Behaviorism and After
Gilbert Ryle invented the term "ghost in the machine" to ridicule what he calls "the official doctrine," i.e. the following view of the mind and body, which is derived from Descartes but believed by virtually everybody, according to Ryle (who was writing over 50 years ago).
The Official Doctrine: Bodies and minds are very different things. Bodies are objects in space that anyone can see, and that are governed by natural laws of science (their movements are determined). Minds are not in space, are accessible only to the owner, and are not subject to mechanical laws (they have free will).
Problems:
1. How do mind and body interact?
2. How do I know that other people even have minds at all (if only my own is accessible to me)?
3. How is my mind ‘accessible to me’--is there some sixth sense?
4. Why does this introspective sense never fail? How come I can’t make a mistake about what I believe (could you really be a Democrat even though you believe you are a Republican)?
5. How do I know that other people’s behavior corresponds to their mental states the same way mine does (when your mouth smiles, how do I know your mind feels happy)?
Category Mistakes: Ryle (who was influenced by Wittgenstein) blames the official doctrine and its problems on what he calls a "category mistake." For instance, you can take a nap, take control, or take my wallet. But naps, control and wallets do not belong to the same category. Someone misled by English grammar might not realize this and think that a nap is a very mysterious, invisible thing. So too, when we talk about "keeping things in mind" or using "mind over matter," we might be led to think that the mind is a very mysterious thing.
Logical behaviorism: Ryle’s solution is to argue that the correct use of words like "mind," "thought," "sanity," "pain," etc. is in connection with human behavior. A thought or a mind is no more a mysterious, ghostly thing than a nap is. Such concepts relate primarily to behavior. Having an idea means behaving in certain ways (saying certain things, having a certain expression on your face, etc.) or being disposed to behave in such ways, not having something intangible, invisible, etc. floating through your head.
Problems with Ryle’s behaviorism:
1. Isn’t there a difference between being in pain and acting as if you are in pain?
2. Can’t you feel pain without showing it?
3. Don’t I know whether I am in pain, or what I believe, without having to observe my behavior?
Mind-Brain Identity Theory: Partly to avoid these problems some philosophers developed the theory that the mind really is the brain, and thoughts, etc. are just electro-chemical objects/states/events in the brain or central nervous system. However, this does not explain the apparent link between the mind and behavior, introspection, free will or intentionality.
Intentionality is the defining characteristic of all mental things, according to Franz Brentano (1838-1917). It means ‘aboutness’ or ‘pointingness’. Hunger is a desire for food, thoughts about wrestling are about wrestling, a headache is a sensation of pain. This ‘forness’, ‘aboutness’, or ‘ofness’ is intentionality. A non-mental thing, like a leg, a sandwich, a neuron or a synapse, is not for or about or of anything.
Functionalism: Functionalism says that mental things (thoughts, pains, memories, etc.) are physical things in the brain (or they could be non-physical things in the mind/soul), but they are defined functionally, i.e. in terms of their causal relations. So a pain, for instance, is something physical, but it is whatever physical phenomenon is characteristically caused by such things as illness, injury, etc. and that characteristically causes such things as groans, tears, bleeding, requests for medical help, etc. The most popular form of this theory is computer functionalism, which thinks of the brain as a computer and the mind as the software that goes with it. This seems to be a basic assumption of cognitive science (the latest thing in philosophy, psychology and computer science) and it raises the question, Can machines think?
The Turing Test: a behavioristic test for thinking, consciousness, etc.. If a computer can fool an expert into thinking that it is thinking, then it really is thinking. There is no difference between fooling an expert and really thinking or being conscious. So a well programmed computer really could think and be conscious.
The Chinese Room: John Searle’s response to the Turing Test. Imagine you are in a room with a book telling you what to do. Symbols are passed into the room and your job is to pass back certain other symbols. These symbols are all in Chinese, a language you don’t know, but the instruction book tells you what to ‘reply’ to any given symbol or set of symbols. In this way you might fool a Chinese speaker into thinking that the room contains a person who understands Chinese. But you do not understand Chinese, neither does the room, and neither does the instruction book. So the Turing Test and its implied definition of consciousness/thinking/ understanding/etc. is false.
Strong A.I.: Searle’s name for the theory that artificial intelligence (A.I.) is really no different from real intelligence. The mind is to the brain as computer software is to hardware. (See functionalism above.) Searle disagrees because computer programs are purely syntactical (i.e. they are just patterns of symbols, as in the Chinese room) but real understanding includes semantics (i.e. real meaning). Whatever semantics is, it is more than just syntax, Searle says.
Epiphenomenalism: the theory that mental states are just by-products of physical states, they are not causally relevant. Searle disagrees. Mind and body are two perspectives on the same thing: a human being. Reality might be made up of physical molecules which are not conscious, but that does not prove that consciousness is not real. No molecule is wet, but a bunch of H2O molecules really is wet. Similarly, no molecule might be conscious, but a human being really is conscious. So there is no "mystery of consciousness" or even a mind-body problem. Nothing is more familiar than mind-body interaction.