Mental Externalism

Narrow Content

content depends only on internal factors - inside the head

Wide Content (Content Externalism)

content depends on external factors - environment

Twin Earth Argument For Wide Content - Hilary Putnam

1. there is a planet that is exactly like earth

2. the only difference is the chemical structure of the stuff in rivers and lakes (H20 → XYZ)

3. Oscar, who is on earth, believes that water quenches thirst not that twin water quenches thirst (because he has no beliefs of XYZ)

4. Oscar’s twin on twin earth believes twin water quenches thirst and not that water quenches thirst (because he has no beliefs of H20)

5. So despite being internal duplicate, they have different beliefs

6. this is because what they believe depends on the chemical structure of the external environment

Reductive Theories of Intentionality

try to explain intentionality in terms of something else

• indicator → co variation under normal conditions

• teleological → biological functions

• pragmatic → choice dispositions

Do Indicator Theories Support Twin Earth Wide Content

yes: indication is a relation between an internal state and something in the environment
what a state indicates depends on what in the environment actually causes it

Do Teleological Theories Support Twin Earth Wide Content

yes: what it was selected to represent might be different on twin earth - check the evolutionary history which is outside of you

Do Pragmatic Theories Support Twin Earth Wide Content

No: what someone believes is a matter of how they are disposed to choose when given options which entail narrow content

Social Externalism

meaning of words and the content of our thoughts are determined, in part, by external social factors and linguistic practices of our community

Twin Earth Arthritis - Tylor Burge

• there exists earth and a physical duplicate called twin earth

• the only difference is how people in the community use the word arthritis

• on earth arthritis is a disease of the joints

• on twin earth the word arthritis is a disease of the bone (this would translate to myositis on earth)

• Ralph has limited medical knowledge about what arthritis is exactly

• Ralph has a pain in his thigh and he believes it is arthritis (false)

• Ralph’s twin believes he has myositis in his thigh (we have to translate the term) TRUE

• internal duplicates can have different beliefs - which are contradictory

• therefore what someone believes depends on their social environment

Content Inheritance Hypothesis

1. competent speaker often doesn’t fully grasp the meaning of their words (ie. arthritis, mass, elm) ie. Ralph

2. when we use these words, we can form thoughts and beliefs

3. these beliefs inherit their content from the public meaning of those words

language of thought becomes a public language

Belief Reports

what we report as belief content is a combination of the actual belief content with an external fact

we can use this to explain away wide content

the belief itself has narrow content but when we report a belief it seems like there is wide content because our belief reports are a combination of internal beliefs and external facts

Belief Reports and Pierre

1. Pierre is a French speaker who has seen photos of London under the name Londres and believe it is pretty

2. Pierre is abducted and taken to London and he thinks it is ugly

3. when we describe Pierre’s beliefs there are two contradictory beliefs but we are reluctant to say he has an inconsistent representation of reality

4. Pierre is just lacking a fact (that Londres is London)

5. internally Pierre has two consistent beliefs about two different cities so it is his belief reports that are making him look inconsistent by misdescribing his mind

Dualist / Phenomenal Theories of Intentionality

intentional facts are primitive and irreducible

Phenomenal Character

1. conscious visual experiences have an irreducible “inner” aspect

   1. what is is like to have current visual experience - impossible without focusing on how experience presents the world (phenomenal character)

2. this aspect presents the world as being a certain way - it determines the content of the experience (intentionality)

3. therefore: that the visual experience has a particular content is irreducible

Issues with Phenomenal Theories of Intentionality

• a book has content and no phenomenal character so how does it get to have it’s content

• other mental states such as beliefs or memories have content but not phenomenology

  • we have beliefs but don’t pay attention to them

Phenomenal Concepts Strategy

a defence of physicalism using wide content to explain away anti-physicalist intuitions

we have two different concepts ie. pain and c-fibres firing for one fact

different so we cannot deduce truths from one using truths from another (inferential gap)

Pierre → has two concepts LONDRES + LONDON → they are the same concept but he doesn’t recognise this + cannot infer one from the other

this also works against Mary - two concepts for the same fact about red

Type A Physicalism

all facts are entailed by physical facts and all true statements can be deduced from true statements in the language of physics

Type B Physicalism

all facts are entailed by physical facts but not all true statements can be deduced from true statements in the language of physics

Objection to Type B Physicalism

• if this view were correct there would probably be a lot of uncontroversial examples

• in the Pierre example he lacks a completely ordinary piece of information

Classical Cognitive Science

in normal humans, the physical basis of mental processes is located inside the brain

• always some brain state that gives rise to mental states

Embodied Cognition

the physical basis of some mental processes includes events elsewhere in the body (thinking with gestures, counting on fingers, writing)

• the activity is part of your thinking / not just in your brain

Social Cognition

the physical basis of some mental processes includes events in the subject’s social environment eg. combined memory efforts

• trying to remember christmas 5 years ago with family - trigger each others memories

Extended Mind

the physical basis of some mental processes includes events in the non social environment (calculators, notebooks)

• imagine someone whose normal memory doesn’t function well + so the notebook takes over the function that normal memory has

Biological Naturalism

consciousness requires a biological brain

Substrate-Neutrality

consciousness only requires state with a certain functional profile

Identity Theory - BN or SN

f pain = c-fibre firing, nothing without c-fibre firing can be in pain
entails biological naturalism

multiple realisability - for octopuses what causes pain might be different so why can this not also apply for computers

Functionalism - BN or SN

combination of causal inputs and outputs so it just needs a certain causal structure → SN
fine grain functionalism holds that the functional roles can only be realised by biological brains → BN

Property Dualism - BN or SN

which physical systems have these properties depends on the laws (or powers) that connect the physical with the mental

Chalmers: The basic law links experience to informational structure. Any system with the right informational structure is conscious. (substrate-neutrality)

Hasker: Brains have a basic power to generate experiences. Silicon chips may or may not have this power.

Arguments For Biological Naturalism

1) we know that certain brain states are a physical basis for consciousness and we know that a computational state of a calculator is not a physical basis for consciousness → making a calculator more complex won’t make it conscious

2) we could build a functional duplicate of a mouse out of metal and this contraption would not be conscious - so consciousness is not a functional role but it arises from the intrinsic nature of certain brain states

3) we could replace the brain with a functionally identical system in which the neurons have been replaced by the citizens of China - this system has the same structure + functional role as the original brain but surely this is not consciousness

Arguments For Substrate Neutrality

1) if consciousness needs a biological brain then which feature of biology is this? what specific part makes the difference
is it: the ions in the cell membranes, the evolutionary history? none of these look like they could matter
living ‘organic’ chemistry is the same as inorganic chemistry (metals, silicon, salts) so why does a brain need to be biological

2) if we find sophisticated alien life that doesn’t have the same ions or same membranes it would be absurd and chauvinistic to say they can’t be conscious

3) if we gradually replace neurons with synthetic but functionally identical neurons, you will behave the same throughout - so at what point do you become somehow not conscious

Computational Functionalism

mental states are computational states and the brain is the hardware the mind runs on
consciousness arises in any systems that realises the right abstract functional profile
entails substrate neutrality