Kenny’s approach to understanding the mind seems appealing, but I think that it can be shown to be flawed. It is within the above framework that Kenny offers, in a non-technical manner, an analysis of various mental notions: soul, spirit, will, abilities, faculties, dispositions, self-knowledge, sensation, observation, imagination and intellect. So what gives meaning to the brain’s or computer’s output is something ‘external to it’ – not as the behaviourists thought, a specific set of behaviours, but the way it functions and is used as part of a ‘social activity.’ (p.153) To do that, the output needs to be correlated with information so that it becomes, through conventional associations, a symbol that has that meaning. Consider what happens when someone speaks – what is required for that output to be part of our language? To be more than just a physical occurrence, but a meaningful utterance as well, the output must represent or convey information. To see why, Kenny presents an examination of that structure as influenced by Wittgenstein.Ī brain or computer might process inputs into outputs in certain ways, but the manner in which it does so does not constitute the mental. It is true that humans are physical beings “with certain abilities which constitute their minds.” (p.15) But these views fail to accurately capture the mind’s structure. (p.3)įurthermore, we cannot identify the mind and its states with a brain, a computer, states of either, or as cognitive scientists think, in terms of the ways in which those states function to process or produce outputs. A mental item (a belief, for instance) cannot be explained as just a specific set of dispositions to behave, since being alike mentally, for example sharing a belief, can be expressed by different behaviours. Kenny wants to follow Ryle in ridding the bodily machine of the Cartesian ghost but without embracing Ryle’s behaviourism. Isn’t it plausible that some day artifacts (androids) entirely composed of the physical will be capable of human-like behaviour? If their actions can be explained in physical terms, it seems reasonable to hold that our physical nature provides the basis for explaining our behaviour in the same way. Surely a desire to understand the mind in this way seems reasonable. He argues against the Cartesian view according to which the mind and its contents are non-physical, non-publicly observable phenomena that interact with the physical brain “in a mysterious manner that transcends the normal rules of causality and evidence.” (p.1) Anthony Kenny wants to explain mental phenomena in terms of the physical and its capacities. This theory, called Cartesian Dualism, was ridiculed by Gilbert Ryle, who called it the Dogma of the Ghost in the Machine. The most famous theory in the philosophy of mind is René Descartes’ view that each human being consists of a mind (which is a non-physical, purely spiritual thing) inhabiting a body, which is completely material and subject to the laws of physics. SUBSCRIBE NOW Books Driving the Ghost from the Machine Alan Brody reviews The Metaphysics of Mind by Anthony Kenny.
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