Some Main Positions
Topic: Mind


I wanted to give a quick run-down of some of the basic phil mind positions from the 20th century. This will be a huge oversimplification, of course. We’ll call the default position that everyone sort of reacts against as the Cartesian view of mind-body dualism. The body is an extending thing in space, the mind isn’t, but it is still something very real. So that gives us the problem that there are two things in the universe and the intuition war that I see, is between the logical parsimony of monism and the force of our common sense intuition of feelings and pains, which don’t intuitionally reduce descriptively. So which one will win out? Or, what will be the compromise?

The first reaction is to eliminate mind all together and talk about outward life only. Behaviorism. A famous “intuition pump” in this direction would be Ryle’s example of the university. A student walks onto campus looking for “X university” but only finds building Y, building Z, Professor P and so on. Talking about the mind seems to read in something extra that on closer inspection isn’t really there. The “mind” is generally considered constituted of one or two general entities, feelings (qualia) and intentions. A feeling would be pain or redness, an intention would be something like, “I wish to raise my arm now.” Against behaviorism would be the standard qualia argument that pain seems to real to be reduced descriptively, but equally important that behavior can be explained by various intentions. For instance, anti-socials on the outside can seem very normal but what’s going on inside is radically different from the rest of us.

A main departure from behaviorism that maintained a scientific POV was Identity Theory. This kept intentions and qualia intact, but as identities to some kind of physical process. Here is where the “c-fiber” talk you’ll see originates. In other words, any time you feel a pain, the one-day-to-be-discovered “c-fibers” are activating. So mental states are reduced to specific neurological brain features. The behaviorist in contrast, has no interest in what’s going on inside. The best rough analogy I’ve see would put a behaviorist as interested only in the hands on the clock, and Identity Theory as interested only in the gears. Some of the typical qualia type of objections still might hold, but the most devastating objection is the “multiple realizability” thesis from Hilary Putnam. Essentially, we can talk about both a snail and a human being in pain but the neuro-features are very different.

Multiple realizability along with explorations in computer science gave rise to Functionalism which to my knowledge was the last big-school theory in phil mind. Functionalism doesn’t care about the “hardware” as long as the causal relations, the “software” running is the same. Functionalism allows the possibility of mind to be extended to computers as well, which of course makes it a popular position for AI buffs and computer geeks generally.

One current running along simultaneously with identity theory and functionalism but less formalized were insights to phil mind from the philosophy of language. Two big contributors here would be Quine and Davidson. Quine’s position was radical in the sense that he approached meaning holistically. This parallels a lot of what was popular on “the Continent”. Basically, the story goes that thoughts can’t be reduced to atomic entities and therefore talk about qualia and intentions is itself meaningless and confused. This holistic position is the inspiration for so-called eliminative materialism. The basic idea is that any thought requires the understanding of another thought. Thoughts exist in a chain rather than a hierarchal structure. Dennett, who was a student of Quine’s, is probably the most well known figure to generally follow this line of thinking. This position flies in the face of conventional behaviorism, identity theory, and functionalism alike. See for instance, Ned Block’s (functionalist) attacks on semantic holism.

Davidson explored the language of mind and came up with a very brainy solution I can’t summarize at all in a couple of lines, but from what I can tell, his most important contribution brought to the table the concept of supervenience which explores all the subtle ways things can relate to each other. When you need a knife that cuts cleaner than clumsy notions like “causality,” you can talk about how A supervenes on B and all the subtle and distinct ways that can happen. Insights from Davidson mature in non-reductive physicalism, see in particular Jaegwon Kim who is probably one of the most technical and detail-oriented philosophers of mind ever.

Some of the most well-known philosophers of mind who write popular publications are hard to peg for various reasons. Either because of non-philosophical background or disdain for philosophical language. The Churchlands are more science oriented and their eliminativism is less philosophically rooted and dismiss folk psychology on the grounds that it’s simply too inadequate to count as any kind of explanation at all. Dennett doesn’t like tech talk so doesn’t self-identify in the usual ways, relying on common sense examples to raise all the issues he’s interested in. Searle also doesn’t like philosophical language. His take makes consciousness essentially qualia only, and that seems to be what makes a mind for him. Strictly, the what-it’s-like-to-be-a line of thinking. He’s not a dualist but maintains there is a “first person” and “third person” way to look at things. And third-personism is somehow an artifact of biology. He’s supposedly a dualist but he hates those kinds of distinctions, from what I gather. Finally, there’s David Chalmers who is kind of an odd duck for different reasons, he’s an actual self-avowed property dualist. Matter has a mind aspect and a material aspect. So, therefore, on a very low level the universe is conscious to a limited extent. Particular arrangements bring out mind in varying degrees. This kind of stuff puts him in kind of a “mystic” category with many other philosophers. Like Searle, the “what-it’s-like-to-be-a” line of thinking is very important to his position. But he differs in important ways. For instance, Chalmers would probably agree that a machine could be conscious like a human, something Searle would die before agreeing to. But he’d argue that the reasons would be different from a functionalist’s doctrine and could never be reflected in machine tables, etc.

Anyway, one of the reasons I wrote this is because the gurus often cited in popular publications while being highly respected in the community (those in the last paragraph), don’t necessarily reflect the main lines of debate on the subject and aren’t specifically helpful for understanding the subject generally.