Provocative and imaginative, the
first volume in the VIBS’ Special Series in Cognitive Science is a critique of
the traditional theoretical apparatus of the discipline.  In The
Dissolution of Mind, neuroscientist Oscar Vilarroya undertakes the
ambitious project of reformulating the traditional notions of
"concept," "thought," "communication,"
"representation," "language" and eventually
"mind."

During a conversation lasting six
days, Alice (Miss Common Sense) raises a series of perplexities to
Non-Professor O (Oscar Vilarroya himself) about how human knowledge comes
about. In reply, he describes how some imaginary beings, the Arkadians, acquire
and manage knowledge. In short, the story goes as follows.

Arkadian knowledge is essentially
grounded in experiences or "slifes"(from "slices-of-life"), and in the memory traces (the
"memograms") that they leave in the brain. Slifeshave a holistic character; for example, they are
perceptual and cognitive-evaluative at the same time. While in humans i) senses
process sensorial information, ii) certain brain areas categorize it, and iii)
eventually other brain areas reason about it, Arkadians "panceive":
their brains do all those things together within the space-time of a slife.

In Arkadia, concepts and mental
representations do not exist.  There are
only slifes that mould the brain in a certain way, leaving imprints that will
influence future slifes.  Despite this,
Arkadians understand one another pretty well. 
They all have similar brains that allow a similar organization of
slifes, and they all experience an enormous number of slifes throughout life;
this guarantees that, for example, they will all panceive tables in a similar way.

Language plays an important role in
successful communication, but not because it points to objects in the world or
to concepts in the head.  Arkadian words
are rather switches that evoke the
slifes in which they have previously occurred. 
Communicating is thus evoking in the hearer "a slife equivalent to
that which the emitter wants to evoke" (p.138).

On the last day of the
conversation, Non-Professor O draws all these ideas together to dissolve the
concept of mind, and he comments briefly on major topics such as qualia,
personal identity, emotions, creativity, beauty – and more.  Finally, he reveals that what he has been
telling about Arkadians applies to humans as well: indeed, we are Arkadians!

This brief summary does not do justice to
the variety of issues addressed by Vilarroya, who masters the neuroscientific
literature and is aware of several philosophical questions in disparate areas.
Alice raises the right questions, and Non-Professor O patiently clarifies his
views with a wealth of examples; he is also honest, and admits when the
question is too difficult or has no answer yet. The dialogue form renders the
text light and readable, and Vilarroya’s coinage of new words is great fun.

Beside this, the reader should be warned
that the book is really just a nicely
told story. The author does not explain why
his conceptual framework is better than the one he criticises; nor which are
the data that are better accounted
for by his views; nor what is wrong with the traditional conceptualisations. In
this sense, the book offers no arguments. It simply tells the story of the
Arkadians (one full of clever anecdotes, but anecdotes anyway), and gives no
reason to believe that the story is also ours. There is no philosophical
analysis of the concepts involved, and no explicit discussion of empirical
research.

Although Vilarroya’s views are consistent
with recent work in neuroscience and developmental psychology (dynamical
systems approaches), robotics (nouvelle AI) and empirically minded philosophy
(embodied and embedded accounts of cognition), he deliberately avoids saying
this in the text. This is disappointing because, although there is a
bibliography at the end of each chapter, the absence of more specific
indications renders it nearly useless. Those readers who know the mentioned
sources will already be familiar with the ideas; those who do not, will not
know where exactly to look to learn more.

It is thus not clear for whom the book is
intended, and Vilarroya himself admits that his book "is not a classic
academic text, nor a popularisation" (p.xix), but only the exploration of
a hypothesis. I, who am sympathetic to the general approach, will keep the book
as a source of ideas that should shake and provoke my imagination on many
important issues. However, I will not be able to use it as a source of
arguments that could be either borrowed or criticized.

©
2003 Giovanna Colombetti

Giovanna Colombetti is a
third year DPhil student in Philosophy at the School of Cognitive and Computing
Sciences, University of Sussex (Brighton, UK). Her research interests include
emotion theories, dynamical systems models of cognition and emotion, and theories
of social construction.

Categories: Psychology, Philosophical