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8 responses to “Philosophy of Mind: What should we be teaching?”

1. 

   Skef

   March 9, 2016

   My 2 cents. This probably applies more to an advanced course than an introductory one.
   The Chalmers-edited “Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings” from 2002 gives a fairly good idea of what was considered to be important back then by those of a certain influential mindset and what wasn’t. One of the decision points for a contemporary course is whether to follow that mindset out another 15 years or to take a different approach. Either way, what you discuss will probably be a bit broader now given how things have developed.
   I would say that unless you take a very empirical approach starting from cognitive science and the like, you’ll have to spend some time on the mid-century identity theory/functionalism/explanatory gap et al work. And if you follow the normal expectation of working from only primary sources, that will take up a bunch of the course. (I was hoping to find a way to do that stuff justice while not spending a huge chunk of time on it — it’s good stuff, after all — but it’s hard to condense and I didn’t find spectacular secondary sources that would overcome the normal inhibitions about focusing on those.) So many of the more recent papers refer back to or assume these debates that your students will still need it in the front of their minds.
   So, what else?
   One thing is that idealism is back, by way of simulation arguments like Bostrom’s. So if that interests you, you face the question of whether to connect the new idealism to the old (which the 2002 mindset puts aside). The obvious move here is to assign the relevant Berkeley readings, which sounds good until you’re dealing with it in class. Another option is Foster’s “The Succinct Case for Idealism”, which is hard (especially at the very end of his argument) but at least more on target. Definitely not introductory though.
   [And since idealism usually includes the view that there are other real people, this is also a good place to deal with solipsism. Good luck finding a reading, though! I used the entry in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy written by C.D. Rollins.]
   For panpsychism, Chalmers “Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism” is pretty good, although I would cut off the assigned portion well before the end. (I understand why it’s so pedantic but there’s only so much time in a class.) “Panpsychism as Paradigm” by Freya Matthews is an interesting article to twist students’ heads around. (She argues with starting from the whole rather than from the micro. Even if you don’t buy that, it’s interesting to face just how different that would be from present standard practice.)
   For information integration, “Consciousness: Here, There and Everywhere?” by Toroni and Koch is not a bad choice. You can assign the reading but then spend the class time on the helpful diagram.
   Other details:
   Many people who read “Quining Qualia” tend to leave with the impression it argues something stronger than it seems to when you read it carefully. In a course that’s good reason to either skip it or spend lots of time picking it apart.
   “Why is dualism false? Because it would (probably) entail routine violations of physics in the brain! How do we know there aren’t such violations? Because … cough … physics is so right!” Anti-dualism positions often cite physics and (post-)Libet as the main rationales, but I personally doubt if the physics stuff is either the historical or best evidentiary reason we tend to reject dualism. Face it, we can’t and don’t actually measure that stuff other than looking for particularly gross energy conservation violations. I suspect holding those positions has more to do with not being able to put the “right” stuff on the other side of a dualist view, due to what we know from lesion studies, and more recently FMRI. For an overview of stuff the brain does in that area, “Social Cognitive Neuroscience: A Review of Core Systems” by Dore, Zerubavel and Ochsner is pretty good.

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2. 

   Joshua Knobe

   March 9, 2016

   Carolyn,
   This is a deeply important question, and I am really delighted that you are bringing it up here.
   On one hand, I certainly think that it is very important to continue teaching students about traditional metaphysical topics (dualism, functionalism, etc.). Yet, on the other hand, it seems that it would not be in the interests of our students for us to focus almost exclusively on topics like these. At this point, the majority of work in the philosophical study of mind does not seem to be on these topics but rather on questions about how people’s minds actually work. It would, I think, be a big mistake on our parts if we nonetheless continued focus almost exclusively on these traditional issues, ignoring more contemporary developments.
   That said, I don’t feel like I have a very good sense of precisely what sorts of work about how the mind actually works would be best to teach in these classes. So I would be very grateful for any suggestions people had on that score.

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3. 

   Markos Valaris

   March 10, 2016

   Great question!
   I think it is important to consider the course in the context of a curriculum as a whole. In my second year phil. mind course I focus mostly on the traditional metaphysical debates, in no small part because the conceptual tools you thereby introduce (necessity of identity, supervenience, causal overdetermination and so on) are tools for philosophy across the board, and also good for sharpening students’ thinking in any number of areas.
   I also teach a third year course, where I try to move away from that stuff to more contemporary and specialized debates. Students tend to have different responses to stuff in this area. I’ve had the most success with issues on perception, consciousness, and attention. This stuff is quite easy to motivate for students, and easily branches out to deep questions, including intentionality, content and so on. Since many of them know the original “gorilla in our midst” video, I now use the updated version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGQmdoK_ZfY

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4. 

   John Turri

   March 10, 2016

   I wouldn’t be so bold as to say that others “should” be doing this, but it’s something that worked well for me and my students recently, so I’ll mention it here.
   Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority is famous for the gripping series of experiments it elegantly describes. It is less well known that Milgram then offers a theory of the self and how an individual organism’s mind must be structured in order for certain beneficial forms of social organization to emerge and persist. He then applies this theory to explain the results of the obedience experiments. All this occurs in chapters 10-12 and is philosophy of mind at its best — inspiring in its theoretical scope and ambitions, while remaining deeply informed by relevant empirical evidence.
   This could be taught on its own or it could be paired with other readings emphasizing the social dimensions of mentality and meaning.

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5. 

   Sofia

   March 11, 2016

   I’ve lived through many phil of mind and intro psychology or neuroscience classes as both a student and a teaching assistant, and in diverse departments / fields — and my thinking is that it depends on what trajectory students tend to take, and what is involved in the program. Psychologists who try to tackle the problem of qualia don’t teach it with the correct metaphysical background (some philosophers themselves rarely do); and sometimes philosophers who try to tackle consciousness or perception leave out a lot of relevant empirical work too.
   For me, I like to think of intro classes, at least, as sweeping through the major issues in metaphysics and epistemology of mind; and then, once the students have a conceptual grasp on the basic issues and terminology, ending with something where they can tackle empirical work in a philosophically minded way: I think discussing animal minds and discussing perception are both good areas to go, since there is a breadth of philosophical work on both and they remain accessible to the average undergrad.
   I think the most innovative/exciting work is happening in the upper-level courses, where they’re able to be offered; I’m designing one (for the job market) on the philosophy of mental illness, covering controversy with the DSM and issues in natural kinds, as well as some material from a more traditional bioethics course. I have also wanted to teach a specialist course on the imagination, or on emotion and action, with a mixed historical and contemporary empirical perspective. But I feel like it’s hard to do all of those same issues in intro philosophy of mind contexts, where I do believe the main goal ought to include solving the problem of “what minds might be,” and that involves teaching students about the metaphysical and epistemological landscape. Ultimately, I do think of myself as a philosopher first.
   One intermediate way to go that I’ve pondered is to ask students to write one short paper or give one presentation during the course (depending on the class size) where they choose one or two empirical articles and comment on them philosophically. I did that unbidden during an advanced phil of mind course I took as an undergrad, and it helped me both with my philosophical writing and my empirical judgment.

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6. 

   edwardtbabinski

   March 19, 2016

   Has anyone heard of the “argument from reason?”–an idealist position. Prof. Victor Reppert (who is also a Christian) defends it. Perhaps some of you have had Christian students who spoke up in class concerning philosophy of mind? Evolution is not the only controversy in which Christian academics get embroiled.
   I have a post on the philosophy of mind that discusses it in the context of Reppert’s argument from reason, also discussed is the nature of language, logic and mathematical modeling of the cosmos:
   http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2011/01/prior-prejudices-and-argument-from.html
   And a related post on the cosmos and complexity in general
   http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2015/06/complexity-is-how-cosmos-flows.html
   Any comments would be appreciated.

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7. 

   edwardtbabinski

   March 19, 2016

   Also, some of these Logan Pearsall Smith quotations (related to thinking as a function of the natural world), seem wonderfully geared toward catalyzing conversations about philosophy of mind:
   http://edward-t-babinski.blogspot.com/2011/08/logan-pearsall-smith-quotations-related.html

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8. 

   Carolyn Dicey Jennings

   April 7, 2016

   This is just to note that I think there is much of value to the comments here and intend to write a follow-up post based on these ideas and also examples I can find online. I will put up a comment on this thread when I finally do so! Thanks for all of your help!

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