Time: TBA
Room: Philosophy Seminar Room
Instructor: Rick Grush (rick@mind.ucsd.edu)
Office Hours: TBA
Office Phone: 2-4440
This webpage will be expanded as more details become clear.
Course
Description: Content
Course Description: Structure and motivation for that structure
Readings (incomplete & preliminary list)
Course Description, Content
Consider the following remarkable passage from Strawson's Individuals:
Philosophers used to discuss the question of whether there was, or could be, such a thing as a 'group mind'. For some the idea had a peculiar fascination, while to others it seemed utterly absurd and nonsensical and at the same time, curiously enough, pernicious. It is easy to see why these last found it pernicious: they found something horrible in the thought that people should cease to have to individual persons the kind of attitudes that they did have, and instead have attitudes in some way analogous towards groups; and that they might cease to decide individual courses of action for themselves and instead merely participate in corporate activities. But their finding it pernicious showed that they understood the idea they claimed to be absurd only too well. The fact that we find it natural to individuate as persons the members of a certain class of moving natural objects does not mean that such a conceptual scheme is inevitable for any class of beings not utterly unlike ourselves. A technique similar to that which I used in the last chapter to decide whether there was a place in the restricted auditory world for the concept of the self, is available to determine whether we might not construct the idea of a special kind of social world in which the concept of an individual person is replaced by that of a group. Think, to begin with, of certain aspects of actual human existence. Think, for example, of two groups of human beings engaged in some competitive, but corporate activity, such as battle, for which they have been exceedingly well trained. We may even suppose that orders are superfluous, though information is passed. It is easy to suppose that, while absorbed in such activity, the members of the groups make no references to individual persons at all, have no use for personal names or pronouns. They do, however, refer to the groups and apply to them predicates analogous to those predicates ascribing purposive activity which we normally apply to individual persons. They may in fact use in such circumstances the plural forms 'we' and 'they'; But these are not genuine plurals, they are plurals without a singular, such as occur in sentences like: 'We have taken the citadel', 'We have lost the game'. They may also refer to elements in the group, to members of the group, but exclusively in terms which get their sense from the parts played by these elements in the corporate activity. Thus we sometimes refer to what are in fact persons as 'stroke' or 'square-leg'.
When we think of such cases, we see that we ourselves, over a part of our social lives -- not, happily, a very large part -- do work with a set of ideas from which that of the individual person is excluded, in which its place is taken by that of the group. But might we not think of communities or groups such that this part of the lives of their members was the dominant part -- or was not merely a part, but the whole? It sometimes happens, with groups of human beings, that, as we say, their members think, feel and act 'as one'. I suggest it is a condition for the existence of the concept of an individual person, that this should happen only sometimes.
It is quite useless to say, at this point: 'But all the same, even if it happened all the time, every member of the group would have an individual consciousness, would embody an individual subject of experience.' For, once more, there is no sense in speaking of the individual consciousness just as such, of the individual subject of experience just as such; there is no way of identifying such pure entities. It is true, of course, that, in suggesting the fantasy of total absorption in the group, I took our concept of an individual person as a starting point. It is this fact which makes the useless reaction a natural one. But suppose someone seriously advanced the following 'hypothesis': that each part of the human body, each organ and each member, had an individual consciousness, was a separate centre of experiences. The 'hypothesis' would be useless in the same way as the above remark, only more obviously so. Let us now suppose that there is a class of moving natural objects, divided into groups, each group exhibiting the same characteristic pattern of activity. Within each group there are certain differentiations of appearance accompanying differentiations of function, and in particular there is one member of each group with a distinctive appearance. Cannot one imagine different sets of observations which might lead us in the one case to think of the particular member as the spokesman of the group, as its mouthpiece; and in the other case to think of him as its mouth, to think of the group as a single scattered body? The important point is that as soon as we adopt the latter way of thinking, then we abandon the former; we are no longer influenced by the human analogy in its first form, but only in its second; we are no longer tempted to say: Perhaps the members have consciousness. It is helpful here to remember the startling ambiguity of the phrase, 'a body and its members'.
The basic idea has in recent years been made more tangible through the example of a fictional race of beings in Star Trek, the Borg. The Borg are(/is?) a race in which there are, as is the case in actual human societies, a multitude of dermatologically delineated sacks of homosapiens-shaped biomass; but unlike actual human societies, the individual sacks of biomass have no individual mind or consciousness, no individual plans, no individual goals. They play a role in the collective that is analogous to the role plyed by individual neurons in your brain. (This, anyway, is one way to conceive of the Borg, though interestingly even deciding how to describe it/them is no easy matter.)
Another notable example is from Vernor Vinge's A Fire upon the Deep. Part of this story involves a race of beings, the Tines, whose biological members are long-necked wolf-like creatures, but whose cognitive and social units are individuals composed of 4 to 8 such biological units (larger groups are too spatially distributed to support the sort of information passing required for coherent thought and action, smaller groups lack the processing power and behave analogously humanstroke victims. These individuals can, in some sense, survive the death and replacement of some members, and can grow and shrink in number of members with concomitant changes in capacities (and there are even specialized 'individuals' of unusual member topology, such as 'sentry lines' that can have many members and are excellent at sensing and reacting to certain kinds of threats, but are incapable of organized thought). Unconnected biological members (which emerge, for example, when all but one member of an individual suffers biological death) are incapable of anything other than very low-level animal behavior, and instinctively seek to join an individual. The descriptions of the psychological continuity and concerns and intentions of these 'individuals' casts interesting light on many philosophical topics, e.g. questions of personal identity (think Parfit-esque thought experiments on steroids).
The topic is not merely of interest in philosophy of mind, though. The Wikipedia entry on corporations explains that:
The law typically views a corporation as a fictional person, a legal person, or a moral person (as opposed to a natural person); United States law recognises this as corporate personhood. Under such a doctrine (traditionally seen as a legal fiction), a corporation enjoys many of the rights and obligations of individual persons, such as the ability to own property, sign binding contracts, pay taxes, have certain constitutional rights, and otherwise participate in society. (Note that corporations do not possess all the rights appertaining to individuals: in most jurisdictions, for example, a corporation cannot become a citizen and vote.)
In common law countries, the classic statement of this principle is found in Lennard's Carrying Co Ltd v Asiatic Petroleum Co Ltd [1915] AC 705, where Lord Haldane said:
"My Lords, a corporation is an abstraction. It has no mind of its own any more than it has a body of its own; its active and directing will must consequently be sought in the person of somebody who is really the directing mind and will of the corporation, the very ego and centre of the personality of the corporation."
Is Haldane's position correct, sometimes or always? Note that the political documentary The Corporation, points out that as persons, corporationsthey exhibit many symptoms that could merit a diagnosis of psychotic behavior, specifically (1) callous unconcern for the feelings of others, (2) incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, (3) reckless disregard for the safety of others, (4) deceitfulness: repeated lying and conning others for profit, (5) incapacity to experience guilt, (6) failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors. If Haldane is right, then one or more people in charge of the corporation would have to be the locus of the psychotic personality. Other issues are raised as well, such as (these are meant as philosophical, not legal, questions): are corportations individuals, and if so in what sense? do they have repsonsibilities to other corporations? do corporations have responsibilities to individual people? do individual people have responsibilities to corporations?
Social insects raise a number of issues. First, they are potentially non-science fiction examples of hive- or group-minds. The colony reproduces, looks for food, defends itself, and so forth. There is a coherence and complexity in the behavior of the colony that is unlike that of the behavior of any of the 'individuals' in the colony. In addition to raising ussues in the philosophy of mind and cognition, it is related to a topic in the philosophy of biology. Since the entire colony acts as an individual whose reproductive success is not a matter of the reproductive success of the 'individuals' (many of whom are sterile) the question of the appropriate unit of selection becomes pressing (the 'individual' ant? 'group selection? or 'superorganism' selection?).
In short, while the notion of the group or hive mind itself might seem more science fiction than philosophy, it arguably can provide a useful arena in which to test, and possibly extend, various theories of mentality, cognition, personhood, personal identity, action, responsibility, natural selection, and others. And in some applications (such as how to understand 'distributed congition', or the bases and limits of 'corporate' moral and legal responsibility and entitlement), the cases are real and practically pressing, not mere science fiction.
Course Description: Structure, and the motivation for that structure
This seminar will be structured in an atypical way. It is a two-quarter sequence: the first quarter will be exclusively devoted to reading and discussion of course material; the second quarter will be exclusively focused on the writing of seminar papers, including providing feedback on other seminar participant's paper drafts, workshop style (this will include information on publishing, procedures and tips for submitting to journals, and so forth). It is assumed that anyone signed up for Winter will also be signed up for Spring. It is not clear yet how this will work out from an enrollment standpoint.
The reason for this experimental format is that the standard single-quarter seminar scheme, while possessing many virtues, has a significant shortcoming in that it fails to prepare graduate students for the demands of professional-level writing. Clark Glymour, for example, does not require seminar papers because he feels they train people to "produce bad philosophy quickly". Whether or not you agree with Glymour's take, it can't be denied that the standard seminar format is essentially the same as the undergrad format -- a few weeks of rapid material absorption followed by a hastily written paper at the end of the term --, and not at all like what is involved in professional project development (prospectus, dissertation, journal articles, etc.). Writing philosophy well takes time -- time to read and absorb the relevant literature on a topic (this is what we will focus on for the first quarter), and time to write, and re-write, and re-re-write, a paper, ideally with the benefit of feedback and criticims from informed readers (this is what we will do the second quarter).
Furthermore, the seminar will involve two two-hour meetings per week. Both quarters. I realize that this is quite unusual in philosophy, but it is, in my opinion, a better format. 3 hour meetings are a bit much, even with a break, and I feel diminishing returns occur at about the 2 hour mark. Having more than one meeting per week is fairly standard in many other disciplines, including linguistics, electrical and computer engineering, neuroscience, and others.
Furthermore, given the writing-intensive nature of the second quarter in which participants will be expected to not only spend significant time working up their own substantive project, but also investing time reading and providing feedback on the writing of others, there is an enrollment figure beyond which the format won't work. I would guess that number might be in the 8-10 range. In the unlikely event that that number gets pushed, preference will be given to students earlier in their graduate careers.
Finally, I have a no auditor policy.
Preliminary Schedule:
January 8: Introduction to course, discussion of requirements, and so forth.
January 10: Wilson, R. A. (2004). Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences. Chapter 11. [5.7 MB pdf]
January 17: Wilson, R. A. (2004). Boundaries of the Mind: The Individual in the Fragile Sciences. Chapter 12.
January 22: Dennett, Daniel (1997). True Believers. In Haugeland, John (1997) Mind Design II. MIT Press. [3.3 MB pdf]
January 24: Clark, Austen (1994). Beliefs and Desires Incorporated. Journal of Philosophy 91(8):404-25. [2 MB pdf]
January 29: Strawson, P.F. (1959). Individuals. Especially Chapters 3. [1.3 MB pdf]
January 31: Strawson, P.F. (1959). Individuals. (continued discussion)
February 5: Hutchins, Ed. (1995) Cognition in the Wild. Especially Chapter 3. [Intro 1MB pdf][Ch1 9.2MB pdf][Ch2 10.5MB pdf][Ch3 8.8MB pdf]
February 7: Parfit, Derek (1971). Personal Identity. The Philosophical Review 80(1):3-27. [2MB pdf]
February 12: Hutchins, Ed. (1995) Cognition in the Wild. Chapter 4. [7.3MB pdf]
February 14: Seeley et al. (2006). Group decision making in honey bee swarms. American Scientist 94(3) [1MB pdf]
February 21: Day of reflection.
February 26: Vinge, Vernor (1993). A Fire upon the Deep. [Available form Amazon.com here]
February 28: Pettit, Philip (2005). Responsibility Incorporated. [116K pdf] And as an additional not-required-but-relevant and interesting paper, see Pettit (2001). Akrasia, collective and individual. [80K pdf]
March 5: Miller, Seumas and Pekka Makela (2005). The collectivist approach to collective moral responsibility. Metaphilosophy 36(5):634-51. [132K pdf]
March 7: Strawson, P.F. Freedom and Resentment [284K pdf]; Silver, David (2005). A Strawsonian Defense of Corporate responsbility. [128 pdf]
March 12: Sober, E and Wilson, S. D.. “The Revival of the Superorganism”. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 1989, 136, pp. 337-56. [3.3MB pdf]
March 14: Mitchell, Sandra (2003) Constitutive complexity. Chapter 2 of Biological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism. [1.3MB pdf]
Khoo, A. and Horswill, I. (2001) HIVEMind: Grounding Inference in Cooperative Activity. AAAI 2001 Fall Symposium.