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MIND AND BRAIN – MIDTERM8 questions about the conscious mind
Preface:
How does the brain generate the conscious mind?
David Chalmers: ‘’Conscious experience is at once the most familiar thing in the world and
the most mysterious.’’
We all have some idea of what consciousness is, but that idea is far from clear. We rely on
our intuitions or on the people we consider to be authorities in this area, like priests,
scientists or philosophers.
This book aims to provide you with basic possible answers to the questions what
consciousness is and what its place in the world is, no longer relying on authorities or your
intuitions.
According to a Science survey, we don’t know the answer to 125 questions. For example:
‘’What is the biological basis of consciousness?’’
Eight questions are selected in this book. Most of the questions are concerned with the
place of the conscious mind in the physical world.
About half of the Western population believe in the separability thesis: the thesis that the
mind can exist and function separately from the physical world.
Mental entities – physical entities.
Question 1: What is the conscious mind?
A bar in Oslo
Hans Dooremalen is sitting at a bar, thinking of a good friend he uses to sit with at a bar in
Amsterdam.
Taking the mind seriously
Mental states: for example, drinking coffee, feeling emotions, having thoughts about a city.
Together, such states form the conscious mind. No one will deny these mental states.
Experiences, thought and emotions exist is beyond any doubt. Doubting this would in itself
be a mental state, thereby providing the point that the conscious mind does indeed exist.
(Makes me think of cogito ergo sum – Descartes)
Saying that the conscious mind exists, we can move on and try to answer questions about
the nature of the conscious mind and how it fits into the physical world.
Preliminary characterization of what the mind is: three types of mental states, three
questions about how these mental states fit into our world.
A preliminary characterization of the conscious mind
The coffee I drink at home is different, even better, than the coffee at this bar in my
hometown. There is a qualitative difference. This difference is established by tasting. There
is a difference in the two experiences of drinking coffee. There is a difference in quality.
Drinking coffee or seeing beauty both have qualitative aspects = qualia (singular quale).
Thomas Nagel: qualia = what-it-is-likeness. When our senses are stimulated, we have all
kinds of experiences.
1. Phenomenal experiences: all phenomenal experiences have a feel to them. They are
characterized by their qualitative feel, what-it-is-likeness. Phenomenal = how something
feels, how something appears to us, how something is experienced.
For example: bats use echolocation. It is a sense humans do not possess, so we can
never know it is like to experience it.
2. Cognitive state: can be characterized by saying that they possess intentionality = being
about something/aboutness. A cognitive state is a type of representation.
, For example: my thought about my friend in the bar in Amsterdam clearly is about my
friend and the bar in Amsterdam.
Intentionality in this case is not about intending: doing something on purpose.
Intentionality is the propositional attitude.
For example: the English sentence ‘’I like coffee’’ and its Dutch translation ‘’Ik hou van
koffie’’ both express the same proposition. They have the same meaning. You may have
different stances or attitudes towards a proposition, like knowing, believing, hoping or
wondering. Propositional attitudes have intentionality.
There are mental states with only one of these properties (what-it-is-likeness/qualia and
intentionality/aboutness).
For example: if you close your eyes and press your eyelids, you see (colored) stars. You also
know that they have nothing to do with real stars. You have an experience that possesses
what-it-is-likeness but not aboutness. There are mental states characterized by qualia and
mental states characterized by intentionality.
3. Emotion: an emotion not only has a phenomenal feel, it is about something as well.
For example: if one person says: ‘’I feels so good to be in love again’’, you take this
experience as an indication that someone has a new crush, since when you are in love,
this phenomenal feeling is directed towards someone: it is about someone. When that
person says, ‘’I’m in love with no one, but it feels really good’’, that would be strange. It
is not only a phenomenal feel, it is about something as well.
The conscious and the unconscious mind
We must distinguish the conscious from the unconscious mind.
The relation between the conscious and the unconscious mind is that the states of the
unconscious mind can become conscious given the right circumstances.
For example: most of our memories are unconscious initially, but they can become
conscious.
There is a lot going on inside of you that you will never be conscious of.
Some states neither belong to the conscious nor the unconscious mind. Such states of
course are not conscious, in a sense, they are unconscious, but these states are not mental
states because they lack the ability to become conscious states.
For example: the brain state that regulates your heartbeat.
The mind-body problems
How do these states generate problems?
The central mind-body problem: how the conscious mind fits into the physical world.
Three mental states = three mind-body problems.
1. Problem 1: how do phenomenal experiences fit into the physical world?
2. Problem 2: How do cognitive states fit into the physical world?
3. Problem 3: How do emotions fit into the physical world?
But there are only two properties: qualia and intentionality. We actually have two problems.
1. Problem 1: How do qualia fit into the physical world?
2. Problem 2: How does intentionality fit into the physical world?
Consciousness and cognition
Cognition = used to refer to the part of the mental states that have aboutness. Cognitive
states are mental states that can also be conscious states. They can become conscious.
Many cognitive states are mental states while not being part of the conscious mind, but they
do have the ability to become part of it.
Consciousness = used to refer to the phenomenal states of the mind. A phenomenal state is
by definition conscious.
This does not mean that cognitive states are never conscious states.
Taking science seriously
The debate about the conscious mind = philosophical <-> metaphysical.
, Metaphysics tells us what is beyond nature. No science about this relation then?
Metaphysics is the type of philosophy that does not take into account what science has
discovered about the world: it chooses fantasy and speculation over our best way to gain
knowledge about and insight into our world.
For example: David Hume said that books containing claims that had nothing to do with
either logic or empirical data should be committed to the flames, for they can contain
nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Dooremalen: the problem about the conscious mind and its place in nature must be
answered by science, because science is our best way of finding out what the world is and
how it works. We don’t need philosophy alone, we also need science.
Why philosophy?
1. It asks questions about important concepts.
2. It brings together data from different scientific fields and comes up with testable
hypotheses that scientists might not propose.
3. Philosophers are trained to discover false reasoning.
Conclusion and preview
Not important.
Question 2: Can the mind function separately from the brain?
A bar in Paris
Hans Dooremalen accompanied a dear friend to Paris.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Separability thesis = Many people accept the idea that the mind can exist and function
separately from the physical world.
Inseparability thesis = the idea that the mind cannot function separated from a physical
body.
René Descartes was the most influential proponent of the separability thesis. He responded
to skeptics like Michel Eyquem de Montaigne.
Skeptics argue that we can never be certain about anything, and that we will always have to
postpone our judgments.
Michel Eyquem de Montaigne came to see that there was nothing he could be sure of: any
claim was open for doubt. However, if you say you know for certain that you do not know
anything for certain, you are already making a knowledge claim, making him not conclude
that he did not know anything for certain. He merely posed the question: What do I know?
Descartes’ method of doubt
René Descartes was not satisfied with the skeptical conclusion that we do not know anything
for certain: he desired true knowledge about the world. But how should
one proceed to gain true knowledge?
In a way, he was a skeptic: he doubted everything he could doubt.
René Descartes did not trust other humans, since they had not always told
the truth. Someone could lie or simply be wrong.
The same goes for senses. We all have had the experience of visual
illusions Lyer illusion, The Müller.
Thought experiment:
1. So if our senses deceive us sometimes (visual illusions), how can we be sure they do not
deceive us at all times?
2. To make it worse, René Descartes said that he could be conceived of a malicious
almighty demon.
Is there anything then which René Descartes can know with absolute certainty? Yes. ‘’Just
the one fact that nothing is certain.’’
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