Thinkby Simon Blackburn

Chapter 2c Mind

According to Paul Bloom, children mainly learn to be dualists from their culture. We know this because dualism is rare outside of Western societies.

A. TrueB. False

Paul Bloom says that when children learn that the brain is the thinking organ they

A. do not believe it at first, but then come to accept it gradually over time.

B. express disbelief and reject it completely until adulthood.

C. accept this in a narrow sense that does not apply to all mental activities.

An excerpt from Paul Bloom“Once children learn that the brain is involved in thinking, they don't take it as showing that the brain as the source of mental life; they don't become materialists. Rather they interpret "thinking" in anarrow sense, and conclude that the brain is a cognitive prosthesis, something added to the soul to enhance its computing power. In other words, there's Max, the person, and then there's his brain, which he uses to solve problems just as he might use a calculator or a computer.“I don't think that this is an entirely immature way of thinking. For instance when adults read that a certain part of the brain is involved when you think about sex, or race, or politics, they are often surprised. And I think this surprise is revealing. After all, the details of the studies may be of scientific interest, but the mere fact that the brain is involved should be boring. In fact, it would be the discovery of the century if some sort of thinking went on that did not involve the brain. And when they describe such results, even experts slip into dualistic language: "I think about sex and this activates such-and-so part of my brain"—as if there are two separate things going on, first the thought and then the brain activity.”

The takeaway

Even as we consider the philosophical refutation of dualism we should be aware of the possibility that recognizing it as incoherent is an exercise of rational inquiry.This doesn’t immediately entail that we can easily use this insight to overcome an attachment to dualism, especially if it is innate.

Recall Locke’s basic point of view

For unthinking particles of matter, however put together, can have nothing thereby added to them, but a new relation of position, which it is impossible should give thought and knowledge to them. (p.64)

Locke’s predicament

Locke thought there was no way that a lump of “unthinking matter” could be made into a thinking, feeling thing, just by arranging the particles in a certain way.But how does Locke know this? Why is he so sure that particles arranged in a certain way can’t result in thoughts and feelings?The answer is that Locke, like Descartes, thinks that it is just part of the very concept of a physical thing that it is not a mental thing.

A priori vs. a posteriori

On p. 33 you were introduced the term a priori. A priori knowledge is knowledge that can achieved “prior to all experience” by reason alone.Later, on p.164 you will be introduced to term a posteriori. This term means “on the basis of experience”.Rationalists are very big on a priori knowledge, whereas empiricists tend to stress the importance of a posteriori knowledge.But most empiricists believe that someknowledge is a priori. (e.g. mathematical knowledge).

Locke vs. Leibniz

So, Locke doesn’t have to turn in his empiricist credentials just because he claims to know a priori that unthinking matter can’t be made to think simply be rearranging the particles.But is still quite fascinating, that Leibniz, the rationalist, rejects this view.

ResemblanceLocke said that there is no resemblance between a knife cutting the flesh, and the pain that results from that event.Recall that his point here is that in normal causal relationships the cause and the effect resemble each other in some fundamental way.

E.g., if I you kick a football, it makes total sense that the ball will move as a result: motion causes motion.E.g., if you put fire under a pot of water, it makes sense that the water will get hot: hot things make other things hot.

But in the case of the relation between the mental and the physical, that principle just doesn’t hold.

Leibniz’s rebukeLeibniz, however, thinks that Locke is just being sloppy and impatient. Think again about Leibniz’s example of the circle. He is saying that it is easy to conclude that a circle, an ellipse, and a line are three completely different shapes.

But a circle will look like an ellipse or ultimately a line if you simply rotate it through the third dimension.

An aside on circles and ellipsesAncient astronomers believed that all heavenly bodies traveled in perfectly circular orbits.

This was at least partially due to thinking that circles are perfect shapes, unlike anything else in this respect.

By not fully recognizing that a circle is just a kind of ellipse, astronomers could barely even imagine the possibility of elliptical motion for planets.

Which is how they move.

Leibniz’s position

Leibniz has a strong a priori commitment to the Principle of Sufficient Reason.In other words, he does not think, that we learn this principle from experience, but something we know prior to experience.Even though Leibniz rejects Cartesian Dualism, he has a strong affinity with Descartes here.

Clarity and Distinctness and the PSR

Recall that Descartes argued that we can trust our clear and distinct ideas, because a good God would not provide us with clear and distinct ideas that can not be trusted.Leibniz is thinking along the same lines with respect to the PSR. A good God would only construct a universe that makes sense, but dualism inherently does not make sense, because the connection between mind and body is entirely arbitrary.

Blackburn’s analogyBlackburn provides an interesting way to think about the difference between Leibniz and Lock dualism from the perspective of God’s creation of the universe. (p. 61)

So, on Leibniz’s view, all God has to do is create the rules of the physical universe, and in doing so that would fix the rules by which mental phenomena occur as well.

This means that if God wanted to change the way we experience things, he would need to change something in the physical world.

On Locke’s view, God has to do two different things. He has to fix all the rules of physics. But then he also has to fix all the rules of the mind, and then relate them with the rules of physics so they are in sync.

This means that God would be able to just change the way we experienced things without changing anything physical.

Which of the following sentences is false?

A. Leibniz was a rationalist who doubted the existence of a priori knowledge.

B. Hume was an empiricist who believed that it was a mistake to try to doubt everything.

C. Descartes was a rationalist who believed that the mind was better known than the body.

D. Locke was an empiricist who believed that it is an a priori truth that purely physical things can’t think.

Who do you find yourself agreeing with the most so far?

A. DescartesB. LockeC. Leibniz

Analysis

This chapter ends with a discussion of some 20th century approaches to dealing with the mind-body problem.In the section entitled “Analysis,”Blackburn discusses a doctrine known as “Logical Behaviorism”.Logical behaviorism is based on a certain idea of how philosophical inquiry itself is supposed to work.We call it logical analysis, conceptual analysis, or sometimes just analysis.

HypostasisBlackburn points out on p. 65 that we often use language in ways that suggests the existence of a rather mysterious kind of object when in fact we are just talking about a certain way of aggregating normal kinds of objects.

He gives you a nice example of the “average person” who has 2.4 children. Intellectuals sometimes ridicule the idea of the average person on the basis that there is no such being. But it is not ridiculous if you understand that this statement is just a convenient shorthand.

A sentence like “The average person has 2.4 children,” is simply a compact way of expressing the fertility rate.

Logical BehaviorismLogical behaviorists applied this way of thinking to the mind. They would say that there really is no such entity. We only speak of a person’s mind as an object because it provides a compact way of referring to a person’s entire set of behavioral dispositions. Similarly, they would say that pains and thoughts are not things, and hence there is no stuff that they are made out of. Thinking is an activity that we sometimes find it convenient to characterize as “having thoughts.” But that doesn’t mean that there literally are things called thoughts.In the same way, hiking is an activity that we might describe as “going on a hike”. But nobody thinks that a hike is literally an object composed of some kind of special material.

What behaviorists thinkAs noted earlier, behaviorists think that whenever we talk about mental states we are talking about the way that people (or animals) tend to behave.E.g., if I say that I have a headache, that literally just means that I am disposed to complain in various ways, take Tylenol, etc. The important point is that for a behaviorist, a mental state isn’t a private, subjectively experienced state at all. They agree that you can’t exactly observe a mental state from the outside. But this isn’t because mental states are inherently private. It’s because they are dispositions or tendencies to behave in certain ways. You can’t observe a disposition, but you can observe the behavior they create.

Problems for behaviorism

Blackburn relates an old joke about behaviorism: Two behaviorist have just finished having sex. One says to the other:

That was great for you, how was it for me?The point here, of course, is that behaviorism seems to have the absurd implication that in order to know how you are feeling you need to ask people who are in a position to observe you.It’s easy to agree that sometimes other people know how we are feeling better than we do, but normally they are the ones who have to ask us.

Logical behaviorists

A. believe the mind is a distinct substance.B. believe the mind is a dispositional

substance.C. believe that mental states are

dispositions to behave in certain ways.D. we are disposed to feeling the feelings of

other people.

Logical behaviorism denies

A. that thinking occurs.B. people have a unique privileged access

to their own mental states.C. the existence of external reality.D. that objects that can think are better

known to us than objects that can not.

Problems with behaviorism

Behaviorism is an interesting view, but it is definitely a problem that it seems to deny the reality of the first person perspective on our own mental states.The behaviorist might try saying that to have a pain is to receive information about our own dispositions to behave. But that’s a very peculiar point of view. My headache doesn’t seem to function for me as information that I am about to take some Tylenol. Rather, it seems to be part of what actually makes me take the Tylenol.

Problems summarized.

So, the two problems with behaviorism are:

It doesn’t acknowledge the reality of the first-person perspective.It doesn’t acknowledge the fact that our mental states actually have a causal effect on our behavior.

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A. [Option 1]B. [Option 2]C. [Option 3]D. [Option 4]

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A. [Option 1]B. [Option 2]C. [Option 3]D. [Option 4]