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| Philosophy
of Mind
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Fred Dretske uses information-theoretic approach to semantics.
His theory explains how physical things possess the ability
to represent. The theory is based on the assumption that physical
entities are able to occupy states, which are connected with
physical world. He uses contentful mental states for explaining
human behaviour. According to his theory, the content of mental
states is responsible for human behaviour. Dretske uses indicators
and representations. He states that representation is an indication,
which is attributed to some subject. Representation is a function
to indicate X, choosing it from many things, which could have
been indicated. Only indicators, which have a function of
indicating some condition of the world, may become representations.
This can be explained by the fact that mere indicators do
not possess the ability to misinterpret. “An indicator
is given its indicator function by being converted into a
switch for behaviour.” (Dretske, 88) According to Dretske
recruitment is responsible for turning an indication into
representation. For example, a cat hears a sound when the
food is put in its place and it distinguishes this sound from
many other sounds. When some internal mechanisms make the
cat distinguish this sound from many others the cat has representation
of this sound. Dretske himself defines two charges, which
threaten indicator semantics. He calls this charges distality
and disjunction. Distalilty problem deals with defining what
is identified by indicators. Disjunction problem deals with
time continuum. Indication is switched to representation under
condition that indicator is saved in the memory correctly
and it does not change its value in the external world. For
example, once having learnt the word cow we use it for representation
of all cows. Till conditions do not change our representation
will be correct, but as external conditions change, we will
meet a problem. If we turn to example with cat, who hears
the sound of found when it is put in the place. If we put
small stone on the same place the sound will be indicated
in a same way as it would have happened with food and it will
have the same representation value as food did. Dretske puts
much effort to explain possible difficulties, which arise
when applying his theory, and I believe his arguments to be
quite convincing.
2.
Dennett rejects this thesis and gives his alternative interpretation.
He developed his own “multiple drafts” model of
consciousness. Dennett denies the Cartesian Theater of the
Mind. Dennett used the term Cartesian Theater to underline
a defining aspect of Cartesian materialism, which is often
used in materialistic theories of mind. Dennett states that:
“Cartesian materialism is the view that there is a crucial
finish line or boundary somewhere in the brain, marking a
place where the order of arrival equals the order of “presentation”
in experience because what happens there is what you are conscious
of. […] the persuasive imagery of the Cartesian Theater
keeps coming back to haunt us — laypeople and scientists
alike — even after its ghostly dualism has been denounced
and exorcized.” (Dennett, p.107)
According to this theory all the perceptions come to the consciousness
all together and in this way form a single mind. His theory
of “Multiple Drafts” assumes that his perceptions
are not joined together and pass through the brain separately
in the form of drafts or possibilities. The mind derives from
the combination of these drafts. (Dennett, 1991)
The data about the split brain causing double consciousness
he explains by the damage of the links between left and right
hemispheres the patients get during the treatment (Dennett,
1991). During the treatment of some mental diseases, epilepsy,
for example, the hemispheres lose wires of interaction between
them and this finally causes the split. “There are more
than a few anecdotes about such ingenious jury-rigs invented
on the spot by patients with split brains, but we should treat
them with caution. They might be what they appear to be: cases
exhibiting the deftness with which the brain can discover
and implement autostimulatory strategies to improve its internal
communications in the absence of the ‘desired’
wiring. But they might also be the unwittingly embroidered
fantasies of researchers hoping for just such evidence.”(Dennett,
198) Dennett states that the center of consciousness found
in the right hemisphere of some patients appears there only
after the operations when ties between two hemispheres are
damaged and that disconnected right hemisphere possesses nothing
but a transitory consciousness. At the same time he states
that the conciseness, which appears in the right hemisphere,
is identical to the consciousness of the left one. (Dennett,
1991) In this case both hemispheres must have a transitional
consciousness but the experiments show that they don not (Gazzaniga,
1970; Bogen, 1985) Dennett rejects double consciousness theory,
as he states “not because ‘consciousness is only
in the left hemisphere’ and not because it could not
be the case that someone found himself or herself in such
a pickle, but simply because it is not the case that commissurotomy
leaves in its wake organizations both distinct and robust
enough to support such a separate self (Dennett, 426).
Speaking about mistakes in perception Orwellian and Stalinesque
give different explanations of this phenomenon. Orwellian
explains mistakes in recall by interference, while Stalinesque
states that they occur during perception. Orwellian states
that all the mistakes appear after the object is saved in
the memory. He believes that perception is always right and
makes an exact reflection of reality but, as soon as the process
of perception is finished and information is saved as a memory
past experience can interfere with these memories and change
them. That is the reason a person does not recollect things
right. Stalinesque presents another point of view on the subject.
He believes that mistakes occur during the very process of
perception. He states that information is perceived inaccurately
and later inaccurate memories are saved. There are some problems
with both approaches. In Orwellian’s case it is difficult
to distinguish a type when memories are changed to the wrong
ones. When it comes to Stalinesque, the question makes us
wonder about the reasons of wrong perception.
Dennett rejects the mind to be a countable thing and calls
it a mere abstraction. On the other hand, there are cases,
when people survived having only one left hemisphere functioning.
If to follow Dennett’s theory, these people would not
have mind at all, but researchs show that they do have mind.
In addition, Dennett’s theory of “Multiple Drafts”
can not give reasonable explanations of different kinds of
dissociation of consciousness. This happens because the theory
does not make any distinction between real and apparent streams
of consciousness.
3.
There are several theories, which explain the origin of our
mental states content. One group of scholars states that content
of the mental states depends on the experience a person gets
being alone, i.e. this content does not belong to the environment.
Other group of scientists believes that external factors partially
influence the content of our mental states. The last theory
got the name externalism. Tyler Burge, one of the main proponents
of this theory stresses an important role of the environment
of the content of human mental state. As he states, “individuating
many of a person or animal’s mental kinds… is
necessarily dependent on relations that the person bears to
the physical, or in some cases social, environment”
(Burge 1988, 650).
This view also favors anti-individualism, Burge insisted on
this notion because he was preoccupied with the sources of
individuation of content rather than with the location of
the content. Burge uses hypothetical example in order to support
his thesis. He bases his examples on the thought experiment
about the Twin Earth initiated by Hilary Putnam. Inspired
by Putnam’s thought experiences, Burge gives hypothetical
examples about arthritis and Twin Earth in order to support
his thesis. In the example with arthritis Burge concludes
that content of the mind depends on conventional meanings,
which are determined by linguistic community. An example with
the Twin Mind proves that thought depends on physical environment.
Burge’s anti-individualism has provokes loud disputes
among scientists. Some adherents of externalism reject the
existence of a priory knowledge. They believe that content
of human mind can be achieved only through the interaction
with the environment. “For example, to know whether
we are having water thoughts or twater (twin-earth “water”)
thoughts we may have to conduct an investigation into the
chemical composition of the stuff we call ‘water’.”
(Ludlow, 89)In this case we cannot count on a priory knowledge
any more.
A number of scholars argue Burge’s views. For example,
McKinsey believes that externalism can undermine authoritative
knowledge of people about their thought content. Fodor states
that Burge’s theory does not explain the way in which
mental states cause behavior. (Fodor, 1991) In his response
to the proponents, Burge states that he does not see any controversy
with anti-individualism and ability to know the content of
our mental states.
There are several possible solutions for this dilemma, which
do not reject the theory of externalism. In the first case
scholars reject the very concept of a priori self-knowledge
and believe that self-knowledge is only a part of empirical
investigation. According to this view, argued for example
by Norah Martin, knowledge of our mental states may be partial,
and may be in error at times, but we are nevertheless in a
kind of privileged relation towards our mental states because
we are usually in a better position than others to investigate
our own mental states. (Ludlow, 116) Another group of scientists
states that in reality there is no controversy between self-knowledge
and externalism. They state that these two notions supplement
each other. Davidson, Burge and Heil share such position.
(Bure, Davidson, Hail) They all believe that second-order
thought content is already fixed on the environment. For example,
when the person thinks that he thinks that the water is wet,
he already thinks about the type of water he has in his environment.
The group of authors, who do not agree with explanations given
by the followers of compatibility, challenge their explanations.
Boghossian, for example, argues that slow-switching can be
a good reason again computability of self-knowledge and extremism.
Slow-switching is described like a phenomenon, when agent’s
environment is switched without his knowing about it. Finally,
new environment challenges ideas about the environment, which
agent had before. Using Burge’s example, we can talk
about fiction scenario when a person is moved to Twin-Earth
without knowing about it. Without knowing about the change
of the environment a person will think about the environment
as about one he used to know. Only after some time his thought
about water will be replaced by the thought about twater.
In this case we can talk about slow-switching. Ludlow restricts
this example by talking not only about fiction scenarios but
also using examples from our everyday life. For example when
a person knows certain meaning of a certain word he will most
probably use and understand the word in this very meaning
until some time passes and he starts using the meaning, which
the word has in his new environment. To see this, just consider
the case of someone who defers to his language community for
the individuating conditions of the word ‘chickory’
and who moves from England to the United States without realizing
that ‘chickory’ has a different meaning in those
two locations. Then, as the agent continues to defer to his
immediate language community, the content of the term ‘chickory’
will shift. (Ludlow, 119) The phenomenon of slow-switching
is used in order to undermine compitability of self-knowledge
and externalism. As states Boghossian, “Burge’s
self- verifying judgments do not constitute genuine knowledge.
hat other reason is there for why our slowly transported thinker
will not know tomorrow what he is said to know directly and
authoritatively today?” (Boghossian, p.44 ). Externalism
is an interesting view on the nature of the content of our
mind. Burge and those, who share his position, give some convincing
arguments to support their thesis. On the other hand, controversy,
which arises if we apply Burge’s anti-individualism
to all kinds of content of the mind, shows that this theory
has some weak points. I believe that environment has an important
role in forming the content of our mind but I do not think
it to be the only source of this content.
References:
1. Burge, Tyler. “Individualism and the Mental”,
Midwest Studies in Philosophy 4:73-122, 1979.
2. Burge, Tyler. “Individualism and Self-Knowledge”,
Journal of Philosophy 85:649-63, 1988.
3. Dennett, C. Daniel. Consciousness Explained, Little, Brown
& Co. USA, 1991
4. Dretske, Fred. Knowledge and the Flow of Information, Cambridge,
MA:MIT Press, 1981.
Dretske, Fred. “Misrepresentation” in Belief:
Form, Content, and Function, R. Bogdan (ed.), Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1986.
5. Heil, John. “Privileged Access”, Mind, 1988.
6. Ludlow, Peter. “Externalism, Self-Knowledge, and
the
Prevalence of Slow-Switching.” Analysis, Jan. 1995.
Boghossian, Paul. “Content and Self-Knowledge”,
Philosophical Topics. 17:5-26, 1989.
7. Putnam, Hilary. The Meaning of meaning. Gunderson
(ed.), Language, Mind and Knowledge. Vol. 7, Minnesota
Studies in the Philosophy of Science. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1979
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