If the mind is something we all have, and it exists in it's entirety prior to our awareness of it, then in principle it can be studied... if we know what we're looking for and at.

We have beliefs about other peoples minds but we can't directly compare mental states.

I think reliance on introspection or phenomenology makes it hard to define mental states.

The less visible a phenomenon is the harder it is to describe it seems. For example we can define a horse in a basic way based on very distinct features or family resemblances. At the level of it's cells we need a microscope then at the atomic level we have quantum theory weirdness and math.

Pressed enter by accident.

:razz:

I think that any theory is going to rely on introspection and personal analysis of ones own mental states. In comparison I don't think a theory of something like cancer needs any introspection.

If the mind is something we all have, and it exists in it's entirety prior to our awareness of it, then in principle it can be studied... if we know what we're looking for and at. — creativesoul

Do you agree with this... in principle?

How are you defining studied?

I reflect on my mental states but so far I don't know what they are.

Maybe we can explore the language we use to define them?

How are you defining studied? — Andrew4Handel

Normally. No technical jargon necessary there.

:smile:

I reflect on my mental states but so far I don't know what they are.

Maybe we can explore the language we use to define them? — Andrew4Handel

How does one reflect upon something if they do not first know what that something is to be reflecting on it?

Language plays an irrevocable role. Exploring the language is a metacognitive endeavor. Knowing which language is best for talking about something requires first knowing what we're talking about.

What are you talking about when you talk in terms of "mind"? It is a noun... a name... what are you picking out of this world to the exclusion of all else by using it? What is the referent of the name?

I only have direct access to my own mental states ... — Andrew4Handel

How do you know this?

... and I can't think of a way that I can have the same access to anyone else's

Maybe via BMI-mediated CNS-to-CNS connection with sufficiently high (& fast) bandwidth ...

I only have direct access to my own mental states — Andrew4Handel

Very debatable. Maybe, just maybe if you gave some ground for understanding at least what you mean by mind and mental states, it might be possible to move forward in say.

Or this. When you say you have direct access to your own mental states, what is it you have access to, exactly?

If someone tells me they have a headache I cannot experience it with them.

I was involved in the care of my severely ill brother for many years who ended up paralysed. I have no idea what that was like for hi m. I just had to listen to him and make no assertions about how he felt.

You can't compare your headache with someone else's. Also like the Mary's room scenario she couldn't know what red looked like by just trying to imagine it.

Non sequitur, anecdote & truism. :yawn:

I think we gradually come to have mental state concepts through experience but also through literature or stories and other peoples testimony.

For example I don't remember the word consciousness being used or discussed throughout my whole childhood. Studying philosophy of mind exposed me to new concepts but all of them linguistic or conceptual as opposed to referring directly to transparent mental states.

My experience with my brother exposed me to peoples misconceptions about other peoples feelings and the completely differing degrees of coping mechanisms.

Discussion about experiences is bound to be anecdotal . Hence the problem.

I think this attitude of only relying on the scientific method leads to a unrealistic and unproductive and unjustified dismissal or reductive attitude to personal testimony.

If you think the scientific method is limited then you have to come up with another explanatory framework.

Have you ever used the avatar name bushidobillyclub?

Using the scientific method doesn't mean that one is ignorant of the limitations of the method, on the contrary.

If you seek of objective answers, it shouldn't be surprising to notice that there is the subjective also. And that it's quite important too.

I think we gradually come to have mental state concepts through experience but also through literature or stories and other peoples testimony.

For example I don't remember the word consciousness being used or discussed throughout my whole childhood. Studying philosophy of mind exposed me to new concepts but all of them linguistic or conceptual as opposed to referring directly to transparent mental states. — Andrew4Handel

This gets into something that underlies the question in the OP.

Here you're invoking "mental state concepts". These are equivalent to our thought and belief about mental states.

Hence... if mental states or minds exist in their entirety prior to our awareness of them, then they can be studied... in principle. Practically, we first need to know what we're studying.

So, going back to what you've added here...

There are a multitude of mental state concepts. What are they talking about though? What is being picked out to the exclusion of all else? Not all of them are compatible with one another. So, at least some of them are wrong. In what way can they be wrong? How would we know that?

These are the sorts of questions that arise if and when we do not clearly explicate what it is we're talking about when using the term "mind".

If minds exist in their entirety prior to our naming and descriptive practices... then we can be wrong about them. Hence... my approach here.

:wink:

I only have direct access to my own mental states and I can't think of a way that I can have the same access to anyone else's. — Andrew4Handel

Not sure about access to; if I am my mental state, that is, if no distinction is at all possible between the state and the representation of it, then to say I have direct access to myself is merely a trivial truth which tells me nothing I didn’t already know.

But I would agree without equivocation, that I have no direct access to any other mind in the same way, for then that mind would have two representations: the one that belongs to it, and mine, which certainly does not.

I think that our own access to our mental states is not very helpful either. — Andrew4Handel

Correct. To assert our accessibility to what we already are, doesn’t help anything.

Now, if one has reason to think that which has access is not a proper representation of the condition being accessed........that’s a whole different philosophy.

I only have direct access to my own mental states and I can't think of a way that I can have the same access to anyone else's. I believe science in all its current methodologies has no direct access to private subjective mental states.

An analogy is if I gave a cook eggs, flour and sugar and told them go make me a fruit salad.

However, at the same time I think that our own access to our mental states is not very helpful either. — Andrew4Handel

I think we have to first figure out is if particle collisions is the only thing that effects feeling/awareness. We know that particle collision does have some or alot of effect on feeling/awareness, however is it the only thing that has an effect on feeling/awareness?

Until we answer that question, i don't think we can answer the OP.

:up:

I reflect on my mental states but so far I don't know what they are. — Andrew4Handel

Do you think a person can come to talk about one's mental states with any precision? How would talking about mental states come about?

I think conversation is very informative and can be analysed for content that expresses private or mental information.

There is the external versus internal problem though. One picture, especially in cognitive theory, is that everything is a mental representation and we have no direct access to an external world.

So it is unclear how much of reality has a mental component.

It seems a big part of understanding language is through analogy to ones own experiences.

Earlier you mentioned having direct access to your own mental states...

One's own personal subjective mental states begin long before one acquires the ability to name and describe their own mental ongoings. Accessing one's own mental state is talking about one's own thought and belief. All sorts of creatures aside from humans are fearful, relaxed, hungry, starving, content, and/or disturbed. So, following what you've offered here, are we to say that these animals have direct access to their own mental states?

I would think not. We humans access our own mental states by naming and describing them. We are often naming and describing that which existed in it's entirety prior to our awareness of it. Thus, we are faced with a choice to make:Either those animals have those states even though they do not have direct access to their own mental states, or there is no difference at all between being fearful and having direct access to the mental state of being fearful.

Notice that there are other ways of measuring things than just by directly observing them. For example, we do not directly observe forces, but we can measure them by indirect observations. Similarly, we cannot directly observe "the mind", but we can understand it by indirectly observing people's reactions.

Here's an example of what I have in mind. Until the 80's, it was widely believed that infants operated under "dumb association mechanisms", i.e. they had no conceptual apparatus and whatever discrimination they made was based on an innate similarity space that measured how much similar one perceptual stimulation was to another (in philosophy, this paradigm was famously defended by Quine: cf. Word and Object and The Roots of Reference). Starting in the 80's, however, a group of researchers, especially Elizabeth Spelke and her collaborators, devised new methods to investigate how infants organize their world. The idea was simple enough: you habituate the infant to a certain stimulus, and then present a new stimulus differing from the new one over a controlled dimension. If the infant's reaction was different (especially if the infant displayed surprise, as measured by looking times), then we know that he or she can discriminate the controlled dimension.

This idea is simple enough, but it showed that infants as young as two months already have an implicit physics and the concept of object, so that objects are thought of by the infant as cohesive wholes (i.e. wholes that maintains their parts connected and boundary integrity) that only move together as they touch and which are tracked through a continuous space-time trajectory. Further studies also showed that infants have integrated senses (so they can use information from touch to discriminate by vision an object) and use analog magnitude representations in order to calculate with numbers. Notice that most subjects studied are pre-verbal! So we can acquire a lot of information about their minds without needing to literally observe it.

Incidentally, I think this is congenial to a point John McDowell repeats over and over again. We tend to think of minds as organs, as if they were "located" in some sort of para-space, which we cannot access and hence must somewhat guess its contents. McDowell urges us to drop this talk and instead recognize that to talk about minds is to talk subjects of a mental life, i.e. to talk about people. So in some sense we can in a sense see the person's mental states because they show us (unwittingly, in some cases, such as the infant's) their mental states.

When it comes to general epistemological questions of the form 'Can science study X'? the answer depends on the extent to which X is considered to constitute the very meaning of scientific practice. In the event that X is considered to ground the meaning or truth conditions of scientific practice, science can only be said to study X if science is considered to be it's own meta-science. But that assumption in turn raises worries and doubts as to the consistency, meaningfulness and reliability of the consequently circular scientific epistemology.

Consider similar questions: Can and to what extent can science study causality? or the existence of space, time and phenomena? or the reliability of epistemology suitably naturalised? can it even be meaningfully asserted that science can study the cosmos?

Notice that there are other ways of measuring things than just by directly observing them. For example, we do not directly observe forces, but we can measure them by indirect observations. Similarly, we cannot directly observe "the mind", but we can understand it by indirectly observing people's reactions. — Nagase

I think that, in a way, this is begging the question. Can we study the mind by observing people from the outside?

Incidentally, I think this is congenial to a point John McDowell repeats over and over again. We tend to think of minds as organs, as if they were "located" in some sort of para-space, which we cannot access and hence must somewhat guess its contents. McDowell urges us to drop this talk and instead recognize that to talk about minds is to talk subjects of a mental life, i.e. to talk about people. So in some sense we can in a sense see the person's mental states because they show us (unwittingly, in some cases, such as the infant's) their mental states. — Nagase

I like this perspective. Minds are people. But is knowing a person the same as studying their behaviour? Is, for example, empathy a way of studying another person?

:up:

I think that, in a way, this is begging the question. Can we study the mind by observing people from the outside? — Echarmion

I think the question begging accusation is a bit backwards. A reasonable a priori answer to this question is "possibly", or, "perhaps; let's find out". The answer, "no, because minds are private" is the dubious one; that is the answer that begs the question (assumes its conclusion).

The question boils down to whether the mind has observable effects from the outside and whether those effects can be used to infer facts about the mind. That minds are private in the way described in the original post does not suffice to entail that it has no observable effects that can be used to infer facts about the mind; all it really entails is that such methods cannot reveal facts about the mind "directly".

Nagase gave an example of studying infant behaviors in terms of the ability to relate stimuli. I can think of several other kinds of examples, some of which we already do; studying the efficacy of pain medications, studying the effects of optical illusions on perception; studying/classifying disorders of mind in terms of the disabilities of particular persons and by contrast to nominal persons without disorders, deriving facts about how capabilities of the mind are organized; studying nominal disabilities, such as cognitive biases, and deriving from such studies facts about how our minds tend to form conclusions and beliefs; and so on. These things fall somewhere on the spectrum of the scientific method from data collecting to forming theories based on the data, but there's no clear barrier to deriving facts about the mind using these types of observations and scientific approaches.

To me it's painfully obvious that we can indeed study the mind, by which I mean we can derive facts related to how the mind works, using indirect means and scientific approaches. What might be a much more interesting conversation than simply denying reality would be to explore what we could study by such methods and what we cannot.