Terminology

1
Terminology

• Materialism The universe consists entirely of
  physical stuff.
• Normally associated with the contemporary
  scientific view of the world.

2
Two Varieties of Dualism

• Substance dualism There are two kinds of
  substance in the universe physical substance and
  nonphysical mental stuff.
• Property dualism There are two kinds of
  properties that a thing can have, physical
  properties and nonphysical mental properties.
  (Consistent with all things being material
  things.)

3
Sketch of Rene Descartess famous argument for
dualism

• I can imagine myself existing without a physical
  body (or any physical basis).
• Thus, its possible for me to exist without a
  body.
• Thus, Im not identical to a physical body.
• Therefore, my self is constituted by a
  nonphysical substance.

4
Is this an argument only for property dualism?

• Because I can imagine the mind and body
  separated, mental properties must not be
  identical to physical properties but maybe the
  thing that has both kinds of properties is
  ultimately physical.

5
More Terminology

• Mind-Brain Identity Theory A given kind of
  mental state is identical to a specific kind of
  brain state
• (faces the chauvinism objection)
• Functionalism To be in mental state S is to be
  in some state or other that plays the distinctive
  causal role of states of type S.

6
Is functionalism a form of property-dualism?

• Its plausible that functional properties are
  completely determined by physical ones.
• Is it possible for the two to come apart? Could
  something have a given functional property in a
  world with a completely different distribution of
  physical properties?

7
Chalmerss distinction

• The easy problems of consciousness are standard
  cognitive scientific problems, having to do with
  access, reportability, and generally, the effects
  of various neural and cognitive states on each
  other and on behavior.
• The hard problem of consciousness Accounting for
  the subjective quality of experience, its
  intrinsic character (the soft feel of fur, the
  tart taste of a lemon).

8
Easy problems and functionalism

• -Work on the easy problems presupposes
  functionalism (or perhaps identity theory)
• -From a scientific standpoint, though, it does
  not matter whether this amounts to property
  dualism, so long as, for each population, there
  is a correlation between physical structure and
  functional properties associated with
  consciousness.

9
Searle on Consciousness

• Searle says that, as a matter of fact, in our
  world biological properties cause conscious ones,
  including the qualia.
• If we can figure out which physical properties
  cause which conscious experiences (or cause
  consciousness to exist at all), the easy and hard
  problems are solved.

10
The properties to be explained

• -qualitativeness a given conscious experience
  has distinctive, intrinsic characteristics
• -subjectivity conscious experiences are
  necessarily experiences of a self or mind
• -unity conscious experience is always part of a
  single unified field

11
Searle and dualism

• The physical properties cause conscious
  experience, but do conscious experiences cause
  anything to happen in the physical world?
  Movement? Speech? Reactions?
• If so, why isnt this dualism?

12
The building block approach to the scientific
study of consciousness

• We try identify the neural correlates of
  conscious states (NCC), for various aspects of
  our conscious experience
• Then we figure out how they get bound together.

13
Unified field approach

• Figure out what brings about consciousness at all
  (versus unconsciousness), then study patterns of
  modification of the field.
• This motivates a different kind of research
  program than is often reported on in the
  literature. Not so much study of blindsight and
  binocular rivalry, and more study of, say, the
  thalamocortical loop.

14
Thalamocortical loop

• The thalamus is a complex subcortical structure
  that receives incoming sensory information,
  relays it to sensory cortices, and receives
  feedback from sensory cortices.
• In the laminated neocortex (six layers), thalamus
  projects to layer four, four projects to other
  layers, then six sends information back to the
  thalamus.