Review of Linda A. W. Brakel, The Ontology of Psychology: Questioning Foundations in the Philosophy of Mind. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

Philosophy

College of Arts and Letters Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2014.06.11 Author Linda A.W. Brakel The Ontology of Psychology: Questioning Foundations in the Philosophy of Mind Published: June 08, 2014 Linda A.W. Brakel, The Ontology of Psychology: Questioning Foundations in the Philosophy of Mind, Routledge, 2013, 179pp., $125.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780415635622. Reviewed by Claudia Passos-Ferreira, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Linda Brakel presents an ambitious interdisciplinary approach to psychoanalysis. She focuses on three 'epistemological discomforts' in contemporary psychoanalysis. The first concerns techniques: how can we explain the effectiveness of psychoanalytic techniques in producing therapeutic changes? The second concerns ontology: what view of the mind-body problem is most appropriate in light of psychoanalysis? The third concerns methodology: what is the central role of consistency in psychoanalysis as well as in philosophy and science? Chapters 2 through 4 each analyzes one of the three issues. Each chapter can be read alone. This might suggest that the book is not unified, that it lacks an explicit central thesis that integrates these issues into a coherent whole. However, there is an implicit thesis that unifies Brakel's analysis and integrates the three epistemological problems. Brakel's core idea is that psychoanalytic theory is a general scientific theory of mind that might explain mental processes in general as well as particular pathological mental states. Brakel developed this thesis in previous books (Brakel 2009, 2010), and it is helpful to read this book keeping it in mind. As Brakel articulates it, the theory rests on three assumptions: psychological continuity, psychological determinism, and the existence of a dynamic unconscious. It postulates the existence of two types of mentation: the a-rational and associative primary process, and the rational and rule-following secondary process. It invokes free association as a methodological tool. Brakel's project might be seen as part of the neuropsychoanalytical movement that aims to bring together psychoanalysis and a contemporary neuroscientific perspective on the mind. Historically, when opponents such as Adolf Grünbaum criticized the scientific status of psychoanalysis, an initial reaction was to construe psychoanalysis as an extension of common sense psychology, removing it from the realm of scientific theories. This approach can be found in psychoanalytic philosophers such as Richard Wollheim, Jonathan Lear, and Marcia Cavell. Brakel takes issue with these accounts of the mind. She aims to resume the naturalist project, putting psychoanalysis on the scientific agenda with an associated neurobiological ontology. She argues that psychoanalysis intervenes in the mind at a biological level, and she defends a reductive physicalist ontology of the mind in light of neuroscientific evidence about the dynamic biological unconscious. In Chapter 2, Brakel defends a biological perspective on psychoanalytic techniques. She argues that classical techniques -the use of the couch, frequent meetings, free association -can produce more changes than rival psychotherapies because they are 'biologically potent'. By this she means that psychoanalytic techniques have the power to modify biological structures that play a crucial role in psychopathology. Brakel's biological model is based on the biology of conditioning. The paradigmatic situation is the biological phenomena of aversive fear conditioning. It is an experimental fact that fear memory is easily acquired, readily generalized across contexts, and resistant to extinction. According to the research literature on conditioning, it is extremely difficult to destroy the original association of the conditioned stimulus and unconditioned stimulus even after intensive extinction training. Extinction of aversive conditioning is highly context-specific and "depends . . . on new learning that is specific to the context in which it is learned" (p. 22). The original association can recede only through the formation of new memories in a variety of contexts. Treatment for aversive fear, which plays a role in many neurotic psychopathologies, has shown better results when it includes multiple context exposure and imaginative rehearsal. Brakel holds that classical psychoanalysis operates on both the psychological level and the biological level, whereas cognitive behavioral therapies operate primarily on the psychological level. Where the psychological level involves rationality-based learning and autobiographical memory, the biological level involves the dynamic unconscious and unconscious (irrational and a-rational) transferences. Brakel holds that this difference explains the positive outcomes of classic psychoanalytic techniques. Only these techniques can provide the multiple context exposure and imaginative rehearsal necessary for approximating extinction of aversively conditioned responses. The psychoanalytic setting -with free association, frequency of meetings and the use of the couch -creates a particular situation that facilitates the patient's imaginative engagement "toward the formation of multiple transference" (p. 29). Brakel emphatically defends the use of the couch as promoting the development of transferences through imagination. The couch "facilitates the shift from the real (here and now) to the imaginative" (p. 31). On her view these transferences are necessary for the enduring improvements in psychopathology provided by the biologically mediated process in which psychoanalysis intervenes. Although she argues for extra-clinical testing for the psychoanalytical hypothesis, Brakel does not provide systematic empirical support for the effectiveness of the psychoanalytic techniques that she defends. The evidence of her findings is supported by here-and-now clinical ('on the couch') testability. She does not provide controlled experiments to test the psychoanalytical mechanism underlying therapeutic change. While this lack of support does not refute Brakel's view, it raises doubts about generalizing the hypothesis to a variety of cases and contexts. For instance, is the couch crucial for all cases or just for patients showing long-standing maladaptive patterns of behavior? Are free association and intensive relation with the analyst enough? Is psychoanalysis the best method for approximating extinction learning? Are classical psychoanalytic techniques the only way to intervene in basic biological processes? Because Brakel's hypotheses are theory-driven and remain to be empirically tested, they may not do much to persuade psychoanalysts who worry that classical techniques are not therapeutically beneficial. Chapter 3, which is on the ontology of the mind, is the philosophical core of the book. Its main ambition is to provide a physicalist solution to the mind-body problem that might explain the unconscious mind and the psychological states found in clinical work. Brakel discusses a variety of metaphysical positions in the philosophy of mind. She rejects arguments for dualism, such as David Chalmers' conceivability argument, on the grounds that they fail to explain the causal efficacy of mental phenomena and that they have question-begging presuppositions (p. 47). She also rejects nonreductive views, such as Donald Davidson's anomalous monism (p. 53), which has had a strong impact in psychoanalysis, since these accounts fail to provide causal efficacy for mental events. She endorses reductive physicalism in the spirit of Jaegwon Kim (p. 71), arguing that it avoids many problems for nonreductive accounts, such as the ontological, epistemological and explanatory gaps, the mental causation problem, and the problem of causal exclusion. Brakel develops her own version of reductive physicalism: Diachronic Conjunctive Token Physicalism. She holds that this view avoids problems for type physicalism (including multiple realization and scale problems) and better explains the correlations between a mental property and its realizing physical property. Brakel's main motivation for token physicalism is its compatibility with multiple realization phenomena and with scientific findings about brain plasticity (p. 81). Her model takes into account two ways of understanding token identities. Synchronically (at a specific time), a token mental state is identical with its physical token realizer. Diachronically (across time), a token mental state is a single unified entity constituted by the conjunction of various synchronic physical token realizers. This model, Brakel suggests, helps to explain the biological ontology of the phobic fear states analyzed in Chapter 2. The patient's aversive conditioning consists of two sorts of ontological conjunctions: synchronically, the phobic fear state is constituted by the specific neuronal network realizer, and diachronically, it is constituted by the sum of many different instantiations of neuronal group realizers. Brakel acknowledges that her contribution to the mind-body problem does not solve the problem of consciousness. Although she is convinced that her token physicalism closes the ontological gap (p. 81), she concedes that an identity theory cannot completely obviate the epistemic gap and fully explain all connections between physical events and their mental tokens. This raises the question of how she can confidently endorse reductive physicalism while the problem of consciousness remains unsolved. In light of the problem, Kim (2005) himself has rejected reductive physicalism where consciousness is concerned. Brakel does not make clear how her own view resolves this tension and how it accommodates the first-person experience of mental states -an essential element in clinical work. Chapter 4, "Uses and Abuses of Consistency", is the least straightforward part of the book. It investigates the role of consistency in four disciplines: thought experiments, empirical research, psychoanalysis and experimental philosophy. The basic idea is that human understanding is guided by consistency. Those domains of knowledge use consistency to achieve a common aim, which is to enlarge and advance current knowledge and our understanding of the world. Brakel's principal argument is that consistency is the criterion used to measure the advance of knowledge in those areas. Brakel invokes a very broad and flexible notion of consistency here, to the point where one might wonder whether there is really a single notion at work. The key notion involves not just freedom from contradiction, but a sort of coherence: roughly, treating like cases alike. Brakel identifies cases in a number of fields where consistency in this sense is used and abused. In particular, she identifies a common case of abuse via 'false parallels' that arises especially in thought experiments and experimental philosophy. She proposes handling those cases by replacing the apparent parallels with intervening stepwise cases that are more deeply parallel and convergent to the original cases (p. 137). In psychoanalysis, on Brakel's view, the role of consistency is to increase the understanding of a patient's mind. Psychoanalyst's interpretations work as a 'pilot experiment' that helps the analyst test her hypothesis and enlarge the patient's self-understanding of his behaviors as consistent and intelligible. Consistency across the patient's data is used to test the analyst's interpretations, rather than to test the general theory of mind postulated and subsumed in the interpretations. Brakel's book offers a cogent and original defense of a biological ontology of the mind. Chapters 2 and 3, in which Brakel puts forward a novel explanation of the biological effectiveness of psychoanalysis and a novel way of placing the psychoanalytical mind in the physical world, are of particular interest.. Although there is much one can argue with, this is a refreshing reconceptualization of the psychoanalytic theory of mind. REFERENCES Brakel, Linda A.W. (2009). Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and the A-rational Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brakel, Linda A.W. (2010). Unconscious Knowing and Other Essays in Psycho-Philosophical Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Grünbaum, Adolph (1984). The Foundations of Psychoanalysis: A Philosophical Critique. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kim, Jaegwon (2005). Physicalism, or Something Near Enough. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Copyright © 2014 ISSN: 1538 1617 College of Arts and Letters Notre Dame, IN


Critique of bentham's utilitarianism

Philosophy

Critique of bentham's utilitarianism Over time, the actions of mankind have been the victim of two vague labels, right and wrong. The criteria for these labels are not clearly defined, but they still seem to be the standard by which the actions of man are judged. There are some people that abide by a deontological view when it comes to judging the nature of actions; the deontological view holds that it is a person's intention that makes an action right or wrong. On the other hand there is the teleological view which holds that it is the result of an action is what makes that act right or wrong. In this essay I will be dealing with utilitarianism, a philosophical principle that holds a teleological view when it comes the nature of actions. To solely discuss utilitarianism is much too broad of topic and must be broken down, so I will discuss specifically quantitative utilitarianism as presented by Jeremy Bentham. In this essay I will present the argument of Bentham supporting his respective form of utilitarianism and I will give my critique of this argument along the way. Before the main discussion of the Bentham's utilitarianism gets underway, lets first establish what utilitarianism is. As stated in the introduction, utilitarianism is a teleological philosophy that is primarily concerned with the results of an action when determining the nature of that act. Utilitarianism operates primarily under the greater happiness principal, in other words, utilitarians believe that one should only act in such a way that the results of that act should produce the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest for the greatest number of people. It is due to this view that utilitarianism is often criticized for being too hedonistic because it places the moral value of an act only on how much that act effects happiness. The teleological nature of utilitarianism also can serve as a problem because it pays no attention to the intention an action and can make acts of an immoral nature justifiably right. I will use the example that a professor of mine used in which a man tries to snatch an old lady's purse and in his struggle to do so he pulls her out of the way of a speeding vehicle thus saving her life. This act, although it started with mischievous intent, ended with a life being saved and surely produced the greatest amount of happiness for the old lady. In the utilitarian eye this act is morally acceptable and right due to the fact that happiness was produced. Jeremy Bentham was a utilitarian philosopher with his own version of this particular of this teleological view called \"Quantitative Utilitarianism\". Bentham's utilitarianism argument starts by giving his principle of utility which judges all actions based on its tendency to promote or diminish happiness of whoever is involved, be it a community or an individual. According to Bentham, an action is right if, it increases happiness and decreases suffering and is wrong it does not. Also included in his view of utilitarianism is a way to calculate the general tendency of any act and its affect on a community. The calculation is based on the seven circumstances of the act, which are: its intensity, its duration, its certainty or uncertainty, its propinquity or remoteness, its fecundity (tendency to be followed by sensations of like kind), its purity (tendency not to be followed by sensations of unlike kind), and its extent (number of people affected). With these circumstances in order, one can start to calculate the nature of the act and according to Bentham after the completion of the process, one can make an accurate assessment of the true nature of the act. Here is where my critique of Bentham's \"Quantitative Utilitarianism\" comes into the picture. I will present Bentham's process in his own words and then offer my observation as to where he went wrong. The community is a fictitious body composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting as it were members. The interest of the community then is, what?-the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.....To take an exact account then of the general tendency of any act, by which the interests of a community are affected, proceed as follows. Begin with any one person of those whose interests seem most immediately to be affected by it: and take an account, 1. Of the value of each distinguishable pleasure which appears to be produced by it in the first interest. 2. Of the value of each pain which appears to be produced by it in the first interests. 3. Of the value of each pleasure which appears to be produced by it after the first. This constitutes the fecundity of the first pleasure and the impurity of the first pain. 4. Of the value of each pain which appears to be produced by it after the first. This constitutes the fecundity of the first pain and the impurity of the first pleasure. 5. Sum up all the values of all the pleasures on the one side, and those of all the pains on the other. The balance, if it be on the side of pleasure, will give the good tendency of the act upon the whole, with respect to the interests of that individual person; if on the side of pain, the bad tendency of it upon the whole. 6. Take an account of the number of persons whose interests are concerned and repeat the process for each. Sum up the numbers expressive to the degrees of good tendency...do this again in regard to whom the tendency is bad upon the whole. Take the balance, which, if on the side of pleasure, will give the good general tendency; if on the side of pain, the general evil tendency Maybe it is my mentality, but a number of things in the preceding passage were and still remain unclear to me. The first thing that I will take up issue with is Bentham's perspective about the interests of the community. The interest of the community is said to be a sum of the total interests of its several members. It is never specified what how exactly this total is acquired or even if the members of the community would agree on whatever is considered the community's interest. If the members would agree then that means that everyone in the community had the same interest to begin with. If the members would not agree, then how can you go about adding up their conflicting interests? These interests, when attempting to get a total seem like they would cancel each other out which wouldn't make for much of sum total. Things of this nature (individual interests) are so relative that it would be impossible as well as pointless to even try to place any kind of concrete value, which brings up another point. What kind of value are these individual and community interests supposed to have? In order to add things up they must have some sort of value. Because of Bentham's failure to offer some sort of method for combining individuals' interests and since he failed to offer some sort of concrete value for these abstract things, his perspective on the interest of the community remains unclear to me. The second issue that I am going to take up lies in Bentham's method of calculating the general tendency of an act that affects a community's interest. For starters, the process itself is too arduous. There are too many things that need to be done in order to come to the final conclusion and on top of that, the process instructs you to repeat however many times necessary. Secondly, the terms fecundity and purity seem like the same thing. I can not see the difference between taking into account the chance of something being followed by something else of same nature and taking into account the chance of something not being followed by something of opposite nature. If I am trying to estimate the chances a pleasurable sensation has of being followed by another pleasurable sensation, is that not the same as trying to estimate the chances a pleasurable sensation has of not being followed by a painful sensation. In both scenarios I am trying to see if the original pleasurable sensation will be followed by another pleasurable sensation. Thirdly, the problem of again rises about value. In the first case, the value for interests went unspecified, now in this case it is the value of pleasure and plain. Throughout Bentham's explaining of how to calculate how an act affects a community's interest, he once again fails to give some kind of value for pleasure and pain. We are instructed to take every pleasure and every pain into account and them sum up all the values in order to get a balance, but there is no value. Bentham also repeats the mistake of treating abstract concepts as concrete concepts. Just like individual interests, pleasure and pain are relative. The ways that pleasure and pain affect people vary and what is pleasurable for one person may not be pleasurable for another. Another problem with this method has to do with the end product of the account process. Bentham says that after all of the values of pleasure and pain are summed up, if the balance is on the side of pleasure the act as a whole has a good tendency, as the same for pain. But what if there is no side that the balance lay on? Hypothetically speaking, if there were a community of 200 people and after all of the values of pleasure and pain were added up and the results were split down the middle, what tendency would the act have? In order to even start to answer this there would have to be some sort of value for the pleasure and pain. The values would also have to differ in order to get a definite end result, certain pains and pleasures would have to weigh more than others, but that's \"Qualitative Utilitarianism\". As for Bentham and \"Quantitative Utilitarianism\" this is all I have to say, it's all that I could muster. In conclusion, Bentham's essay does read well. He is very precise in keeping his argument consistent. If there were some kind of way to give things like pleasure and pain definite values, then his quantitative method would be that which all other methods would go by. But things of that nature vary too much and too often to even try to try.