[Wittrs] Re: When is "brain talk" really dualism?
- From: gprimero <gerardoprim@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Wittrs@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 15 Aug 2009 12:51:50 -0700 (PDT)
(Stuart) Do we have a mental life or not? By "mental life" I mean
mental images, thoughts, memories, beliefs, sensations, etc. When we
sleep do we dream? When we're awake can we daydream? When we're not
paying attention to our immediate surroundings but lost in thought,
are there mental things going on? When we meditate do we run the risk
of being lost in our own thoughts? Do we have minds or is the word
"mind" a misnomer, a non-starter or simply another word for "brain"?
(I'll leave the discussion of what dualism is to a later stage
assuming we reach it.)
(Gerardo) I´d say “mind” is not "another word for brain": it is the
nominalization of a large set of heterogeneous concepts. Those
concepts could be classified, for present purposes, in 3 categories:
privately experienced events (M1), dispositional concepts (M2) and
speculative constructs (M3). As I told you in other message, I´d
propose you to distinguish the following meanings of “mind”. M1 is
“mental as private event”, events that can be detected only by one
person. M1 is the content of episodic mental concepts: perceiving X,
sensing X, feeling X, having imagery of X, dreaming X, and saying X to
oneself. M2 is “mental as disposition of overt or private
behavior” (see that this is not the logical behaviorist proposal of
overt dispositions, but a functionalist proposal of overt-plus-covert
dispositions), and includes concepts like being intelligent, knowing
about X, having a belief, or understanding a sign. M2 is still
“observable”, but in a less direct way than M1: people can detect many
criteria that support or refute the ascription of the disposition
(this usually happens very quickly and without the need of reasoning).
M3 is “mental as speculative constructs”, it includes all the imagery
and conceptualization that are not based on observation, direct or
indirect, but on the social reinforcement of some ideas: freudian
unconscious, religious souls, unconscious “mental
representations” (unlike the so-called “neural representations”, which
are observed physiological events that correlate with other
variables). Learning mechanisms that have been studied with public
behaviors can be applied to the explanation, prediction and control of
M1-experiential events (which is a valuable purpose, both for
empirical and technical research). And the disctinction with M2 and M3
allow us to avoid “Throwing the baby out with the bath water” (like
logical behaviorists did) and “keeping the bath water for fear of
throwing out the baby” (as speculative mentalists do). I´d say that in
your previous list, most examples are M1-experiential concepts
(imagery, thinking, remembering, feeling, dreaming, daydreaming),
except “beliefs” which are M2-dispositional concepts.
Regards,
Gerardo.
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