A Minimalist Conception of the Human Mind

Talk by Nirmalangshu Mukherjee

14th November, 2024

Professor Nirmalangshu Mukherji is an eminent philosopher specializing in theory of mind, biolinguistics and cognitive science. Professor Mukherji retired as Professor of Philosophy from University of Delhi in 2015 and held the position of National Professor of Philosophy at the Indian Council of Philosophical Research from 2015 to 2016.

The classical view of the mind argues that the mind is a collection of capacities such as  reasoning, language, senses, feelings, consciousness, vision, emotions essentially considering the mind to be a list of capacities. According to this view, our notion of the mind begins and ends with this list. The speaker highlights the problems with this conceptualisation of the mind through the ideas of the British Philosopher Gilbert Ryle. Famously known as the Ryle’s problem, if we were to look at the mind as a collection of dispositions, listing them one after the other to conceptualize the mind, we are unable to extract the notion of the mind from these dispositions. The speaker terms this as a “category mistake”. This talk seeks to conceptualize the mind in accordance with the Cartesian idea of the mind without subjecting it to contradictions. 

Rene Descartes imposed certain concepts of the mind with conditions. According to him, these concepts of the mind are integrated and narrower than the usual list of dispositions as discussed before. This list does not include sensitive emotions and feelings, which are shared by other animal species. Sensations, feelings, perceptions are a part of the body, but the mind is unique to humans, and it is the mind that differentiates humans from other animals. Conceptualizing the mind as a human specific cluster of abilities, in which some dispositions such as vision, consciousness and and some level of reasoning belong to other animal species is an inconsistency that the speaker finds in the process of adhering to the Cartesian idea of the mind. 

The speaker uses the term “cognoscitive powers” to describe the power of the mind. “Cognoscitive” essentially because of two aspects- stimulus independent and interpretive. Humans can interpret sensory stimuli even in the absence of stimuli, unlike the stimulus-dependent animal cognition. The speaker takes the example of the San tribe of Kalahari who are said to “hunt twice - once in the field and a second time around the campfire.” These cognoscitive powers of the mind are channeled through language. The use of signs indicates the presence of inner thoughts, generated by the mind- its own resources rather than a movement of mere nature. The schematic representation of organism external and internal factors are related to the faculty of language. The speaker points out that language is the true distinction between humans and animals but does it necessarily equate to mind?

There has been evidence of vocal imitation, as well as visuomanual imitation in lower species than Great Apes but are not able to imitate human gestures. A descended larynx in non mammalian species and recognition of  human sounds by tamarin monkeys have been observed (Ramus et al, 2000). Furthermore, conceptual representations- abstract concepts such as color, causality, geometric relationships, food and members are present in many animals. If we turn our attention to chimpanzees, they have demonstrated a sense of self, an ability to fool other members of the species and recognize numbers up to 9. However, some discontinuities that were observed is that there is no evidence of morphemes in tamarin monkeys. The ability to use one modality and transfer information to another modality solely rests with humans. Furthermore the recognition of numbers up to 9 was found to be possible because the numbers were taught individually and not in a sequence. There were many such discontinuities in size identification systems and knowledge of social hierarchies. The speaker points out a common factor across the discontinuities which is the absence of combinatorial systems. 

The Hominid line gave rise to the pre-sapien ancestors (proto-humans) around 100,000 million years ago. These proto species developed both sound and conceptual systems that inserted grammar to produce language 5-6 million years ago. The speaker raises the question of whether the mind can be conceptualized as the grammar of language? Species in the middle stone ages and late Acheuleans displayed significant logical reasoning and analytical skills through the complex processing of plants, fruits, tubers to remove toxins; and devising weapons by using different stone shapes. These species followed a hierarchy in the complex processing. The speaker asks the question about what is there in the process of grammar of language that promotes a wider notion of grammar that can be used to minimalistically conceptualize the mind.

The speaker proposes the merge operation, which is the fundamental combinatorial operation that puts two things together without tampering them. Merge promotes a wider notion of grammar by operating on representations and functions even during the significant impairment of language. Finally, the speaker asks whether the merge operation conceptualizes the mind. Merge has been available much earlier in species, which set the precedence for language. This operation does not take the individual dispositions into the conception of the human mind. Thus until discontinuities are observed in the merge operation, this qualifies for the minimalist conception of the human mind.