The Mind-Body Problem: Toward a Second-Best Solution

Robert Bass
Department of Philosophy
Coastal Carolina University
Conway, SC 29528
rhbass@gmail.com

I. Introduction

I think there are powerful reasons for favoring a materialistic or physicalistic¹ solution to the mind-body problem. More specifically, what we should be seeking in the way of a solution is a variety of functionalism that preserves, at least, by and large, folk psychology. (Below, I shall call this "orthodox functionalism.") But discussions of the problem have, I think, been beset by a failure to fully take the measure of a potentially promising alternative, eliminative materialism. Part of the reason is that its promise has been obscured by the way it has sometimes been presented. Part of the reason, also, has been that the promising alternative has not appeared to be as promising as orthodox functionalism – hence, I would term it a second-best solution. Sometimes, however, a second-best solution is the best one can reasonably expect.

I do not think that it is clear, in the present state of the argument, whether circumstances are such that we should accept a second-best solution. I would, of course, prefer not to resort to it, but it may be that the "first-best" solution is untenable.² 

In section II, I will try to set the context for the discussion to come, explaining in somewhat more detail the crucial issues and options and why orthodox functionalism is attractive. In section III, I shall briefly mention, without discussing in detail, some of the difficulties that must be faced by orthodox functionalism and will argue that if those difficulties prove decisive, eliminative materialism appears to be a (relatively) attractive alternative.

II. Orthodox Functionalism as the Best Solution

Dualism³ is (deservedly) in poor repute. In consequence, many philosophers have gravitated in the direction of some variety of materialism, as the major alternative (or family of alternatives) to dualism. Among those who specialize in philosophy of mind, materialism is probably the  majority position. Of course, these are not the only possible positions, but panpsychist or idealist approaches to the mind-body problem seem less credible to most theorists than either.

There are also, of course, those who find the materi­al­is­tic near-consensus unsatisfactory,⁴ but I think that the reasons for adopting materialism, in terms of the deep problems in making dualism coherent, intelligible and consistent with other knowledge,⁵ in terms of the way that materialism fits into a scien­tif­ically informed world-view, and in terms of the promise of research in a host of fields ranging from neurobiology to artifi­cial intelli­gence (that appear not to need or to benefit from any dualis­tic hypotheses), are sufficiently powerful that it is appro­priate to consider alternatives only if materialism runs into insupera­ble difficulties.

Among the versions of materialism, some form of functionalism has seemed best: Other versions of materialism, including the various versions of the identity theory, apparently face crippling objections.⁶

Strictly speaking, however, functionalism isn't a sub-variety of materialism. Rather, it is an account that is consistent with materialism but which might also be adopted by someone hold­ing a dualistic or some other view. (It is perhaps slightly curious that there do not seem to be any non-materialist functionalists.) It can be shortly charac­ter­ized as the view that mental states or events are to be understood in terms of the functional roles that they play in a system which is or amounts to "a mind."

More fully, Sydney Shoemaker characterizes it as follows:

What the various versions of [functionalism] hold in common is that every mental state is a 'functional state', i.e., a state which is definable in terms of its relations (primarily its causal relations) to sensory inputs, behavioural outputs, and (especially) other functional states. A mental state is individuated, and constituted as being the particular mental state it is, by its place in a complex causal network of states. Take, for example, the belief that it is rain­ing. It is characteristic of this state that it is apt to be brought by certain sense-experiences (but only if the person has certain background beliefs), that in combi­nation with certain other beliefs (e.g., the belief that umbrellas keep off rain) and certain de­sires (e.g., the desire to keep dry) it leads to certain behaviour (e.g., taking an umbrella if one goes out), and that in combination with certain other beliefs (e.g., the belief that if it is raining the streets are wet) it leads to still other beliefs (e.g., the belief that the streets are wet). On the functional view, if this characterization were suitably expanded and re­fined, then no state would count as the belief that it is raining unless it satisfied this characterization, and any state that satisfied it would automatically count as that belief (or ... as a 'realization' of that belief). To believe that it is raining, on this view, just is to have a state which can be caused to exist in these ways, and which has these sorts of effects when combined with such-and-such other states. And every mental state will have such a functional charac­teriza­tion -- one such that a state is a realization of that mental state just in case it satisfies that character­ization. (Shoemaker and Swinburne, p. 92)

  This is an expression of orthodox functionalism. It is a form of functionalism because it treats mental states or events as the states or events that occupy certain functional roles in a causal network (that includes other states or events also occupying functional roles).⁷

It is orthodox in that it takes it takes the referents of the common terms of everyday psychological description, reporting, explanation and prediction – terms such as "belief," "desire," "sensation," "pain," etc. – to be the occupants of the relevant causal roles. As well, it takes the assumptions embedded in the ordinary repertoire of psychological explanations (etc.) to be basically in order. That is, it preserves (or aims to preserve) what has been called "folk psychology."

Functionalism seems to avoid the chief problems faced by two other forms of materialism, behaviorism and the identity theory. According to behaviorism, terms referring to mental events or states are to be understood solely in terms of externally observable causal inputs and behavioral outputs (stimuli and responses), without reference to what, if anything, is going on "in the mind." It suffered (apart from the fact that it is simply and literally incredible) from the objection that no behavioral equivalents for a term like "desire" were available without appealing to beliefs and no equivalents for "belief" were available without reference to desire.⁸ More generally, mental terms could not be defined adequately without reference to other mental events or states. Purely behavioral equivalents are not to be had.

According to the identity theory, mental states or events are to be identified, via empirical discovery, with states, processes or events in the nervous system. Thus, pain might turn out to be, for example, C-fiber stimulation in the brain. The main problem with the identity theory was that it seemed to make it impossible to attribute the same mental states to beings who were not in the same brain states. Though extraterrestrials might have an entirely different neurophysiology from us – different enough that there was no straightforward mapping of our brain states onto theirs – we would still want to be able to say that they were in pain if they exhibited certain kinds of behavior and avoidance reactions when their bodies were damaged. To put it differently, we would not wait to find out if their brains had any C-fibers before we attributed pain to them.⁹ Even in the case of humans, it is implausible that people, raised in different cultures and using different languages, are always in the same brain state – so far as that can be described in terms of physically specifiable parameters – in every case in which we would say that they hold, say, the same belief. But if two people can be in the same mental state – say, that of believing Vienna to be in Austria – without being in the same brain state, then the identity theory must have gone wrong somewhere.

Functionalism avoids both of these problems by not insisting that mental states be defined without reference to other mental states and by identifying the mental state not with an underlying brain process or event but with whatever brain state or process plays the appropriate causal role.

So far, I have spoken of the advantages of functionalism vis-a-vis behaviorism and the identity theory. I have not yet directly said anything in favor of a functionalism that preserves folk psychology. Patricia Churchland defines "folk psychology" adequately for my purposes:

[B]y folk psychology I mean that rough-hewn set of concepts, generalizations, and rules of thumb we all standardly use in explaining and predicting human behavior. Folk psychology is commonsense psychology – the psychological lore in virtue of which we explain behavior as the outcome of beliefs, desires, perceptions, expectations, goals, sensations, and so forth. It is a theory whose generalizations connect mental states to other mental states, to perceptions, and to actions. (Churchland 1986, p. 299)

The reasons for wishing to preserve folk psychology are fairly simple. Almost all of our normal understanding of the mind and behavior of ourselves and others is framed in terms of folk psychology. Through its employment, we achieve impressive capacities for prediction and explanation that appear to "float free" of details about how the psychological assumptions we make use of are physically implemented or realized. We explain actions in terms of the beliefs and desires that make them understandable, assuming that persons we come across at least approximate the ideal of believing and wanting what they ought to believe and want, given their situations and interests.¹⁰ This kind of success in turn suggests that our folk-psychological assumptions track, at least roughly, underlying law-like relations. Folk psychology both sets the problems and suggests terms of solutions for the problems that must be addressed by an adequate theory of the mind. We are well-advised to preserve folk psychology if we can simply because we have no other equally rich set of psychological generalizations.

III. If Orthodox Functionalism Fails ...

Though there are reasons for preferring orthodox functionalism to its main alternatives, there is no guarantee that we can maintain it in the light of certain serious criticisms to which it has been exposed. The most serious, perhaps, is simply that orthodox functionalism is too sketchy a theory for us to judge adequately whether it is true or not. To quote Shoemaker again:

I have done no more than hint at how functional definitions of mental states would go; and no functionalist has offered more than a sketch of a functional definition of any mental state. We are a long way from having a full account of the nature of mental states. (Shoemaker and Swinburne 1984, p. 101)

I consider this to be a tolerable level of ignorance because (a) no other theory has offered anything better (or as good) as an analysis of the nature of mental states, and (b) it provides at least the outlines of a program of inquiry aimed at filling in the missing details.

In addition, functionalism has drawn criticism for not adequately dealing with intentionality, with the "aboutness" of many mental phenomena, or with qualia, the immediate contents of experience. Each of these problems has spawned a large literature,¹¹ and adequately surveying the literature, much less providing a reasoned and balanced assessment, is beyond the scope of this paper.

In general, I am optimistic that the criticisms of orthodox functionalism can be met. But it may be that I am being overly optimistic. Orthodox functionalism, attractive as it is, is more of a promise and a program for research than it is a thoroughly articulated theory. Certainly, whether the criticisms to which it is exposed can be met, they have not so far been met to the satisfaction of all critics.¹² What I wish to do is consider what we should conclude if it turns out that the criticisms cannot be met, if it appears that we cannot have a functionalist materialism while preserving folk psychology.

Obviously, one reaction might be to return to some form of dualism (or epiphenomenalism or ...). More interestingly, accepting the force of the criticisms of dualism (overwhelming) and of non-functionalist forms of materialism (powerful, if not quite overwhelming), we might follow "new mysterians" like Colin McGinn in concluding that the mind-body problem is simply beyond us – "the mind-body problem brings us bang up against the limits of our capacity to understand the world." (McGinn 1991, p. 7) It is not, in his view, that there is anything inherently miraculous or unintelligible about the mind-body problem; rather, we are just not cognitively equipped to grasp the facts, relations or principles on which the solution depends.¹³

It can hardly be denied that this may be correct. There is no a priori assurance that the set of truths or even the set of truths in which we are interested coincides precisely with the set of truths accessible to us (given our cognitive powers and limitations). However, I find the arguments offered for this particular alleged cognitive incapacity to be unpersuasive.

As an example of the way in which the arguments offered blur important distinctions, I offer the following: McGinn claims that "[t]he man born blind cannot grasp the concept of a visual experience of red, and human beings cannot conceive of the echolocatory experiences of bats." (McGinn 1991, pp. 8f., emphasis added) Surely, what he should have said – and then only with qualification – is that human beings and the man born blind find it difficult or impossible to imagine the relevant experiences, not that those experiences are inconceivable.

A further reason for questioning McGinn's pessimism about our capacity to reach a solution to the mind-body problem can be illustrated by a tension between the conclusion that he reaches and some of the reasons that he offers to support it. His conclusion is that we are not cognitively equipped to understand the mind-body relation. Nonetheless, he thinks that "it is undeniable that it must be in virtue of some natural property of the brain that organisms are conscious .... Consciousness ... must be a natural phenomenon, naturally arising from certain organizations of matter." (McGinn 1991, p. 6) But if the mind-body relation is really incomprehensible (to us), what reason is there for rejecting, as McGinn does, dualism or "radical emergence"?

It seems that if we accept his conclusion, we have no more reason to adopt his naturalistic presuppositions about what an acceptable solution to the mind-body problem must be like than any of many other possibilities. (For example, there is no problem about how mind emerges from [mindless] matter for the panpsychist.) I am not objecting to the formal structure of the argument. There's nothing objectionable about the inference from "If a problem is tractable, then it's intractable" to "Therefore, it's intractable." Rather, my concern is that, if McGinn is right about the conclusion C that the mind-body problem is intractable (for us) – then the physicalism that he espouses is no better supported than any other position. Choice among the various options becomes a matter of taste rather than argument.

In the absence of really powerful arguments that the mind-body problem exceeds (or is mismatched to) our capacities, I think that giving up on it, as McGinn in effect recommends, is premature, more an expression of failure of imagination than of the necessities of the subject matter.

But if orthodox functionalism is precluded,¹⁴ and if we are to remain physicalists without joining the new mysterians, what option is left?

The short answer is that we can be eliminativists.

Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our commonsense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by a completed neuroscience. Our mutual understanding and even our introspection may then be reconstituted within the conceptual framework of completed neuroscience, a theory we may expect to be more powerful by far than the commonsense psychology it displaces, and more substantially integrated within physical science generally. (Churchland 1989, p. 1)

To employ an analogy made famous by Rorty, we do not reduce a "demon theory" of disease to a germ theory or define demons as "whatever it is that occupies the role of demons in the etiology of disease." For the ontology and conceptual framework of the demon theory mislead us systematically with regard to the explanation and prevention of disease. Instead, we simply deny the existence of demons and replace the demon theory with a germ theory. Similarly, if the conceptual framework embodied in folk psychology should prove to be misleading, the thing to do – so the eliminativist claims – is to replace it. (Rorty 1965)

If, for example, it turns out that pains, as understood in folk psychology, have properties (e.g., being such that we have incorrigible access to them) that cannot be accounted for in physicalistic terms,¹⁵ then, according to the eliminativist, we can and should simply deny the existence of pains. In principle (though perhaps it would be infeasible for purposes of daily conversation), we can replace talk of pains with a neurophysiological description¹⁶ that will (a) capture all the truths expressed in terms of pain-talk, (b) avoid the errors to which the folk-psychological framework led, and (c) enable us to discover additional truths which the folk-psychological framework systematically obscured.

It is common to react to an initial presentation of eliminativism with incredulity:  If "belief" is one of the folk-psychological categories that is displaced by a mature neuroscience, "It doesn't even make sense to say that you believe there are no beliefs!" Or, "Surely, you can't believe that pains don't exist!"

Tempting as such responses are, they are based on misunderstanding. The two objections illustrate two mistakes that lead to significant underestimation of the real strength of the eliminativist position.

With respect to the first objection, the position of the eliminativist appears paradoxical because the vocabulary and conceptual framework needed to properly state the view do not yet exist. In essence, the objector is insisting that a new conceptual framework make sense in terms of an older and more familiar framework. But this demand can't be generally appropriate unless we are willing to deny that there is ever legitimate or justified major conceptual change. Remember, in this connection, the replacement of the demon theory of disease. If its defenders knew of no alternative, there undoubtedly would have been "conceptual truths" expressed within its framework that the germ theory would simply have denied. It might have been a conceptual truth that a witch-doctor, shaking a rattle over you, could drive away demons. There would be nothing to correspond to that in a germ theory – which is one of the reasons the demon theory is denied and replaced, rather than "reduced" to a germ theory. So, the first mistake is taking eliminativism to be simply a revision or refinement of our existing psychological theories.

The second mistake has, I think, been even more influential in engendering misunderstanding of eliminativism. Interestingly, it is almost entirely a result of the connotations of the word, "eliminativism." It is true that the eliminativist may end up denying that pains exist. But he does not deny it in the sense of claiming that nothing is going on, "feigning anesthesia" as some behaviorists have been accused of doing. Rather, what he is denying is that "pains," as they are understood within a particular conceptual framework, exist. That is entirely compatible with there being some state of the organism that the folk-psychological framework would describe as a case of "pain" that the organism is aware of and has reason to avoid, prevent, ameliorate, etc. What the eliminativist proposes is not really, as the term might lead us to think, a denial of the existence of pain, but elimination of the term, "pain," (with the misleading implications associated with it) from our theoretical vocabulary, and its replacement with a better and more revealing theory. So, "eliminativism" might (considerations of awkwardness apart) better be called "replacementism." At least such a term would make it clearer that eliminativists do not wish to deny any facts about our mental lives; they wish to challenge what they claim is a defective theory of our mental lives.

Conclusion

A functionalism that preserves folk psychology is appealing for many reasons and, in my judgment, not subject to fatal criticisms. However, if the various criticisms that have been mounted against it prove to be unanswerable, we still have no need either to reject a broadly naturalistic perspective on the mind-body problem or to despair that its solution is beyond our powers. Eliminativism, once misunderstandings are cleared away, is a promising second-best alternative.

References

Churchland, Patricia Smith [1986]. Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind/Brain. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Churchland, Paul M. [1989]. A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Dennett, Daniel C. [1978] Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Dennett, Daniel C. [1991]. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.

Dennett, Daniel C. [1984]. Elbow Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Dennett, Daniel C. [1987]. The Intentional Stance. Cambridge: MIT Press.

McGinn, Colin [1991]. The Problem of Consciousness. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Putnam, Hilary [1988]. Representation and Reality. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Rorty, Richard [1965]. "Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories" in Rosenthal, David M. (ed.), Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1971.

Searle, John R. [1984]. Minds, Brains and Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Shoemaker, Sydney and Richard Swinburne [1984]. Personal Identity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Comments? I'd love to hear!