Massimo Marraffa

Functions, levels, and mechanisms: Explanation in cognitive science and its problems:

In the first part of the paper we describe the philosophical debate on the expansions of cognitive science into the brain and into the environment, take sides against the “revolutionary” positions on them and in favor of a “reformist” approach, and conclude that the most appropriate model for cognitive sciences is pluralistic. This is meant in a twofold sense. On the one hand, mental phenomena require a variety of explanatory levels, whose inter-relations are of two kinds: decomposition and contextualization. On the other hand, the arguably quasi-holistic character of some cognitive tasks suggests that the mechanistic style of explanation has to be integrated in these cases with a dynamical explanatory style. This theoretical picture, however, raises two classes of problems: (a) the compatibility between the mechanistic-computationalist explanation and the dynamical one and (b) the nature of theoretical entities and relations postulated at the different levels of a pluralistic model involving computational explanations. Each point will be discussed in the second part of the paper.

A plea for a more dialectical relationship between personal and subpersonal levels of analysis

Bermudez (2005) termed “the interface problem” the question of clarifying how typical subpersonal explanations in cognitive sciences, whatever is their specific form, are related to folk psychology. In this opinion article we will approach the interface problem from a specific angle, i.e., the relationship between consciousness and the unconscious as it has taken shape within cognitive sciences.

Mentalization, attachment, and subjective identity.

In a life-span perspective, Baglio and Marchetti make the hypothesis of “the existence of multiple kinds of Theory of Mind” and urge the transition from a discrete to a dimensional approach in the study of mentalization (“ToM may vary along a quantitative and a qualitative continuum”). We resist such a plea and argue that we can stick to a discrete approach which posits just a single early-developing mindreading system, and then works out a “third-person first” perspective on mentalization, according to which the understanding of other minds both ontogenetically precedes and grounds the understanding of our own minds. In this third-person first framework, Baglio and Marchettis claim that mentalization is “a multifaceted set of competences liable to influence—and be influenced by—a manifold of psychosocial aspects” is reformulated as follows: first-person mentalization evolves in an interplay of third-person mentalization, autobiographical memory and socio-communicative skills attuned by cultural variables. Let us examine these points one by one.

Models and Mechanisms in Cognitive Science

In this chapter, we present and discuss models in the context of cognitive sciences, that is, the sciences of the mind. We will focus on computational models, which are the most popular models used in the disciplines of the mind.

Debunking the pyramidal mind: A plea for synergy between reason and emotion

An instructive example of the present renaissance of emotivism is given by Chapman et al. (2009), who offered an evolutionary account of the genesis of morality whose main idea is that moral disgust is physiologically identical and phylogenetically connected to gustatory distaste. From common sense, we know that scowling is connected with repugnance and, consequently, with the attitude to refuse the substance that triggered that reaction. Evolutionarily, this phenomenon can be explained by referring to the crucial adaptive function that the attitude of refusal might have played, as early as 500 million years ago, in making survival easier for some primitive living beings. According to Chapman et al., “in the moral domain, this rejection impulse might have been co-opted to promote withdrawal from transgressors, or even from the thought of committing a transgression. If the primitive motivational system of disgust is indeed activated by abstract moral transgressions, it would provide strong support for the idea that the human moral sense is built from evolutionarily ancient precursors” (2009, p. 1222). The article suggests that the phylogenetic account is a necessary component of the explanation of the way of working of our moral sense, and this may appear to support the sentimentalist perspective. But is this correct? In our opinion, no. According to Chapman et al., when we face a morally relevant situation, our having the physiological reaction of disgust goes together with our having a moral attitude. But this isn’t so because, in assuming a moral attitude it is essential that we can (at least in principle) detach ourselves from our instinctive and immediate reactions. That the possibility of a detachment from our instinctive reactions in morally relevant situations is a necessary condition for morality can be shown by an example. Jim grew up in a racist environment but later became a convinced antiracist, even if, sometimes, he still fights against the effects of his education. One day, Jim encounters a wounded man who asks for help, but the man is of a different ethnic group, so Jim has an instinctive attitude of “moral disgust” and raises his lips. But now he is a convinced antiracist and consequently makes a rational effort to overcome his repugnance and help the man. This shows that the facial expressions of disgust do not have to go together with our moral attitudes. (Analogously, after reflection one could decide to perform an action that provokes in him/her a reaction of disgust because one has realized that such an action is morally required.) In any morally relevant situation, we have the possibility to detach ourselves from our instinctive reactions in order to evaluate whether they are morally acceptable. Very often they are (in those cases, the moral detachment will confirm the instinctive reactions); but this does not happen necessarily. The connection between moral attitudes and physiological reactions is an extrinsic one. Chapman et al.’s evolutionary hypothesis is interesting for investigating the enabling biological conditions of morality; but it is not relevant for explaining morality as such and even less so for assessing the truth of emotivism as a metaethical theory (De Caro, 2011). Moreover, it is important to note that the detachment from our instinctive repugnance can be, and probably in most cases is, accompanied by positive emotions (such as self-gratification for behaving in a way that we think is correct) that contribute to reinforce our decisions to

The Self and its Defenses. From Psychodynamics to Cognitive Science.

This book presents a theory of the self whose core principle is that the consciousness of the self is a process of self-representing that runs throughout our life. This process aims primarily at defending the self-conscious subject against the threat of its metaphysical inconsistence. In other words, the self is essentially a repertoire of psychological manoeuvres whose outcome is self-representation aimed at coping with the fundamental fragility of the human subject. This picture of the self differs from both the idealist and the eliminative approaches widely represented in contemporary discussion. Against the idealist approach, this book contends that rather than the self being primitive and logically prior, it is the result of a process of construction that originates in subpersonal unconscious processes. On the other hand, it also rejects the anti-realistic, eliminative argument that, from the non-primary, derivative nature of the self, infers its status as an illusory by-product of real neurobiological events, devoid of any explanatory role.

Making the Self, II: Psychological Self-Consciousness

The construction of the virtual inner space of the mind is the topic of this chapter, which works back and forth between theoretical psychology and the findings of empirical research. Within the framework of attachment theory, the authors draw on developmental, social and personality psychology to reconstruct the process through which, starting from bodily self-awareness, we become aware of the existence of the mind as a virtual inner dimension. This awareness is a psychological form of self-consciousness that will evolve into the most cognitively demanding form of self: a narrative self. They thus part company with all those accounts of narrative identity that pay little or no attention to the role of the body in the development of the narrative self-concept: without an affective and bodily self-description, narrative selfhood would not arise.

The Self as a Causal Center of Gravity

The authors reject the antirealist argument that infers, from the non-primary, derivative nature of the self, a view of it as an epiphenomenal by-product of neurobiological events or, alternatively, of social (or sociolinguistic) practices. The antirealists disregard the inherently defensive nature of identity self-construction. The need to construct and protect the most valid identity possible is rooted in the subject’s primary need to solidly exist as a describable ego, as a unitary subject. The incessant construction and reconstruction of an acceptable and adaptively functioning identity is the process that produces our intra- and interpersonal balances, and thus must be regarded as the foundation of psychological well-being and mental health. The process of self-identity construction, therefore, imposes a teleology of self-defense on the human psychobiological system.

The Unconscious Mind

The authors provide a critical discussion of the notion of unconscious, both in the cognitive-science sense and in the Freudian sense. The outcome of this discussion is that self-consciousness should be studied by integrating the subpersonal, bottom-up approach characteristic of cognitive sciences with recent developments in the psychodynamic framework, focusing (in particular) on the theories of cognitive-affectional relationality of the very young child: as is showed by the theories of object relations and attachment, physical contact and the construction of protective and communicative interpersonal structures constitute the infant’s primordial psychological needs, around which her mental life gradually takes form.

Making the Self, I: Bodily Self-Consciousness

The authors argue that there is not a pre-reflective self-consciousness that accompanies every conscious state from birth. This is an empirically void construction, still reminiscent of the Kantian transcendentalism. The outcome of this discussion is that the most minimal form of self-consciousness is bodily self-consciousness, the capacity to construct an analogical and imagistic representation of one’s own body as an entire object, simultaneously taking this representation as a subject, that is, as an active source of the representation of itself. This is coherent with a view of the self in which a distinction (reminiscent of James) must be drawn between the I and the Me, that is, the self as the interminable objectivation process and the self as the multidimensional representation continuously updated by this process.