Book review

Mind, Consciousness and Language

Cattell, Ray. 2006. An Introduction to Mind, Consciousness and Language. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.

Reviewed by Christina Behme, Department of Philosophy, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada.

Linguist Ray Cattell has set himself an ambitious goal: to write a textbook that introduces the reader to the philosophical and linguistic debates about the human mind, consciousness and language. Anyone familiar with the subject matter might expect a monumental work, but Cattell condenses what he considers to be essential into a book of less than 200 pages. The first 6 chapters of his book deal with the mind, the next 3 chapters cover consciousness, chapter 10 is dedicated to language, and a 10-page glossary highlights key concepts. Suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter guide the student to important publications.

The part of the book dedicated to the mind is further subdivided. In the first 3 chapters Cattell deals mainly with the history of the 'big' debates between dualism and materialism. He traces the mind-body problem back to the work of René Descartes and the distinction between the extended physical substance of the body (res extensa) and the indivisible, immaterial thinking substance of the mind (res cogitans). The Cartesian view of substance dualism appeals to our intuition that the mind is distinctly different from the body, but it has been notoriously plagued by its inability to explain how two fundamentally different substances could interact. Cattell informs the reader that dualism is rejected by most modern philosophers and introduces some of the recent theories of materialism: identity theory (the view that mental states are brain states or that the mental can be reduced to the physical, pp. 13-17) and functionalism (the view that explains the mind through the functions it performs, pp. 17-21). Next, Cattell gives a brief account of the rise and fall of behaviorism (the view that science needs to abandon reliance on subjective reports of internal mental states and, instead, focus on observable behavior) and discusses in some detail how Noam Chomsky's work in the 1960s demonstrated the limitations of behaviorism. Chomsky shows that behaviorists have underestimated the complexity of language use (pp. 27-41), arguing that children do not learn language through stimulus-response conditioning (as claimed by B.F. Skinner) but instead rely on an "inborn internal architecture of the mind/brain" (p. 38).

The next 3 chapters focus on past and current debates between the leading proponents of computational approaches to the mind-body problem. The reader is very briefly introduced to Jerry Fodor's representational theory of meaning. 'Propositional attitudes' and 'folk psychology' are explained and exposed to criticisms by Paul and Patricia Churchland. Cattell continues with an account of connectionism, which tries "to model the brain by setting up fairly primitive networks on a computer" (p. 55). In contrast to Fodor's classical serial models, connectionists' networks are parallel. Cattell uses the work of David Rumelhart and Jim McClelland to illustrate how connectionist networks simulate processes such as the acquisition of the English past tense. With examples of the classical and connectionist approach in place Cattell discusses the clash between the two perspectives, relying on a technical analysis and evaluation of the neural network model and presenting the forceful criticisms of Jerry Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn. These authors allege that only classical models can account for key features of human language (and thought): systematicity, productivity and compositionality. Finally, Cattell introduces a fairly technical argument by Paul Smolensky who argues that connectionist models might be able to account for these features of language and thought as well and are not necessarily reducible to "an implementation of a classical architecture" (p. 83).

The second theme of the book, consciousness, is introduced with a brief discussion of the history of the problem and some explication of widely discussed philosophical thought experiments: in short succession the reader meets Thomas Nagel's bats (p. 89f), Frank Jackson's color-deprived Mary (p. 90-93) and John Searle's criticism of eliminative materialism and, as his positive contribution to the debate, the 'Connection Principle' (p. 94f). Perhaps readers familiar with the consciousness debates will be somewhat surprised by the extensive elaboration of Chomsky's skeptical argument regarding the mind-body problem. Essentially, Chomsky argues that we do not really know what matter is and, therefore, cannot be sure that a mind-body problem exists. It is not clear how this discussion relates to consciousness and why it is not placed in one of the earlier chapters that deal with the mind-body problem. Possibly Cattell intended to use it as link to the next chapter, which discusses (and essentially dismisses) reductionism in its various flavors. The segment about consciousness concludes with a chapter on the work of neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. This is possibly the strongest chapter of the book even though it reads at times not like a textbook but rather like an enthusiastic book report. The reader learns with the help of several detailed case studies how localized brain damage has a profound impact on the emotional (mental) life of patients. At first, this seems again more relevant to mind ("emotions are ... intimately associated with the mind", p. 135) than to consciousness, but eventually it emerges that Damasio proposes an intimate link between feelings, emotions, and consciousness. Towards the end of the chapter Cattell hints for the first time at the importance of 'embodiment' when he writes that "the whole body, including the brain, bears on the nature of the mind" (p. 157). The chapter concludes with a list of claims supported by Damasio's theoretical position on the mind-body problem.

The third theme of the book, language, is discussed in a single chapter, which is almost exclusively dedicated to the evolution of Chomsky's generative grammar theories. After some introductory remarks about the surprising complexity of language and the distinction between language competence and language performance, Cattell provides a (presumably historically motivated) account of steps of the development of the various generative grammar models (from the 'Standard Model' of the 1960s to the 'Minimalist Program' of 1995, pp. 169-192). And, while Cattell thinks that "minimalist theory is unlikely to be right" (p. 193) he provides only a 2-page sketch of a possible competitor (Optimality Theory) and concludes that the mind-body problem cannot be solved by either approach (p. 195).

Overall, Cattell highlights some of the most important debates relating to mind, consciousness and language. His writing is free of jargon and he attempts to intersperse 'dry' technical passages with entertaining details about the authors he introduces and anecdotes from his own life. However, the (at times excessively) discursive style makes it difficult to remain focused. Especially readers unfamiliar with the topic (e.g., students, his target audience) might find it hard to distinguish between important issues and digressions. While the glossary remedies this problem somewhat even here one wonders how 'colonoscopy' deserved an entry and the entry for 'materialism' is problematic (for a more accurate definition see Bunge, 2002). It is obvious that a short textbook attempting to unite the subjects of mind, consciousness and language cannot possibly address all the relevant work in those areas. Yet, several omissions are regrettable. I agree with Cattell that Cartesian dualism is obsolete but would have hoped for some references to recent attempts to defend more sophisticated forms of dualism. Especially philosophy students need to be familiar with the arguments for predicate dualism (e.g., Kripke 1980) and property dualism (e.g., Penrose 1990, Chalmers 2002). Cattell's discussion of computational models of mind relies on work completed before 1997 and completely neglects important work in robotics and artificial life (e.g. Boden 1996, Clark 2001, Brooks 2002). Similarly, the section on consciousness leaves out important contributions by David Chalmers (e.g., the hard problem, phenomenal zombie arguments) and Ned Block (distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness, implications of blindsight). Regrettably, the section on language was the most disappointing part of the book. While Chomsky's contributions to linguistics certainly deserve discussion, the exclusive focus on his work (and predominantly on theories that have been abandoned or substantially revised by Chomsky) is not justified. Philosophy students will miss reference to the work of Wittgenstein, Quine, Kripke, Davidson and Austin; linguists would profit from some explication of the contribution of Pinker, Jackendoff, Pullum, Slobin and others. Neither theories of language evolution nor recent challenges to Chomsky's work on language acquisition are mentioned. For these reasons I would not use An Introduction to Mind, Consciousness and Language as introductory textbook.

References

Boden, M. 1996. The Philosophy of Artificial Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brooks, R. 2002. Flesh and Machines. New York: Pantheon Books.

Bunge, M. 2002. Philosophical Dictionary. Amherst: Prometheus Books.

Chalmers, D. (ed). 2002. Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Clark, A. 2001. Mindware. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kripke, S. 1980. Naming and Necessity. Oxford: Blackwell.

Penrose, R. 1990. The Emperor's New Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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