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The Mind, the Brain and the Face

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

David Cockburn
David Cockburn
Affiliation:
St David's University College, Lampeter
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Extract

‘Only of a living human being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears, is deaf; is conscious or unconscious’.1 ‘The human body is the best picture of the human soul’. Anyone who believes that Wittgenstein's remarks here embody important truths has quite a bit of explaining to do. What needs to be explained is why it is that enormous numbers of people, people who have never had the chance to be corrupted by reading Descartes or Dennett, are willing, with only the slightest prompting, to speak in ways which appear to conflict dramatically with Wittgenstein's thought. Many people appear to find no difficulty at all in the idea that we could ascribe thoughts, sensations, emotions and so on to things which in no way resemble or behave like a living human being—for example to disembodied ‘minds’ or ‘souls’ or disembodied brains floating in tanks. And with a little more pressing many will agree that it is never to the living human being that these states are, strictly speaking, correctly ascribed; but, rather, to one part of the living human being—the brain, for example. Now if this incredibly widespread tendency is the expression of confusion then we need an explanation of its existence. We need this partly because without it it will be difficult to undermine the tendency; and partly because we might expect that such a widespread tendency is a distortion of some truth.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 60 , Issue 234 , October 1985 , pp. 477 - 493
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1985

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References

1 Wittgenstein, L., Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell, 1958), §281. The next quotation is from p. 174.Google Scholar

2 While I will use the terminology employed by professional philosophers, I should perhaps stress that I am not primarily concerned with the formulations and defences of these views to be found in the writings of professional philosophers. I have already suggested that the tendency of thought which they represent is very widespread. It is this general tendency of thought which interests me.Google Scholar

3 Descartes, René, Philosophical Works, Haldane, E. and Ross, G. (eds) (New York: Dover, 1955), Vol. I, 289; The Principles of Philosophy, Part IV, Principle CLXXXIX.Google Scholar

4 The parallel is far from perfect. It is, however, close enoughfor my purposes.

5 Malcolm, Norman, Problems of Mind (London: Allen and Unwin, 1972), 78.Google Scholar

6 Cook, John, ‘Human Beings’, Studies in the Philosophy of Wittgenstein, Winch, Peter (ed.) (London: Routledge, 1969), 124.Google Scholar

7 Wittgenstein, , Zettel (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967).Google Scholar

8 Wittgenstein (1967), §225.

9 Wittgenstein (1958), §537.

10 Op. cit. 132–133.

11 The connection I have in mind is this. While it is relatively easy to give ‘neutral’ descriptions of human ‘behaviour’—descriptions which carry no implication that what we are speaking about is a live human being—most of us would generally be very hard pressed to give this form of description of the ‘expression’ on a human face. Descriptions in human terms—in terms of joy, grief, boredom and so on—are not easily displaced in favour of ‘neutral’ ‘physical’ descriptions. Presumably this is connected with the smallness of the role which the face has played in the philosophical tradition which suggests that we need a justification for thinking of the things we see around us as human beings.Google Scholar

12 Hampshire, Stuart, ‘Feeling and Expression’, The Philosophy of Mind, Glover, Jonathan (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1976), 80. Despite the doubts that I raise about some of the ways in which Hampshire speaks I have found this paper enormously helpful.Google Scholar

13 The distinction is not exhaustive. Between behaviour and expression, as I am understanding them, there lies a whole spectrum of cases, e.g. turning to look, making a rude sign at someone's back, the non-functional gestures which I make with my hands in conversation, and so on.Google Scholar

14 I am not denying that it can go the other way. Observation of a sufficient stretch of a person's behoviour might overthorwthe testimony of the face.Google Scholar

15 It is true that what we see in a face can depend on the context in which it is set. I am inclined to think that the degree of this dependence is not sufficient to undermine the point I have just been making. Though I should say that I do have doubts here.Google Scholar

16 There may even be some foothold here for the notion that my body is an instrument that I use in so far as there is room for a contrast with the nonfunctional role of my face. We might feel that genuine contact with another is contact with them in so far as they do not stand in a manipulative relation to the environment. But I am not sure how much could be made of this.Google Scholar

17 Wittgenstein (1958), §281.

18 Ibid. 178.

19 For the purposes of this paper I must just assume that it will be granted that this is not simply a local feature of our concept of pain which can be discarded without serious loss.Google Scholar

20 It will be objected that with my insistence that this is the crucial question I am going round in a circle. In reply I can only express the hope that it is an illuminating circle.Google Scholar

21 Op. cit. §286.

22 See, for example, ‘Fortitude’ by Vonnegut, Kurt, Jr, in his Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons (Granada,1976).Google Scholar

23 It has been suggested to me that my thesis amounts to the claim that the mind—brain identity theorist gets it wrong by half an inch. Well, I do not think that is as absurd as it sounds. Though I should perhaps stress that my claim is no more than that the importance of the face eases the way for a conclusion which is accepted, in some measure or, perhaps, primarily, on other grounds.Google Scholar

24 An earlier version of this paper was read at St David's University College and at the University College of Swansea. I have been helped by points raised at these meetings and by discussions with R. A. Sharpe and Maureen Meehan.Google Scholar