Comments on: Time Changes Mind

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 15:43:07 +0000

I guess what’s most galling to me about Pinker’s writings here is that either he is actually ignorant of the philosophical sticking points that inhere in his position, or he’s trying simply to foist his view upon lay readers who have no reason to know about those difficulties. I hope that it is the latter (while irritating, I can well understand that sort of demagoguery and its motivations).

But I fear that it may be the former. It certainly is not only Pinker who seems to have this apparent ignorance. It seems like every time I see mind-brain issues like consciousness brought up in the popular press, it always has this same bias and apparent ignorance of the long history of thinkers’ attempts (largely failed attempts) to understand the mind in any kind of coherent way. I am just a humble lawyer with a mere undergraduate major in philosophy, and I am aware of that history and those issues. It would be a terrible shame if professional academics like Pinker (who has a professional interest not only in consciousness, but also in language – a topic that has its own vast set of philosophical problems) are actually ignorant of it. I hope someone can reassure me that that is unlikely to be true.

By: Patrick S. O'Donnell

Patrick S. O'Donnell — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 00:28:29 +0000

After reading Matt and Frank’s comments I thought I’d proffer my own list of names by way of prompting those enamored by Pinker’s thoughts on ‘the brain’ and consciousness to see just how and why he’s so deeply mistaken on this subject. These authors are not of one mind although they (with the exception of Buller) do evidence an acquaintance with the crème de la crème in the ‘philosophy of mind’ literature:

Auyang, Sunny Y. Mind in Everyday Life and Cognitive Science (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000).

Bennett, M.R. and P.M.S. Hacker. Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003).

Buller, David J. Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for Human Nature (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005). [Jerry Fodor wrote a brilliant review of this book for the Times Literary Supplement (July 27, 2005), a copy of which is found at Buller’s Philosophy Dept. webpage at Northern Illinois University: http://www.niu.edu/phil/~buller/index.shtml%5D

Descombes, Vincent. The Mind’s Provisions: A Critique of Cognitivism(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001).

Hutto, Daniel D. The Presence of Mind (Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publ. Co., 1999).

Putnam, Hilary. The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999).

Velmans, Max. Understanding Consciousness (London: Routledge, 2000).

By: Frank

Frank — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 19:51:32 +0000

I too was deeply troubled by the whole issue. I found Pinker’s article insufferably smug and infused with the kind of anti-religious, anti-spiritual bias that is increasingly emerging in his popular writing.

Many of the other contributors are basically trying to redefine the philosophy of consciousness and ethics as a branch of psychology or engineering. I have critiqued the experimental philosophers (or X-Phi) in these posts (along with pointers to more comprehensive work on the topic):

http://madisonian.net/archives/2006/07/14/experimental-philosophy/

http://jurisdynamics.blogspot.com/2006/09/x-phi-limits-of-science.html

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 21:24:06 +0000

Patrick hits the nail on the head. Pinker authoritatively pronounces that “thoughts” “consist entirely of” physiological activity in the brain, as if that were fully coherent and unproblematic. Um, there are several whole disciplines within philosophy focused on the difficulties inherent in a statement like that. One gets the sense that this guy has never even thought about taking seriously those who take consciousness and its implications seriously, people like John Searle, Thomas Nagel, et al.

By: Patrick S. O'Donnell

Patrick S. O'Donnell — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 20:07:06 +0000

Pinker’s remarks remind one why he is a psychologist and not a philosopher.

By: np

np — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 18:09:47 +0000

Hello Professor Hanson. I just found out about your blog and plan to read regularly. Steven Pinker is great.

Best,

Noah