How do the following themes help us to clarify the relationship between mental properties and physical properties: Neurophysiology? Free will? Artificial Intelligence? Language?

The long running debate between dualists and monists of the relationship between mental and physical properties has taken in many topics for consideration. Whether the themes have clarified the relationship between mental properties and physical properties is in question. The vast range covered by the themes and the questions that they pose does not clarify the relationship between mental and physical properties at all.

In 1942, an eminent neurophysiologist, Sir Charles Sherrington, described the workings of the nervous system as an ‘enchanted loom’. He believed that thought escaped the remit of natural science to measure and explain. Since then remarkable advances have been made in remote sensing technology. More of the inner workings of the brain can be shown without harm or hindrance to the organ.

Causality, whether the effect is or is not different from its cause, has been applied to the mind. A theory of the mind called epiphenomenalism claims that electro-chemical energy causes the occurrence of thoughts. A neurophysiological state within the brain causes a mental event such as a want or desire. Thus mental life can be determined by the arrangement of physical conditions. Neurophysiology claims that there are no mental properties independent of physical properties.

From determinist theories such as this Free Will has been put in doubt. There can be no free will if thought and act can be determined by physical cause and effect. Unless, that is, there is a dualist theory of the mind having properties detached from physical laws of causality. To keep causality and reject duality another theory proposes that there is a rule between mental and physical events, but that mental events themselves need not be datable – so the lack of such a rule is anomalous monism.

A category mistake may have been made between the direct perception of a physical object, that conforms to causality, and the beliefs and wants of an individual that do not conform to causality. Hence the beliefs, wants and reasons encompassing the mind of an individual, and so their free will, is not compromised by determinism. Sir Charles Sherrington could have been an unwitting anomalous monist.

There are other approaches to free will. There is a certain subjectivity to all physical causes. Physical causes are only relevant to a subject. The world of free will is now populated by decisions and responsibilities to oneself and others. It is a moral and ethical world rather than a physicalist world.

Aristotle put forward the view that a human being had an ethical duty to himself and a political duty to others. Aristotle’s mental properties were to do with voluntary action and responsibility. Although there were involuntary acts that the physicalist would agree with, Aristotle would have non-voluntary actions motivated by ignorance and voluntary, or ethical, actions that were of a non-determinist nature.

Sartre would propose that the individual is the important determining factor. Physical conditions affect the individual to the extent that there are limits to their freedom (facticity), but that the individual’s inner mental life transcends the physical limits. That an individual’s entire life is determined by physical causes is only one interpretation of reality that rejects any subjectivity (life is inauthentic). So matter, physical forces and causality, are being-in-itself whilst consciousness is being-for-itself. The essential mental properties of an individual are for them to develop throughout their life regardless of physical properties.

A functionalist interpretation of the mind has gained ground due its analogy with the computer. The geometrically increasing power of the computational speed of the computer, together with advances in data storage and communications networks has led to topical discussions as of the ‘intelligence’ of the machines. Popular evidence for Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) are Grand Master Chess players being beaten by super computers. The emergence of enough computing power to make virtual reality viable for training and recreational purposes holds intriguing glimpses into a world of intelligent machines controlling environment, and thus, us.

If the functionalist is correct then input, process and output are all there is to the mind. The thinking can be reduced to machine code. The working of the human mind is analogous to the working of the modern computer.

There are arguments against this. To reduce the thinking to machine code requires a human programmer. No original thought has been acquired by the machine independently of its human programmer. John Searle would also argue that the syntactic forms of thought are well met by computers, but the semantics, or meanings, behind a sentence, question or machine instruction are beyond the machine’s comprehension. The difference between human reasoning and machine working is that of representation. We work with signs and attach meanings, whilst computers work with rules to process those signs.

Functionalists would argue that Searle’s Chinese Room argument against A.I. is misrepresenting their case. The entire system of (a) input of symbols by the Chinese, (b) processing by the ‘homonculus’ of the English speaker and their rule book, and (c) the output of the Chinese symbols, is an intelligent system.

The problem of semantics still remains. There is still a question as to whether a machine may learn by its mistakes. The English speaker in the Chinese room may one day learn the semantics of the rule book, especially if there is feedback from the English speaker’s output to the next questions being input. Whether a machine may learn is another question.

In the past Philosophers have represented thought as a picture theory. The Mind’s eye represents and makes sense of images. This does not take into account the thoughts of blind people. Nor does it rid us of the homunculus, or mind within a mind, making sense of the outside world.

Later Philosophers have offered language as the medium of thought, whether that is spoken language, Braille or other sign languages. There is no homunculus, as the language every one thinks in is public, open to scrutiny for meaning. Wittgenstein talked of language games in which it was impossible to identify the mind outside of language as we were already within the language game.

There is no room for dualism within this language game. In fact there is no meaning to be attached to discussing the relationship between mental and physical properties under language games.

Language as a medium of thought has been applied by mathematical sciences such as Cybernetics. Evidence that the control of communications (such as language) can influence a system (such as a human being) has been given since Norbert Weiner’s work of the 1940’s and ‘50’s. If the inputs are controlled, the processing (through the medium of language) can be shown to be controlled by what is output (the behaviour of the individual, society or any complex system). Cybernetics has also highlighted the complexities of the inputs and outputs needed to control the processing. That cause and effect can be simply used to control a system has been shown not to be possible.

The discussed themes help us to clarify the relationship between mental and physical properties in some ways. The physicalist monists of Determinism question the division of mental and physical properties whilst the anomalous monists prefer a subjective difference. Theories of language would have us believe that there are no mental properties that can be described. The mainly deterministic neurophysiologists would describe any discernable mental properties entirely in physical terms.

In other ways the discussed themes do not clarify the relationship at all. Despite the scientific and technological advances in neurophysiology and cognitive science there is still space left for separate mental properties to be discussed and characterised. However minute that space may be. The uncertainty left by quantum physics has left scope for criticism of any deterministic characterisation of the thought process. Free Will may be more statistical and probabilistic in nature but enough room has been left for doubt.

The age of the computer and its all encompassing computational uses still leads to dangers of proof by analogy. That a binary machine still essentially using 1950’s devised architecture for ‘thinking’ could be analogous to millions of years of evolutionary ‘wetware’ is naïve to the point of insulting.

George Graham Philosophy of Mind, Second Edition, Blackwell 1998.

Roger Scruton Modern Philosophy, Arrow, 1994. Especially chapter 16, ‘The Soul’.

New Scientist ‘Can Brains be Conscious?’ http://www.newscientist.com/nsplus/insight/big3/conscious/2b.html ,1997.