What is a mental state?
What is a mental state?
Is it a state of mind? Psychology today lists six - Rational, anxious, depressed, angry, fearful, and rebellious. Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital has a more nuanced approach.
Is it just experiencing Mental phenomena such as beliefs, desires, intentions , and sensations?
Is it analogous to a physical state? How - what do mental and physical states have in common that makes them both states... That they only last for a limited time?
Is the notion of a mental state coherent? Consistent?
Is it a state of mind? Psychology today lists six - Rational, anxious, depressed, angry, fearful, and rebellious. Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital has a more nuanced approach.
Is it just experiencing Mental phenomena such as beliefs, desires, intentions , and sensations?
Is it analogous to a physical state? How - what do mental and physical states have in common that makes them both states... That they only last for a limited time?
Is the notion of a mental state coherent? Consistent?
Comments (78)
A mind condition (mode of being).
Examples:
1) Consciousness (mass noun)
2) Altered States of Consciousness (noun)
3) Personality (Affect Correlation)
4) Mood (Temperament Correlation)
5) Emotion
I find it useful to distinguish between mental conditions and mental functions in spite of the relations which obtain between them. Mental conditions are experienced, and mental functions are exercised, by an organism.
Types of mental function (mind action):
1) Semantic
2) Syntactic
3) Pragmatic
Inductive evidence in the form of physiological correlates, and criterial evidence in the form of observed behaviour, establish the existence of mental conditions and functions.
Corporeal and mental conditions and functions are mutually dependent, but incommensurable because:
1) Correlation does not imply causation.
2) Corporeal and mental data are accessed at different levels of abstraction.
The result is our memory is actually stored in layers, based on the feeling tags. It is analogous to looking a grid of blue and red dots through red sunglasses. The red dots will disappear and we will only see the blue dots; focus layer.
For example, if I feel hungry, images of food appear in my mind. The hunger feeling induces a layer of memory all with the same feeling tag. There are not many feelings tags; dozens, so these are reused for lots of different memories. The hunger feeling is attached to hundreds of data points. As this memory layer becomes active and in focus, states are connected to specific layers. This layering allows the ego to focus, while still having access to all the brain.
Beyond the memory layering, are brain firmware called the archetypes of the collective unconscious. These firmware help to organize each memory layer around the feeling and dynamics associated with that firmware. In the case of hunger, being hungry is not just recalling the food layer of memory, but also gathering, prepping and eating the food. Mental states are connected to this combined affect; given memory layer and the dynamics in the natural or modified firmware.
So we go about thinking about mental states to either help ourselves feel better, or to assess whether others need help in feeling better.
I'm in two minds about it. How fucked is that?
Do we need this to be nailed down? I think it works as a vague finger pointing thing - she a bit upset, - his ceramic is cracked. So I'll pull myself together, buck my ideas up and declare it to apply only to other people. The kitchen is in a state at the moment and other people's minds are frequently in a state. Me, I have thoughts and feeling, both of which are wonderful, even when they are miserable.
talks of mental conditions and mental functions as if we knew what they are - but that's the question. @wellwisher talks of anatomy and images in minds. But after reading the first three replies I have no clearer idea of what a mental state is.
talks of making us feel better. That's close to the post hoc analysis of Belief. Mental states as rationalisations.
That is, can they be parsed by constants in first-order language...
Is it close?
The medical value of talking about the state someone's mental life is in, including my own, seems to indicate that there must be something to the matter, no? If we can set a leg after it's broken, then surely our thinking about bones and how they work helped us to do so.
So maybe mental states are the post hoc rationalizations, ala belief. But then what is it that makes us feel better, if it is not our mental state?
Quoting Banno
I would think that a mental state would not be a propositional attitude, but a propositional attitude is a mental state. But not all mental states are about propositions, or are even necessarily about anything, so mental states are wider than propositional attitudes.
Quoting Banno
I'm afraid that question eludes me.
Talk about states implies that a thing changes over time, although there is no reason a thing couldn't be in the same state for its entire existence. It's just that it could be in a different state and still be the same thing. (Nixon could have lost or have been in a state of defeat).
A mental state is a state of a person's mind, obviously. For more you'd have to explain what problem you're trying to solve.
I might qualify that by saying "everything we are aware of".
I think that to be aware of anything means it becomes part of a mental state.
All states of mind are 'determined' by the emotions at the time. This holds good from the rudimentary state of fear to the complex state of righteous indignation.
Is the brain a machine, a computer - a finite state automaton?
If you are happy to think so, then sure, the OP probably seems to make sense to you. You can spend forever trying to make the organismic facts fit that weird thing of "a state".
Exactly. And homeostasis is about having the goal of regulating dynamical instabilities. So that is a very organic conception of nature - to be able to impose stability on instability in pursuit of a purpose.
You can have the defining desire of maintaining a "constant state" only because that state is in fact absent without the appropriate constraints being applied.
So now we are clearly starting to talk the language of organisms rather than machines. Some form of long-run intentionality has already come into play. And at the same time, some presumption about simple atomistic states of affairs - a state as a snapshot of all that exists during some "instant" - is making its exit.
Talk about "states" is Newtonian physics-speak. It presumes localised linearity and determinism. But good, you agree that talk about the mind is already talk about holism. We are really talking about states of intentionality. We are talking about sticking determinedly, in a fairly straight line, to goals that have a long-run stability. Or better yet, that produce that long-run stability.
That is why we can see the OP has already made the wrong move in accepting the Newtonian physics-speak notion of a state when it asks such questions as: "Is it just experiencing Mental phenomena such as beliefs, desires, intentions , and sensations?"
Now we have goal-directedness being spoken of as some kind of object floating in some kind of space. It is a mental thing, a lump with properties, that is to be found wandering about in some stray corner of this great place called "experience".
That is why I suggest that the OP ought first define what is meant here by state. If meaning is use, it is clear that the only definition the OP has in mind is some drab and lifeless notion derived from Newtonian mechanics and computer science.
Quoting apokrisis
Flux is a state. A living organism is always in this state. The world in general is even if it looks stable. Stability is the outcome of equal opposing forces.
The number 12 is not in a state of flux. It can't be. A mind can be in the state of contemplating the number 12. Yet 12 is apparently something beyond any individual mind. We believe that because a person can be wrong about what 12 is.
Our forebears would have said that 12 is a resident of the divine mind. Having dispensed with that idea, we're presently at a loss to explain what it is. I don't see any need to build some philosophical project around it.
Sure, they are all the time. They were in those links you linked, for example, weren't they?
Are you asking whether 'mental states' correspond to some actual thing, a mental-state, in the person to whom they're ascribed? My guess is no, not really, tho, if youre familiar with the terms and the settings in which they crop up, you stand a good chance at making valid inferences about someone given the knowledge they've been ascribed mental state x.
'Mental states', at least of the sort described in your links, are part of a clinical language game involving
(1) finding the appropriate label for how someone presents in a mental health setting.
in order to
(2) interact with that person in such a way that they'll get better (or, more cynically, interact in such a way that one can reasonably ascribe a good 'state' to them in order to free up a bed in the clinic and have your interaction with them reflect well on your ability to treat patients vis-a-vis institutional expectations re: treatment duration)
To ask what actual thing it is 'mental state' refers to isto give the clinical game an undue dignity. 'mental states' are 'how-to-relate-to-this-person' tags determined by simple algorithmic checklists used to get the minimum [whatever] needed to categorize. They're instrumental through and through.
That the clinical game involving "mental states" is notoriously bad at the long-term amelioration of undesirable 'states' is also worth taking into account.
Flux is a state of what though? And why have you suddenly changed the subject from homeostasis, or the intentional regulation of fluctuations, in pursuit of some stable - and in fact, "far from equilibrium" - equilibrium condition?
Quoting frank
Yep. Equilibrium is a state of all forces, or sources of fluctuation, arriving at some steady persisting balance. It is an outcome of a system being closed or bounded in a fashion that allows it to be so. And also some mind, some point of view, which no longer sweats the uncertain details.
The particles of an ideal gas at equilibrium are still in furious motion. But the state of the system can be completely determined by its macro-properties, such as temperature and pressure. At equilibrium, the kinetic details get averaged away. The actual state - some account of every individual particle - doesn't matter. The effective state is enough so far as the physical model is concerned.
So we do have our very mechanical notions of statistical states. But they in turn still rely on holistic and rather mental notions - like points of view that apply suitable cut-offs in terms of when the fine-grain details cease to matter.
Quoting frank
We suddenly seem to be discussing Platonism. Are you completely abandoning homeostasis, which I agree is a great starting point for highlighting an organic approach in contrast to a mechanical one?
Don't you think that talk of flux, and talk of fluxes held in deliberate equilibrium balance, constitute two different "states of affairs". ;)
Very true, but them telling you that is an external sign. (My hunch, having talked to many schizophrenics, is that the 'voices' they hear are not well understood in the way "hearing voices" would suggest, as though youre on your couch and an internal radio's playing some voice talking to you. But thats another topic altogether.)
True. I guess you mean it's irrelavent if there really is any voice in the same way it's irrelevant whether we're presently in a simulation, or that the world is your mind and I'm just one of those crazy voices you hear.
Which I am, by the way.
Yes.
So is a flux itself a state of balance according to you? Help me understand your understanding of homeostasis here.
Oh no, I think it's relevant. My response to Banno only meant that I think the terminology of mental states only makes sense in the setting in which its used (if even there). Theres very real stuff going on, but 'mental states' isnt going to get you close to it.
In terms of schizophrenic voices - I just mean the voices seem more like a drama being played out through (or within) a person than a hallucination appearing (resounding?) to a stable subject.
But im much more sure of the first paragraph than the second. (And I probably shouldn't have even brought up the stuff in the second. It's not all that relevant here.)
I disagreed. Homeostasis is in fact all about states. The state of blood pressure, the state of glucose and O2 supply, etc.
Since you mentioned "constant state", I think you were confusing "state" and "stasis."
Abstract objects might be considered the only things that can be truly static because they can be atemporal: like the number 12.
I don't understand. What do you mean by this?
Nope. My point was that talk of "states" usually already presupposes a particular metaphysical point of view - a mechanical or computational one.
And indeed, talk of states does become problematic when talking about organisms as if they were merely finite state automata.
So it would be helpful if the OP had tried to define how state is intended to be understood - in some hand waving way that defies definition in fact, or as something that can be given a usefully precise set of ontic commitments.
That was my point. Not something else.
Quoting frank
Un huh. Well I did biology and it was all about managing the instability of those things.
And how do organisms regulate their blood pressure or glucose levels? In some sense they sense their own state of being. They can make measurements that encode something of significance about how they "are right now" compared to how they imagine they "ought generally to be".
And the fact that there is this interpreting of measurements business going on is where things start to get interestingly complex. What happens if your body is misreading its glucose signals - something about its instrumentation is out of whack - and so homeostatically it is chasing a misguided target?
So yeah, in a very loose way you can talk about "states" of the body's vital signs as if they were something clearly physical - the kind of readings a doctor's instruments would provide. But that kind of Newtonian physicalist ontology doesn't really get you very far in understanding how the biology actually works.
And the same applies in spades when it comes to neuroscience and "states of mind".
So:
I've spent time in psych wards, for major depression. In those wards, I spent a lot of time around people with schizophrenia. Big caveat here: My experience with schizophrenics is mostly with those who are in the depths of acute psychosis, not with those who are managing symptoms out in the real world.
That said: I noticed that most of the schizophrenics I talked to seem to be highly attuned to the power dynamics and emotional currents of their environment. In many ways they seemed *more* aware of what was going on than the others there. Talking to them, they'd almost always speak in allegories, or metaphors. People talk about schizophrenic 'word salad' but my impression was that there was always a strange logic to their free-association. And they'd shift 'voices' or 'registers' correspondingly. But they weren't just 'in another world' - they were interpreting the world we were in, through themselves.
It's hard to put this into words: We're very used to people talking about what they feel and who they are and what's going on - we're used to people talking about that stuff in terms of personal beliefs, feelings, etc all centered around an 'I'. But these conversations - it was more like witnessing - and being called upon to witness - a kind of jazz show/tone poem/mood play, that would shift depending on what was happening. Most of the schizophrenics I talked to had a stable cast of characters (or scenarios, or voices) that would act in different ways, depending.
But most of the schizophrenics were also aware of the position of power the psychiatric staff held - one patient, who preferred to bathe things in Norse Mythology - talked about the Priests of Asgard, for example. Psychiatrists ask you to give an account of what you're feeling. You, the I, giving an account to another, the doctor. Quite like priests. This is only one way of talking, and most - not all - of the schizophrenics I knew would adjust themselves, and speak in terms of hallucinations etc. But that isn't how they usually talked to the rest of us, when the psychiatrists weren't around.
I don't know if that helps at all.
Just out of curiosity. We're these schizophrenics against or grudging towards these high 'priests' as they call the psychiatrists there? Schizophrenia is essentially a issue of a 'failure to adapt' to one's settings or even one's diagnosis, and in many cases schizophrenics rebel against the settings, themselves, and the people who they resent being called as schizophrenics.
Blood pressure is complex plumbing. We generally start by looking at baroreceptors on the renal arteries and go from there. Its not magic.
The oddity of an organism vs a mechanism has to do with the kind of causation that's revealed in the overarching flowchart.
Yes; but, I guess schizophrenia is the logical conclusion of the highest form of a failure to adapt. It's just a placeholder name I referenced.
Why do I bother.
This is interesting. Because I've realized that schizophrenia has to be addressed at an early age to deter a person from becoming convinced about the internal chatter/reality/distorted dreamworld they generate.
We're most of these people of an early onset in their diagnosis and if not we're the older types more prone to not wanting to adhere to the protocol of treating their diagnosis and thus were more hostile towards the people trying to help them?
But again, I should probably re-iterate that you only wind up in a psych ward if your symptoms have become overwhelming. So there could be a kind of selection bias, here. It may be that I didn't meet many people who were open to standard ways of treating their condition, because the people who were able to integrate that kind of treatment didn't need to go to psych ward. Hard to know.
OK, thanks.
This is hard and there are mountains of books trying to describe things including on psychology and psychodynamics.
Accessing other peoples mental states is a puzzle. We cannot see other peoples minds in the same way as we experience our own. It seems an impenetrable barrier. This becomes quite solipsistic where one has to rely on ones own mind to make analogies about other people and it is also where process all other information.
Maybe we well be able to connect peoples brains so that they can tap into other peoples experiences in some way.
I think the best we can is to try and report our mental contents as accurately as possible. Another question though is to what is mind independent and what things are like stripped of the input of mental processes.
OK, so mental states have a subset of propositional attitudes.
And some mental states have no content - I suppose that's like "I'm happy".
That's another decent point. Cheers.
I'm not too happy about including time here. But the point that being in a given state implies the possibility of bing in some other state is a good one.
So mental states have a modal element.
Mental states are just feelings?
Quoting csalisbury
Was it? "John is mad" - the mental state is a predicate rather than an individual here...
Quoting csalisbury
This. Yes. The mental state is exhibited, apparent in the doings of the individual.
I wouldn't equate the two. Emotion is an integral part. Personally, I do not find these mental states very understandable at all aside from experiencing some emotion or other for a time. During the time, it's a state. I suppose.
I'm unsure about that much actually. I mean, I personally wouldn't object to a mental state of hunger, for example. Hunger isn't normally categorized as an emotion.
Yeah, moods were what I mostly had in mind when saying that the mental state isn't about anything in particular -- since moods are global upon experience.
Quoting Banno
Always a pleasure. :)
I would only add that the beliefs, emotions (ineffable other being-a-person things) etc of the person to whom the mental state are ascribed are totally real, just slip through the mesh of 'mental states' and any other linguistic net one might try to cast.
In other words, I'd agree that 'mental states' have a socio- behavioral meaning, but also say the fact that one can correctly use 'mental state x' indicates that there's an iceberg-beneath-the-tip level of stuff allowing this.
I'm not sure if we're on the same page in this regard?
Apologies for trying to read so much into OP's scattered comments so far. I try to jump ahead because there are tells and these beliefs tend to cluster together, and I've heard & gotten tired of them all, so I try to predict where people are going so we can get a move on to more interesting stuff.
Who's to say that they've gotten things right? Mental states aren't all entirely creations of our language and understanding. Some consist of things that we discover.
So, focusing upon our conception use neglects to focus upon the target of our meaning. Our conceptions can be wrong about some things. Namely any and all things that are not existentially dependent upon our language use.
:worry:
I don't think it's a lack of focus - one can't focus on a fog; it might be that an analysis of mental states will not reveal more detail. If it were helpful we could talk of being happy, or sad, or hungry, or indifferent, as emotions. But there appears to be a difference between an emotion and a mental state. Is being convinced, say by a mathematical discourse, an emotion or a state of mind?
This, as I understand, is an internal position; mental states are independent of what is going on around us. Not sure if this is like being a priori or like being phenomenal. Either way, we have to avoid it being seen as inexpressible, and hence beyond discussion.
Nor am I.
I would point out that if someone's mental state is ineffable, then it is pointless to discuss it.
But then we do discuss mental states - with a degree of ambiguity or uncertainty.
Hence, mental states cannot be ineffable.
How does that sit with you?
Wittgenstein showed that meaning lies in shared use. There is a long history of mistaking this for behaviourism.
Behaviourism does not necessarily deny that there are hidden things going on; it suggests that the way to learn about them is to look at the behaviour in which they result. Wittgenstein, in one way, goes further in supposing that meaning is found only in our shared use of words and symbols.
That is, whatever goes on beneath the surface, it is not language or meaning.
But that's not to deny that there is stuff going on beneath the surface.
We talk about the ineffable in poetry, philosophy, art, mystery. And yet it remains ineffable.
As hinted at in the earlier post of mine, I would tend to agree with all this...
There indeed can be a difference between experiencing some emotion or an other and a state of mind. However, it seems that there are states of mind that are virtually indistinguishable from emotional states. Being excited is both. Being hungry, not so much. So, I would think that all emotion would qualify as a state of mind, but I would not say that all states of mind are emotional ones.
Being convinced would qualify as a state of mind. The contemplating would be a state of mind in itself. Being convinced would be a resultant state of mind. Or at least, that seems simple and straight forward enough for my liking.
So, yes. I would think that being convinced by a mathematical discourse would qualify as being a state of mind. That of being certain or convinced.
I think you've missed me from the get-go then
I strove- strove - to indicate how the use of things like 'mental states' is unrelated to the people to whom those states are attributed.
[editorial: real people who suffer are not grist for bad linguistic philosophy, they aren't examples for shallow wryness}
but -
Quoting csalisbury
Hm. Yep, I've missed you. There is some relation between someone and their mental state, surely.
Definition of “a”
A Relevant speech/language counterpart of orthographic “a”
Definition of “mental” – All found in Merriam-Webster
Of or relating to the mind; specifically: of or relating to the total emotional and intellectual response of an individual to external reality
• mental health
Of or relating to intellectual as contrasted with emotional activity
• mental acuity
Relating to, or being intellectual as contrasted with overt physical activity
• made quick mental calculations
Occurring or experienced in the mind: inner
• mental anguish
• a mental breakdown
Relating to the mind, its activity, or its products as an object of study: ideological
• mental science
Relating to spirit or idea as opposed to matter
• the distinction between physical things and mental ideas
Definition of “state” - relevant
Condition of mind or temperament.
• in a highly nervous state
Condition of abnormal tension or excitement.
Thus deducting from the aforementioned definitions “a mental state” would be time dependent due to the probability of change thus making the whole condition a variable of a specific frame of reference point, relating to the total emotional and intellectual response of an individual to external reality. An objective measurable state of emotional mental faculties can only be observed and calculated from an external point of view. An unknown amount of emotional dependencies exists subjectively within the individual that is impossible to measure by any means from the external, thus portions are extracted relating to the known thus giving limitational parameters constructed by the collective psychological views on Emotional and mental faculties of the mind. These together with the Time parameter is used to create a referenceable state that could be used in therapy when psycho analysing the origins that gave rise to the referenced.
Well, it would be wrong if one's conception of mind was equivalent to only the brain.
It's the state you're in when they put you in a mental institution. :wink: :joke:
No, seriously, I would say it is a more or less complex experiential process that exemplifies one or more cohesive themes.
Well, mental states are semi-independent, I might prefer to say. They are queer in that they aren't totally independent of what's happening around us, and they aren't fully determined either. And perhaps that sliding scale changes from person to person, too -- we can develop a certain amount of independence from our circumstances, but not everyone can do this as much as others, and we are surely never fully independent of our environment in our mental states.
I don't think I'd say that mental states are inexpressible. But there is something worth noting in being tempted to say they are. There is something that seems missing, a lot of the time, in attempting to express our mental states (or whatever they are). Our attempts often fall short, for whatever reason. And there is value in extra-propositional knowledge when it comes to mental states -- we value people who have experienced a certain kind of pain in speaking about said pain over someone who might have read a lot of books about pain.
But I wouldn't say that it's entirely beyond discussion. We do talk about what seems to count as mental states very frequently. It's just very particular to the moment, and so caution is advisable in making generalizations.
Quoting Banno
I'd say yes. But I would say that such knowledge is heavily dependent upon listening -- to a point that certainty is always relative to what someone tells us about themselves, rather than relative to our prior experiences with people who seem like such and such. The particularity of mental states makes it so that generalizations are too inaccurate to take as guiding theories of persons, I think.
So far my definition of 'mind' is 'the directive/structural/organizational mechanism of life'. While this definition may not be fully thought through, it does help in explaining a little about how the mind works. The brain, I define as 'the physical interface for the mind'. This is kind of the relationship between software and hardware. The 'mind' is the software while the 'brain' is the hardware.
I see a mental state as something close to an attitude or a character but not yet a personality because while it lacks permanency, there is a distinct persistence/recurrence to its mode of operation. I would then define a mental state as an element of mind ( usually that which is in focus within consciousness). Therefore, while the 'mind' is the 'structural mechanism', a 'mental state' would be an individual 'structure' within the mechanism.
* [JUST FOR CONTEXT => As to 'emotions', I define them as 'the fuel substance for life'; that is, an ingredient which nourishes or catalyses life processes. For example, for a house to exist, there must have been a plan, then afterwards the materials and lastly the builders who perform the actual work. From my perspective, the plan symbolizes the mental aspect, the materials symbolize the emotional aspect, and the builders symbolize the physical/practical aspect. Basically, I don't think there can be one aspect without relation to the others in life, otherwise life would not be.]
I don't know, does this make sense? What do you think?
What I meant was that 'mental states' aren't a thing - they have no ontological heft. The meaning of 'mental states' boils down to complex patterns of behavior and linguistic usage. Or almost: its also grounded in the hodgpodge of values, insitutional, ethical etc, that ground those patterns.
So yes they're effable, mental states, because their substance is effability. They're a way of organizing our speech and behavior in the face of whatever is the cause of that speech and behavior (as mediated by the socio-linguistic game of 'mental states')
(Note that this isn't relativism. You can be wrong in ascribing a mental state, even if mental states don't 'exist'. Linguists talk about felicitous usage. That way of framing is right, here. The ability to tag something correctly, in the right way, in a complex tagging-environment is different than saying something that corresponds or doesnt to a real referent.)
This doesn't make sense to me.
(Unless youre just doing a game, for the sake of it, of 'if you speak of it, then its effable [and nothing is left out in the effing]' Which is basically a lingustic stove's gem, isn't it?)
I haven't the capacity right now to reply in the detail this deserves, so I will just say that this looks good to me, provided I ignore the problematic phrase "ontological heft".
Further this seems to me to be the same for belief.
Part of what I am doing is exploring the difference between saying and showing. One can't say stuff about the ineffable - but we do anyway. How does that work? Talk about the ineffable must be showing.
Not this. The more I think about mental states, and belief in particular, the less solid they become.
Very much in agreement with this.
One of my all-time favorite quotes from literature - its in my bio - deals with this, I think. He (William Gaddis) is obviously using language artistically (like the use of 'truth') but I think he's touching on something very similar:
"When people tell a truth they do not understand what they mean, they say it by accident, it goes through them and they do not recognize it until someone accuses them of telling the truth, then they try to recover it as their own and it escapes."
I think this captures the relationship between showing and saying well (and esp what happens when saying tries to be showing)
Quoting csalisbury
Hmmm.
States are just a particular set of processes (occurring subjectively or objectively). We come to identify and experience states that are familiar and occur regularly, and we tend to label them for our own practical utility. A mental state is a subjective phenomenon occurring at a particular moment in time.
Quoting Banno
Yes.
Quoting Banno
Mental states are physical states. Everything is always changing/in flux, and so everything/event/process is temporary.