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A Critique of the Learning Brain A CRITIQUE OF THE LEARNING BRAIN JOAKIM OLSSON Department of Philosophy Master Thesis in Theoretical Philosophy (45 ECTS) Autumn 2020 Supervisor: Sharon Rider Examiner: Pauliina Remes Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 A Brief Overview ............................................................................................................. 1 1.2 Method, Structure and Delimitations ............................................................................... 4 2. BACKGROUND ON THE LEARNING BRAIN ............................................................. 8 2.1 The Learning Brain and Its Philosophical Foundation .................................................... 9 2.2 Cognitivism’s Three Steps: Mentalism, Mind-Brain Identity and Computer Analogy . 14 3. A CRITIQUE OF COGNITIVISM .................................................................................. 24 3.1 A Critique of Mentalism ................................................................................................ 24 3.1.1 The Exteriorization of the Mental ........................................................................... 25 3.1.2 The Intentionality of Mind Seen Through Intentional Action ................................ 32 3.2 A Critique of the Mind-Brain Identity Theory .............................................................. 54 3.3 A Critique of the Computer Analogy ............................................................................. 58 3.3.1 Discrepancies in Re-Descriptions ........................................................................... 58 3.3.2 The Formal Calculator vs. the Engaged Architect .................................................. 60 4. A CRITIQUE OF THE LEARNING BRAIN ................................................................. 69 5. CONCLUSION .................................................................................................................. 82 Glossary ................................................................................................................................... 83 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 85 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 A Brief Overview The guiding question for this essay is: who is the learner? The aim is to examine and criticize one answer to this question, sometimes referred to as the theory of the learning brain, which suggests that the explanation of human learning can be reduced to the transmitting and storing of information in the brain’s formal and representational architecture, i.e., that the brain is the learner. This essay will argue that this answer is misleading, because it cannot account for the way people strive to learn in an attempt to lead a good life as it misrepresents the intentional life of the mind, which results in its counting ourselves out of the picture when it attempts to provide a scientific theory of the learning process. To criticize this theory of the learning brain, this essay will investigate its philosophical foundation, a theory of mind called cognitivism, which is the basis for the cognitive sciences. Cognitivism is itself built on three main tenets: mentalism, the mind-brain identity theory and the computer analogy. After a background-investigation into the learning brain and cognitivism, each of these tenets will be criticized in turn, before the essay moves to criticize the theory of the learning brain itself. The purpose of the investigation into cognitivism is to render the criticism of the learning brain in the last section more substantial and philosophically grounded. The focus of this essay is, in other words, mainly negative, as its purpose is to show that the idea of the learning brain is inadequate as a theory about human learning. The hope is that this criticism will lay the groundwork for an alternative view of mind, one that is better equipped to give meaningful answers to the important questions we have about what it means to learn, i.e., what we learn, how we do it and why. This alternative will emphasize the holistic and intentional character of the human mind, and consider the learning process as an intentional activity performed, not by isolated brains, but by people with minds that are extended, embodied, enacted and embedded in a sociocultural and physical context. This essay will, however, not attempt to provide a positive account of this alternative theory of mind, nor will it attempt a detailed characterization of the learning process that follows from it. All it aims to do is to thoroughly examine and criticize the theory of the learning brain and its philosophical foundation in order to prove it unsound. It is common today to consider ourselves as reducible to our brains, and to speak of learning as something that goes on solely inside our heads. Research programs are formed within the cognitive sciences, books are written for public consumption, and new strategies are created in order to revolutionize education, all seemingly based on the idea that we can optimize our 1 learning capabilities if only we had a better understanding of what the brain does in order to learn and the ways it stores and transmits the information that constitutes the knowledge that we seek to attain. It is this framework that needs to be analyzed, its origins and problems revealed, for better models to emerge. Here is a short introduction to cognitivism and its three main tenets—mentalism, the mind- brain identity theory, and the computer analogy—that work as a foundation for this framework. Mentalism is the theory that detaches mind from body and world in order to study it as an isolated and observable object; it is often traced back to the works of René Descartes, who, in contemporary philosophy of mind, is usually credited as its architect. However, this thesis will emphasize that this theory is more likely a modern phenomenon, one stemming from a certain interpretation of Cartesianism. Consequently, this thesis will make a distinction between Descartes and modern Cartesianism.1 Cognitivism adopts this mentalism, but rejects the Cartesian understanding of the mind as an immaterial object. The mentalist foundation of cognitivism, and much of contemporary philosophy of mind in general, is the treatment of mental life as made up of mental states and processes relating to representations of the world, which in turn, though locked up and isolated from this world, have the capacity to cause us to act in it. This is why mentalism leads to, what is often called, the representational theory of mind. In order to modernize this theory in light of the epistemological demands set by the natural sciences, cognitivism adopts the computational theory of mind, which proposes a nuanced version of the mind-brain identity theory, an idea that originated with the works of J. J. C. Smart and Herbert Feigl in the 1950s, and then works from the supposition that this mind as brain functions like a computer, an idea influenced by Hilary Putnam’s functionalism of the 1960s. Even though the mind-brain identity theory was originally proposed as an alternative to mentalism, and functionalism was proposed as an alternative to the identity theory, cognitivism attempts to find a way to combine these theories into one. By doing this, cognitivism hopes to show that mental states and processes are really brain states and processes. But contrary to some of the stricter mind-brain identity theories, cognitivism still conceives of the mind as brain as working with mental representations. This is supposed to be made possible through the 1 Lilli Alanen (1989), for example, argues that the way we view Descartes’ dualism today as a distinction between “an immaterial soul or mind working ‘inside’ an extended material body functioning according to the mechanical laws of the universe” can be attributed to Gilbert Ryle’s interpretation of Descartes in The Concept of Mind (1949: 115-116), where Ryle labels the Cartesian mind the myth of the “Ghost in the Machine.” Alanen criticizes what she calls “the Myth of the Cartesian Myth,” and shows why Ryle’s interpretation of Descartes is confused (391- 392). On her account, Descartes’s view, as it is revealed particularly in the Sixth Meditation (1641), is that everyday experience shows how the relationship between mind and body is much more complex, nuanced and unified (which makes it, at times, more reminiscent of the view presented in this essay). According to Alanen, in other words, Descartes is not a Cartesian. 2 computer analogy, which is meant to allow the cognitivist to view mental life as re-describable in physical terms, and vice versa. A computer playing chess can be described both physically and psychologically, either as a machine or as a chess-player. The cognitivist hope is that the computational theory of mind will allow us to do the same with human minds as brains (even though Putnam’s functionalism originally intended to show that we cannot reduce ourselves to our brains). The goal of cognitivism thus understood is to provide a philosophical foundation for the scientific study of mental life by naturalizing the mind in a way that still allows us to talk of a “mental life” in a mentalist sense. At the core of this naturalization is the attempt to translate teleological descriptions of intentional mental life into brain mechanisms in terms of natural and efficient causes. The
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