First Arts Philosophy

What sort of thing is a mind?

7. Identity Theory (Continued)

What would Descartes say? Recall the Ways of Knowing argument:

What (and how) we know about our minds is quite different from what we know about our brain.

An argument against identity theory: The Average person knows his own mind intimately The average person does not know his brain processes intimately Therefore, the mind cannot be identical to brain processes.

Response From J.J.C. Smart

This commits the Intensional Fallacy (I.e., it treats a psychological attitude towards a thing as if it were a property of that thing) And then it tries to say that, since the mind and brain have different properties, they must be different things. BUT: When you know X, believe X, doubt X, love X etc., those are not themselves properties of X.

Example Consider the following analogous argument:

Lois Lane does not love Clark Kent Lois Lane does love Superman Therefore Clark Kent is not identical to superman Something went wrong here. Whether or not Lois Lane loves them is not a property of Clark Kent or of Superman, and so cannot be used to distinguish the two.

So...

Like Lois Lane, we can have knowledge of all kinds of things while remaining ignorant of their true identities. Just because you know about sensations, but you dont know about brain states, it doesnt mean the two are different things.

A problem: Places identity theory says that Pain C-fibre firing But different types of brains might be capable of the same types of mental states.
E.g., a Non-human animal might still be capable of feeling pain, even if their brain doesnt contain any CFibres. The identity theory seems chauvinistic its based on the assumption that mental states can only be identical to our (human) brain states

But worse: The phenomenon of neural plasticity.

When one part of the brain is damaged, other parts of the brain can take over the functions of the damaged parts. Further, its reasonable to suppose that everyones brains are a little bit different from each other.

So the brain state that corresponds to a mental state might vary from person to person, or even within the same person at different times. Multiple Realisability Mental states can exist in (can be realised by) a variety of different physical systems.

So...

Taken together, the chauvinism objection and the multiple realisability objection point to a problem for identity theory... If there is no one physical state common to all beings that feel pain, then it seems unlikely that pain could be reduced to a brain state in the way that identity theorists proposed.

Response: A more detailed view There are actually two different versions of the identity theory. Note that Places theory concerns a relationship between categories or types of mental states and categories or types of brain states
E.g., Pain is C-fibre firing

For that reason its sometimes called the Type Identity Theory

A distinction: Types vs. Tokens A token is a specific individual example of a general type (or category, or group). Scooter and Trim: Two tokens of the type cat.

Yellow, blue and red: Three tokens of the type colour.

Places view: Type Identity Theory Mental state types are identical to brain state types
E.g., Pain is identical to C-Fibre firing

Why? The evidence comes from correlations every time weve seen someone in pain, we notice that their cfibres are firing. Its this version of the Identity Theory that runs into problems with chauvinism and multiple realisability

So... Many philosophers have moved to a more liberal version Token Identity Theory. Every mental state is identical with some physical state, but... Tokens of the the same type of mental state might occur as different physical states.
E.g., Joels pain now= c-fibre #578 firing Kongs pain now = d-fibre #352 firing

Pain is always a brain state, but it need not be the same state in every brain that has a pain.

An analogy that may help: Consider the relationship between a computers hardware and its software. Its possible for the same piece of software to run on very different hardware:

So... Every software state is identical to some hardware state, but... Tokens of the same type of software state (e.g., running a spellchecker) can occur as different hardware states.

So... You can have a kind of physicalism

Whilst allowing multiple realisability.

But now: Token identity theory says that many different brain states can nonetheless be instances of the same mental state.
I, you, a chimp and a dog can all feel pain, despite our different brains.

But if thats so, what do they have in common that makes them all pains? How can you have a physicalist theory about pains, if pains dont have anything physical in common?

The essential tension of identity theory: Type identity allows you to have a physicalist theory about mental states, but it wont account for multiple realisability. Token identity allows you to account for multiple realisability, but wont let you have a phyicalist theory about mental states. Where does that leave us?

Two options: 1) Find something else thats common to all instances of pain, despite their physical differences.
Looking ahead: their function. A pain, whatever physical state makes it up, has the function of guiding the system away, forming other mental states, and so on.

2) Make a stronger claim, and say that we cant ever find one-to-one match ups between physical and mental concepts, because theres something wrong with the latter! (Eliminativism)