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1 Wood Lindsay Wood Intro Cognitive Science Prof. Livingston 18 February 2008 The Mind Matters: Weighing in on Dualism and Reductionism Cognitive science may be a relatively new discipline, but humans have been thinking about their minds for centuries. It seems only natural that if people are to look up at the stars and wonder, question, and attempt to explain, they should also turn their curiosity within. In fact, understanding the mind would seem far more universally relevant to human beings than the study of any other phenomena for people may sometimes wonder about the economy or history, but the very act of "wondering" is a mental journey. The extent to which it is also a physical journey, however, is the source of a heated debate. Modern scientists, in favor of emphasizing the material nature of the universe, have largely eradicated traditional, mystical theories of the mind, yet there exist lingering doubts about the ability of the purely scientific and concrete theory of the mind to explain abstract mental activities. It is astounding to consider that through hundreds of years of debate, one of the earliest thinkers about the mind still has such weighty influence, still leaves such a strong legacy. Rene Descartes, a 17th century philosopher and mathematician, systematically doubted his own beliefs and ideas to the point that he doubted everything he knew, including his own perceptions. Through his process of methodical skepticism, Descartes found only one certainty, his own thoughts and, by extension, the ability to think (Churchland, 1988, p. 8). For Descartes, his mind Wood 2 was the only certainty about his existence and he could trust only his mental experiences. This difference in reliability led Descartes to consider his mind not only of a fundamentally different nature than his body, but even composed of different substance. Descartes emphasized two central points about the mind: that it shares no causal properties with the body and is of a different substance, and that it does not interact directly with the physical body. Descartes' form of dualism, deemed substance dualism because it distinguishes between the mind and body in terms of physical substance, inspired a slightly more feasible, more modern dualistic view called property dualism. Property dualists do not insist the mind and body are different substances, but suggest the mind has different causal properties from the body. Property dualists propose mental activity is caused by the brain, but does not in turn affect the physical body. One's actions, therefore, are caused by the physical brain, and not by mental activity, which occurs simultaneously and only appears to have a causal influence on the body. Mental events are said to emerge from the physical brain, but cannot be themselves reduced to the physical (Churchland, 1999, p. 10-12). Descartes' theory of mind its ideological successors, based in antiquated scientific and spiritual ideas, clash head-on with modern materialist theories of the mind. Modern research in neuroscience rejects the dualist view in favor of reductionism, the notion that mental states can be explained by physical activity in the brain and do not have any kind of mystical, non-physical properties. Reductionists refer to the brain as the location of mental states and believe understanding these mental states is a straightforward matter of learning more about how the brain functions. Reductionism attacks the two key assertions of dualism, pointing out that it is impossible to hold both assertions at the same time as they are directly contradictory. If the mind Wood 3 and body are of different substances, then interaction is impossible. Reductionists insist that dualists must abandon one claim or the other for consistency's sake. Folk-psychology, our common-sense, everyday notion of how the mind works, is not altogether distant from certain reductionist schools of thought. Belief-desire psychology, a loosely scientifically based, systematic way of applying common-sense and rationality to the understanding of the minds, is taken very seriously in the intertheoretic and co-evolutionary schools of reductionism. Belief-desire psychology is the term used to describe the relationship between our actions and perceptions, attempting to link the two based on logic and very basic scientific guidelines (Livingston, 2002, p. 2). Belief-desire psychology is the basis of intertheoretic reduction, in which proponents believe the current structure of belief-desire psychology will eventually be explained by neuroscience. Intertheoretic reductionists accept the conceptualization of our mental states as beliefs and desires that motivate certain actions, and are actively matching physical brain functions to these mental events. Critics suggest belief-desire psychology does not map out perfectly with our neuroscientific information, providing an incomplete explanation or an altogether faulty notion of how the brain works. Some scientists suggest making changes in the structures of both belief-desire psychology and the neuroscientific explanation of it in order to find a consistent reductionist theory. Because this method involves co-evolving both sides of the theory simultaneously, these reductionists are known as coevolutionary reductionists. Intertheoretic reductionism and co-evolutionary reductionism face criticism from dualists, but also from other reductionist thinkers. Eliminative reductionists challenge the principles of belief-desire psychology, instead suggesting the fault is in the idea that mental states are discussed as something separate from the physical; eliminativists propose Wood 4 all mental phenomena are entirely physical and should be understood in a purely scientific, objective, and physical way. Reductionist views, however, can be hard to swallow. The core reductionist idea is that the universe is a thoroughly material place and all mental states are entirely and fundamentally physical states. Dualists, in contrast, insist mental proceedings, especially the experience of emotions and construction the of abstract ideas, cannot be reduced to purely physical events. It seems impossible to give a full account of such intangible mental experiences in terms of concrete physical entities. Dualists also raise the issue of qualia, "what it is like" to experience something, sensory interaction with the world. Dualists like Frank Jackson admit the strengths of the reductionist view, but suggest it is impossible to reduce qualia in any objective way. Jackson claims qualia represent an aspect of physical knowledge escaping definition and concreteness (Jackson, 1999). Reductionists, such as Paul Churchland, one of the most ardent voices of eliminativism, disagree, suggesting sensual experiences simply represent an alternative way of gaining knowledge, other than the memorization of straightforward facts (Churchland, 1988, p. 34). Churchland and other eliminativists agree that although it may be impossible to describe perceptions in a way that replicates the sensory experience, the awareness of qualia still reduce to physical events. According to the reductionist, just because qualia and higher thought are currently impossible to conceive of in a purely physical way, it does not follow that it is impossible to do so. Reductionism is also criticized for its lack of causality. Many areas of the brain can be associated with mental functions via brain scans, but it is difficult to prove the connections to be causal and not merely correlational. Without causal explanations for mental states that are supposedly entirely physical, it is difficult to prove mental phenomena have no other alternative Wood 5 explanations. Reductionists insist technology improvement will someday allow the causal understanding of mental events, but claim a lack of sufficient technology cannot negate the assertion that mental phenomena are entirely physically reducible. Reductionists also cite full, causal knowledge of mental phenomena in simpler animals whose brains are far easier to map than humans' brains. If we can prove, with current technology, the physical nature of mental activity in simple animals, we can analogously believe our own mental activities are just as physical, yet far more complex. Reductionists maintain time and technology will be the keys to finding causal links between the physical brain and our mental states. Although most criticism of reductionism stems from the difficulty of imagining the reduction of seemingly abstract mental states or the lack of sufficient technology to causally illustrate mental events, another criticism of reductionism is harder to refute. The fact that a variety of different physical types can achieve the same mental state is highly problematic for reductionists. For example, animals of differing levels of mental capacity and brain complexity can all experience pain (Bickle, 2006). If reductionism were valid, the critics claim, these parallel mental states would correspond to one physical system, a common structure in all of the types of organisms in which the mental states operate. However, these mental states are instead realizable in a myriad of ways, making it impossible to assemble a single reductionist hierarchy in which everything can be reduced to the quantum level or expanded to the cosmic level. In other words, mental states can be reduced to the physical only in individual cases, but not generalized in a unified way. No mental kind has one corresponding physical kind, but only a specific physical kind in specific cases. This problem of "multiple realizability" does not, however, challenge the fundamental idea that mental sates are purely physical in nature and necessarily reduce to physical events, but simply argues against a hierarchical, systematic form Wood 6 of reduction in which mental states match to only one physical type. Reductionists argue for the validity of narrower, more specific reductionism, which may apply only to a particular species, a particular organism, or possibly even to a particular event within a single organism. Although modern science has made the dualist view essentially obsolete, the legacy of Descartes has timeless relevance to the study of the mind. Descartes' conception of representation, the mental projection of the outside world through sensory input and mental constructions, remains important to cognitive scientists. Descartes also raised the problem of differentiating the purely mechanical from that which is mentally active, the issue of automata; it is still unknown why and how the physical brain can have mental states but other physical bodies cannot. Descartes also discussed consciousness and the sense of the self. When Descartes deconstructed his own reality and beliefs, the constancy of the self was brought into question and continues to be a mystery to cognitive scientists. The composition of the self in a reductionist world may be conceived as only a physical structure, but as our cells are constantly being replaced, the self must be somehow defined in a different metaphysical way (Livingston, 2002, p. 21-23). The guiding issues found in Descartes' work do not entirely elude reductionists. The complexity of cognitive science still faces fierce controversy and will probably be deconstructed and re-built many times over. Reductionism and dualism face both internal and external tension, a tension not soon to be resolved, if in fact ever settled. The views present only a few facets of the study and understanding of the brain, excluding a vast number of diverse alternative hypotheses. Wood 7 References Bickle, John (2006, Jul 27). Multiple Realizability. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2006 Edition) [Web]. Retrieved Feb 17, 2008, from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2006/entries/multiple-realizability Churchland, Paul M. (1988). Matter and consciousness. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Jackson, Frank (1999). What Mary didn't know. In David Rosenthal (ed). The Nature of Mind. Oxford: Oxford U. Press, pp. 392-395. Livingston, K. (2002). Integrating the sciences of mind. Ken Livingston.

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