Explaining Behavior: Reasons in a World of Causes
Fred Dretske
Any fans? It's about the tension between brain-based and psychological-based causes. I missed it (published in 1991) and I'm just starting.
It is the business of this book to show how this apparent conflict, a conflict between two different pictures of how human behavior is to be explained, can be resolved. The project is to see how reasons- our beliefs, desires, purposes, and plans- operate in a world of causes, and to exhibit the role of reasons in the causal explanation of human behavior. In a broader sense, the project is to understand the relationship between the psychological and the biological- between, on the one hand, the reasons people have for moving their bodies and, on the other, the causes of their bodies' consequent movements.
@elduvelle
There is however this, which I just learned about: property dualism. I don’t think it has anything to do with this book, but speaks to the notion that minds might have properties that won’t be reducible to brains (even though the arise from them):
@NicoleCRust@elduvelle I've seen this philosophical morass so long it's frustrating. The solution is to recognize that it isn't matter vs mind, but rather static material vs dynamic material. Dynamical things exist in the time domain. Both DNA and brain processes exist in the time domain. We can objectify with named processes like beliefs or wants or DNA transcription. But there really shouldn't be an issue about mater vs mind. Functionalism comes close to explaining this also.
@NicoleCRust@elduvelle For example this "nor is any mental state composed merely from physical states and phenomena. " view is wrong. Mental states are dynamical states of material processes. It is a mistake to say it can't be reduced to biology. Biology is both material and dynamical. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_dualism] Much of the problem is old fashioned language. There really isn't a dualism issue, it's a natural language problem, needing a systems language explanatory framework.
@NicoleCRust@elduvelle The problem with this kind of statement:
"there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties."
is that we need to generalize beyond "mental" because there are many ways that dynamical systems create phenomena, the mind is just one way. In particular, Information processing happens all through biology, not just in minds.
Sorry for the rant, but old fashioned natural language based philosophy is so frustrating.
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