a materialist theory of the mind by d. m. armstrong

8/9/2019 A Materialist Theory of the Mind by D. M. Armstrong

1/8

Journal of Philosophy Inc.

A Materialist Theory of the Mind by D. M. ArmstrongReview by: Alvin I. GoldmanThe Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 66, No. 22 (Nov. 20, 1969), pp. 812-818Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2024373.

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2/8

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Step

1.

Inflationary ontological

reduction:

We replace

R

by

R'

and

D

by

D

u

N; the proxy function

is

identity.

Step 2. Ontological reduction without change of domain: We replace R'

by (3 z)

-

(Nz

&

R'xy)

V

(z) (Nz

&

RN'XY).

This reinterpretation pre-

serves truth,

since

in

the

domain D

v

N the interpretation coincides

with

R'; the proxy function

is

identity.

Step

3.

Ontological

destruction: Eliminate

D

from the domain.

This

reduces the interpretation of R in effect to

RN

and, hence, preserves

truth.

Thus it appears that, if Pythagoreanism is to be resisted, either

some

further condition

must be

added

or a further explication of the pres-

ent conditions must be given. A more drastic alternative would be

to seek

a

less

model-theoretic approach to ontological questions.

R.

E. G.

BOOK REVIEWS

A Materialist Theory of the Mind. D. M. ARMSTRONG.

New York:

Hu-

manities Press, 1968. xii, 372 p. $8.50.

This book is a stimulating defense of the

thesis

that the

mind is

identical with the brain (or central nervous system) and that men-

tal states are physicochemical states of the brain. Armstrong fits

the

identity thesis into the framework of a general theory of the mind,

and provides one of the most

comprehensive and clearly structured

discussions of the subject in the recent

literature.

The

book begins with a threefold

classification

of theories of

mind:

(1) Dualism, (2) The Attribute

Theory,

and

(3) Materialism.

The author's own theory is a species of

materialism,

which he

calls

Central-state Materialism. Armstrong then sets out to criticize

the rival theories. He charges that

dualism is unable to capture

the

unity of mind and body, that it fails to give a satisfactory account

of

the

interaction

of

mind

and body, and that it cannot

explain

the

emergence

and

growth

of

the

mind

over time.

The

attribute

theory

differs from Cartesian dualism

in

positing only

one

substance,

but

contrasts with materialism in claiming that mental states are

non-

material attributes of the substance. Though it escapes some of the

difficulties confronting dualism, Armstrong thinks that other objec-

tions raised against

dualism

also

hold for

it.

Moreover,

he finds it

just mysterious

that there should

be

properties

of

the

brain that

are not reducible to material properties.

The advance

of science,

he

feels, renders implausible

the

hypothesis

of

any entity

or attribute

that is not reducible to

the entities and attributes of

physical

science.

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3/8

BOOK REVIEWS

8I3

Behaviorism is

classed as a species

of materialism, or physicalism,

since it tries to

reduce the mind to physical behavior and

to tenden-

cies to behave physically in certain ways. Armstrong's main criti-

cism of behaviorism is precisely its emphasis

on outer behavior

and

its consequent failure to account for

the inner nature

of mental

states. According

to behaviorism, says

Armstrong, the mind is just

the body in action

(56). Central-state materialism, on

the other

hand, sees the

mind as an inner arena

identified by its causal rela-

tions to outward

act (129). Nevertheless, Armstrong's

own theory

closely resembles

behaviorism; for, like the behaviorist,

he thinks

our concepts of mental states are dispositional concepts. Unlike the

behaviorist, however, he contends

that dispositional

states must

have a categorical

basis. Thus, although we may think

of a men-

tal state as a state apt for producing

certain behavior,

such a state

must also have an intrinsic nature.

Question then arises

concerning

this intrinsic nature,

and central-state materialism asserts

that it is

a

physicochemical state. Armstrong

compares the process

of identi-

fying the mind with the brain to the

process of identifying

the gene

with the DNA molecule.

The concept of a gene is a causal-disposi-

tional concept: that of a factor apt for producing hereditary charac-

teristics. Biological

evidence suggests that the production

of such

characteristics is

attributable to DNA.

Hence, the gene is identified

with the

DNA

molecule.

Similarly, the

concept of the mind is the

concept

of

a

factor apt for producing

certain behavior. Hence, since

scientific evidence

suggests that the

thing apt for producing this

behavior is the

brain, the mind is identified

with the brain.

The

defense of

the

mind-brain

identity

thesis is

hereby

divided

into two stages. The first stage, a purely conceptual one, consists in

an analysis of the concept of

a

mental state

as a state

apt for bring-

ing about a certain

sort

of

behavior

(82).

The

second

stage argues

the

contingent hypothesis

that these

behavior-causing

states are

physicochemical

states

of

the brain.

Actually very

little

space

is

de-

voted to

the second

stage,

whereas

the first

occupies

the bulk

of

the

book. In a wide-ranging survey,

Armstrong

seeks to

analyze

numer-

ous mental-state

concepts

in terms

of

their

dispositions

to

cause

behavior (and,

in

some

cases,

to

be caused

by

certain

stimuli).

Among

the

concepts analyzed

are those of

desire, deliberation, plea-

sure and

pain,

emotion, inference,

perception, belief,

mental im-

agery,

and

bodily

sensation.

The two

most

important

mental

concepts

in

Armstrong's theory

are desire

and

perception,

which

play

an

important part

in the

analysis

of

various other mental

concepts. Armstrong begins

with



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the concept

of desire,

which is the clearest case

of

a mental

state that

tends to produce

behavior.

Problems

arise

immediately, however.

Some desires do not really tend to cause behavior; for example, an

agent does

not

act upon

a desire that he

knows

he

cannot

fulfill.

Armstrong tries to handle such cases by suitable counterfactuals,

saying

what behavior

would

result

from

these desires

if

the

agent

had certain beliefs. Secondly, desires

are not the

only mental states

that produce behavior; so distinguishing features of desires must

be introduced. Armstrong tries

to do

this by defining a purpose (or

desire) as a state whose behavioral effects depend on perceptual

feedback:

Purposive activity .

..

is a train of activities initiated

and sustained by

a mental 'thrust' or causal state. At the beginning of

the

activity,

and

as the activity develops, perceptions of the current

state of

the

agent

and

his

environment occur.

Where the information

.

.

.

contained

in

the perceptions is relevant, it feeds back to the causal

state, modifying

the latter in a way suitable (or believed to be suitable) for the achieve-

ment of the 'end' of the activity.

The 'end'

is simply

the state of affairs

such that perception that

it

has

been reached

feeds back to

the

sus-

taining causal state and stops the causal state operating. Purposive ac-

tivity is a train of activities, initiated

and sustained

by

a mental

state,

and

controlled

from

beginning to

end

by perception

acting

as

a

feed-

back cause on the mental state.

To

put

forward

a slogan:

a

purpose

is

an

information-sensitive mental cause (139).

Having explained

desire in

part

in

terms of perception, Armstrong

turns to

the latter

concept.

Here

again

he

employs

the formula char-

acterizing mental states as states apt

for

producing

certain

sorts

of

behavior, though

he

admits that

perception

does

not

have

the

same

sort

of

causal

role as desires or

purposes.

Now,

in

the case of perception, there is no question of the inner event

actually tending to bring

about

behavior.

What we must say, rather,

is

that perception supplies a necessary

preconditionfor appropriate be-

havior. If a baby can perceive a difference between a green and a blue

block,

then it is

in

a

position

to

discriminate between

them

in

its be-

havior if it should want

to. . .

. Perception enables

discriminating be-

havior, but does not impel towards that behavior (249).

The

behavioral

effects

of

perception

tell

only part

of the story, how-

ever.

Armstrong says

that

certain

mental-state concepts must be ana-

lyzed partly

in

terms

of

the propensity to be

caused by certain stim-

uli, and perception is the main example of this. To perceive an ob-

ject

or

situation

in the

environment,

he

says,

is

to

acquire

a belief

about the

environment.

(This thesis was espoused

in

his

earlier



5/8

BOOK REVIEWS

8i5

book,

Perception

and the

Physical

World.')

Such

belief-acquirings

are apt

for

being brought

about

by

the

corresponding

objects or

situations in the environment, which is what occurs in veridical per-

ception.

Thus,

perception

is to

be

understood

in

terms

of

the

stimuli

that

characteristically cause

it,

as

well

as the

behavioral differences

it

is apt

to

produce.

Armstrong's

analysis of mental-state

concepts

turns out to be far

less

simple

and straightforward

than the

original

billing suggests.

As

we have seen,

he not

only appeals to

behavioral

consequences

in

analyzing

mental

concepts,

but

also to

stimulus causes.

Moreover,

in many cases mental states are characterized in terms of their causal

relations

to other

mental

states,

rather than their

direct

ties to be-

havior or

stimuli.

Emotions

are

analyzed

in

terms

of

propensities

to cause

certain

desires

and

to be caused

by certain

beliefs,

and de-

liberation

is analyzed as a

process apt for

causing a

decision.

Again,

even the

primary

mental

concepts,

desire and

perception,

are

not

independently

analyzed. As we

have

seen,

Armstrong's

analysis of

desire

or

purpose

makes use of the

concept

of

perception,

and

his

analysis

of

perception

presupposes the

concept

of

desire; hence,

he

calls them package-deal concepts (253). But a full analysis re-

quires him

to

distinguish

the

joint

operation of

purpose

and per-

ception

from that

of

other

mechanisms, e.g., automatic

self-regulat-

ing

mechanisms in the

body.

In

his

attempt to do

this,

Armstrong

is

eventually

forced to

appeal to the

enormously greater

complex-

ity

of purpose

and

perception (252).

In

addition

to

the

analysis

of

particular

mental

concepts, a com-

plete

theory of the mind

must

also give an

account

of

self-knowledge

and of consciousness in general. Here seem to lurk large obstacles to

a

causal-materialist

account of the mind.

For example,

if a

mental

state

is a

disposition

to

produce

behavior, how

is

noninferential

knowledge

of it

possible? And

if a

mental state is a

physicochemical

state of the

brain, why should a

statement

concerning such

a state

have

a different

epistemic

status from, say, a

statement about

the

state

of

one's

liver? Yet it

is

widely

claimed that

first-person mental

statements

do

have

a

unique

epistemic status:

they

are

incorrigible

and

self-intimating.

Armstrong

confronts these

challenges

head on. He

argues

that

noninferential

knowledge

of

dispositions

is

perfectly possible

and,

hence,

that noninferential

knowledge

of one's mental

states

is

also

possible. On

the

other

hand,

he

emphatically

denies

the

incorrigi-

' New York: Humanities,

1961; reviewed

in this JOURNAL,

LIX, 14

(July

5,

1962):

384-388.



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bility and self-intimatingness of first-person

mental statements.

That

I believe I am in mental state

M,

he says, does not entail that

I

am

in

M; and that

I

am in

M

does not entail that

I

believe,

or

am

aware, that

I

am.

Armstrong's position

is that

. . . our cognitive relation to

our mind ...

is like our cognitive

rela-

tion to anything else

in

nature. We know in part, guess in part, in

part we are mistakenand

in

large part

we

are

simply ignorant.Being

in a mental state entails nothing about our awarenessof that state

(115).

If mental states are physicochemical states of the brain, indubitable

knowledge of them should not be expected. Consciousness of one's

mental states

is a

self-scanning process. One is conscious of a men-

tal state when it is scanned by a further mental state. Although

successful

scanning

is

possible,

there is no reason to

expect every

mental

state

to be

scanned or

every putative scanning to

be correct.

Thus, Armstrong's position squares well with his materialism.

On the

whole,

this

is a valuable book

that

deserves, and will

receive, considerable attention. It presents a coherent and systematic

theory of the mind, with reasonably clear-cut proposals for the solu-

tion of

many

traditional

problems

in

this domain.

It

certainly

con-

stitutes

the most detailed

defense

of the

contingent identity

thesis

yet to appear.

In

addition, Armstrong writes lucidly

and

engagingly;

he

puts

all his cards face

up

on the

table,

both

in

criticism of others

and in

defense

of

his

own

views.

Though

the

book is

long,

it is

emi-

nently readable.

Of

special

use to

students

is

Armstrong's classification

of theories

of mind and his critique of theories that rival his own. His criticisms

of

rivals

are often

imaginative.

I

was

disappointed, however, by

in-

sufficient discussion

of

the

concept of

reduction. In

criticizing

the

attribute

theory, Armstrong claims

that mental

attributes, or prop-

erties, must be

reducible to

physical ones, but he never explains

what this means.

Presumably, reducibility requires some sort of reg-

ularities

holding between the

incidence of mental

properties

and

of

physical properties.

But

the nature of these regularities goes com-

pletely unexplored.

In

the

same

vein, one

wishes

Armstrong

had

said

more

about criteria

of

identity

for states or

events. In

the

early

part

of the book he talks almost

exclusively

of the

identification of

mind

and brain. But since

the mind

is

just shorthand,

I

think,

for

a certain

class

of states and

events,

one wishes there

were

some

elaboration

of the

problem

of

when

two

states

can be

considered

identical.



7/8

BOOK REVIEWS

8I7

Armstrong's causal

analysis of mental

concepts is a

salutary

devel-

opment

in the

philosophy

of mind. Its

main

importance,

I think,

lies in its refutation of the oft-repeated dogma that logical connec-

tions and

causal

connections are

incompatible.

Armstrong is

quite

right to point

to

concepts, such as

the

gene, whose

analysis

includes

a

propensity

to

cause

certain

effects. He

is also

right,

I

think,

in

sug-

gesting

that the

concept of

desire or

purpose

is the

concept of

a

state

whose

analysis

includes

the propensity

to

cause

behavior.

There is

a sense,

then, in

which there is

a

conceptual, or

logical,

tie

between

desire and

action.

Yet this

logical tie

is perfectly

compati-

ble with the fact that actions are caused by desires.

More

dubious, however,

is

Armstrong's

extension

of this

logical

connection

thesis to

all

mental states.

First,

even where we

can

agree

that

a certain kind

of mental

state

characteristically

produces cer-

tain

behavior,

it may

not be

evident

that this is a

logical truth.

Sec-

ondly, there

are

many kinds of

mental

states that do

not

seem to be

associated with

specific

kinds of

physical

behavior.

What sorts

of

overt

behavior

are

typically

associated

with

entertaining a

hypothe-

sis,

doubting a

proposition, or

daydreaming? The

conceptual rela-

tionship between such states and overt behavior-even an

indirect

relationship via other

mental states-is,

at

best, extremely

tenuous.

Armstrong's willingness

to

come

to

grips

with

the

consequences

of

his

view

is

most

in evidence in

his

treatment

of

noninferential

knowledge of mental states

and

his

treatment

of consciousness. He

clearly

recognizes

the

implications

of his

causal-materialist

position

on

these

issues,

and his

positions

on

them are

original

and

refresh-

ing.

I

remain

unconvinced,

however, by

his

support

for

noninferen-

tial knowledge of dispositions. He claims that pressure is a state apt

for

producing

movement in

a

body,

so that

noninferential

knowl-

edge

of

pressure

on one's

body

is

noninferential

knowledge

of a dis-

position.

But this is dubious.

His

view of

consciousness as a

self-

scanning

process

is

also

questionable.

On his

view,

M

is a

conscious

mental

event

if

it

is the

object

of

another mental

event

(the

aware-

ness

of

M).

Otherwise

it

is

unconscious.

It

follows that an

awareness

is itself

an

unconscious mental event

if

it

is not the

object

of a

fur-

ther

awareness.

Thus,

an

awareness

of

a

pain

is

unconscious

if

it

goes

unscanned

by

a

higher-level

awareness. This

strikes me

as

extremely

counterintuitive.

There

are

other

specific points

where

Armstrong's

discussion

is

inadequate,

sometimes because he

tries

too

hard to fit

things into

his

framework without

full

cognizance

of

the

difficulties

involved.

On

the

other

hand,

his

development

of the

theory

is

always

interest-



8/8

8i8

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PHILOSOPHY

ing and frequently ingenious. Bold theories, like Armstrong's,

are

the stuff of which

philosophical progress is made, and so this is a

val-

uable contribution

to

the

philosophy of mind.

ALVIN

I.

GOLDMAN

University

of

Michigan

ERRATUM. The last item of the

APA Program for Saturday,

December 27, in

LXVI,

20 (Oct.

16, 1969): 725-735,

page 726, was omitted. This

line

should

have read:

8:00

Smoker,

Grand Ballroom

The editors regret

the

omission,

and trust that many

of our readers will

attend

the

Smoker.

NOTES AND NEWS

The editors

report with deep

regret

the death of A. N. Prior, fellow

in

phi-

losophy

of Balliol College, Oxford,

and former

editor

of the Journal

of

Symbolic

Logic.

Professor Prior was

born and educated

in New Zealand;

he

had taught

at Otago University

and

at

Canterbury University,

and

also

at Manchester

University,

England. At

the

time

of his death he was

on

sabbatical

leave, visiting

at the

University

of Oslo. He died

in

Trondheim,

Norway, on October

6, i969,

at the age of fifty-four.

The editors regret to learn that J. W. Swanson, Professor of Philosophy at

the

University

of

Massachusettts,

Amherst,

and a contributor

to

this

JOURNAL,

died on November

6, i969.

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a materialist theory of the mind by d. m. armstrong

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