Externalism

Mark Rowlands

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317489283
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

It is commonly held that our thoughts, beliefs, desires and feelings - the mental phenomena that we instantiate - are constituted by states and processes that occur inside our head. The view known as externalism, however, denies that mental phenomena are internal in this sense. The mind is not purely in the head. Mental phenomena are hybrid entities that straddle both internal state and processes and things occurring in the outside world. The development of externalist conceptions of the mind is one of the most controversial, and arguably one of the most important, developments in the philosophy of mind in the second half of the twentieth century. Yet, despite its significance most recent work on externalism has been highly technical, clouding its basic ideas and principles. Moreover, very little work has been done to locate externalism within philosophical developments in both analytic and continental traditions. In this book, Mark Rowlands aims to remedy both these problems and present for the reader a clear and accessible introduction to the subject grounded in wider developments in the history of philosophy. Rowlands shows that externalism has significant and respectable historical roots that make it much more important than a specific eruption that occurred in late twentieth-century analytic philosophy.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: internalism and externalism

In the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, starring Raquel Welch, humans are shrunk down to the size of body cells and injected into another (full-size) human being. Actually, it was a little spaceship of sorts that was injected, but Raquel was inside it. I can’t remember precisely what the reason for this injection was, but, as I recall, some sort of errand of mercy was involved. So, let us engage in what philosophers call a thought-experiment. You are Raquel Welch aboard your little spaceship. But this ship has been modified. Instead of having to be injected into the blood supply, it now has a boring or tunnelling device, and you can bore directly into the person’s body. The whole errand of mercy scenario would no doubt have to be changed given this technological innovation – we now seem to have a sort of inverse Alien scenario, and our film should now be directed by Ridley Scott – but we needn’t worry about that. Our concern is not ethics but philosophy of mind.

Your preferred port of entry, let us suppose, is the skull. So, bore away you do. First you make your way through the skin: the boundary between your experimental subject/victim and the outer world. That’s easy. The next layer, the skull, however, proves a lot more difficult, and you spend quite some time boring your way through that. Eventually you break through into the grey, gooey mess that is the brain. Actually, at your new cellular size, it may not appear grey and gooey at all. Electrical storms may very well surround you, your ship a ghostly galleon tossed on cloudy, chemical seas. Pretty nasty stuff.

Eventually, however, after many years of exploration, you manage to chart your new world. You map out how small parts of this world are arranged into larger parts, how the electrical storms you witness are ordered according to, and can to some extent be rendered predictable by reference to, the arrangements of these parts and so on. In short, you succeed in identifying the gross structural and functional components of your subject’s/victim’s brain. Then you return to the surface, are restored to normal size and sign up for your next film, One Million Years BC.

In your quieter moments, you might reflect on what it is you achieved on your fantastic voyage. And if you are at all typical, the following sort of conflation may seem overwhelmingly tempting to you. In burrowing in through the skull to the brain, you are burrowing into the mind, for the mind is the brain. And in identifying the gross structural and functional areas of the brain, and mapping out the patterns of electrical and chemical activity, what you are doing, in effect, is mapping out the mind. In identifying patterns in the chemical eddies, and stabilities in the electrical fields, you are identifying mental events, states and processes – for it is precisely this sort of thing in which mental events, states and processes consist.

If you find this sort of temptation overwhelming, then, whether you realize it or not, you hold what is known as an internalist view of the mind. Internalism is, very roughly, the view that all mental things are located inside the head of the person or creature that has these things. Externalism, on the other hand, is the view that not all mental things are exclusively located inside the head of the person or creature that has these things.

It doesn’t have to be the head, actually. There might be some logically possible creatures that have minds but no identifiable heads. More accurately, internalism is the view that all mental events, states and processes – mental phenomena, broadly construed – are located inside the skins of the creatures that have them. Externalism is the view that denies this. Of course, some creatures might not have identifiable skins, as such. What is crucial, however, is not heads or skins but the notion of an identifiable physical boundary between the organism that possesses the mental phenomena in question and its wider environment. I’ll usually refer to this boundary as the skin, but the above qualifications should be borne in mind.

Perhaps, however, you don’t find the assimilation of the mind to the brain very tempting at all. Perhaps, for example, the assimilation is unacceptably materialist for your tastes. You might, that is, hold a dualist view of the mind: the mind is a non-physical object, and mental phenomena consist in modifications or alterations in the properties of this object. Perhaps, on your fantastic voyage, you even think that you found this non-physical region of the person – the seat of the soul, if you will. No matter, you are still an internalist if you believe this seat of the soul to be located inside the skin of the person or creature whose soul it is. Internalism cuts across the distinction between dualism and materialism, and most versions of both views are internalist ones.

Chapter 2 introduces the concept of internalism, and traces its logical–historical development to the work of Descartes. I argue that this Cartesian (and I shall use the terms “Cartesian” and “internalist” interchangeably) conception of the mind – the conception bequeathed us by Descartes – is made up of three broad strands: ontological, epistemological and axiological. The ontological component of Cartesianism is composed of what I call the Location Claim, according to which mental particulars are spatially located inside the skins of mental subjects, and the Possession Claim, according to which the possession of mental properties by a subject is logically independent of anything external to that subject. Most views of the mind, at least until fairly recently, are forms of Cartesian internalism in that they are committed to both the Location Claim and the Possession Claim, and this is true whether these views are dualist or materialist in character.

The epistemological component of Cartesianism, I argue, consists in what I call the thesis of epistemic internalism: we know the contents of our own minds first and best. This provides us with an additional way – an essentially epistemic one – of understanding mental phenomena as internal: the limits of the mental coincide with the limits of what we know first and best.

The axiological strand of Cartesianism consists in the framework for thinking about value bequeathed us by the ontological and epistemological strands. If we adopt the Cartesian view of the mind as an interiority, then this gives us a fairly stark and unforgiving framework for thinking about the nature of value. Value must be something either objectively existing in the world or something subjectively constituted by the activities of the mind.

Future chapters will be primarily concerned with internalism and externalism as ontological doctrines. However, two chapters are reserved for discussion of the epistemological and axiological aspects of the competing views. Chapter 8 examines the epistemological ramifications of externalism and Chapter 11 examines its axiological consequences.

Suppose we wish to endorse the internalist view of the mind as an interiority. Then we are immediately presented with a problem that has played an important role in the development of modern philosophy. We can call it the matching problem. If the mind is something located inside the head (skin, boundary) of a creature that has it, how does the mind, so to speak, get a hold on the world in such a way that the creature might know, or even have any reason for believing, anything about that world? If mind and world are separated, in the manner prescribed by internalism, then how do we get the two back together again in the way they presumably need to be together in order for a creature to know or even think anything about the world?

The matching problem has played a pivotal role in the development of modern philosophy since it is what underpins Immanuel Kant’s “Copernican revolution” in philosophy and his resulting endorsement of the position known as transcendental idealism. According to Kant, the world of our everyday experience is a world constructed by the activities of the mind, specifically through the activities of what he called sensibility and understanding. How does the mind latch on to the world in the way required for the possibility of thought and knowledge about that world? Kant’s answer is that the world, or at least that portion of the world we can know and think about, is a world constructed by the activities of the mind. This idealist trend of seeing the world as, in one or another way, a construction of the mind is thus a direct response to the matching problem. And the matching problem is predicated on the separation of mind and world bound up with internalism. Idealism, then, is a natural development of – in the sense of a response to – internalism. Or, at least, so I shall argue in Chapter 3.

Moreover, it is a response that has proved enormously influential. More recent imitators of Kant have replaced the operations of the faculties of sensibility and understanding with language, discourse, theory, or, more generally, structure. But in any event, the core idea remains the same: the world, at least the world of which we can meaningfully speak, is a world that is constituted by human mental activity, either directly or via the products of that activity. This idea, I think it is fair to say, was virtually definitive of much twentieth-century thought. The idea that idealism can be understood as a response to internalism, and the enormous influence of this idealist response, is defended and discussed in Chapter 3.

One influential twentieth-century version of internalism, and ensuing idealism, is to be found in the work of the father of modern phenomenology, Edmund Husserl. However, in followers of Husserl we find the beginnings of a reaction to this internalism-idealism complex that takes an identifiably externalist form. Jean-Paul Sartre famously defends a view of consciousness as nothing but a directedness towards objects. In this, Sartre is developing the notion of intentionality that is central to Husserl’s phenomenology. However, Sartre insists on the claim that these objects of consciousness are transcendent with respect to that consciousness. That is, these objects are not conscious or mental items; they are irredeemably external to consciousness and all things mental. On the basis of this, I argue in Chapter 4 that Sartre presents us with a form of externalism that turns on the rejection of both the Location Claim and the Possession Claim that constituted Cartesian internalism. Sartre is one of the first genuine externalists.

This development of an externalist alternative is, I argue in Chapter 5, carried on in the work of Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein’s externalism is based centrally on a rejection of the Possession Claim (partly) definitive of internalism. At least some types of mental phenomena depend, for their possession by a subject, on structures that are external to – outside the skin of – that subject. Thus, according to Wittgenstein, to mean, intend or understand something by a sign is not to be the subject of an inner state or process. Rather, it is to possess a capacity: the capacity to adjust one’s use of the sign to bring it into line with custom or practice. And this connects meaning, intending and understanding with structures that are external to the subject of this meaning, intending and understanding. The precise nature of these external structures depends on how we understand Wittgenstein’s idea of a custom. But whatever understanding of this idea we adopt, Wittgenstein clearly emerges as someone who is committed to rejecting the Possession Claim (and probably also the Location Claim), and so as an externalist. Wittgenstein’s externalism is the subject of Chapter 5.

Chapter 6 discusses what I call content externalism. This position is, in fact, what most people have in mind when they use or hear the word “externalism”. Content externalism is the idea that the semantic content of mental states that have it is often dependent on factors – objects, properties, events and so on – that are external to the subject of that content. It is not possible, to use a classic example of Hilary Putnam’s, to entertain the content that water is wet if you inhabit a world where there is no water. If you inhabited a world where there was no water but only, for example, something that was superficially indistinguishable from it, whatever content you entertained would not be the content that water is wet but, rather, that this superficially indistinguishable substance is wet. The content one is capable of entertaining depends on the nature of the world one inhabits.

However, many mental states are identified by way of their content. So, if content cannot be entertained in the absence of certain environmental items, neither can these mental states be possessed or instantiated in the absence of these items. Thus, we have a rejection of the Possession Claim, and this rejection is the cornerstone of the position known as content externalism. These issues will be discussed in Chapter 6. In Chapter 7, however, I go on to argue that content externalism is extremely restricted, both in scope and force. In particular, attempts to show that the arguments for content externalism also entail rejection of the Location Claim typically fail.

The attempt to strengthen externalism – to refashion it into a doctrine that entails rejection of the Location Claim as well as the Possession Claim – is taken up again in Chapter 9. The result is a position that goes by a variety of names: vehicle externalism, active externalism, architecturalism, environmentalism and so on. To regard these labels as all picking out a single position is, perhaps, overly simplistic. It is more likely that they designate several closely related positions. However, one common thread running through each of them is that the structures and mechanisms that allow a creature to possess or undergo various mental states and processes are often structures and mechanisms that extend beyond the skin of that creature. These vehicles of mental processes are extended, or distributed, out into the world and so too, we have every reason for supposing, are the mental processes themselves.

This form of externalism, therefore, is more radical than content externalism with regard to both its force and scope. Its force is greater than that of its content-based cousin because it rejects not only the Possession Claim but also the Location Claim. Not only is the possession of certain types of mental phenomena dependent on what is instantiated in the world of the creature that possesses such phenomena, but also such phenomena are often located, at least in part, out in that world. The scope of vehicle externalism is also greater in that content externalism is restricted to states that possess semantic content and, indeed, that do so essentially. If the arguments of Chapter 7 are correct, the restrictions on content externalism are even greater than this: it is confined to a relatively small subset of mental states that possess their content essentially. The application of vehicle externalism is, I argue, much wider. Indeed, in Chapter 10 an attempt is made to apply vehicle externalism to the sorts of states typically thought of as being beyond the purview of externalism: conscious experiences.

Externalism is a striking and provocative view of the nature of mental phenomena, a view whose acceptance has important philosophical, and ultimately practical, consequences. What is at stake is nothing less than our ontic place in the world and our epistemic grip on that world. Mental phenomena, according to externalism, are not confined to what is going on inside the skins of mental subjects. Rather, such phenomena are, in one way or another, and to one degree or another, extended out into the world, distributed upon that world. In the eyes of many, externalism is a counter-intuitive view. The aim of this book is to make it less so.

CHAPTER 2

Cartesianism

There is a view of the mind that seems overwhelmingly natural to us. No one really knows why this is. Maybe the view simply is a natural one. Maybe it only seems that way for some other reason – cultural or whatever. No one really knows. However it came to be that way, it now pretty much passes as common sense. The view is pervasive and tenacious, not only as an explicit doctrine but, perhaps even more significantly, in the clandestine influence it has on explicit doctrines of the mind. In effect, it has the status of what Wittgenstein would call a picture, a pre-theoretical picture, and it holds in its grip our thinking about the mind and things mental. The most famous philosophical exposition and defence of this picture is to be found in the writing of the seventeenth-century French philosopher René Descartes, and its association with him is sufficiently robust for it to be called the Cartesian conception.

Even to speak of the Cartesian conception of the mind, however, is to suggest an underlying simplicity that is not really there. The Cartesian conception is not just a single view of the mind; it is an array of interwoven views, like the strands of a rope, each lending support to the others, and each being supported b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface and acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: internalism and externalism
• 2 Cartesianism
• 3 Idealism
• 4 The “radical reversal” of idealism
• 5 The attack on the inner
• 6 Content externalism
• 7 The scope and limits of content externalism
• 8 Externalism and first-person authority
• 9 Vehicle externalism
• 10 Externalism and consciousness
• 11 Externalist axiology
• 12 Conclusion: externalism, internalism, and idealism
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index