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What is mind?

What is mind?. A presentation by Pim Klaassen. I Introduction. Goal. Make plausible the two following claims: 1) Mind ought to be studied from a multitude of perspectives, that is, multi-disciplinary;

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What is mind?

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  1. What is mind? A presentation by Pim Klaassen

  2. IIntroduction

  3. 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).

  4. 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…

  5. 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

  6. Psychological questions and scientific answers The sciences provide nomological, causal explanations, which cannot account for the normativity inherent to our subject matter.

  7. Psychological questions and philosophy Not ontology, but conceptual clarifications. “Experience is not a something, but not a nothing either.” (PU §304)

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

  9. Causality II • This involves a reification of mind: it’s 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.

  10. 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.

  11. 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.

  12. 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).

  13. Advantages of the Wittgensteinian outlook: • Does not run into the traditional problems of monism and dualism; • Scores very high on Occam’s scale; • Is compatible with scientificly acquired empirical facts. Nevertheless, it provides reasons to question some of the goals of science, as we’ll see.

  14. II(my version of) The adverbial theory of mind that is, Schatzki’s interpretation of Wittgenstein remodeled

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

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

  17. Distinctive of Wittgenstein’s 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)

  18. One realm, no monism • Psychological phenomena, i.e. conditions of life, aren’t identified with states of the body. • “Life has two faces”: • “outer”: doings and sayings, open to view • “inner”: experience

  19. 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)

  20. Mind and body 1. Mind is not contingently, but necessarily embodied. 2. Mind is intrinsically related to action.

  21. There is empirical proof for this, e.g:- Held & Hein 1958. (In Varela e.a. 1991, p.174-5)- Brooks’ work in AI/ Robotics

  22. Action presupposes a practice.The social nature of practices is located in “understanding”

  23. 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.

  24. Rule following II • It is central to all practices that they can be judged normatively. • It isn’t possible to follow a rule privately.

  25. Reasons versus causes • Explanations of action can’t be put in terms of causality. • This is not a denial of the fact that causal chains necessarily sustain action.

  26. Inner: no access no criteria no entities no knowledge  experience You are your experiences Outer: entities or behaviour features inductive knowledge Differences between inner and outer:

  27. The difference between the inner and the outer isn’t ontological, but “epistemological”:

  28. IIITowards a multi-disciplinary study of mind

  29. 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.

  30. 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.

  31. 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

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