infallibly self-intimating
• Descartes (2nd Meditation): "nothing is better known to be than my own mind"
• objection from proprioception: some physical phenomena meet the joint criterion
• I am infallibly & self-intimatedly aware of the positions of my limbs (via proprioception)
• the position of my limbs is a physical phenomena if there ever was one
• conclusion: either
• the criterion is too weak: some nonmental phenomena are self-intimating and incorrigible
• or you will need to insist on very high standards of infallibility & self-intimation to rule this out
• objection from unconscious mentation: some mental states aren't infallibly self-intimating
• Freudian unconscious
• beliefs, wishes, etc. we have unawares: not self-intimating
• beliefs, wishes, etc. we falsely avow, e.g., the passive aggressive wish to "help"
• vagaries of emotion, belief, and desire
• epistemic uncertainties of sensation
• fallibility: pain v. cold: the "fraternity initiation" experiment
• self-intimation: the "turnpike trance" or "soldier in the heat of battle" phenomenon
• Kim's summation
• how exactly the special epistemic character of the mental is to be specified is controversial
• sensations v. attitudes: sensations seem to have a stronger claim to meet these criteria than attitudes
• fallibilty: "fraternity intiation" case: misimpression is short-lived
• intimation: "turnpike trance" case: description of the case is controversial (some deny that any sensations are being experienced when the driver is "on autopilot")
• soft criteria invite exceptions (e.g., proprioception)
• nevertheless, "the differences . . . noted . . . seem to point to a crucial qualitative difference between what is physical and an important subclass of the mental."
• "It may well be that we get our initial purchase on the concept of mentality through the core class of mental states for which special first-person authority holds,
• deriving the broader class of mental phenomena by extending and generalizing this core in various ways." (19)
• Mentality as nonspatial
• Initial reservation (LH): since the characterization appeals to something mental phenomena presumably lack it's a poor candidate for an essential  characterization or definition
• essential character is supposed to be something the thing has that makes it what it is
• still might be adequate for discrimination
• Recall Descartes
• dualism
1. mind is thinking (& nonextended)
2. matter is extended (& nonthinking)
• comment "most physicalists would reject this corollary" (19) that matter is unthinking
• stronger claim warranted: a physicalist must reject this corollary
• even for property dualist there will be thinking matter (brains)
• still nonspatiality might serve to distinguinsh the mental from the physical
• Proposal: mental qualities are those which do not entail the extension of their bearers
• elaboration
• if x is Qentails (or necessitates) x being extended then Q is a physical quality
• examples: color, shape, mass, etc.
• plausibly nothing could have these unless it were extended
• if x is Q does not necessitate x being extended then Q is a mental quality
• perhaps -- pace physicalism -- there are no unextended thinking things
• plausibly, there could be
• problem with abstract objects, e.g., numbers and their qualities
• consider  2 is an even prime
• plausibly numbers aren't extended
• so being even and prime are turn out to be mental qualities by the proposed criterion
• but they aren't: so the criterion fails (it's too weak, too broad)
• mental properties are those which do not entail the extension of their temporary bearers
• qualities of abstract objects belong to them eternally -- 2 is forever even, forever prime
• qualities of thought belong to their bearers temporarily: "time is the form of inner experience" (Kant)
• o.k. . . . unless there are immortal spirits with enduring mental qualities (e.g., God's wisdom)
• Kim's reservation: "one who takes this approach seriously must also take the idea of mental substance seriously"
• since "she must allow the existence of possible worlds in which menatl properties are instantiated by nonphysical beings"
• and "it makes no sense to think of abstract entities, like numbers, as subjects of mental properties"
• "the only other possibility is Cartesian mental substances"
• "Thus, anyone who accepts the criterion of the mental as the nonspatial must accept the idea of mental substance as a coherent one, an idea that makes sense." (20)
• Comment (LH): mere coherence is not that big an admission
• if you believe there could be immaterial spirits -- but there aren't -- you qualify
• many smart people have thought there were such things; perhaps they were wrong; but they weren't incoherent
• Intentionality as a Criterion of the Mental
• Intentionality characterized as a relation that does not entail the actual existence of its objects
• examples: Schlieman looked for the site of Troy and Poncé de Leon looked for the Fountain of Youth
• there is a site of Troy
• there is no Fountain of Youth
• looking for is a relation one may have to nonexistent objects (similarly believing, wanting, etc.)
• contrast finding, touching, kicking: you can't find or touch or kick what doesn't exist
• scholastic terminology intentional inexistence
• ordinary relations: both relata must actually exist for the relationship to truly hold
• intentional relations: only the subject need actually exist, the object intentionally inexists
• Brentano's thesis: intentionality is the mark of the mental (a characteristic possessed by all and only mental states)
• "Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself, although they do not all do so in the same way." (21)
• "In presentation something is presented, in judgement something is affirmed or denied, in love loved, in hate hated, in desire desired and so on." (21)
• Subdivision of the concept of intentionality
• referential intentionality: concerns the aboutness or reference:
• the referent of my thought "There's Petey" is Pete (my cat)
• the referent of my thought "There's a cat" is Pete (my cat)
• content intentionality: concerns the sense -- something like the descriptive content -- of the expression
• "There's Petey" doesn't mean the same or have the same content as "There's a cat"
• suppose there went Louise (my other cat) instead
• my thought "There's Petey" was false.
• my thought "There's a cat" was true.
• Two difficulties
1. some mental states seem nonintentional (the criterion is too narrow)
• undirected or "free floating" anxiety a classic example
• more generally, "sensations like pains and tickles, do not seem to exhibit either kind of intentionality" (21)
• Bretano's "reply": when I feel pain there's
1. the feeling (awareness of) it and
2. there's the felt quality -- the ouchiness -- of it
• Implication & issues regarding Brentano's "reply"
• implication: the ouchiness has the same intentionally inexistent character as the Fountain of Youth
• issue: staus of inexistence is contrary to infallibility of access?
• infallibilty: if I feel pain the pain felt must actually exist.
• inexistence: if I feel it's almost time to go it needn't actually be almost time to go.
2. some nonmental things are intentional
• words and sentences
• are physical objects or events:
• inscriptions of cat are physical marks (e.g., blotches of ink)
• utterances of cat are physical events (vibrations in the air)
• having sense and reference
• my utterance or inscription refers to Pete, Louise, et al.
• in virtue of its having the sense "member of the species felinus domesticus"
• two lines of reply
• distinguish intrinsic intentionality or original intentionality (as of thoughts) from derived intentionality or "as if" intentionality (as of speech, etc.)
• reply: utterances and inscriptions derive their intentionality from the intrinsically intentional thoughts that cause or accompany them & such original intentionality is the mark of the mental
• grounds for reservations
• derivation (since its external) seems a poor candidate for marking an essential distinction
• fires arising from spontaneous combustion and those lit from other fires are equally fires
• if you caught AIDS from the first person to have it you still have one and the same disease
• derived does not entail counterfeit -- quite the contrary!
• there is an account owing of the supposed derivation
• grounds to believe that (at least some of) our thoughts derive their meaning from the words we deploy in thinking them.
• and that words get their meaning from their communicative use in society
• a more direct reply -- "bite the bullett": acknowledge that to the extent that speech acts, etc., if they do exhibit intentionality, are mental
• acknowledge "the possibility that physical systems and their states may posess genuine intentionality and hence mentality"
• the "bullet" here being physicalistic is perhaps not so hard to bite
• "After all, some would argue, we, too, are complex physical systems, and the physical/biological states of our brains are capable of referring to things and states of affairs external to them and store their representations in memory." (23)
• Perhaps too physicalistic for the taste of some: some would like to deny that computers think by asserting the counterfeit character of their derived intentionality.
• An Unresolved Puzzle concerning the unity of the (category of) mental
• The preceding survey suggests "that our notion of the mental is far from monolithic and that it is in fact a cluster of many ideas" (23)
• some of the features cited appear independent of each other, e.g.,
• nonspatiality
• special epistemic access
• consider the two broad categories of sensory and intentional
• sensory seem paradigmatically accessible (but dubiously intentional)
• intentional states seem paridigmatically intentional (but dubiously accessible)
• Question: "In virtue of what common property are both sensory states and intentional states mental."
• purely disjunctive property intentional-or-accessible doesn't cut it (compare round-or-red)
• perhaps if we could say how they interacted we could characterize mental in terms of their interaction
• How might qualia enable cognition to have content? (Searle et al.)
• How might cognition enable qualia to be accessible? (Higher Order Theories)
• "Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind." (Kant)

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