04 mind

Philosophy of Mind
What is the place of minds in a physical universe?
George Matthews
Spring 2016

The Mind Body Problem
“Thinking meat! You’re asking me to
believe in thinking meat!”
“Yes, thinking meat! Conscious meat!
Loving meat. Dreaming meat. The meat is
the whole deal!”
Terry Bisson, “They’re Made out of Meat”

What is the place of minds in the physical universe?

Minds are real but
non-physical things.
dualism

Minds are real but
dualism
! Dualists claim there are two basic
kinds of stuﬀ in the world, matter and
minds.
! This view of the mind has ancient
roots – the concept of a soul as an
immaterial entity separate from the
body is a version of dualism.

“Minds” are really just
ways of talking about what
intelligent creatures do.
behaviorism

behaviorism
! Behaviorism was the dominant
approach to psychology in the ﬁrst
half of the 20th century.
! Behaviorists wanted to make the
study of the mind scientiﬁc by getting
rid of all reference to a private “inner”
world and talking only about
publically observable and measurable
phenomena.

Minds are nothing
but brains.
mind/brain identity theory

Minds are nothing
but brains.
! The 20th century also saw enormous
advances in the study of the brain
which continue to this day.
! Mind/brain Identity Theory is an
example of a “reductionist” theory in
that it tries to reduce statements
about minds to statements about
brains.

Minds are programs
running on brains or some
other kind of hardware.
functionalism

Minds are programs
functionalism
! Functionalism arose in tandem with
the development of contemporary
cognitive psychology which looks at
the mind in terms of information
processing.
! According to functionalists, there is
no reason why machines or
non-human organisms might not have
minds, as long as their mental
processes are of the right kind.

Minds are real but
dualism
behaviorism
Minds are nothing
but brains.
Minds are programs
functionalism

The Case for Dualism
Rene Descartes
1596 – 1650

Rene Descartes
1596 – 1650
Minds and bodies are
so fundamentally
different that they must
be made of entirely
different kinds of stuff.

Rene Descartes
1596 – 1650
Minds and bodies are
so fundamentally
different that they must
be made of entirely
different kinds of stuff.
Although dualism is an ancient
theory, Rene Descartes is its
most well-known defender. He
did not just take for granted
the existence of an immaterial
soul (also called a mind) but
argued for it explicitly.

Rene Descartes
1596 – 1650
Whatever we can conceive of as being
separate can actually exist separately.
We can conceive of minds without
bodies and bodies without minds.
Thus minds and bodies can exist
separately and hence dualism is true.
Descartes’ ﬁrst argument

Whatever we can conceive of as being
separate can actually exist separately.
We can conceive of minds without
bodies and bodies without minds.
Thus minds and bodies can exist
separately and hence dualism is true.
Descartes’ ﬁrst argument
Descartes argues that since
he can doubt the existence
of his body but not of his
mind, the two must be
metaphysically distinct.

Material things take up space, are
publicly accessible, interact with each
other in physical ways.
Mental things don’t take up space, are
private, and interact with each other
according to their meanings.
It is completely unclear how these
diﬀerent kinds of things could possibly
be uniﬁed.
Thus minds and bodies are really
distinct kinds of things.
Descartes’ second argument

Material things take up space, are
publicly accessible, interact with each
other in physical ways.
Mental things don’t take up space, are
private, and interact with each other
according to their meanings.
It is completely unclear how these
diﬀerent kinds of things could possibly
be uniﬁed.
Thus minds and bodies are really
distinct kinds of things.
Descartes’ second argument
Does the fact that we
cannot conceive of how
mental and material things
might relate to each other
entail that they are really
metaphysically distinct?

Objections to Dualism
Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia
1618 – 1680

1618 – 1680
If minds and bodies exist in
separate realms and share no
common features, how can they
interact, which they obviously
do?

1618 – 1680
Elizabeth Palatine, Princess of Bohemia,
was one of many people with whom
Descartes exchanged letters. She is most
well-known for taking his dualistic
philosophy of mind to task in her letters to
him, by pointing out that on his view there
was no easy way to explain how minds and
bodies could possibly interact.

1618 – 1680
! It is clear that minds and bodies interact.

1618 – 1680
! I may, for example, see a bear when
walking in the woods, feel fear, and then
plan and execute an escape.

1618 – 1680
! I may, for example, see a bear when
walking in the woods, feel fear, and then
plan and execute an escape.
! Dualism has no way of accounting for
such an obvious and everyday interaction
between mind and body.

Gilbert Ryle
1900 – 1976

Gilbert Ryle
1900 – 1976
A mind is best understood not
as another “thing” in the world
alongside of the physical
things we we experience, but
as a pattern of activity
exhibited by organisms like us.

Gilbert Ryle
1900 – 1976
Gilbert Ryle was a British philosopher and
an early advocate of what has come to be
known as “analytic philosophy” one of the
major contemporary approaches to
philosophy. He set out to show how many
philosophical puzzles resulted from the
misuse of language and how a proper
analysis of language could dissolve these
puzzles.

Gilbert Ryle
1900 – 1976
! Descartes has made a “category mistake”
in granting the mind the status of a
separate thing alongside of and somehow
mysteriously connected with the body.

Gilbert Ryle
1900 – 1976
! This is similar to looking for the thing
called “a desert” alongside the rocks,
sand and cactus in Death Valley.

Gilbert Ryle
1900 – 1976
! This is similar to looking for the thing
called “a desert” alongside the rocks,
sand and cactus in Death Valley.
! A mind, like a desert is not a separate
entity, but a higher level pattern made up
of particular things.

The Case for Behaviorism
J.B. Watson
1878 – 1958

J.B. Watson
1878 – 1958
“Psychology as the
behaviorist views it is a
purely objective
experimental branch of
natural science.”

J.B. Watson
1878 – 1958
J.B. Watson was one of the founders of
modern psychology, although after he was
ﬁred from an academic job on account of a
personal scandal he spent the rest of his life
working for an advertising agency.
Behaviorists claimed that we need not talk
about minds from an “internal,” ﬁrst-person
standpoint, but instead can study minds
exclusively by watching how various animals
and humans responded to stimuli in
controlled experiments.

J.B. Watson
1878 – 1958
Inner mental states are unnecessary
for talking about what organisms
with “minds” actually do.
Furthermore there is no publicly
accessible evidence for such inner
states.
So minds are not sets of inner states,
but are instead patterns of
objectively describable behavior.
an argument for behaviorism

Inner mental states are unnecessary
for talking about what organisms
with “minds” actually do.
Furthermore there is no publicly
accessible evidence for such inner
states.
So minds are not sets of inner states,
but are instead patterns of
objectively describable behavior.
an argument for behaviorism
This argument is not valid
since from the fact that we
need not mention “inner
states” to describe minds,
it does not follow that
such states do not exist.

Objections to Behaviorism
Hilary Putnam
1926 –

Hilary Putnam
1926 –
Is being in some mental state or
other really the same thing as
exhibiting certain behaviors?

Hilary Putnam
1926 –
Hilary Putnam is an inﬂuential American
philosopher who is highly critical of
behaviorist approaches to the mind. He also
has done important work in philosophical
logic and the theory of meaning.

Hilary Putnam
1926 –
! We can imagine a race of Super-Spartans
who have trained themselves not to
respond to bodily injuries.

Hilary Putnam
1926 –
! Clearly they may very well be in pain
even though they exhibit no behaviors
normally associated with being in pain.

Hilary Putnam
1926 –
! Clearly they may very well be in pain
even though they exhibit no behaviors
normally associated with being in pain.
! Therefore we cannot entirely eliminate
reference to inner states in talking about
minds.

Hilary Putnam
1926 –
! Someone might exhibit all of the signs of
being in love such as talking about
someone all of the time, buying them
ﬂowers, etc.

Hilary Putnam
1926 –
ﬂowers, etc.
! And yet this person could be faking it,
wishing only to marry the person they
are courting for their money.

Hilary Putnam
1926 –
ﬂowers, etc.
! And yet this person could be faking it,
wishing only to marry the person they
are courting for their money.
! Once again behaviorists would miss this
important diﬀerence – they confuse
outwards signs of a state with the state
itself.

The Case for Mind/Brain Identity Theory

J.C.C. Smart
1920 – 2012

J.C.C. Smart
1920 – 2012
“There does seem to
be, so far as science is
concerned, nothing in
the world but
increasingly complex
arrangements of
physical constituents.”

J.C.C. Smart
1920 – 2012
J.J.C. Smart was a British philosopher who
wanted to explain the mind in purely
physical terms, since he thought it absurd
that everything except minds had such a
physical explanation.

J.C.C. Smart
1920 – 2012
Neuroscience reveals that particular
mental states are correlated with
particular brain states.
There is no reason to think that
mental states are something
non-physical.
Thus mental states are nothing but
brain states.
an argument for mind/brain identity theory

Neuroscience reveals that particular
mental states are correlated with
particular brain states.
There is no reason to think that
mental states are something
non-physical.
Thus mental states are nothing but
brain states.
an argument for mind/brain identity theory
This argument is an appeal
to Ockham’s razor, or the
principle that our
explanations should not
rely on extra entities that
do no explanatory work. If
we do not need to talk
about mental states in
addition to brain states, we
should just eliminate talk
of the former.

Objections to Mind/Brain Identity Theory

Jerry Fodor
1935 –

Jerry Fodor
1935 –
Can’t it be the case that many
diﬀerent particular brain states
might realize one and the same
mental state?

Jerry Fodor
1935 –
Jerry Fodor is an American philosopher who
has greatly contributed to the philosophy of
mind. He opposes attempts to reduce
mental phenomena to something
non-mental and so defends the autonomy
of psychology and its independence from
neuroscience.

Jerry Fodor
1935 –
! The brains of individuals diﬀer in their
small-scale structure, even if the overall
anatomy of the brain is similar in
humans.

Jerry Fodor
1935 –
humans.
! Yet in spite of these diﬀerences we can
think the same thoughts such as “ 2 is
an irrational number,” which means the
same for all of us.

Jerry Fodor
1935 –
humans.
! Yet in spite of these diﬀerences we can
think the same thoughts such as “ 2 is
an irrational number,” which means the
same for all of us.
! So mental states cannot be identical with
brain states, and thus minds and brains
are not identical things.

Frank Jackson
1943 –

Frank Jackson
1943 –
No matter how much we know
about minds and brains from
outside, without knowledge of
what it is like to have certain
experiences from inside, our
picture of the mind will not be
complete.

Frank Jackson
1943 –
Frank Jackson is an Australian philosopher
who argues against “physicalism” or the idea
that we can account for everything there is
in the universe in purely physical terms.

Frank Jackson
1943 –
! Imagine a neuro-scientist named Mary
who knows everything about color vision,
but who herself lacks color vision.

Frank Jackson
1943 –
! Even though Mary knows everything
about the physical brain states involved
in color vision she lacks some knowledge
about it – what it is like to see color.

Frank Jackson
1943 –
! Even though Mary knows everything
about the physical brain states involved
in color vision she lacks some knowledge
about it – what it is like to see color.
! Thus mind/brain identity theory is false,
since there is something missing in a
merely physical account of the mind.

The Case for Functionalism
Jerry Fodor
1935 –

Jerry Fodor
1935 –
Mind is to software as
brain is to hardware.

Jerry Fodor
1935 –
What distinguishes minds, according to
Fodor and other functionalists, is not so
much what they are made of but what they
do – they process information.

Jerry Fodor
1935 –
Having a mind enables an organism
to respond intelligently to stimuli.
Intelligent responses are sensitive to
the informational content of stimuli.
Thus minds are best understood in
terms of their ability to process
information and mental states are
computational states.
an argument for functionalism

Like behaviorists
functionalists claim that
having a mind is to be
understood as having
certain capacities. Unlike
behaviorists, functionalists
claim that “inner mental
states” can’t be dispensed
with in a scientiﬁc study of
the mind.

Functionalists claim that
minds are “multiply
realizable” in that the sets
of functions performed by
our brains and senses could
in principle be carried out
by a suitably programmed
machine made of other
materials.

Objections to Functionalism
Ned Block
1942 –

Ned Block
1942 –
It makes no sense to say that a
mind is nothing but a set of
functions running in the brain.

Ned Block
1942 –
Ned Block is an American philosopher who
has argued against the adequacy of the
functionalist conception of the mind.

Ned Block
1942 –
! Suppose the population of China
mimicked the human brain with each
person playing the role of a single nueron
in communication with others via
walkie-talkie.

Ned Block
1942 –
walkie-talkie.
! Suppose that all of these people modeled
the activity of a real brain.

Ned Block
1942 –
walkie-talkie.
! Suppose that all of these people modeled
the activity of a real brain.
! Such a functional equivalent of a brain
with a mind clearly lacks a conscious
mind, and so there must be more to
having a mind than performing a set of
functions.

Block’s China brain intends to show that
there must be more to a mind than its
programming. What might this extra
ingredient be?

David Chalmers
1966 –

David Chalmers
1966 –
No matter how much we know
about minds and brains from
outside, without knowledge of
what it is like to have certain
experiences from inside, our
picture of the mind will not be
complete.

David Chalmers
1966 –
David Chalmers is an Australian
philosopher who has written extensively on
the diﬃculties involved in explaining one of
the distinctive features of minds –
consciousness. He often argues that all
attempts to explain minds in purely physical
terms must fail to leave consciousness out
of the picture.

David Chalmers
1966 –
! Imagine a being just like me in terms of
its behavior and the way it processes
information, but with no consciousness –
a philosophical zombie.

David Chalmers
1966 –
! If such a being is conceivable, then
functionalist accounts of minds leave
something out.

David Chalmers
1966 –
! If such a being is conceivable, then
functionalist accounts of minds leave
something out.
! Such beings are conceivable, even if they
do not actually exist, so functionalism
leaves something out of our account of
the mind.

The Case for Artiﬁcial Intelligence

Alan Turing
1912 – 1954

Alan Turing
1912 – 1954
A computer is a universal
machine, which can in principle
be programmed to carry out any
ﬁnite task.

Alan Turing
1912 – 1954
Alan Turing was one of the pioneers of the
computer age. He proved the possibility of
a machine that could be programmed to
carry out any task that could be described
as a series of individual steps, and he
helped build computing machines to crack
German codes during WWII.

Alan Turing
1912 – 1954
! In principle there is no reason a computer
couldn’t be programmed to behave
intelligently.

Alan Turing
1912 – 1954
! In principle there is no reason a computer
couldn’t be programmed to behave
intelligently.
! To see whether a machine is intelligent
we give it a simple test, “The Turing
Test:” if a person cannpot tell the
diﬀerence between its answers to our
questions and humans answers it should
count as intelligent.

Alan Turing
1912 – 1954
If intelligence is nothing but a kind of fancy
programming carried out by human brains,
there is no reason we shouldn’t be able to
build an intelligent machine at some point.

Against Artiﬁcial Intelligence

John Searle
1935 –

John Searle
1935 –
Merely manipulating symbols is
not the same thing as thinking.

John Searle
1935 –
John Searle is an American philosopher who
has written extensively on the philosophy of
mind and the philosophy of language. He
has always been critical of the idea that a
machine can have a mind.

John Searle
1935 –
! Imagine a room in which there is a
person who does not speak Chinese, but
who has an instruction manual for
responding to Chinese symbols passed in
through a window.

John Searle
1935 –
through a window.
! This manual is like a program, designed
to make the person using it look like she
understands Chinese to a Chinese speaker
passing written symbols into the room.

John Searle
1935 –
through a window.
! This manual is like a program, designed
to make the person using it look like she
understands Chinese to a Chinese speaker
passing written symbols into the room.
! From outside it looks like the room
understands Chinese, but this is absurd
since neither the person inside nor the
room as a whole understands anything.

Searle’s Chinese room example is intended
to show that Artiﬁcial Intelligence is
impossible – since a system like the Chinese
Room, with an information processor like
the person with the manual, that is
programmed to respond to language like a
computer might be programmed lacks
understanding, an important part of
intelligence.

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