Philosophy Of Mind

Computation has been having a heyday in the philosophy of mind. But not without detractors.

Recently I paused from reading through some work of the philosopher ColinMcGinn? when I happened to read an account of a violent crime: a deadly home invasion.

One of the striking things was that the group who carried out two murders based on lies, wild imaginings and truly daft plans, failed to see the natural logical outcome of their plan.

What they planned to form was a private military force to rescue kidnap victims in foreign lands Their crime was to finance their venture. But they did not first attempt to form alliances with the prospective kidnappers - a far more reasonable plan given their already extreme views.

What is striking about the crime and the conspiracy is the role of deception, fraud, lies and wild imaginings. They could imagine themselves doing these things (they were already playing "army" and "police" on the border of Mexico and the USA.) It is unlikely that the leader was, in fact, self-deceived (self deception being a nightmare for a computational theory of mental life) but he does appear to have formed a vivid identification with "being a Marine". The role of fantasy in these crimes seems to so far out-weigh the logical processing of information and the rational pursuit of ends through viable means as give pause: is this a likely evolutionary outcome for a computing organism?

What is striking is how they saw themselves - imagined themselves - and imagined their fantastical future as criminal do-gooders. And then there is te impression that here were adults who in some respect remained mentally adolescent. But what in computational theory would correspond to an evolutionary story in which the maturing computational machinery of the individual remains - for years - in a pre-adult phase - let alone developing in a stunted or emotionally distorted manner?

This is where a theory of mind which accords an appropriate place to images and imagination is not in need of computational underpinnings. Whether evolution makes a contribution to explaining these bizarre hazards and defects of mental life would be another matter.

So, humans rationalize up the wazoo.