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Mind-Brain Analogies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Alan R. White
Alan R. White*
Affiliation:
University of Hull
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Extract

In the history of thought the relation between the mind and the body has been discussed in terms of various analogies. Plato, for example, examined the analogy of a man and his clothes and of the music of an instrument and the instrument itself; Aristotle advocated the analogy of an instrument's capacity and the instrument itself; Descartes alluded to that of a pilot and his ship; and Ryle derided that of a ghost and a machine.

What I wish to discuss, however, are the analogies used by contemporary philosophers to explain their theory that the mind is the brain, that the mind's states, capacities and qualities are the brain's states, capacities and qualities, that our thoughts and our thinking are brain elements and brain movements and that our mental experiences, such as having images or sensations, are brain processes. Various analogies have been advanced to explain the sense in which one of the former is one of the latter.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 1 , Issue 4 , June 1972 , pp. 457 - 472
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1972

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References

1 Anticipations are numerous in the nineteenth century, e.g. Lewes, Romanes, Marion Prince; and, perhaps, earlier, e.g. Hobbes, Spinoza.

2 The two are clearly distinguished by Smart, J.J.C. ‘Sensations and brain processes’, Phil. Rev. 68 (1959).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Exceptions are, e.g., Feigl, H. The ‘Mental’ and the ‘Physical’ (1958).Google Scholar

4 E.G. by Cornman, J ‘The identity of mind and body’, Journal of Phil. 59 (1962) 488–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; R., Rorty ‘Mind-body identity, privacy and categories’, Rev. of Metaphysics 19 (1965) 24–54Google Scholar; Borst, C. V. The mind-brain identity theory (1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar Introduction; Teichmann, J.. ‘The contingent identity of minds and brains’ Mind 76 (1967) 404–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; O'Connor, J. Modern Materialism; Readings on Mind-Body Identity, Introduction p. 15–16 (1969)Google Scholar.

5 E.g. Pitcher, G. ‘Sensations and brain processes: a reply to Professor Smart’ Austral. Journ. of Phil. 38 (1960) 150–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rorty, op. cit.; Nagel, T. ‘Physicalism’ Phil. Rev. 74 (1965) 339–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 E.g. Smart, op. cit.

7 It could also be applied to other cases, e.g. that the mental, but not the physiological, is intentional.

8 E.g. Shaffer, J. ‘Could mental states be brain processes?’ Journ. of Phil. 58 (1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Malcolm, N. ‘Scientific materialism and the identity theory’ Dialogue 3 (1964)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A quite different objection (e.g. Bradley, M. C. ‘Two arguments against the identity thesis’ in Contemporary Philosophy in Australia (1969)Google Scholar) locates sensations, though presumably not thoughts, in the places they are felt to be, e.g. in one's toe.

9 E.g. Smart, op. cit.; Armstrong, D. M. A Materialist Theory of Mind (1968) 117Google Scholar; Shatter, J. ‘Recent work on the mind-body problem’, American Phil. Quart. 2 (1965) 81–104Google Scholar; Lewis, D. K. ‘An argument for the identity theory’, Journ. of Phil. 63 (1966) 17–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hoffman, R. ‘Malcolm and Smart on brain-mind identity’, Philosophy 42 (1967) 128–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Quinton, A. M. ‘Mind and matter’ in Smythies, J. R. (ed.) Brain and Mind (1965)Google Scholar.

10 A quite different answer (e.g. Nagel, op. cit.) is to deny location both to the mental and the physiological on the ground that what is identical with the mental occurrence is a non-locatable physiological occurrence and not a locatable physiological process or movement.

11 E.g. Baier, K. ‘Smart on sensations’, Austral. Journal of Phil. 40 (1962).Google Scholar

12 There are many exceptions to this, e.g. feeling jealous or envious without realizing it.

13 E.g. Smart, op. cit., Armstrong, op. cit., Quinton, op. cit.

14 I do not wish to oppose the denial of the premisses. Indeed, I am inclined to think that the premisses are based on a confusion of necessity and certainly; that is, that there is no p—not even where p is ‘A feels a pain’—for which either (a) p, but p is unknown, or (b) A thinks that p, but not p, is necessarily false, though there may be a p—e.g. where p is ‘A feels pain’—for which these are both certainly false.

15 E.g. Coburn, R. C. ‘Shaffer on the identity of mental states and brain processes’, Journ. of Phil. 60 (1963) 89–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Malcolm, op. cit.

16 E.g. Armstrong, op. cit. and ‘Dispositions are causes’, Analysis 30 (1969) 23–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Cp. Margolis, J. ‘Brain processes and sensations’ Theoria 31 (1965) 133–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 E.g. Smart, op. cit., Armstrong, op. cit.

19 Cp. White, A. R. Attention (1964) 5–6Google Scholar and references there to Ryle and Wittgenstein; cp. The Philosophy of Mind (1967) 97 fl.

20 E.g. Smart and Feigl.

21 E.g. Smart and Armstrong.

22 E.g. Feigl.

23 Cp. Taylor, C. ‘Mind-body identity, a side issue?’ Phil. Rev. 76 (1967).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24 Pace C. V. Borst, op. cit.

25 Cp. Ryle, G. Dilemmas (1954) ch. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; D. M. McKay ‘From mechanism to mind’ in Brain and Mind (ed. Smythies).

26 E.g. Coburn, op. cit., and Malcolm, op. cit.

27 E.g. Feigl, Place and Smart.

28 These reports of sensations are not at all topic-neutral in the way that ‘Someone did it’ is; pace Smart. For anyone who reported the having of an after-image of an orange as ‘something is going on which is like what is going on when… . I really see an orange’ would be reporting a ‘pictorial’ likeness, not a ‘neutral’ likeness-whatever that may mean.

29 E.g. Armstrong, A Materialist Theory of Mind.

30 This view must be carefully distinguished from the double-aspect view, sometimes followed even by some Identity-theorists (e.g. Feyerabend, P. ‘Materialism and the mind-body problem’ Rev. of Metaphysics 17 (1963) 49–66)Google Scholar that the mental phenomenon, e.g. feeling a pain or having an after-image, is not identical with the brain process but is a sixth and private method of perceiving the brain process comparable to the methods used by the five senses with the aid of an autocerebroscope, or analogous to the way in which a man's brow might feel hot as well as feeling hot to his touch. The confusion of these two views may be due to the confusion between ‘A mental experience is a brain process’ and ‘What is mentally experienced is a brain process’.

31 Indeed, Place, op. cit., makes this a necessary condition of their identity.

32 As Smart and Shaffer contend.

33 E.g. Nagel, op. cit.

34 I am indebted to Aaron Sloman for comments on an earlier draft.