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The emergence of mind from action and behavior. Juan Diego Morales jdmorales@unal.edu.co Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
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The emergence of mind from action and behavior Juan Diego Morales jdmorales@unal.edu.co Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Within the contemporary debate about the relationship between mind, action and behavior, we find the metaphysical assumption that causation is a relationship between entities only contingently related • This assumption separates the two main philosophical approaches of the twentieth century:
Whereas philosophers like Davidson and Fodor argue that the link between mind and action must be merely contingent, given that they are causally related, • authors like Ryle, Wittgenstein and Charles Taylor affirm that a merely contingent (and therefore, they say, causal) relation between mind and action is inconceivable, since that would imply accepting a Cartesian picture of a mind ontologically separated from the physical and public domains
In recent years the enactive and embodied approaches have tried make coherent the existence of both the causal and ontological links between action and mind, • but without clearly articulating the underlying metaphysical assumptions, which have led to criticisms about confusion between causation and constitution (Block, Adams, Aizawa, McLaughlin).
I want to argue that an emergentist approach can overcome these criticisms: • on such a view, mind is necessarily related to action because it is made out of, realized by, supervenient on, and emerges from actions and behaviors; • further, mind is causally related to action: mind causes a certain course of action in a downward way, by selecting and constraining the possibilities given on the lower behavioral level.
Some kind of warning • Due to time constraints, I will not defend the idea of emergence nor the associated notion of downward causation (which I have tried to do elsewhere), but only expose their main features, allowing us to understand how there can be an emergence relationship between action and mind. • Nor I will clearly articulate the relation between action and behavior, assuming that both consist of bodily movements and states, where the former is a higher level property of the last.
Emergence • We can see emergentism, the doctrine proposed by such early-twentieth century philosophers as Samuel Alexander, C. Lloyd Morgan and C. D. Broad, as a form of nonreductivephysicalism. • The fundamental idea of emergentism is that there are systems (wholes) having properties that their constituent parts don’t have, and that cannot be reduced to the properties of these parts.
Although irreducibility is a necessary condition for a nonphysical/emergent property, it is not sufficient. • A property may be different from the basic physical properties on which it supervenes, be irreducible to the latter, and nevertheless be epiphenomenal. • However, if the instantiation of an irreducible and emergent property do not have a causal influence on the world, it would be impossible to consider it as real.
This is precisely the so-called Alexander’s Dictum: to be real is to have causal powers. • I want to affirm that only if the mental properties are entities with causal influence in a world that is fundamentally physical, • only then we can say that these properties are real and irreducible, part of the causal network that is the world.
In this sense, mental properties must exert causal influence on a fundamentally physical world, that is, there must be some form of downward causation from the mental level to the physical one. • But just because the relation between mind and matter is ontological (of supervenience, realization and emergence), this relation cannot be given in just any way, but only through the appearance of a new organization of the old physical elements. • As the “selection” or constriction the higher level exerts on the lower, instantiating some of the latter’s possible configurations over others (this proposal is inspired by the independent work of Alicia Juarrero and Robert Van Gulick).
The emergence of mind from action and behavior • Some of the early philosophers to undertake the task of understanding a constitutive link between action and mind, although from a purely conceptual standpoint, were Wittgenstein and Ryle. • Nonetheless, it is not until the works of Varela, Thompson & Rosch (1991) and Andy Clark (1997), that both contemporary philosophy of mind, but especially cognitive science, begin to re-introduce the idea of a mind intrinsically bound to body, action and the surrounding world.
In fact, one of the crucial distinctions between the enactive/embodied/extended perspectives and those of Wittgenstein and Ryle, lies in the possibility of mental science. • Wittgensteinian analysis showed the internal and constitutive relation between mind and action, but did not allow for any empirical and scientific explanation of such a link.
This was because, according to the orthodox (Humean) position on the subject of causation and scientific explanation, empirical and causal relationships can only be sustained between logically and ontologically distinct, separable entities. • Unfortunately, Wittgenstein and Ryle helped to keep alive both this traditional view of causation and its corollary: the notion of a merely conceptual connection between mind and action.
Alva Noë is one of the authors who have argued most strongly about the idea of a constitutive relation between mind and action, claiming, for example, that “perceiving is a way of acting.” (Noë 2004 1) • The problem with Noë’s position is that it does not develop nor articulate a clear explanation of the alleged constitutive connection. • Authors such as Ned Block (2005), Adams & Aizawa (2009), and even Clark himself (2006) highlight this point.
Although Noë’s argument is based on a multiplicity of empirical evidence showing the interdependency between perception and motor and behavioral contingencies, these impressive results only show, as Ned Block affirms, “that sensorimotor contingencies have an effect on experience, not that experience is even partially constituted by--or supervenes, constitutively on--bodily activity.” (Block 2005 4-5)
Even Clark’s new arguments (2006) about the essential coupling between mind and body, are subject to this criticism. • For example Adams & Aizawa argue that the coupling arguments commit what they call the coupling-constitution fallacy: “The pattern of reasoning here involves moving from the observation that process X is in some way causally connected (coupled) to a process Y of type ϕ to the conclusion that X is part of a process of type ϕ” (Adams & Aizawa 2009 81).
It seems that neither Noë nor Clark have given sufficient reason to accept that the body as a whole should be considered as the realizer and supervening basis of (and not simply a causal element only contingently related with) the mental process. • Further, they also do not examine carefully the kind of causal relationship that exists between mind and behavior, and the kind of metaphysical criticism that philosophers like Jaegwon Kim have developed about the very idea of an interlevelcausal connection .
From this picture we can develop two classic arguments from the philosophy of mind that can serve to support a perspective in which both the whole body and the behavior are the realizers and the constitutive bases of mental processes.
In the first case, following Dennett ([1969] 2000) - who in turn is based on the analysis of Wittgenstein and Ryle - one might argue for making a categorical distinction between what this author calls personal and subpersonal levels of explanation, and sustains that we make a category mistake when we attribute clearly personal states as beliefs, feelings, opinions and desires to the brain.
Thus, given that mental properties are only attributable to people (and animals), and because it is clear that neither the brain - nor any part of the body - is a person (or an animal), we cannot attribute mental properties, states or events to the brain. To make this attribution is what Bennett & Hacker call a mereological fallacy (2003 72).
In second place, we can revisit and slightly alter the externalist argument that Tyler Burge has developed through several writings in favor of a non-individualistic and non-internalist determination of mental states, according to which, as he argues, psychological kinds “presuppose individuative methods that make essential reference to the environment surrounding instances of those kinds.” (Burge [1986] 2007 233).
Suppose neuropsychology finds that pleasure in humans is always correlated with the neuronal state P. • Following the idea that mental properties are completely determined by the internal properties of the brain, in this case the individualist will argue that the neural state P is identical to the state of pleasure; that when we talk about pleasure, we really talk about a neuronal state P.
However, we can imagine counterfactual cases in which brains of people (neuron by neuron, atom by atom) have their same stories considered regardless of their most direct physical environments, that is, regardless of the rest of their bodies. • Now, in the counterfactual environment there can be significant behavioral differences in reference to the actual situation: neuronal state P is prone to be caused by damage to tissues and prone to cause grimaces and groans. In this case, people who have the neuronal state P will not experience pleasure; in fact they will experience pain.
Thus, behavioral differences in the counterfactual environment show that mental states such as pleasure and pain cannot be determined solely by the properties of brain states; • their determination requires that brain states fulfill a defined function necessarily appealing to properties outside the brain: the properties of the bodily movements and behaviors of people who have them.
Finally, I would like to address the problem professors Aizawa & McLaughlin (2012) develop against the embodied perspective, based on the so called anesthetic awareness cases. These are surgical operations cases wherein “the patient is (inadvertently) given too little hypnotic and so remains to some extent awake.” (16)
As the authors say: • The cases of anesthetic awareness that especially concern us are those in which the paralytic drug is a neuromuscular blocker that successfully renders the patient completely paralyzed. (18) […] Although the patient feels intense pain, panic and anxiety, there are no physiological signs of these such as increased heart rate, rise in blood pressure, sweating , formation of tears, or dilation of pupils. (20) […] Cases of anesthetic awareness in which the patient experiences emotions despite complete paralysis show, we maintain, that emotional experience does not consist, even in part, of experiencing bodily movements or even the ability to perform bodily movements. (25) […] These cases are counterexamples to the emotion embodiment thesis. (26)
Here we have real empirical cases wherein there are plenty of mental states without what we could call bodily movements, or even their possibility. • Now, how is that we have to understand them? • The conclusion of professors Aizawa & McLaughlin is that the Emotion Embodiment Thesis, that is, the idea “that emotion experience necessarily constitutively involves experiences of bodily movement or at least the possibility for bodily movement” (2012 6), is clearly false. • In this paper I can agree with them.
Nonetheless, I think that the present point is not about the constitutive relation between some kinds of mental states (e.g. emotions) and other kinds of mental states (e.g. experiences of bodily movement or experiences of the possibility for bodily movement), but about all kinds of mental states and bodily movements, actions and behaviors.
At first glance, this idea seems even more problematic because, as in the anesthetic awareness cases, the subjects cannot even move any of their bodily parts. • How is it possible that completely paralyzed people can have rich mental phenomena? • Does this mean that mental properties are primarily instantiated in the brain? • That the brain is the realizer of the mental properties? • My answer is: “no”.
The embodied explanation of this kind of phenomena, I suggest, should be like this: • Brain states are shaped to function as both causal and informational responses to, and in coordination with, mental states, intentions and thoughts of individuals, but also with their behavioral expressions. • So brain mechanisms are part of the realizer of the pain (core realizers in Shoemaker’s terminology (2007)), only because such functional association with behaviors.
As we have seen with the Burge’s kind of arguments, if the brain state associated with the pain did not have the normal causal function, then we will not call it (part of) the pain’s realizer but (part of) the realizer of another kind of mental state, maybe pleasure.
Now, in the anesthetic awareness cases the crucial point about realization, constitution, supervenience and emergence, is that some of the causal and control mental mechanisms, that is, their efferent mechanisms, are inhibited . • But their afferent mechanisms are intact: there is information going on from the different parts of the body to the brain, and it is for this reason that the person has these horrendous experiences. • Although the brain mechanisms do not cause the behavioral expressions of the mental states, it receives causal information from the bodily parts.
Now, this peripheral information is constitutive part of the mental phenomena because, again, the brain states are part of the realizers of the mental phenomena only because their causal and functional connections with the referred afferent mechanisms. • If the same brain states were normally caused by completely different afferent processes, then they would be the core realizers of different mental states; as in the imagined example, they would be the core realizers of pleasure states, not of the pain states.
Just because both afferent and efferent processes are constitutive and defining parts of the mental states (even when they are not working in normal and common ways), • we can say that the mental properties are still realized by the person and her whole body; the whole system of her brain, heart, hands, eyes, and so on.
As conclusion… • We have reached an analysis of mind and behavior that articulates a double kind of relationship: • (i) the former is realized by, and emerges from behaviors. In a word: no mind without behavior. • (ii) mental states are causally related to behaviors in such a way that they determine that certain courses of action occur instead of another.
As conclusion… • The first point allows us to overcome the traditional ontological and epistemological problems about the mind-body and mind-world connections, • while the second show us there is an objective empirical link between mind, body and behavior that can be studied by the special sciences.
Thank you very much… • Cited works: • Adams, F. & Aizawa, K. Why the Mind is Still in the Head. In P. Robbins and M. Aydede (eds.) Cambridge Handbook of Situated Cognition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 78–95). 2009. • Aizawa, K. & McLaughlin B. Is Emotion Kinesthetic? Presentation at the Workshop on Giovanna Colombetti’sThe Feeling Body: Affective Science Meets the Enactive Mind. Department of Cognition Science, University of Osnbrueck, June 19, 2012. • Block, N. Review of action in perception. J PhilosCII(5):259–272. Downloaded from: http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/philo/faculty/block/papers/Shortened_Noe_Review_JoP.pdf. 2005. • Burge, Tyler. Individualism and Psychology. In: Foundations of Mind. Philosophical Essays, Volume 2 (2007). Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2007, [1986]. • Clark, A. Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge: Mass.: MIT Press. 1997. • Clark, A.Vision as dance: three challenges for sensorimotor contingency theory. In: Psyche 12.1, downloaded from: http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/bitstream/1842/1444/1/Psyche%20Clark.pdf, 2006. • Clark, A. Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (Oxford: Oxford University Press). 2008. • Dennett, D. Personal and Sub-personal Levels of Explanation.In J. L. Bermúdez (Ed.), Philosophy of Psychology.Contemporary Readings, New York: Routledge. [1969] 2000. • Noë, Alva. Action in perception. The MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004. • Shoemaker, Sydney. Physical realization. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. • Varela, F., Thompson, E. & Rosch, E. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. MIT Press. 1991.
