The Rediscovery of the Mind (Representation and Mind)

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 288 pages
• Published by: The MIT Press July 8, 1992
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 026269154X
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0262691543
• Book Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Weighs: 14.9 ounces

Product Review


"This is as entertaining as serious philosophy gets."
-- Theodore Roszak, New Scientist



"The computationalists have probably never had such a powerful challenge as this book."
-- Anthony Gottlieb, New York Times Book Review

Product Description
In this major new work, John Searle launches a formidable attack on current orthodoxies in the philosophy of mind. More than anything else, he argues, it is the neglect of consciousness that results in so much barrenness and sterility in psychology, the philosophy of mind, and cognitive science: there can be no study of mind that leaves out consciousness. What is going on in the brain is neurophysiological processes and consciousness and nothing more - no rule following, no mental information processing or mental models, no language of thought, and no universal grammar. Mental events are themselves features of the brain, "like liquidity is a feature of water."

Beginning with a spirited discussion of what's wrong with the philosophy of mind, Searle characterizes and refutes the philosophical tradition of materialism. But he does not embrace dualism. All these "isms" are mistaken, he insists. Once you start counting types of substance you are on the wrong track, whether you stop at one or two. In four chapters that constitute the heart of his argument, Searle elaborates a theory of consciousness and its relation to our overall scientific world view and to unconscious mental phenomena. He concludes with a criticism of cognitive science and a proposal for an approach to studying the mind that emphasizes the centrality of consciousness to any account of mental functioning.

In his characteristically direct style, punctuated with persuasive examples, Searle identifies the very terminology of the field as the main source of truth. He observes that it is a mistake to suppose that the ontology of the mental is objective and to suppose that the methodology of a science of the mind must concern itself only with objectively observable behavior; that it is also a mistake to suppose that we know of the existence of mental phenomena in others only by observing their behavior; that behavior or causal relations to behavior are not essential to the existence of mental phenomena; and that it is inconsistent with what we know about the universe and our place in it to suppose that everything is knowable by us.

John R. Searle is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley.

Reader Reviews
Excellently written and argued, the author proceeds at a calm and steady pace, laying out the many flaws in past and current approaches to the 'mind'. More importantly, equally well layed out is the contruction of his own view of what he calls "biological naturalism". This view is neither a flavor of behaviorilism nor any other kind of reductionist attempt to deny consciousness. Indeed, consciousness retains it's unique position in his model without the kind of apologetic argument or mysticism (of the kind that usually occurs as a result of unwittingly thinking in the Cartesian dilemma mindset). Most shocking to me was the way in which Searle argued that the mind is not and cannot be an information processing system. As counterintuitive and remarkable as that may sound, it is quite apparently true after reading his arguments. He is not saying that we do not *think*, but rather that equating *thinking* and *information processing* is in error, primarily because the interpretation of symbols, syntax and semantics requires an outside intelligence to make the interpretation, so to say that we are information processing machines makes no sense for it is exactly our own intelligence that we are trying to explain. The devastating impact for AI and cognitive science from this viewpoint is also duly noted in a rather understated way. Likewise, the 'unconscious' loses it's imagined place as part of the mind, replaced with an equally (or perhaps moreso)complex 'Background' of non-conscious and potentially-conscious components. Also, so many activities of the brain that have been deemed as "mental" turn out to have no basis for such an ascription: it turns out they are anthropomorphisms placed on neurobiological processes that neither have intentionality nor mentality. As a result (my opinion), much of psychology and probably many theories of neurobiology are as wayward as their AI counterparts. In the end, the 'mind' that one is left with remains utterly rich and complex, with consciousness and all subjective experience intact and valid. However, now bereft of the possibility of computational models and rules and such to understand the brain in an abstracted programmatic way, and bereft of anthropomorphisms of lower-level brain functioning, we find that the brain is an organ - an organ of great ability and complexity that will require an immense effort to understand and appreciate. Comment | | (Report this)