Physicalist models of the mind

Phyicalist models of the mind

Over the years, many people have tried to explain how the mind works and how mind and brain relate and most of them assume that physicalism is true. There are a number of books, and parts of books, which give good overviews of them such as:[Papineau 2002][Blackmore 2003][Heil 1998][Ravenscroft 2005].

All of them hit a problem when they consider consciousness, the fact that there is “something it is like” to be a human. No matter how well we model the brain, the fact remains that we are no nearer to explaining what consciousness is or how it arises. As Levine states, an explanatory gap [Levine 1983] stubbornly remains between consciousness which we know exists by direct experience and descriptions of brain or mind.

Researchers respond to that in different ways ranging from saying that consciousness is a mystery which we can never solve to a complete denial that there is a problem at all, even to the extent of denying that consciousness exists. Christof Koch compares this latter view, eliminativism, as akin to Cotard’s syndrome, a psychiatric condition in which patients deny being alive! [Koch 2019]

Intuitively the mind and the brain seem like very different entities. What does the feeling of pain or joy or the feelings associated with seeing a work of art have in common with the physical workings of a brain? No link, other than some unexplained correlations, have so far been found.

On the basis of the physicalist presupposition, it is not possible to find an explanation for consciousness because Physicalism has implicitly ruled it out.

Those who take the view that there is nothing more to the mind than the material it is made of tend to reject quite vehemently any suggestion that there is more to minds than this, eg. [Papineau 2002].

According to Dennis Dennett, “Accepting Dualism is giving up”.[Dennett 1991]p 91. Hardly a scientific approach!

The majority of models of brain and mind start from what can be observed from the outside, or “third party” observations. These, in contrast to phenomenal experience, can be measured and are publicly observable, therefore amenable to the methods of science. Some theories of this type aim to solve the problem of phenomenal consciousness by this route, others ignore phenomenal consciousness altogether and yet others would deny that there is a problem at all.

Essentially physicalism tries to reverse engineer the mind on the basis of its outputs in response to different inputs. Consciousness is ignored or side-stepped.

Flavours of physicalism

There are many physicalist theories of the mind. The fact that there are so many seems to point to there being an underlying flaw in the starting assumptions. For instance:

Because of the limits of physicalism, none of these can adequately address phenomenal consciousness. Something more is needed.

Back to “Who are Humans?”
Onwards to “Beyond Physicalism”