MPYE - 014 : PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

Rishi Kumar Shukla Enrolment 126516060

ASSIGNMENT MPYE -014 PHILOSOPHY OF MIND

Question 1: What is the mind-body problem? What are the various theories regarding the possible interaction between mind and body?
The mindbody problem in philosophy examines the relationship between mind and matter, and in particular the relationship between consciousness and the brain. The problem was famously addressed by Ren Descartes in the 17th century, resulting in Cartesian dualism, and by pre-Aristotelian philosophers, in Avicennian philosophy, and in earlier Asian traditions. Varieties of approaches have been proposed. Most are either dualist or monist. Dualism maintains a rigid distinction between the realms of mind and matter. Monism maintains that there is only one kind of stuff, and that mind and matter are both aspects of it. Mind-body as a "problem" is generally traced to Ren Descartes, who asked how the immaterial mind (or soul) could influence the material body. Would not the interaction between the two have to partake somehow of the character of both? Descartes famously identified the tiny pineal gland as the point of contact between mind and body. Descartes made the mind the locus of freedom. For him, the body is a mechanical system of tiny fibres causing movements in the brain (the afferent sensations), which then can pull on other fibres to activate the muscles (the efferent nerve impulses). This is the basis of stimulus and response theory in modern physiology (reflexology). Each of these categories itself contains numerous variants. The two main forms of dualism are substance dualism, which holds that the mind is formed of a distinct type of substance not governed by the laws of physics, and property dualism, which holds that the laws of physics are universally valid but cannot be used to explain the mind. The three main forms of monism are physicalism, which holds that the mind consists of matter organized in a particular way; idealism, which holds that only thought truly exists and matter is merely an illusion; and neutral monism, which holds that both mind and matter are aspects of a distinct essence that is itself identical to neither of them. Several philosophical perspectives have been developed which reject the mind body dichotomy. The historical materialism of Karl Marx and subsequent writers, itself a form of physicalism, held that consciousness was engendered by the material contingencies of one's environment. The most explicit rejection of the dichotomy is
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found in French structuralism, and is a position that generally characterized postwar French philosophy. The absence of an empirically identifiable meeting point between the non-physical mind and its physical extension has proven problematic to dualism and many modern philosophers of mind maintain that the mind is not something separate from the body. These approaches have been particularly influential in the sciences, particularly in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionary psychology, and the neurosciences. In ancient philosophy, mind and body formed one of the classic dualisms, like idealism versus materialism, the problem of the one (monism) or the many (pluralism), the distinction between essence and existence, between universals and particulars, between the eternal and the ephemeral. When mind and body are viewed today as a dualism, the emphasis is on the mind, that is to say the information, being fundamentally different from the material brain. Since the universe is continuously creating new information, by rearranging existing matter, this is an important and understandable difference. Matter (and energy) is conserved, a constant of the universe. Information is not conserved; it is the source of genuine novelty. A mind-body dualism coincides with Plato's "ideas" as pure form; its ontology is different from that of matter. The ancients asked about the existential status of Platonic Ideas. On the other hand, monists can see the mind-body distinction as pure physicalism, since information embodied in matter corresponds to a mere reorganization of the matter. This was Aristotle's more practical view. For him, Plato's Ideas were mere abstractions generalized from many existent particulars. Philosophers who accept the idea that all laws of nature are deterministic and that the world is causally closed still cannot understand how an immaterial mind can be the cause of an action. On this view, every physical event is reducible to the microscopic motions of physical particles. The laws of biology are reducible to those of physics and chemistry. The mind is reducible to the brain, with no remainder. Since the early twentieth century, quantum mechanics adds the possibility that some processes are indeterministic, but random quantum-mechanical events have generally been thought to be unhelpful by philosophers of mind. Adding indeterminism to mental events apparently would only make our actions random and our desires the product of pure chance. If our willed actions are not determined by anything, they say, we are neither morally responsible nor truly free. Whether mental events are reducible to physical events, or whether mental events can be physical events without such a reduction, the interposition of indeterministic quantum processes apparently adds no explanatory power.

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Question 2: What is perception, Indian Philosophy schools

Classical Indian Philosophy accepts perception ( pratyaka), or perceptual experience, as the primary means of knowledge ( prama). Perception (pratyaka) is etymologically rooted in the sense-faculty or the sense-organ (aka) and can be translated as sensory awareness, while prama, on the other hand, is derived from knowledge (pram) and, literally means the instrument in the act of knowing. However, the standard interpretation of perception accepted by classical Indian philosophers, barring the Buddhists and the Vedntins, is that it is a cognition arising within the self the knowing subjectfrom mental operations following a sense-object contact. It, therefore, is neither an instrument in the act of knowing, nor a mere sensory awareness. The Naiyyikas generally take perception to be a two -staged process: first there arises a non-conceptual (nirvikalpaka) perception of the object and then a conceptual (savikalpaka) perception, both being valid cognitions. For Buddhists, non-conceptual perceptions alone are valid, while Grammarians (bdikas) deny their validity altogether. Skhya and Mms agree with the Nyya position. These two realist schools, Nyya and Mms, contest the Grammarian as well as the Buddhist positions. Advaita Vednta position on perception seems to agree, in spirit, with the Buddhists, but their reasons for supporting non-conceptual perceptions alone as ultimately valid (paramrthika satta) are very different. According to Gautama's Nyya-stra : Perception is a cognition which arises from the contact of the sense organ and object and is not impregnated by words, is unerring, and well-ascertained. While the Purva Mms-stra says: The arising of a cognition when there is a connection of the sense faculties of a person with an existing (sat) objectthat (tat) is perception; it is not the basis of the knowledge of Dharma, because it is the apprehension of that which is present. In the oldest Skhya tradition, perception is the functioning of a sense organ.. Perception in this sense cannot be a means of knowledge ( prama) as it does not distinguish between proper and improper functioning of sense organs and, therefore, between valid and erroneous perceptions. A more sophisticated definition is later devised wherein perception is an ascertainment [of buddhi or intellect] in regard to a sense faculty (Skhyakrik 5 inYuktdipik). This implies that perception is a modification of the intellect in the form of selective ascertainment of an object, brought about by the activity or functioning of a sense faculty. According to Advaita Vednta the defining characteristic of percepti on is the directness of knowledge acquired through perception. In highlighting the directness of the perceptual process, the Advaitin differs from Nyya and Mm s proponents for whom the contact of the sense faculty with its object is central to the perceptual process. Vednta Paribh cites pleasure and pain as instances of perception that are directly intuited without any sense object contact. For the Advaitin perception is simply the immediacy of consciousness; knowledge not mediated by any instrument . The Buddhists argue that a perceiver apprehends only the real particulars, arbitrarily imposes concepts/words on them and believes, mistakenly, that these are really there in the objects and integral to them. The conceptual awareness conceals its own imaginative quality and, because it results directly from experience, the
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perceiver takes it to be a perceptual experience. The perceiver fails to notice that imagination is involved and mistakenly thinks that he really perceives the constructed world. From the Buddhists standpoint, therefore, a perceiver can only perceive real particulars so that any perceptual experience is always and only at the non-conceptual level.

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Question 3: a) Are mental processes merely intelligent acts? Explain the position of Gilbert Ryle on the mind-body problem.
Gilbert Ryle was best known for his criticism of what he called the "Official Doctrine" of "Cartesian Dualism" as a theory of mind. Ren Descartes had naturalized the theological idea of a soul as a separate non-material substance called "mind." The Mind-Body Problem is how a non-material mental substance can causally influence the material body. Ryle's 1949 book The Concept of Mind is regarded by many thinkers as having eliminated the immaterial mind and "dis-solved" the mind-body problem, which Ryle saw as the result of what he called a "category mistake." In some ways influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein, who thought many philosophical problems were caused by misuse of language, Ryle said the category mistake was applying properties to a non-material thing that are logically and grammatically appropriate only for a category including material things. With his remarkable ability to turn a phrase, what Ryle even more famously did was to stigmatize "mind" as the "Ghost in the Machine." Unfortunately, the phrase greatly advanced the enlightenment idea of "Man a Machine." For Ryle, free will was invented to answer "the question whether human beings deserve praise or blame." He conflates free will with moral responsibility, committing the ethical fallacy," assuming with Kant that our actions must be moral to be free.

b) Platos stand the on the survival of mind after death:

Plato was the first philosopher to argue, not merely in favor of the convenience of accepting the belief in immortality, but for the truth of the belief itself. His Phaedo is a dramatic representation of Socrates final discussion with his disciples, just before drinking the hemlock. Socrates shows no sign of fear or concern, for he is certain that he will survive the death of his body. He presents three main arguments to support his position, and some of these arguments are still in use today. First, Socrates appeals to cycles and opposites. He believes that everything has an opposite that is implied by it. And, as in cycles, things not only come from opposites, but also go towards opposites. Thus, when something is hot, it was previously cold; or when we are awake, we were previously asleep; but when we are asleep, we shall be awake once again. In the same manner, life and death are opposites in a cycle. Being alive is opposite to being dead. And, in as much as death comes from life, life must come from death. We come from death, and we go towards death. But, again, in as much as death
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comes from life, it will also go towards life. Thus, we had a life before being born, and we shall have a life after we die. Socrates also appeals to the theory of reminiscence, the view that learning is really a process of remembering knowledge from past lives. The soul must already exist before the birth of the body, because we seem to know things that were not available to us. Consider the knowledge of equality. If we compare two sticks and we realize they are not equal, we form a judgment on the basis of a previous knowledge of equality as a form. That knowledge must come from previous lives. Therefore, this is an argument in favor of the transmigration of souls (that is, reincarnation or metempsychosis).

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Question 4: a) Wittgensteins view of understanding

Ludwig Wittgensteins Philosophical Investigations (1953) is an inquiry into the relation between meaning and the practical uses of language, and is also an examination of the relation between meaning and the rules of language. Wittgenstein explains how vague or unclear uses of language may be the source of philosophical problems, and describes how philosophy may resolve these problems by providing a clear view of the uses of language. Wittgenstein is of the view that meaning, explanation of meaning and understanding are interrelated concepts. The relation that holds among them is expressed in the following words: Meaning is the content of understanding and understanding is the correlate of explanation. A discussion of these interrelated concepts is imperative in dispensing with the false conception language. It will also throw light on relation between misconceived view of language and Psychologism. Understanding, Wittgenstein holds, is not a state or process. The logic (grammar) of understanding and that of mental states, experiences and processes is totally different. The two belong to two different language-games as their grammar of is different. Their meaning and employment cannot be the same. There are certain experiential states which accompany when something is meant or understood. Wittgenstein does not deny this. What he repudiates is the view that meaning and understanding consists in being conscious of these experiential states, e.g. the view that meaning consists in being conscious of a picture or an image. This is central to the empiricists conception of meaning and understanding.

b) Category error:
The term "category-mistake" was introduced by Gilbert Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind (1949) to remove what he argued to be a confusion over the nature of mind born from Cartesian metaphysics. Ryle alleged that it was a mistake to treat the mind as an object made of an immaterial substance because predications of substance are not meaningful for a collection of dispositions and capacities. A category mistake (or category error), a term coined by philosopher Gilbert Ryle, is a type of informal fallacy where things that belong to one grouping are mistakenly placed in another. The example Ryle gives is of someone visiting Oxford who looks around and asks to see the university. His guide tells him he is at the university; "Here are the buildings, here are the professors, here are the students, etc." The visitor then tells him that he sees the buildings, the professors, and the students, but he still doesn't see the university. The point of the story is that the visitor has the expectation that the university is a physical object and not an abstraction, but the two obviously belong to separate categories altogether. Ryle makes this distinction as an argument against dualism, but the idea of the category mistake has entered common
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philosophical parlance. As the example demonstrates, the category mistake is often tied into the fallacies of composition and division.

c) Contrast between monism and dualism

Dualism and monism are the two major schools of thought that attempt to resolve the mindbody problem. Dualism can be traced back to Plato, and the Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy, but it was most precisely formulated by Ren Descartes in the 17th century. Substance dualists argue that the mind is an independently existing substance, whereas property dualists maintain that the mind is a group of independent properties that emerge from and cannot be reduced to the brain, but that it is not a distinct substance. Monism is the position that mind and body are not ontologically distinct kinds of entities. This view was first advocated in Western philosophy by Parmenides in the 5th century BC and was later espoused by the 17th century rationalist Baruch Spinoza. Physicalists argue that only the entities postulated by physical theory exist, and that the mind will eventually be explained in terms of these entities as physical theory continues to evolve. Idealists maintain that the mind is all that exists and that the external world is either mental itself, or an illusion created by the mind. . The most common monisms in the 20th and 21st centuries have all been variations of physicalism; these positions include behaviorism, the type identity theory, anomalous monism and functionalism. Most modern philosophers of mind adopt either a reductive or non-reductive physicalist position, maintaining in their different ways that the mind is not something separate from the body. One of the earliest known formulations of mind body dualism was expressed in the eastern Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy (c. 650 BCE), which divided the world into purusha (mind/spirit) and prakriti (material substance). Specifically, the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali presents an analytical approach to the nature of the mind.In contrast to dualism, monism does not accept any fundamental divisions. The fundamentally disseparate nature of reality has been central to forms of eastern philosophies for over two millennia. In Indian and Chinese philosophy, monism is integral to how experience is understood. Today, the most common forms of monism in Western philosophy are physicalist. Physicalistic monism asserts that the only existing substance is physical, in some sense of that term to be clarified by our best science.

d) What is mental state for a behaviourist?

The philosophical theory of behaviourism - or, to give it its full title, logical behaviourism holds that being in a mental state (such as being happy) is the same as being in a physical state. In other words, since all that we can know about another person's state of mind is through their behaviour, there is nothing else.
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Logical behaviourists believe that any statement about the internal or private world of individuals may be translated into a statement about publicly observable actions. For instance, if I say, "I am happy", this may be translated into a description of my physical state - increased heart rate, smiling, etc. If none of these things were present - the behaviourist would argue - then the person is not really happy. Obviously, emotions are not always accompanied by extravagant outward signs, but even quieter forms of emotional or mental state must be translatable into some form of physical condition. Functionalism is a theory about the nature of mental states. According to functionalism, mental states are identified by what they do rather than by what they are made of. This can be understood by thinking about artifacts like mousetraps and keys. In particular, the original motivation for functionalism comes from the helpful comparison of minds with computers. But that is only an analogy. The main arguments for functionalism depend on showing that it is superior to its primary competitors: identity theory and behaviorism. Contrasted with behaviorism, functionalism retains the traditional idea that mental states are internal states of thinking creatures. Contrasted with identity theory, functionalism introduces the idea that mental states are multiply realized. Objectors to functionalism generally charge that it classifies too many things as having mental states, or at least more states than psychologists usually accept.

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Question 5: Connectionism: Connectionism is an approach to the study of human cognition that

utilizes mathematical models, known as connectionist networks or artificial neural networks. Often, these come in the form of highly interconnected, neuron-like processing units. There is no sharp dividing line between connectionism and computational neuroscience, but connectionists tend more often to abstract away from the specific details of neural functioning to focus on high-level cognitive processes (for example, recognition, memory, comprehension, grammatical competence and reasoning). During connectionisms ideological heyday in the late twentieth century, its proponents aimed to replace theoretical appeals to formal rules of inference and sentence-like cognitive representations with appeals to the parallel processing of diffuse patterns of neural activity. Connectionism was pioneered in the 1940s and had attracted a great deal of attention by the 1960s. However, major flaws in the connectionist modeling techniques were soon revealed, and this led to reduced interest in connectionist research and reduced funding. But in the 1980s connectionism underwent a potent, permanent revival. During the later part of the twentieth century, connectionism would be touted by many as the brain-inspired replacement for the computational artifact-inspired classical approach to the study of cognition.

Emergentism If we were pressed to give a definition of emergence, we could say

that a property is emergent if it is a novel property of a system or an entity that arises when that system or entity has reached a certain level of complexity and that, even though it exists only insofar as the system or entity exists, it is distinct from the properties of the parts of the system from which it emerges. However, as will become apparent, things are not so simple because emergence is a term used in different ways both in science and in philosophy, and how it is to be defined is a substantive question in itself. The term was coined by G. H. Lewes in Problems of Life and Mind (1875) who drew the distinction between emergent and resultant effects. For Lewes, examples of such emergent effects are mental properties that emerge from neural processes yet are not properties of the parts of the neural processes from which they emerge. In Lewes work, three essential features of emergence are laid out. First, that emergentism is a theory about the structure of the natural world; and, consequently, it has ramifications concerning the unity of science. Second, that emergence is a relation between properties of an entity and the properties of its parts. Third, that the question of emergence is related to the question of the possibility of reduction.

Qualia Qualia are the subjective or qualitative properties of experiences. What it feels
like, experientially, to see a red rose is different from what it feels like to see a yellow rose. Likewise for hearing a musical note played by a piano and hearing the same
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musical note played by a tuba. The qualia of these experiences are what give each of them its characteristic feel and also what distinguish them from one another. Qualia have traditionally been thought to be intrinsic qualities of experience that are directly available to introspection. However, some philosophers offer theories of qualia that deny one or both of those features. The term qualia (singular: quale and pronounced kwol -ay) was introduced into the philosophical literature in its contemporary sense in 1929 by C. I. Lewis in a discussion of sense-data theory. As Lewis used the term, qualia were properties of sense-data themselves. In contemporary usage, the term has been broadened to refer more generally to properties of experience. Paradigm examples of experiences with qualia are perceptual experiences (including nonveridical perceptual experiences like hallucinations) and bodily sensations (such as pain, hunger, and itching). Emotions (like anger, envy, or fear) and moods (like euphoria, ennui, or anxiety) are also usually taken to have qualitative aspects. Qualia are often referred to as the phenomenal properties of experience, and experiences that have qualia are referred to as being phenomenally conscious. Phenomenal consciousness is often contrasted with intentionality (that is, the representational aspects of mental states).

Intentionality : The picking out, referring to, or being about things when we think
and speak, is intentionality. In a word, intentionality is aboutness. Many mental states exhibit intentionality. If I believe that the weather is rainy today, this belief of mine is about todays weather, and my belief that it is rainy. Desires are similarly directed at, or about things: if I desire a mosquito to buzz off, my desire is directed at the mosquito, and the possibility that it depart. Imaginings seem to be directed at particular imaginary scenarios, while regrets are directed at events or objects in the past, as are memories. And perceptions seem to be, similarly, directed at or about the objects we perceptually encounter in our environment. We call mental states that are directed at things in this way intentional states. The major role played by intentionality in affairs of the mind led Brentano (1884) to regard intentionality as the mark of the mental; a necessary and sufficient condition for mentality. But some non-mental phenomena seem to display intentionality toopictures, signposts, and words, for example. Nevertheless, the intentionality of these phenomena seems to be derived from the intentionality of the mind that produces them. A sound is only a word if it has been conferred with meaning by the intentions of a speaker or perhaps a community of speakers; while a painting, however abstract, seems only to have a subject matter insofar as its painter intends it to. Whether or not all mental phenomena are intentional, then, it certainly seems to be the case that all intentional phenomena are mental in origin.

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Supervenience: The term supervenience gained prominence in the twentieth century when it was suggested that moral properties supervene on natural properties and that our mental characteristics supervene on our physical characteristics such as the properties of our nervous system. The term can be defined as follows. For two sets of properties, A (the supervenient set) and B (the subvenient set or supervenience base), A supervenes on B just in case there can be no difference in A without a difference in B. Turning this principle on its head gives us the converse concept of determination: B determines A just in case sameness with respect to B implies sameness with respect to A. Supervenience and determination are simply two sides of the same coin.
As this line of inquiry shows, the concept of supervenience is an invaluable tool for deciding whether and how one set of properties depends on another. An analogous line of inquiry is found in discussions ofmental content. The content of ones mental states depends largely on what the individual is like internally on the state of the brain and the brains causal relations to other parts of the body, including sense organs and limbs. .

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