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Mind and Body “Consciousness Is What Makes the Mind- Body Problem Really Intractable

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The Real Mind-Body Problem Nagel, “What Is It Like To Be a Bat?” (1979) Mind and Body “Consciousness is what makes the mind- body problem really intractable. Without consciousness, the mind-body Fall 2014 problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness, it seems hopeless.” 1 2 Descartes‘s Doctrines The Cartesian Impasse Meditations (1641) • Strict Separation between Humans, Animals • How Can a Material Substance Affect an – Animals as Unconscious Reflex Machines Immaterial Substance? – Consciousness Frees Humans from Reflex • The Pineal Gland • Substance Dualism – Location – Body Characterized by Extension – Singular – Mind Characterized by Thought – Uniquely Human • Interactive Dualism – Knowledge Through Sensory Organs – Thoughts Affect Bodily Actions 3 The Persistence of Dualism Escaping Descartes's Impasse: Varieties of Dualism • Religious Doctrine • Occasionalism – Soul Separates Man from Animals – Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715) – Soul = Mind = Consciousness – All Causality Resides with God • As “Folk Psychology” • Dual-Aspect Theory (Property Dualism) – We have Bodies and Minds – Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) – They are Somehow Different – God Ordains Isomorphism between Mind and – Mind and Body Interact Somehow Body • As Scientific Psychology • Psychophysical Parallelism – Doctrine of Mentalism – Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716) – Psychology as the Science of Mental Life 5 – Correlation Established by God 6 1 Escaping Descartes' Impasse: Escaping Descartes' Impasse: Varieties of Immaterialist Monism Varieties of Materialist Monism • Mentalistic Monism (Idealism) • The Automaton Theory – George Berkeley (1685-1753) – Julien Offray de la Mettrie (1709-1751) – No Reality Other than the Mind • Pierre Jean George Cabanis (1757-1808) – Humans are Conscious Automata • Mind-Stuff Theory – Morton Prince (1854-1929) • Epiphenomenalism – All Matter Contains “Mind-Stuff” – T.H. Huxley (1874) • Shadworth Holloway Hodgson (1870) 7 – Consciousness Has No Causal Efficacy 8 The Steamwhistle Analogy T.H. Huxley (1868) William James at Descartes‘s Impasse Principles (1890) “The consciousness of brutes would appear to be related to the mechanism of their body simply as a collateral product of its working, and to be completely without any power of • Rejected Mind-Stuff theory modifying that working as the steamwhistle which • Materialism is Right, but… accompanies the work of a locomotive engine is without influence upon its machinery.” T.H. Huxley (1868) – Rejected Automaton Theory – Rejected Epiphenomenalism • Mind has Causal Efficacy • Psychophysical Parallelism – Secular Version “The Sespe”, built 1891 (Fillmore & Western Railway, California) 9 10 The Behaviorist Revolution The Concept of Mind Watson (1913, 1919) Ryle (1949) • Humans are Behaving Organisms – Behavior, Conditions Under Which it Occurs, Can Be Objectively Described • Mind as “The Ghost in the Machine” • Mental States are Not Causally Efficacious • Category Mistake – Behaving Organisms React to Environmental – Identify Mind with Brain Stimuli – Treat Mind as Separate Component of Body • Psychology a Natural Science • In Addition to Physical Parts – Predict Behavior to Advance Scientific Theory • Mind as Behavior or Disposition – Control Behavior to Promote Human welfare • Circumstances for Using Mental Terms 11 12 2 “Mind” in Philosophical Behaviorism Denying Consciousness • Consciousness Does Not Really Exist • “Thinking” – Illusory – Talking to Oneself • Positivistic Stance (“Vienna Circle”) • “Believing” – Nothing Exists Which Cannot Be Publicly Verified – Behaving As If Something Were True • Consciousness is Irrelevant to Function • Mental Terms – Plays No Causal Role in Behavior – Behavior • Mind as “Virtual Machine” – Circumstances Under Which It Takes Place • Processes Stimulus Inputs • Generates Response Outputs 13 14 Descartes’ Impasse and Back at Descartes' Impasse the Explanatory Gap Levine (1983) • James' Conundrum – Science Forces Us to Materialism • Physicalist Theories of Mind Cannot Explain – Experience Inclines Us to Dualism How Physical Properties Give Rise to • Responses Experience – Give Up Folk Psychology • Consider the Plausibility of the Following: – Non-Reductionist Materialism – The Motion of Molecules Creates Heat – Blend Materialism, Dualism – Electromagnetic Radiation at 700nm Creates Red – Embrace Dualism – Give Up Entirely 15 16 Mysterianism Searle’s Biological Naturalism McGinn (1989, 2000) The Rediscovery of the Mind (1992) We have been trying for a long time to solve the mind-body problem. It has stubbornly • Consciousness is a Causal Property of the resisted our best efforts. The mystery Brain… persists. I think the time has come to admit – At Certain Levels of Anatomical Organization candidly that we cannot resolve the mystery. • Human, Primate Brain [W]e know that brains are the de facto causal • Invertebrate Brains? basis for consciousness, [but] we are cut off – In Certain Types of Physiological States by our very cognitive constitution from • General Anesthesia? • Concussion, Coma? achieving a conception of… the psychophysical link. 17 18 3 Intertheoretic Reduction Folk Psychology and Neuroscience Churchland & Churchland (1998) Churchland & Churchland (1998) “When the propositions and principles of a • Folk Psychology Talks About Mental States new theory mirror the propositions and principles of an old theory; and • Real Science Talks About Physical States The new theory gives better explanations and • Therefore “Psychology must be grounded in predictions than the old one; then the real-world findings of neuroscience” The new theory contains the correct • The World of the Mind is the World of Ether description of reality and is to be preferred on and Phlogiston and Fairies that ground.” 19 20 Should Have What Pat Said to Paul… ^ Quoted in The New Yorker, February 12, 2007 What Pat Said to Paul… “Paul, don’t speak to me, my serotonin levels have hit bottom, “Paul, don’t speak to me, my Your Broca’s area should be releasing my brain is awash in serotonin levels have hit inhibitory neurotransmitters for a bottom, my brain is awash while, so that my mirror neurons glucosteroids, my blood vessels in glucosteroids, my blood don’t automatically emulate your are full of adrenaline, and if it vessels are full of articulatory gestures as you push air weren’t for my endogenous adrenaline, and if it weren’t into your larynx, across your vocal for my endogenous opiates cords, and into your mouth and nose. opiates I’d have driven the car I’d have driven the car into into a tree on the way home. My a tree on the way home. Mix me a 12.7% solution of alcohol in dopamine levels need lifting. My dopamine levels need water, along with some glycerol and lifting. Pour me a a little reducing sugar, plus some Pour me a Chardonnay, and I’ll Chardonnay, and I’ll be tartaric, acetic, malic, and lactic be down in a minute.” New Yorker (02/12/07) down in a minute.” acids, with a pH level of about 3.25. 21 22 Touching a Nerve A Reductio ad Absurdum? Patricia Churchland, Touching a Nerve (2014) McGinn (2014) Churchland’s reasoning is as unsound as the following bit of invented “I began to learn neuroscience in the mid- autobiography: “I began by studying biology, but then I realized that 1970s after having begun a career in organisms are made of molecules, so I switched to chemistry—this being the only rational course of action.” That declaration can only seem remotely philosophy. This transition was motivated plausible if we assume a very strong form of reductionism, namely that by the realization that if mental processes psychology (or biology) can be translated into neurology (or chemistry). Indeed, anyone studying virtually any subject, following Churchland’s logic, are actually processes of the brain, then should switch immediately to physics, since everything is ultimately made of you cannot understand the mind without elementary particles and depends on their activity. Historians should become physicists, as should students of literature, because people and books are understanding how the brain works.” made of elementary particles! Churchland herself should abandon neuroscience and take up basic physics, because she must realize that brains are made of matter and physics is the science of matter. 23 24 4 But Why Not Ground Neuroscience “in Four Problems of Body and Mind the Real-World Findings of” Psychology? Kihlstrom (2010) • From Body to Mind • Examples – Neural Correlates of Consciousness – Color Vision – Structure of Memory • From Mind to Body – The Great Mental Imagery Debate – Placebo and Other “Psychosomatic” Effects • Mind Without Body “Without neuroscience, psychology – Spiritualism, Parapsychology is still the science of mental life; • Body Without Mind without psychology, neuroscience is – Zombies and Other “Reflex Machines” just the science of neurons.” 25 26 The “Unbridgeable Gulf” “The Hard Problem” of Consciousness Between the Body and the Mind Chalmers (1996) Wittgenstein (1953) Philosophical Investigations, Part I, Section 412, p. 124e “The feeling of an unbridgeable gulf between consciousness and brain-process…. When • How Do Brain-Processes Produce does this feeling occur in the present case? Consciousness? It is when I (for example) turn my attention – What is the Mechanism? in a particular way on to my own • Why Do Brain-Processes Produce consciousness and, astonished, say to Consciousness? myself: THIS is supposed to be produced by a process in the brain! -- as it were – Why Doesn’t It All Just Go On In the Dark?
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