Mental Causation

From Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind (Continuum, 2010):



mental causation, denied by EPIPHENOMENALISM, the having of effects, by mental phenomena, on any other phenomena, especially physical phenomena. An example would be the production of a bodily motion (a physical event) as a result of an episode of willing (see WILL, THE). (See also ACTION.) Another would be the causing of one mental state by another in a chain of REASONING. More broadly, mental causation concerns the causes of mental phenomena in addition to their effects. On this broader construal, an example would be the production of a PERCEPTION of an avalanche as a causal consequence of an avalanche. That mental phenomena enter into various causal interactions with one another and with nonmental phenomena is a core idea of many varieties of FUNCTIONALISM. For example, one sort of functionalistic thesis holds that what it is to be a BELIEF, and in particular a belief that tigers have stripes, is to be a state of a subject that has various causal relations to other states of the subject, including other states of belief as well as states of sensory reac- tions to striped tigers and states of intention toward certain kinds of behaviors concerning striped tigers. See also EXPLANATORY EXCLUSION; INTERACTIONISM.

Chinese room

From Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind (Continuum, 2010):



Chinese room, an argument, due to John Searle, against FUNCTIONALISM as well as certain conceptions of ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE. The argument has, as a main component, the following THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: A computer program alleged by functionalists to allow a computer to conduct a conversation in Chinese is rewritten as a set of instructions in English that can be followed by John Searle even though he understands no Chinese. Searle is imagined to sit in a room in which cards with Chinese symbols emerge from one of two slots in the wall. Searle examines each incoming card and, though comprehending no Chinese, consults instructions concerning which appropriate response card should be selected and sent out of the second of the two wall slots. The essence of the Chinese room argument against functionalism is that since Searle can follow the program without understanding Chinese, functionalism is mistaken in its contention that intelligent processes such as understanding Chinese are constituted by program-following.

One noteworthy functionalist response to the Chinese room argument has come to be known as the systems response. According to the systems response, it is not John Searle who is running the program, but a larger system, of which he is a mere proper part, that runs the program. This larger system includes, in addition to John Searle, the cards coming in and out of the slots, and the book that Searle consults when each new card comes in. According to the systems response, no threat is posed to functionalism by the possibility that John Searle can play his part without understanding Chinese. It is the whole system that runs the program and thus, according to the functionalist, the whole system is what understands Chinese.

Searle has countered against the systems response that the cards and the book are irrelevant and that it is possible, at least in theory, for John Searle to memorize the contents of the book (or its functional equivalent) and replace the cards with heard and spoken Chinese utterances. In this imagined sce- nario, John Searle hears a Chinese question and then, though he doesn’t understand Chinese, consults his memory of the rule book, which describes different sounds in terms of their purely auditory, nonsemantic characteristics, and Searle then produces an appropriate sound with his mouth. Now the whole system running the program does not have John Searle as a mere proper part.

Another functionalist response to the Chinese room argument is the robot response. According to the robot response, the system comprising the Chinese room does not adequately satisfy the conditions for SYMBOL GROUNDING and thus no state of the system exhibits the appropriate INTENTIONALITY for understanding Chinese. If, instead, the system comprised by the whole Chinese room and its contents were embedded in a large robot so that it could act as the robot’s brain, the states of the room-system could acquire intentionality in virtue of their relations to the rest of the robot and the robot’s relations to its environment. Such a response emphasizes the importance of embodiment for cognition. See EMBODIED COGNITION.

conceptual-role semantics

From Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind (Continuum, 2010):

conceptual-role semantics, (also known as “inferential-role semantics,” “causal-role semantics,” “computational-role semantics,” and “functional- role semantics”) an attempt to explain the INTENTIONALITY or CONTENT of a mental STATE in terms of relations (such as inferential relations [see INFERENCE]) a mental state bears to other mental states. For example, the content of my mental state concerning dogs may be constituted by relations to other mental states, such as those concerning mammals, those concerning domestication, and those concerning barking. Thus, any mental state has the content dog if it is a mental state that a person would be in as a result of drawing an inference from premises concerning domesticated barking mammals. Such an account of mental content seems especially compatible with the LANGUAGE OF THOUGHT hypothesis. For the same reasons that make conceptual-role semantics fit with the hypothesis of a language of thought, conceptual-role semantics is sometimes regarded as an account of the meaning of public language items. (See also USE THEORY OF MEANING.)

A key early proponent of conceptual-role semantics was Wilfrid SELLARS.

Conceptual-role semantics is widely regarded as most plausible as an account of logical concepts and terms such as “and.” Plausibly, the meaning of the truth-functional connective “and” is exhausted by the role it plays in truth- preserving inferences such as inferring from “John has slacks and Mary has a skirt” to “John has slacks.” One appealing reason for extending conceptual- role semantics beyond logical items is that it promises to account for the sorts of phenomena that support the postulation of Fregean SENSE. For example, there seems to be a difference in thinking that the Morning Star is bright and that Venus is bright even though the Morning Star and Venus are one and the same astronomical body. This difference is accounted for in conceptual- role semantics by positing different conceptual roles for the MENTAL REPRESENTATION of the Morning Star and the mental representation of Venus.

Conceptual-role semantics has a certain compatibility with FUNCTIONALISM given the emphases both theories place on the roles played by mental states. Certain versions of conceptual-role semantics, in emphasizing relations between mental states and de-emphasizing relations borne to states of the external world, have been appealing to adherents of INTERNALISM and METHODOLOGICAL SOLIPSISM. Other philosophers, more impressed with the insights of EXTERNALISM, have adapted conceptual-role semantics to involve content-constituting rela- tions to the external world in addition to relations between internal states, thus giving rise to accounts such as two-factor conceptual-role semantics. Many detractors of conceptual-role semantics have held that it gives rise to intolerable versions of HOLISM. See also CONTENT, THEORIES OF.

first-order representationalism

From Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind (Continuum, 2010):

first-order representationalism, a theory of CONSCIOUSNESS that explains state consciousness (see CONSCIOUSNESS, STATE) in terms of having a certain kind of MENTAL REPRESENTATION (crucially, a representation that need not be represented by any other representation, thus “first-order”) and explains QUALIA or the “WHAT IT IS LIKE” aspects of consciousness (see CONSCIOUSNESS, PHENOMENAL) in terms of the CONTENT of the relevant mental representation. The main distinctive feature of first-order representationalism is that unlike higher-order representationalisms, such as the HIGHER-ORDER THOUGHT THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS or the higher-order PERCEPTION theory of consciousness, it does not make it a requirement on a state’s being conscious that it be represented by itself or any other state. One consideration that first-order representationalists raise in support of this part of their view is that it appears, or so it is claimed, that we cannot become aware of the features of an EXPERIENCE itself as opposed to features of what the experience is an experience of. For example, when I attend to my experience of a blue rectangle, it seems that I am only aware of the blueness and the rectangularity—properties presumably instantiated not by my experience but by some physical object in the external world: a blue rectangle. See TRANSPARENCY (OF EXPERIENCE).

the extended mind hypothesis

From Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind (Continuum, 2010):

extended mind, the hypothesis that mental states themselves, as opposed to the factors determining their CONTENT, extend beyond the physical boundaries of an organism to include environmental phenomena. The extended-mind hypothesis may thus be characterized as a kind of vehicle EXTERNALISM and contrasted against content externalism (see VEHICLE; CONTENT/VEHICLE DISTINCTION). A key argument for the extended-mind hypothesis advanced by Andy Clark and David CHALMERS involves a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT concerning two characters, Inga and Otto (their names are evocative of “inner” and “outer”), who both make their way to a museum they’ve been to previously. Otto’s “memory” of where the museum is located is not encoded in his nervous system (he’s imagined to be an Alzheimer’s patient with difficulty doing such a thing) but is instead written down in his notebook. Inga, however, has no external record of the location of the museum but remembers the location in the usual way of what we would consider her MEMORY, perhaps by accessing INFORMATION stored in her nervous system. Clark and Chalmers urge the conclusion that the distributed system that includes Otto’s brain and notebook counts as no less a SUPERVENIENCE base for a (vehicle of) BELIEF than does Inga’s purely (or, at least, more) internal system.

what it is like

From Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind (Continuum, 2010):

what it is like, a phrase often used in philosophy of mind for discussing phenomenal character or QUALIA. Such uses include “What it is like to taste a lemon is more like tasting a lime than tasting chocolate” and “A person blind from birth does not know what it is like to see red.” Perhaps one of the most famous uses of the phrase is due to Thomas Nagel’s essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” the titular question of which served to launch Nagel’s criticisms of the completeness of physical, objective science. See PHYSICALISM; OBJECTIVITY; SUBJECTIVITY. A line of thought against physicalism hinging on what it is like, similar to Nagel’s, was developed by Frank Jackson and others in terms of the now famous KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT concerning conditions under which one may acquire KNOWLEDGE of what it is like to see red. Central to the knowledge argument is a THOUGHT EXPERIMENT concerning Mary, a hypothetical super-neuroscientist who knows all of the objective physical facts about human color vision but has never herself seen red before. Many philosophers share the INTUITION that Mary does not know what it is like to see red if all she has is knowledge of physical facts and has not herself seen red. The intuition that one could not know what it is like to have certain kinds of EXPERIENCE (e.g., tasting wine or pineapple) without first undergoing an experience of such a kind was appealed to by John LOCKE and David HUME in their arguments for EMPIRICISM. See also MOLYNEUX QUESTION; MISSING SHADE OF BLUE.

multiple-drafts theory of consciousness

From Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind (Continuum, 2010):

multiple-drafts theory of consciousness, due to Daniel DENNETT, a theory of CONSCIOUSNESS consistent with PHYSICALISM wherein a conscious state (see CONSCIOUSNESS, STATE) is spread out in both space and time in the brain across multiple instances of what Dennett calls “content fixations” (see MENTAL REPRESENTATION), each of which—the “multiple drafts”—compete for domination in the cognitive system or what Dennett calls “fame in the brain.” Crucial to Dennett’s account of consciousness is a denial of the existence of what he calls “the Cartesian theater”—a single place in the brain where at some specific time which is the onset of consciousness, “it all comes together.” The Cartesian theater is where the various previously unconscious brain events march onto the stage of consciousness before the audience of a HOMUNCULUS who watches the passing show. Dennett regards such a positing of a homunculus as nonexplanatory: How is the homunculus conscious of the show in the Cartesian theater?

Many of the considerations that Dennett provides in support of the multiple-drafts theory hinge on features concerning the application of the CONTENT/VEHICLE DISTINCTION to conscious representations of time. Such representations may themselves (the vehicles) occur at times other than the times that they are representations of (the contents). The importance of the content/vehicle distinction for time representation can be drawn out in contemplation of an
argument Dennett gives concerning the illusory motion and illusory color- change in an effect known as the color-phi phenomenon. In the color-phi phenomenon, the subject is presented with a brief flash of a green circle, followed by a brief flash of a red circle. The two flashes occur in slightly different locations. Subjects report the appearance of motion: a green circle, that moves and becomes red at the point roughly between where the green circle was flashed and where the red circle was flashed. Especially interesting is that subjects report that the green circle turns red before arriving at the spot where the red circle is flashed. The subjects cannot have known ahead of time that a red circle was going to flash, so how is it that they are able to have a conscious experience of something turning to red prior to the red circle’s
flashing? One candidate explanation is that the subject unconsciously perceives the red circle’s flash and the subject’s brain uses that INFORMATION to generate an illusory conscious experience of a green circle changing to red. Another candidate explanation is that the subject consciously perceived only the nonmoving green and red circle flashes and has a false memory of there having been a moving and color-shifting circle. Dennett argues that there is absolutely no basis for preferring one of these candidate explanations over the other. According to Dennett, there is no fact of the matter about consciousness aside from how things seem to the subject (see APPEARANCE), and how things seem to the subject is determined by the BELIEF that is arrived at via the process, smeared out in space and time in the brain, of competitions for fame in the brain via multiple content fixations. Some of Dennett’s critics have accused his argument here of relying on an untenable VERIFICATIONISM.

private-language argument

From Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind (Continuum, 2010):

private-language argument, due to Ludwig WITTGENSTEIN, an argument the conclusion of which is that it is impossible for there to be a language that can be understood by only a single individual. Another way to put the conclusion, then, is that if a language may be understood by any individual, then it must be possible as well for it to be understood by many individuals. Wittgenstein’s discussion of the argument involves contemplation of an attempt to devise a language for keeping a diary of one’s own private sensations. A key issue that arises is, in devising a sign, “S,” to stand for some particular SENSATION, whether there can be any basis for knowing or saying that “S” does indeed stand for that sensation as opposed to something else or nothing at all. The keeper of the allegedly private journal will not be in a position to distinguish whether his grasp of a private ostensive definition of “S” is correct instead of merely seeming correct. And where there can be no graspable distinction between seeming correct and being correct, there is no place for a notion of correctness at all (see also NORMATIVE).

What is philosophy of mind?

Here is a link [link] to a free preview of my book, Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind (Continuum, 2010). The preview contains the introductory essay "What is Philosophy of Mind?" as well as term entries for Action through Chinese nation.

Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind

Continuum Philosophy says...

@ContinuumPhilos: ..direct link to preview is here for Key Terms in Philosophy of Mindhttp://bit.ly/bOdGmm - out next week in the UK, May for the US

David Lewis

From the "Key Thinkers" section of Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind by Pete Mandik, to be published by Continuum in May 2010 (link to publisher's page).

Lewis, David (1941–2001) Lewis’s contributions to the philosophy of mind involved the development of various physicalistic theses and defenses of PHYSICALISM. The brand of physicalism that Lewis favored was a kind of FUNCTIONALISM whereby functional analyses where obtained by collecting the mass of commonsense platitudes about mental states—platitudes such as “People who desire something tend to seek it out,” “People who believe that something will cause painful experiences will fear it,” and so on—and then codifying such mental states in the form of theories expressed as sets of Ramsey sentences (see RAMSEY SENTENCE. See also RAMSIFICATION). Lewis saw the resultant functionalism as compatible with the TYPE-IDENTITY THESIS (see also TYPE-TYPE IDENTITY). The functional roles described by the Ramsified theory, discovered by consulting commonsense platitudes, were open to be identified with entities discoverable in the physical sciences, including neuroscience.

Lewis was an influential defender of the ability hypothesis, a physicalist response to the KNOWLEDGE ARGUMENT whereby it is objected that KNOWLEDGE of WHAT IT IS LIKE to see red is not, as presupposed by the knowledge argument, a kind of PROPOSITIONAL KNOWLEDGE, but instead, a kind of KNOW-HOW. Defenders of the ability hypothesis hold that the knowledge of what it is like to see red is constituted by an ability to recognize and imagine red things (see also IMAGERY; MEMORY).

Representative writings:

“An argument for the identity theory” (1966)

“Psychophysical and theoretical identifications” (1970)

“Mad pain and Martian pain” (1980)

“What experience teaches” (1990)

Defining "Objectivity" and "Subjectivity"

From Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind by Pete Mandik, to be published by Continuum in May 2010 (link to publisher's page).

objectivity, (1) of that which exists, that it exists independently of any one’s PERCEPTION of it or THOUGHT or BELIEF about it. (2) Of that which exists, KNOWLEDGE about it being acquirable via multiple kinds of EXPERIENCE. (3) Of mental states, especially judgments or beliefs, that they are arrived at impartially and do not simply reflect the bias of the judge or believer and, additionally, have their TRUTH-value (true or false) in virtue of factors that have objectivity in sense (1) of the term “objectivity.” All three senses of “objectivity” may be contrasted against correlative senses of SUBJECTIVITY.

Despite sense (3)’s being explicitly about a feature of mental states, senses (1) and (2) have played more central roles in the philosophy of mind. Sense (1) of “objectivity” has played a central role in discussions of REALISM and TRUTH. The classical debate between early versions of MATERIALISM and IDEALISM concerned whether so-called material objects existed independently of anyone’s perceiving or conceiving of them. Related are discussions of the contrast between PRIMARY QUALITIES and SECONDARY QUALITIES, with the former being more objective than the latter.

Sense (2) of “objectivity” and a contrasting sense of “subjectivity” have been central in discussions of phenomenal consciousness (see CONSCIOUSNESS, PHENOMENAL). Some philosophers have urged that WHAT IT IS LIKE to see red or to be a bat is subjective in the sense of being knowable only from the point of view of one who has seen red or been a bat. In contrast, one need not have any particular kind of experience to know about the brain states of a bat or of a person seeing red. It is claimed, for instance, that while a person blind from birth may not know what it is like to see red, everything physical about the brain states of a red-seeing person is knowable by the blind person. (See also FIRST-PERSON; FIRST-PERSON AUTHORITY.)

subjectivity, (1) Of that which exists, that its existence depends on someone’s PERCEPTION of it or THOUGHT or BELIEF about it. (2) Of that which exists, KNOWLEDGE about it being acquirable via limited kinds of EXPERIENCE. (3) Of mental states, especially judgments or beliefs, that they fail to be impartial and instead reflect the bias of the judge or believer and have their TRUTH-value (true or false) in virtue of factors that have subjectivity in sense (1) of the term. All three senses of “subjectivity” may be contrasted against correlative senses of OBJECTIVITY. For further discussion of both subjectivity and objectivity, see the entry on objectivity.

Defining "Emotion"

From Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind by Pete Mandik, to be published by Continuum in May 2010 (link to publisher's page).

emotion, an affective mental state, examples of which include states of fear, anger, disgust, and joy. Emotions are often regarded as obstacles to RATIONALITY, but they play central roles in quality of life, personal preferences and priorities, social affiliations, and morality. Emotions may be distinguished from other mental states such as judgment or BELIEF by the relative closeness of association between emotions and characteristic bodily reactions (e.g., increased heart rate, perspiration). Emotions may be differentiated from each other along numerous dimensions such as (1) the presence and type of intentional object (see INTENTIONALITY), (2) intensity, and (3) valence (positive versus negative). So, for an example concerning (1), joy and resentment
may be distinguished by what they are about or directed at, where resentment
is directed toward other people in a way that joy need not be. For an example concerning (2), irritation and rage may be distinguished by, among other things, their intensity. For an example concerning (3), joy and fear have opposite valences, with there being a relatively obvious sense in which one is more positive than the other.

My book has a tree on it

Continuum Books has some product info up on my forthcoming book, Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind [link]. This is the first I'm seeing of the book cover. Hmm! It's got a tree on it, which, I presume, is the tree of the mind, or something. Also, the pink spot of consciousness hovers above the tree, perhaps loaded with extra qualia? I'm too excited to be totally sure. See for yourselves.