Transcript docenti.lett.unisi.it

Philosophy of mind
Module A: Mind and brain
2014-2015
Sandro Nannini
University of Siena
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Naive physics and scientific
physics
One of the following statements is true:
1) Every breath you take contains at least an atom that has
been exhaled by Marylin Monroe.
2) There are liquids that flow upward.
3) At the top floor of a building you get older faster than at
the ground floor.
4) An atom can be in several places at once [...].
5) There is no law of nature that speaks against the
possibility of time travels [...].
(Freely drawn from M. Chown, Quantum theory cannot hurt
you,Faber and Faber, London 2007.).
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Folk psychology and cognitive
sciences
One of the following statements is true:
In some cases you can confuse a rubber hand that lies in front of you for
your hand.
Some mentally ill people think they are dead.
Some people think after an accident that their wife is actually a double,
an impostor.
We become aware of what is happening around us with a delay of about
500 ms.
Our brain prepares all voluntary movements 300 ms. earlier than we
consciously decide to execute them.
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Naive physics and scientific
physics
In fact all the above statements are true!
1) Every breath you take contains at least an atom that has been
exhaled by Marylin Monroe (the number of atoms)
2) There are liquids that flow upward (syphons).
3) At the top floor of a building you get older faster than at the
ground floor (the general theory of relativity).
4) An atom can be in several places at once (quantum mechanics)
5) There is no fundamental law of nature that speaks against the
possibility of time travels (classical mechanics, quantum
mechanics, theory of relativity].
(Freely drawn from M. Chown, Quantum theory cannot hurt
you,Faber and Faber, London 2007.).
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Folk psychology and cognitive
sciences
In this case too all the previous statements are true!
In some cases you can confuse a rubber hand that lies in front of you for
your hand (see e.g. Metzinger 2009)
Some mentally ill people think they are dead (Cotard delusion).
Some people think after an accident that their wife is actually a double,
an impostor (Capgras delusion).
We become aware of what is happening around us with a delay of about
500 ms. (B. Libet, Mind Time, 2004)
Our brain prepares all voluntary movements 300 ms. earlier than we
consciously decide to execute them (B. Libet, Mind Time 2004).
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The mind-body problem
mind
EE ……P(+M) (D) A
body
DS ....PS... B........ R
EE: external event
DS: distal stimulus
P: perception
PS: proxy stimulus
M: mental states
B: brain processes
D: decision
A: action
R: motor response
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Ontological Dualism
Interactionism
Mind
P …D


SD  SP..BP D... R
Body
Objection: Interactionism violates the first
principle of thermodynamics.
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Ontological Dualism
Parallelism (and neutral monism)
Mind
P …D
SD  SP..BP D... R
Body
Objection: Parallelism can be explained only by
old metaphysical hypotheses (Spinoza, Leibniz)
or by a mere convention (Russell)
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Ontological Dualism
Epiphenomenalism
Mind
P
D


SD  SP..BP .. BD..N  R
Body
Objection: “Ockham’s Razor”.
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Identity Theory
SD  SP..BP .. BD ... R
Body
P = BP
D = BD
• P and D are only redescriptions of BP and BD
in psychological terms.
• Objection: Such a reduction seems to be
impossible. Phenomenal consciousness
seems to be nonreducible.
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Functionalism
1) “Mind-computer analogy”
EE ……P(+M)(D) 
Key board  Computer
A
 Screen
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Functionalism
2) “Marr’s Cascade”
Computer
Computation: Problem  Procedure
(….)
 Solution
Algorithm:
Input
 Software  Output
Implementation:
Key board  Hardware  Screen
Human being
Common sense: EE-->P(+M)-->(D)-->A
Explanation Interpretation
Cogn. Psychol: EE-->(Flowchart)-->MO-->A
Objection: you take
the risk to
completely separate
cognitive
psychology from
neurosciences
ImplementationInterpretation
[Neurosc.: DS-->(…B1 or B2 or....)-->R)]
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Flowcharts in cognitive psychology
An example
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Eliminativism
P and D are substituted by new concepts (BP and BD)
drawn by neurosciences.
Coevolution of cognitive psychology and neurosciences
with the help of philosophy.
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Perception and sensory-motor coordination
• Animals acquired the
ability to perceive some
features of the external
world and of their own
body in order to execute
movements apt to
increase the probability to
survive (e.g. by catching
preys or avoiding
plunderers).
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Perception and sensory-motor coordination
Biological
evolution
• Human senses and human
sensori-motor coordination
are the result of biological
evolution.
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Perception and sensory-motor coordination:
Representation-Action Theory (RAT)
• Perceptions can be
conscious or unconscious:
in both cases they are
mental representations of
the internal and external
world.
• Human beings construct a
representation of the
external world in order to
move and act in it.
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The computational brain
• According to the RAT the brain
acquires by means of the senses
a certain amount of information
about some regularities of the
external world as regards the
distribution of matter and physical
events in space and time and
changes the format of such
information step by step until a
pattern of motor neurons activity
able to trigger a right motor
response is produced.
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Styles of brain computation
No!!!
Symbolic
representations
A Brooks’ robot
Unlikely!
No representations
May be!
Subsymbolic representations
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Naturalising perceptions according to the RAT
Functional reduction
• A perception is functionally
reducible to an intermediate
step in the information
processing of sensori-motor
coordination
• Therefore it is similar to the
activity pattern of hidden units
in an artificial neural network
and is describable as a vector
in a state space.
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Naturalising perceptions according to the RAT
Neural implementation
• Perceptions as vectors in
a space state are
biologically implemented
by the dynamics of brain
processes.
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A reply to 3c: the 1-eaters and the 2-eaters
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Which is the right representation?
??????????
It depends on what you eat!
Siena, 20th-22nd October
2006
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A reply to (3c): frogs and flies
• A frog recognizes flies as food only
if they are moving.
• We human beings instead
recognize flies as flies
independently of their movements.
• Therefore, the representation that
an animal has of its environment is
functional to the actions that it is
able to execute in that environment.
Siena, 20th-22nd October
2006
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A reply to (3c): frogs and flies
• It is not the case that we human
beings see flies as they are, frogs
instead see them as they appear to
them.
Siena, 20th-22nd October
2006
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Brain-Wise
Patricia Smith Churchland
Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2002
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Preface




Brain sciences (neurosciences and cognitive
science) and philosophy
The history of science and the immaturity of
neurosciences
The history of philosophy
Acknowledgements: Francis Crick, Antonio and
Hannah Damasio, Paul Churchland, Roderick
Corriveau, Rick Grush, … Terry Sejnowski,
“Rama” Ramachandran.
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Introduction

Core questions:

1) “There is no soul” (p. 1)



2) Consciousness is “a coordinated pattern of
neuronal activity serving various biological
functions” (p. 2)
The mind-body problem and neurosciences
Neurophilosophy “predicts that philosophy of
mind conducted with no understanding of
neurons and the brain is likely to be sterile” (p.
3)
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Introduction: Natural philosophy


Philosophy and sciences in the history of
philosophy: from natural philosophy to distinct
empirical sciences
From 'physics' and metaphysics to the
contemporary cognitive sciences (especially
cognitive neuroscience).
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Introduction: Reductions and
coevolution in scientific domains
Reductive explanation: “a reduction has been achieved when
the causal powers of the machrophenomena are explained as
a function of the physical structure and causal powers of the
microphenomena” (pp. 20-21)
- Example 1: “temperature in a gas was reduced to mean
molecular kinetic energy” (p. 21).
Reductive explanation does no imply identity of meaning.
[G. Frege: Bedeutung und Sinn (reference and meaning); Morning Star
and Evening Star]
Example 2: “visible light turned out to be electromagnetic
radiation” (p. 23)
Example 3: (more complex) “phenotypic traits and genes” (p.
23).
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Introduction: Reductions and
coevolution in scientific domains (2)
The coevolution of two scientific theories (p. 24)
Reduction and mathematics (p. 25).
A criticism on functionalism (p. 25-28)
The reduction of mental life to brain activity does not imply
that mental life goes away (p. 28).
Reductive explanation is not necessarily “a direct explanatory
bridge” between macrophenomena and microphenomena
(pp. 28-29).
Self esteem and reductionism (pp. 29-30).
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Introduction: Concluding remarks
Hypotheses:
1 - “Mental activity is brain activity. It is susceptible to scientific methods
of investigation.”
2 - “Neuroscience needs cognitive science to know what phenomena need
to be explained.”
3 - “It is necessary to understand the brain, and to understand it at many
levels of organization, in order to understand the nature of the mind.”
2 and 3 are “mutually dependent” (coevolution of cognitive sciences and
neurosciences) (p. 31)
Theories about ourselves – (Freud’s concepts in psychology and
Aristotle’s concepts in physics.)
Neurosciences and old philosophical problems
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Metaphysics: Introduction
- Metaphysics = the Book after the Physics
- “[..] Aristotle did not suppose that the topics in Metaphysica were beyond
the methods of science or different in kind from the questions of the
particular sciences” (p. 38)
- “Pure metaphysics” and the development of empirical sciences in modern
times.
- “[..] metaphysics, as construed by the purists, is probably misguided” (p.
39): S. Peirce and W.v.O. Quine: “there is no first philosophy” (p. 39).
- “[...] either we abandon metaphysics as misguided, or we break with
purists and update our characterization of the subject matter” (p. 39).
- Metaphysics = science in an immature stage (pp. 39 ff.).
- Biological evolution and epistemology: “[...] an important job of
cognition is to make predictions that guide decisions.”
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Metaphysics: Introduction(2)
Introduction (2):
- - “There is no suprascientific, ‘metaphysical’ faculty” (p. 40 ff.)
- “Feelings of certainty, however, are no guarantee of truth” (p. 42).
- “[...] we abandon romantic notions when their wheels fall off” (p. 42).
- “From the pragmatist’s perspective, we shall explore questions about
consciousness, free will, and the self as questions about the mind/brain,
and we will see that a young science is discovering things about the
nature of the mind-body that we could never have discovered through
reflection and introspection alone” (p. 43).
- “Note that there is a mind-body problem only if the mind is nonphysical
and the body is physical. […] if the mind is activity in the brain then that
particular problem, at least, does not exist […].” (p. 43).
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Metaphysics: Metaphysics and the mind
- Mind/brain causal interaction and the law of conservation of mass-energy
(p. 43)
- Against dualism: the degeneration of neurons causes the degeneration of
cognitive functions (p. 44)
- The “disconnection effect” (p. 44 ff.)
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Metaphysics: Metaphysics and the mind (2)
- Descartes identified the mind with the conscious mind. However, there is
overwhelming evidence in favour of unconscious cognition (p. 48 ff):
1) Language
2) The dilation of pupils
3) Inattentional blindsight
4) Subthreshold stimuli
5) Eye movements
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Metaphysics: Causation
Causal connections and mere correlations:
– Necessary connection between cause and effect: Hume’s criticism
(p. 55) and answers to Hume:
–
1) true causal relations are covered by natural laws – Objection:
the concept of ‘natural law’ is difficult to define as it is the
concept of ‘cause’
–
2) necessity is not in the world but in the mind [I. Kant] –
Objection: statements about causal relations are statements about
the world, not about our mind.
–
“Brains have evolved the capacity to infer causality from certain
patterns of regularity observed in experience” - Objection: this
does not explain what is causality in the world (p. 57).
–
“Causation as a metaphysical issue remains an unsolved problem”
- Better to put it aside (pragmatic approach) (p. 57)
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Memory and self in common sense (2)
 Self: this is a philosophical concept about which
common sense offers only vague intuitions.
However, the idea that each human being has an
intuition of herself based on a sentiment of
freedom and agency is deeply rooted in our
culture.
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Self as soul or mind
 “The Socrates who is now conversing and
arranging the details of his argument is really I”
(Platon, Phaedo) - I am my soul.
 “Cogito, ergo sum” (Descartes) - I am a thinking
thing, I am my being conscious of myself: I am my
mind
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Self as memory of himself or herself
 “But he, now having no consciousness of any of the
Actions either of Nestor or Thersites, does, or can he,
conceive himself the same Person with either of them?”
(Locke, Essay)- I am the continuity of myself through
the conscious recollection of my past perceptions,
thoughts, and actions.
 My Self  my soul. I am no substance that has mental
states but a relation between mental states.
 Descartes/Locke: I am my thinking / I am a relation
between the contents of my past and present thoughts.
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The ‘bundle theory’ of the mind
The non-existence of a perception of
myself
 “(…) what we call a mind, is nothing but a heap or
collection of different perceptions, united together by
certain relations, and suppos’d, tho’ falsely, to be endow’d
with a perfect simplicity and identity” (D. Hume, Treatise). The ‘bundle theory’ of the mind.
 “I never can catch myself at any time without a perception,
and never can observe anything but the perception” (D.
Hume, Treatise). - I have no intuition of myself (against
Descartes); I can know myself only through the empirical
knowledge of the association relations that connect the
contents of my ‘perceptions’ (= mental states).
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Self and Self-Knowledge: The internalModel Solution
What is the problem?
–
Descartes: I am a nonphysical conscious thing (p. 58).
–
D. Hume: I am a flux of mental states (p. 58). The self is no thing
(p. 61).
–
The self as a thing enduring through time is a construction of the
brain (p. 61).
–
“The self is something like a squadron of capacities flying in
loose formation […] The fundamental capacity, however,
probably consists in coordinating needs, goals, perception, and
memory with motor control” (p. 63).
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Self and Self-Knowledge: The internalModel Solution (2)
Self-Representational Capacities: What are representations?
–
“Representations are states of the brain, such as patterns of
activity across groupes of neurones, which carry information”
(p.64).
–
“Thus a brain might have a representational model of the body or
of one’s hunting territory or of one’s clan and the pattern of social
relationships within it. A brain can also have models of its own
processes […] higher order neuronal activity may represent the
integration of many lower-order representations” (p. 64).
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Self and Self-Knowledge: The internalModel Solution (2)
Self-Representational Capacities (2):
•
•
•
•
•
•
Autobiography and self : Auto-biographical memory is
NOT the self (p. 65 ff.).
Depersonalisation phenomena
Parietal cortex lesions: e.g. “limb denial”, anosognosia
The dementias: Alzheimer’s disease
Anorexia nervosa
Conclusion: “self-representation is multi-dimensional” (p.
70).
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Self and Self-Knowledge: The internalModel Solution (2)
Self-Representational Capacities (2):
•
•
•
•
•
•
Autobiography and self : Auto-biographical memory is
NOT the self (p. 65 ff.).
Depersonalisation phenomena
Parietal cortex lesions: e.g. “limb denial”, anosognosia
The dementias: Alzheimer’s disease
Anorexia nervosa
Conclusion: “self-representation is multi-dimensional” (p.
70).
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Self and Self-Knowledge: The internalModel Solution (3)
Self as Agent:
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Self and Self-Knowledge: The internalModel Solution (3)
Self as Agent:
•
•
•
•
•
“Coordination can only be performed by neurons, since
there is no intelligent extraneuronal ‘mini-me’ inside who
puts it all together” (p. 71).
Internal milieu, needs, and goals:
“maintaining a costant internal milieu means that the
nervous system has to ‘know’, in some sense, what the
internal set points should be” (p. 73).
“By making some effects pleasant and some not, the
nervous system directs the animal’s choices. Emotions are
the brain’s way of making us do and pay attention to
certain things” (p. 73).
Moving, causing, and surviving (p. 76 ff.): The
transformation of visual coordinates in motor coordinates.
The emulators (p. 77 ff.).
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Self and Self-Knowledge: The internalModel Solution (3)
Self as Agent:
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Self and Self-Knowledge: The internalModel Solution (3)
Self as Agent:
•
•
Moving, causing, and surviving
Sensori-motor coordination
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Self and Self-Knowledge: The internalModel Solution (3)
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Self and Self-Knowledge: The internalModel Solution
Efference copy: “In short, the brain makes a prediction about a
change of scene based on the eye-movement command, which
hitherto has always been followed by real eye movement. When
the prediction fails, the brain grabs the “best explanation” (p. 85).

Crows and ravens: “The ravens used body-image manipulation
in causal problem solving. As Heinrich argues, 'The simplest...
hypothesis is that the birds anticipated at least some
consequences of the behaviors before overtly executing them’” (p.
87).

Covertly practicing a golf swing (p. 87).
The difficulty of tickling yourself (p. 87).

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Inner Models of Body, Self, and Others
Sensory systems representing the body: somatic s.s. and
autonomous s.s.
 The somatic sensory system. “The body-to-brain wiring
keeps the brain informed about what is happening to the
body, while the brain-to-body wiring allows the brain to
control the body” (p. 91)
 Mirror neurons (p. 101 ff.)
 Visceral feelings (p. 104)
 “... the autonomic system – because of the centrality of its
role in coordinating vital functions, biasing behavior choice,
and giving emotional color to ongoing experience –
constitutes the core of what makes an animal a coherent
biological entity” (p. 105)
 [The neural self] (p. 105)
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Inner Models of Body, Self, and Others

Myself among other things
 “Guided by its rich postnatal experience, the brain constructs
a systematic representation of the external world. […] Much
of learning consists of constructing a causal map of one’s
world. […] Especially in gregarious creatures like ravens,
wolves, monkeys, and humans, the brain also comes to
understand and represent the complex social world in which
it finds itself” (pp. 106-107).
 The comprehension of others: “To a first approximation, the
brain is now representing the representational activities of
brains in general; it is now capable of representing, at least
to some degree, its own activities as a representational
system (p. 107).

Representing conspecifics as other minds (p. 107)
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Inner Models of Body, Self, and Others

Myself among other things
 Sellars: representing other minds and scientific theories (p.
108 ff.)
 The brain and social cognition (p. 110)
 Sellar’s “theory theory” shows that it is necessary for
philosophers to look outward to psychology, neuroscience,
and biology in general to try to understand how the brain
represents its own acitivities and capacities (p. 112)
 “By 16 months, still before they acquire their first spoken
words, children comprehend what someone is trying to do
and can screen out what is accidental in an action” (p. 112)
 The candy-pencil experiment [false belief experiments] (p.
113).
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Inner Models of Body, Self, and Others

Myself among other things
 “[...] the animals are not merely responding to specific cues
but are also making use of representations of what others
can see, want, intend, and feel” (p. 113)
 On this hypothesis, autism is a kind of ‚mind blindness’ (p.
116)
Human beings have the capacity of representing
representations of representations etc. (within certain limits).
It is not determined to which extent non human animals
enjoy this capacity.
 “Although the capacity for self-reflection is important, it is
not, on the Grush emulator hypothesis, the fundamental
platform of the sense of self. The platform, as I have
suggested, is first and foremost a matter of body regulation
and body representations” [against dualism again] (p. 117).
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Knowing Oneself: a Philosphical
Problem
“Descartes believed that the (conscious) mind, and only the mind,
is directly known. […] He used the alleged epistemic specialness
of the mind (directness) to defend the metaphysical specialness of
the mind (the thing known). […] [But] all knowledge involves some
neural processing prior to conscious recognition that something is
an a or a b […] There is no such thing as unprocessed perception”
(pp. 117-118).
The mind is not identical to consciousness. This is against
dualism: “Once the ‚nonconscious processing’ point is on the
table, the case for a metaphysically special stuff to handle direct
knowledge is enfeebled” (p. 119).
The alleged infallible knowledge of the mind (p. 119 ff.). Some
things are better recognized “not for metaphysical reasons but for
survival” (p. 120). Moreover I recognize my subjective states
better than anyone else only because they happen in my brain!

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Knowing Oneself: a Philosphical
Problem
“[...] there are abnormal conditions where I err in my
noninferential judgements about my conscious states” (p. 120).
Other errors with regard to one’s own conscious states: Anton’s
syndrome (p. 122). “These patients have lost the very
mechanisms for knowing whether one is seeing or not. Since the
brain has no information to indicate otherwise, it goes with the
standard state of affairs” (p. 122).
Conclusions: “The brain makes us think that we have a self.
Does that mean that the self I think I am is not real? No, it is real
as any activity of the brain. It does mean, however, that one’s self
is not an ethereal bit of ,soul stuff’ (p. 124)
[ I prefer to maintain the “Absent Conductor Theory”]
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The Absent Conductor Theory
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Illusion of continuity
Short term memory
B2
B1
Time: cause/effect
58
Consciousness
Introduction – What is consciousness?: the pragmatic attitude
and the mysterian attitude (pp. 127-128).
Definitions and Science
 “In everyday use, the term ‚consciousness’ can describe a
range of somewhat different things” (p. 129)
 “Terms
may change their range of application as new
discoveries are made” (p. 129). 1st example: the concept of
fire (pp. 129-130); 2nd example: Ptolomaeus and Newton
about superlunar realm and sublunar realm (pp. 130-131);
 “The more general lesson is this: theories about certain
things and definitions as to what in the world count as those
things evolve together” (p. 133) [T. Kuhn]
 Kinds of conscious states: sensory perceptions, somatic
sensory perceptions; remembering, knowing, imagining,
attending to, wondering whether, surprise, emotional states
(fear, anger etc.), drive states (hunger, thirst etc.), capacities
(dispositions vs exercise of those dispositions).

59
Consciousness

Experimental strategies
 The direct approach (a mechanism for consciousness, p.
135):




Crick’s assumption – “There must be brain differences in
the following two conditions: (1) a stimulus is presented and
the subject is aware of it, and (2) a stimulus is presented and
the subject is not aware of it” (p. 136). Examples:
What is binocular rivalry? (pp. 136-148)
Loops and conscious experience - “[...] loops (also
referred to as re-entrant pathways and as back projections)
are essential circuitry in the production of conscious
awareness” (G. Edelman) (p. 148).
“Artificial neural network (ANN) indicates that many of the
consciousness-related functions – STM, attention, sensory
perception, meaning – are handled most powerfully and
efficiently by networks with recurrent projections” (p. 149).
Consciousness






Loops and conscious experience (2)
 “Experimental
evidence is beginning to come in to
support this idea: For example, Pascual-Leone and
Walsh exploited the fact that transcranial magnetic
stimulation (TMS) of cortical visual area area V1 will
cause the subject to experience small flashes of light,
while stimulation of cortical visual area MT will produce
flashes of light that move” (p. 151).
A methodological question about neural correlates
From correlation to identification (p. 154 ff.)
An analogy: light = electromagnetic wave. This identification
needs a background: Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism
(p. 155).
Also the identification of consciousness to its neural
correlates needs a theoretical framework (p. 156).
Examples are limited to vision here (p. 156).
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Consciousness

The Indirect Approach
• A theory of brain function in general (p. 157).
• Consciousness is connected to attention but it cannot just
be attention (p. 157).
• While you ar reading a text you are not aware of the very
short span of words your attention is directed to (pp. 157158).
• If you want to suppress a noise that is disturbing your
performance, purposefully paying attention to it is a bad
strategy! (p. 158).
• Consciousness as global workspace (p. 158 ff.)
– Conscious states are more broadly accessible than
unconscious states (Dennett and Baars) (p. 159). A
criticism: the hypothesis is unclear from a neurological
point of view.
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Consciousness

The Indirect Approach
• Self, subjectivity, and consciousness (p. 164 ff.)
– A. Damasio: “the capacity for consciousness is the
outcome
of
high-level
self-representational
capacities. […] Thus nervous systems have
integrative organizations for ranking goals, making
behavioral decision, and evaluating relevant
perceptual signals in the context of specific
behavioral plans” (p. 164)
– An internal model: The Grush emulator (p. 164). “an
inner representation of the body in relation to its
environment” (p. 164).
– “At some stage, new circuitry enabled a neuronal
population to represent the internal model itself” (p.
165).
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Consciousness

The Indirect Approach
• Life and Conscious experience
– Life and consciousness are their physical correlates
(p. 171 ff,) against vitalism
• Objections against reductionism
– I cannot imagine that mental states are brain
processes. Reply: Ignorance says nothing positive
(p. 174-175).
– The Zombies (p. 176 ff.). Reply: Logical possibility
does not imply real possibility!
– The problem is too hard. Reply: “the fallacy of
arguments from ignorance” (p. 179).
– The inverted spectrum. Reply: same reply as
against Zombies.
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Consciousness

The Indirect Approach
• Connecting qualia and neuronal organization
– The vision of colours:
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Consciousness naturalized
Albert H. Munsell
(1858-1918)
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Consciousness naturalized
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