Philosophy E156: Philosophy of Mind

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Philosophy E156 Philosophy of Mind
Week Nine More Approaches to Mind Body,
Some Concepts of Consciousness
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Is your mind your brain, or is it something different?
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain?
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Functional State Identity Theory
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different?
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain?
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Functional State Identity Theory
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Functionalism topic neutral
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain?
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Functional State Identity Theory
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Functionalism topic neutral
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Topic neutral mental states are whatever are caused by inputs, cause outputs, and are causally related to other mental states
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Four Sources of Functionalism

• (1) Concerns about multiple realizability
• (2) Attempts to give topic-neutral analyses of
  mental concepts
• (3) The computer model of the mind
• (4) Lewiss influential use of Ramsification in
  An Argument for the Identity Theory

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Four Sources of Functionalism

• (1) Concerns about multiple realizability
• Already discussed
• (2) Attempts to give topic-neutral analyses of
  mental concepts
• (3) The computer model of the mind
• (4) Lewiss influential use of Ramsification in
  An Argument for the Identity Theory

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Four Sources of Functionalism

• (1) Concerns about multiple realizability
• Already discussed
• (2) Attempts to give topic-neutral analyses of
  mental concepts
• (3) The computer model of the mind
• (4) Lewiss influential use of Ramsification in
  An Argument for the Identity Theory
• I will omit because its technical, its
  complicated and Heil mentions it but really does
  not discuss it

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Four Sources of Functionalism

• (1) Concerns about multiple realizability
• Already discussed
• (2) Attempts to give topic-neutral analyses of
  mental concepts
• Next
• (3) The computer model of the mind
• (4) Lewiss influential use of Ramsification in
  An Argument for the Identity Theory
• I will omit because its technical, its
  complicated and Heil mentions it but really does
  not discuss it

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Four Sources of Functionalism

• (1) Concerns about multiple realizability
• Already discussed
• (2) Attempts to give topic-neutral analyses of
  mental concepts
• Next
• (3) The computer model of the mind
• After discussing (2)
• (4) Lewiss influential use of Ramsification in
  An Argument for the Identity Theory
• I will omit because its technical, its
  complicated and Heil mentions it but really does
  not discuss it

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Second Source for FunctionalismTopic Neutrality

• Youll recall that Smarts response to dualism
  requires topic neutrality concepts that pick
  out mental states without being committed to
  whether they are physical or nonphysical.
• Like behaviorism, functionalism can be used to
  give topic-neutral analyses of mental concepts.
• Define pain, for example, with a definition of
  the following form pain is the state (1) which
  is caused by such-and-such external causes (such
  as perceptions), (2) which causes such-and-such
  external effects (behaviors), and (3) which is
  related as cause or effect to such-and-such other
  mental states.
• That definition is topic-neutral, since it can
  be satisfied by a physical state as well as by a
  nonphysical state.

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Smarts Treatment of Objection 3 The Fregean
Objection
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Smarts Objection 3
Smart asks Now how do I get over the objection
that a sensation can be identified with a brain
process only if it has some irreducibly mental
phenomenal property, not possessed by brain
processes, whereby one-half of the identification
may be, so to speak, pinned down? (Page 64.)
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Smarts Topic-Neutrality Solution

• When a person says, I see a yellowish-orange
  after-image, he is saying something like this
  There is something going on which is like what
  is going on when I have my eyes open, am awake,
  and there is an orange illuminated in good light
  in front of me, that is, when I really see an
  orange.
• Notice that the italicized words, namely there
  is something going on which is like what is going
  on when, are all quasi-logical or topic-neutral
  words.
• This explains why the ancient Greek peasants
  reports about his sensations can be neutral
  between dualistic metaphysics or my materialistic
  metaphysics.

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Smarts Caveat (at the end of Objection 3)
The strength of my reply depends on the
possibility of our being able to report that one
thing is like another without being able to state
the respect in which it is like. I am not sure
whether this is so or not, and that is why I
regard Objection 3 as the strongest with which I
have to deal.
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Smarts Problem Not a Problem

• The strength of my reply depends on the
  possibility of our being able to report that one
  thing is like another without being able to state
  the respect in which it is like. I am not sure
  whether this is so or not, and that is why I
  regard Objection 3 as the strongest with which I
  have to deal.
• Thats not a problem, since clearly I can report
  that this pain is like that pain without being
  able to report the respect in which it is like.

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The Deeper Problem the Functionalists
Topic-Neutral Solution

• The deeper problem is that because of the
  possibility of inverted spectra and absent
  qualia, the topic-neutral property that Smart
  posits to pick out the mental state on the mental
  side of the psychophysical identity cannot do its
  work
• The property of being whatever goes on in me
  which is like what is going on when I have my
  eyes open, am awake and there is an orange
  illuminated in good light in front of me, that
  is, when I really see an orange can pick out a
  brain state associated with bluish appearances
  instead of orangish ones, or in the absent qualia
  case, associated with an absence of color
  appearances
• But the functionalist thinks adding associations
  to other mental states eliminates inverted
  spectra and absent qualia

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The Third Source for Functionalism The Computer
Model of the Mind

• Computationalism
• Heil refers to it, but does not formally set it
  out. The best he does is this
• Suppose you thought of minds in roughly the way
  you might think of computing machines. A mind is
  a device capable of performing particular sorts
  of operation. States of mind resemble
  computational states, at least to the extent that
  they could occur, in principle, in many different
  kinds of material (and perhaps immaterial, a
  qualification I shall henceforth omit) system
  (p. 90)

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Machine-State Functionalism

• It was on the basis of this way of thinking that
  Hilary Putnam introduced machine state
  functionalism in the 1960s
• Minds and Machines in 1960
• The Nature of Mental States in 1967

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A Machine Description

• Ned Block in his article What Is Functionalism?
  introduces the following automaton

S1 S2
1 "Odd" S2 "Even" S1
   
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Blocks Description of the Machines States

• This automaton has two states, S1 and S2 and
  two outputs, Odd or Even. It only has one
  input, 1, though of course it can get no input
  at all. The table describes two functions, one
  from input and state to output, and another from
  input and state to next state. Each square
  encodes two conditionals specifying the output
  and next state given both the current state and
  input. The left box says that if the machine is
  in S1 and sees a 1 , it says Odd (indicating
  that it has seen an odd number of 1s) and goes
  to S2. The right box says, similarly, that if the
  machine is in S2 and sees a 1, it says Even
  and goes back to S1. This machine intuitively
  serves the purpose of telling us whether it
  has seen an odd or even number of 1s.

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What Is a Machine State Such as S1?

• Suppose we ask What is S1?
• This is the answer Block gives
• Being in S1 being in the first of two states
  that are related to one another and to inputs and
  outputs as follows being in one of the states
  and getting a 1 input results in going into the
  second state and emitting Odd and being in the
  second of the two states and getting a 1 input
  results in going into the first and emitting
  Even.

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The Computationalist Account of Mental States

• The computationalist gives a similar sort of
  answer to questions of the form What is mental
  state M1?
• Being in M1 is, roughly, being in a state that
  is
• caused by inputs I1, I2, etc. and
• causes output O1, if already in Mi, etc., or
• causes other mental state Mj, if already in
  Mj1,, etc.
• Notice the resemblance to the functional
  definition of mental-state terms like pain.

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Functional State Identity Theory
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Functionalism topic neutral
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Topic neutral mental states are whatever are caused by inputs, cause outputs, and are causally related to other mental states
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Functional State Identity Theory Representational Theory of Mind
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Functionalism topic neutral
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Topic neutral mental states are whatever are caused by inputs, cause outputs, and are causally related to other mental states
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Functional State Identity Theory Representational Theory of Mind
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Functionalism topic neutral Your brain
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Topic neutral mental states are whatever are caused by inputs, cause outputs, and are causally related to other mental states
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Functional State Identity Theory Representational Theory of Mind
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Functionalism topic neutral Your brain
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Topic neutral mental states are whatever are caused by inputs, cause outputs, and are causally related to other mental states All mental states are representational states
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Functional State Identity Theory Representational Theory of Mind Dennetts Intentional Stance
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Functionalism topic neutral Your brain
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Topic neutral mental states are whatever are caused by inputs, cause outputs, and are causally related to other mental states All mental states are representational states
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Functional State Identity Theory Representational Theory of Mind Dennetts Intentional Stance
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Functionalism topic neutral Your brain Instrumentalist matter of how we usefully see ourselves
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Topic neutral mental states are whatever are caused by inputs, cause outputs, and are causally related to other mental states All mental states are representational states
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Functional State Identity Theory Representational Theory of Mind Dennetts Intentional Stance
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Functionalism topic neutral Your brain Instrumentalist matter of how we usefully see ourselves
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Topic neutral mental states are whatever are caused by inputs, cause outputs, and are causally related to other mental states All mental states are representational states Talk of mental states is talk of states that we regard our-selves and other creatures as having in order to make sense of their pursuing ends
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Functional State Identity Theory Representational Theory of Mind Dennetts Intentional Stance Eliminative Materialism
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Functionalism topic neutral Your brain Instrumentalist matter of how we usefully see ourselves
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Topic neutral mental states are whatever are caused by inputs, cause outputs, and are causally related to other mental states All mental states are representational states Talk of mental states is talk of states that we regard our-selves and other creatures as having in order to make sense of their pursuing ends
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Functional State Identity Theory Representational Theory of Mind Dennetts Intentional Stance Eliminative Materialism
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Functionalism topic neutral Your brain Instrumentalist matter of how we usefully see ourselves There is no mind
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Topic neutral mental states are whatever are caused by inputs, cause outputs, and are causally related to other mental states All mental states are representational states Talk of mental states is talk of states that we regard our-selves and other creatures as having in order to make sense of their pursuing ends
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Functional State Identity Theory Representational Theory of Mind Dennetts Intentional Stance Eliminative Materialism
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Functionalism topic neutral Your brain Instrumentalist matter of how we usefully see ourselves There is no mind
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Topic neutral mental states are whatever are caused by inputs, cause outputs, and are causally related to other mental states All mental states are representational states Talk of mental states is talk of states that we regard our-selves and other creatures as having in order to make sense of their pursuing ends Talk of experience mental talk generally refers to nothing at all it is false folk psychology
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Concepts of Consciousness
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Concepts of Consciousness

• Three hypotheses about the word consciousness
• The Platonism Hypothesis There is a single
  meaning to the word, and it is used with that
  meaning in a variety of ways.
• Socrates example in Republic of justice, the one
  thing all just things supposedly have in common
  by virtue of which they are all just
• The Ambiguity Hypothesis The word has several
  different meanings, and these different meanings
  explain in part the different ways it is used.
• Blocks example of velocity, ambiguous between
  meaning average velocity and instantaneous
  velocity
• The Cluster Concept Hypothesis The word
  expresses a concept by way of a prototype or
  paradigm, even though various instances might be
  missing important aspects of the prototype or
  paradigm.
• Wittgensteins example of a game Putnams
  example of a disease Blocks example of a
  religion

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Ned Block Embraces the Ambiguity Hypothesis

• Block writes that the word consciousness
  connotes a number of different concepts and
  denotes a number of different phenomena.
• He calls the concept a hybrid or better, a
  mongrel concept
• Thus, he says, We reason about consciousness
  using some premises that apply to one of the
  phenomena that fall under consciousness, other
  premises that apply to other consciousnesses
  and we end up in trouble.
• Ambiguity in this case can be verified by
  reflection alone, unlike claims about natural
  kinds (such as the claim that cancer is not a
  natural kind).
• He claims that one can make up ones mind about
  whether there is ambiguity by finding
  equivocation hard to deny.

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Blocks Four Concepts of Consciousness

• Phenomenal consciousness, or P-consciousness
• Access-consciousness, or A-consciousness
• Self-consciousness
• Monitoring consciousness

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How Block Characterizes Phenomenal Consciousness

• Phenomenal consciousness is experience
• What makes a state phenomenally conscious is
  that there is something it is like to be in
  that state
• Identifying phenomenal consciousness with
  experience looks odd if consciousness is the
  property a mental state has of being conscious,
  since it would not seem to be true that
  experience is a property of being conscious we
  use the word experience differently
• I cannot define P-consciousness in any remotely
  non-circular way i.e., in any reductive way
• The best one can do for P-consciousness is in
  some respects worse than for many other things
  because really all one can do is point to the
  phenomenon
• How should we point to P-consciousness?
  Via rough synonyms and examples

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How Block Characterizes Access Consciousness

• A representation is A-conscious if it is
  broadcast for free use in reasoning and for
  direct rational control of action (including
  reporting)
• An A-state is one that consists in having an
  A-representation
• Put crudely, A-conscious content is
  representational
• It is of the essence of A-conscious content to
  play a role in reasoning, and only
  representational content can figure in reasoning
• The paradigm A-conscious states are
  propositional attitude states like thoughts,
  beliefs and desires. (E.g., the thought that
  grass is green.)
• I see A-consciousness as a cluster concept in
  which
• reportability is the element of the cluster that
  has the smallest weight
• even though it is often the best practical guide
  to A-consciousness

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Self-Consciousness

• Block writes I mean the possession of the
  concept of the self and the ability to use this
  concept in thinking about oneself
• Mirror behavior
• Chimps try to wipe off spots painted on their
  foreheads and ears
• Monkeys do not
• Neither do human babies until after 18 mos.
• Dogs treat their mirror images as strangers,
  unlike higher primates
• If we take monkeys and dogs and young infants are
  thus lacking in self-consciousness, we do not
  correspondingly deny they have pain or deny there
  is something it is like for them to see
  themselves in the mirror
• Thus P-consciousness differs from
  self-consciousness animals might lack the
  latter and have the former

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Me-ishness

• Block claims that P-consciousness often seem to
  have what he calls a me-ishness to them
• What exactly does he mean?
• He writes that the phenomenal content often
  represents the state as a state of me.
• He means that the phenomenal content of a
  P-conscious state of mine represents the state as
  a state of me.
• But the experiences of two qualitatively
  different P-conscious states e.g., red and
  green can nevertheless be the same in
  self-orientation.
• Thus, P-consciousness cant reduce to
  self-consciousness.