CUNY SEMINAR IN LOGIC AND GAMES
Is the mind in the head?
Howard Rachlin (Psychology, SUNYSB)
Thursday, March 29, 2012, 6:30 PM
CUNY Graduate Center, room 5383
Abstract. I will consider some historical approaches to the relation of mind to human behavior. Traditionally, the mind has been seen as an inner cause of voluntary, overt behavior. But voluntary behavior is most clearly and distinctly caused by its consequences in the temporal and social environment. Even the most complex temporally and socially extended patterns of overt behavior evolve over a person’s lifetime just as complex structures such as the eye evolve over generations; the selection process rests in the feedback contingencies between those patterns and the outer environment, which is therefore most usefully considered to be the locus of mental events.
Formal Philosophy 