The Mind: From Cartesian Dualism to Piccinini’s Computational Functionalism

Ryle’s Dispositional Behaviourism, Mind-Body Debate and Armstrong’s Materialist Perspective

Gilbert Ryle in his book “The Concept of Mind” gave an alternative version of behaviorism known as dispositional behaviorism in which it is not necessary that any mental processes are expressed outwardly as behavior, but rather even if an entity has a disposition to behave in a certain way, even though it may not act in that way, so the entity is said to be in a particular mental state if it has a disposition in it to behave in accordance with that particular mental state. In the essay “The Nature of Mind” by David M. Armstrong, Armstrong gives a philosophical account of mind that is compatible with the materialist scientific view of the mind. Descartes’ thought of mind as a spiritual substance and this conception of mind as a spiritual substance was attacked by Gilbert Ryle in his book - “The Concept of Mind”. Ryle thinks that dualism arises from confusion about concepts. Dualism comes from a misunderstanding of the concept of mind and that this misunderstanding can be removed by clarifying what we mean when we use words that refer to the mind. In Philosophy, concepts are understood to be general ideas, or categories, that we must help us understand to be general ideas, or categories, that we must help us understand the world [1]. We need to clarify our concepts, so that once we are clear that the concept of “mind” is not a concept of anything that is an actual object, we will no longer be tempted to accept dualism. He ridiculed the Cartesian view as the dogma of the ghost in the machine - He said that the mind is not something behind the behaviour of the body, it was simply part of that physical behaviour. Armstrong gives a theory of central-state materialism- a synthesis between Descartes’ dualism and Gilbert Ryle’s dispositional behaviourism.

Though Armstrong rejects Behaviourism, he suggests that it is useful to say that the “mind and mental states are logically tied to behaviour.” Thought is not speech under suitable circumstances, rather it is something withing the person that in suitable circumstances, brings about speech. Armstrong believed this view is compatible with a materialist view of the mind, though it is also compatible with non- materialist views of the mind. Armstrong modifies Ryle’s Dispositional Behaviourism by suggesting that the mind’s disposition may be explainable by science in materialist terms, in the same way that glass brittleness can be explained in terms of molecular structure. Ryle rejected the Cartesian notion of the mind as an inner substance, but rather stated that the mind is an outer activity, it is a disposition to behave in a certain way. Some philosophers like Bertrand Russell said that there is only one substance which accounts for both the mind and the body and is different from both. The identity thesis that the mental processes are identical with the brain processes is a reductionist theory which attempts to show that the study of mental life can ultimately be seen as a branch of neurophysiology; that is, the laws of psychology can be explained in terms of the laws of neurophysiology, or thoughts can be translated into statements about processes going on in our brain without loss of meaning. If thoughts and feelings have properties of subjectivity and intentionality and brain processes don’t, then it is very difficult to see how thoughts, feelings and sensations can be identified with the brain-processes (identity thesis of materialism). And if sensations have subjectivity when brain-processes don’t, then pains and neuron-firings cannot be identical. There is a difference of kind between the intrinsic properties of thoughts and brain-processes, So the identity of both is incompatible [3]. According to Ryle’s view, when we say that someone is playing tennis intelligently, not when we think that they are performing certain ‘mental’ actions first before moving their arms and legs, but when we see them moving their arms and legs in certain ways - skillfully, so as to hit the ball at the right angle and with the right degree of force in the right direction. What we mean by intelligence, according to Ryle is not a combination of two actions, but one action performed in a certain way. The main contention of Gilbert Ryle was that the intelligence displayed in an action is not something separate from the physical movements going on, as it were, behind the scenes, but something to be observed in the style or manner of the physical movements themselves [3]. According to Ryle, the dualist’s account of choosing to do something implies the logical impossibility that an infinite number of acts of choosing to choose to choose from, must be completed before one can freely perform an action. Therefore, the dualist account must be false. Ryle believed it is the “ism” or the different theories of the mind which confuses us, he says that instead of proposing general theories of the mind, we should simply look at the kind of things we say about human beings: if we do that, then we shall find that they do not fall within two neatly categories - ‘mental’ things and ‘physical’ things. Instead of asking metaphysical questions about minds, we should rather ask what kinds of features of human beings lead us to say that they have “minds”.

Functionalism: Minds as Programs and the Challenge of Qualia

There is a third kind of materialists who are called as functionalists, who compared minds to computer programs. The software can be realized in any kind of stuff, so a mind can be realized in any kind of stuff. humans feel pain and have c-fibres. But other species, with different brain anatomies than ours, feel pain as well: some of these creatures might have no (or relevantly physiologically different) c-fibres. The standard philosopher’s example, owing to an influential article by Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States) (1967), is the octopus, since octopuses are intelligent creatures to which we are strongly inclined to attribute a conscious mental life, yet they are - along with slugs and bivalves - members of the phylum Mollusca and physiologically quite different from us mammals. And what about robots? Or aliens? Or angels? We can be quite sure that none of these three categories of being have c-fibres and yet, if they exist, it seems perfectly possible that they might feel pain. Functionalists believed we should not be concerned with what is an entity made up of, but what it does in contrast to the position of classical materialists and dualists according to whom, the stuff out of which a system is made of is more important than what role or function that system plays. What these kinds of examples - examples of a phenomenon called multiple realizability - seem to demonstrate is that pain cannot be the same thing as the firing of c-fibres, in the following sense: though c-fibre firing may be sufficient for pain (i.e. pain in humans might be nothing over and above c-fibre firings), it is not necessary for pain - pain in octopuses might not involve c-fibres at all, and in, say, aliens it might not even be realized by anything carbon based [6]. Talk about the mental states and processes implies nothing about what kind of stuff or kinds of stuff human beings are made of, or what is responsible for our thinking, feeling, wishing, intending and the rest. And the very fact, that our mental lives are so varied, and that it is hard sometimes to decide whether or to what extent the ‘mind’ is involved in what we do, suggests strongly that the ‘mind’ is not the name of some distinct part of ourselves, but a general term for referring to a loosely defined sort of human activities [3]. An argument has been raised against functionalism that it cannot account for the conscious subjective experience or qualia (what it is like) aspect of an experience. For example, two persons having the same functional roles and same outer expression may differ in their inner qualitative aspects of experience. A person may see green as I see red and another person may see red as I see green, but both persons have the same functional roles, causal roles, beliefs and behaviors. So, we can say that functionalism cannot account for the qualitative conscious and subjective experiences. No amount of detailed specification of functional relationships will ever make the jump from cognitive psychology to phenomenal consciousness - that the subjective sensation of pain, for example, has an intrinsic quality that is simply not reducible to any amount of physical structure and function [6]. Another argument given against functionalism and more particularly against physicalism (all mental states are physical states) is the knowledge argument given by Frank Jackson. In Knowledge Argument, in which we are asked to imagine someone who knows all the physical facts about colour experience, light and vision but has never seen colour, coming to see something red for the first time. The new physical state they come to be in on seeing red is nevertheless one that they knew all the physical facts about in advance. The intuition is supposed to be that, despite this, they come to know something new: what the experience of red is like, even though they could have - maybe did - predict in advance everything that they would say and do on having the experience. The reply typically is to deny that there any knowledge of that kind had to be coupled with some move to explain the intuitiveness of it: such as that there is some kind of non-propositional thing that one might call ‘knowledge’ which is indeed gained, but it is not knowledge of any fact [6].

Merleau-Ponty: Embodied Mind and Perception

According to Maurice Merleau-Ponty (an existentialist phenomenologist), the mind is essentially embodied. It is not some kind of a dimensionless ego, immaterial substance or spirit. According to Ponty, mental states are not something which lacks all bodily dimensions, but rather mental states involve the lived body of the perceiver [6]. Mental state is not a detached something, but rather the mental state is embodies in the body of the perceiver. Perception according to Merleau- Ponty is not a representation of the objects, but rather the perceived object is present in perception in full sense. The

phenomenological reduction is not a reduction of reality per-se, but rather it is the reduction of our preconceptions of reality and all our habitual conceptualizations about reality.

Causal Role of Mental States: Lewis and Armstrong

The resolution of David Lewis and David Armstrong was to synthesize the claim that mental states are internal with the claim that mental states are detectable by perception and other methods central to the natural sciences. There is a conceptual connection between mental states and causing of a behaviour even though each mental state only contingently causes the state that it does. The mental state is a mental state only in virtue of what it causes and if it didn’t play any causal role, then it wouldn’t be a mental state. David Lewis says that the states that play certain causal roles are mental states and material are those states, so mental states are material states. David Armstrong also said that mental states as a matter of fact are material [6].

Computational Functionalism: Putnam’s and Piccinini’s view on the Mind

Hilary Putnam is the father of computational functionalism. Computational Functionalism is the view that mental states and events - pains, beliefs and desires - are computational states of the brain and are defined in terms of “computational parameters plus relations to biologically characterized inputs and outputs.” The nature of the mind is independent of the physical making of the brain. What matters is the functional organization, the way in which mental states are causally related to each other - to sensory inputs and motor outputs. Stones and tress do not possess a mind, not because of the reason that they are not made of the right kind of material, but rather with the reason that they don’t have the right kind of functional organization or complex structures to possess a mind [7]. Computational Functionalism presented an alternative to the two dominant theories of classical materialism (mental states are brain states) and of behaviourism (mental states are behaviour- dispositions). There have been three main versions of this theory:

• The classical theory associated with Jerry Fodor
• F.P. Ramsey’s view that beliefs are maps by which we steer which emphasizes the role in reasoning of maps and mental and mental imagery
• Connectionism which denies that there are any structured representations at all: the mind/brain consists of a vast network of nodes whose different and variable excitation levels explain intelligent learning [8].

According to Hilary Putnam, there is a striking analogy between humans and machines - The internal makeup and the behaviour of a machine and a human - can both be described in terms of physical states governed by physical laws and in terms of logical states in case of machines and mental states governed by reasoning in the case of human beings [7]. Gualtiero Piccinini (The Associate Director of the Center of Neurodynamics at UMSL) also holds the view that the mind is a functional system, it is a system of structures that perform functions. Piccinini’s view of the mind is that the mind is a complex system in which all the levels of the mind are aspects of the same portion of reality. All levels of the mind are equally real, and no level is more fundamental than others. This view of Piccinini contrasts with the metaphysicians which hold that there is a hierarchy among the different levels [9]. An argument against computational functionalism of the limits of computational modelling can be described as follows - “Intuitive, creative, or skilful human activity may seem to resist formularization by a computer program.” A computer cannot compose the Eroica symphony, nor it can discover the theory of general relativity and neither it can replicate a child’s effortless ability to perceive the environment and discern the emotions of others. These types of activities can only be performed through the intuitive and creative abilities of a human being. An argument of “embodied cognition” has been also given against the theory of computational functionalism according to which the computational functionalist approach treats the mental activity as static symbol manipulation detached from the embedding environment. Computational functionalists approach also neglects the myriad complex ways the environment causally or constitutively shapes mental activity. According to the theory of embodies cognition, computational functionalist approach or the computational theory of mind should be replaced with a new model of reality which emphasizes continuous links between the mind, body and the environment. It is not the internal computation which plays the role of understanding cognition, but rather it is agent-environment dynamics which considers the continuous link between mind, body and cognition which can hold an important key to understanding the different aspects of cognition [10].

Embodied Cognition and the Extended Mind

Embodied cognition is a growing research program in cognitive science that emphasizes the formative role the environment plays in the development of cognitive processes. The general theory contends that cognitive processes develop when a tightly coupled system emerges from real-time, goal- directed interactions between organisms and their environment; the nature of these interactions influences the formation and further specifies the nature of the cognitive capacities. Theoretical assumptions most held by the embodies models of cognition are as follows:

• The primacy of goal directed action
• Embodiment determining the cognition
• Cognition is constructive
• Faculty psychology is questioned and
• A traditional classicist account of representation is denied and viewed as not being the only representational model [6].

To understand its own basic skills, an organism has to control its movements and perform goal-directed actions. For example, when an infant must learn to walk properly, he must slow down and control his/her movements of the legs, so that he/she can learn to walk properly. The way in which an organism perceives the world is based on its sensorimotor experiences and how it is embodies in a particular system according to the model of embodied cognition. The way in which an organism is embodies will determine the type of action that it performs. The way the world appears to us is not dependent on some observer independent reality, but rather it is dependent on the way an organism is embodied. There is a relation of mutual dependence between the organism and its environment. Clark and Chalmers claim that in certain systems, the environment features can partly determine an agent’s beliefs so that the mind extends into the environment (the extended mind thesis). The extended mind can explain a lot of actions which cannot be easily explained by referring to the mind as something completely internal and limited to the boundary of the skin and the skull. The portability argument against the extended mind thesis claims that certain core abilities and operations of the mind are always available to the organism regardless of environmental changes, and so to say that the mind extends into the environment is problematic and if the mind extended into the environment instead of being confined inside the head, then any changes to the environment would cause changes in our cognitive capabilities and mechanism, but it is not so [6]. So, the extended mind thesis is untenable. But still the extended mind hypothesis is continuously debated with no resolution as to the proof and the final structure of the hypothesis/thesis. The investigation into the mind throughout the realm and the field of philosophy of mind is a journey of unyielding inquiry and reflection. From the ancient wisdom of Greek thinkers to the modern complexities of contemporary discourse, the pursuit of comprehending consciousness and mental phenomena has persisted. Descartes’ proposition of dualism, materialism’s rebuttal, and Hume’s radical notions of selfhood have all contributed to this intricate tapestry of thought. Yet, even amidst the diversity of perspectives, persistent questions endure. And it is with the rise of these questions that the field of philosophy of mind becomes even more exciting and thrilling to explore [1].