Where is mind to be found in nature? Is it revealed by end-driven behavior, by mental contents (conscious or not, qualitative or not), by the ability to perceive an external environment and act within it? This seminar considers these and related questions as they arise in selected streams of thought found in contemporary discussions of the evolution of minds, brains, and behavior.

In approaching this topic, we may distinguish various dimensions of variation that condition answers to the core question of where mind exists in nature. First, there is a range of conceptions of what constitutes the presence of mind. Evan Thompson and others have argued that mind is present quite early in the development of life. That, indeed, the presence of a cell membrane constitutes a differentiation between organism and world that indicates mind at the origin of life. Others require more for mindedness, along this spectrum: representation, intentionality, mental content, action for ends, perspectival situatedness, consciousness, rationality.

No matter where one thinks mind is introduced in the evolutionary development of living things, questions arise regarding the development of mental capacity over time. For Thompson, this extends back to the origins of life. But, no matter where one places the starting point, there is considerable interest in understanding the development of specifically human mental capacities. Human beings have the capacity for culture. Depending on how one defines culture, more or fewer types of organism can be said to possess a culture. Culture interacts with theory of mind in at least two ways. The existence and transmission of culture requires cognitive capacities adequate to the task (whether these are modular or general purpose), and culturally developed abilities for representation using images or verbal signs expands one's cognitive abilities.

The question of mind in nature is also sensitive to conceptions of nature. Again there is a spectrum. Some hold that notions such as intentionality or qualitative experiences are non-natural. These purported properties of minded individuals must either be reduced to something else that is natural, such as physicochemical neural processes, or eliminated from our conception of nature. This is an exclusive naturalism. Others prefer an inclusive naturalism, in which representation, intentionality, and consciousness fall within the ambit of the natural. Within this inclusive naturalism, some might allow that bare associative processes are natural but exclude higher cognitive processes that embody notions of justification as intrinsically normative and hence not naturalizable (think of those who render the charge of psychologism with respect to epistemology or to thought about numbers). But then a dualist such as Descartes was willing to include mind with all its capacities (including the "natural light" of the intellect) within nature. There is a spectrum of non-reductivist inclusive naturalism. Moreover, some draw a distinction between "nature" and "culture," on the thought that "natural" human capacities should be universal, as opposed to acquired cultural variations. At the same time, possessing a culture might itself be deemed a natural requirement for normal ("natural"?) human cognition.

Readings from authors such as Dretske, Fodor, Neander, M. Donald, Carruthers, and Sterelny.

For those who like hard-copy books, I suggest getting:
Fred Dretske, Naturalizing the Mind (MIT 1995; pbk available)
Jerry Fodor, Naturalizing the The Elm and the Expert ( MIT 1994; pbk available)
Karen Neander, A Mark of the Mental: In Defense of Informational Teleosemantics (MIT 2017).
More to come.

Reading for first meeting, Thursday, August 31: Neander, Mark of the Mental , ch. 1 (available in Franklin through "cognet"); Hatfield, Perception and Cognition , ch. 1 (available online here).

For those with little background in philosophy of psychology and cognitive science, I recommend reading Tim Crane, The Mechanical Mind: A Philosophical Introduction (3rd ed.), chs. 1-3 (30 pages); this is the Intro and ch. 1 in the 2nd ed.

Sept. 7: Naturalism; recent history of theories of cognition.
Readings: Jaegwon Kim, "The American Origins of Philosophical Naturalism," in Robert Audi (ed.), Philosophy in America at the Turn of the Century (Philosophy Documentation Center, 2003).
Gary Hatfield, "Cognition," in Lawrence Shapiro (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Embodied Cognition (Routledge, 2014), pp. 361-73. (Available in Franklin through Routledge Handbooks online, via the item entry under Shapiro.)

Sept. 14: Dretske
Readings: Dretske, Precis of Knowledge and the Flow of Information (MIT 1981), Behavioral and Brain Sciences 6(1983), 55-90; READ 55-63, the rest is optional.
Dretske, Naturalizing the Mind (MIT 1995); Prologue and ch. 1 (available through MIT cognet, in Franklin).

Sept. 21: Fodor
Reading: Fodor, Elm and the Expert, chs. 1, 2, 4 (cognet).

Sept. 28: Neander
Reading: Neander, Mark of the Mental, chs. 2-4 (cognet).

Oct. 12: Neander
Reading: Neander, Mark of the Mental, chs. 5-7 (cognet).

Oct. 19: Neander
Reading: Neander, Mark of the Mental, chs. 8-9 (cognet).

Oct. 26: Neander and critics
Reading: Peter Schulte, "Perceiving the World Outside: How to Solve the Distality Problem for Informational Teleosemantics," Philosophical Quarterly (2017), online access through Franklin. This article offers an alternative to Neander's solution to the stopping problem, and we will focus on it in relation to Neander (esp. chs. 5, 9).
Christoph Limbeck-Lilienau, "Perception as Representation. A Conceptual Clarification of Intentionalism," e-Journal Philosophie der Psychologie (June 2016). This article provides an overview of intentional theories of perceptual content. It provides a framework for dicussion, and includes teleosemantic positions (more from Dretske and Millikan than from Neander).

Nov 2 Evolution of Mind, Brain, and Culture
Main reading: Heyes, Cognitive Gadgets: The Cultural Evolution of Thinking. ManuscriptPreview the document, not for further circulation. Chs. 1-4 (80 pages double spaced).
Framework reading: Hatfield, Introduction: The Evolution of Mind, Brain, and Culture. Available as Ebook under title The Evolution of Mind, Brain, and Culture through Franklin (which gives reference list).

Nov 9 Social Learning and Culture
Reading: Heyes, Ch. 5, "Selective Social Learning"; Philip Chase, "Human Culture Is More than Memes and TransmissionPreview the document," in Hatfield and Pittman, Ch. 14.
Heyes is arguing that social learning results from general purpose mechanisms and doesn't rely on innate special purpose modules (or the like). Chase is complicating the conceptualization of social learning and human culture. His chapter is somewhat long and intricate, and repays re-reading.

Nov 16 Imitation and "mimesis"
Reading: Heyes, Ch. 6, "Imitation"; Merlin Donald, "Precis of Origins of the modern mind: Three stages in the evolution of culture and cognitionPreview the document," BBS, pp. 737-48, and "Mimesis Theory Re-Examined, Twenty Years after the FactPreview the document," in Hatfield and Pittman, Ch. 7.

Tues, Nov. 21 Mind-reading
Reading: Heyes, ch. 7. Carruthers, "Two Systems for Mindreading?Preview the document"
We are interested in Heyes's entire argument. Carruthers, though not focusing on Heyes's work, seeks to undermine the "two systems" approach, which is the approach Heyes takes. We are of course also interested in his alternative view in its own right.
Framework reading: Evan Westra and Peter Carruthers, "Pragmatic development explains the Theory-of-Mind ScalePreview the document." This article aims to support the innate theory of mind position in relation to recent proposals favoring the social construction of theories of mind (a generic position that might include Heyes's conception).

The first half of the course will examine some "classic" philosophy of psychology and a recent book (Neander) on grounding content in evolution.
The second half will pursue the topic of evolution of the mind in relation to works that take the course of human evolution (as determined in relation to available evidence) into account.