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Persons, Thoughts and Brains
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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‘Mental processes are brain processes’ is not a logically necessary truth, but nevertheless certain logical conditions must be fulfilled if it is to be a candidate for the role of contingent truth. Not just anything can, conceivably, be contingently identical with anything else: a play cannot be identical with its copies, nor beauty with a beautiful object. The propagation of light may be electromagnetic radiation, but it cannot conceivably be the tri-section of a right-angle. In this paper I shall be concerned with the general question of whether there are any logical barriers to mind-body identification, and I shall approach this via the more particular question of whether the mental processes of persons can conceivably be identical with the physiological processes of brains. It is my contention that identity theorists, by concentrating their attentions upon what were once called the “lower” parts of the soul rather than upon “higher” parts which are more typical of human persons, have paved a logical way for themselves which is artificially straight.
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- Copyright © The Authors 1973
References
1 Philosophical Review, Vol. 74 (1905), pp. 339–356.
2 For reasons which I shall specify later on, I shall refer exclusively to thoughts, by which I intend to refer roughly to conscious rational processes, such as working over a problem silently in one's head, and such as are typically expressible in articulate verbal form.
3 Individuals p. 97. This is not strictly speaking correct, for animals may also be the subject of psychological predication. This point has been elaborated by R. Puccetti in his book, Persons, and I shall return to it in the final section.
4 Stuart Hampshire thinks that one cannot sensibly talk of individuating particular sensations, etc. See Thoughts & Action p. 27. I cannot deal with this objection en passant.
5 “Mind, Brain and Identity,” forthcoming in Mind. The argument in this section is derived largely from Candlish, and I am grateful to him for discussing his paper with me prior to its publication, as well as for his comments on the present paper.
6 For a full treatment see Luria, A. R.: Higher Cortical Functions in Man, London, 1966.Google Scholar
7 A Materialist Theory of Mind, p. 76.
8 I shall deal in the final section with the objection that there may be alternative descriptions of any particular thought.
9 This issue is discussed, though from a different angle, by Charles Taylor in chapter IV of his book, The Explanation of Behaviour.
10 A view such as this has been defended by Hampshire in Thought and Action, and by Winch, in “The Idea of a Primitive Society” The American Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 1 (1964), pp. 307–325.Google Scholar
11 I deal in a later section with the possibility of neutralising or otherwise spiriting away thought protocols such as to fit them for the data language of science.
12 My argument does indeed resemble that of Peter Winch's The Idea of a Social Science in certain respects, though I believe that my argument is stronger in that, as I shall argue, thoughts are essentially conceptual, whereas there is some doubt as to whether this is true of the objects studied by the social sciences.
13 The example is Candlish's.
14 This does not appear to be impossible in the case of brains as long as the facilitations at the synaptic junctions are duplicated as well as the basic neuronal wiring.
15 Individuals p. 90-92. See also his distinction on p. 96 between two forms of ‘having’.
16 See Herbert Fingarette: Self Deception, Appendix.
17 Clinical evidence points to the fact that “split personality” is a misnomer, for in cases where a patient has been treated for such a condition, the two “parts” of the personality constitute to all intents and purposes two distinct persons who are as curious to learn about each other as we are about them. See, for example, Sidis, B. and Goodhart, S. P.: Multiple Personality, New York 1968.Google Scholar
18 This thesis, which may be termed ‘the relatively of identity’, is strongly contested by Wiggins, David in his book, Identity and Spatio-temporal Continuity, Oxford 1967.Google Scholar
19 Though Smart has apparently defected from this position: see C. H. Presley: The Identity Theory of Mind, p. 89ff.
20 See his “Problems of Empiricism” in R. G. Colodny (ed.): Beyond the Edge of Certainty, p. 256.
21 Op, cit., p. 79.
22 Babies and the like are persons in so far as they are potentially participants in such forms of life.
23 Op. cit., p. 32.
24 This is equivalent to the third criterion of intensionality distinguished by R. Chisholm. See his Perceiving p. 171.
25 I ignore here the question of a substratum of mental images or words since these do not seem to be essential to thinking. And even when present, it is difficult to detach the image as a visual presentation from the meaning which it bears as part of the current thought.
26 See A Materialist Theory of Mind, p. 345.
27 The chief proponents of this method are Feyerabend, P. K. op. cit., and Richard Rorty: “Mind-Body Identity, Privacy and Categories” in The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 19 (1965-6), pp. 24–51.Google Scholar See also Cornman, James W.: “On the Elimination of ‘Sensations’ and Sensations” in The Review of Metaphysics, vol. 22 (1968-9), pp. 15–35.Google Scholar And Nagel's, Thomas Review of Armstrong's A Materialist Theory of Mind in The Philosophical Review, vol. 79 (1970), pp. 394–403.Google Scholar
28 See Feyerabend op. cit., p. 186.
29 Ibid., p. 188.
30 Some materialists, e.g. Smart, have suggested that conscious thoughts can be construed in dispositional terms, but I do not think this can be treated seriously. If I am consciously engaged in reflecting upon the proximity of Spring in England, this is as much an occurrence as blowing my nose or wiping my spectacles.