Philosophy of Mind

An Overview for Cognitive Science

William Bechtel

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317785415
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Specifically designed to make the philosophy of mind intelligible to those not trained in philosophy, this book provides a concise overview for students and researchers in the cognitive sciences. Emphasizing the relevance of philosophical work to investigations in other cognitive sciences, this unique text examines such issues as the meaning of language, the mind-body problem, the functionalist theories of cognition, and intentionality. As he explores the philosophical issues, Bechtel draws connections between philosophical views and theoretical and experimental work in such disciplines as cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, neuroscience, and anthropology.

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Some Perspectives on Philosophy of Mind

Introduction: What is Philosophy of Mind?

This book is devoted to introducing basic issues in philosophy of mind to the practitioners of other disciplines of cognitive science: cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, theoretical linguistics, and cognitive anthropology. Philosophers were interested in the character of the mind long before these empirical disciplines arose. They asked such questions as: What are the distinctive features of minds? How should mental states be characterized? How are minds related to physical bodies? How are minds able to learn about the physical world? A variety of answers that philosophers have offered to these and other questions are examined in the subsequent chapters of this book. Before turning to the particular views philosophers have advanced, however, it is useful to put philosophical investigations of these issues into perspective.

Two questions cognitive scientists not trained in philosophy are likely to ask about philosophy of mind are (a) What methodology do philosophers employ to analyze mental phenomena? and (b) How do philosophical endeavors relate to the investigations carried out in other disciplines of cognitive science? I address these two issues in this first section of the chapter, and then offer an overview of some of the major historical traditions in philosophy that provide both the origins of many ideas now influential in cognitive science and the background to contemporary philosophical thinking.

In methodology, philosophy is distinct from the other disciplines of cognitive science in not having its own distinct empirical base.¹ Philosophers often distinguish between a priori knowledge, which can be discovered without empirical investigation, and a posteriori knowledge, which relies on empirical results. Many philosophers have thought that important truths about the mind could be established a priori. They hold that these truths can be established simply by reasoning about how the mind has to be or by analyzing the structure of our language through which we talk about minds. Other philosophers, although holding that their claims were ultimately a posteriori ones, have sought to establish truths about the mind by drawing out some of the logical consequences of results scientists have obtained through empirical inquiry.

Withm philosophy, discussions about the nature of mind generally occur in two subfields: epistemology and metaphysics. Epistemology, which seeks to define what knowledge is and to determine how it is obtained, is concerned with those processes by which the mind is able to gather knowledge. Metaphysics has traditionally been characterized as the study of basic principles of the universe and of its origins. Ontology, a subfield of metaphysics, is concerned with identifying and characterizing the kinds of things that exist in the world.² It is particularly in this subfield that the character of mind is discussed. Some contemporary work in ontology is closely tied to the results of scientific investigations and analyzes what kinds of objects these sciences assume exist. Philosophers have been concerned with such matters as the criteria by which we determine whether theoretical entities posited in science (such as quarks or mental states) really exist or whether they are simply useful fictions for doing science. Quine (1969a) advanced the maxim (which not all agree with) that what we take to exist are the entities posited in our scientific theories. Quine's approach ties investigation of metaphysical issues closely to work of empirical science, but there remains the question of when we should accept a scientific theory as giving an accurate account of nature. Quine thought that theories purporting to talk about mental states are not acceptable scientific theories (see chapter 3).

Most philosophers today would maintain that empirical science is relevant to both epistemological and ontological discussions of the mind, but still maintain that the philosophical issues are distinct from the empirical issues addressed in other disciplines of cognitive science. Generally, the distinction is thought to result from the fact that philosophy is concerned with fundamental conceptual issues. Such issues concern the adequacy of a particular theoretical framework to accommodate features of mental states such as their intentionality (chapters 3 and 4) or their affective or qualitative character (chapter 7). These are issues for which we cannot simply devise empirical experiments. Hence, attempts to answer them often involves complex arguments that take us quite far from empirical results.

The fact that philosophical claims lie so far removed from empirical inquiry poses a challenge to anyone turning to philosophical investigations from training in experimental research. In order to evaluate a philosophical claim you must follow the often complicated chain of reasoning offered in support of the claim. This, however, is not meant to deter outsiders from entering the philosophical arena. Indeed, such participation is most welcome; one of the benefits philosophers can gain from participating in the interdisciplinary research cluster of cognitive science is learning of new perspectives on the mind from other cognitive scientists.

All that is required for the nonphilosopher to get involved with philosophy of mind is to begin to confront the issues. This means becoming an active participant in the debates by offering arguments for or against different positions. It is not enough simply to turn to philosophers as authorities and cite what a particular philosopher has said as an answer to one of these foundational questions. Given that philosophical views depend on a long chain of argument, they are frequently controversial. Different philosophers maintain a variety of different views about these issues. This becomes evident as we take up various issues in the following chapters. Rather than simply accepting an authority, it is necessary to explore the issues and to evaluate the arguments advanced for competing claims. On this basis, you can hope to make a rational decision about what position to accept.³

Nonphilosophers, upon recognizing the controversial nature of philosophical claims, sometimes decide that such fundamental questions cannot be resolved. They form the view that there are simply a variety of different views and it does not matter much which one you accept. The fact that philosophers have been addressing some of these questions for 2,500 years and still disagree on how to answer them would seem to be provide good support for such a claim. But what that claim fails to recognize is that there often is a close interaction between philosophical claims and empirical research efforts such that those engaged in an empirical investigation frequently assume, consciously or unconsciously, a particular philosophical stance. Historically, these connections can be demonstrated in the history of physics and biology, but here it suffices to consider some ways philosophical views have had or are having broad impact on cognitive science.

The cognitive approach to mental phenomena, which unites current work in cognitive science, is not the only possible approach. Two other approaches are to characterize mental activities in terms of propensities to behave or in terms of neural processes. The focus on behavior was characteristic of behaviorism, which dominated much of experimental psychology (and had consequences for linguistics and anthropology) for much of this century. The behaviorist approach was supported by a number of philosophical arguments that I consider in chapters 3 and 5. Although the behaviorist approach is now largely out of fashion, both in philosophy and psychology, the neural approach is not. Serious endeavors are now developing to explain mental life in terms of neural processing. This approach too is supported by philosophical perspectives, including the mind-brain Identity Theory and Eliminative Materialism, which are discussed in chapter 6.

The cognitive approach is characterized by the attempt to identify mental states functionally, that is, in terms of their causal interactions with other mental states. Recognizing the possibility of identifying these states through their causal interactions is part of what enabled cognitivists to overcome the strictures of behaviorism. Moreover, it is the prospect of characterizing these states independently of their material realization in the brain which, for cognitivists, licenses the autonomy of psychology from neuroscience. Over the past 2 decades philosophers have tried to develop a functionalist account of mental states to ground the cognitivist program. As I discuss in chapters 4 and 7, however, there have been a number of criticisms of the coherence of this approach that in turn may have implications for the cognitivist program.

Language has figured centrally in the study of cognitive processes. A great deal of philosophical theorizing has focused on language and on the ability of language to carry meaning. Some of these views have been adopted directly in various programs in psychology and linguistics, including the distinction between the sense of an expression and its referent (see chapter 2). Formal logical analyses of language, such as predicate calculus,⁴ have been employed in endeavors in artificial intelligence to model human reasoning. Other aspects of the philosophical analysis of language, such as challenges to the claim that words have objective meanings, have figured in some of the criticisms of artificial intelligence and in the development of recent views of concepts and categorization in psychology and linguistics.

As I discuss different philosophical views in this text I point out ways in which they are relevant to work in other disciplines of cognitive science. As the brief sketch just given indicates, however, many of the views advanced within philosophy have had and are having ramifications for cognitive science. One consequence of linking philosophical ideas with the empirical inquiries in other parts of cognitive science is that empirical evidence becomes relevant to addressing the adequacy of particular philosophical views. This may suggest, mistakenly, that the only way now to evaluate these philosophical views is to await the judgments of the empirical investigations based upon them. Although those judgments will certainly be relevant, philosophers bring some additional resources that can help in our contemporary evaluations of these endeavors. One is training in developing and evaluating complex and often abstract arguments. A second is knowledge of the long history of attempts to grapple with these issues. It is within this history that we can often locate the sources of modern ideas. But more importantly, we can discover a rich source of arguments that suggest why particular positions are plausible and why others are not viable.

Many of the ideas that underlie research endeavors in contemporary cognitive science are direct descendants of ideas that were first developed by philosophers of earlier eras such as Plato, Descartes, Hume, and Kant. Moreover, contemporary philosophical theorizing about minds is also the heir to this tradition. Therefore, the remainder of this chapter offers a brief overview of relevant figures in the history of philosophy, focusing on how they understood mind and the ideas they contributed to current discussions.

Relevant Aspects of Major Historical Approaches to Philosophy

In a short discussion it is not possible to do full justice to any of the major historical figures in philosophy that have influenced contemporary thinking about mind. To present a manageable account of this material I focus on a number of traditions within the history of philosophy, each of which offered a general perspective on important issues relevant to our understanding of mind. I briefly indicate some of the major members of these traditions and the central tenets advanced by the members of the school. The reader should be advised, however, that there is intense debate surrounding the interpretation of most ot these philosophers and one would need to enter into a careful examination of these debates to reach a definitive interpretation of any of them.

The Classical Philosophers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle

Three Greek philosophers working in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. set the agenda for much of subsequent thinking about science as well as philosophy in the Western world, including our attempts to understand mind. Socrates set the questions. Plato was his student, and in turn was the teacher of Aristotle, but Plato and Aristotle offered quite different sorts of answers to Socrates' questions.

Socrates (c. 470-399 B.C.) is often taken to be the first major philosophical thinker. He is rather unusual in that he did not defend any philosophical theses. He also left no writings, so what we know of Socrates largely stems from Plato's presentation of him as the central figure in a number of dialogues. Rather than defending theses, Socrates developed a mode of inquiry, commonly referred to as the Socratic Method. This method involves dialogue that begins with a request for a definition, such as: what is knowledge? or what is beauty? Once a definition is proposed (e.g., knowledge is true belief), the questioner pursues additional questions to evaluate the adequacy of the answer. Often such questioning generates counterexamples that show that the initial definition is inadequate. (For example, a true belief acquired quite by chance would not seem to be a case of knowledge.) Once the definition is found to be deficient, the questioner asks for a new definition that overcomes the objections to the previous attempt, and the process is repeated. For Socrates, the goal of this activity was to discover universally true definitions for our concepts. In seeking such definitions, Socrates opposed the Sophists, many of whom maintained that precise definitions were impossible because words meant different things in different contexts.

Socrates focused on trying to define ethical terms like virtue ana justice, but the method can clearly be applied to any concept. Socrates would maintain that we cannot acquire knowledge in any field until we develop adequate definitions of the concepts used in that field. The issue of whether there are definitions for our concepts that meet Socrates' requirements of adequacy is clearly a critical one for cognitive science. Early cognitive scientists, especially in artificial intelligence, tended to assume that there were such definitions and that these could be encoded in programs. Moreover, many studies of meaning or semantics by philosophers and linguists have assumed that our concepts can be defined. But recent developments in psychology (Rosch, 1975) and linguistics (Lakoff, 1987), as well as in philosophy (Wittgenstein, 1953), have challenged the view that most of our concepts are grounded in the kind of definitions Socrates sought.

Socrates never seemed to find adequate definitions,⁵ but the quest was taken up by Plato (c. 428-347 B.C.), who thought he could provide a framework for answering Socrates' questions. One of Socrates' frequent objections was that, in trying to provide definitions, interlocutors would cite examples. He found examples inadequate as definitions because they did not tell us the range of things to which the concept would apply. For instance, an example of a just action would not tell us what other actions were just. Plato saw Socrates' demand for general definitions as unanswerable as long as we confined ourselves to the physical world. He therefore proposed the existence of an abstract world of Ideas or Forms. These entities would provide the perfect exemplars for our concepts, and we could judge instances in this world as being more or less good imitations of these Ideas. Thus, for Plato, to answer Socrates' request for a definition, it was necessary to identify the Idea, not a worldly instance. The human predicament, however, is that all we experience are the imperfect examples of the concepts found in the physical world around us. We never see a truly straight line, but only an imperfect approximation to a straight line drawn on paper. In order to clarify our thinking, Plato maintained, we need to redirect our thinking to the Ideas themselves and not remain focused on the objects of the physical world.

To explain how our knowledge is based on the Ideas, Plato develops an elaborate account of how we once perceived the Ideas directly, but through birth had forgotten this experience. It is necessary to rekindle these memories so that we can ground our thinking on the Ideas themselves. The physical objects of experience, because they are imitations of the Ideas, can facilitate this rekindling if we conduct the right kind of Socratic inquiry about these objects and do not become preoccupied with the distortions induced by these imitations. In the dialogue Meno, Plato tries to show how knowledge of mathematical principles is innate in an untutored slave boy, but must be elicited through an inquiry in which the boy tests the adequacy of various hypotheses he himself puts forward until he is able to once again recognize the true principles embodied in the Ideas. (For Plato's dialogues, see Hamilton & Cairns, 1961.)

Plato's theory of ideas and his propos...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• PREFACE
• 1 SOME PERSPECTIVES ON PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
• 2 PHILOSOPHICAL ANALYSES OF LANGUAGE
• 3 THE PROBLEM OF INTENTIONALITY
• 4 PHILOSOPHICAL STRATEGIES FOR EXPLAINING INTENTIONALITY
• 5 THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM: DUALISM AND PHILOSOPHICAL BEHAVIORISM
• 6 THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM: VERSIONS OF MATERIALISM
• 7 FUNCTIONALISM
• POSTSCRIPT
• REFERENCES
• AUTHOR INDEX
• SUBJECT INDEX