John Searle "Minds, Brains, and Science"

· What is the mind's place in the physical world?
· What is the mind's relationship to the brain?
· Is the mind a natural phenomenon that can be explained by modern science? (1)
· Why is there no "digestion-stomach problem" comparable to the mind-body problem?

3 mind-body problems:
1) Consciousness and subjectivity: how can a private and subjective feeling (a pain, an image, a taste, an emotion, etc.) be explained by objective science? (2)
· How can a scientist study a patient's pain if she cannot observe the pain itself?
· Doesn't science only study publicly observable phenomena?
· How can a subjective feeling be an objective brain state? How can a red image be electrical activity in gray nervous tissue?
2) Intentionality: that property of minds that allows them to refer beyond themselves to objects in the world; thoughts are about things (5).
· But how should science explain this unique property of minds?
· Why is it that the electrical activity in gray nervous tissue nervous tissue refers to things beyond itself?

3) Mental Causation: mental events seem to cause much of our behaviour; we eat things we desire, act on what we believe, react to feelings of pain and pleasure, love and jealousy, anger and joy.
· But how do mental events affect changes in the physical body?
· Doesn't physiology give a complete causal story of the actions of the body? What causal role is left for mental events to play (6)?

3 basic ontological positions:
· Substance dualism: there are both mental and physical substances.
· Property dualism: there are no mental substances but the brain has both mental and neurological properties.
· Mind-brain identity: mental states are just certain sorts of brain states; mental properties are reducible to certain neurological properties.

Searle seems to be defending a version of mind-brain identity.

Searle:
· Minds seem to be completely different in kind from brains (3).
· For this reason, standard attempts to account for the mind are either antiscientific or antimind.
· Many have ignored consciousness because it seems to be an unscientific object to study (4).

· Mental properties are caused by processes in the brain.
· Mental states are "features" of the brain.
· The mind's relation to the body is a natural one comparable to the relation between the molecular structure (body) of an object and its solidity (mind).

Macro Micro
Water H2O

Solidity (certain molecular structure)

Transparency (certain molecular structure)

Mind brain

conscious feelings brain states

· So, consciousness is a macro property of the brain, the neurons (etc.) are micro properties of the brain

But does Searle's account explain subjectivity and consciousness?
· The macro feature transparency is publicly observable BUT when we look at someone's brain we don't see feelings and thoughts, only the micro features: nervous cell activity.

Is he denying "the intrinsically mental character of mental phenomena" as he accuses others of doing??

· We can give a pretty clear explanation of how the molecular micro structure of a substance allows for liquidity or transparency;
· But Searle gives no hint of what such a story would look like in the case of consciousness and the brain.

· Consciousness is like no other macro feature:
transparency doesn't have subjective feelings and conscious experience is private and seemingly unobservable.