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What is mind

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Title: What is mind


1
What is mind?
  • A presentation by Pim Klaassen

2
IIntroduction
3
Goal
  • Make plausible the two following claims
  • 1) Mind ought to be studied from a multitude of
    perspectives, that is, multi-disciplinary
  • 2) philosophy remains one of these disciplines
    (although it can never supply knowledge, a
    task that is privileged to the sciences).

4
What is mind? I
  • Formally defined
  • Mind is that which is overall attributed to
    entities by the application of common mental
    locutions to them.
  • (SP p.20)
  • This involves concepts like think, belief,
    hope, see, hear, imagine, expect,
    desire etcetera

5
Most interesting psychological questions
  • What are the criteria for ascribing belief, hope,
    seeing, knowing, understanding?
  • Criteria
  • Possibilities neurophysiological states,
    behaviour, functional states, action
  • How do individuals become believers, hopers,
    see-ers, knowers, understanders?
  • Genesis
  • Possibilities factory, birth, socialization

6
Psychological questions and scientific answers
  • The sciences provide nomological, causal
    explanations, which cannot account for the
    normativity inherent to our subject matter.

7
Psychological questions and philosophy
  • Not ontology, but conceptual clarifications.
  • Experience is not a something, but not a nothing
    either. (PU 304)

8
Causality I
  • Common feature of most approaches to mind
    positing a causal relation between mind and body,
    or mind and action.

9
Causality II
  • This involves a reification of mind its
    pictured as
  • a separate ontological realm (Descartes)
  • the brain (materialism)
  • the central processor/ neural net
    (functionalism)
  • ...
  • This approach of mind will be questioned in the
    following.

10
Causality III
  • Adverbial theory of mind relation between mind
    and body is expressive, not causal.
  • The rejection of the causal explanation of mind
    has to do with the fact that normative practices
    are constitutive for any reasonably complex mind.

11
Normativity, it will be shown, is impossible to
grasp in terms of causal chains.This provides
an argument against- behaviouristic-
functionalistic - materialistic accounts of mind.
12
Wittgenstein does not
  • reduce psychological phenomena to behaviour (as
    behaviourists do)
  • treat them as explanatory functional or
    computational states (as (computer-)functionalists
    do)
  • identify them with states of the body or the
    brain (as identity theorists do)
  • conceive them as theoretical entities, that will
    eventually be proven to be wrong (as eliminative
    materialists do)
  • deny their existence (as the latter do, but as an
    interpretationalist like Dennet does as well).

13
Advantages of the Wittgensteinian outlook
  • Does not run into the traditional problems of
    monism and dualism
  • Scores very high on Occams scale
  • Is compatible with scientificly acquired
    empirical facts.
  • Nevertheless, it provides reasons to question
    some of the goals of science, as well see.

14
II(my version of) The adverbial theory of mind
  • that is, Schatzkis interpretation of
    Wittgenstein remodeled

15
  • Mind and body
  • Mind, body and action
  • Action and practices
  • Normative structure of practices

16
Wittgenstein does agree with all contemporary
positions on that there is but one realm, viz.
that of the body.
17
Distinctive of Wittgensteins position
  • psychological phenomena are conditions of life
  • the relation between mind and body is not causal,
    but expressive.
  • The human body is the best picture of the human
    soul. (PU II, p.178)

18
One realm, no monism
  • Psychological phenomena, i.e. conditions of life,
    arent identified with states of the body.
  • Life has two faces
  • outer doings and sayings, open to view
  • inner experience

19
Bodily expressions of mind
  • Doings
  • Sayings
  • Can only those hope who can talk? Only those who
    have mastered the use of a language. That is to
    say, the phenomena of hope are modes of this
    complicated form of life. (PU II p.174)

20
Mind and body
  • 1. Mind is not contingently, but necessarily
    embodied.
  • 2. Mind is intrinsically related to action.

21
?There is empirical proof for this, e.g- Held
Hein 1958. (In Varela e.a. 1991, p.174-5)-
Brooks work in AI/ Robotics
22
Action presupposes a practice.The social nature
of practices is located in understanding
23
Rule following I
  • Rules are instruments by means of which we
    distinguish between correct and incorrect
    applications and standards against which succes
    and faillure can be measured.

24
Rule following II
  • It is central to all practices that they can be
    judged normatively.
  • It isnt possible to follow a rule privately.

25
Reasons versus causes
  • Explanations of action cant be put in terms of
    causality.
  • This is not a denial of the fact that causal
    chains necessarily sustain action.

26
Differences between inner and outer
  • Inner
  • no access
  • no criteria
  • no entities
  • no knowledge
  • ? experience
  • You are your experiences
  • Outer
  • entities or behaviour
  • features
  • inductive knowledge

27
The difference between the inner and the outer
isnt ontological, but epistemological
28
IIITowards a multi-disciplinary study of mind
29
Disciplines and their role I
  • Cognitive sciences
  • provide the causal explanations of what sustains
    mind physiologically (neurosciences)
  • Try to find paralels between phenomenological
    content and neurophysiological realizations.

30
Disciplines and their role II
  • Social science
  • provide conceptual mappings of conditions of life
    and their genesis.
  • Philosophy
  • provide conceptual clarifications that enable
    others to fullfill their tasks fruitfully.

31
Literature
  • Schatzki, Th.
  • 1996 Social Practices. A Wittgensteinian
    Approach to Human Activity and the Social,
    Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
  • F. Varela, E. Thompson E. Rosch
  • 1991 The Embodied Mind. Cognitive Science and
    Human Experience
  • Williams, M.
  • 1999 Wittgenstein, Mind and Meaning. Towards a
    social conception of mind, Routledge, London
    New York
  • Wittgenstein, L.
  • 1953 Philosophische Untersuchungen, Blackwell,
    Oxford Malden, Massachusets
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