BROAD, RYLE, AND DENNETT: A DISCUSSION OF IMPORTANT CHANGES IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY OF MIND by KEVIN FORT B.A., York University, 1992 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTERS OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of Philosophy) We accept this thesis as conforming to ihe reauired standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA October 1996 © Kevin Thomas Fort, 1996 \ In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada Date I us S Ay Odo^f AT DE-6 (2/88) THESIS ABSTRACT In my thesis I discuss and criticize the work of three important philosophers: CD. Broad, Gilbert Ryle, and D.C. Dennett. These three figures serve as reference points, allowing me to frame the discussion of my view that there is an emerging tradition in contemporary philosophy of mind, a tradition which has its roots in the philosophical views of Gilbert Ryle. I'll show that CD. Broad belongs to an older school of thought, one which Ryle opposes both explicitly and implicitly. Daniel Dennett, a contemporary philosopher, was deeply influenced by Ryle, and I believe that he is the most important flag bearer for this new way of thinking about the mind. He has also made some substantive contributions and amendments to this emerging paradigm. Upon examination, we can see that proponents of this new view oppose any form of Cartesianism and deny that we have an pre-linguistic intuitions. These philosophers are apt to give accounts of the mind and mental terms which not only deny the mind status as a substance, but also claim that mental terms don't refer to events and processes at all. A view called Emergentism, endorsed by Broad, is rejected by thinkers such as Ryle and Dennett, but I'll show that there is a distinct form of emergentism (one which is less philosophically problematic) which forms a vital part of the new tradition. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract ii Table of Contents iii INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter One 2 Chapter Two 39 Chapter Three - 65 Chapter Four 91 CONCLUSION 108 References 110 iii INTRODUCTION Philosophy of mind has undergone a dramatic shift in emphasis over the last one hundred years, due to a large extent to a re-conceptualization of the task of philosophy generally. Philosophy of mind has been on the forefront of this revolution in the discipline and has demonstrated that old problems can be resolved or dissolved by adopting new approaches. In my thesis, I will examine the emergence of these new intellectual developments by means of three reference points: the philosophical works of CD. Broad, Gilbert Ryle, and D.C Dennett. CD. Broad's principle contribution to the field, The Mind and its Place in Nature, first appeared in 1925. Today, however, few read this massive work, primarily because there are not many in the philosophical community now who are apt to think about these issues in the way that Broad and his contemporaries did. By means of an examination of Broad's philosophical views, I'll show how traditional assumptions (both implicit and explicit) drive Broad to adopt problematic positions. Principle among these assumptions is a lingering Cartesianism, and one of the central tasks of Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind was to expose and eradicate 'Descartes' Myth', as he called it (Ryle 1949, 13). This book appeared in mid-century, and I believe that it marks the beginning of an important shift in approach towards the issues in philosophy of mind. The contemporary philosopher Daniel Dennett was deeply influenced by Ryle and his work, and Dennett's work in the field indicates to me that there is a new tradition emerging-Richard Rorty has called it the "Ryle-Dennett tradition "(Rorty 1982a, 325)- which is changing the way philosophers approach the issues in this field. It is my primary goal to argue that such a tradition is in fact emerging, and in the final chapter I extract, from the discussion of the three philosophers in the preceding chapters, a set of four crucial themes which will enable me to distinguish this new tradition from that which was still predominantly unquestioned in Broad's day. 1 CHAPTER ONE 1) Introduction CD. Broad's The Mind and its Place in Nature is based on his Tarner Lectures series given at Trinity College in 1923. First published in 1925, it is a massive (666 page) work, devoted to an investigation of the phenomenon of mind and its relation to the natural world. As such, it is an attempt to solve the perennial problem in the philosophy of mind, namely how can we bring our scientific conception of ourselves as biological organisms into harmony with our intuitive self-conception as centres of subjectivity and agenthood? Broad was well aware of the complexity of his subject matter and the danger of prematurely rejecting viable alternatives. Broad describes his basic strategy as one in which he canvasses all the possible alternative theories in any particular department of knowledge, and the alternative which is most favoured when considered in the light of its relation to other departments is then selected. In theory, then, Broad can move safely towards truth by replacing "less determinate theories by true and more determinate theories"(Broad 1925, 8).1 An admirable goal, but I'll argue that Broad's tacit assumptions both constrain the alternatives that he is willing to countenance and drive him to reject promising theories prematurely. In this chapter, I will focus on three critical parts of Broad's book: 1) his views on emergentism, 2) his discussion of the kinds of relations between body and mind that are possible which is found in the second chapter, and 3) the crucial final chapter, in which Broad examines an allegedly exhaustive list of seventeen possible theories of the mind's place in Nature and argues for one. I'll show that Broad has presented us with a mysterious doctrine in emergentism and that he has failed to offer any positive motivation for preferring emergentism over more mechanistic alternatives. Various problematic assumptions are revealed to be at work in the second part, dealing with the relation between body and mind, including a key introspectionist assumption. This assumption does a lot of work in the final chapter, where Broad uses it to 1 This book will be referred to as MPN in the text. constrain his list of possible theories in too rigid a manner, as well as illegitimately and prematurely removing promising theories. 2) Emergentism a) In MPN, Broad defends a view of the mind he calls Emergent Materialism, a theory which applies the general emergentist theories of S. Alexander and CL. Morgan to the relation between the biological and the psychological level of explanation. In this section I will outline the basic emergentist picture, as put forth by Alexander, and also Broad's exposition of the same idea in chapter 2 of MPN. Broad argues here that Emergent Vitalism is the least problematic of three possible types of theories at the biological level. At the same time he lays the groundwork for his argument in the final chapter of the book for Emergent Materialism. I will show that his arguments against mechanistic theories are flawed, and that his further argument that "trans-physical" laws must be emergent relies on assumptions that are now open to question. b) S. Alexander argues in Space, Time, and Deity that a scientist's ability to predict is limited by the 'nature of things'. The universe, he claims, is so constituted that over time there is an increase in the amount of complexity. However, this relatively uncontroversial statement is followed by a claim that, at certain critical points, novel properties appear or 'emerge', creating a hierarchy of levels (e.g. physical, chemical, biological, and psychological). Importantly, the properties associated with each new level are in principle unpredictable from the level immediately below it. A being who knew only mechanical and chemical action could not predict life; he must wait till life emerged with the course of Time. A being who knew only life could not predict mind, though he might predict that combination of vital actions which has mind...(Alexander 1920,72) According to Alexander, we are to accept the existence of emergent qualities as 'brute facts' which admit of no further explanation. 3 c) Broad takes up the issue in chapter 2 of MPN, in which "emergent vitalism" is canvassed as the most promising of three possible theories of the difference between living and non-living things, the other two being "substantial vitalism" and "biological mechanism". Although the discussion here is restricted to the biological debate, Broad does think we can generalize these three positions into general theory types (i.e. theories of special component, theories of emergence, and mechanistic theories) and arguments here are intended to have a bearing on debates at other levels. The substantial vitalist position states that living things exhibit the characteristic behaviour that they do by virtue of a special structural component occurring only in living things (referred to in the text as an 'entelechy') which is a necessary, but probably not sufficient (chemical factors are assumed to play some role), condition for explanation of this behaviour.