European Studies in Philosophy of Science David Ludwig A Pluralist Theory of the Mind European Studies in Philosophy of Science Volume 2 Series editors Dennis Dieks , Institute for History & Foundations of Science , Utrecht University , The Netherlands Maria Carla Galavotti , Università di Bologna , Italy Wenceslao J. Gonzalez , University of A Coruña , Spain Editorial Board Daniel Andler, University of Paris-Sorbonne, France Theodore Arabatzis, University of Athens, Greece Diderik Batens, Ghent University, Belgium Michael Esfeld, University of Lausanne, Switzerland Jan Faye, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Olav Gjelsvik, University of Oslo, Norway Stephan Hartmann, University of Munich, Germany Gurol Irzik, Sabancı University, Turkey Ladislav Kvasz, Charles University, Czech Republic Adrian Miroiu, National School of Political Science and Public Administration, Romania Elizabeth Nemeth, University of Vienna, Austria Ilkka Niiniluoto, University of Helsinki, Finland Samir Okasha, University of Bristol, UK Katarzyna Paprzycka, University of Warsaw, Poland Tomasz Placek, Jagiellonian University, Poland Demetris Portides, University of Cyprus, Cyprus Wlodek Rabinowicz, Lund University, Sweden Miklos Redei, London School of Economics, UK Friedrich Stadler, University of Vienna, Austria Gereon Wolters, University of Konstanz, Germany This new series results from the synergy of EPSA - European Philosophy of Science Association - and PSE - Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective: ESF Networking Programme (2008–2013). It continues the aims of the Springer series “The Philosophy of Science in a European Perspective” and is meant to give a new impetus to European research in the philosophy of science. The main purpose of the series is to provide a publication platform to young researchers working in Europe, who will thus be encouraged to publish in English and make their work internation- ally known and available. In addition, the series will host the EPSA conference proceedings, selected papers coming from workshops, edited volumes on specifi c issues in the philosophy of science, monographs and outstanding Ph.D. disserta- tions. There will be a special emphasis on philosophy of science originating from Europe. In all cases there will be a commitment to high standards of quality. The Editors will be assisted by an Editorial Board of renowned scholars, who will advise on the selection of manuscripts to be considered for publication. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13909 David Ludwig A Pluralist Theory of the Mind David Ludwig Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Amsterdam , The Netherlands European Studies in Philosophy of Science ISBN 978-3-319-22737-5 ISBN 978-3-319-22738-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-22738-2 Library of Congress Control Number: 2015950433 Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifi cally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfi lms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Printed on acid-free paper Springer International Publishing AG Switzerland is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) For Megan In this sense, however, every sensible and philosophically honest world view must be pluralistic. For the universe is variegated and manifold, a fabric woven of many qualities no two of which are exactly alike. A formal metaphysical monism, with its principle that all being is in truth one , does not give an adequate account; it must be supplemented with some sort of pluralistic principle. Moritz Schlick – General Theory of Knowledge, 1918/1974, p. 333 Acknowledgements The issues raised in this book have been with me since my time as an undergraduate student at Free University Berlin. When I decided to study philosophy in 2002, my intellectual landscape was dominated by a handful of critical theorists in the tradi- tion of the Frankfurt School. My fi rst contact with contemporary academic philoso- phy came as a shock that impressed me so deeply that I quickly changed my enrollment from philosophy and ancient history to philosophy and cognitive sci- ence. As far as I remember, this decision was made during Holm Tetens’ lecture on “Computers, Brains, and other Machines” and one of his melancholic pleas for a naturalist theory of the mind. Holm’s uncompromising insistence on intellectual honesty left us students with the pessimistic suggestion that naturalism was a tragic truth, but a truth nonetheless. The anti-naturalists’ obsession with qualia and other supposedly irreducible entities was well motivated but unfortunately not well justifi ed. Challenged by this pessimistic naturalism, I decided that my philosophical inter- ests require more than anecdotal knowledge about the natural sciences. The cogni- tive science program at the University of Potsdam offered a great opportunity to learn about a large range of fascinating disciplines from excellent teachers like Johannes Haack and Reinhold Kliegl. Now focusing on debates about mind and cognition, my new subjects suggested a neat division of labor. As a student of cogni- tive science, I would learn about empirical problems of human memory, perception, problem solving, and so on. As a student of philosophy, I would be concerned with the remaining metaphysical problems such as consciousness, intentionality, self- knowledge, or free will. However, the problems with this division of labor soon started to appear. While I did my best to follow lectures from neurolinguistics to artifi cial intelligence, the convenient philosophical distinction between “easy” empirical problems and “hard” metaphysical problems made less and less sense. On the one hand, the “easy” empirical problems weren’t so easy after all and the reductive explanations from my Introduction to Philosophy of Mind courses nowhere to be found. On the other hand, there appeared to be a wealth of fascinating empirical research on consciousness, ix x Acknowledgements intentionality, and other entities that were claimed to fall in the philosophers’ realm of competence. Of course, I was soon introduced to a number of philosophical strat- egies of explaining this discomfort away. Models of reductive explanation in phi- losophy of mind were not supposed to provide a realistic account of explanations in scientifi c practice. Furthermore, the “hard problem of consciousness” did not imply that scientists have nothing to say about consciousness. Instead, one just had to separate the empirically unproblematic issues such as access consciousness or neu- ral correlates from the philosophically troubling issue of phenomenal consciousness. My discomfort about the relation between philosophy of mind and the reality of scientifi c practice might have faded without three lucky coincidences during my time as student in Berlin. First, I started to work as a student assistant for Peter Bieri who had been highly infl uential in establishing analytic philosophy of mind in German philosophy but had become disenchanted with the entire discipline. I do not know whether Peter Bieri would agree with the core claims of this book, but our discussions about Wittgenstein, Goodman, and the state of philosophy of mind were the single most important event in the formation of the thoughts of this book. The second lucky coincidence was a seminar on mereology with Olaf Müller at the same time as I was exposed to Peter Bieri’s staunch criticism of the analytic mainstream that he so successfully co-established in Germany. Olaf Müller’s broadly Putnam- inspired criticism of current developments in ontology provided me with a much- needed theoretical framework to formulate my ideas. My term paper on “mereological physicalism” was a fi rst attempt to articulate my discomfort with current philosophy of mind and to sketch a broadly pluralist alternative. The third lucky coincidence was that I started working as a student assistant for Tania Munz at the Max - Planck Institute for the History of Science . I rarely talked with history of science colleagues about philosophy of mind and I rarely talk about history of science thorough this book. Still, this book would not have been possible without a perspective on science that I do not owe to philosophers but to historians. I had learned to approach philosophy of mind by starting with sweeping metaphysi- cal doctrines (mostly physicalism and dualism in their countless varieties) and by looking at the cognitive sciences for support. It took history of science to invert this perspective. Instead of asking