Dr. J.S.

Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind

Introduction
Part one: Theories of Mind
i.
ii.
iii.

Cartesian dualism
Identity theories
Functionalism

Part two: Mind as Computer

iv.
v.

Turing machines
Searles Chinese Room argument

Conclusions

Introduction
What is it to have a mind? Were certain that anyone reading this
handout has a mind. But what are the special properties we consider
minded beings to have, and are these properties shared by other animals,
or even infants? In this lecture I introduce some of the approaches
contemporary philosophers have taken to the question of what it is to
have a mind.
Some terminology: I will use the term mental state to refer to any
mental phenomenon, e.g. thoughts, emotions, sensations. So the thought
that beaver dams are cool, and the joy I feel when I see beavers building a
dam are examples of mental states that I can have.
Further reading
Clark, A. (2001). Mindware. Oxford University Press. (Introduction and
chapter 1)
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Dr. J.S.Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

i. Cartesian (or Substance) Dualism

Cartesian dualism is the idea that the mind is made of a fundamentally
different substance to the body. The mind is made of immaterial stuff
and the body is made of material stuff.
Material substances
Have extension. Extension = occupies a certain amount of space.
Immaterial substances
Do not have extension
According to Cartesian dualism, minds are made of immaterial thinking
substance which does not occupy a place in space. The part of me that
thinks exists independently of the body.
>> To find out more about how Descartes argued for this position,
see Appendix 1.
Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia & the problem of causation
Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia was one of Descartes pupils. She pointed
out that physical things can only be changed by interaction with other
physical things. If the mind is immaterial (i.e. not physical) then how can
it instigate changes in the body, which are physical? It is clear that minds
cause behaviours it is my desire for juice that causes me to walk to the
fridge but how can this be on Descartes position? She challenged
Descartes to
[Explain] how the mind of a human being, being only a thinking
substance, can determine the bodily spirits in producing bodily
actions. For it appears that all determination of movement is
produced by the pushing of the thing being moved, by the manner
in which it is pushed by that which moves it, or else by the
qualification and figure of the surface of the latter. Contact is
required for the first two conditions, and extension for the third.
[But] you entirely exclude the latter from the notion you have of the
soul, and the former seems incompatible with an immaterial thing.
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Dr. J.S.Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, 1643. Cited Kim (2006, 41 -2)

Descartes faces the problem of explaining how minds can cause bodies to
move if they are made of substances which do not occupy a place in space.
Similarly, he will also need to explain how physical substances that we
ingest can affect our minds, as is the case with hallucinogens.
Further reading
Descartes 2nd and 6th Meditations. Many editions available.
ii. Identity theory

Physicalism is the view that all that exists is physical stuff, that is, stuff
which has extension. Therefore, whatever our explanation of mental
phenomena is, it cant go around citing immaterial stuff! This gets around
the problem of causation, because if mental phenomena consist in
physical stuff, just like our bodies, then they can interact with our bodies
to cause various behaviours.
On one view of physicalism mental phenomena, like thoughts and
emotions etc., are identical with certain physical phenomena, e.g. a
cocktail of chemicals in our heads. This is known as the identity theory.
The identity theory of physicalism with regards to mental states claims
that having a mental state consists in being in a particular physical state.
For example, being in pain is identical to your C-fibres firing and there is
nothing else to it than that. Identity theory is a reductive account of
mental states: it is reducing them to physical processes.
There are two ways of spelling out the identity theory, which rely on the
token/type distinction.
The token/type distinction
How many dogs were at Crufts last year?
This question could be interpreted in two ways. The questioner might be
asking about how many types of dogs (i.e. breeds) were at Crufts last year,
and the answer would be around 300. Alternatively, she could be asking
about how many individual dogs were at Crufts last year, in which case
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Dr. J.S.Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

the answer would be around 3,000. In the second case, philosophers

would say she is asking about how many dog tokens there were at Crufts.
If I were looking at two Bassett hounds, we would say that I was looking at
two tokens of the same type: I am looking at one type of dog (namely, the
Bassett hound type) and two instances of that type, referred to as tokens.
This matters for our discussion because when an identity theorist says
that mental phenomena are identical with physical phenomena, we want
to know whether she thinks:
a) That types of mental phenomena (e.g. the type feeling sad, or the
type feeling happy) are identical with types of physical phenomena
(e.g. that feeling sad can be reduced a particular chemical cocktail).
This is known as type- identity theory. 1
Or
b) That instances, or tokens, of mental phenomena are identical with
physical phenomena. On this view, you can just claim that the
happy feeling I had yesterday at 15:10 was identical with a physical
state. This is known as token- identity theory.
Type- identity theory claims that for every type of mental phenomenon
(feeling sad; feeling happy; wanting something or hating something) there
is a corresponding physical state. So pains are identical with C-fibre
activation2: my pain is identical with my C-fibres activation, and your pain
is identical with your C-fibres activation; my pain now is identical with Cfibre activation and my pain yesterday lunch time was also identical with
the activity of my C-fibres.
By contrast, token-identity theorists say that my pain yesterday was
definitely identical with a physical state. And my pain today is definitely
identical with a physical state. And your pain is identical with a physical
state. But these physical states might all be different: the first might be
neuron 24 firing, whilst the second is neuron 408 firing. All the token1

Strictly speaking type-type identity theory because it says types of mental

phenomena are identical with types of physical phenomena.
2
Philosophers love to talk about C-fibres as being identical with pain. But, really, we
know that the neural correlates of pain are much more complicated. We also like
discussing pain a lot, which gives a worrying insight into the profession.
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Dr. J.S.Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

identity theorist is committed to is that every mental phenomenon is

identical with some physical phenomenon.
Type- identity theory offers a stronger research program. It says that types
of physical states, e.g. a surge in endorphins, are identical with types of
mental state, e.g. feeling happy, and that this is the case for all humans.
A problem for type- identity theory
Hilary Putnam, in his 1967 paper The Nature of Mental States raised the
following objection to type-identity theory, arguing that it is too narrow.
Imagine that we find the cocktail of chemicals which we are certain is
type-identical to the mental state of feeling pain. Putnam says that all
weve done is find out the identity relation between pain and its physical
realisation in humans. Lets say, for the sake of argument, that octopus
brains are made up of totally different chemicals to human brains, but
that we have good reason to believe that these critters feel pain, e.g. they
withdraw from hot stimuli, they engage in avoidance behaviour around
those stimuli, we see a spike in their brain activity when they touch hot
things. Do we want to deny them pain because their brains are made up
of different stuff to ours? Of course not, says Putnam.
Multiple realisability
The key point for Putnam is that mental states are multiply realisable.
This just means that any mental state, e.g. the mental state of wanting a
pet beaver, can be instantiated in a variety of different physical systems.
It could be in a physical system made out of H2O and other chemicals
(like us) or a system made out of something totally different, like the
chemicals in an octopus brain.
To take a different example: in our society, money is made of bits of paper
and metal. But in other societies shells are used to trade with, and the
value of various things is measured in terms of how many shells they are
worth. In other societies still livestock serve the function that metal and
paper serve in our society. But cows, shells and bits of paper and metal
are all recognisable as currency in virtue of them all playing a particular
role (being traded for other objects, and being a unit of value). Currency
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Dr. J.S.Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

is thus multiply realisable: there are lots of different things that are
currency in different cultures, but they all share a common role.
iii. Functionalism
Putnams insight had a considerable impact on contemporary philosophy
of mind. He was saying that rather than thinking about mental
phenomena in terms of what they might be made of physically (because
this leads to all sorts of problems when it comes to non-humans) we
should be thinking about them in terms of what they do. This led to the
functionalist account of mental states. Functionalists claim that trying to
give an account of mental states in terms of what theyre made of is like
trying to explain what a chair is in terms of what its made of. What
makes something a chair is whether that thing can function as a chair: can
it support you sitting on it; does it have support for your back; does it
raise your sitting position up from the ground? Chairs can be made of lots
of different things, and look completely different, but what makes them
identifiable as chairs is the job that they do.
Putnams big claim was that we should identify mental states not by what
theyre made of, but by what they do. And what mental states do is they
are caused by sensory stimuli and current mental states and cause
behaviour and new mental states.

The belief that tigers are dangerous is distinct from the desire to hug a
tiger in virtue of what that belief does. The desire to hug a tiger would
cause me to rush towards the tiger with open arms, and it might be
caused by the belief that tigers are harmless human-loving creatures.
Whereas the belief that tigers are dangerous is caused by my previous
knowledge that tigers eat people and that creatures with big teeth are
dangerous, and causes running away behaviour as well as new mental
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Dr. J.S.Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

states such as the dislike of the person who let the tiger into the room in
the first place. To make the contrast with type-identity clearer: on a typeidentity view what makes the belief that tigers are dangerous distinct from
the desire to hug a tiger is the different chemical cocktails which those
states consist in. But functionalists say that this is wrong: what makes
each of these states distinct is their different functional roles. They might
also be made of different chemicals, but thats by-the-by. The interesting
difference lies in what causes them and what they do.
Part two: Mind as Computer
Functionalism provides the segue to the next aspect of this lecture,
namely, that it has become very popular to think about the mind as
analogous to a computer. Computers are information processing
machines: they take information of one kind, e.g. an electrical pulse
caused by the depression of a key, and turn it into information of another
kind, e.g. displaying a number on a screen. And one could argue that
minds are also information processing machines: they take information
provided by our senses and other mental states which we have, process it
and produce new behaviours and mental states. We individuate mental
states by the processes that they can engage in, processes which require
certain starting conditions (particular mental states and sensations) and
result in end conditions in the form of new mental states and behaviours.
The similarity goes further: what allows us to identify something as a
computer or a mind is what that thing does, and not what it is made of.
In this next part of the lecture, well look at some of the consequences of
the view that minds are computers.
iv. Turing machines
Computers come in varying degrees of complexity. There is a computer in
my washing-machine which controls the various cycles. There are also
computers which can generate complex probabilistic models which we
use to predict all kinds of phenomena: weather cycles, biological
degradation, wave formations etc. If minds are computing machines,
then how complex does an information-processing system need to be
before it counts as a mind? In his landmark paper Computing Machinery
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Dr. J.S.Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

and Intelligence (1950) Alan Turing (1912 1954) proposed the following
thought experiment as a response to this question.
Turing asks us to imagine three people, a questioner and two
respondents, a man and a woman. The questioner is in a different room
to the respondents, and can communicate with them via an instant
messenger style set-up: the questioner types questions which appear on
screens in front of the responding man and woman, who in turn can type
messages back. The task set to the questioner is to determine which of
the respondents, labelled only as X and Y, is the man, and which is the
woman. The mans task is to mislead the questioner into believing that he
is the woman, and the womans task is to help the questioner.
The next stage of the game is very similar, except that the man is replaced
by a computer, and the questioners task is to determine which of the
respondents is the human, and which is the computer. As before, the
computers task is to mislead the questioner into believing it is the
human, and the human-respondents task is to help the questioner.
Turings hypothesis was this: if a computer can consistently fool the
interrogator into believing that it is a human, then the computer has
reached the level of functional complexity required for having a mind.
(For a cinematic interpretation of the Turing Test, take a look at Ridley
Scotts Bladerunner ).
There are, as ever, objections to the hypothesis. It might be possible, for
example, that a machine with an extremely large database with a powerful
search engine passes the test. Thus, when asked what 84 13 is, the
machine whizzes to its set of files labelled possible subtraction sums,
pulls out the file labelled 84 13 (perhaps it is nestled between the files
labelled 84 14 and 84 12) and displays whatever it finds in that file.
And it does the same for questions like do you prefer your martinis
shaken or stirred or what are your views on Tarantino films? We would
be reluctant to label such a machine a thinking machine. This suggests
that Turings test is not sufficient for finding thinking machines, because
it does not take into account the internal structure of the machine. This
example is intended to show that the internal structure of a processing
machine matters when it comes to determining whether it is minded.
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Dr. J.S.Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

In addition to this concern, one might wonder if the Turing test is too
limited: surely there might be beings who cannot persuade the questioner
that they are human but who we nevertheless want to count as minded.
The Turing test relies on language, and it sets very narrow criteria for
minds, namely, that they must be like human minds. But it is not a very
big stretch of the imagination to conceive of aliens who appear to act
intelligently but who would not be able to pass the Turing test.
Further reading
Turing, A. (1950). Computing Machinery and Intelligence. Mind, 59, 433
460. There are also lots of free versions of the paper available on-line, and
it pops up in lots of philosophy of mind anthologies.
v. John Searles Chinese Room
The idea that the mind is a computing machine is certainly an attractive
one. However, there are problems with the view, and to finish Id like to
point to some of these using John Searles Chinese Room thought
experiment (1980). Searle asks us to imagine the following situation: you
are in a sealed room whose walls lined with books containing Chinese
symbols. For the sake of the experiment, we shall assume that you do not
understand any Chinese at all, in fact, you are so ignorant of Chinese that
you do not even know that the patterns in the book are linguistic symbols.
There is a slot leading into the room, through which occasionally come
pieces of paper with patterns on. You have a code-book which contains a
set of rules (written in English) which tells you what to do when particular
patterns are posted through the slot; usually this means going to one of
the books in the library, opening it to a particular page, and copying the
pattern you see there onto the piece of paper you have received, and
posting it back out through the slot. The code-book covers all possible
combinations of patterns that you might receive.
Now lets suppose that outside of the room is a native speaker of Chinese.
Unbeknownst to you, she is posting questions in Chinese through the slot,
and you are giving her coherent answers to these questions. Although
believes she is conversing with someone who understands Chinese, you
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Dr. J.S.Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

actually do not understand any Chinese at all, you dont even know that
you are engaged in a communicative act!
Searle is pointing to a fundamental issue facing the view that the mind is a
computing machine. Computers work by processing symbols. Symbols
have syntactic and semantic properties. Their syntactic properties are
their physical properties, e.g. shape. Their semantic properties are what
the symbol means, or represents. Thus, if I were to say let be the
symbol for start dancing, then its syntactic properties are that it has four
right angles and four equilateral sides, and its semantic property is that it
represents the instruction start dancing, and that in certain contexts
when we perceive this symbol we should start to dance.
Calculators, computers, etc. are symbol manipulating machines. But
importantly, they are only sensitive to the syntactic properties of symbols.
We program machines with rules that operate on the syntactic structure
of the symbols it receives. One rule might be If input A and input B
produce output A&B. The computer can do this operation just by
looking at the physical structure of the shapes.
The problem is that the computer does not know that it is manipulating
symbols that have semantic content any more than the person inside
Searles Chinese room knows she is manipulating Chinese characters.
This leads to a fundamental issue with the claim that the mind is a
computing machine: what part of the machine understands the symbols
that it is manipulating? With a computer it doesnt matter that the
machines processing has nothing to do with the semantic content of the
symbols, because it is the humans who use the machine that have this
information, we are the ones who give meaning to those symbols. But if
the mind is just a processor which operates on the syntactic properties of
symbols, then how can it produce a being who can understand the
meaning of the symbols? How can a mind think about dogs, when all it
recognises are the syntactic properties of that symbol? Where is the
programmer who deciphers the meaning of all the symbols?

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Dr. J.S.Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

The Chinese Room argument throws up all sorts of tricky questions,

discussion of which we shall have to leave for another day. Ill leave you
with one last puzzle.

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Dr. J.S.Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

Representation is a three way relation

What makes something a symbol or representation? We say that
something is a representation or symbol if it functions as one. When Im
at the pub, I might use beer-mugs and coasters to represent a particular
football formation on the table, and move them around to demonstrate
what happened in a game. The beer-mug is functioning to represent me
on the football pitch.
What we need to grasp here is that representation (including symbolic
representation) is a three way relation: X represents Y to Z; the beer-mug
represents my position on the field to my friends. But when it comes to
minds, its not clear what fills the place of Z: this neural activity represents
a dog to ???
Conclusions
The aim of this lecture was to introduce some of the core topics in
contemporary philosophy of mind. We began by looking at the merits of
physicalism over Cartesian Dualism. We then turned to how the
physicalist position has played out, first through identity theories and
then through functionalism. Functionalist was the catalyst for the
popular move to start thinking of minds as computers, information
processing machines which operate on the syntactic structures of
symbols. By thinking about our minds containing symbols which can
represent states of affairs, we begin to address one of the fundamental
questions in the philosophy of mind: how can thoughts be about things?
We have not touched on how a symbol-crunching machine could possess
consciousness. Indeed, we have side-stepped the issue of consciousness
altogether. That would be a topic for another day. We have also passed
over the intricacies of these debates: each of these topics would be
discussed over two or three weeks in our undergraduate classes! Despite
this, I hope the MOOC has given you some insight into some of the
puzzles which have inspired, and continue to intrigue, philosophers of
mind.

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Dr. J.S.Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

Further reading
Clark, A. (2001) Mindware: an introduction to the philosophy of cognitive
science O.U.P.
Crane, T. (1995) The Mechanical Mind Penguin
D. Hofstadter and D. C. Dennett (Eds.) The Minds I: Fantasies and
Reflections on Self and Soul Basic Books

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Dr. J.S.Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

Appendix 1: The argument from doubt

There are several arguments which Descartes offers for his dualistic
account of the mind, but the most famous is the argument from doubt
(Discourse, second meditation):
1. I can doubt the existence of everything around me
2. I cannot doubt the existence of my thoughts (my mind)
3. Therefore, my mind must be made of something fundamentally
different from everything else around me.
Descartes believed that this argument shows that the mind must be made
of a different substance to his body and other things found in the physical
world. This is because it has a property which physical things do not: its
existence cannot be doubted. To put it another way: I can imagine that
the physical world does not exist, but it is impossible for me to imagine
that I dont exist because there has to be something which is doing the
imagining! Hence the famous Cogito: I think therefore I am. In order to
think, there must be something which is doing the thinking (namely, me).
There are significant problems with this argument. Most pressing, as
pointed out by Leibniz (in his Philosophical Papers) and Arnauld (a
contemporary of Descartes) the argument is revealing about the nature of
the imagination (or doubt), but not necessarily about the nature of the
mind. Doubt is such that we cannot apply it to our own minds but this
does not tell us anything about the nature of the mind.
An example might help here.3 Lets imagine that I am unaware that Dr.
Jekyll is Mr. Hyde. I can imagine a scenario where Dr. Jekyll apprehends
Mr. Hyde and leaves him in the custody of the police, going home to a
warm supper whilst Mr. Hyde languishes in the cells cursing Jekyll. Yet
this imagining does not inform me of what is in fact possible. Rather, it
reveals a limitation on my knowledge which cannot be appreciated from
my current perspective. It is perfectly logical to state that if two things
have different properties then those two things distinct. But this doesnt
3

My thanks to Dr. Paul Sludds who thought of this example!

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Dr. J.S.Lavelle, University of Edinburgh

MOOC Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (January 2013)

hold once we throw psychological terms in there: If I believe two things

to have different properties then they are distinct. This is because my
belief might not match on to how the world actually is. I believe that Dr.
Jekyll has the property of being kind, and that Mr. Hyde lacks this
property (being a murdering psychopath), and I infer from this that
because Dr Jekyll has a property that Mr. Hyde lacks, they must be
distinct people. This believing, however, does not preclude the possibility
that they are identical.

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