Problems of Mind

Descartes to Wittgenstein

Norman Malcolm

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000455106
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filosofia
• Subtopic: Mente e corpo in filosofia

First published in 1972, Problems of Mind begins with a consideration of the view that the human mind is an immaterial thing that does not require corporeal embodiment for its operations. It takes up the conception that "inner experiences" are "strictly identical" with brain processes. The book also deals exclusively with the doctrine called "Logical Behaviourism", which will always possess a compelling attraction for anyone who is perplexed by the psychological concepts, who has become aware of the worthlessness of an appeal to introspection as an account of how we learn those concepts, and who has no inclination to identify mind with brain. The three most plausible theories of mind-body dualism, mind-brain monism, and behaviourism are all rejected, and nothing is set forth as the true theory. Norman Malcolm states that this is 'only a drop in the bucket. It will serve its purpose if it leads the reader into the writings of Wittgenstein, who is easily the most important figure in the philosophy of mind.'

Problems of Mind will be an essential read for scholars and researchers of philosophy of mind, ethics, logic, and philosophy in general.

I.

Mind and Body

1. A Mysterious Union

Descartes created a picture of the relationship between the human mind and the human body with which philosophy has struggled ever since. The problem of the nature of mind is a region which, perhaps more than any other, reveals the weakness, the perplexities and, sometimes, the power of human thought. The variety and depth of confusion displayed there can astonish and dismay us. When we trace the history of it we are, in the words of Thomas Reid, “led into a labyrinth of fanciful opinions, contradictions, and absurdities, intermixed with some truths.”¹

The relation of mind to body has been commonly felt by philosophers to be acutely difficult and even incomprehensible. Hume summarized this feeling in his rhetorical question:

Is there any principle in all nature more mysterious than the union of soul with body; by which a supposed spiritual substance acquires such an influence over a material one, that the most refined thought is able to actuate the grossest matter? Were we empowered, by a secret wish, to remove mountains, or control the planets in their orbit, this extensive authority would not be more extraordinary, nor more beyond our comprehension.²

William James remarked that

mental and physical events are, on all hands, admitted to present the strongest contrast in the entire field of being. The chasm which yawns between them is less easily bridged over by the mind than any interval we know.³

2. Cartesian Dualism

In order to establish certainty in metaphysics in the place of error and conjecture, Descartes undertook to “reject as absolutely false” everything in regard to which he “could imagine the least ground of doubt.”⁴ This procedure would seem to consist in asserting the negation of any proposition the truth of which is subject to any possible ground of doubt. A general ground of doubt that struck at many of his former “opinions” was the possibility of his being so constituted that none of his perceptions corresponded to reality. Even his belief that he is placed in a material universe and a fortiori, his belief that he has a body, might be false. He can reject these beliefs without falling into any apparent absurdity. But matters stand differently when it comes to doubting his own existence. If he has this doubt he must exist. This doubt is, therefore, absurd. He cannot even conceive that he does not exist, although he still can conceive that he has no body. “I saw that I could conceive that I had no body, and that there was no world nor place where I might be; but yet that I could not for all that conceive that I was not.”⁵

Descartes wishes to discover the nature of this “I” that he knows to exist. He comes to the conclusion that his nature or essence is solely thinking. “What then am I? A thing which thinks. What is a thing which thinks ? It is a thing which doubts, understands, conceives, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, which also imagines and feels.”⁶

In holding that he was solely a thinking thing Descartes excluded body from his essential nature. What considerations led him to this result? One simple argument he uses is the following: “I can doubt that my body exists; I cannot doubt that I exist; therefore my body is not essential to my existence.”

This reasoning is clearly fallacious. Even if the premises are true the conclusion does not follow. If I can doubt that a certain geometrical figure has the property F, but cannot doubt that it has the property G, it does not follow that G does not entail F.

A more complex argument employed by Descartes is the following: “I have a clear and distinct perception of myself as a thinking and unextended thing, and of my body as an extended and unthinking thing; all things that I apprehend clearly and distinctly can be created by God in the manner I apprehend them; therefore I could exist without my body.”

The first premise of this reasoning requires support. What assures Descartes that he has a clear and distinct perception of himself as a thinking but noncorporeal thing? His writings are not unmistakably clear on this point. There is some evidence that he had the following procedure in mind: since his aim was to find some property, F, which would be his essential nature, he made use of the following criterion or test: A property, F, constitutes my essential nature if it is necessarily the case both that if I am aware of F, then I am aware of myself (or of my existence, or that I exist), and if I am aware of myself (or … et cetera), then I am aware of F. When thinking is substituted for F, both conditions of the criterion would appear to be satisfied. For both of the following propositions would seem to be necessarily true: if I am aware of thinking, I am aware that I exist; if I am aware that I exist, I am aware of thinking. If we substitute body, or my body, then the second condition is not satisfied. For it is not necessarily true that if I am aware that I exist, I am aware of my body. Thus it could seem to Descartes to be proved that he had a clear and distinct perception of himself as a thinking and unextended thing, and therefore (by the second of the two arguments stated above) that he was entitled to the conclusion that “this I (that is to say, my soul by which I am what I am), is entirely and absolutely distinct from my body, and can exist without it.”⁷

A careful study of the workings of Descartes’ criterion will show that the foregoing reasoning is invalid. Such a study will not be undertaken in this essay.⁸ But even if none of Descartes’ arguments in support of his mind-body dualism is valid, this does not disprove the dualism. Familiar facts would seem to support it. People have thoughts, make decisions and experience feelings, without there being any known physical occurrences corresponding to these mental occurrences. This would seem to present a case for the independence of mind and body.

It would be useful to clarify what Descartes meant by the separateness of mind and body. He believed that in actual fact a human being is an “intimate union” of mind and body. In saying that I (or my mind, or my soul) am separate and distinct from my body, he meant to be speaking only of what is possible. As far as the concepts of myself and my body are concerned, I could exist without a body. Descartes did not mean merely that I, having dwelt in a union with my body for some years, might be separated from it and yet survive in a disembodied condition. He meant that I might have existed without ever having had a body. In that state what would my mental life have been like? Logically speaking, it could have been the same as it is and has been. For my nature is to doubt, understand, affirm, deny, will, imagine, and feel. As a bodiless mind I would do those things. My mental acts, and the contents of my consciousness, could be identical with what they are in my actual embodied condition. In a sense even my sensations could be the same, even though their apparent bodily locations and bodily causes would be illusory. The history of my thoughts, desires, volitions, emotions, and sensations might be just what it has been, even if I was, and had always been, noncorporeal.

Sometimes the interest of readers of Descartes declines when they come to understand that his doctrine of the separateness of mind and body does not mean an actual separation, but only the conceptual possibility of separation. This should not be so. Philosophy is as much interested in the possible as in the actual. Furthermore, the implications of this possibility, if it is genuine, are of incomparable significance. Descartes’ dualism is a troubling beacon around which the thoughts of subsequent philosophers have circled, both attracted and repelled.

Do we understand what it would mean for me to have thoughts and desires, or to make decisions, if I had been forever noncorporeal? Could there be a distinction between you and me—a concept of different selves? If I had always been disembodied how would I have acquired the concepts on which my thinking turns? What would it mean for me to have a correct understanding of those concepts, as contrasted with an incorrect one?

In order to fully appraise the Cartesian doctrine of the separateness of mind and body, one would have to explore such topics as the nature of mental acts, the principles governing the identity and difference of persons, and the nature of concepts.

If disembodied mind is a possibility, although not a fact, then how are we to conceive of the actual relationship of body and mind? Is it to be understood purely in causal terms ? Or possibly as a mere correlation? Could the actual correspondences between our mental contents and our bodily behavior have been entirely different ? If so, how do I know that the same correlations, or causal connections, that hold in my case, hold true for other persons? What are the connections between speech and language, on the one hand, and mental contents, on the other ? How do we succeed in conveying to one another our thoughts and experiences. Or do we? How can words refer to the various items of mental content? How can it be brought about that different people mean the same things by the words “thinking,” “fear,” and “hunger” ? Do we know that they do? How do we know it? The Cartesian doctrine of separateness gives rise to these severely difficult problems of epistemology.

3. Impressions and Ideas

Descartes says virtually nothing about how language and speech are related to mental contents. But his conception of this was undoubtedly the same one that dominated British empiricism, and was expounded at length by John Locke. Let us turn to this conception.

In thinking, we employ ideas (concepts). How do we get them? Locke answers, from experience. Here he differs from Descartes, who held that this could not be true even of our idea of a material body. For infinity is an ingredient of our concept of a body. We conceive of a body (for example, a piece of wax) to be capable of an infinite number of alterations of shape and size. Experience could not have presented us with the perception of an infinity of changes. Our concept of an infinite must be possessed by us innately.

According to Locke our ideas have two sources: external sense and internal sense. Our sense organs are stimulated by external things, producing in us perceptions or sensations. These produce in us such ideas as soft and hard, bitter and sweet, heat and cold. Another class of ideas is obtained by our perception of the operations of our own minds. For example, we remember some sensations we have got from external sense, and by observing this operation of remembering we derive our idea of memory.

And such are perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, knowing, willing, and all the different actings of our own minds;—which we being conscious of, and observing in ourselves, do from these receive into our understandings as distinct ideas as we do from bodies affecting our senses. This source of ideas every man has wholly in himself: and though it be not sense, as having nothing to do with external objects, yet it is very like it, and might properly enough be called internal sense.⁹

Thus our whole stock of simple ideas is obtained from either the influence of external material things upon us, or from the mind’s taking notice of its own acts and passions. It is “not in the power of the most exalted wit, or enlarged understanding, by any quickness or variety of thought, to invent or frame one new simple idea in the mind,” that has not been taken in by one of these ways.¹⁰ These simple ideas are joined together in manifold ways to produce complex ideas.

Hume had a similar conception. We receive impressions of heat or cold, thirst or hunger, pleasure or pain. The mind makes images or copies of these impressions, which are called ideas. These ideas give rise in the mind to feelings of desire or hope or fear. The mind in turn produces copies of these new feelings. Thus comes into being another set of ideas, largely the same as those that Locke holds to proceed from “internal sense.”¹¹

4. Ideas as the Mind's Immediate Objects

For Locke, external and internal sense are “the windows by which light is let” into the bare, “dark room” of the mind. He thinks of the latter as being “not much unlike a closet wholly shut from light, with only some little opening left, to let in external visible resemblances, or ideas of things without.”¹²

Locke speaks of ideas not only as “resemblances” of external things, but also as “pictures” and “patterns.” Hume says that ideas are “images” of impressions. Descartes, too, speaks of ideas as “images”: “Of my thoughts some are, so to speak, images of the things, and to these alone is th...