Hofstadter, Dennett - The Mind's I

Rediscovering the Mind 35In modern times relied on reductionism as the chief explanatoryconcept. This approach to knowledge tries to comprehend onelevel of scientific phenomena in terms of concepts at a lowerand presumably more fundamental level. In chemistry, large-scalereactions are accounted for by examining the behaviour ofmolecules. Similarly, physiologists study the activity of livingcells in terms of processes carried out by organelles and othersubcellular entities. An din geology, the formations andproperties of minerals are described using the features of theconstituent crystals. The essence of these cases is seekingexplanation in underlying structures and activities.Reductionism at the psychological level is exemplified bythe viewpoint in Carl Sagan’s best-selling book The Dragons ofEden. He writes: “My fundamental premise about the brain is thatall its workings – what we sometimes call ´´ `mind´ – are aconsequence of its anatomy and physiology and nothing more.” Asa further demonstration of this trend of thought, we note thatSagan’s glossary does not contain the words mind, consciousness,perception, awareness, or thought, but rather deals with entriessuch as synapse, lobotomy, proteins, and electrodes.Such attempts to reduce human behaviour to its biologicalbasis have a long history, beginning with early Darwinians andtheir contemporaries working in physiological psychology. Beforethe nineteenth-century, the mind-body duality, which was centralto Descartes’ philosophy, had tended to place the human mindoutside the domain of biology. Then the stress that theevolutionists placed on our “apeness” made us subject tobiological study by methods appropriate to nonhuman primatesand, by extension, to other animals. The Pavlovian schoolreinforced that theme, and it became a cornerstone of manybehavioural theories. While