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- Thomas W. Polger (2009). Evaluating the Evidence for Multiple Realization. Synthese 167 (3):457 - 472.Consider what the brain-state theorist has to do to make good his claims. He has to specify a physical–chemical state such that any organism (not just a mammal) is in pain if and only if (a) it possesses a brain of suitable physical–chemical structure; and (b) its brain is in that physical–chemical state. This means that the physical–chemical state in question must be a possible state of a mammalian brain, a reptilian brain, a mollusc’s brain (octopuses are mollusca, and certainly feel pain), etc. At the same time, it must not be a possible (physically possible) state of the brain of any physically possible creature that cannot feel pain. Even if such a state can be found, it must be nomologically certain that it will also be a state of the brain of any extraterrestrial life that may be found that will be capable of feeling pain before we can even entertain the supposition that it may be pain. It is not altogether impossible that such a state will be found... . But this is certainly an ambitious hypothesis. (Putnam 1967/1975, p. 436) The belief that mental states are multiply realized is now nearly universal among philosophers, as is the belief that this fact decisively refutes the identity theory. I argue that the empirical support for multiple realization does not justify the confidence that has been placed in it. In order for multiple realization of mental states to be an objection to the identity theory, the neurological differences among pains, for example, must be such as to guarantee that they are of distinct neurological kinds. But the phenomena traditionally cited do not provide evidence of that sort of variation. In particular, examples of neural plasticity do not provide such evidence.Reading list | Discuss | Edit | Categorize |My bibliography
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Do animals other than humans feel pain? How do we know? Well, how do we know if anyone, human or nonhuman, feels pain? We know that we ourselves can feel pain. We know this from the direct experience of pain that we have when, for instance, somebody presses a lighted cigarette against the back of our hand. But how do we know that anyone else feels pain? We cannot directly experience anyone else's pain, whether that "anyone" is our best friend or a stray dog. Pain is a state of consciousness, a "mental event", and as such it can never be observed. Behavior like writhing, screaming, or drawing one's hand away from the lighted cigarette is not pain itself; nor are the recordings a neurologist might make of activity within the brain observations of pain itself. Pain is something that we feel, and we can only infer that others are feeling it from various external indications.
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| | Other links: animal-rights-library.com | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Newcomers to the philosophy of mind are sometimes resistant to the idea that pain is a mental state. If asked to defend their view, they might say something like this: pain is a physical state, it is a state of the body. A pain in one’s leg feels to be in the leg, not ‘in the mind’. After all, sometimes people distinguish pain which is ‘all in the mind’ from a genuine pain, sometimes because the second is ‘physical’ while the first is not. And we also occasionally distinguish mental pain (which is normally understood as some kind of emotional distress) from the ‘physical pain’ one feels in one’s body. So what can be meant by saying that pain is a mental state? Of course, it only takes a little reflection shows that this naive view is mistaken. Pain is a state of consciousness, or an event in consciousness, and whether or not all states of mind are conscious, it is indisputable that only minds, or states of mind, are conscious.2 But does the naive view tell us anything about the concept of pain, or the concept of mind? I think it does. In this paper, I shall give reasons for thinking that consciousness is a form of intentionality, the mind’s ‘direction upon its objects’. I shall claim that the consciousness involved in bodily sensations like pain is constituted by the mind’s direction upon the part or region of the body where the sensation feels to be. Given this, it is less surprising that the naive view of pain says what it does: the apparent ‘physicality’ of pain is a consequence of confusing the object of the intentional state—the part of the body in which the pain is felt—with the state of being in pain.
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| | Other links: ucl.ac.uk books.google.com hdl.handle.net eprints.ucl.ac.uk web.mac.com | Scholar | At my library | More options ... "Of Minds and Molecules" attempts to show the difficulties in mental-state brain-state monism. By exploring the differences in meaning between mental-state sentences and brain-state sentences, and by analysing the implications of the theory of the molecular composition of matter, a kind of dualism is arrived at that no scientist should feel uncomfortable with. It is a dualism without mental substance but it does not deprive mental states of their uniqueness. Arguments are given for the propriety of asserting causal connections and dependency relations between mental states and molecular states of the brain.
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| | Other links: jstor.org journals.uchicago.edu dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... One trend in recent work on topic of the multiple realization of psychological properties has been an emphasis on greater sensitivity to actual science and greater clarity regarding the metaphysics of realization and multiple realization. One contribution to this trend is Bechtel and Mundale’s examination of the implications of brain mapping for multiple realization. Where Bechtel and Mundale argue that studies of brain mapping undermine claims about the multiple realization, this paper challenges that argument.
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| | Other links: jstor.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... identity theory , usually attributed to J.J.C. Smart (Smart, 1959) and U.T. Place (Place, 1956), claimed that kinds of mental states are identical to kinds of brain states. Sensations of pain, for instance, were said to be identical to the firing of C-fibres or some such type of neurological state. According to this view, then, pain, conceived as a _kind_ of mental state, is said to be _reduced_ to a certain kind of neurological state. The reduction envisaged here was modelled on the kind of reduction seen in other areas of the sciences. For instance, lightning can be said to be reduced to a rapid discharge of electrons in the atmosphere. When such a reduction is made scientists are not saying that there are two phenomena that are correlated, but rather that lightning is.
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| | Other links: jstor.org mind.oxfordjournals.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Bechtel and Mundale (1999) argue that multiple realizability is not plausible. They point out that neuroscientists assume that psychological traits are realized similarly in homologous brain structures and contend that a biological aspect of the brain that is relevant to neuropsychological state individuation provides evidence against multiple realizability. I argue that Bechtel and Mundale adduce the wrong sort of evidence against multiple realizability. Homologous traits do not provide relevant evidence. It is homoplasious traits of brains that can provide evidence for or against multiple realizability.
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| | Other links: journals.uchicago.edu jstor.org dx.doi.org | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Functionalism cannot accommodate the possibility of mad pain—pain whose causes and effects diverge from those of the pain causal role. This is because what it is to be in pain according to functionalism is simply to be in a state that occupies the pain role. And the identity theory cannot accommodate the possibility of Martian pain—pain whose physical realization is foot-cavity inflation rather than C-fibre activation (or whatever physiological state occupies the pain-role in normal humans). After all, what it is to be in pain according to the identity theory is to be in whatever state that occupies the pain role for us.
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| | Scholar | At my library | More options ... Assume that a quale as we experience it is a perspective on an underlying physical state, rather than the physical state as such – the reality as known as distinct from the reality as such. Assume, further, that this inner perspective is integral to, and materially co-extensive with, the physical state itself. Assume, finally, that the physical state in question is known as a brain state of a particular kind by an external observer of the brain in which it occurs. The result is a perspective in which a quale is entirely physical; a position that resolves several known difficulties for physicalism, including those associated with the explanatory gap, Jackson’s knowledge argument, and Chalmers’ hard problem of consciousness.
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| | Other links: cogprints.org | Scholar | More options ... Which comes first, realization or multiple realization? Hilary Putnam (1960) invoked the term ‘realization’ to refer to the relation that holds between physical devices and abstract computing machines, such as Turing machines or probabilistic automata. Putnam (1967) hypothesized that the relation between brain and mind is also realization. He contrasted his hypothesis—which he dubbed “functionalism”—with the competing hypotheses that mental states are to be identified with syndromes of behavior and behavioral dispositions, or that mental states are to be identified with brain processes. Instead, functionalism proposes that mental states are to be identified with functional states of whole organisms. Importantly, Putnam regards functionalism as an empirical hypothesis, and one whose explication appeals to some technical notions, particularly to the idea of a probabilistic automaton.
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| | Other links: homepages.uc.edu | Scholar | More options ... Discussion of Thomas W. Polger, Evaluating the evidence for multiple realization
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