Do We Need the Concept of Mind in Psychology?

Do we need the concept of mind in psychology? The Interbehaviorist, 1983-1984, 12(5), 8-10

Noel W. Smith

State University of New York at Plattsburg

Let us begin our approach to this question by looking at some terms that are now related to psychophysical dualism, but that originally were not.

PSYCHE to Aristotle meant the life functions of the organism, including nutritive and reproductive acts, locomotion, sensing, and thinking. Psyche, he said, is to the body as cutting is to the ax. Psyche is what the organism does — its most characteristic acts. Aristotle developed a systematic psychology around this usage that included sensing, thinking, remembering, imagining, and dreaming. He seemed to be at no disadvantage for not having psychophysical dualism.

SPIRIT in Latin originally meant, quite simply, breath, and not any metaphysical entity.

SOUL in Old English, as used in Beowulf, referred to life itself or components of the body, such as blood, that were associated with life and with life actions, such as thinking.

MIND goes back to Inda-European origins, perhaps 4000 years ago or more, to men which meant “to think”, “remember”, or “intend”. It is possibly related to “man”, meaning “the one who thinks”. It was not an entity or agent or internal process but thinking activity. “Mind” (as gemynd) is first recorded in English in the year 971 and was used as the action of thinking about something, as in the phrase “to have mind of”, or to intend, as in “have a mind to” (Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 1983). It was not until 1125 that mind came to be something distinct from the body, a practice that was influenced by Christianity. Mind then became the seat or agent of perceiving, thinking, willing, etc. and was contrasted with matter.

Psychophysical dualism is a relatively recent creation. It is not an inevitable or necessary way of thinking. How did it arise? I can only take the time for a brief glance at a long and complex history. It arose as a retreat or a turning inward and away from a cruel world that existed through the Hellenistic and Graeco-Roman times. It began in the School of Alexandria about 200 B.C. and was refined and carried to greater levels of abstraction by the theologians such as Clement of Alexandria, Origin, Hippolytus, Gregory of Nyssa, and others and by that supreme mystic, Plotinus. There were a few opponents of this way of thinking. Lucretius (De Rerum Natura), for example, argued that there could be only matter and space and no third thing, but his was a voice in the wilderness during a period of great social insecurity. The overwhelming need was not for rationality, but for a belief in a nonphysical psychological agent that would survive the destruction of the body and live in a paradise in the hereafter. This was vital to oppressed and insecure people.

Once psychophysical dualism had been created, no effort was made to resolve it until the 17th century. Descartes declared, quite illogically, that mind and body interacted, and he was severely criticized by other philosophers. Leibnitz said that mind and body operated in parallel without any contact with each other; they were set on this parallel course by the Creator. Spinoza held that mind and body were but two aspects of a single thing — nonphysical mind when looked at from the inside and physical body from the outside. The French materialists argued that mind was a byproduct of the body, something the body produces. These and other attempted solutions all failed because two contradictory constructs cannot be brought into interplay or mutual influence. Unfortunately, no one seemed to recognize that these arguments completely avoided any reference to actual events.

The arguments continued into the 20th century. John Watson pronounced that there was only a behaving body without a mind. He lopped off one-half of the dualism, thereby implicitly acknowledging it. A favorite current argument is that brain and mind are one. The brain thinks, interprets sensations, and processes information. This homuculean brain has the same metaphysical status as mind or soul, and the same insurmountable problems.

Aristotle did not need psychophysical dualism for his psychology. Do we need it for ours? By way of answer I will offer three brief examples of alternatives to dualism. First, let us consider the case of someone who is preparing for a formal debate. The individual sits quietly thinking of some arguments that will be useful in the debate. This interaction would be unobservable to another observer, although special instruments might provide indications that the individual was thinking about something, a behavior that some might call mental. As this individual continues to think about the arguments, he becomes slightly more animated. He mumbles and gestures slightly. The interaction is now slightly observable. As he continues further in this activity, he becomes increasingly animated until he is speaking out loud and gesturing fully just as he would in an actual debate. The interaction has varied on a continuum from unobservable to observable (or covert to overt), but at what point has it changed from mental to physical? Is there any difference in principle between the interactions at any point on the continuum? Are these not just all confrontable interactions that vary in degree of subtleness or of observability?

As a second example, let us consider so-called psychosomatic disorders. The term “psychosomatic” means that the psyche, not in Aristotle’s sense but in the sense that the Church Fathers gave it, is acting on the body, the soma, causing malfunction or tissue damage. In the case of ulcers, a mental or psychic disturbance is said to act destructively on the body. The alternative approach can be stated very briefly: A prolonged stress situation involves a configuration of reactions including excessive gastric secretion and resulting ulceration as part of the interaction.

A final example comes from studies on perceptual constancies. The usual account is that a brain process makes adjustments to objects viewed at different angles, distances, and brightnesses and gives a read-out such that things look the same regardless of these changes. For example, we see a table as rectangular regardless of our viewing angle even though a rectangle is subtended on the retina only when we view the table from directly above. This is said to occur because our brain somehow processes the parallelograms or other nonrectangular images that appear on the retina and reinterprets them as a rectangle. We then have an internal representation of a constantly rectangular table. Instead of adapting an explanation by recourse to a metaphysical brain and a resulting double world (one inside and another outside), we need simply note that people respond to things in accordance with their meanings, and that meanings are developed through a history of interactions with them. A table looks rectangular to me regardless of my viewing angle, not because of some mysterious brain process, but because of my history of contacts with such objects. These objects look to me in accordance with what they mean to me, and what they mean to me consists of my history of interactions with them.

In conclusion, I suggest that if we start our inquiry or our investigation with confrontable events, we do not need metaphysical constructs. We are susceptible to them because of our cultural indoctrination which leads us implicitly to assume such constructs and then impose them on whatever we observe. The remedy is to start with events, develop our constructs from events, and keep our constructs consistent with the events. With this direct approach, “mind” would disappear from psychology and never be missed. It could then revert to the theologians and mystics from which it sprang.

[This paper was presented at the State University of New York at Plattsburg, February 23, 1984, in a panel discussion on the topic “Is the Concept of ‘Mind’ a Necessary One in Psychology? “]