Phil of Mind

Cartesian Dualism

Folk understanding of consciousness

⭐ Phenomenal consciousness: The subjective experience that seem to exist alongside mental activity.

The idea that mind is an immaterial non-physical 'substance'

problem of causation: if mind is immaterial, then how can a mind affect a physical body?

Several other problems with the argument

Physicalism/materialism

One way to get around the problems of Cartesian dualism is for minds to be made of physical matter. Three different physicalist approaches:

1⃣ Logical behaviourism

2⃣ Identity theory

3⃣ Functionalism

Physicalism commits to the idea that if two entities are physically identical, then they must be psychologically identical

Thoughts are identical to a particular physical state of my body and brain. Reductionist: thoughts can be redescribed in terms of chemical reactions

Different ways of defining the identity relation

Token Identity: each psychological state has a distinct physical state

Type Identity: a stronger statement that types of psychological states are identical to types of physical structures

This generates a research programme. To study the mind by grouping physical states into types

Problem of multiple realisability: Theory is too narrow. It doesn't allow different beings to have similar psychological states. e.g. octopus with a different kind of nervous system should still be able to experience similar psychological states such as pain. #

Hilary Putnam answers the problems of Type Identity theory with Functionalism. He argued that we shouldn't characterise minds as what they're made of, but instead as 1⃣ what they do (their function) and 2⃣ what causes them,

This counters the problem of multiple realisability by allowing for vastly different physical entities to have similar psychological states such as pain, by observing similar functions of those mental states. In this approach, we define complex psychological states by whether the entity shows complex interactions with the environment

Some functions of psychological states

⭐ Generate behaviour

⭐Generate new psychological states

The Computer Metaphor

Computers are defined by their physical function not their substrate, therefore computers could have minds

Turing Test: Turing argued that if a computer can fool a human into thinking that a computer is human, then that computer is by definition a complex mind. Mind is defined by function, and if a computer functions to engage in human communication, then it must have a mind.

Problem 1: It's only based on language

Problem 2: Too anthropocentric, as it's defining intelligence as what Humans do

Problem 3: It doesn't take into account the kinds of inner states within the computer which would distinguish intelligence from automaton behavior

A lookup table of responses that the computer should make would not seem like intelligence, as the computer only has knowledge of syntax of symbols and not semantics of symbols (aboutness/meaning). e.g. Chinese Room argument

Functional analysis however fails to account for the experience of what it's like to have a mind. The subjective experience. #

Sentience: A creature reacts to its environment in an intelligent way

Access consciousness: Conscious information is accessible to be noticed, reasoned about, and communicated to others, or behaved upon.

what it is like: minds also have an experience of what it's like to think about something

Wakefulness

aboutness: minds have a property of thinking about something (about thoughts, about objects, about hypotheticals). This is also known as Intentionality referring to the property of consciousness stretching out towards something (in-tension) #

Phenomenology studies this using introspection

The Hard Problem of Consciousness: To explain what it is about our physical makeup that produces phenomenal consciousness

  • The Knowledge Argument (Frank Jackson) argues that this problem will never be solved. The gap between internal introspection and external observation will never be bridged.
  • e.g. Mary knows all neuroscientific facts about colour processing in vision. However she has never experienced colour herself
  • One day she experiences a red rose. Arguably she has now learnt something new about the process: about what it's like to see a red rose

Scientific understanding of consciousness #

Psychology shows that behaviour is affected by many non-conscious stimuli

Two dimensions: Wakefulness and Awareness

e.g. Vegetative state has high wakefulness but no awareness

Bistable images are useful to study:

  • Same stimulus
  • Different possible percepts
  • Mutually exclusive at any one time
  • The percepts spontaneously flip

David Marr proposes that understanding the brain amounts of understanding three levels:

  • Computation : The task to be solved/why is it important?
  • Algorithm: The specific method used to achieve the task
  • Implementation: The physical instantiation of the algorithm

Unconscious inference (Helmholtz)

Embodied Cognition

The idea that mental states are really a shorthand for disposition towards particular behaviours

e.g. when saying that 'She feels pain' we are not talking about an internal state. Instead it refers to a set of behaviours/reactions we expect to see (facial expression, vocalisation, avoidance)

To sort

Symbol grounding problem

Cybernetics

Uses control theory to model internal processes, such that the control process generates behaviour. It requires a circular causality between body and environment.

How do we achieve meaning (semantics) out of symbols (syntax)?