the philosophy of mind

And since the soul of animals for this isthe substance of a living being is their substance according to the formula, i.e., the formand the essence of a body of a certain kind at least w

There is assuredly no more effectual method of clearing up one's own mind on any subled than

by talking it over, so to speak, with [persons] of real power and grasp who have considered itfrom a totally different point of view The paral1a.r of time helps us to the true position of aconception, as the paral1a.r of space helps us to that of a star

T H Huxley

We assembled this volume with several goals in mind First, we wanted to provide apedagogical tool for those teaching the philosophy of mind to upper level undergraduates We have each taught courses in the philosophy of mind, and we have each beenfrustrated by the lack of an introductory reader that contains historically relevantmaterial There are several excellent collections of recent writings in the philosophy ofmind, but we thought it was important for students to see how certain problems havesurvived through the centuries Our solution was to pull together the historical andcontemporary work and organize the material by topics Each section of the volume isdedicated to a single area and progress es Horn the relevant historical work (by, forexample, Descartes) to more contemporary writings (by, for example, Fodor)

Our second goal was not pedagogical so much as ideological Some philosophershave contended privately that the philosophy of mind is an irreducibly trendy branch ofphilosophy We disagreed with this assessment and wanted this collection to show howmany of the current concerns in the philosophy of mind have their roots in intellectualhistory

Finally, we wanted to provide a helpful resource manual for those working in thephilosophy of mind and the cognitive sciences Few people will have all of thesereadings, and those who do will not have all of them at their fingertips Of course wealso hoped that by making some of the historical selections more accessible, they wouldbecome more widely read and appreciated As the quote Horn Huxley suggests, there ismuch to be learned Horn dialogue with these thinkers

It is customary to note that many excellent essays had to be left out due to spacelimitations Sometimes this disclaimer is made merely to be polite, but not in this case.The writings in philosophy and psychology over the last 2500 years have been vast,and there is simply no way to include all of the worthy material One can also envisionadditional sections that might be added to a collection of this nature Candidate topics(which we have considered) include qualia, psychological content, and so forth Tosome extent, all these topics are treated along the way, but we will be the first to admitthat more extensive discussion of these topics is possible

We have provided a brief introduction to each section We prefer that the introductory material be viewed as articulating one interpretation of these works and theirinterrelationship, not as articulating some canonical view The introductions should beread critically, as should all texts

Preface

Peter Ludlow'Dept of PhilosophySUNY Stony BrookStony Brook NY 11794email: PLUDLOW @ccvm.sunysb.edu

xii Pre Eace

This collection was compiled with the help of a number of individuals Ned BlockStephen Neale, and Robert van Gulick read our initial proposal and made a number olvery helpful suggestions for improvements ( Ned and Stephen also provided invaluableassistance with various aspects of preparation, ranging horn help in securing permissions

to advice on section introductions) We have also bene6ted horn discussion withand suggestions horn Marcos Bisticas-Cocoves, Nancy Franklin, Steve Fuller, KathyKemp, Peter Nagy, and Anderson Weekes We also wish to thank Betty Stanton olBradford Books for shepherding us through this process

Finally, we welcome comments and aitidsms horn readers, espeaally students Pleasewrite!

Rene Descartes

From Mtdit Rtions n and VI and from Reply to Objldions n

From Haldane and Ross , eds., TIll Phiiosophi C Rl Works of DISc Rrla (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 1911).

George Berkeley

From TIll Principles of H Um Rn Knowltdgt

From A C Fraser , ed., TIll Works of George Berbiey (London , 1871).

John Stuart Mill

Of the Laws of Mind

From TIll System of Logic , 8th edition (London , 1871 ).

Gilbert Ryle

Descartes' Myth

From TIll Concept of Mirul ( New York: Harper Collins Publishen, 1949), by pennission of the publisher.

U T Place

Is Consciousness a Brain Process ?

From the British JOumRl of Psychology (1956), by permil Sioo of the autl K Jr and the British Psydto1ogical Society Saul Kripke

From 'identity and Necessity"

From Milton Munitz, ed., Identify Rnd lrulioid U Qtion ( New York: New York University Press , 1971), by pennission of the author.

Troubles with Functionalism

From C W Savage , ed., Ptr C Iption mid Cognition : ] , a in the~ fions

-of Psvcl oiogv, volume 9 -of the

Reductionism and Antiredudionism in F\ mdionalist Theories of Mind

From Neurophilosoph ,v (Cambridge , MA: MIT Press , 1986), by permission of the author a OO publisher.

Aristotle

From Metaphysics , book 7, and On the SoaJ , book 2

From W D Ross , ed., The Orford Aristotle , voL 8 (Oxford: Oxford University Press , 1928), by per million

Acknowledgments Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Sdence ( MilU\e8polis : Univenity of Minnesota Press , 1978),

by pe Imi S Iion of the author and publisher This venion ha been signi6cantiy revised by the author Hilary Putnam

Philosophy and Om Mental Ufe

From Mind, l A I Ig~ , RMlity, volwne 1 of Putn8m's AliiC Ophical

University Prell, 1975), by pennillion of the au~ and publisher. (Cambridge : Cambridge

From The Di Rlog U I S of PlRto , trans B Jowett (New Yom: Random Hoose , 1891 ).

Rene Descartes

From P RISions of the Soul

From The Phiiosophieal Works of ~ , trans Haldane and ROIl (Cunbrldge: Cambridge University Press , 1911).

Nicolas Malebrandte

From "The Union of Soul and Body"

From The SMrch./fer Trulh, trans Thomu Lennon and Paul Oilcamp (Cohanbus : Ohio State University

Huvle1 '

Thomas Henry

On the Hypothesis

That Animals Are Automata

From Lawrence Foster and J W Swanson , eds., &" rima ThIDry (Amherst : University of Massachusetts

Press , 1970), by permi Jlion of the author and publisher

Jerry A Fodor

Making Mind Matter More

From Philosophical Topicsivo L 17 (1989), by permi Jlion of the author and publisher

Thomas Aquinas

That the Soul Never Thinb with~ t an Image

Frmn 5NmmR 1' h1 Oioga , voL 11 ( New Yark: Blackfrian , McGraw-HilL 1968), by permil Sion of the publisher Thomas Hobbes

From Mtdif R Hon VI and from Objldion IV and R Ip' "

From Haldane and Ross, eds., 1111 Alii Dl Ophai Works of Dt6c,.-it

Press , 1911).

University

David Hume

Of the Ideas of the Memory and Imagination

From A Trr R Ii St of H Um Rn Naturr, ed L A Se Iby-8igg~

tion: London , 1739).

Press , 1888 ) (Original

voL 1 ( New York: Henry Holt, 1890).

Press , 1980), by permission of the publisher.

Gott&Led Wilhelm ~ hni%

William james

Imagination

From The Principia of

Sources and Acknowledgments xv

Oswald Kwpe

The Modem Psychology of Thinking

Originally given as a lecture in Berlin 1912 Translation by G Mandler and J Mandler &om 1hinking : From

A voci Rtion toGest Rit ( New York: Wiley, 1964), by pennission of the translaton and the publisher John Watson

Image and Affection in Behavior

From The }0UmR1 of Philosophy , Psychology Rnd Scientific Met~ , vol 10, no 16 (1913), pp 421- 424 Gilbert Ryle

"

The Theory of Spedal Status Pictures" and 'imagining"

From The Con Ctpf of Mind ( New York: Harper Collins Publishen, 1949), by pennission of the publisher Daniel Dennett

The Nature of Images and the Introspective Trap

From Content Rnd Consci Ousn5 (London : Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969), by pennission of the author and publisher

Roger Shepard and Jacqueline Metzler

Mental Rotation of Three -Dimensional Objects

From Scitna, vol 171(1971), pp 701- 703, by pennission of the authon and the American Assodation for the Advancement of Science

Stephen Kosslyn

Scanning Visual Mental Images: The First Phase of the Debate

From Daniel Oshenon , Stephen Kosslyn , and John Hollerbach , eds., Vis U Rl Cognition Rnd Adion, vol\ une ~

of An Invif Rtion to Cognitive Scien Ct (Cambridge , MA: MIT Press , 1990), by pennission of the author and publisher

Zenon W Pylyshyn

Tact Knowledge and "Mental Scanning"

From Comput Rtion Rnd Cognition (Cambridge , MA: MIT Press , 1984), by pennission of the publisher Stephen Kosslyn

Demand O1araderistics1 : The Second - - - - - - - - - - - Pha W : of th~ ~ bat~

From Daniel Oshenon , Stephen Kosslyn and John Ho Uerbadt , eds., Vis U Rl Cognition Rnd Action, volmne 2

of An Int7it Rtion to Cognitiw Science (Cambridge , MA: MIT Press , 1990), by pennission of the author and publisher

Thomas Hobbes

Of the Consequence or Train of Imaginations

From Ltviath Rn, ed Oakeshott: ( New YoM: Maanillan Publishing Company, 1962), by pennission of the publisher

John Locke

(Original

William James

The Elementary Law of Association

From The Principles of Psychology , vol 2 ( New York: Henry Holt, 1890).

James L Mc Cle Uand , David E Rumelhart , and Geoffrey E Hinton

The Appeal of Parallel Distributed Processing

From James L Rumelhart , David E McClelland , and the PDP Research Group, Parallel Distributed PrO C I S Sing:

~

lica-Of the Association of Ideas

From An ES S Ry Concm Iing Hunwn Undmt Rnding , fifth edition (London , 1706).

David Hume

Of the Connection or Association of Ideas

From A Trt Rti St of Human NRturt, ed LA Selby-Bigge (Oxford Univenity Press , 1888)

tion: London , 1739).

John Stuart Mill

The Principal Investigations of Psychology Q, araderised

From A System of Logic , vol 2, book, 6 (London , 1843).

xvi Sources and Acbtowledgments

& p1or Rlions in the Mlcrostn4durr of Cognition , vol 1 (Cambridge , MA: MIT Press, 1986 ), by pennission

of the authon and publisher

Jerry A Fodor am Zenon W Pylyshyn

Connectionism am Cognitive Ardtitedure : A Critical Analysis

From Cognition, voL 20 (1988 ), by pennission of the authon and Elsevier Science Publishen

Paul Smolensky

The Constituent Strudure of Connectionist Mental States: A Reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn

From The Southern] m mQ/ of Philosophy, voL 26 supp (1987 ), by pennission of the journal and the author

From The Di Riog U I S of PlRfo , trans B Jowett (New York: Random House , 1892).

Rene Descartes

From "Comments on a Certain Broadsheet"

From Phiiosopllic l Writings of Dl Sc R Tta, trans Cottingham , Stoothoff, and Murdoch (Cambridge : Cambridge

Univenity Press , 1985), by pennission of the publisher.

John Locke

No Innate Prindples in the MiOO

From An v Conaming Hunwn Undmt Rnding , Afth edition (London , 1706).

Jean Piaget

The Psydtogenesis of Knowledge and Its Epistemological Signi6cance

From Massimo Piatelli-Palmerini ed., lAng U Rgt Rnd Ll Rming : The o, _ fe Bth Dttn ]Mn Pi Ilgft Rnd NORm C~ 1Sky (Cambridge , MA: Harvard Univenity Press , 1980), by pennission of the author and publisher Copyright <C> 1980 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Jerry A Fodor

How There Could Be a Private Language and What It Must Be Uke

From The lAng U Rgt of Thmcght (Cambridge , MA: Harvard University Press ,

author and publisher Copyright <C> 1975 by ThomasY Cromwell Company,

Noam Otomsky

~ ion of Putnam ' Corn~ h

1975), by permission of the Inc.

Noam O1omsky

On Cognitive Structures and Their Development : A Reply to Piaget

From Massimo Piatelli-Palmerini , ed., langUAge And iMming: 11rt DebRtt Bth Dttn Jean Pi I Igtt And NCMm Chornsicy (Cambridge , MA: Harvard Univenity Press , 1980), by permission of the author and publisher Copyright <C> 1980 by the President and FeUows of Harvard Co Uege.

From Massimo Piatelli-Palmerini , ed., langUAge And iMming: 11rt Del Nltt Bth Dttn Jean Pi I Igtt And NCMm Chomskv (Cambridge , MA: Harvard University Press , 1980), by _~ a of the author and

Copyright <C 1980 by the President and FeUows of

Over the past 2500 years there have been many responses to the mind/ body problem.

The readings in this section represent a chronological sketch of the movement between

four of the most influential general proposals: dualism, materialism, idealism, and functionalism

Dualism is the doctrine that there are two different types of substance: physical substance, which is the object of the natural sciences, and mental substance, which is

the stuff of which our conscious states are comprised Materialism is the position that

there is only physical substance For the materialist, mental states like pains, beliefs,

desires, etc are fundamentally physical states Idealism, like materialism, holds that there

is only one substance, but claims that the substance is mental Functionalism steers a

middle course between dualism and materialism Against dualism, the functionalist

holds that the mind is not something that exists apart Horn the physical Against

materialism, the functionalist denies that mental states are identical to physical states

Roughly, the idea is that it is not the physical substance itself that is important, but

rather the way in which the physical substance is organized

Although the claim is hotly debated among contemporary philosophers and

clas-sicists, Aristotle may be thought of as the first functionalist In his discussion of

definition- which he takes to express the formula, or essence, of a thing- Aristotle

describes objects as combinations of foma and matter According to Aristotle, there are

many cases where the form of the object is essential to the object, while the matter is

not For example, a word written in wax contains its letters as part of its formula but is

only coincidentally made of wax (since it could equally well be engraved in stone,

written on paper, etc.) Because the form of a word like "dog" can be realized in many

different substances, we know that the form and the material substance are not identical.

Contemporary philosophers call this a multiple instantiation argument, for it appeals to

the fact that a single form can be instantiated (realized) in many different physical

substances Although, as it turns out, the formula of the soul is only realized in material

like bones and muscle, Aristotle says that we should not make the mistake of thinking

that the soul and body are identical For if words were only written in wax, we would

still be mistaken in supposing that word$ are identical to wax

Thomas Hobbes provides an early and influential statement of identity theory in his

account of perception: visual experiences are really only the action of external physical

objects on our physical organs

Rene Descartes provides the classical statement of dualism Starting with the experience

of his own mental existence, Descartes asks whether the idea of his mental

existence is indistinguishable Horn the idea of his body His answer is that it is not,

concluding that the idea or essence of mind is different Horn the idea of body Since two

things that correspond to different ideas cannot be identical, the mind must be different

Horn the body

George Berkeley argues that a thorough empiricist will be led to adopt idealism

According to Berkeley, if all our knowledge comes to us through sense impressions,

Introduction

4 Part I Introduction

then we can never have knowledge of material substance itself We may posit materialsubstance as the cause of these impressions, but there is no direct evidence for suchsubstance, and positing such substance may lead us into contradiction His conclusion isthat there are only minds and sense impressions

John Stuart Mill introduces a new concern into the debate Mill agrees that materialism

is a plausible answer to the onto logical question about the mind (the question ofwhat the mind really is), but argues that we should not overlook the methodologicalquestion of how science should proceed to study the mind Even if we hold that mentalstates are brain states, the brain is so complex and so poorly understood that we muststudy mental regularities independent of brain research Thus, Mill concludes that thestudy of mind (psychology) should remain a separate science even if material i $m shouldturn out to be true

Gilbert Ryle, who is a logical be Mviorist, provides an influential critidsm of dualism.According to Ryle, dualists are guilty of a category mistake For example, it is perfectlylegitimate to talk about a football team winning a game, and it is also legitimate to talkabout the individual members of a football team, but it would surely be a blunder

to think that the team is something that exists in addition to the members of the team.For example, if someone were introduced to the members of the team and then exclaimed, "Now I'd like to meet the team," we would say that the person was fundamentally confused Talk of the team is really just talk of the members of the team at acertain level of abstraction Likewise, according to Ryle, we can talk about mental states(like pain) and we can talk of certain behaviors (like holding damaged body parts andmoaning), but it would be a mistake to suppose that the mental state of pain exists inaddition to some relevant class of behavior

U T Place attempts to defuse certain arguments against the identity theory Placeargues that two things can turn out to be identical even if their definitions are different:'

1ightning", for example, doesn't mean the same thing as "electrical discharge", but wecan discover that lightning and electrical discharge are identical Likewise, though

Noam Chomsky sketch es a radical approach to materialism According to Chomsky,the notion of body is itself subject to revision by the sciences For example, the concept

of body employed by Descartes was soon superseded by the Newtonian notion ofbody, and research in particle physics during the last century has continually revisedour understanding of the nature of physical bodies This being the case, Chomskyargues that the very notion of the mind/ body problem is ill defined It is ill definedbecause we have no clear conception of what the body is Moreover, he suggests that

if our understanding of mental phenomena seems incompatible with our understanding

of the physical body, then our understanding of the physical body will have to change

to accommodate the mental Our ultimate understanding of body will be shaped by(among other things) our theories of the mental

Hilary Putnam initiates the contemporary discussion of functionalism Like Aristotle,Putnam is concerned with the formula of the soul, though he suggests in "The Nature of

The Mind/Body ProblemSOur Mental States" that it can be thought of as a Turing machine, an abstract computingmachine Turing machines can be instantiated in many different kinds of hardware-silicon chips, Tinker toy models, and, according to Putnam, the human body Putnamargues against the identity theory by using a multiple instantiation argument: because

a given psychological state (e.g., pain) can be realized in creatures with nervous systemsquite different from our own, and indeed can presumably even be realized by thesilicon-based creatures of science fiction, there is no single physical type that correlateswith the psychological type pain Consequently, no reduction of the psychologicalstate pain to a single type of neurophysiological state is possible

Patricia Church land is unimpressed by this use of the multiple instantiation argument She argues that Putnam's notion of reduction is far too restrictive- so restrictivethat by Putnam's standards it is not clear that any science has been success fully reduced

to a more fundamental science Take, for example, the theory of thermodynamics,which is widely taken to have been reduced to statistical mechanics As Church landnotes, a kind of multiple instantiation argument is possible here as well, for in gases,heat is reduced to mean kinetic energy, in solids something else, and in a vacuumsomething else again But we don't conclude that there is no reduction

Ned Block attacks functionalism from another direction, arguing that any functionaldefinition of mental states will be either too liberal (ascribing mental states to creaturesthat don't really have them), or too chauvinistic (failing to ascribe mental states tocreatures that do have them) In setting up his argument, he surveys a number ofconcerns that have been raised against functionalism, including the problem of accounting for the phenomenology of mental states Block's article is also useful in providing anextensive classification of the various types of functionalism

In "Philosophy and our Mental Life," Putnam criticizes his earlier formulation offunctionalism, arguing that the multiple instantiation argument can also be extended toTuring machines- thus showing that mental states cannot be reduced to Turing machine states But Putnam does not reject functionalism Rather, he defines functionalstates more broadly as classes of structurally identical states, perhaps returning tosomething a bit more like Aristotle's notion of "form."

Further Reading

Several good collections are aval Jable on the mindlbody problem, though they are primarily concernedwith the debate between materialism and dualism They include:

Bont, C V., ed 1970 The Mind/8min 1dmh' ty Theory London: MacMillan

Presley, C F., ed 1967 The / dmtity Theory of Mind University of Queensland Press

Rosenthal, David, ed 1971 M Rttri Rlism Rnd the Mind-Body Probltm Englewood Qifh, NJ: Prentice Hall

The following collections are more general but also address the mind/body problem The Block and Lycancollections have particularly good sections on functionalism.

Block, Ned, ed 1980 Readings in the Philosophy of Psychology 00/ 1 Cambridge, MA: Harvard UniversityPress

Hook, Sidney, ed 1960 Dimensions of Mind New York: Collier.

Lycan, William, ed 1990 Mind Rnd CORnition: A Reader Oxford: Basil Blackwell

Let us inquire about the parts of which substance consists If then matter is onething, fonn another, the compound of these a third, and both the matter and the fonnand the compound are substance, even the matter is in a sense called part of a thing,while in a sense it is not, but only the elements of which the fonnula of the fonnconsists E.g., the bronze is a part of the concrete statue, but not of the statue whenthis is spoken of in the sense of the fonn (For the fonn, or the thing as having fonn,should be said to be the thing, but the material element by itself must never be said to

be so.) And so the fonnula of the circle does not include that of the segments, but thefonnula of the syllable includes that of the letters; for the letters are parts of the fonnula

of the fonn, and not matter, but the segments are parts in the sense of matter on whichthe fonn supervenes; yet they are nearer the fonn than the bronze is when roundness isproduced in bronze But in a sense not even every kind of letter will be present in thefonnula of the syllable, e.g., particular waxen letters or the letters as movements in theair; for in these also we have already something that is part of the syllable only in thesense that it is its perceptible matter For even if the line when divided passes away intoits halves, or the man into bones and muscles and flesh, it does not follow that they arecomposed of these as parts of their essence, but rather as matter; and these are parts ofthe concrete thing, but not also of the fonn, i.e., of that to which the fonnula refers;wherefore also they are not present in the fonnulae In one kind of fonnula, then, thefonnula of such parts will be present, but in another it must not be present, where thefonnula does not refer to the concrete object For it is for this reason that some thingshave as their constituent principles parts into which they pass away, while some havenot Those things which are the fonn and the matter taken together, e.g., the bronzecircle, pass away into these materials, and the matter is a part of them; but those thingswhich do not involve matter but are without matter, and whose fonnulae are fonnulae

of the fonn only, do not pass away Therefore these materials are principles andparts of the concrete things, while of the fonn they are neither parts nor principles Andtherefore the clay statue is resolved into clay and the ball into bronze and Callias into

8 Aristotle

flesh and bones, and again the circle into its segments; for there is a sense of 'circle' inwhich it involves matter For 'circle' is used ambiguously, meaning both the circle,unqualified, and the individual circle, because there is no name peculiar to theindividuals

The truth has indeed now been stated, but still let us state it yet more clearly, taking

up the question again The parts of the formula, into which the formula is divided, areprior to it, either all or some of them The circle and the semicircle also are in such arelation; for the semicircle is defined by the circle; and so is the finger by the wholebody, for a finger is 'such and such a part of a man.' Therefore the parts which are ofthe nature of matter, and into which as its matter a thing is divided, are posterior; butthose which are of the nature of parts of the formula, and of the substance according toits formula, are prior, either all or some of them And since the soul of animals (for this isthe substance of a living being) is their substance according to the formula, i.e., the formand the essence of a body of a certain kind (at least we shall define each part, if we define

it well, not without reference to its function, and this cannot belong to it withoutperception), so that the parts of soul are prior, either all or some of them, to the con-crete' animal,' and so too with each individual animal; and the body and its parts areposterior to this, the essential substance, and it is not the substance but the concretething that is divided into these parts as its matter: this being so, to the concrete thingthese are in a sense prior, but in a sense they are not For they cannot even exist ifsevered from the whole; for it is not a finger in any and every state that is the finger of aliving thing, but a dead finger is a finger only in name 'A part' may be a part either

of the form (i.e., of the essence), or of the compound of the form and the matter, or ofthe matter itself But only the parts of the form are parts of the formula, and the formula

is of the universal; for ' being a circle' is the same as the circle, and ' being a soul' the same

as the soul But when we come to the concrete thing, e.g., this circle, i.e., one of theindividual circles, whether perceptible or intelligible (I mean by intelligible circles themathematical, and by perceptible circles those of bronze and of wood)- of these there

is no definition, but they are known by the aid of intuitive thinking or of perception

We have stated, then, how matters stand with regard to whole and part, and theirpriority and posteriority But when anyone asks whether the right angle and the circleand the animal are prior, or the things into which they are divided and of which theyconsist, i.e., the parts, we must meet the inquiry by saying that the question cannot beanswered simply For if eve J'\ bare soul is the animal or the living thing, or the soul ofeach individual is the individual itself, and ' being a circle' is the circle, and ' being a rightangle' and the essence of the right angle is the right angle, then the whole in one sensemust be called posterior to the part in one sense, i.e., to the parts included in the formulaand to the parts of the individual right angle (for both the material right angle which

is made of bronze, and that which is formed by individual lines, are posterior totheir parts); the immaterial right angle is posterior to the parts included in the formula,but prior to those included in the particular instance, and the question must not beanswered simply If the soul is something different and is not identical with the animal,even so some parts must, as we have maintained, be called prior and others must not In the case of things which are found to occur in specifically different materials, as

a circle may exist in bronze or stone or wood, it seems plain that these, the bronze orthe stone, are no part of the essence of the circle, since it is found apart from them Ofthings which are not seen to exist apart, [even here] there is no reason why the samemay not be true, just as if all circles that had ever been seen were of bronze; for none theless the bronze would be no part of the form; but it is hard to eliminate it in thought

From Metaphysics , and On the Soul 9

E.g., the fonD of man is always found in flesh and bones and parts of this kind; are these

then also parts of the fonD and the fonnula1 No, they are matter; but because man is not

found also in other matters we are unable to perfonn the abstraction

such

While waking is actuality in a sense corresponding to [actually] seeing, the soul is

actuality in the sense corresponding to the power of sight ; the body corresponds to

We are in the habit of recognizing, as one determinate kind of [ being], substance, and

that in several senses, (a) in the sense of matter or that which in itself is not 'a

[such-and-such],' and (b) in the sense of form or essence, which is that precisely in virtue of which

a thing is called 'a [such-and-such],' and thirdly (c) in the sense of that which is compounded

of both (a) and (b) Now matter is potentiality, form actuality; of the latter there

are two grades related to one another as, e.g., knowledge to the exercise of knowledge

Substances are, by general consent, [taken to include] bodies and especially natural

bodies; for they are the principles of all other bodies Of natural bodies some have life in

them, others not; by life we mean self-nutrition and growth (with its correlative decay)

It follows that every natural body which has life in it is a substance in the sense of a

composite

But since it is also a body of such and such a kind, viz having life, the body cannot be

soul; the body is the subject, or matter, not what is attributed to it Hence the soul must

be a substance in the sense of the form of a natural body having life potentially within

it But form is actuality, and thus soul is the actuality of a body as above characterized

Now the word actuality has two senses corresponding respectively to the possession of

knowledge and the actual exercise of knowledge It is obvious that the soul is actuality

in the Arst sense, viz that of knowledge as possessed, for both sleeping and waking

presuppose the existence of soul, and of these waking corresponds to actual knowing,

sleeping to knowledge possessed but not employed, and, in the history of the individual

, knowledge comes before its employment or exercise

That is why the soul is the first grade of actuality of a natural body having life

potentially in it The body so described is a body which is organized The parts of

plants in spite of their extreme simplicity are 'organs'; e.g., the leaf serves to shelter the

pericarp, the pericarp to shelter the fruit, while the roots of plants are analogous to the

mouth of animals, both serving for the absorption of food If, then, we have to give a

general formula applicable to all kinds of soul, we must describe it as the first grade of

actuality of a natural organized body That is why we can wholly dismiss as unnecessary the question whether the soul and the body are one: it is as meaningless as to ask

whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one, or generally the matter

of a thing and that of which it is the matter

We have now given an answer to the question, What is sou17- an answer which

applies to it in its full extent It is substance in the sense which corresponds to the

definitive formula of a thing's essence That means that it is 'the essential whatness' of a

body of the character just assigned Suppose that the eye were an animal- sight

would have been its soul, for sight is the substance, or essence, of the eye which corresponds

to the formula, the eye being merely the matter of seeing; when seeing is

removed the eye is no longer an eye, except in name- it is no more a real eye than the

eye of a statue or of a painted figure We must now extend our consideration &om the

'

parts' to the whole living body; for what the departmental sense is to the bodily part

which is its organ, that the whole faculty of sense is to the whole sensitive body as

The original of them all, is that which we call sense, for there is no conception in a man's mind , which has not at first , totally , or by parts, been begotten [by] the organs of sense The rest are derived from that original

To know the natural cause of sense, is not very necessary to the business now in hand; and I have elsewhere written of the same at large Nevertheless , to fill each part of

my present method , I will briefly deliver the same in this place.

The cause of sense, is the external body , or object , which presseth the organ proper

to each sense, either immediately , as in the taste and touch ; or mediately , as in seeing, hearing , and smelling; which pressure, by the mediation of the nerves, and other strings and membranes of the body , continued inwards to the brain and heart, causeth there

a resistance, or counter -pressure, or endeavour of the heart to deliver itself, which endeavour , because outward, seemeth to be some matter outside And this seeming, or fancy, is that which men call sense ; and consisteth, as to the eye, in a light, or colour figured;

to the ear, in a sound; to the nostril , in an odour; to the tongue and palate, in a savour; and

to the rest of the body , in heat, cold, hardness, softness, and such other qualities as we discern by feeling All which qualities , called sensible, are, in the object that causeth them, [nothing ] but so many several motions of the matter , by which it presseth our organs diversely [ Nor] in us that are pressed, are they any thing else, but divers motions ; for motion produceth nothing but motion But their appearance to us is fancy, the same waking , [as] dreaming And as pressing, rubbing, or striking the eye, makes us fancy a light ; and pressing the ear, produceth a din ; so do the bodies we see, or hear, produce the same by their strong, though unobserved action For if these colours and sounds were in the bodies, or objects that cause them, they could not be severed from them, as

by glasses, and in echoes by reflection, we see they are; [so] we know the thing we see is

in one place, the appearance in another And though at some certain distance, the real and very object seems invested with the fancy it begets in us; yet the object is one thing, the image or fancy is another So that sense, in all cases, is nothing else but original fancy , caused, as I have said, by the pressure, that is, by the motion of external things upon our eyes, ears, and other organs thereunto ordained

Sense

Chapter 3

From Meditations

Rene Descartes

: II and VI and from Reply to Objections II

By the body I understand all that which can be de Aned by a certain figure: somethingwhich can be confined in a certain place, and which can fill a given space in such a waythat every other body will be excluded Horn it; which can be perceived either by touch,

or by sight, or by hearing, or by taste, or by smell: which can be moved in many waysnot, in truth, by itself, but by something which is foreign to it, by which it is touched[and Horn which it receives impressions]: for to have the power of self-movement, asalso of feeling or of thinking, I did not consider to appertain to the nature of body: onthe contrary, I was rather astonished to And that faculties similar to them existed insome bodies

But what am I, now that I suppose that there is a certain genius which is extremelypowerful, and, if I may say so, malicious, who employs all his powers in deceiving me?Can I affirm that I possess the least of all those things which I have just said pertain tothe nature of body? I pause to consider, I revolve all these things in my mind, and I findnone of which I can say that it pertains to me It would be tedious to stop to enumeratethem Let us pass to the attributes of soul and see if there is anyone which is in me?What of nutrition or walking [the first mentioned)? But if it is so that I have no body it isalso true that I can neither walk nor take nourishment Another attribute is sensation.But one cannot feel without body, and besides I have thought I perceived many thingsduring sleep that I recognised in my waking moments as not having been experienced

at all What of thinking? I And here that thought is an attribute that belongs to me; italone cannot be separated Horn me I am, I exist, that is certain But how often? Justwhen I think; for it might possibly be the case if I ceased entirely to think that I shouldlikewise cease altogether to exist I do not now admit anything which is not necessarilytrue: to speak accurately I am not more than a thing which thinks, that is to say a mind

or a soul, or an understanding, or a reason, which are terms whose significance wasformerly unknown to me I am, however, a real thing and really exist; but what thing? Ihave answered: a thing which thinks

And first of all, because I know that all things which I apprehend clearly anddistinctly can be created by God as I apprehend them, it suffices that I am able toapprehend one thing apart from another clearly and distinctly in order to be certain thatthe one is different from the other, since they may be made to exist in separation atleast by the omnipotence of God; and it does not signify by what power this separation

is made in order to compel me to judge them to be different: and, therefore, just because

I know certainly that I exist, and that meanwhile I do not remark that any other thingnecessarily pertains to my nature or essence, excepting that I am a thinking thing, I

interpolation Bracketed text is translator 's

rather certainly, as I shall say in a moment) I possess a body with which I am veryintimately conjoined, yet because, on the one side, I have a clear and distinct idea ofmyself inasmuch as I am only a thinking and unextended thing, and as, on the other, Ipossess a distinct idea of body, inasmuch as it is only an extended and unthinkingthing, it is certain that this I [that is to say, my soul by which I am what I am L is entirelyand absolutely distinct from my body, and can exist without it.

Do you deny that in order to recognise a real distinctness between objects it issufficient for us to conceive one of them clearly apart from the other? If so, offer us somesurer token of real distinction I believe that none such can be found What will yousay? That those things are really distinct each of which can exist apart from the other.But once more I ask how you will know that one thing can be apart from the other; this,

in order to be a sign of the distinctness, should be known Perhaps you will say that it isgiven to you by the senses, since you can see, touch, etc., the one thing while the other

is absent But the trustworthiness of the senses is inferior to that of the intellect, and it is

in many ways possible for one and the same thing to appear under various guises

or in several places or in different manners, and so to be taken to be two things.And finally if you bear in mind what was said at the end of the Second Meditationabout wax, you will see that properly speaking not even are bodies themselves perceived

by sense, but that they are perceived by the intellect alone, so that there is nodifference between perceiving by sense one thing apart from another, and having anidea of one thing and understanding that that idea is not the same as an idea ofsomething else Moreover, this knowledge can be drawn from no other source than thefact that the one thing is perceived apart from the other; nor can this be known withcertainty unless the ideas in each case are clear and distinct Hence that sign you offer ofreal distinctness must be reduced to my criterion in order to be infallible

But if any people deny that they have distinct ideas of mind and body, I can donothing further than ask them to give sufficient attention to what is said in the SecondMeditation I beg them to note that the opinion they perchance hold, namely, that theparts of the brain join 'their forces with the soul to fonD thoughts, has not arisen fromany positive ground, but only from the fact that they have never had experience ofseparation from the body, and have not seldom been hindered by it in their operations,and that similarly if anyone had from infancy continually worn irons on his legs, hewould think that those irons were part of his own body and that he needed them inorder to walk

14 Rene Descartes

It is evident to anyone who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that theyare either ideas actually imprinted on the senses; or else such as are perceived byattending to the passions and operations of the mind; or lastly, ideas formed by help ofmemory and imagination- either compounding, dividing, or barely representing thoseoriginally perceived in the aforesaid ways By sight I have the ideas of light and colours,with their several degrees and variations By touch I perceive hard and soft, heat andcold, motion and resistance, and of all these more and less either as to quantity ordegree Smelling furnish es me with odours; the palate with tastes; and hearing conveyssounds to the mind in all their variety of tone and composition And as several of theseare observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to

be reputed as one thing Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure andconsistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing,signified by the name apple; other collections of ideas constitute a stone, a tree, a book,and the like sensible things- which as they are pleasing or disagreeable excite thepassions of love, hatred, joy , grief, and so forth

But, besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewisesomething which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing ,imagining, remembering, about them This perceiving, active being is what I call mind,spirit, soul, or myself By which words I do not denote anyone of my ideas, but a thingentirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, wherebythey are perceived- for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived

That neither our thoughts, nor passions, nor ideas formed by the imagination, existwithout the mind, is what everybody will allow And to me it is no less evident that thevarious sensations or ideas imprinted on the sense, however blended or combinedtogether (that is, whatever objects they compose), cannot exist otherwise than in amind perceiving them I think an intuitive knowledge may be obtained of this by anyone that shall attend to what is meant by the term exist when applied to sensible things.The table I write on I say exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study Ishould say it existed- meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, orthat some other spirit actually does perceive it There was an odour, that is, it was smelt;there was a sound, that is, it was heard; a colour or figure, and it was perceived by sight

or touch This is all that I can understand by these and the like expressions For as towhat is said of the absolute existence of unthinking things without any relation to theirbeing perceived, that is to me perfectly unintelligible Their esse is perripi, nor is itpossible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things whichperceive them

It is indeed an opinion strangely prevailing amongst men, that houses, mountains,rivers, and in a word all sensible objects, have an existence, natural or real, distinct fromtheir being perceived by the understanding But, with how great an assurance and

Chapter 4

From The Principles of Human Knowledge

George Berkeley

acquiescence soever this principle may be entertained in the world, yet whoever shallAnd in his heart to call it in question may, if I mistake not, perceive it to involve amanifest contradiction For, what are the forementioned objects but the things weperceive by sense? and what do we perceive besides our own ideas or sensations? and is

it not plainly repugnant that anyone of these, or any combination of them, should existunperceived?

If we throughly examine this tenet it will , perhaps, be found at bottom to depend

on the doctrine of abstract ideas For can there be a nicer strain of abstraction than

to distinguish the existence of sensible objects from their being perceived, so as toconceive them existing unperceived? Light and colours, heat and cold, extension andfigures- in a word the things we see and feel- what are they but so many sensations,notions, ideas, or impressions on the sense? and is it possible to separate, even inthought, any of these from perception? For my part, I might as easily divide a thingfrom itself I may, indeed, divide in my thoughts, or conceive apart from each other,those things which, perhaps, I never perceived by sense so divided Thus, I imagine thetrunk of a human body without the limbs, or conceive the smell of a rose withoutthinking on the rose itself So far, I will not deny, I can abstract- if that may properly

be called abstraction which extends only to the conceiving separately such objects as it

is possible may really exist or be actually perceived asunder But my conceiving orimagining power does not extend beyond the possibility of real existence or perception Hence, as it is impossible for me to see or feel anything without an actual sensation

of that thing, so is it impossible for me to conceive in my thoughts any sensible thing orobject distinct from the sensation or perception of it [In truth, the object and thesensation are the same thing, and cannot therefore be abstracted from each other.]

Some truths there are so near and obvious to the mind that a man need only open hiseyes to see them Such I take this important one to be, viz that all the choir of heavenand furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame

of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind, that their being is to be perceived

or known; that consequently so long as they are not actually perceived by me, or

do not exist in my mind or that of any other created spirit, they must either have noexistence at all, or else subsist in the mind of some Eternal Spirit- it being perfectlyunintelligible, and involving all the absurdity of abstraction, to attribute to any singlepart of them an existence independent of a spirit [ To be convinced of which, the readerneed only reflect, and try to separate in his own thoughts the being of a sensible thingfrom its being perceived.]

From what has been said it is evident there is not any other Substance than Spirit, orthat which perceives But, for the fuller demonstration of this point, let it be consideredthe sensible qualities are colour, figure, motion, smell, taste, etc., i.e., the ideas perceived

by sense Now , for an idea to exist in an unperceiving thing is a manifest contradiction,for to have an idea is all one as to perceive; that therefore wherein colour, figure, etc.exist must perceive them; hence it is clear there can be no unthinking substance orsubstratum of those ideas

But, say you, though the ideas themselves do not exist without the mind, yet theremay be things like them, whereof they are copies or resemblances, which things existwithout the mind in an unthinking substance I answer, an idea can be like nothing but

an idea; a colour or figure can be like nothing but another colour or figure If we lookbut never so little into our thought, we shall And it impossible for us to conceive alikeness except only between our ideas Again, I ask whether those supposed originals

or external things, of which our ideas are the pictures or representations, be themselvesperceivable or no? If they are, then they are ideas and we have gained our point; but if

16 George Berkeley

you say they are not , I

something which is

appeaJ invi ible ~

the rest

Some there are who

the fonner they mean extension,

number; by the latter they denote

and so forth The ideas we have of these

figure aU ,

From ThI Principles of H Um Rn Know/edge 17

to anyone whether it be sense to assert a colour is like

; hard or soft, like something which is intangible; and so ofmake a distinction betwixt primary and secondary qualities By

- ,- -', motion, rest, solidity or impenetrability, and-" other sensible qualities, as colours, sounds, tastes,they acknowledge not to be the resemblances

of anything existing without the mind, or unperceived, but they will have our ideas ofthe primary qualities to be patterns or images of things which exist without the mind, in

an unthinking substance which they call Matter By Matter, therefore, we are to understand

an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, &sure, and motion do actuallysubsist But it is evident, Horn what we have already shewn, that extension, figure, andmotion are only ideas existing in the mind, and that an idea can be like nothing butanother idea, and that consequently neither they nor their archetypes can exist in anunperceiving substance Hence, it is plain that the very notion of what is called Matter

or corporeal substance, involves a contradiction in it [Insomuch that I should not think itnecessary to spend more time in exposing its absurdity But, because the tenet of theexistence of Matter seems to have taken so deep a root in the minds of philosophers,and draws after it so many ill consequences, I choose rather to be thought prolix andtedious than omit anything that might conduce to the full discovery and extirpation ofthat prejudice.]

Chapter 5

Of the Laws of Mind

John Stuart Mill

What Is Meant by Laws of Mind

What the Mind is, as well as what Matter is, or any other question respecting Things in

themselves, as distinguished Horn their sensible manifestations, it would be foreign to

the purposes of this treatise to consider Here, as throughout our inquiry, we shall keep

clear of all speculations respecting the mind's own nature, and shall understand by the

laws of mind those of mental phenomena- of the various feelings or states of consciousness

of sentient beings These, according to the classification we have unifonnly

followed, consist of Thoughts, Emotions, Volitions, and Sensations; the last being as

truly states of Mind as the three former It is usual, indeed, to speak of sensations as

states of body, not of mind But this is the common confusion of giving one and the

same name to a phenomenon and to the proximate cause or conditions of the phenomenon

The immediate antecedent of a sensation is a state of body, but the sensation itself

is a state of mind If the word mind means anything, it means that which feels Whatever

opinion we hold respecting the fundamental identity or diversity of matter and mind,

in any case the distinction between mental and physical facts, between the internal and

the external world, will always remain as a matter of classification; and in that

classifica-tion, sensations, like all other feelings, must be ranked as mental phenomena The

mechanism of their production, both in the body itself and in what is called outward

nature, is all that can with any propriety be classed as physical

The phenomena of mind, then, are the various feelings of our nature, both those

improperly called physical and those peculiarly designated as mental; and by the laws

of mind I mean the laws according to which those feelings generate one another

Is There a Science of Psychology?

All states of mind are immediately caused either by other states of mind or by states of

body When a state of mind is produced by a state of mind, I call the law concerned in

the case a law of Mind When a state of mind is produced directly by a state of body,

the law is a law of Body, and belongs to physical science

With regard to those states of mind which are called sensations, all are agreed that

these have for their immediate antecedents states of body Every sensation has for its

proximate cause some affection of the portion of our &ame called the nervous system,

whether this affection originate in the action of some external object, or in some

pathological condition of the nervous organisation itself The laws of this portion of our

nature- the varieties of our sensations and the physical conditions on which they

proximately depend- manifestly belong to the province of Physiology

Whether the remainder of our mental states are similarly dependent on physical

conditions, is one of the vexatae question es in the science of human nature It is still

disputed whether our thoughts, emotions, and volitions are generated through theintervention of material mechanism; whether we have organs of thought and of emotion

in the same sense in which we have organs of sensation Many eminent gists hold the a Hinnative These contend that a thought (for example) is as much theresult of nervous agency as a sensation; that some particular state of our nervoussystem, in particular of that central portion of it called the brain, invariably precedes,and is presupposed by, every state of our consciousness According to this theory, onestate of mind is never really produced by another; all are produced by states of body.When one thought seems to call up another by association, it is not really a thoughtwhich recalls a thought; the association did not exist between the two thoughts, butbetween the two states of the brain or nerves which preceded the thoughts~ one ofthose states recalls the other, each being attended, in its passage, by the particularstate of consciousness which is consequent on it On this theory the uniformities ofsuccession among states of mind would be mere derivative uniformities, resulting fromthe laws of succession of the bodily states which cause them There would be nooriginal mental laws, no Laws of Mind in the sense in which I use the term, at all;and mental science would be a mere branch, though the highest and most reconditebranch, of the science of Physiology M Comte, accordingly, claims the scientificcognisance of moral and intellectual phenomena exclusively for physiologists; and notonly denies to Psychology, or Mental Philosophy properly so called, the character of ascience, but places it, in the chimerical nature of its objects and pretensions, almost on apar with astrology

physiolo-But, after all has been said which can be said, it remains incontestable that there existuniformities of succession among states of mind, and that these can be ascertained byobservation and experiment Further, that every mental state has a nervous state forits immediate antecedent and proximate cause, though extremely probable, cannothitherto be said to be proved, in the conclusive manner in which this can be proved ofsensations; and even were it certain, yet every one must admit that we are whollyignorant of the characteristics of these nervous states; we know not, and at presenthave no means of knowing, in what respect one of them differs from another; and ouronly mode of studying their successions or co- existences must be by observing thesuccessions and co- existences of the mental states of which they are supposed to

be the generators or Causes The successions, therefore, which obtain among mentalphenomena do not admit of being deduced from the physiological laws of our nervousorganisation; and all real knowledge of them must continue, for a long time at least, ifnot always, to be sought in the direct study, by observation and experiment, of themental successions themselves Since, therefore, the order of our mental phenomenamust be studied in those phenomena, and not inferred from the laws of any phenomenamore general, there is a distinct and separate Science of Mind

The relations, indeed, of that science to the science of physiology must never beoverlooked or undervalued It must by no means be forgotten that the laws of mindmay be derivative laws resulting from laws of animal life, and that their truth thereforemay ultimately depend on physical conditions; and the influence of physiological states

or physiological changes in altering or counteracting the mental successions is one ofthe most important departments of psychological study But, on the other hand, toreject the resource of psychological analysis, and construct the theory of the mindsolely on such data as physiology at present affords, seems to me as great an error inprinciple, and an even more serious one in practice Imperfect as is the science of mind, I

do not scruple to a Hinn that it is in a consider ably more advanced state than the portion

20 John Stuart Mill

Of the Laws of Mind 21

of physiology which corresponds to it; and to discard the fonner for the latter appears

to me an infringement of the tNe canons of indudive philosophy, which must produce,and which does produce, erroneous conclusions in some very important departments ofthe science of human nature

The Official Doctrine

There is a doctrine about the nature and place of minds which is so prevalent amongtheorists and even among laymen that it deserves to be described as the official theory.Most philosophers, psychologists and religious teachers subscribe, with minor reservations, to its main articles and, although they admit certain theoretical difficulties in it,they tend to assume that these can be overcome without serious modifications beingmade to the architecture of the theory It will be argued here that the central principles

of the doctrine are unsound and conflict with the whole body of what we know aboutminds when we are not speculating about them

The official doctrine, which hails chiefly from Descartes, is something like this Withthe doubtful exceptions of idiots and infants in arms every human being has both

a body and a mind Some would prefer to say that every human being is both a bodyand a mind His body and his mind are ordinarily harnessed together, but after the death

of the body his mind may continue to exist and function

Human bodies are in space and are subject to the mechanical laws which govern allother bodies in space Bodily process es and states can be inspected by external observers So a man's bodily life is as much a public affair as are the lives of animals and reptilesand even as the careers of trees, crystals and planets

But minds are not in space, nor are their operations subject to mechanical laws Theworkings of one mind are not witnessable by other observers; its career is private Only

I can take direct cognisance of the states and process es of my own mind A persontherefore lives through two collateral histories, one consisting of what happens in and

to his body, the other consisting of what happens in and to his mind The first is public,the second private The events in the first history are events in the physical world, those

in the second are events in the mental world

It has been disputed whether a person does or can directly monitor all or only some

of the episodes of his own private history; but, according to the official doctrine,

of at least some of these episodes he has direct and unchallengeable cognisance Inconsciousness, self-consciousness and introspection he is directly and authenticallyapprised of the present states and operations of his mind He may have great or smalluncertainties about concurrent and adjacent episodes in the physical world, but he canhave none about at least part of what is momenta rily occupying his mind

It is customary to express this bifurcation of his two lives and of his two worlds bysaying that the things and events which belong to the physical world, including hisown body, are external, while the workings of his own mind are internal This antithesis

of outer and inner is of course meant to be construed as a metaphor, since minds, notbeing in space, could not be described as being spatially inside anything else, or ashaving things going on spatially inside themselves But relapses from this good intention are common and theorists are found speculating how stimuli, the physical sources

Chapter 6

Descartes ' Myth

Gilbert Ryle

of which are yards or miles outside a person's skin, can generate mental responses inside his skull, or how decisions framed inside his cranium can set going movements of his extremities

Even when 'inner' and 'outer' are construed as metaphors , the problem how a son's mind and body influence one another is notoriously charged with theoretical difficulties What the mind wills , the legs, arms and the tongue execute; what affects the ear and the eye has something to do with what the mind perceives; grimaces and smiles betray the mind's moods and bodily castigations lead, it is hoped, to moral improvement But the actual transactions between the episodes of the private history and those

per-of the public history remain mysterious , since by definition they can belong to neither series They could not be reported among the happenings described in a person's autobiography of his inner life , but nor could they be reported among those described

in some one else's biography of that person's overt career They can be inspected neither by introspection nor by laboratory experiment They are theoretical shuttlecocks which are forever being bandied from the physiologist back to the psychologist and from the psychologist back to the physiologist

Underlying this partly metaphorical representation of the bifurcation of a person'stwo lives there is a seemingly more profound and philosophical assumption It is assumed that there are two different kinds of existence or status What exists or happens may have the status of physical existence, or it may have the status of mental existence Somewhat as the faces of coins are either heads or tails, or somewhat as living creatures are either male or female, so, it is supposed, some existing is physical existing, other existing is mental existing It is a necessary feature of what has physical existence that it is in space and time, it is a necessary feature of what has mental existence that it is in time but not in space What has physical existence is composed of matter , or else is a function of matter ; what has mental existence consists of consciousness , or else is a function of consciousness.

There is thus a polar opposition between mind and matter , an opposition which is often brought out as follows Material objects are situated in a common field, known as '

space', and what happens to one body in one part of space is mechanically connected with what happens to other bodies in other parts of space But mental happenings occur

in insulated fields, known as 'minds', and there is, apart maybe from telepathy , no direct causal connection between what happens in one mind and what happens in another Only through the medium of the public physical world can the mind of one person make a difference to the mind of another The mind is its own place and in his inner life each of us lives the life of a ghostly Robinson Crusoe People can see, hear and jolt one another' s bodies, but they are irremediably blind and deaf to the workings of one another' s minds and inoperative upon them

What sort of knowledge can be secured of the workings of a mind? On the one side, according to the official theory , a person has direct knowledge of the best imaginable kind of the workings of his own mind Mental states and process es are (or are normally ) conscious states and process es, and the consciousness which irradiates them can engender

no illusions and leaves the door open for no doubts A person's present thinkings , feelings and willings , his perceivings , rememberings and imaginings are intrinsically '

phosphorescent'; their existence and their nature are inevitably betrayed to their owner The inner life is a stream of consciousness of such a sort that it would be absurd

to suggest that the mind whose life is that stream might be unaware of what is passing down it

True , the evidence adduced recently by Freud seems to show that there exist channels tributary to this stream, which run hidden from their owner People are actuated by

24 Gilbert Ryle

impulses the existence of which they vigorously disavow; some of their thoughts differfrom the thoughts which they acknowledge; and some of the actions which they thinkthey will to perform they do not really will They are thoroughly gulled by some oftheir own hypocrisies and they success fully ignore facts about their mental lives which

on the official theory ought to be patent to them Holders of the official theory tend,however, to maintain that anyhow in normal circumstances a person must be directlyand authentically seized of the present state and workings of his own mind

Besides being currently supplied with these alleged immediate data of consciousness,

a person is also generally supposed to be able to exercise from time to time a specialkind of perception, namely inner perception, or introspection He can take a (nonoptical) 1ook' at what is passing in his mind Not only can he view and scrutinize

a flower through his sense of sight and listen to and discriminate the notes of a bellthrough his sense of hearing; he can also reflectively or introspectively watch, withoutany bodily organ of sense, the current episodes of his inner life This self-observation isalso commonly supposed to be immune from illusion, confusion or doubt A mind'sreports of its own affairs have a certainty superior to the best that is possessed by itsreports of matters in the physical world Sense-perceptions can, but consciousness andintrospection cannot, be mistaken or confused

On the other side, one person has no direct access of any sort to the events of theinner life of another He cannot do better than make problematic inferences from theobserved behaviour of the other person's body to the states of mind which, by analogyfrom his own conduct, he supposes to be signalised by that behaviour Direct access tothe workings of a mind is the privilege of that mind itself; in default of such privilegedaccess, the workings of one mind are inevitably occult to everyone else For the supposed arguments from bodily movements similar to their own to mental workingssimilar to their own would lack any possibility of observational corroboration Notunnaturally, therefore, an adherent of the official theory finds it difficult to resist thisconsequence of his premiss es, that he has no good reason to believe that there do existminds other than his own Even if he prefers to believe that to other human bodies thereare harnessed minds not unlike his own, he cannot claim to be able to discover theirindividual characteristics, or the particular things that they undergo and do Absolutesolitude is on this showing the ineluctable destiny of the soul Only our bodies canmeet

As a necessary corollary of this general scheme there is implicitly prescribed a specialway of construing our ordinary concepts of mental powers and operations The verbs,nouns and adjectives, with which in ordinary life we describe the wits, characters andhigher-grade perfonnances of the people with whom we have do, are required to beconstrued as signifying special episodes in their secret histories, or else as signifyingtendencies for such episodes to occur When someone is described as knowing, believing

or guessing something, as hoping, dreading, intending or shirking something, asdesigning this or being amused at that, these verbs are supposed to denote the occur-rence of specific modifications in his (to us) occult stream of consciousness Only hisown privileged access to this stream in direct awareness and introspection could provide authentic testimony that these mental-conduct verbs were correctly or incorrectlyapplied The onlooker, be he teacher, critic, biographer or friend, call never assurehimself that his comments have any vestige of truth Yet it was just because we do

in fact all know how to make such comments, make them with general correctness andcorrect them when they turn out to be confused or mistaken, that philosophers found itnecessary to construct their theories of the nature and place of minds Finding mental-conduct concepts being regularly and effectively used, they properly sought to fix their

Descartes' Myth 2S

26 Gilbert Ryle

logical geography But the logical geography officially recommended would entail that there could be no regular or effective use of these mental -conduct concepts in our descriptions of, and prescriptions for , other people's minds

The Absurdity of the Official Doctrine

Such in outline is the official theory I shall often speak of it, with deliberate abusiveness,

as 'the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine' I hope to prove that it is entirely false, andfalse not in detail but in principle It is not merely an assemblage of particular mistakes

It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind It is, namely, a category-mistake Itrepresents the fads of mental life as if they belonged to one logical type or category (orrange of types or categories), when they actually belong to another The dogma istherefore a philosopher's myth In attempting to explode the myth I shall probably betaken to be denying well-known facts about the mental life of human beings, and myplea that I aim at doing nothing more than rectify the logic of mental-condud conceptswill probably be disallowed as mere subterfuge

I must first indicate what is meant by the phrase 'Category-mistake' This I do in aseries of illustrations

A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is shown a number ofcolleges, libraries, playing fields, museums, scientific departments and administrativeoffices He then asks 'But where is the University? I have seen where the members of theColleges live, where the Registrar works, where the scientists experiment and lhe rest.But I have not yet seen the University in which reside and work the members of yourUniversity.' It has then to be explained to him that the University is not anothercollateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the colleges, laboratories and officeswhich he has seen The University is just the way in which all that he has already seen isorganized When they are seen and when their co- ordination is understood, the University has been seen His mistake lay in his innocent assumption that it was corred tospeak of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean Museum and the University, to speak, that is, as if 'the University' stood for an extra member of the class ofwhich these other units are members He was mistakenly allocating the University tothe same category as that to which the other institutions belong

The same mistake would be made by a child witnessing the march-past of a division,who, having had pointed out to him such and such battalions, batteries, squadrons, etc.,asked when the division was going to appear He would be supposing that a divisionwas a counterpart to the units already seen, partly similar to them and partly unlikethem He would be shown his mistake by being told that in watching the battalions,batteries and squadrons marching past he had been watching the division marchingpast The march-past was not a parade of battalions, batteries, squadrons and a division;

it was a parade of the battalions, batteries and squadrons of a division

One more illustration A foreigner watching his first game of cricket learns what arethe functions of the bowlers, the batsmen, the fielders, the umpires and the scorers Hethen says ' But there is no one left on the field to contribute the famous element ofteam-spirit I see who does the bowling, the batting and the wicket-keeping; but I donot see whose role it is to exercise esprit de corps.' Once more, it would have to beexplained that he was looking for the wrong type of thing Team-spirit is not anothercricketing- operation supplementary to all of the other special tasks It is, roughly, thekeenness with which each of the special tasks is performed, and perfonning a taskkeenly is not perfonning two tasks Certainly exhibiting team-spirit is not the samething as bowling or catching, but nor is it a third thing such that we can say that the

bowler first bowls and then exhibits team-spirit or that a fielder is at a given momenteither catching or displaying esprit de corps.

These illustrations of category-mistakes have a common feature which must benoticed The mistakes were made by people who did not know how to wield theconcepts University, division and team-spirit Their puzzles arose horn inability to usecertain items in the English vocabulary

The theoretically interesting category-mistakes are those made by people who areperfectly competent to apply concepts, at least in the situations with which they arefamiliar, but are still liable in their abstract thinking to allocate those concepts to logicaltypes to which they do not belong An instance of a mistake of this sort would be thefollowing story A student of politics has learned the main differences between theBritish, the French and the American Constitutions, and has learned also the differencesand connections between the Cabinet, Parliament, the various Ministries, the Judicatureand the Church of England But he still becomes embarrassed when asked questionsabout the connections between the Church of England, the Home Office and the BritishConstitution For while the Church and the Home Office are institutions, the BritishConstitution is not another institution in the same sense of that noun So inter-institutional relations which can be asserted or denied to hold between the Church and theHome Office cannot be asserted or denied to hold between either of them and theBritish Constitution ' The British Constitution is not a term of the same logical type as'

the Home Office' and 'the Church of England' In a partially similar way, John Doe may

be a relative, a mend, an enemy or a stranger to Richard Roe; but he cannot be any ofthese things to the Average Taxpayer He knows how to talk sense in certain sorts ofdiscussions about the Average Taxpayer, but he is baffled to say why he could notcome across him in the street as he can come across Richard Roe

It is pertinent to our main subject to notice that, so long as the student of politicscontinues to think of the British Constitution as a counterpart to the other institutions,

he will tend to describe it as a mysteriously occult institution; and so long as John Doecontinues to think of the Average Taxpayer as a fellow-citizen, he will tend to think ofhim as an elusive insubstantial man, a ghost who is everywhere yet nowhere

My destructive purpose is to show that a family of radical category-mistakes is thesource of the double-life theory The representation of a person as a ghost mysteriouslyensconced in a machine derives horn this argument Because, as is true, a person'sthinking, feeling and purposive doing cannot be described solely in the idioms ofphysics, chemistry and physiology, therefore they must be described in counterpartidioms As the human body is a complex organised unit, so the human mind must beanother complex organised unit, though one made of a different sort of stuff and with adifferent sort of strocture Or, again, as the human body, like any other parcel of matter,

is a field of causes and effects, so the mind must be another field of causes and effects,though not (Heaven be praised) mechanical causes and effects.

The Origin of the Category-Mistake

One of the chief intellectual origins of what I have yet to prove to be the Cartesiancategory-mistake seems to be this When Galileo showed that his methods of scientificdiscovery were competent to provide a mechanical theory which should cover everyoccupant of space, Descartes found in himself two conflicting motives As a man ofscientific genius he could not but endorse the claims of mechanics, yet as a religious andmoral man he could not accept, as Hobbes accepted, the discouraging rider to those

Descartes' Myth 27

claims, namely that human nature differs only in degree of complexity &om clockwork.The mental could not be just a variety of the mechanical.

He and subsequent philosophers naturally but erroneously availed themselves of thefollowing escape-route Since mental-conduct words are not to be construed as signi-fying the occurrence of mechanical process es, they must be construed as signifying theoccurrence of non-mechanical process es; since mechanical laws explain movements inspace as the effects of other movements in space, other laws must explain some of thenon-spatial workings of minds as the effects of other non-spatial workings of minds.The difference between the human behaviours which we describe as intelligent andthose which we describe as unintelligent must be a difference in their causation; so,while some movements of human tongues and limbs are the effects of mechanicalcauses, others must be the effects of non-mechanical causes, i.e some issue &om movements

of particles of matter, others &om workings of the mind

The differences between the physical and the mental were thus represented as differences inside the common &amework of the categories of 'thing', 'stuff', 'attribute','

state', 'process', 'change', 'cause' and 'effect' Minds are things, but different sorts ofthings &om bodies; mental process es are causes and effects, but different sorts ofcauses and effects &om bodily movements And so on Somewhat as the foreignerexpected the University to be an extra edifice, rather like a college but also consider ablydifferent, so the repudiators of mechanism represented minds as extra centres of causalprocess es, rather like machines but also consider ably different &om them Their theorywas a paramechanical hypothesis

That this assumption was at the heart of the doctrine is shown by the fact that the~.ewas from the beginning felt to be a major theoretical difficulty in explaining how mindscan influence and be influenced by bodies How can a mental process, such as willing ,cause spatial movements like the movements of the tongue? How can a physical change

in the optic nerve have among its effects a mind's perception of a flash of light? Thisnotorious crux by itself shows the logical mould into which Descartes pressed histheory of the mind It was the self-same mould into which he and Galileo set theirmechanics Still unwittingly adhering to the grammar of mechanics, he tried to avertdisaster by describing minds in what was merely an obverse vocabulary The workings

of minds had to be described by the mere negatives of the specific descriptions given

to bodies; they are not in space, they are not motions, they are not modifications ofmatter, they are not accessible to public observation Minds are not bits of clockwork,they are just bits of not-clockwork

As thus represented, minds are not merely ghosts harnessed to machines, they arethemselves just spectral machines Though the human body is an engine, it is not quite

an ordinary engine, since some of its workings are governed by another engine inside

it - this interior governor-engine being one of a very special sort It is invisible, inaudible and it has no size or weight It cannot be taken to bits and the laws it obeys are notthose known to ordinary engineers Nothing is known of how it governs the bodilyengine

A second major crux points the same moral Since, according to the doctrine, mindsbelong to the same category as bodies and since bodies are rigidly governed bymechanical laws, it seemed to many theorists to follow that minds must be similarlygoverned by rigid non-mechanical laws The physical world is a deterministic system,

so the mental world must be a deterministic system Bodies cannot help the ifications that they undergo, so minds cannot help pursuing the careers fixed for them.Responsibility, choice, merit and demerit are therefore inapplicable concepts- unless thecompromise solution is adopted of saying that the laws governing mental process es,

mod-28 Gilbert Ryle

Descartes' Myth 29 unlike those governing physical process es, have the congenial attribute of being only rather rigid The problem of the Freedom of the Will was the problem how to reconcile the hypothesis that minds are to be described in terms drawn from the categories of mechanics with the knowledge that higher -grade human conduct is not of a piece with the behaviour of machines.

It is an historical curiosity that it was not noticed that the entire argument was broken -backed Theorists correctly assumed that any sane man could already recognise the differences between , say, rational and non -rational utterances or between purposive and automatic behaviour Else there would have been nothing requiring to be salved from mechanism Yet the explanation given presupposed that one person could in principle never recognise the difference between the rational and the irrational ' utter -ances issuing from other human bodies, since he could never get access to the postulated immaterial causes of some of their utterances Save for the doubtful exception of himself , he could never tell the difference between a man and a Robot It would have to

be conceded, for example, that , for all that we can tell , the inner lives of persons who are classed as idiots or lunatics are as rational as those of anyone else Perhaps only their overt behaviour is disappointing ; that is to say, perhaps 'idiots' are not really idiotic , or 1unatics' lunatic Perhaps, too , some of those who are classed as sane are really idiots According to the theory , external observers could never know how the overt behaviour

of others is correlated with their mental powers and process es and so they could never know or even plausibly conjecture whether their applications of mental - conduct concepts to these other people were correct or incorrect It would then be hazardous or impossible for a man to claim sanity or logical consistency even for himself , since he would be debarred from comparing his own performances with those

of others In short , our characterisations of persons and their performances as intelligent , prudent and virtuous or as stupid , hypocritical and cowardly could never have been made, so the problem of providing a special causal hypothesis to serve as the basis

of such diagnoses would never have arisen The question , ' How do persons differ from machinesf arose just because everyone already knew how to apply mental-conduct concepts before the new causal hypothesis was introduced This causal hypothesis could not therefore be the source of the criteria used in those applications Nor , of course, has the causal hypothesis in any degree improved our handling of those criteria

We still distinguish good from bad arithmetic , politic from impolitic conduct and fertile from infertile imaginations in the ways in which Descartes himself distinguished them before and after he speculated how the applicability of these criteria was compatible with the principle of mechanical causation.

He had mistaken the logic of his problem Instead of asking by what criteria intelligent behaviour is actually distinguished from non-intelligent behaviour , he asked '

Given that the principle of mechanical causation does not tell us the difference, what other causal principle will tell usf He realised that the problem was not one of mechanics and assumed that it must therefore be one of some counterpart to mechanics Not unnaturally psychology is often cast for just this role

When two terms belong to the same category , it is proper to construct conjunctive propositions embodying them Thus a purchaser may say that he bought a left -hand glove and a right -hand glove , but not that he bought a left -hand glove , a right -hand glove and a pair of gloves 'She came home in a flood of tears and a sedan- chair' is awell -known joke based on the absurdity of conjoining terms of different types It would have been equally ridiculous to construct the disjunction 'She came home either in a flood of tears or else in a sedan-chair' Now the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine does just this It maintains that there exist both bodies and minds; that there occur

physical process es and mental process es; that there are mechanical causes of corporeal

movements and mental causes of corporeal movements I shall argue that these and

other analogous conjunctions are absurd; but, it must be noticed, the argument will not

show that either of the illegitimately conjoined propositions is absurd in itself I am not,

for example, denying that there occur mental process es Doing long division is a mental

process and so is making a joke But I am saying that the phrase 'there occur mental

processes' does not mean the same sort of thing as 'there occur physical processes', and,

therefore, that it makes no sense to conjoin or disjoin the two

If my argument is successful, there will follow some interesting consequences First,

the hallowed contrast between Mind and Matter will be dissipated, but dissipated not

by either of the equally hallowed absorptions of Mind by Matter or of Matter by Mind ,

but in quite a different way For the seeming contrast of the two will be shown to be as

illegitimate as would be the contrast of 'she came home in a Rood of tears' and 'she came

home in a sedan-chair' The belief that there is a polar opposition between Mind and

Matter is the belief that they are terms of the same logical type

It will also follow that both Idealism and Materialism are answers to an improper

question The 'reduction' of the material world to mental states and process es, as well as

the 'reduction' of mental states and process es to physical states and process es, presuppose

the legitimacy of the disjunction ' Either there exist minds or there exist bodies

(but not both)' It would be like saying ' Either she bought a left-hand and a right-hand

glove or she bought a pair of gloves (but not both)'.

It is perfectly proper to say, in one logical tone of voice, that there exist minds and to

say, in another logical tone of voice, that there exist bodies But these expressions do

not indicate two different species of existence, for' existence' is not a generic word like

'coloured' or 'sexed'

They indicate two different senses of 'exist', somewhat as 'rising'has different senses in 'the tide is rising', ' hopes are rising', and 'the average age of death

is rising' A man would be thought to be making a poor joke who said that three things

are now rising namely the tide, hopes and the average age of death It would be just as

good or bad a joke to say that there exist prime numbers and Wednesdays and public

opinions and navies; or that there exist both minds and bodies I try to prove that the

official theory does rest on a batch of category-mistakes by showing that logically

absurd corollaries follow from it The exhibition of these absurdities will have the

constructive effect of bringing out part of the correct logic of mental-conduct concepts

Historical Note

It would not be true to say that the official theory derives solely from Descartes'

theories, or even from a more widespread anxiety about the implications of seventeenth century mechanics Scholastic and Reformation theology had schooled the intellects

of the scientists as well as of the laymen, philosophers and clerics of that age

Stoic-Augustinian theories of the will were embedded in the Calvinist doctrines of sin

and grace; Platonic and Aristotelian theories of the intellect shaped the orthodox doctrines

of the immortality of the soul Descartes was reformulating already prevalent

theological doctrines of the soul in the new syntax of Galileo The theologian's privacy

of conscience became the philosopher's privacy of consciousness, and what had been

the bogy of Predestination reappeared as the bogy of Determinism

It would also not be true to say that the two-worlds myth did no theoretical good

Myths often do a lot of theoretical good, while they are still new One benefit bestowed

by the paramechanical myth was that it partly superannuated the then prevalent parapolitical myth Minds and their Faculties had previously been described by

30 Gilbert Ryle

Descartes' Myth 31

analogies with political superiors and political subordinates The idioms used werethose of ruling, obeying, collaborating and rebelling They survived and still survive inmany ethical and some epistemological discussions As, in physics, the new myth ofoccult Forces was a sdentific improvement on the old myth of Final Causes, so, inanthropological and psychological theory, the new myth of hidden operations, impulses and agencies was an improvement on the old myth of dictations, deferences anddisobediences

I a Brain Process?

Introduction

The view that there exists a separate class of events, mental events, which cannot

be described in tenns of the concepts employed by the physical sciences no longer

commands the universal and unquestioning acceptance amongst philosophers and psychologists

which it once did Modem physicalism, however, unlike the materialism of

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is behaviouristic Consciousness on this view

is either a special type of behaviour, 'sampling' or 'running-back-and-forth' behaviour as

Tolman (1932, p 206) has it, or a disposition to behave in a certain way, an itch for

example being a temporary propensity to scratch In the case of cognitive concepts like

' knowing', ' believing', 'understanding', 'remembering' and volitional concepts like

'

wanting' and 'intending', there can be little doubt, I think, that an analysis in tenns of

dispositions to behave ( Wittgenstein 1953, Ryle 1949) is fundamentally sound On the

other hand, there would seem to be an intractable residue of concepts clustering around

the notions of consciousness, experience, sensation and mental imagery, where some

sort of inner process story is unavoidable (place 1954) It is possible, of course, that a

satisfactory behaviouristic account of this conceptual residuum will ultimately be found

For our present purposes, however, I shall assume that this cannot be done and that

statements about pains and twinges, about how things look, sound and feel, about

things dreamed of or pictured in the mind's eye, are statements referring to events and

process es which are in some sense private or internal to the individual of whom they

are predicated The question I wish to raise is whether in making this assumption we are

inevitably committed to a dualist position in which sensations and mental images fonn

a separate category of process es over and above the physical and physiological

pro-cesses with which they are known to be correlated I shall argue that an acceptance of

inner process es does not entail dualism and that the thesis that consciousness is a

process in the brain cannot be dismissed on logical grounds

The 'Is' of Definition and the 'Is' of Composition

I want to stress from the outset that in defending the thesis that consciousness is a

process in the brain, I am not trying to argue that when we describe our dreams,

fantasies and sensations we are talking about process es in our brains That is, I am not

claiming that statements about sensations and mental images are reducible to or analysable into statements about brain process es, in the way in which' cognition statements'

are analysable into statements about behaviour To say that statements about consciousness

are statements about brain process es is manifestly false This is shown (a) by

the fact that you can describe your sensations and mental imagery without knowing

anything about your brain process es or even that such things exist, (b) by the fact that

statements about one's consciousness and statements about one's brain process es are

Chapter 7

Is Consciousness

U T Place

verified in entirely different ways and (c) by the fact that there is nothing self-contradictory about the statement 'X has a pain but there is nothing going on in his bram' What

I do want to assert, however, is that the statement 'consciousness is a process in

the brain', although not necessarily true, is not necessarily false 'Consciousness is a

process in the brain', on my view is neither self-contradictory nor self-evident; it is a

reasonable scientific hypothesis, in the way that the statement 'lightning is a motion of

electric charges' is a reasonable scientific hypothesis

The all but universally accepted view that an assertion of identity between consciousness

and brain process es can be ruled out on logical grounds alone, derives, I

suspect, from a failure to distinguish between what we may call the 'is' of definition and

the 'is' of composition The distinction I have in mind here is the difference between the

function of the word 'is' in statements like' a square is an equilateral rectangle', 'red is a

colour' , 'to understand an instruction is to be able to act appropriately under the

appropriate circumstances', and its function in statements like ' his table is an old packing

case " ' her hat is a bundle of straw tied together with string', 'a cloud is a mass of water

droplets or other particles in suspension' These two types of'is' statements have one

thing in common In both cases it makes sense to add the qualification 'and nothing

else' In this they differ from those statements in which the 'is' is an 'is' of predication;

the statements 'Toby is 80 years old and nothing else', ' her hat is red and nothing else'

or 'giraffes are tall and nothing else', for example, are nonsense This logical feature may

be desaibed by saying that in both cases both the grammatical subject and the grammatical predicate are expressions which provide an adequate characterization of the

state of affairs to which they both refer

In another respect, however, the two groups of statements are strikingly different

Statements like 'a square is an equilateral rectangle' are necessary statements which are

true by definition Statements like ' his table is an old packing case', on the other hand,

are contingent statements which have to be verified by observation In the case of

statements like 'a square is an equilateral rectangle' or 'red is a colour' , there is a

relationship between the meaning of the expression fonning the grammatical predicate

and the meaning of the expression fonning the grammatical subject, such that whenever the subject expression is applicable the predicate must also be applicable If you

can desaibe something as red then you must also be able to desaibe it as coloured In

the case of statements like ' his table is an old packing case', on the other hand, there is

no such relationship between the meanings of the expressions 'his table' and 'old

packing case'; it merely so happens that in this case both expressions are applicable to

and at the same time provide an adequate characterization of the same object Those

who contend that the statement 'consciousness is a brain process' is logically untenable

base their claim, I suspect, on the mistaken assumption that if the meanings of two

statements or expressions are quite unconnected, they cannot both provide an adequate

characterization of the same object or state of affairs: if something is a state of consciousness

, it cannot be a brain process, since there is nothing self-contradictory in

supposing that someone feels a pain when there is nothing happening inside his skull

By the same token we might be led to conclude that a table cannot be an old packing

case, since there is nothing self-contradictory in supposing that someone has a table,

but is not in possession of an old packing case

The Logicallndeptndence of Erpressions and the Ontologicallndepmdence of Entities

There is, of course, an important difference between the table/ packing case case and the

consciousness/ brain process case in that the statement ' his table is an old packing case'

34 U.T.Place

Is Consciousness a Brain Process? 3S

is a particular proposition which refers only to one particular case, whereas the statement 'consciousness

is a process in the brain' is a general or universal propositionapplying to all states of consciousness whatever It is fairly clear, I think, that if we lived

in a world in which all tables without exception were packing cases, the concepts of

'table' and '

packing case' in our language would not have their present logically independent status In such a world a table would be a species of packing case in much the

same way that red is a species of colour It seems to be a rule of language that whenever

a given variety of object or state of affairs has two characteristics or sets of characteristics, one of which is unique to the variety of object or state of affairs in question, the

expression used to refer to the characteristic or set of characteristics which defines the

variety of object or state of affairs in question will always entail the expression used

to refer to the other characteristic or set of characteristics If this rule admitted of

no exception it would follow that any expression which is logically independent of

another expression which uniquely characterizes a given variety of object or state of

affairs, must refer to a characteristic or set of characteristics which is not normally or

necessarily associated with the object or state of affairs in question It is because this

rule applies almost universally, I suggest, that we are normally justified in arguing from

the logical independence of two expressions to the onto logical independence of the

states of affairs to which they refer This would explain both the undoubted force of the

argument that consciousness and brain process es must be independent entities becausethe expressions used to refer to them are logically independent and, in general, the

curious phenomenon whereby questions about the furniture of the universe are often

fought and not infrequently decided merely on a point of logic

The argument from the logical independence of two expressions to the onto logical

independence of the entities to which they refer breaks down in the case of brain

process es and consciousness, I believe, because this is one of a relatively small number

of cases where the rule stated above does not apply These exceptions are to be found, I

suggest, in those cases where the operations which have to be performed in order to

verify the presence of the two sets of characteristics inhering in the object or state of

affairs in question can seldom if ever be performed simultaneously A good example

here is the case of the cloud and the mass of droplets or other particles in suspension A

cloud is a large semi-transparent mass with a fleecy texture suspended in the atmosphere whose shape is subject to continual and kaleidoscopic change When observed

at close quarters, however, it is found to consist of a mass of tiny particles, usually

water droplets, in continuous motion On the basis of this second observation we

conclude that a cloud is a mass of tiny particles and nothing else But there is no logical

connexion in our language between a cloud and a mass of tiny particles; there is

nothing self-contradictory in talking about a cloud which is not compoSed of tiny

particles in suspension There is no contradiction involved in supposing that clouds

consist of a dense mass of fibrous tissue; indeed, such a consistency seems to be

implied by many of the functions performed by clouds in fairy stories and mythology

It is clear from this that the terms 'cloud' and 'mass of tiny particles in suspension' meanquite different things Yet we do not conclude from this that there must be two things,

the mass of particles in suspension and the cloud The reason for this, I suggest, is that

although the characteristics of being a cloud and being a mass of tiny particles in

suspension are invariably associated, we never make the observations necessary to

verify the statement 'that is a cloud' and those necessary to verify the statement 'this

is a mass of tiny particles in suspension' at one and the same time We can observethe micro- structure of a cloud only when we are enveloped by it, a condition which

effectively prevents us from observing those characteristics which from a distance lead

us to describe it as a cloud Indeed, so disparate are these two experiences that we use different words to describe them That which is a cloud when we observe it from a distance becomes a fog or mist when we are enveloped by it

When Are Two Sets of Obsm1ations Obsm1ations of the Same Event?

The example of the cloud and the mass of tiny particles in suspension was chosenbecause it is one of the few cases of a general proposition involving what I have calledthe 'is' of composition which does not involve us in sdentific technicalities It is usefulbecause it brings out the connexion between the ordinary everyday cases of the 'is' ofcomposition like the table/ packing case example and the more technical cases like'lightning is a motion of electric charges' where the analogy with the consdousness/brain process case is most marked The limitation of the cloud/ tiny particles in suspension case is that it does not bring out sufficiently clearly the crucial problem of how theidentity of the states of affairs referred to by the two expressions is established In thecloud case the fad that something is a cloud and the fad that something is a mass oftiny particles in suspension are both verified by the normal process es of visual observation It is arguable, moreover, that the identity of the entities referred to by the twoexpressions is established by the continuity between the two sets of observations as theobserver moves towards or away from the cloud In the case of brain process es andconsciousness there is no such continuity between the two sets of observations involved A closer introspective scrutiny will never reveal the passage of nerve impulsesover a thousand synapses in the way that a closer scrutiny of a cloud will reveal a mass

of tiny particles in suspension The operations required to verify statements aboutconsciousness and statements about brain process es are fundamentally different

To find a parallel for this feature we must examine other cases where an identity isasserted between something whose occurrence is veri6ed by the ordinary process es ofobservation and something whose occurrence is established by special sdenti6c procedures For this purpose I have chosen the case where we say that lightning is a motion

of electric charges As in the case of consdousness, however closely we scrutinize thelightning we shall never be able to observe the electric charges, and just as the operations for determining the nature of one's state of consdousness are radically differentfrom those involved in determining the nature of one's brain process es, so the operations for determining the occurrence of lightning are radically different from thoseinvolved in determining the occurrence of a motion of electric charges What is it,therefore, that leads us to say that the two sets of observations are observations of thesame event? It cannot be merely the fad that the two sets of observations are systematically correlated such that whenever there is lightning there is always a motion ofelectric charges There are innumerable cases of such correlations where we have notemptation to say that the two sets of observations are observations of the same event.There is a systematic correlation, for example, between the movement of the tides andthe stages of the moon, but this does not lead us to say that records of tidal levels arerecords of the moon's stages or vice versa We speak rather of a causal connexionbetween two independent events or process es

The answer here seems to be that we treat the two sets of observations as observations

of the same event, in those cases where the technical sdentific observations set inthe context of the appropriate body of scientific theory provide an immediate explanation

of the observations made by the man in the street Thus we conclude that lightning

is nothing more than a motion of electric charges, because we know that a motion ofelectric charges through the atmosphere, such as occurs when lightning is reported,

36 U.T.Place

Is Consdousness a Brain Process ? 3 7

gives rise to the type of visual stimulation which would lead an observer to report a

flash of lightning In the moon / tide case, on the other hand, there is no such direct

causal connexion between the stages of the moon and the observations made by the

man who measures the height of the tide The causal connexion is between the moon

and the tides, not between the moon and the measurement of the tides.

The Physiological Explanation of Introspection and the Phenomenological Fallacy

If this account is correct, it should follow that in order to establish the identity of

consciousness and certain process es in the brain, it would be necessary to show that the

introspective observations reported by the subject can be accounted for in tet: ms of

process es which are known to have occurred in his brain In the light of this suggestion

it is extremely interesting to find that when a physiologist as distinct &om a philosopher finds it difficult to see how consciousness could be a process in the brain, what

worries him is not any supposed self-contradiction involved in such an assumption, but

the apparent impossibility of accounting for the reports given by the subject of his

conscious process es in terms of the known properties of the central nervous system Sir

CharlesS herring ton has posed the problem as follows: ' The chain of events stretching

&om the sun's radiation entering the eye to, on the one hand, the contraction of the

pupillary muscles, and on the other, to the electrical disturbances in the brain-cortex are

all straightforward steps in a sequence of physical "causation", such as, thanks to science, are intelligible But in the second serial chain there follows on, or attends, the

stage of brain-cortex reaction an event or set of events quite inexplicable to us, which

both as to themselves and as to the causal tie between them and what preceded them

science does not help us; a set of events seemingly incommensurable with any of the

events leading up to it The self "sees" the sun; it senses a two-dimensional disc of

brightness, located in the "sky", this last a Reid of lesser brightness, and overhead

shaped as a rather flattened dome, coping the self and a hundred other visual things as

well Of hint that this is within the head there is none Vision is saturated with this

strange property called "projection", the unargued inference that what it sees is at a

"

distance" &om the seeing "self" Enough has been said to stress that in the sequence of

events a step is reached where a physical situation in the brain leads to a psychical,

which however contains no hint of the brain or any other bodily part The supposition

has to be, it would seem, two continuous series of events, one physicochemical, the other psychical, and at times interaction between them' (S herring ton,

1947, pp xx- xxi)

Just as the physiologist is not likely to be impressed by the philosopher's contention

that there is some self-contradiction involved in supposing consciousness to be a brain

process, so the philosopher is unlikely to be impressed by the considerations which lead

S herring ton to conclude that there are two sets of events, one physicochemical, the

other psychical Sherrington's argument for all its emotional appeal depends on a fairly

simple logical mistake, which is unfortunately all too &equently made by psychologists

and physiologists and not in &equently in the past by the philosophers themselves This

logical mistake, which I shall refer to as the 'phenomenological fallacy', is the mistake of

supposing that when the subject describes his experience, when he describes how

things look, sound, smell, taste or feel to him, he is describing the literal properties of

objects and events on a peculiar sort of internal cinema or television screen, usually

referred to in the modem psychological literature as the 'phenomenal Reid' If we

assume, for example, that when a subject reports a green after-image he is asserting the

occurrence inside himself of an object which is literally green, it is clear that we have on

our hands an entity for which there is no place in the world of physics In the case of thegreen after-image there is no green object in the subject's environment corresponding

to the description that he gives Nor is there anything green in his brain; certainly there

is nothing which could have emerged when he reported the appearance of the greenafter-image Brain process es are not the sort of things to which colour concepts can beproperly applied

The phenomenological fallacy on which this argument is based depends on themistaken assumption that because our ability to describe things in our environmentdepends on our consciousness of them, our descriptions of things are primarily descriptions

of our consdous experience and only secondarily, indirectly and inferentiallydescriptions of the objects and events in our environments It is assumed that because

we recognize things in our environment by their look, sound, smell, taste and feel,

we begin by describing their phenomenal properties, i.e., the properties of the looks,sounds, smells, tastes and feels which they produce in us, and infer their real propertiesHorn their phenomenal properties In fact, the reverse is the case We begin by learning

to recognize the real properties of things in our environment We learn to recognizethem, of course, by their look, sound, smell, taste and feel; but this does not mean that

we have to learn to describe the look, sound, smell, taste and feel of things before wecan describe the things themselves Indeed, it is only after we have learnt to describe thethings in our environment that we can learn to describe our consciousness of them

We describe our conscious experience not in terms of the mythological 'phenomenalproperties' which are supposed to inhere in the mythological' objects' in the mythologi-cal 'phenomenal field', but by reference to the actual physical properties of the concretephysical objects, events and process es which normally, though not perhaps in thepresent instance, give rise to the sort of conscious experience which we are trying todescribe In other words when we describe the after-image as green, we are not sayingthat there is something, the after-image, which is green we are saying that we arehaving the sort of experience which we nonnally have when, and which we have learnt

to describe as, looking at a green patch of light

Once we rid ourselves of the phenomenological fallacy we realize that the problem

of explaining introspective observations in terms of brain process es is far Horn insuperable We realize that there is nothing that the introspecting subject says about hisconscious experiences which is inconsistent with anything the physiologist might want

to say about the brain process es which cause him to describe the environment and hisconsciousness of that environment in the way he does When the subject describes hisexperience by saying that a light which is in fact stationary, appears to move, all thephysiologist or physiological psychologist has to do in order to explain the subject'sintrospective observations, is to show that the brain process which is causing thesubject to describe his experience in this way, is the sort of process which nonnallyoccurs when he is observing an actual moving object and which therefore normallycauses him to report the movement of an object in his environment Once the mechanism whereby the individual describes what is going on in his environment has beenworked out, all that is required to explain the individual's capacity to make introspective observations is an explanation of his ability to discriminate between those caseswhere his nonnal habits of verbal description are appropriate to the stimulus situationand those cases where they are not and an explanation of how and why, in those caseswhere the appropriateness of his nonnal descriptive habits is in doubt, he learns to issuehis ordinary descriptive protocols preceded by a qualificatory phrase like 'it appears','seems'

, 100ks', 'feels', etc

38 U T Place

Is Con Id ~ a Brain Procell? 39

Acknm Diedgments

I am greatly indebted to my feUow-partidpants in a series of infonnal discussions onthis topic which took place in the Department of Philosophy, Univenity of Adelaide, inparticular to Mr C B Martin for his persistent and searching aitidsm of my earlierattempts to defend the thesis that consdousness is a brain process, to prof D AT Gasking, of the Univenity of Melbourne, for clarifying many of the logical issuesinvolved and to Prof } } C Smart for moral support and encouragement in what oftenseemed a lost cause

References

Place , U T (1954).11 concept of heed Brif.] Psvchol 45, ] AJ- 55.

Ryle, G (1949) 1111 Conapt of Mind Lo I K Ic.\: Hutminl On.

S herring ton, Sir 0tar Ies (1947) Foreword to the 1947 edition of 1111 blflgr8fiw Adion of fill NIrw SysI Canlbridge University Prell.

Tolman , Eo c (1931 ) Purpt iw BI'-f1i D I Ir in A I Ii ~ " Mm Berkeley and Los Angeles : University

of Call fomia Press

Wittgenstein , L (1953) Plrii M Ophical ba Dalig8fi Df8 Oxford: Blackwell

an a posterior i judgment; scientific investigation might have turned out otherwise As Isaid before, this shows nothing against the view that it is necessary- at least if I amright But here, surely, people had very specific circumstances in mind under which, sothey thought, the judgment that heat is the motion of molecules would have been false.What were these circumstances? One can distill them out of the fad that we found outempirically that heat is the motion of molecules How was this? What did we find outfirst when we found out that heat is the motion of molecules? There is a certain externalphenomenon which we can sense by the sense of touch, and it produces a sensationwhich we call "the sensation of heat." We then discover that the external phenomenonwhich produces this sensation, which we sense, by means of our sense of touch, is infad that of molecular agitation in the thing that we touch, a very high degree ofmolecular agitation So, it might be thought, to imagine a situation in which heat wouldnot have been the motion of molecules, we need only imagine a situation in which wewould have had the very same sensation and it would have been produced by something other than the motion of molecules Similarly, if we wanted to imagine a situation

in which light was not a stream of photons, we could imagine a situation in which wewere sensitive to something else in exactly the same way, producing what we callvisual experiences, though not through a stream of photons To make the case stronger,

or to look at another side of the coin, we could also consider a situation in which we areconcerned with the motion of molecules but in which such motion does not give us thesensation of heat And it might also have happened that we, or, at least, the creaturesinhabiting this planet, might have been so constituted that, let us say, an increase in themotion of molecules did not give us this sensation but that, on the contrary, a slowingdown of the molecules did give us the very same sensation This would be a situation,

so it might be thought, in which heat would not be the motion of molecules, or, moreprecisely, in which temperature would not be mean molecular kinetic energy

But I think it would not be so Let us think about the situation again First, let us thinkabout it in the actual world Imagine right now the world invaded by a number ofMartians, who do indeed get the very sensation that we call "the sensation of heat"when they feel some ice which has slow molecular motion, and who do not get asensation of heat- in fad , maybe just the reverse- when they put their hand near afire which causes a lot of molecular agitation Would we say, " Ah, this casts some doubt

on heat being the motion of molecules, because there are these other people who don't