Thursday, May 27, 2010

Christopher Suhler & Patricia Churchland - Control: Conscious and Otherwise

http://www.orianit.edu-negev.gov.il/carmella/sites/homepage/amnon/Images/brain%20as%20computer2.jpg

I'm not a big fan of Patricia Churchland - she is one of the most hard-core materialist neurophilosophers working today. I recognize that there are partial truths in her position - and she is brilliant - but on the whole I am not very sympathetic. In this article, her main point is that "consciousness is not a necessary condition for control." This is line with her general position that consciousness is a by-product of neural function, and not a cause in itself.

Here is a brief summary of her overall philosophical position:
Churchland has focused on the interface between neuroscience and philosophy. According to her, philosophers are increasingly realizing that to understand the mind one must understand the brain. She is associated with a school of thought called eliminativism or eliminative materialism, which argues that folk psychology concepts such as belief, free will, and consciousness will likely need to be revised as science understands more about the nature of brain function.
Here is a little bit on eliminative materialism, the position with which Churchland is most identified:

Eliminative materialism (also called eliminativism) is a materialist position in the philosophy of mind. Its primary claim is that people's common-sense understanding of the mind (or folk psychology) is false and that certain classes of mental states that most people believe in do not exist. Some eliminativists argue that no coherent neural basis will be found for many everyday psychological concepts such as belief or desire, since they are poorly defined. Rather, they argue that psychological concepts of behaviour and experience should be judged by how well they reduce to the biological level.[1] Other versions entail the non-existence of conscious mental states such as pain and visual perceptions.[2]

Eliminativism about a class of entities is the view that that class of entities does not exist.[3] For example, all forms of materialism are eliminativist about the soul; modern chemists are eliminativist about phlogiston; and modern physicists are eliminativist about the existence of luminiferous aether. Eliminative materialism is the relatively new (1960s-70s) idea that certain classes of mental entities that commonsense takes for granted, such as beliefs, desires, and the subjective sensation of pain, do not exist.[4][5] The most common versions are eliminativism about propositional attitudes, as expressed by Paul and Patricia Churchland,[6] and eliminativism about qualia (subjective experience), as expressed by Daniel Dennett and Georges Rey.[2]

Various arguments have been put forth both for and against eliminative materialism over the last forty years. Most of the arguments in favor of the view are based on the assumption that people's commonsense view of the mind is actually an implicit theory. It is to be compared and contrasted with other scientific theories in its explanatory success, accuracy, and ability to allow people to make correct predictions about the future. Eliminativists argue that, based on these and other criteria, commonsense "folk" psychology has failed and will eventually need to be replaced with explanations derived from the neurosciences. These philosophers therefore tend to emphasize the importance of neuroscientific research as well as developments in artificial intelligence to sustain their thesis.

Philosophers who argue against eliminativism may take several approaches. Simulation theorists, like Robert Gordon[7] and Alvin Goldman[8] argue that folk psychology is not a theory, but rather depends on internal simulation of others, and therefore is not subject to falsification in the same way that theories are. Jerry Fodor, among others,[9] argues that folk psychology is, in fact, a successful (even indispensable) theory. Another view is that since eliminativism assumes the existence of the beliefs and other entities it seeks to "eliminate", it must be self-refuting.[10]

And finally, this summary:

Today, the eliminativist view is most closely associated with the philosophers Paul and Patricia Churchland, who deny the existence of propositional attitudes (a subclass of intentional states), and with Daniel Dennett, who is generally considered to be an eliminativist about qualia and phenomenal aspects of consciousness. One way to summarize the difference between the Churchlands's views and Dennett's view is that the Churchlands are eliminativists when it comes to propositional attitudes, but reductionists concerning qualia, while Dennett is a reductionist with respect to propositional attitudes, and an eliminativist concerning qualia.[20][21][22]

So with that foundation, this new article by Churchland and Christopher Suhler (a doctoral student) - Control: Conscious and Otherwise - posted at On the Human is stirring up a bit of discussion on the web. Some big names in experimental philosophy have taken part in the discussion thread following the post.

Let's begin with the article.

Control: Conscious and Otherwise

by: Christopher Suhler and Patricia Churchland

Introduction
An important notion in moral philosophy and many legal systems is that certain circumstances can mitigate an individual’s responsibility for a transgression. Generally speaking, such situations are considered extenuating in virtue of their exceptional influence on a person’s ability to act and make decisions in a normal manner. The essence of the case for diminished responsibility is that these special circumstances impede the ability of a normal person to exercise self-control.

In recent years, however, this notion of diminished responsibility has come to wider attention in a quite unexpected way. Some researchers, drawing on findings from social psychology, have argued that situational forces may play a much larger role in behavior than traditionally assumed. The situational forces in question are often entirely ordinary, mundane and seemingly trivial. Given that such influences are pervasive, the general issue raised concerns control in commonplace cases. According to a condensed version of this view – which we call the Frail Control hypothesis for convenience – even in unexceptional conditions, humans have little control over their behavior. If correct, this line of argument could have widespread and dramatic ramifications, notably for our practices of attributing moral and legal responsibility. (We note that although in certain rare cases control and responsibility come apart, in most cases of moral and legal responsibility attribution, control and responsibility are closely linked.)

While agreeing that moral philosophy and the law can benefit from a greater understanding of developments in psychology and neuroscience, we suggest that the Frail Control challenge is markedly weakened once a wider range of data is considered. In our assessment, the Frail Control hypothesis underestimates the vigor of normal goal-maintenance in the face of distractions, and neglects the role of nonconscious aspects of control as displayed, for instance, in the exercise of cognitive, motor and social skills. Furthermore, a large psychological literature has demonstrated that nonconscious, automatic processes are pervasive and anything but “dumb”. Instead, they are often remarkably sophisticated and flexible in performing functions such as goal pursuit that were once considered the sole province of conscious cognition (Bargh & Morsella, in press) [3].

On the basis of these and other data, we develop an account of control that we believe goes some way toward sharpening the meaning of control – including nonconscious control – in a way that accommodates the role of nonconscious processes in nearly everything we do. the general conclusion we will be arguing for is that nonconscious processes can support a robust form of control and, by extension, that consciousness is not a necessary condition for control. One notable feature of our account is a model of control in which neurobiological criteria, rather than intuitive or behavioral criteria alone, define the boundaries of control. A significant virtue of this account, in light of the pervasiveness of automatic processes in our cognitive lives, is that it is agnostic as to whether the underlying processes are conscious or nonconscious.

Frail Control
A leading advocate of the Frail Control hypothesis is the philosopher John Doris (e.g., Doris, 1998, [7]). He bases his claims on a range of data from social psychology showing that choices can be affected by various manipulations, such as priming (often below the level of consciousness) or ostensibly banal environmental features. For example, subjects exposed to words related to rudeness on a scrambled-sentence task are subsequently more likely to interrupt a (staged) conversation between the experimenter and another person than are subjects primed with words related to politeness or controls who are not primed (Bargh et al., 1996) [8]. Other studies show that people are more likely to litter in a particular setting when it is heavily littered than when the same setting is clean (Keizer et al., 2008) [9]. (For reviews, see Bargh & Morsella, in press; Nisbett & Wilson, 1977) [3, 10].

Adding to the surprise, the data appear to show that very minor environmental influences can at times produce large effects. Among the examples Doris cites are the finding by Isen and Levin (1972) [11] that “[p]assersby who had just found a dime were twenty-two times more likely to help a woman who had dropped some papers than passersby who did not find a dime” (Doris & Murphy, 2007) [12, p. 34] and the finding by Darley and Batson (1973) [13] that “[p]assersby not in a hurry were six times more likely to help an unfortunate who appeared to be in significant distress than were passersby in a hurry” (Doris & Murphy, 2007) [12, p. 34].

These data are connected to the issue of responsibility in the following way: if your choice is strongly affected by situational factors in ways that you are unaware of, then you plausibly have an excuse for your actions. Doris echoes widespread philosophical assumptions when he says that to be responsible we must have normative competence, meaning that we consciously weigh the evidence, effectively deliberate, and make a decision (Doris, 2002) [14, p. 136]. If the deciding and weighing is below the level of consciousness, normative competence is compromised. No normative competence, no responsibility. (Other statements of Frail Control positions can be found in Wilson (2002) [15], Harman (1999) [16], Bargh (2008) [17], Wegner (2002) [18], and Appiah (2008) [19], as well as a recent news feature in Nature (Buchanan, 2009) [20].

The conclusion that our actions are much more frequently excusable than hitherto assumed could have monumental implications for the law, both criminal and civil, as well as our daily social interactions. A rather different picture of control emerges, however, once the range of data is expanded to include neurobiological, clinical, and other behavioral data, as well as considerations from evolutionary biology.

Read the whole article, which is followed by the comments.

This is an interesting article - an approach that is highly needed in philosophy. There is a tendency in the world of philosophy to be insulated from what we know about the brain, much of which brings into questions ideas such as free will and rational morality.

There is a great deal of decision making and behavioral response that occurs outside of our rational consciousness - this is not a new idea. But to reduce all of our consciousness to these processes is mistaken in my opinion.

Some of the philosophers who have left comments make similar points in more academic language, but the gist is the same: Chruchland and Suhler's position is true but partial. There is more to the story.


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