This Is Philosophy of Mind

PETE MANDIK is a Full Professor in the Department of Philosophy at William Paterson University of New Jersey. He is the author of Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind and Physicalist Theories of Consciousness, the co-author of Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Mind and Brain, and the co-editor of Philosophy and the Neurosciences: A Reader. He writes and illustrates the comic Mind Chunks, which appears monthly at DailyNous.com.

How to Use This Book xv

Acknowledgments xvii

About the Companion Website xix

1 Meet Your Mind 1

Aspects of Mind 1
Thought and experience 1
Conscious and unconscious 2
Qualia 3
Sensory perception 3
Emotion 4
Imagery 4
Will and action 5
Self 5
Propositional attitudes 5

Philosophical Problems 6
Mind–body problem 6
Other problems 9

Conclusion 14

Annotated Bibliography 14

2 Substance Dualism 15

Arguments for Substance Dualism 15
Leibniz’s law arguments 16
Criticism of Leibniz’s law arguments: Intensional fallacy 19
Explanatory gap arguments 20
Criticisms of explanatory gap arguments 21
Modal arguments 22

Mind–Body Interaction as a Problem for Substance Dualism 24
Princess Elisabeth’s objection 25
The dualistic alternatives to Cartesian interactionism 26

Conclusion 27

Annotated Bibliography 28

3 Property Dualism 29

Introducing Property Dualism: Qualia and the Brain 29

The Inverted Spectrum 30

Attack of the Zombies 32

The Knowledge Argument 34

The Explanatory Gap Argument 37

Does Property Dualism Lead to Epiphenomenalism? 39

How Do You Know You’re Not a Zombie? 40

Conclusion 42

Annotated Bibliography 42

4 Idealism, Solipsism, and Panpsychism 44

Solipsism: Is It Just Me? 45

Idealism: It’s All in the Mind 49
Berkeley’s argument from pain 50
Berkeley’s argument from perceptual relativity: Berkeley’s bucket 51
Berkeley’s “Nothing but an idea can resemble an idea” 51
Berkeley’s master argument 52
Why Berkeley is not a solipsist 52
Arguing against idealism 53

Panpsychism: Mind Is Everywhere 53
The analogy argument 54
The nothing from nothing argument 55
The evolutionary argument 56
Arguing against panpsychism: The combination problem 57

Conclusion 58

Annotated Bibliography 58

5 Behaviorism and Other Minds 59

Behaviorism: Introduction and Overview 59

The History of Behaviorism 61
Ludwig Wittgenstein and the private language argument 62
Gilbert Ryle versus the ghost in the machine 64

Objections to Behaviorism 65
The qualia objection 65
Sellars’s objection 66
The Geach–Chisholm objection 67

The Philosophical Problem of Other Minds 68
The rise and fall of the argument from analogy 69
Denying the asymmetry between self- knowledge and knowledge of other minds 70

Conclusion 71

Annotated Bibliography 72

6 Mind as Brain 74

Introducing Mind–Brain Identity Theory 74

Advantages of Mind–Brain Identity Theory 75

A Very Brief Overview of Neuroscience 76
Major parts and functions of the nervous system 77
Major parts and functions of the brain 77
Neurons, neural activations, and brain states 78
Lesions, imaging, and electrophysiology 78
Localism and holism 78
Learning and synaptic plasticity 79
Computational neuroscience and connectionism 79
Neural correlates of consciousness 80
On pain and c- fibers 80

Some General Remarks about Identity 81

Arguments against Mind–Brain Identity Theory 83
The zombie argument 83
The multiple realizability argument 84
Max Black’s “distinct property” argument 86

Conclusion 87
Annotated Bibliography 88

7 Thinking Machines 89

Can a Machine Think? 89

Alan Turing, Turing Machines, and the Turing Test 90
Alan Turing 91
Turing machines 91
The Turing test 92

Searle’s Chinese Room Argument 93

Responses to the Chinese Room Argument 94

The Silicon Chip Replacement Thought Experiment 95

Symbolicism versus Connectionism 98

Conclusion 101

Annotated Bibliography 102

8 Functionalism 104

The Gist of Functionalism 104

A Brief History of Functionalism 106

Arguments for Functionalism 107
The causal argument 107
The multiple realization argument 109

The Varieties of Functionalism 111
Turing machine functionalism 112
Analytical functionalism versus empirical functionalism 113

Arguments against Functionalism 114
Adapting the zombie argument to be against functionalism 114
Adapting the Chinese room argument to be against functionalism 115

Conclusion 116

Annotated Bibliography 116

9 Mental Causation 118

The Problem of Mental Causation 118
The causal closure of the physical 119
The problem for substance dualists 121
The problem for property dualists 121

Basic Views of Interaction 122
Interactionism 122
Parallelism 123
Epiphenomenalism 124
Reductionism 125

Qualia and Epiphenomenalism 125
Whether qualia- based epiphenomenalism conflicts with phenomenal self- knowledge 126
Dennett’s zimboes 126

Anomalous Monism 127

The Explanatory Exclusion Argument 131

Conclusion 132

Annotated Bibliography 132

10 Eliminative Materialism 134

Introduction and Overview 134

Basic Ingredients of Contemporary Eliminative Materialism 135
Folk psychology as a theory 136
The contrast between reduction and elimination 137
Putting the ingredients together 138

Arguments for Propositional Attitude Eliminative Materialism 138
Folk psychology is a stagnant research program 139
Folk psychology is committed to propositional attitudes having a sentential structure that is unsupported by neuroscientific research 139
Folk psychology makes commitments to features of mental states that lead to an unacceptable epiphenomenalism 140

Arguments against Propositional Attitude Eliminative Materialism 140
Eliminative materialism is self- refuting 140
The “theory” theory is false 141
Folk psychology is indispensable 142
Introspection reveals the existence of propositional attitudes 142

Qualia Eliminative Materialism: “Quining” Qualia 143

Conclusion 147

Annotated Bibliography 147

11 Perception, Mental Imagery, and Emotion 149

Perception 149
Direct realism and the argument from illusion 149
Philosophical theories of perception 152

Mental Imagery 155
How similar are mental images to other mental states? 156
Is mental imagery the basis for mental states such as thoughts? 157
To what degree, if any, is mental imagery genuinely imagistic or picture-like? 157

Emotion 159
What distinguishes emotions from other mental states? 160
What distinguishes different emotions from each other? 160
The difficulties in giving a unified account of the emotions 161

Conclusion 162

Annotated Bibliography 162

12 The Will: Willpower and Freedom 164

The Problem of Free Will and Determinism 164

Sources of Determinism 166
General remarks 166
Physical determinism 167
Theological determinism 168
Logical determinism 168
Ethical determinism 169
Psychological determinism 169

Compatibilism 169

Incompatibilism 171
The origination or causal chain argument 172
The consequence argument 172

What Might Free Will Be, If There Were Any Such Thing? 173
Freedom aside for the moment, what is the will? 173
What might the freedom of the will consist in? 176

Conclusion 177

Annotated Bibliography 178

13 Intentionality and Mental Representation 179

Introducing Intentionality 179

The Inconsistent Triad of Intentionality 180
Defending each individual proposition 181
Spelling out the inconsistency 182

Internalism versus Externalism 182
For externalism: The Twin Earth thought experiment 184
Against externalism: Swampman and the brain in the vat 185

Theories of Content Determination 186
Resemblance theory 186
Interpretational semantics 187
Conceptual role semantics 188
Causal or informational theory 190
Teleological evolutionary theory 191

Conclusion 192

Annotated Bibliography 192

14 Consciousness and Qualia 194

Optimism about Explaining Consciousness 194

Focusing on Several Different Uses of the Word “Conscious” 195
Creature consciousness 195
Transitive consciousness 195
State consciousness 196
Phenomenal consciousness 196

Rosenthal’s Higher Order Thought Theory of Consciousness 197
An objection to the HOT theory: Introspectively implausible 200
Another objection to the HOT theory: Too intellectual 200

First Order Representation Theories of Consciousness 202
The transparency argument for first order representationalism 204
The “Spot” argument for first order representationalism 205

Conclusion 205

Annotated Bibliography 206

15 Is This the End?: Personal Identity, the Self, and Life after Death 207

Problems of Personal Identity 207

The Problem of Persistence 209

Approaches to the Problem of Persistence 209
The psychological approach 210
The fission problem for the psychological approach 211
The somatic or bodily approach 212
Temporal parts theory aka perdurantism aka four- dimensionalism 214
The no- self view 215

Life after Death 217
Substance dualism and the afterlife 218
Mind–brain identity theory and the afterlife 218
Functionalism and the afterlife 219
Temporal parts and the afterlife 219
No- self and the afterlife 220

Conclusion 220

Annotated Bibliography 220

16 The 4E Approach 222

Two Dimensions of Difference 223
The spatial dimension: From in here to out there 223
The causation- constitution dimension: Important to the mind vs. part of the mind 224

The First E: Mind as Embodied 225
Embodiment and thinking 225
Embodiment and memory 226
Embodiment and conscious experience 227
Embodiment and the plasticity of sensory systems 228
Spatial concepts and bodily orientation 229
The coupling- constitution fallacy 230

The Second E: Enactive 230
You’ve got to move 231
Sensorimotor contingencies 232
Enactivism and anti- representationalism 233

In a World: The Third and Fourth Es 235

Annotated Bibliography 235

17 Futuristic Directions 237

Super AI and the Technological Singularity 238
Chalmers’ singularity argument 240
The gist of Chalmers argument is 240
The quest for friendly AI 241

Enhanced Humans and Posthumans 243
Cyborgization and bioengineering 244
Technology and the extended mind 245
Posthumans versus natural- born cyborgs 246

Mind Uploading 247
Arguing for uploading 248

Annotated Bibliography 250

Index 252