Emergent Representations:
Dialectical Materialism and the Philosophy of Mind 		Joe Faith, 2000
DPhil Thesis, University of Sussex
If minds are the products of brains (and they are) then surely neuroscience should tell us something about the philosophy of mind? And, if minds are also the products of natural and social history (and they are) then surely the study of these subjects will tell us something about mind too? I am not the first to suggest these lines of inquiry but they have both traditionally lead to the same conclusion, namely a virulent scepticism about our ability to know the world. We seem to be stuck in a Faustian bargain in which we gain scientific knowledge at the expense of philosophical doubt.

This thesis is an attempt to break this bargain, in which I start from the conviction that we can know the world, and then ask what kind of science, both natural and social, can make sense of this ability. We do not just need a philosophy of mind that fits our science, we also need a science that fits our philosophy of mind. We must fiddle with both sides of the equation in order to get a fit. In the course of this fiddling I challenge reductionist and empiricist assumptions about science, I question the philosophical tradition that dates back to Frege's `linguistic turn', and I draw parallels between Marx's theory of history and Darwin's theory of natural selection. The result is a realist philosophy of mind that is built on our ability to interact with and change the world, rather than on our ability to contemplate it passively.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This thesis was written while I was a DPhil student at University of Sussex, generously supported by a scholarship from the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences. It was submitted in 2000 and Dan Dennett and John Maynard Smith kindly agreed to be my examiners.

The thesis is divided into 4 parts. The first is about general issues in the philosophy of science, about how we understand complex systems in general. Part 2 then applies these general lessons to how we understand brains, and draws some conclusions for the philosophy of mind. The third part puts these issues in the context of natural selection, and part 4 then draws parallels with Marx's theory of history. The table below gives a summary of each chapter.

You can download each of the four parts, or each of the seperate chapters. All downloads are in pdf format, uncompressed.

Part 1: Matter
1.1 Anti Reductionism Wholes are often described as being emergent products of their parts. This is true, but overlooks the fact that parts are also emergent products of wholes.
  • Reductionism and Materialism
  • Anti Reductive Materialism
  • Downwards Causation
1.2 Naturalisation The possibility of naturalisation is what differentiates physical objects from Homer's gods.
  • Descriptions and Biases
  • Naturalisation
  • Theoretical Terms, Dispositions, and Causal Explanation
  • Laws and Exceptions
  • Prediction and Induction
Part 2: Minds
2.1 Brains and Behaviour The fact that the brain has a body is true, obvious, important, and usually ignored. 
  • Neuropsychology and Neuroethology
  • Representation and Explanation
  • South Coast AI
2.2 Intentionality:
The Insides		 Psychology is the science of discovering what is going on in people's heads. So if you want to settle disputes in psychology then surely you should look insides those heads?
  • Opening the Black Box
  • Anti Turing
  • Epistemological Externalism
  • Metaphysical Externalism
  • Brains In Vats
  • Emergent Representation
2.3 Intentionality:
The Outsides		 We do not carve the world at its joints, rather we define joints through acts of carving. Moreover we carve the world in particular ways because those ways yield objects that have properties that are useful for us.
Part 3: Natural History
3.1 Functions and Norms The philosophical importance of Darwin is that he supplied a way of naturalising normativity. In other words he lets us derive ethical oughts from scientific is's.
  • Functional Explanation and Darwinian Norms
  • The Function of `Function'
  • The Function of Behaviour
3.2 Genes in Natural Selection A breed of cow that reliably gave birth to a high proportion of heifers compared to bullocks would be very profitable to farmers, but no amount of artificial selection has managed to produce one. Why not? 
  • Evolution and Mendelian Inheritance
  • Nature and Nurture
  • Inheritance and Mechanism
  • Evolution and Development
3.3 Vehicles in Natural Selection If you take a DNA molecule out of its chromosomal, nuclear, cellular, and organismic environment then it does not contain any genes, just as a slice of brain tissue on a slide does not contain beliefs.
Part 4: Social History
4.1 Social Evolution The concept of power is as central to sociology as force is to physics and natural selection is to population biology. In each case it is the concept used to explain change.
  • Natural and Social History
  • Memes and Social Units
  • Memes and Social Power
  • Marx's Theory of History
  • Memes, Symbols, and Language
  • Lamarckian Inheritance, Signalling, and Social Status
  • Memes and Adaptation
4.2 The Good, The True,
The Beautiful		 We rarely judge right and wrong on the basis of the interests of the social vehicle that our actions serve. But although we do not usually judge our actions in this way, history does.
Bibliography