The Natural Method: Essays on Mind, Ethics, and Self in Honor of Owen Flanagan

272 Pages·2020·0.878 MB·English

by  Eddy Nahmias (editor), Thomas W. Polger (editor), Wenqing Zhao (editor)

Foreword
Patricia S. Churchland
A celebration in honor of Owen Flanagan and his storied career in philoso-
phy stirs up memories of his tenacious curiosity about all things, along with
his willingness to size up problems without being hemmed in by philo-
sophical fashions.1 It is also an occasion to take a long look at the academic
discipline of philosophy over the last forty years or so and its sometimes
quite strict orthodoxies. The glance backward is especially fitting when the
connecting thread is Flanagan and the way he went about things or, per-
haps more accurately, did not go about things.
Especially in the second half of the twentieth century, many philosophers
tended to be deferential to the “mainstream” and thus to the luminaries who
set the philosophical agenda, but not Flanagan. He could be respectful, but
he did not shape his inquiries to fit trendy theories and methods. For exam-
ple, when others were pushing “necessary truths” rooted in their convictions
about what words do mean and must mean, Flanagan preferred to take a good
look at what the data revealed about the phenomena the words described.
When others were assembling natty metaphors to “explain” consciousness,
Flanagan was the head-s cratching skeptic asking what explanatory value
the metaphors cornered and how they measured up against scientific data.
When moral philosophers lined up to proclaim themselves either Kantians
or Utilitarians and do battle accordingly, Flanagan wisely saw that there was
a far deeper story that both factions totally missed.
Fads and fashions seem to find a welcome home in philosophy, which
is why the Cambridge group, Beyond the Fringe, and their later Oxford-
ian counterpart, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, found such ready mate-
rial. The satire staged in 1977 by John Cleese and Jonathan Miller of a
common room conversation between two philosophers concerning what
x Foreword
philosophers do remains surprisingly current. At one point, Cleese responds
to some banal point of Miller’s by saying “yes, yes” and Miller sincerely que-
ries, “Do you mean ‘yes’ in the affirmative sense,’” to which Cleese, after a
thoughtful pause, says, “no.”2 The entire caricature is stunningly silly, and
yet the echoes of actual philosophical practice are all too audible. Of course,
fads and foolishness can be found in science too, but perhaps any discipline
is especially vulnerable to fads when little is known concerning its chosen
topics, thereby rewarding debating swagger and sometimes plain silliness.
For example, this was true concerning the nature of the heart until William
Harvey discovered in the early seventeenth century that it was a meat pump.
What Flanagan realized early on, and what motivated his first book, The
Science of the Mind,3 is that if we want to understand phenomena such as
consciousness, decision- making, and reasoning, we will not get very far
unless we have evidence, as opposed to mere speculations, metaphors, and
dogmatic edicts, about what certain words mean. Thus, he felt at home with
naturalism, the very general view that understanding natural phenomena
requires, among other things, paying attention to the facts regarding the
phenomena. Or, to paraphrase Quine in his defense of naturalism, there is
no principled division between science and philosophy.
Although Flanagan’s heresy on how to make progress might have been
a break with trends in philosophy circa 1980, it was not a break with the
grand philosophical tradition of Aristotle, René Descartes, David Hume,
Adam Smith, William James, and Hermann von Helmholtz. Rather, it was
an extension of that same tradition. At this point in the twenty- first cen-
tury, Flanagan’s unfashionable regard for the empirical world of experi-
ments, data, and how science makes progress has paid off— handsomely. By
contrast, some of the hotly contested ground of the 1990s now looks a bit
forlorn, more abandoned than productively cultivated.
As Flanagan well appreciated, neuroscience, ethology, anthropology,
and experimental psychology have made discoveries that, if we permit,
have an impact on traditional philosophical questions, such as the nature
of decision- making, consciousness, and the origins of moral values.
As we look to the future, the nature of knowledge, learning, and memory
is a broad topic where the impact of neuroscience on philosophical theories
is likely to be substantial, if not outright revolutionary. Any epistemologist
worth her salt will be intrigued by the discovery that nonverbal animals
clearly have spatial knowledge, such as where home is and where the food
Foreword xi
is, as well as nonspatial knowledge, such as who one’s mate is. Like us, non-
verbal animals learn from experience, and what is learned is put to good use
in their behavior. Neuroscientists have inquired into the mechanisms that
support this knowledge, and impressive data relevant to these mechanisms
have been discovered. In 2014, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
went to Edvard Moser, May- Britt Moser, and John O’Keefe “for their discov-
ery of cells that constitute a positioning system in the brain.”
It turns out that the hippocampus and connected structures (e.g., medial
entorhinal cortex, pre- subiculum) are essential for spatial knowledge as well
as for episodic memory generally (e.g., what music I listened to at break-
fast). There is a demonstrable link between repeatable patterns of activity
of the neurons of the hippocampus of a rat and the spatial routes it uses
to navigate the world it inhabits. In short, the hippocampus and ancillary
structures construct organized, flexible, and usable representations of the
rat’s spatial environment. Spatial knowledge is only part of what the hip-
pocampus constructs. Other cognitive functions, such as social knowledge
of who to trust, also depend on the hippocampus.
The neural mechanisms supporting spatial cognition are complex,
though major clues derive from the precise tuning properties of distinct
groups of neurons. Some neurons (place cells) respond preferentially when-
ever the rat enters a particular place in an area such as a room. Other neu-
rons (head direction cells) respond specifically to the direction in which
the rat’s head is pointing. Yet other neurons respond to a specific distance
from the borders of the region that the rat is in. Remarkably, in the medial
entorhinal cortex, which feeds into the hippocampus, a population of neu-
rons collectively tiles the entire space that the rat is in. These neurons are
called grid cells, and they allocentrically represent a spatial area (as opposed
to merely a response to sensory cues in the area). When the rat explores a
new room, these neurons then tile that new area. Under those conditions,
the hippocampal place cells remap as well. Moreover, the upshot of this
complex spatial framework is that the rat knows where it is in the larger
environment. It knows where to go to get what it seeks. The rat need not
see the food or the hiding place to make a beeline for it.4
Exactly how the different types of cellular signals are integrated to yield
the systematic representations of space and other forms of relational rep-
resentations (such as remembering the flow of events across time and the
ability to draw novel inferences from memory) are not yet well understood.
xii Foreword
The rat’s spatial knowledge is more abstract than one might have
guessed, as is illustrated by recording the activity of neurons. When a rat
is resting or merely planning to forage, an observable pattern of activity is
seen in the rat hippocampus that replicates the activity seen, for example,
when it is actually running that successful route to the food cache. In short,
its brain rehearses the winning route even while not running the route, and
the time taken is compressed. This is probably a lot like what I do when
I rehearse (i.e., imagine) a good route to a chanterelle mushroom patch
in the woods. I would say, and many neuroscientists do say, that the rat
knows where the food is likely to be found much as I know my route to the
chanterelles. When a rat confronts a range of possible routes, its brain will
play out (i.e., imagine) a series of routes before making a selection. This is
probably a lot like what I do when I confront a range of routes for a portage
of my canoe, some of them more hazardous than others. This rehearsal of
routes involves representing the future—w here I could go or will go—n ot
just the past (what I did last time). In short, there is a lot of smart cognitive
business going on here. This is not simple stimulus- response conditioning.
For philosophers to appreciate the epistemological significance of hip-
pocampal discoveries made over the last four decades, they will find it use-
ful to know as much as possible about the physiology of the hippocampus
and its role in behaviors such as foraging and escaping predators. Along
the way, they may bump into developmental psychologists, such as Jean
Mandler, who are testing the hypothesis that spatial primitives (such as
“close by” and “far away”) in baby humans are the scaffolding for many cat-
egories that babies come to acquire as they develop.5 They will perhaps see
a link to the vast array of spatial metaphors common in so many languages
that scaffold the way we make inferences.6 Undoubtedly they will be more
productive if they relax the rigid dogma that “knowing how” involves a
completely different system from “knowing that,” along with the favored
assumption that believing something always requires having a language in
which to represent what is believed.
One dividend of absorbing the hippocampal research is likely to be
progress on intentionality, otherwise known as the aboutness of representa-
tions. Put another way, the question is how representations can represent
something in the world, including something in the body and brain itself,
such as metacognitive representation, where a monkey or a human knows
what it does know. Although intentionality is sometimes considered an
Foreword xiii
exclusively philosophical topic, at this stage the topic appears to be sorely
in need of fresh ideas. Consequently, it may be productive to reflect on
the neurobiological discoveries showing that representations in neural net-
works are about spatial and temporal relationships in the world. The allo-
centric system of grid cells is undoubtedly about some small part of the
world. As the mechanisms sustaining a “positioning system” come to be
more fully understood, will that help explain what it is for activity in neu-
rons to be about things in the world? A good bet says yes.7
Should the philosophical contribution consist in divining the deep con-
ceptual truths that limit what the neuroscientists can meaningfully say or
discover about the nature of representation— of knowledge and belief? This
is not likely to be a rewarding strategy. Frequently in science, we have to
make do with an imprecise expression to refer to a phenomenon, at least
until the science develops to the point where greater precision is possible.
Gene is a well- known case in point. To make that term more precise, sci-
entists in the 1940s did not turn to philosophers to reveal the conceptual
truths about the concept “gene.” They slowly got more data, whereupon
the meaning of the word gene became better defined in tandem. Many
expressions used in neuroscience are like gene circa 1940, because much
about how the brain works remains poorly understood. The words repre-
sents and believes are two examples, and their meaning is apt to change
profoundly over the coming decades as more is understood about how the
brain learns, knows, and represents. Although immersing yourself in the
neurobiological data is no guarantee of a theoretical breakthrough, it pretty
obviously seems a necessary condition.
Although Flanagan was not especially focused on represents, he had long
suspected that a lot of heavy philosophical posturing about what words
must mean (supposed conceptual truths) did not accurately reflect what
was going on in the actual world of language, science, and practical reason-
ing. All too often, what are shopped as conceptual truths anchored by word
meanings are actually empirical speculations floating free of an empirical
base.
As I look on the Flanagan shelf in my library, I tend to think my favorite
Flanagan book is The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized. It taught me
a lot about Buddhism and about philosophy for the ages, but Flanagan’s
audacity also made me laugh a lot. The first two paragraphs are quite aston-
ishing, and bear repeating:
xiv Foreword
Suppose we permitted ourselves this luxury: invite Confucius, Siddhartha Gau-
tama, Mohammed, Joan of Arc, Catherine the Great, Karl Marx, Thomas Jeffer-
son, Sojourner Truth or any other interesting or wise dead person with a view,
who is representative of a tradition, into our conversations about our problems—
poverty, health care, capitalism, how to be a good person, how to live well, to
flourish, to be happy, and listen to what they say. This is anachronistic. Some say
anachronism is bad, even that it is not allowed. Allow it.
Next imagine responding to the anachronistic answers of our respected ances-
tors with our own reflective standards of cogency, wisdom, and breadth and
depth, feeling free to judge their answers as helpful or inadequate for our prob-
lems in our time. This is ethnocentric. It is temporally different but logically iden-
tical to judging the ideas and ways of other contemporary peoples as well suited
for us or not suited for us or not good for us in our time. Some say ethnocentrism
is bad, even that it is not allowed. Allow it.
Thus, Flanagan launched a deep, thoughtful, and always fresh exploration
of an ancient and still pressing question: what is it to live well? Flanagan’s
approach never appeals to a divine authority, to the edicts of pure reason,
or to some shattered algorithm that aims to solve all moral problems. He
knows all those pitfalls inside out. Such knowledge motivates his advice
that when we are stuck on a moral problem, we need to go into the world;
there is nowhere else to go. In The Bodhisattva’s Brain, into the world is
indeed where he takes us. He realizes perfectly well that what he is doing
is not “the way things are done in philosophy.” Instead, Flanagan is invit-
ing us to give our curiosity space to stretch, take in oxygen, see with new
eyes, hear with new ears— and to think for ourselves. Rather like Socrates,
he shows by example that we should admit our ignorance, avoid arrogance
and self- deception, and all the while resist getting blinded by what is fash-
ionable. This is philosophy worth celebrating.
November 21, 2018
Notes
1. Particular thanks are owed to John Kubie, who taught me a lot about the hippo-
campus, and to John Kubie and Eddy Nahmias, who helped correct an earlier draft.
2. https:// www . youtube . com / watch ? v=qUvf3fOmTTk .
3. Owen Flanagan, The Science of the Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984; repr.
1991).
Foreword xv
4. For a much more complete review article, see Neil Burgess, “The 2014 Nobel Prize
in Physiology or Medicine: A Spatial Model for Cognitive Neuroscience,” Neuron 84,
no. 6 (2014): 1120– 1125.
5. Jean Mandler, “The Spatial Foundations of the Conceptual System,” Language and
Cognition 2, no. 1 (March 2010): 21– 44.
6. George Lakoff, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1987).
7. Incidentally, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, typically very up- to- date,
does not yet have an entry for spatial knowledge that even mentions the hippo-
campus, and no general entry for spatial knowledge at all. This omission suggests a
bonanza for an epistemologist with pluck and vision.

Introduction
Eddy Nahmias, Thomas W. Polger, and Wenqing Zhao
It is our pleasure to present this book in honor of our friend and mentor,
Owen Flanagan. The essays collected herein span the range of his interests
across his career to date. Some discuss his work directly; others are inspired
by his work or his methodology. Like Owen’s own work, these essays are
variously penetrating and synoptic, cautious and speculative. We are very
grateful to the contributors to this collection, as well as to the participants
at a conference honoring Owen at Duke University in autumn 2017, and to
Philip Laughlin and the staff at the MIT Press who brought this volume into
being. We would also like to thank Owen’s family, who welcomed us in our
time as his students and colleagues and allowed him to share his time with
us. Finally, and especially, we thank Owen, who always treated us as fellow
explorers on a philosophical journey, never as mere passengers.
This is not the place for a full biography or bibliography of Owen Flana-
gan. He has yet to write his memoir as such, but his philosophy is full of
autobiography. In short, Owen Flanagan was born and raised in Westches-
ter County, New York, the oldest child of six raised in the American Irish
Catholic tradition. He attended Fordham University, where he earned his
undergraduate degree in 1970, and then Boston University, where he earned
his PhD in 1978 under the supervision of Judson Webb. That year he took a
professorship at Wellesley College, where he remained until 1993, when he
moved to Duke University. He is the James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy and
co- director of the Center for Comparative Philosophy. In his first forty years
as a professor he has published ten books, co- edited six volumes, written
over 100 articles and chapters, and mentored dozens of students. Owen’s
work is a model for how to be a naturalistic and scientifically informed
philosopher and for how to write beautifully and deeply about a diverse
2 Introduction
range of topics, from consciousness to Buddhism, from moral psychology
to dreaming, from identity to addiction, from literature to neuroscience.
He writes about these topics in an eminently readable and engaging style.
At the same time, it is hard for anybody to fail to notice the originality and
depth of the arguments and positions he develops. Often, Owen puts in
prose what we readers then realize we already believed in a way that helps
us to recognize why we believe them.
It may seem peculiar to consider what some would call juvenilia, but
Owen’s dissertation already has the hallmarks—p erhaps we should say
“sprouts”— of his mature philosophical thinking. He posed the question, as
he put it: “Does B. F. Skinner’s radical behaviorism constitute a potentially
adequate science of human behavior?” Owen was already concerned that
the dominant psychological science of the day might fail. He had two main
worries. First, a science of the mind might fail by improperly restricting its
subject matter to only a subset of the behaviors in which human beings
engage. Second, it might fail by not having the resources to make all the
distinctions among human behaviors that are central to moral theories,
for instance, between purposeful and non- purposeful behaviors. These dual
concerns, individually and in combination, permeate Owen’s work.
The first big concern from Owen’s dissertation that became a theme in
his subsequent work is that the sciences of the mind and philosophy will
be individually and collectively impoverished if they artificially restrict
their attention to only some kinds of evidence or reasoning. As the sciences
developed through the latter part of the twentieth century— especially the
cognitive and brain sciences—s o did Owen’s concerns. His worry that radi-
cal behaviorism neglects some aspects of human psychological behavior
evolved into the concern that cognitive psychology may neglect infor-
mation both from neurosciences and from persons’ own reports of their
experiences, particularly with respect to conscious experience or their phe-
nomenology, and then into a concern about the neurosciences’ tendency
to exclude phenomena not amenable to their instruments. At the same
time, Owen came to be worried that the contemporary Anglo- American
conception of the scope of psychological and brain sciences were as a whole
neglectful of the range of human experiences, activities, and ways of living
that had been more fully appreciated not only in other cultures but even by
turn- of- the- twentieth- century “Western” thinkers like William James, one
of his heroes. As Owen illustrated in The Science of the Mind (1984), these