Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 00:45:57 -0500 (EST)
From: Justin Schwartz <jschwart-AT-freenet.columbus.oh.us>
Subject: M-TH: Absolutely the Last word on philosophy of mind and realist epistemology


On Fri, 9 Jan 1998, Hugh Rodwell wrote:

> Two straightforward questions for Justin:
> 
> How did your political ideas develop during the decade or so you were
> working with the philosophy of mind?

At the start of that period, late 70s, early 80s, I became radicalized as
a Marxist, became politically active first in the anti-nuclear weapons
movement (originally the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in England) then
also in the anti-imperialist solidarity struggles, especially with El
Salvador, Nicaragua, and the Philippines. I joined the Communist Workers
Party, a sort of quasi-Maoist group, mainly because I liked the work they
were doing. My views were pretty similar to what they are now, less
developed, of course. Through the CWP I did a lot of work building
coaliutions with the Black community, especially around the Rainbow
Coalition (Jesse Jackson's group). My main work through most of the 80s
was in an Ann Arbor radical peace and antiimperialist group called the
Michigan Alliance for Disarmament. We organized sitins at missle plants,
that sort of thing. I alsobecame active in my grad student teachinga
ssistant union, the GEO at the Univ. of Mich., was on the strike
committee. The CWP turned intself into something called the New Democratic
Movement and lost all sense of purpose, finally evaporated. I joined
Solidarity, a group formed, orginally, by ex-Trostskyists, mainly from the
US Socialist Workers Party, committeed to nonsectarian revolunaty
socialism, in 1988. I've been with Solidarity for a decade now. Is this
what you wanted to know? 

> 
> What influence did this have on your view of the subject?

I presume you mean, what influence did my politics have on philosophy of
mind. I don't know that it had much in any direct way. My dissertation was
a defense of materialism, but I believed in materialism before I was a
red. I applied a neopragmatic, Marxist-influenced epistemology to phil of
mind, but I had probably picked up the Quineanism from Rorty, Harman, and
Kuhn while I was an apolitical undergrad. I don't think phil of mind is a
particularly political subject, at least not in the areas I was working.
Mostly it's highly technical. Ralph would call it nit-picking.   

> >On the emotions, I regard emotions as cognitive states. 
> 
> This is a very strong rationalist position, as far as I can see, claiming
> that emotions are as accessible to introspection as propositions or
> thoughts.

I didn't say that, although I suppose I believe it. What's "rationalist"
about it I don't know. I don't think the distinction between appetite and
reason, emotion and rationality, taht you put so much weight on is
particularly sharp.

> But it's a question of definition. If "mental" in a certain
> discussion only refers to states of mind accessible to introspection, so be
> it. 

I didn't say that. Mental states, accordinf to functionalism are:

> the internal states
> >that causally link perceptual input to behavioral output.
>
They might or might not be accessible to introspection.
 
> And what about the words, propositions and images that result from these
> processes? Are they all lumped under behavioural output?

Well, words are, if uttered or written, that's linguistic behavior.
Propositions, depends. They can be part of mental states ("propositonal
attitudes"), e,g. when I believe, hope, fear, etc. that p, where p is some
proposition. Or they can be what some piece of linguistic behavior
states,in which case they're not mental. It's a matter of functional role.
Images, if in the head, are mental. 

 This sounds like
> behaviourism, with the mind as a quasi black box to which we somehow have
> privileged access.

Well, behaviorism would deny that we have any privileged access to the
mind. And functionalism is related to behaviorism, the difference is,
behaviorism treats what's in the head as a black box and says the mind is
all in the behavioral output. Functionalism tries to put in the gears and
wheels, to open up the black box and explain how it works. Which is in
theend why I think the mind isn't a question for philosophers anymore.
It's for the AI guys and cognitive scientists and brain reserachers who
are in a position to open up the box. 

As to privileged access, well, yes and no. No, in that I think knowledge
of mind requires scientific research, if what we are interested in is how
it works. Yes, if you mean that each of us is in a uniquely priviliged
position to know the contents of her own mind. Who knows better than I
myself what I think? I might be wriong in particular instances, but in
general if you want to find out what's on my mind, you have to ask me.

> Curiouser and curiouser. If we are wrong about our mental states, then this
> would seem to be very like being unconscious of them.

You could put it that way. It's sort of a dramatic and perhaps misleading
way to express the idea I put more simply.

 Or are we somehow
> consciously repressing them. This would be strong existentialism -- we're
> all totally responsible for everything we think and do.
> 
Well, conscious repression is one theory about how we might be wrong about
some of our mental states. Existentialism, at least in Sartre;s version,
denies that this is possible.


> >Incidentally
> >Hugh seems to think it's a defect of my way of thinking that I am
> >intolerant of contradiction. I think it's a defect of his that he's
> >tolerant of them.
> 
> Farewell dialectics. It's not me that's tolerant of contradictions, it's
> reality that's riddled with them.

It's contradictions in the things we say that I don't like. It's very
unforunate that Hegel should have muddied the waters by suggesting taht
the instabilities he identified in dynamic systems were contradictions in
the sense that p and not-p could both be true in the same time,place,
manner, and respect. Of course I agree with Hegel that such systems do
have internal instabilities.

> The nature and validity of knowledge is not such a ridiculous subject, surely.

No, but whether "knowldge" of our inner states is thesame as "awareness"
of them is, unless someone can show why it matters to anything anyone
would acrea bout. There are literally thousands of papers littering the
philosophy journals on this sort of tedium, and I have read too many of them.

> It will be much easier to investigate the validity of theories of the
> unconscious after socialism is established (ie once the threat of
> capitalist restoration has been overcome for good and human society is on
> its way from socialism to communism).

I anticipate the opportunity.

--jks




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