This paper examines two contrasting philosophical approaches to the theory of mind: Thomas Nagel's dualism and Daniel Dennett's materialism. Nagel argues that non-human animals possess genuine conscious experiences that are inaccessible to other species, using the example of bat echolocation to illustrate the limits of subjective understanding. Dennett counters with a materialist framework in which consciousness consists entirely of genetically determined cognitive tools — including the uniquely human capacity for "florid representing" — that process sensory information without invoking a separate mental entity. The paper concludes that Dennett's framework is more empirically testable and better aligned with the trajectory of neuroscience research.
The theory of mind is probably one of the most challenging areas of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience we will ever have to face, because it involves — depending on the approach or view taken — thinking about or quantifying the very process of thinking. Neither introspection nor neuroscience has provided definitive answers to what the mind is, although this remains an active area of debate and research. Dennett's view of mind theory will likely have more in common with the future direction of neuroscience research and therefore be more relevant and testable.
Generally speaking, philosophers can be grouped into dualists and materialists. Dualists believe the mind is an entity separate from our physical nature, and even though it is currently impossible to measure the mind using scientific instruments, this limitation does not mean the mind does not exist (Ramsey, 2007, Section 3). Materialists, or eliminativists, argue that what we experience as thinking or consciousness is nothing more than our nervous system providing a means for us to interpret and react to the world, and that the existence of a separate mind need not be invoked.
Arguments for and against both positions have relied heavily on comparative psychology and neuroscience research using animals. This research asks questions such as whether the brains of mice and worms produce something equivalent to what we call consciousness, or whether they are nothing more than a series of reflexive responses to sensory experience.
One of the more influential philosophers to tackle the theory of mind, Thomas Nagel, proposed that non-human animals have conscious experiences and that it is impossible for us to know "what it is like" to experience the world the way another creature does (Allen, 2010). To argue this point, Nagel discussed the ability of bats to navigate their environment through echolocation: since we cannot echolocate, it would be impossible for us to fully understand the conscious experiences of a bat. In proposing this argument, Nagel makes the assumption that creatures are capable of subjective experiences. Although many scientists and philosophers may agree with this assumption, it represents a leap from sensory experience to the process of mentation without an explanation of how that connection is made. Human minds, according to Nagel's viewpoint, are unique only because our means for interacting with our environments are unique relative to other species.
Daniel Dennett, on the other hand, holds the view that our conscious experiences represent sets of genetically determined tools for surviving within our environment (Clark, 2002). These tools take inert sensory or explicit information and transform it into useful information through a process of tacit (hard-wired) rules and internal representations — memory and thinking processes — encoded within our nervous systems. One of the more significant tools, and arguably unique to the human species, is the ability to converse verbally with others. The capacity to form language in turn creates derivative tools — such as society, written languages, books, and the internet — all aimed at lessening the burden of survival.
Dennett goes on to describe the concept of "florid representing" as an important tacit tool that is arguably a unique aspect of human consciousness (Clark, 2002, pp. 70–71). Florid representing is the use of symbols or things to represent other things. For example, a chimpanzee may push a red button to obtain a banana, or a child may utter a word to express hunger, but this does not imply that either is capable of thinking about the button or the word as a representation of food. Florid representing can therefore be equated with self-consciousness, or thinking about thinking. According to Dennett, florid representing could not have emerged without the capacity to form and use language, understood as a system of symbols.
"Florid representing as uniquely human self-consciousness"
Allen, Colin. (2010). Animal consciousness. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved October 9, 2011, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness-animal/
Clark, Andy. (2002). Minds, brains, and tools. In H. Clapin (Ed.), Philosophy of Mental Representation (pp. 66–90). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Ramsey, William. (2007). Eliminative materialism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved October 9, 2011, from http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/materialism-eliminative/
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