A Mind Seeks Itself, Part 3: What’s In There Anyway?

It is probably safe to say that most anyone would agree that the mind is a process, among other things. So we should get this out of the way right up front. Even supposedly static mass is actually a continuum of atomic motion, with electrons changing positions every instance. If it were not so, all particles would collapse into their nuclei or some other catastrophic but permanent change would occur, and the universe would be very different than it is. When you consider that everything in the universe is a process of one sort or another, it is not surprising that the mind is a process, not a static existence. So the real question is whether there are other elements involved, or whether the mind is merely a sequence of neural discharges inside the cranium.

Let’s view the thoughts of prior thinkers to see if their ruminations seem to be just electrochemical discharges on the subject, or if there is some sort of order, even reason involved.

Let’s briefly view the following: Descartes; Locke; Pinker. Then we’ll move on to modern reductionism and the denial of agency.

Rene’ Descartes left two major legacies that are learned today by school children. First, he was determined to attempt pure intellectual integrity by denying everything that he currently thought to be true, in a process of determining the most basic – if anything – valid concepts that could be taken as reality. And second, he determined that that fundamental reality was that he existed most fundamentally as a thinking thing, Cogito Ergo Sum.:

“For this reason, from the fact that I know that I exist, and that at the same time I judge that obviously nothing else belongs to my nature or essence except that I am a thinking thing, I rightly conclude that my essence consists entirely in my being a thinking thing. And although perhaps (or rather as I shall soon say, assuredly) I have a body that is very closely joined to me, nevertheless, because on the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, insofar as I am merely a thinking thing and not an extended thing, it is certain that I am really distinct from my body, and can exist without it.”

Descartes; Meditations on First Philosophy, 1641; 3rd Ed., translated by Donald A. Cress; p51.

John Locke went further in attempting to define of what the mental process consists. He dealt with the question of whether the human mind begins with a priori knowledge inhered, or whether it starts as a “blank slate”.

Locke concluded that while the mind seems a blank slate to begin with, there are also a number of faculties with which humans are endowed at birth. These faculties include, along with instincts and autonomics, the ability to reason, which Locke broke down into individual processes: apprehension; comparison; differentiation; judgment; and comprehension. Locke defines knowledge as twofold: the perception of the coherence of our own ideas; and knowledge of the existence of things external to ourselves. Reason itself is a faculty:

”What need is there of reason? Very much; for the enlargement of our knowledge and the regulation our assent: for it hath to do both in knowledge and opinion, and is necessary and assisting to all our other intellectual faculties, and indeed contains two of them, viz. sagacity and illation [inference]. By the one it finds out, and by the other it so orders, the intermediate ideas as to discover what connexion there is in each link of the chain, whereby the extremes are held together; and thereby, as it were, to draw into view the truth sought for, which is that we call “illation” or “inference,” and consists in nothing but the perception of the connexion there is between the ideas in each step to the deduction, whereby the mind comes to see either the certain agreement or disagreement of any two ideas, as in demonstration , in which it arrives as knowledge; or their probable connexion, on which it gives or withholds its assent, as in opinion. Sense and intuition reach but a very little way. The greatest part of our knowledge depends upon deductions and intermediate ideas:; and in those cases where we are fain to substitute assent instead of knowledge, and take propositions for true without being certain they are so, we have need to find out, examine, and compare the grounds of their probability. In both these cases the faculty which finds out the means, and rightly applies them to discover certainty in the one and probability in the other, is that which we call ‘reason'”.

Locke continues to delineate the “four degrees” of reason:

”The first and highest is the discovering and finding our of proofs; the second, the regular and methodological disposition of them, and laying them in a clear and fit order, to make their connexion and force be plainly and easily perceived; the third is the perceiving their connexion; and the fourth, a making a right conclusion.’
Locke; An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 1693; Prometheus, 1995; pp567,8.

Some of modern conceptualizations of the mind are compiled by Steven Pinker, professor of psychology and Director of the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience at M.I.T. In his 1997 book, “How the Mind Works”, Pinker addresses the issue from the perspective of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind:

“Evolutionary psychology brings together two scientific revolutions. One is the cognitive revolution of the 1950’s and 1960’s, which explains the mechanics of thought and emotion in terms of information and computation. The other is the revolution in evolutionary biology of the 1960’s and 1070’s, which explains the complex adaptive design [ ! ] of living things in terms of selection among replicators. The two ideas make a powerful combination. Cognitive science helps us understand how a mind is possible and what kind of mind we have. Evolutionary biology helps us to understand why we have the kind of mind we have.” [p 23]

…

“…the mind is not the brain but what the brain does, and not even everything it does, such as metabolizing fat and giving off heat.”
[p 24]

After acknowledging that certain philosophers, including Dennett, deny consciousness to certain humans and most animals, Pinker goes on to describe consciousness as 1) self-knowledge; a mental data-base of oneself, just like the other data-bases of external, sensory knowledge; 2) access to information; information is available form sensory input and from autonomous systems including internal calculations behind vision, language, and movement, and repressed desires or memories, which can’t be directly accessed but can pass between pools into, say self-knowledge. 3) “Sentience: subjective experience, phenomenal awareness, raw feels, first –person ‘what it is like’ to be or do something, if you have to ask you’ll never know”. [p 134,5]

For the evolutionary cognitive scientists, introspection holds no value in determining what the mind is. Self knowledge is just information gleaned from external sources: the mirror, knowing where your hand is, what people tell you about yourself. But no introspection or intuition. So every notion of mind is based on either observation of people, or observation of neurological functions.

Pinker is a master of analogs, anecdotes, examples and samples. But not so much on philosophical underpinnings. He includes plenty on Freud, but not the First Principles or philosophy of science, at least in this work. So with the idea of sentience, Pinker is stymied. So stymied that with respect to sentience, its source and place in consciousness, he writes,

”Beats the heck out of me! I have some prejudices, but no idea of how to begin to look for a defensible answer. And neither does anyone else. The computational theory of mind offers no insight; neither does any finding in neuroscience, once you clear up the usual confusion of sentience with access and self-knowledge.”

…

“But saying that we have no scientific explanation of sentience is not the same as saying that sentience does not exist at all. I am as certain that I am sentient as I am certain of anything, and I bet you feel the same. Though I concede that my curiosity about sentience may never be satisfied, I refuse to believe that I am just confused when I think I am sentient at all!”

…

“But the mystery remains a mystery, a topic not for science but for ethics, for late-night dorm-room bull sessions, and, of course, for one other realm [ the Twilight Zone]. [p 146-148]
[emphasis in the original]

This is as close as Pinker comes to admitting the internal incoherence of materialism as the sole source for knowledge of the mind.

Now sentience, if it exists, includes intentionality. Pinker attempts to eliminate intentionality by invoking the computational theory of mind, which posits that intents are just pieces of information, called up for computation and resulting actions. They exist as symbols, contained as “bits of matter, like chips in a computer or neurons in the brain”. Eventually, says Pinker, the

“bits of matter constituting a symbol bump into other bits of matter connected to the muscles, and behavior happens”. [p 25]

You see, you don’t control it; it controls you.

As for the real causal source of both intentionality and sentience, no real answers are given, for example how the information is "called up", or what initiates such a call - why it is called. But this paves the way for the next excursion, the journey into the war on agency. [coming soon].