Exploring the Concept of Mind (review)

Reviews357 perience, a position diat both Augustine and Dante would have found congenial . I might have elected to focus on other, equaUy provocative, chapters from this symposium of consistently interesting essays to underscore my earlier suggestion: tiiis book warrants being read as a whole. It is valuable because it chooses to raise, rather dian close, questions, and often it does so precisely at diose moments of sUent intersection among its several essays. In doing so, die book may be said to exemplify the very phenomenon it examines. University of VermontWilliam A. Stephany Exploring the Concept of Mind, edited by Richard M. Caplan; ix & 150 pp. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1986, $15.95. In introducing the concept of mind Richard Caplan notes "how metaphorical is the language I have here written and quoted. Such highly imagistic expression wUl continue through diis introduction and die essays to foUow, for diere seems no other way to deal with these ideas" (p. 6). "Seems, Caplan/ Nay it is; I know not 'seems'" — and Hamlet is surely right. AU die contributors to this symposium are agreed on this and it is perhaps significant thatJulian Jaynes, whose book, The Origins ofConsciousness in the Breakdown ofthe BicameralMind, is the locus modemis oí the metaphor theory of mind, should have been present at this coUoquium. His own essay offers a summary ofhis views concerning die relatively recent origins of consciousness and the central role metaphor plays in generating tiiis phenomenon. AU the participants are people with metaphors on dieir minds and they may be roughly divided into two camps: those in die process of realizing diat die problems associated with understanding the mind relate to a lack of appropriate metaphors and uiose who are wiUing to fiU the gap. A tentative inhabitant of the first camp is HUary Putnam, who notes in his historical survey of die problem diat "If die discussion of die mind-body problem in this country has changed since 1960 it is largely because of the present centrality of computers and computer-suggested metaphors to our modeUing of mental processes" (p. 39). Antonio Damasio, by comparison, already has his tent up and is boUing die billy: "The problem of the 'ghost in die machine,' die ghost that GUbert RyIe wanted to exorcise, is caused by our ignorance of both neuroscience and cognitive science and is prompted by our limited abUity to describe processes that are not mechanical or electronic. In a way, the problem is tiiat offinding adequate, powerful metaphors" (p. 87). Why does Damasio say 358Philosophy and Literature "in a way"? Simply because it is hard to believe, initiaUy, diat we could ever be satisfied with a "metaphorical" solution to die problem of mind. David Morris spoke ofthe languages ofpain and noted that "We have entered a time when pain threatens to become — outside die private languages of medicine — entirely drained of meaning" (p. 96). In search of a language to articulate pain he echoes again the familiar cry: "What our words often reveal is the impossibUity of finding words adequate to our experience" (p. 91). In die camp ofmetaphor-makers we have D. N. Perkins, who does his best to locate creativity in relationship to three models of inteUigence. He tries out the metaphorical waters with the idea that creativity could be thought of as "InteUigence with an accent" (p. 113), an idea which he elaborates in an interesting (but not unabashedly metaphorical) fashion. Then Doris Grumbach considers the problem of creativity and fearlessly plunges in with the statement diat "the mind is a compost heap" (p. 122) and expands upon diis theme with delight. She explains her confidence by quoting Flaubert: "Everydiing you invent is true; you can be sure of diat" (p. 126). FinaUy, Maxine Greene notes the relationship between metaphor and the development of mind. Citing Wordsworth, Joyce, and Alice Walker she notes how these audiors presented young people "thinking in terms of increasingly complex metaphors mat aUow diem to find new patterns ... of significance in their own experience as diey grow. . . . Each [audior] confirms die notion diat metaphormaking and imagining are integral to die growth of mind" (p. 141). To sum up: I enjoyed this book much...