The Concept of Mind

Descartes's Myth

• The dogma of the ghost in the machine

Knowing How and Knowing That

• The distinction between being intelligent and possessing knowledge.
• We think of intellectual powers as that special class of operations which constitute theorizing. The goal of these operations is the knowledge of true propositions or facts. Mathematics and the established natural sciences ar the model accomplishments of human intellects.
• On the contrary theorizing is one practice amongst others and is itself intelligently or stupidly conducted.
• The combination of the two assumptions that theorizing is the primary activity of minds and that theorizing is intrinsically a private, silent, or internal operation remains one of he main supports of the dogmas of the ghost in the machine.
• To be intelligent is not merely to satisfy criteria, but to apply them; to regulate one's actions and not merely to be well-regulate. A person's performance is described as careful or skillful, if in his operations he is ready to detect and correct lapses, to repeat and improve upon successes, to profit from the example of others and so forth. He applies criteria in performing critically, that is, in trying to get things right.
• Efficient practice precedes the theory of it.
• When I do something intelligently, ie thinking what i am doing, I am doing one thing and not two. My performance has a special procedure or manner, not special antecedents.
• It would be quite possible for a boy to learn ches without even hearing or reading the rules at all. By watching the moves made by others and by noticing which of his own moves were conceded and which were rejected, he could pick up the art of playing correctly while still quite unable to propound the regulations in terms of which correct and incorrect are defined. We all learned the rules of hunt the thimble and hide and seek and the elementary rules of grammar and logic in this way. We learn how by practice, schooled indeed by criticism and example, but often quite unaided by any lessons in the theory.
• It is of the essence of intelligent practices that one performance is modified by its predecessors. The agent is still learning.
• We build up habits by drill, but we build up intelligent capacities by training. Training involves the stimulation by criticism and example of the pupil's own judgement. He learns how to do things thinking what he is doing, so that every operation performs is itself a new lesson to him how to perform better. Drill dispenses with intelligence, training develops it.
• Our inquiry is not into causes, but into capacities, skills, habits, liabilities and bents.
• Knowing how is a disposition, but not a single-track disposition like a reflex or a habit. its exercises are observances of rules or canons or the applications of criteria, but they are not tandem operations of theoretically avowing maxims and then putting them into practice. Its exercises can be overt or covert, deeds performed or deeds imagined, words spoken aloud or words heard in one's head, pictures painted on canvas or pictures in the mind's eye. Or they can be amalgamations of the two.
• For a reasoner arguing, much of his argument is likely never to have been constructed before. He has to meet new objections, interpret new evidence and make connexions between elements in the situation which had not previously been coordinated. he has to innovate, and where he innovates he is not operating from habit.
• Underlying all the other features of the operations executed by the intelligent reasoner there is the cardinal feature that he reasons logically, that is, that he avoids fallacies and produces valid proofs and inferences, pertinent to the case he is making. He observes the rules of logic, as well as those of style, forensic strategy, professional etiquette and the rest. But he probably observes the rules of logic without thinking about them. He does not cite Aristotle's formulae to himself or to the court. he applies in his practice what Aristotle abstracted in his theory of such practices.
• We are describing the ways in which parts of his conduct are managed.
• Understanding is a part of knowing how.
• The intelligent performer operates critically, the intelligent spectator follows critically.
• The styles and procedures of people's activities are the way their minds work and are not merely imperfect reflections of the postulated secret processes which were supposed to be the working of minds. Overt intelligent performances are not clues to the working of minds; they are those workings.
• I discover that there are other minds in understanding what other people say and do. In making sense of what you say, in appreciating your jokes, in unmasking your chess strategems, in following your arguments and in hearing you pick holes in my arguments, I am not inferring to the workings of your mind, I am following them.
• I find out most of what I want to know about your capacities, interests, likes, dislikes, methods and convictions by observing how you conduct your overt doings, of which by far the most important are your saying and writings. It is a subsidiary question how you conduct your imaginings, including your imagined monologues.

The Will

• The mind or soul, we are often told has three parts: Thought, Feeling, and Will.
• The discoveries of the physical sciences no more rule out life, sentience, purpose, or intelligence from presence in the world than do the rules of grammar extrude style or logic from prose. They may say noting of life, sentience or purpose, by nor do the rules of grammar say anything about style or logic. They apply to what is animate as well as to what is inanimate, to intelligent people as well as to idiots.

Emotion

• The word emotion is used to designate at least 3-4 different kinds of things - inclinations (motives), moods, agitations (commotions) and feelings.
• By feelings I mean thrills, twinges, pangs, throbs, wrenches, itches, prickings, chills, glows, loads, qualms, hankerings, curdlings, sinkings, tensions, gnawings, and shocks.
• In general we think that an impartial and discerning spectator is a better judge of a person's prevailing motives, as well as of his habits, abilities, and weaknesses, than is that person himself - and this argues against the Privileged Access theory.
• Whatever I do or say, it is always conceivable, though nearly always false, that I did it, or said it, in complete absence of mind. Acting from a motive is different from acting out of habit, but the sorts of things which belong to the one class also belong to the other.
• To say that a certain motive is a trait in someone's character is to say that he is inclined to do certain sorts of things - He would do that!
• For agitations, there are often two currents. Grief of one sort is affection blocked by death, suspense is hope interfered with by fear.
• Hume - some passions are intrinsically calm, while others are violent
• Inclinations and agitations are two different kinds of things.
• Moods are relatively short-term conditions. A person's momentary mood is a different sort of thing from the motives which actuate him. Moods monopolize. The conversational avowal of moods requires not acumen, but openness. It comes from the heart not from the head; It is not discovery, but voluntary non-concealment. Names of mood are not the names of feelings, but to be in a mood is partly to tend to have feelings of a certain kind. A mood is like the morning's weather.
• Roughly speaking, we do not act purposively because we experience feelings. Rather we experience feelings because we are inhibited from acting purposively
• Most sensations and feelings are neither enjoyed nor disliked. Enjoying is a mood. One can be in the mood or not in the mood to enjoy something.
• When a person is thinking what he is doing, his action is to be classed not as automatic, but as done from a motive - the action is taken not absentmindedly but in a certain positive frame of mind.