Brain, Mind, and Human Behavior in Contemporary Cognitive Science: Critical Assessments of the Philosophy of Psychology

252 Pages·2007·15.913 MB·English

by  Jeff Coulter, Wes Sharrock

BRAIN, MIND, AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR
IN CONTEMPORARY COGNITIVE SCIENCE
BRAIN, MIND, AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR
IN CONTEMPORARY COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Critical Assessments
of the Philosophy of Psychology
Jeff Coulter
and
Wes Sharrock
With a Foreword by
P. M. S. Hacker
The EdVI-in Mellen Press
Lewiston•Queenston• Lampeter
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Coulter, Jeff.
Brain, mind, and human behavior in contemporary cognitive science : critical assessments
of the philosophy of psychology I Jeff Coulter and Wes Sharrock; with a foreword by
P. M. S. Hacker.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-7734-5315-9
ISBN-10: 0-7734-5315-6
1. Psychology-Philosophy. 2. Cognitive science. 3. Neurosciences. 4. Philosophy of
mind. I. Sharrock, W. W. (Wes W.) II. Title.
BF38.C759 2007
153.01-dc22
2007029273
hors serie.
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Copyright © 2007 Jeff Coulter and Wes Sharrock
All rights reserved. For information contact
The Edwin Mellen Press The Edwin Mellen Press
Box450 Box67
Lewiston, New York Queenston, Ontario
USA 14092-0450 CANADA LOS lLO
The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd.
Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales
UNITED KINGDOM SA48 8LT
Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Foreword: Dr. P. M.S. Hacker iii
Introduction vii
Chapter 1 Neural Metaphysics 1
Technical and Ordinary Language 1
The Cartesian Heritage and Neuroscience 8
Problems with 'Information' 14
The Physical and 'Symbolic' Environments 18
The Storage Conception of Memory 20
Neuralizing 'Voluntariness' 24
Seeing Colors 28
Chapter 2 Materialist Conceptions of Mind: A Reappraisal 33
The Origins of Materialism in the Philosophy of Mind 33
Problems of the Materialist Theory of Mind 37
The 'Mental' and the 'Physical' 52
Chapter 3 Neural Causation and Freedom of Action 57
The Problem of Determinism 59
Reconceiving Komhuber-Libet 62
'Folk Psychology' and Freedom 68
Causes and Rules 71
On Choosing 76
Chapter 4 Consciousness: The Last Mystery? 83
Human Beings and 'Physical Systems' 87
'In the Mind' Does Not Signify: In Psychology's Remit 108
Phenomenology of Nothing 112
No Explanatory Gap to Bridge 116
On 'Qualia' and Zombies 128
Chapter 5 Memory: Explaining Capacities versus
Explaining Performances 137
Chapter 6 Dissolving the 'Projection Problem' 157
Sources of the Problem 157
Fodor's Problems 163
Can the Problem Be Dissolved? 167
Muddles about Learning 170
Chapter 7 Fetishising 'Syntax' 175
Conclusion 195
Intentional States and the 'Theory of Mind' Theory 199
Extended Mind 214
Bibliography 223
Index 229
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors wish to acknowledge the editors and publishers of the journals
SOCIAL RESEARCH and VISUAL STUDIES for their kind permission to
reproduce materials from previously published papers: Jeff Coulter, "Materialist
Conceptions of Mind: A Reappraisal", Social Research 60:1, Spring 1993, 117-
142, and Wes Sharrock & Jeff Coulter, "Dissolving the 'Projection Problem'",
Visual Studies 18:1, 2003, 74-82. The authors also thank Ahmad Bleik and
Wassim Bleik for their assistance in the technical preparation of this work for
publication. Amal helped as well.
iii
FOREWORD
From the point of view of human advances in knowledge, the twentieth century
was the century of physics. The new millennium opened with the promise of a
century of progress in the sciences of life, and especially in neuroscience. Within
neuroscience, the endeavours to understand the neural basis of human cognitive
abilities has attracted a great deal of public attention and academic speculation.
For it seemed that the discoveries, or anticipated discoveries, of neuroscience
would shed light on a multitude of problems that have preoccupied human beings
for millennia - problems such as: What is the mind? How is it related to the
brain? Is thinking a process in the brain? Do human beings have a free will?
What is consciousness? Are our memories stored in our brains? These kinds of
question have been discussed by philosophers. But they have produced no
scientifically reputable theories to resolve them. To some neuroscientists it seems
that it is time for philosophy to step aside and make room for proper scientific
investigations.
It was perhaps an accident that the early advances in cognitive
neuroscience coincided with the invention of the digital computer, that the
invention of the computer coincided with the demise of behaviourism and the
beginnings of the cognitive (or, more properly, computationalist) revolution in
psychology, and that this in tum coincided with the rise of Chomsky's generative
linguistics. Any one of these intellectual earthquakes would have sufficed to keep
reflective minds occupied for some decades, exploring the ramifications of these
discoveries, inventions and theories. The conjunction of all four proved a heady
draft, which led to the emergence of so-called cognitive science. This was
supposed to be a synthesis of cognitive neuroscience, computational psychology,
artificial intelligence, theoretical linguistics, and philosophy. It aimed to produce
scientific theories about the nature of the mind, of consciousness and self-
iv
consciousness, of the self, of thought and imagination, of knowledge and memory,
and of freedom of the will. With such high ambitions, and with the impressive
discoveries of neuroscience in the twentieth century, it is small wonder that this
new 'science' intoxicated the media and swept a large number of scientists and
intellectuals off their feet.
Cognitive science rightly rejected the traditional dualist conception of the
relationship between mind and body. It correctly denied that the mind is a
spiritual substance. But instead of trying to elucidate the concept of mind afresh,
it replaced the mind by the brain, or reduced the mental to the functional
correlation of inputs and outputs with some neural 'realization'. So too, it
replaced the dualist conception of the operations of the mind by the allegedly
computational operations of the brain. This left intact the logical structure of the
classical dualist conception (merely allocating to the brain the roles previously
allocated to the mind). Moreover, guided by AI on the one hand, and Chomskian
linguistics on the other, it both mechanized and intellectualized
(computationalized) the psychological powers of mankind and their exercise. The
promises were enticing, and the support of leading intellectuals of the day
encouraged many to join the (well-funded) bandwagon.
More angelic thinkers feared to join, preferring not to rush in, but to pause
and think. Can empirical discoveries really shed light on such questions as 'What
is the mind?'? Is such a question really like 'What is cancer?' Or is it more like
'What is knowledge?' or 'What is a number?'? Before equating the mind with the
brain, or comparing the mind to the software of the supposed computer-like brain,
or holding mental states to be identical to states of the brain, should one not be
clearer what one is talking about? The concept of the mind calls out for
clarification, the concept of a mental state demands elucidation, as indeed does
that of a brain state (has anyone ever proposed a criterion of identity for such a
thing?). Conceptual clarification may enable one to see whether it even makes