Tom Simpson
Kinds of Minds - Towards an Understanding of Consciousness
by Daniel C. Dennett
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1996
ISBN: 0 75380 043 8
£5.99
(written for New Scientist)
If all humans have a mind, then what do these minds have in common? If some animals have minds, what similar features do these minds possess, compared to each other, or to human minds? And what makes us think that these questions have an answer, even if we cannot answer them now? Put another way: What kinds of minds are there? How do we know?
These questions form the focus of Kinds of Minds, Daniel C. Dennett's latest exploration into the origin, evolution and nature of mind. Dennett's central thesis is that whereas previously these questions have been treated as distinct - the former a question of ontology, the latter a question of epistemology - we cannot in fact consider one without the other. For Dennett, our knowledge of the mind is epistemologically unique, we know our minds ``from the inside'', and to separate this uniqueness from a discussion of what kinds of minds there are is to ignore a fundamental feature of what we intend to discuss. For Dennett, the questions must be considered together or not at all.
However, anyone seeking answers would be better advised to look elsewhere, for answers are not what Dennett intends to provide. As the preface reminds us, philosophers ``are better at questions than answers'', and making sure we consider the right questions is the motivation for Kinds of Minds. Dennett readily admits that some of his questions will probably lead nowhere, but this, he feels, is a small price if he also asks the questions which will lead us to the right places. Good questions without answers are superior to bad questions with `good' answers, and the ``self-contradictions, quandaries [and] blank walls of mystery'' which have arisen from previous questions demonstrate to Dennett the need for an undertaking of the sort he provides. That Dennett's review is timely I do not doubt, but that it provides the clarification he intends is less certain
Kinds of Minds presents a philosophical and biological history of the mind, detailing how and why evolution through natural selection has given rise to the category of ``mind-havers''; the category in which we place ourselves, and into which we feel we must decide whether to place other animals. Dennett presents this history from the perspective of the ``intentional stance'' - the position from which we as humans judge the actions of other creatures, and through which we treat them ``as if'' they have mental or emotional lives similar to our own. Using the intentional stance, Dennett explores the evolution and development of life and intelligence as it has occurred on Earth, and reaches two conclusions. Firstly that, in at least one sense, robots have minds, for what we are as humans is ``made of robots''. We consist of trillions of macro-molecular machines, each descended from earlier self-replicating machines, and each dedicated to asking the question ``Is my message coming in NOW?''. This much is incontroversial, and to deny it is to invite Dualism or even Vitalism, both to be avoided in our new scientific world. However, it is his second conclusion that may cause alarm.
Dennett argues that the possession of a shared social language is what defines the human mind, and that a mind ``when you add language to it is so different from the kind of mind you can have without language that calling them both minds is a mistake''. Contrary to Wittgenstein's claim that ``if a lion could talk, we could not understand him'', Dennett believes that if a lion could talk, we could understand him as well as we understand any other language user. However, he could not tell us about being a lion, for this lion-with-a-language would possess something so different from whatever is possessed by normal lions that we should not consider them the same at all. For Dennett, the linguistic lion possesses a mind.
Why should we accept this? Dennett argues that social language is what enables the internal representation of internal representations, the distillation of generalities to facilitate concept construction, and thus, ultimately, the ability to represent thoughts themselves within the process of thinking. It is this capacity to build elaborate internal systems, systems which we can incessantly rehearse and tinker with, which defines not just a human mind, but any mind. The only meaning we have of mind is that of something ``known from within'', and this knowledge is only possible with the representational power that social language provides.
The equation of social language to mind is one which Dennett is well aware we may wish to reject, and for familiar reasons. If he is correct, what are we to say about pre-linguistic children, or animals whose behaviour appears to exhibit complexities similar in extension to human actions? Dennett's answer is that we should examine the activities of these supposed non-linguistic ``mind havers'', and ask ourselves whether it is the fact that we cannot imagine our doing these activities without a mind that makes us suppose that they cannot be done without a mind. If we build a nest, or work out how to get some out-of-reach food, than we require a mind to do it, but there is nothing inherent in the tasks we see other creatures perform that requires having a mind. Evolution has provided various creatures with the capacity to solve these problems, but it need only be in the case of humans that this capacity is a mind.
These are seductive arguments, and it is tempting to agree with much of what Dennett says, but one is left with a sense that something is missing, or that somehow the central issues have been dodged by some fancy footwork. Our moral quandaries emerge intact from Dennett's discussion, and we find ourselves still asking the same ethical questions. If we agree that a non-linguistic animal does not have a mind, then what does this entail for our behaviour? Should the animal be treated like an infant? Or a tree? Or a rock? The existence of these questions is the reason defining ''mind havers" was important, yet we seem no nearer to finding answers. Dennett appears not to have replaced new questions for old, but to have changed the terms under which these questions should be discussed. We may see the old questions in a new light, but this does not quite fulfil the promise of better questions.
Kinds of Minds is a thought-provoking and stimulating introduction to the mind, but on finishing one is left with a sense of incompleteness. One can only hope that there is much more to come.
Tom Simpson is studying Knowledge Based Systems at the University of Sussex, Brighton, England
