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The Mechanical Mind The Mechanical Mind How can the human mind represent the external world? What is thought, and can it be studied scientifically? Should we think of the mind as a kind of machine? Is the mind a computer? Can a computer think? Tim Crane sets out to answer these questions and more in a lively and straightforward way, presuming no prior knowledge of philosophy or related disciplines. Since its first publication The Mechanical Mind has introduced thousands of people to some of the most important ideas in contemporary philosophy of mind. Crane explains the fundamental ideas that cut across philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence and cognitive science: what the mind–body problem is; what a computer is and how it works; what thoughts are and how computers and minds might have them. He examines different theories of the mind from dualist to eliminativist, and questions whether there can be thought without language and whether the mind is subject to the same causal laws as natural phenomena. The result is a fascinating exploration of the theories and arguments surrounding the notions of thought and representation. This third edition has been fully revised and updated, and includes a wholly new chapter on externalism about mental content and the extended and embodied mind. There is a stronger emphasis on the environmental and bodily context in which thought occurs. Many chapters have been reorganised to make the reader’s passage through the book easier. The book now contains a much more detailed guide to further reading, and the chronology and the glossary of technical terms have also been updated. The Mechanical Mind is accessible to anyone interested in the mechanisms of our minds, and essential reading for those studying philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, or cognitive psychology. Tim Crane is Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge. He is the author of The Objects of Thought, Aspects of Psychologism, Elements of Mind, the editor of The Contents of Experience, General Editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and the Philosophy Consultant Editor of the Times Literary Supplement. This page intentionally left blank The Mechanical Mind A Philosophical Introduction to Minds, Machines and Mental Representation 3rd Edition By Tim Crane Third edition published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Tim Crane The right of Tim Crane to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. First published 1995 by Penguin Books Second edition published 2003 by Routledge Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Crane, Tim. The mechanical mind : a philosophical introduction to minds, machines, and mental representation / by Tim Crane. -- 3rd Edition. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-138-85832-9 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-138-85835-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-315-65868-1 (e-book) 1. Philosophy of mind. I. Title. BD418.3.C74 2016 128’.2--dc23 2015023436 ISBN13: 978-1-138-85832-9 (hbk) ISBN13: 978-1-138-85835-0 (pbk) ISBN13: 978-1-315-65868-1 (ebk) Typeset in Franklin Gothic by Saxon Graphics Ltd, Derby But how is it, and by what art, doth the soul read that such an image or stroke in matter … signifies such an object? Did we learn such an Alphabet in our Embryo-state? And how comes it to pass, that we are not aware of any such congenite apprehensions? … That by diversity of motions we should spell out figures, distances, magnitudes, colours, things not resembled by them, we attribute to some secret deductions. Joseph Glanvill, The Vanity of Dogmatizing (1661) To my parents Contents List of figures xi Preface to the first edition xiii Preface to the second edition xv Preface to the third edition xvii 1 Introducing the mechanical mind 1 1.1 The mechanical world picture 1 1.2 The mechanical world picture and the human mind 3 1.3 Prospectus 5 2 The puzzle of representation 7 2.1 The puzzle 7 2.2 The idea of representation 9 2.3 Pictures and resemblance 10 2.4 Linguistic representation 15 2.5 Conclusion: pictures, words and interpretation 16 3 Mental representation 17 3.1 Mental representation introduced 17 3.2 Thought and consciousness 20 3.3 Intentionality 22 3.4 Brentano’s thesis 27 3.5 Conclusion: from representation to the mind 29 VIII CONTENTS 4 Understanding thinkers and their thoughts 30 4.1 The mind–body problem 30 4.2 Understanding other minds 33 4.3 The causal picture of thoughts 38 4.4 Conclusion: from the causal picture of thoughts to the science of the mind 43 5 Common-sense psychology and science 44 5.1 Common-sense psychology 44 5.2 The science of thought: elimination or vindication? 49 5.3 Theory versus simulation 53 5.4 Conclusion: from representation to computation 56 6 Computation and representation 58 6.1 Asking the right questions 58 6.2 Computation, functions and algorithms 59 6.3 Turing machines 64 6.4 Coding and symbols 69 6.5 Instantiating a function and computing a function 70 6.6 Automatic algorithms 72 6.7 Conclusion: what is a computer? 75 7 Can a computer think? 77 7.1 Thinking computers? 77 7.2 Artificial intelligence 80 7.3 Can thinking be captured by rules and representations? 83 7.4 The Chinese room 86 7.5 Conclusion: can a computer think? 89 8 The mechanisms of thought 91 8.1 Cognition, computation and functionalism 91 8.2 A language of thought? 94 8.3 For and against the language of thought 98 8.4 ‘Brainy’ computers 105 8.5 Conclusion: does computation explain representation? 110 9 Explaining mental representation 112 9.1 Reduction and definition 112 9.2 Conceptual and naturalistic definitions 114 9.3 Causal theories of mental representation 116 9.4 The problem of error 118 9.5 Conclusion: the importance of error 123 CONTENTS IX 10 The mechanical mind and its biological basis 124 10.1 Mental representation, organisms and agency 124 10.2 Mental representation and biological function 127 10.3 Evolution and the mind 130 10.4 The modularity of mind 134 10.5 Conclusion: the place of the organism 137 11 The extent of the mind 139 11.1 Intentionality as a relation 139 11.2 Externalism about content 141 11.3 Externalism about vehicles: the ‘extended mind’ 144 11.4 Embodiment and enactive cognition 147 11.5 Conclusion: the extent of the mind 151 12 A non-reductive conception of mental representation 153 12.1 Against reduction and definition 153 12.2 A non-reductive conception of computation and representation 156 12.3 Scientific models and models of the mind 159 12.4 Conclusion: can representation be reductively explained? 163 13 Consciousness and the mechanical mind 165 13.1 The story so far 165 13.2 Consciousness, ‘what it’s like’ and qualia 168 13.3 Consciousness and physicalism 170 13.4 The limits of scientific knowledge 175 13.5 Conclusion: what do the problems of consciousness tell us about the mechanical mind? 177 Guide to further reading 179 Glossary 193 The mechanical mind: a chronology 196 Index 199 This page intentionally left blank List of figures Figure 1: Old man with a stick 13 Figure 2: Flow chart for the multiplication algorithm 62 Figure 3: A flow chart for boiling an egg 63 Figure 4: A machine table for a simple Turing machine 66 Figure 5: Mousetrap ‘black box’ 72 Figure 6: The mousetrap’s innards 73 Figure 7: Multiplier black box 73 Figure 8: Flow chart for the multiplication algorithm again 74 Figure 9: An and-gate 80 Figure 10: Diagram of a connectionist network 107 Figure 11: Mach bands 134 Figure 12: Cummins’s ‘Tower Bridge’ picture of computation 157 Figure 13: The domino illusion 161 Figure 14: The Kanizsa triangle 162 This page intentionally left blank Preface to the first edition This book is an introduction to some of the main preoccupations of contemporary philosophy of mind. There are many ways to write an introductory book. Rather than giving an even-handed description of all recent philosophical theories of the mind, I decided instead to follow through a line of thought which captures the essence of what seem to me the most interesting contemporary debates. Central to this line of thought is the problem of mental representation: how can the mind represent the world? This problem is the thread that binds the chapters together, and around this thread are woven the other main themes of the book: the nature of everyday psychological explanation, the causal nature of the mind, the mind as a computer and the reduction of mental content. Although there is a continuous line of argument, I have tried to construct the book so that (to some extent) the chapters can be read independently of each other.
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