Abstract
Hubert Dreyfus once noted that it would be difficult to ascertain whether Edmund Husserl had a computational theory of mind. I provide evidence that he had one. Both Steven Pinker and Steven Horst think that the computational theory of mind must have two components: a representational-symbolic component and a causal component. Bearing this in mind, we proceed to a close-reading of the sections of “On the Logic of Signs” wherein Husserl presents, if I’m correct, his computational theory of mind embedded in a language of thought. My argument goes like this: the computational theory of mind is the idea, following Haugeland, that the mind comes prepackaged as, or is endogenously constrained to be (with respect to certain domains), an automatic formal system; this explains, according to Husserl, why automatic trains of thought without logical intent resemble arguments exhibiting deductive structure with logical intent. In general, an automatic formal system yields true results provided that (1) the syntactic symbols with which they compute are univocal and are semantically evaluable, and (2) the mechanized inferences they perform are valid and preserve truth. These two conditions describe a computational (as opposed to an associative) cognitive process: the first condition connects representations to syntax (corresponding to Pinker and Horst’s first component), and the second condition uses the syntax, in inauthentic judging, to arrive at true conclusions through blind causality (corresponding to Pinker and Horst’s second component). Now, in point of textual fact, these are the conditions which Husserl attributes to our “natural psychological mechanism of symbolic inference” which typically yields true results. Since a formal system attributed to the “internal structure” of the mind, and guided by blind causality, just is the computational theory of mind, it follows, I think, that Husserl had a computational theory of mind. This computational theory is, moreover, embedded in a language of thought, since Husserl attributes a language-like form to our thoughts so that they may be mechanically processed. I conclude with a discussion of my results.
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Notes
Thank you to Walter Hopp for comments on an earlier draft of this article.
I follow Dallas Willard’s suggestion as to the date of this essay.
Charles S. Brown contests this Fregean reading as encouraging the computationalist reading of Husserl. He wishes to show that as we leave the Fregean reading behind, we will come “closer to a so-called connectionist model” (1990, p. 65). Besides the fact that CTM and connectionism are not incompatible theories (Cummins 2010), Brown is incorrect in believing that the computational theory of mind is committed to a Fregean thesis concerning abstract Sinne. Fodor’s (1998) endorsement of meaning-publicity, which is the same as Hopp’s (2011) instantiation model of meaning, is technically a separate thesis, though eminently compatible with CTM. Moreover, Dreyfus already noted that the computational theory of mind is “unlike Frege” (1982, p. 10).
Husserl first raises the question of how a “logically unjustified procedure”—i.e. a causal mental mechanism—can arrive at truth, which Husserl understands as a function of judgment, on page 358, some 18 pages into the essay as a whole (Hua XII, p. 358/1994, p. 37). Within the context of the essay as a whole, then, Husserl begins with the discussion of (in)authentic representation or “symbolic representation” (Hua XII, p. 340/1994, p. 20) and leads up to the discovery—within the context of the question of how mental processes preserve truth—of inauthentic judgments, i.e., judgments not present before consciousness (Hua XII, p. 361/1994, p. 39). This judgmental process within the mechanism of symbolic inference is then explicated in terms of the deductive structure of an automatic formal system and the question is then considered solved: “In this manner is our problem resolved” (Hua XII, p. 364/1994, p. 43).
“Die uneigentlichen Vorstellungen sind die Grundlagen unserer gemeinen praktischen Urteilstätigkeit” (Hua XII, p. 357).
As Husserl says, “[T]he judging here is […] externally inauthentic” (Hua XII, p. 361/1994, p. 39).
This accords with Fodor: "The tendency of mental processes to preserve truth [is] to be explained by the hypothesis that they are computations, where by stipulation a computation is a causal process that is syntactically driven" (Fodor 2000, p. 4).
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Lopes, J.D. How Do Mental Processes Preserve Truth? Husserl’s Discovery of the Computational Theory of Mind. Husserl Stud 36, 25–45 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-019-09257-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10743-019-09257-3