Contemporary Theories of Philosophy of Mind
There are a number of contemporary interpretations of what is collectively known as the mind/body problem. Reductionism is the view that the mind will be reduced to the body. It claims that neuroscience will one day reduce the mental to physical objects such as neurons. Identity theory claims that the mind is identical with the brain. Functionalism claims that the mind is identical with any object that functions like a brain.
Powerful Thinkers: Alan Turing
Can a computer think? Does it have a mind? Asking whether a machine could be taught to imitate the behavior of humans is the main question behind artificial intelligence, and the answer to that question is one of the many contributions of Alan Turing (1912–1954), the visionary mathematician and philosopher of sci- ence whose discoveries are the foundation of today’s artificial intelli- gence and computer science. If you study the philosophy of mind or the relation of the mind to mathematics; if you just use a smart- phone, a mainframe, or a laptop; if you store information on a cloud; or even if you’ve seen the 2014 film The Imitation Game, you’ve been touched by the thoughts of this genius.
His tale is as extraordinary as it is tragic. Turing studied quantum mechanics, probability theory, and logic at Cambridge and then at Princeton, returning to England in 1939 to offer himself to the war effort. His individual contribution to victory in World War II has been ranked with those of Winston Churchill and Dwight D. Eisenhower— and that is no exaggeration. It was Turing’s cryptanalyses at Bletchley Park that led to breaking the Nazi Enigma code, giving the Allies the necessary information to counter U-boat attacks and save the Battle of the Atlantic. Turing’s discoveries saved thousands of lives, but the details of his highly classified secret work did not become public until 2012.
The imitation game Turing devised is an original vision of a computer hardware that could store information and change functions according to the task at hand, so that it did not need to be recali- brated for each computation. In other words, he invented hardware that could imitate the way a person thinks, except the Turing machine could do it much, much faster. In his now famous essay Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Turing first asked the question “Can machines think?” setting up a challenge to epistemology and philosophy of mind that goes on to this day.
If consciousness is physical, as materialists believe, then there is no reason why it could not be imitated by a computer—which then could be said to be thinking. The problem with human conscious- ness, however, is that we in fact have no evidence showing that the mind is indeed made of matter, in this case the brain, than we do that it is not. As Tom Stoppard has the neuroscientist Hilary say near the end of his 2015 play The Hard Problem, “when you come right down to it, the body is made of things. And things don’t think.” That is indeed the hard problem, one we may never solve.
After World War II, Turing continued his research on programming, neural nets, and the budding field of artificial intelligence, while working at the National Physical Laboratory in London. He proposed the first mathematical use of a computer and developed a Turing test for machine intelligence. He began groundbreaking research into the mathematical basis of life and developed a theory of nonlinear biological growth.
The war hero was gay, however, at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England. He was arrested, lost his security clearance, fired, jailed, and sentenced to chemical castration in 1952. He committed suicide in 1954.
Alan Turing received a posthumous royal pardon from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in 2013 on Christmas Eve. Following the pardon and the renewed public gratitude to this powerful thinker who helped the Allies win the war, there is presently a movement to pardon the other 50,000 gay men who were convicted under England’s antigay laws.
POWERFUL ANALYSIS: GHOST IN THE MACHINE?
Can a computer have a mind or a soul?
Logical Behaviorism
Gilbert Ryle (1900–1976) holds a view of the mind known as logical behaviorism. This view claims that behavior can be explained without positing the existence of a mental realm. Under this conception, it is not logically necessary to discuss the men- tal when speaking about behavior. He uses the example of the ghost in the machine. This example is that someone might think that a ghost is responsible for the workings of a machine, but there is a different explanation, simply the physical construction of the machine—if you were to examine all of the parts together, you discover that the machine has a completely mechanical explanation for its operations. For example, if you showed a television or tablet PC to some primitive tribesmen, he might think it was magic or had a spirit inside of it, but in fact it is just electronics, circuits, and com- puter chips—no magic is required. The same may be true of the brain. We think the mind is this magical thing, when it is simply the workings of the brain.
Personal Identity and Artificial Intelligence
David Hume (1711–1776) claims that the self is an illusion and that we can never, in any of our experiences, find a perception of the actual self. In his view, the self is constantly changing and you are never the same person one moment to the next. This view is not unlike some Eastern conceptions of the self and of the mind. It is also close to Jean-Paul Sartre’s notion that human beings are nothingness, that is, not-a-thing, and as such cannot be defined. There is no ego, there is no self. Accord- ing to Hume, all knowledge is based on sense impressions and on experiences. If this is the case, we don’t even have any evidence of the self, since any conception of iden- tity must be based on impressions. “It must be some impression that gives rise to every real idea,” he wrote in his Treatise on Human Nature. “The self is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions are supposed to have a refer- ence.” There is no self. Therefore, as far as our idea of the self, Hume believed “there is no such idea.”
Although Hume argues against the self, other philosophers have argued for the existence of the self. Thomas Reid (1710–1796) argues that the mental ability of memory gives us reason to hold that the self exist. Daniel Dennett (1942) claims that a fundamental principle of evolution is self preservation as such the self must exist. The debate is not new, but recent scientific developments have made it more of a burning issue. If the self, the human mind, is a complex physical instrument—purely
“Listen carefully; what characterizes the mind is clinging to the notion of a self. But if one looks carefully into this ‘mind’, one actually sees no self at all. If you can learn how really to observe this [apparent] ‘nothing’, then you’ll find that “something” will be seen”
—Jetsun Milarepa, 1052–1135, The 100,000 Songs of Milarepa
Although Hume argues against the self, other philosophers have argued for the existence of the self. Thomas Reid (1710–1796) argues that the mental ability of memory gives us reason to hold that the self exist. Daniel Dennett (1942) claims that a fundamental principle of evolution is self preservation as such the self must exist. The debate is not new, but recent scientific developments have made it more of a burning issue. If the self, the human mind, is a complex physical instrument—purely
material, as most neuroscientists believe—then it is not only possible but probable that we will eventually explain everything there is to know about the self by studying how the brain works. And it is also possible and probable that a computer system will do that as well.
POWERFUL ANALYSIS: KNOW THY SELF?
Can we know the self, or is the self simple like an empty theater as Hume proclaims?
Materialism is the rule in the science, and that position permeates much phi- losophy as well; it is certainly an easier proposition to say that all there is, is matter— and thinking is just part of a physical process. Although most people are very likely dualists—anyone who believes in God must be, for example, since God is not mate- rial—including atheists such as Jean-Paul Sartre who are not materialists and then have a tough time explaining what the mind is. Still, such an explanation is needed if we are to insist that a computer cannot “think” the way humans can.
That possibility is here, stemming from Alan Turing’s original work on artifi- cial intelligence and since then taking off at an exponential rate of success. Computers today not only do what only humans used to do, but they do so faster and more accurately. Does that make them intelligent? Does it mean that computers think? Maybe? In 1962, Time Magazine named The Computer its “Man of the Year.” And that was just the beginning.
On film at least, of course. The vengeful computer HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) got the ball rolling in frighteningly believable sci-fi movie, followed by an invasion of smart androids in Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner (1982), an adorable and tragic little boy robot in Steven Spielberg’s A.I. (2001), or a sexy dis- embodied voice online who dumps a real guy for a smarter artificial intelligence in Spike Jonze’s Her (2013), to name a few of the best.
But there’s no need to go to sci-fi movies, just grab your phone. The impres- sively complex technology involved in designing that computational machine would have been unthinkable only a few decades ago. Maybe computers do think. Still, does the chess program on your laptop feel good when it beats you in every game? Does it judge the music you put on the iCloud? Is your computer punishing you when it freezes? Is it sad when it gets a virus? Does it like chicken soup?
Apple’s intelligent personal assistant iOS app Siri, the voice that talks to you in your car or phone, certainly seems intelligent. Siri uses a sophisticated system to interface with your own voice, gets to know you in the sense that her answers—part of the design of her software—will adapt to you the more you ask her. You can ask her “Siri, where is nearest beach?” or “Siri, what is neurophysiology?” But the smartest of smartphones, even with the latest iOS Siri app, is likely to answer your question “Siri, how can I be happy?” with something like “Macy’s is on 34th Street.” You are not talking the same language. Or, what is more likely, you are conscious and self-conscious, and Siri is not.
Some scientists would say that your own happiness and sadness in fact are not that different from the computer’s, as long as what you mean by emotions is precisely whatever goes on in your brain and whatever behavior you perform when you feel those emotions. That is a materialist view, and we do know a lot about matter. The presumption on part here is to assume that our knowing everything there is to know about physical reality leads us to know everything there is to know about the mind. It is fact a popular trend in Anglo-American analytic philosophy to assume just that. The self can or will be explained and understood in physical terms. It’s all about the nerve cells and what they do in that complex gray matter called your brain. Any- thing else is in the realm of mysticism, of returning to Plato, or—God forbid—of psychology. That is, as Tom Stoppard puts it, the hard problem.
And the problem is there, still. To doubt the materialist view of the self is not to doubt science: much of science is as verifiable as 2 + 2 = 4. Evolution is true, for example. The Big Bang Theory is true, as is the Law of Gravity. The Earth is billions of years old. Intelligent design theory of creation is not so intelligent. The idea is not to ask questions that were answered already and bring about confusion and retro- gression, but rather to avoid trusting answers for which there is no foundational evi- dence. A scientific theory of consciousness is easy, but only if you assume that physics, biology, and chemistry are the way to explain the mind. Yet materialism is a premise, not a conclusion.
We have evidence of dualism, hard as it is to prove it. Kurt Go ̋del upset many philosophers and mathematicians when he proved that there are true facts that cannot be proved but are nevertheless true. The tough part is explaining them.
READINGS
RENÉ DESCARTES: Meditations on First Philosophy
Searching for a truth that is clear and distinct, René Descartes sets off on a journey of radical doubt that leads to one certain fact he cannot doubt: that he is thinking.
Meditation 1
12. I will suppose, then, not that Deity, who is sovereignty good and the fountain of truth, but that some malignant demon, who is at once exceed- ingly potent and deceitful, has employed all his artifice to deceive me; I will suppose that the sky, the air, the earth, colors, figures, sounds, and all exter- nal things, are nothing better than the illusions of dreams, by means of which this being has laid snares for my credulity; I will consider my-self as without hands, eyes, flesh, blood, or any of the senses, and as falsely believ- ing that I am possessed of these; I will continue resolutely fixed in this belief, and if indeed by this means it be not in my power to arrive at the knowledge of truth, I shall at least do what is in my power, viz., [ suspend my judgment ], and guard with settled purpose against giving my assent to what is false, and being imposed upon by this deceiver, whatever be his power and artifice.
Meditation 2
1. The Meditation of yesterday has filled my mind with so many doubts, that it is no longer in my power to forget them. Nor do I see, meanwhile, any prin- ciple on which they can be resolved; and, just as if I had fallen all of a sudden into very deep water, I am so greatly disconcerted as to be unable either to plant my feet firmly on the bottom or sustain myself by swimming on the surface. I will, nevertheless, make an effort, and try anew the same path on which I had entered yesterday, that is, proceed by casting aside all that admits of the slightest doubt, not less than if I had discovered it to be abso- lutely false; and I will continue always in this track until I shall find something that is certain, or at least, if I can do nothing more, until I shall know with certainty that there is nothing certain. Archimedes, that he might transport the entire globe from the place it occupied to another, demanded only a point that was firm and immovable; so, also, I shall be entitled to entertain the highest expectations, if I am fortunate enough to discover only one thing that is certain and indubitable.
2. I suppose, accordingly, that all the things which I see are false (ficti- tious); I believe that none of those objects which my fallacious memory rep- resents ever existed; I suppose that I possess no senses; I believe that body, figure, extension, motion, and place are merely fictions of my mind. What is there, then, that can be esteemed true ? Perhaps this only, that there is abso- lutely nothing certain.
3. But how do I know that there is not something different altogether from the objects I have now enumerated, of which it is impossible to enter- tain the slightest doubt? Is there not a God, or some being, by whatever name I may designate him, who causes these thoughts to arise in my mind ? But why suppose such a being, for it may be I myself am capable of pro- ducing them? Am I, then, at least not something? But I before denied that I possessed senses or a body; I hesitate, however, for what follows from that? Am I so dependent on the body and the senses that without these I cannot exist? But I had the persuasion that there was absolutely nothing in the world, that there was no sky and no earth, neither minds nor bodies; was I not, therefore, at the same time, persuaded that I did not exist? Far from it; I assuredly existed, since I was persuaded. But there is I know not what being, who is possessed at once of the highest power and the deepest cun- ning, who is constantly employing all his ingenuity in deceiving me. Doubtless, then, I exist, since I am deceived; and, let him deceive me as he may, he can never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I shall be conscious that I am something. So that it must, in fine, be maintained, all things being maturely and carefully considered, that this proposition (pro- nunciatum ) I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time it is expressed by me, or conceived in my mind.
4. But I do not yet know with sufficient clearness what I am, though assured that I am; and hence, in the next place, I must take care, lest per- chance I inconsiderately substitute some other object in room of what is properly myself, and thus wander from truth, even in that knowledge (cog- nition) which I hold to be of all others the most certain and evident. For this reason, I will now consider anew what I formerly believed myself to be, before I entered on the present train of thought; and of my previous opinion I will retrench all that can in the least be invalidated by the grounds of doubt I have adduced, in order that there may at length remain nothing but what is certain and indubitable.
5. What then did I formerly think I was? Undoubtedly I judged that I was a man. But what is a man? Shall I say a rational animal? Assuredly not; for it would be necessary forthwith to inquire into what is meant by animal, and what by rational, and thus, from a single question, I should insensibly glide into others, and these more difficult than the first; nor do I now possess enough of leisure to warrant me in wasting my time amid subtleties of this
sort. I prefer here to attend to the thoughts that sprung up of themselves in my mind, and were inspired by my own nature alone, when I applied myself to the consideration of what I was. In the first place, then, I thought that I possessed a countenance, hands, arms, and all the fabric of members that appears in a corpse, and which I called by the name of body. It further occurred to me that I was nourished, that I walked, perceived, and thought, and all those actions I referred to the soul; but what the soul itself was I either did not stay to consider, or, if I did, I imagined that it was something extremely rare and subtitle, like wind, or flame, or ether, spread through my grosser parts. As regarded the body, I did not even doubt of its nature, but thought I distinctly knew it, and if I had wished to describe it according to the notions I then entertained, I should have explained myself in this man- ner: By body I understand all that can be terminated by a certain figure; that can be comprised in a certain place, and so fill a certain space as there from to exclude every other body; that can be perceived either by touch, sight, hearing, taste, or smell; that can be moved in different ways, not indeed of itself, but by something foreign to it by which it is touched and from which it receives the impression]; for the power of self-motion, as likewise that of perceiving and thinking, I held as by no means pertaining to the nature of body; on the contrary, I was somewhat astonished to find such faculties existing in some bodies.
6. But as to myself, what can I now say that I am], since I suppose there exists an extremely powerful, and, if I may so speak, malignant being, whose whole endeavors are directed toward deceiving me? Can I affirm that I pos- sess any one of all those attributes of which I have lately spoken as belong- ing to the nature of body? After attentively considering them in my own mind, I find none of them that can properly be said to belong to my-self. To recount them were idle and tedious. Let us pass, then, to the attributes of the soul. The first mentioned were the powers of nutrition and walking; but, if it be true that I have no body, it is true likewise that I am capable neither of walking nor of being nourished. Perception is another attribute of the soul; but perception too is impossible without the body; besides, I have fre- quently, during sleep, believed that I perceived objects which I afterward observed I did not in reality perceive. Thinking is another attribute of the soul; and here I discover what properly belongs to myself. This alone is inseparable from me. I am–I exist: this is certain; but how often? As often as I think; for perhaps it would even happen, if I should wholly cease to think, that I should at the same time altogether cease to be. I now admit nothing that is not necessarily true. I am therefore, precisely speaking, only a thinking thing, that is, a mind (mens sive animus), understanding, or reason, terms whose signification was before unknown to me. I am, however, a real thing, and really existent; but what thing? The answer was, a thinking thing. . .
R. D. LAING: Us and Them
R. D. Laing, a pioneer in existential psychoanalysis, analyzes the problem of other minds in this excerpt from his book, The Politics of Experience. He explores the fact that we are all in the same boat, but it’s still hard to get to know each other.
ONLY WHEN something has become problematic do we start to ask ques- tions. Disagreement shakes us out of our slumbers and forces us to see our own point of view through contrast with another person who does not share it. But we resist such confrontations. The history of heresies of all kinds testifies to more than the tendency to break off communication (excommu- nication) with those who hold different dogmas or opinions; it bears witness to our intolerance of different fundamental structures of experience. We seem to need to share a communal meaning to human existence, to give with others a common sense to the world, to maintain a consensus.
But it seems that once certain fundamental structures of experience are shared, they come to be experienced as objective entities. These reified pro- jections of our own freedom are then introjected. By the time the sociolo- gists study these projected-introjected reifications, they have taken on the appearance of things. They are not things ontologically. But they are pseudo- things. They take on the force and character of partially autonomous reali- ties, with their own way of life. A social norm may come to impose an oppressive obligation on everyone, although few people feel it as their own.
At this moment in history, we are all caught in the hell of frenetic passiv- ity. We find ourselves threatened by extermination that will be reciprocal, that no one wishes, that everyone fears, that may just happen to us“because” no one knows how to stop it. There is one possibility of doing so if we can understand the structure of this alienation of ourselves from our experi- ence, our experience from our deeds, our deeds from human authorship. Everyone will be carrying out orders. Where do they come from? Always from elsewhere. Is it still possible to reconstitute our destiny out of this hellish and inhuman fatality?
Within this most vicious circle, we obey and defend beings that exist only insofar as we continue to invent and to perpetuate them. What ontological status have these group beings?
This human scene is a scene of mirages, demonic pseudo-realities, because everyone believes everyone else believes them.
How can we find our way back to ourselves again? Let us begin by trying to think about it.
We act not only in terms of our own experience, but of what we think they experience, and how we think they think we experience, and so on in a logically vertiginous spiral to infinity.
Our language is only partially adequate to express this state of affairs. On level 1, two people, or two groups, may agree or disagree. As we say, they see eye to eye or otherwise. They share a common point of view. But on level 2 they may or may not think they agree or disagree, and they may or may not be correct in either case. Whereas level 1 is concerned with agree- ment or disagreement, level 2 is concerned with understanding or misun- derstanding. Level 3 is concerned with a third level of awareness: what do I think you think I think? That is, with realization of or failure to realize sec- ond-level understanding or misunderstanding on the basis of first-level agreement or disagreement. Theoretically, there is no end to these levels.
. . . It is possible to think what everyone else thinks and to believe that one is in a minority. It is possible to think what few people think and to suppose that one is in the majority. It is possible to feel that They feel one is like Them when one is not, and They do not. It is possible to say: I believe this, but They believe that, so I’m sorry, there is nothing I can do.
Gossip and scandal are always and everywhere elsewhere. Each person is the other to the others. The members of a scandal network may be unified by ideas to which no one will admit in his own person. Each person is thinking of what he thinks the other thinks. The other, in turn, thinks of what yet another thinks. Each person does not mind a colored lodger, but each person’s neigh- bor does. Each person, however, is a neighbor of his neighbor. What They think is held with conviction. It is indubitable and it is incontestable. The scan- dal group is a series of others which each serial number repudiates in himself.
It is always the others and always elsewhere, and each person feels unable to make any difference to Them. I have no objection to my daughter marrying a Gentile really, but we live in a Jewish neighborhood after all. Such collective power is in proportion to each person’s creation of this power and his own impotence.
This is seen very clearly in the following inverted Romeo and Juliet situation.
John and Mary have a love affair, and just as they are ending it Mary finds she is pregnant. Both families are informed. Mary does not want to marry John. John does not want to marry Mary. But John thinks Mary wants him to marry her, and Mary does not want to hurt John’s feelings by telling him that she does not want to marry him—as she thinks he wants to marry her, and that he thinks she wants to marry him.
The two families, however, compound the confusion considerably. Mary’s mother takes to bed screaming and in tears because of the disgrace—what people are saying about the way she brought her daughter up. She does not mind the situation “in itself,” especially as the girl is going to be married, but she takes to heart what everyone will be saying. No one in their own person in either family (“. . . if it only affected me . . .”) is in the least concerned for their own sake, but everyone is very concerned about the effect of “gossip” and “scandal” on everyone else. The concern focuses itself mainly on the boy’s father and the girl’s mother, both of whom require to be consoled at great length for the terrible blow. The boy’s father is worried about what the girl’smotherwillthinkofhim.Thegirl’smotherisworriedaboutwhat“every- one” will think of her. The boy is concerned at what the family thinks he has done to his father, and so on.
The tension spirals up within a few days to the complete engrossment of all members of both families in various forms of tears, wringing of hands, recriminations, apologies.
Typical utterances are:
MOTHER to GIRL: Even if he does want to marry you, how can he ever respect you after what people will have been saying about you recently?
GIRL (some time later): I had finally got fed up with him just before I found I was pregnant, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings because he was so in love with me.
BOY: If it had not been that I owed it to my father for all he had done for me, I would have arranged that she got rid of it. But then evveryone knew by then.
Everyone knew because the son told his father who told his wife who told her eldest son who told his wife . . . etc.
Such processes seem to have a dynamism divorced from the individuals. But in this and every other case the process is a form of alienation, intelligible when, and only when, the steps in the vicissitudes of its alienation from each and every person can be retraced back to what at each and every moment is their only origin: the experience and actions of each and every single person.
Now the peculiar thing about Them is that They are created only by each one of us repudiating his own identity. When we have installed Them in our hearts, we are only a plurality of solitudes in which what each person has in common is his allocation to the other of the necessity for his own actions. Each person, however, as other to the other, is the other’s neces- sity. Each denies any internal bond with the others; each person claims his own inessentiality: “I just carried out my orders. If I had not done so, some- one else would have.” “Why don’t you sign? Everyone else has,” etc. Yet although I can make no difference, I cannot act differently. No single other person is any more necessary to me than I claim to be to Them. But just as he is “one of Them” to me, so I am “one of Them” to him. In this collection of reciprocal indifference, of reciprocal inessentiality and solitude, there appears to exist no freedom. There is conformity There is conformity to a presence that is everywhere elsewhere.
The being of any group from the point of view of the group members themselves is very curious. If I think of you and him as together with me, and others again as not with me, I have already formed two rudimentary syntheses, namely, We and They. However, this private act of synthesis is not in itself a group. In order that We come into being as a group, it is necessary not only that I regard, let us say, you and him and me as We, but that you and he also think of us as We. I shall call such an act of experiencing a number of persons as a single collectivity, an act of rudimentary group synthesis. In this case We, that is each of Us, me, you and him, have performed acts of rudimentary group synthesis. But at present these are simply three private acts of group synthesis. In order that a group really jell, I must realize that you think of yourself as one of Us, as I do, and that he thinks of himself as one of Us, as you and I do. I must ensure furthermore that both you and he realize that I think of myself with you and him, and you and he must ensure likewise that the other two realize that this We is ubiquitous among us, not simply a private illusion on my, your or his part, shared between two of us but not all three.
