What is mind

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What is mind?

• A presentation by Pim Klaassen

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IIntroduction
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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).

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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

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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

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Psychological questions and scientific answers

• The sciences provide nomological, causal
  explanations, which cannot account for the
  normativity inherent to our subject matter.

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Psychological questions and philosophy

• Not ontology, but conceptual clarifications.
• Experience is not a something, but not a nothing
  either. (PU 304)

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Causality I

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

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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.

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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.

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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.
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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).

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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.

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II(my version of) The adverbial theory of mind

• that is, Schatzkis interpretation of
  Wittgenstein remodeled

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

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Wittgenstein does agree with all contemporary
positions on that there is but one realm, viz.
that of the body.
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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)

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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

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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)

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Mind and body

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

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?There is empirical proof for this, e.g- Held
Hein 1958. (In Varela e.a. 1991, p.174-5)-
Brooks work in AI/ Robotics
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Action presupposes a practice.The social nature
of practices is located in understanding
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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.

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Rule following II

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

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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.

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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

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The difference between the inner and the outer
isnt ontological, but epistemological
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IIITowards a multi-disciplinary study of mind
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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.

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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.

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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