iwpoe wrote:

So, I've tried to follow Feser on mind, but I've not exactly worked out how I should understand typical approaches to the brain and the mind relative to scholasticism. Should they simply be rejected as fundamentally incoherent, or are neuro and cognitive scientists doing real work with generally mistaken metaphysics or, what exactly?

Some questions:

Is the claim that the mind is a computer strictly physicalist or not? Sciencey people act like it is, but Feser sometimes speaks of this as a poor understanding of computers.

First of all we must remember that cognitive researchers ever since Broadbent are accustomed to talk of the Mind's capacity in 'computer-speak', in terms of processing language. Some of them are keen to point out though that this is only an analogy, a fruitful way of speaking which allows us to better understand cognitive processes by comparing them to another ‘information processing faculty’ (of course computers have no such thing and it’s our minds which read that into pure mechanical activity). So in denying the Computationalist theory of mind we in no way throw out what psychologists and neurologists say.

iwpoe wrote:

Is the claim that the mind is a computer incompatible with a wider non-physicalism like that of scholasticism? Specifically why?

In regards to the Computationalism proper the Functionalist claim to multiple-realisability implies that any substance could have a mind if it's capable of fulfilling the requisite casual roles. Many Functionalists are happy to admit that an immaterial substance could do this (they thereby undercut Descartes' Conceivability Argument) but in the case of humanity there is no need to posit one.

Even if there was a way to stipulate that the substance had to be immaterial there wouldn't be much to gain from accepting such a model. Casual imput/output theories of mind are phenomenologicaly impoverished to say the least

iwpoe wrote:

So, I've tried to follow Feser on mind, but I've not exactly worked out how I should understand typical approaches to the brain and the mind relative to scholasticism. Should they simply be rejected as fundamentally incoherent, or are neuro and cognitive scientists doing real work with generally mistaken metaphysics or, what exactly?

I think that scientific results have some value, but it's hard to separate results from (false) metaphysical interpretation. In practice, I don't think that e.g. cognitive science will tell you a lot about the nature of the mind, though the results aren't useless or necessarily false. (They might help someone develop cognitive-behavioral therapy, for instance.)

iwpoe wrote:

Is the claim that the mind is a computer strictly physicalist or not?

Well, a standard line of functionalism has always been that it is technically compatible with either physicalism or non-physicalism. Mental states are functional states; they might be functional states of physical brains or of Cartesian res cogitans. (This sort of line is usually made in this way, supposing that mental state would be functional states of, if not matter, then some other kind of matter, i.e. immaterial Cartesian goo.)

Computationalism has something in common with functionalism. In principle you could imagine a non-physicalist computationalist, I suppose. But no one defends that, and the main interest seems to be in showing that there's nothing in principle more remarkable about mental states than the states of my laptop.

Ad hominem I'd also say physicalism is important to a lot of pop computationalist's self-image. You'll see people working in AI pining over the prospects and moral dimensions of creating conscious machines.

iwpoe wrote:

Is the claim that the mind is a computer incompatible with a wider non-physicalism like that of scholasticism? Specifically why?

I would say so. The position that the mind is a computer is an indeterminate claim; it has to be spelled out more. It seems to be a category mistake; for scholastics, minds are souls are forms, but computers are things, indeed artefacts. Another sense in which it's ambiguous: What makes something a computer? In the theory of computation, I can define a "machine" on a piece of paper, but it doesn't do anything. I might write out how it "responds" to some input.

In other words, it seems like the theoretically useful notion of "computer" is an abstract one. How I construct the computer is another matter. That's not the case with minds.