Announcements

1
Announcements

• For Thursdays class read Nagels What is it
  like to be a bat? and Dennetts The
  Intentional Stance
• The midterms will be handed back on Thursday
• As is custom, tutorial questions will be posted
  by 10pm tomorrow night do look over them before
  tutorial, that will help the discussion

2
Frankfurt Continued The Definition of Freedom

• When are we free?
• It is only because a person has volitions of the
  second order that he is capable of enjoying or
  lacking freedom of the will (334)
• We do not suppose that animals enjoy freedom of
  the will, although we recognize that an animal
  may be free to run in whatever direction it
  wants. Thus, having the freedom to what one
  wants to do is not a sufficient condition of
  having a free will (334)

3
The definition of Freedom

• When a person is able to become who they want to
  be to have the will they want and feel/think is
  the best for them, then they are free. Freedom
  is not doing whatever we want.
• When a second-order desire becomes the first
  order desire effective for action, then the will
  is free. And, as mentioned, this is the case
  regardless of whether the action can be performed
  or not

4
Three Problems Critique

• (1) Coerced yet free?
• (2) It was done against my will, I didnt do it
  freely, therefore, I am not responsible? We do
  allow this in the case of the addict addiction
  needs to be treated but.?
• (3) The introduction of Mr. Black, the mad
  scientist. Do we need further analysis of
  mineness, of when and how something is my own

5
The Value of this Account

• Improvement over traditional accounts of agent
  causation
• Agent Causation the prime mover unmoved the
  agent causes an action without being herself an
  event in the causal chain.
• Critique It doesnt get at the uniquely human
  a rabbit can have agent causation on such a
  metaphysical picture. The wanton has agent
  causation.

6
The Value of this Account

• Consequently, agent causation doesnt tell us why
  we care or why we should care if we have free
  will or not
• Relation to freewill/determinism debate?
  Frankfurt considers it neutral. But consider the
  following odd statement
• It seems conceivable that it should be causally
  determined that a person is free to want what he
  wants to wants. If this is conceivable, then it
  might be causally determined that a person enjoys
  free will. (337)

7
Neutrality?

• Is this conceivable? Can we say that we are
  caused to have a free will or that we are caused
  to be free? Wouldnt this be like the problem
  mentioned before where Black, natural forces,
  infinite causal chain, whatever, is what forms
  our second order volitions and therefore we are
  not free because we do not believe them to be
  fully our own? The story of Brett.

8
The story gets complicated

• We can be morally responsible even if we could
  not have done otherwise!
• How so? A third drug addict like the other two
  the unwilling addict and the wanton he is
  unable to resist his desire to take the drug.
  His will is thus outside his control.
• However, he likes his addiction and wouldnt
  have it any other way. Thus, he has a second
  order volition to take the drug

9
The story gets complicated

• It is because he possesses this second order
  volition, that we regard him as morally
  responsible
• He is morally responsible for taking the drug
  even though he could not have done otherwise!
• Question Is this really an example of
  responsible though could not have done
  otherwise? For example, what is it that we are
  holding the willing addict morally responsible
  for? Is it the actual taking of the drug, which
  we all agree he CNDO?

10
A Critique and Defence of Frankfurt

• From Watson in Free Agency
• There must be something more about a second-order
  desire and second order volition to make it
  special. Why is a second order desire qua desire
  so special? For
• Cant one be a wanton with respect to ones
  second-order desires and volitions?

11
A Critique and Defence

• Since second-order volitions are themselves
  simply desires, to add them to the context of
  conflict is just to increase the number of
  contenders it is not to give a special place to
  any of those in contention. And what is to stop
  an infinite regress?

12
Frankfurt Aware

• Another complexity is that person may have,
  especially if his second order desires are in
  conflict, desires and volitions of a higher order
  than the second. There is no theoretical limit
  to the length of the series of desires of higher
  and higher orders nothing except common sense
  and, perhaps, a saving fatigue prevents an
  individual from obsessively refusing to identify
  himself with any of his desires until he forms a
  desire of the next higher order..

13
Frankfurt Aware

• It is possible, however, to terminate such a
  series of acts without cutting it off
  arbitrarily. When a person identifies himself
  decisively with one of his first-order desires,
  this commitment resounds throughout the
  potentially endless array of higher orders (335)

14
This wont work

• What prevents wantonness with respect to higher
  order volitions? What gives these volitions any
  special relation to oneself? It is unhelpful
  to state that one makes a decisive commitment
  where this just means one stops the series. This
  is arbitrary. Does second order in itself tell
  us why a particular want can have, among all of a
  persons desires, the special property of being
  peculiarly his own?

15
This wont work

• Watsons concern is that as a desire there is
  nothing uniquely special or revealing of it being
  second-order. If we leave the definition of
  second-order desires just as desire it seems to
  be no different from the wanton we just act as
  we desire to the wanton except that now it is
  on a second order.

16
A Defence

• Frankfurt does indeed describe a second order
  desire as Someone has a desire of the second
  order when he wants simply to have a certain
  desire or when he wants a certain desire to be
  his will (333)
• And on this definition Watson has a point in
  questioning what is so special about the
  second-order desire.

17
A Defence

• However, if we keep in mind what Frankfurt says
  on p. 331 that humans have the capacity for
  reflective self-evaluation that is manifested in
  the formation of second-order desires and treat
  such evaluative reflection as a rational how
  else do we interpret reflection? search for
  what is of decisive importance to us then we can
  avoid such arbitrariness.
• Frankfurt should have accentuated this.

18
Nagels Moral Luck

• Main Thesis there exists a paradox at the very
  core of our moral judgments and assessments. We
  hold a person responsible for what she has done.
  It is unfair, unreasonable and unjust to hold a
  person responsible for factors beyond her
  control, for what she did not do. And yet,
  intrinsic to the very forming of moral judgments
  and the very possibility of morality, not just
  our practices of moral judgments and assessments
  which can be judged as irrational and corrected,
  in our more sober moments,..

19
Main Thesis

• ..we must include factors beyond the persons
  control. Hence the paradox
• A person can be morally responsible only for
  what he does but what he does results from a
  great deal that he does not do therefore he is
  not morally responsible for what he is and is not
  responsible for. (This is not a contradiction,
  but it is a paradox.)(372)

20
Simple Illustration

• To be developed in greater detail later
• Situation A your friend drives home drunk but
  arrives safely.
• How do you feel about your friend? What is your
  moral assessment?
• Anger, you consider the person to have done a
  stupid and careless act. However, alls well
  that ends well, you chastise your friend and
  are happy to learn that she will not do it again.

21
Simple Illustration

• Situation B your friend drives home drunk and
  in failing to brake kills an eight year old
  child.
• How do you fell about your friend now? What is
  your moral assessment?
• Fury, she has now killed someone and bears such
  moral reprobation and responsibility. You
  chastise your friend but though she says that she
  will never do it again, you are still quite upset
  about a precious life and all life is precious
  lost.

22
Simple Illustration

• Dont you fell angrier with your friend in
  situation B? Is not your moral assessment of her
  harsher in situation B?
• Legally this is so
• Situation A the person is caught on the way
  home. License suspended, demerit points taken
  away, a stiff penalty.
• Situation B License suspended if not altogether
  revoked, charged with vehicle manslaughter, jail
  time, a much harsher penalty.

23
Simple Illustration

• Yet, what is the only difference in the two
  situations? Luck. A factor beyond her control.
  And yet we hold her more responsible, both
  legally and morally, for such factors beyond her
  control. Is this fair? Rational?

24
Development of the Thesis

• Step one our basic moral intuition (BMI). On
  Nagels account pre-reflective.
• BMI we will hold people morally responsible
  only for what they have done, what is under their
  control, what is their intent and what they have
  themselves willed. For, it is intuitively
  plausible that people cannot be morally assessed
  for what is not their fault, or for what is due
  to factors beyond their control (368). We shall
  exclude such external factors, both positive and
  negative, from..

25
Development of the Thesis

• .our moral assessments.
• Step Two we note cases of moral luck.
• However jewel-like the good will may be in its
  own right, there is a morally significant
  difference between rescuing someone from a
  burning building and dropping him from a
  twelfth-story window while trying to rescue him.
  Similarly, there is a morally significant
  difference between reckless driving and
  manslaughter. (368)

26
Moral Luck

• Do we agree? Is there a morally significant
  difference in the two situations? For example,
  do we regard a person equally as a hero in both
  cases despite the outcome?
• How about the second example?
• Definition of Moral Luck
• Where a significant aspect of what someone does
  depends on factors beyond his control, yet we
  continue to treat him in that respect as an
  object of moral judgment, it can be called moral
  luck. (368)

27
Moral Luck

• Think of Situation A and Situation B above
• The obvious way out to save BMI
• To carefully circumscribe, partition, delineate
  our moral judgments and assessments according to
  BMI strictly to what is in a persons control.
  We need to draw some lines, a more refined
  condition which picked out the kinds of lack of
  control that really undermine certain moral
  judgments, without yielding the unacceptable

28
A way out?

• conclusion derived from the broader condition,
  that most or all ordinary moral judgments are
  illegitimate (368)
• So in our drunk driving example, I will hold the
  person equally morally responsible for the act
  regardless of the outcome. If I find myself
  feeling angrier in situation B I will state
  such an excess of reprobation and anger to be due
  to the circumstantial outcome and state of
  affairs and NOT towards the person herself. I
  will keep

29
A way out?

• my praise and blame towards the person herself
  constant in both situations. The person is
  equally to be praised or blamed, the person is
  equally a hero.
• Questions with respect to this way out?
• Do we accept it morally? Do we believe that a
  person is more responsible, more to be blamed,
  for an act of negligence that kills someone as
  opposed to the very same act of negligence that
  doesnt?

30
A way out?

• How about legally? For example, would it be
  fair to give both people in situation A and B
  the same punishment?
• Or how about murder and attempted murder? Should
  they both get the same sentence?
• But a deeper problem lurks here for Nagel.
• This way out cannot be accomplished.
• What is Nagels response here to this way out?

31
Response

• What rules out this escape is that we are
  dealing not with a theoretical conjecture but
  with a philosophical problem..The erosion of
  moral judgment emerges not as the absurd
  consequence of an over-simple theory, but as a
  natural consequence of the ordinary idea of moral
  assessment, when it is applied in view of a more
  complete and precise account of the facts.The
  view that moral luck is paradoxical is not a
  mistake, ethical or logical, but a perception

32
Response

• of one of the ways in which the intuitively
  acceptable conditions of moral judgment threaten
  to undermine it all. (368-9)
• The suggestion here seems to be that such a way
  out may theoretically work but is so much
  against the grain of our acceptable moral
  practices the intuitively acceptable
  conditions of moral judgment(369) as not to be
  viable.
• Our moral judgments and practices are to be prima
  facie accepted as correct it is how we make.

33
Response

• .moral judgments which are satisfying to us and
  they are paradoxical.
• Rebuttal why accept our intuitions here? If it
  leads to a paradox then there is a mistake,
  contra Nagel, that needs to be corrected. If the
  way out does this, then the agenda should be to
  reform our moral practices, intuitions and
  judgments in line with this way out in order
  to preserve BMI. This kind of response is no
  response. If Nagel is to be ultimately
  convincing he needs to argue..

34
Response

• that this way out is itself not even
  conceptually and theoretically possible in light
  of the demands of moral assessment itself.
  Otherwise, he is simply begging the question in
  favour of our present practices. Our present
  practices may well be irrational in need of
  reform. As we shall see, there is some hint in
  Nagel of him taking up this stronger requirement.

35
An epistemological analogy

• Our beliefs are always, ultimately, due to
  factors outside our control, and the
  impossibility of encompassing those factors
  without being at the mercy of others lead us to
  doubt whether we know anything. It looks as
  though, if any of our beliefs are true, it is
  pure biological luck rather than knowledge.
  (369)
• We have enough philosophy in us already to
  understand this! Isnt that pretty cool!
• As we saw with Descartes, Hume and Russell,

36
An epistemological analogy

• knowledge is a relation between subject and
  object. Skepticism arises because we appear to
  be stuck on one side of the relation the
  subjective while knowledge requires that we be
  in possession of both sides, of both relata. It
  is logically possible that the world is utterly
  different from the way we think and perceive it
  and yet causing in us to have those thoughts and
  perceptions. Thus, it indeed looks as though,
  if any of our beliefs are true, it is pure
  biological.

37
An epistemological analogy

• if we can even talk about truth in
  biological terms luck rather than knowledge.
• Furthermore, even if we believed contra
  Descartes, Hume and Russell, that access to the
  external world through our sense perceptions is
  unproblemmatic, that we can swear such sense
  stimuli and processing to truthfulness, we still
  have the phenomena that such access is relative
  to our cognitive capabilities and more
  importantly, limitations.

38
An epistemological analogy

• A genetically modified human being or angels,
  extra-terrestrials, if they exist with greater
  computational skills, modified sense organs
  (x-ray eyes) and higher cognitive
  functioning, may see aspects of reality that we
  constitutionally cannot. Such higher beings
  may stand in relation to us as we do to eight
  year olds and just as we cannot explain certain
  abstract concepts such as justice to such eight
  year olds due to their psychological
  under-development to grasp

39
An epistemological analogy

• abstractions, so too we may not be able to grasp
  certain concepts due to our under-development.
  Who can definitively state otherwise?
• What is on the objective pole of knowledge and
  reality is not subject to our decree and control
  therefore, we have no way to discount such
  possible dimensions of reality that the human
  species may not have evolved to experience. But
  then again, we have no reason or experience to
  believe in them either.

40
Morality in the same boat

• A similar situation arises for moral judgments
• Moral luck is like this because while there are
  various respects in which the natural objects of
  moral assessment are out of our control, or
  influenced by what is out of our control, we
  cannot reflect on these facts without losing our
  grip on the judgments.(369)
• Now we come to the crux of Nagels argument. He
  needs to establish this the stronger
  requirement if he is to convince us of paradox.

41
Morality in the same boat

• He needs to demonstrate that we have lost a grip
  on the judgments of morality if we attempt to
  calibrate such control issues. We understand the
  epistemological issue how indeed the world is
  not in our control. Is it similar to the
  possibility of moral judgments?
• Can he do it?! Is he successful?
• Let us proceed

42
Four Types of Moral Luck

• (1) Constitutive Luck the kind of person you
  are, your temperament. Some people seem to be
  naturally shy or gregarious, a pleasant or
  unpleasant temperament.
• (2) Circumstances the kinds of problems and
  situations one faces
• (3) Antecedent Circumstances considered
  strictly in terms of cause/effect relationships
  not the more broadly construed (2) though Nagel
  doesnt give much by way of example for this one.

43
Four Types of Moral Luck

• (4) How things turn out, their outcomes,
  consequences.
• To consider the latter first
• murder verses attempted murder
• Our drunk driving example
• Cases of decision under uncertainty
• Of the latter consider the following examples

44
Moral Luck Examples

• If the American Revolution had been a bloody
  failure resulting in greater repression, then
  Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington would still
  have made a noble attempt, and might not even
  have regretted it on their way to the scaffold,
  but they would also have had to blame themselves
  for what they had helped to bring on their
  compatriots. (Perhaps peaceful efforts at reform
  would eventually have succeeded). 370

45
Examples

• If Hitler had not overrun Europe and
  exterminated millions, but instead had died of a
  heart attack after occupying the Sudetenland,
  Chamberlains action at Munich would still have
  utterly betrayed the Czechs, but it would not be
  the great moral disaster that has made his name a
  household word. (370)

46
Our way out?

• But what about our way out? We will restrict
  the level of moral responsibility and judgment
  solely to the persons intent and what is in her
  control?
• Nagels response The mens rea which could have
  existed in the absence of any consequences does
  not exhaust the grounds or moral judgment.
  Actual results influence culpability of esteem in
  a large class of unquestionably ethical
  cases(370)

47
Our way out?

• Do we agree? This is the key to the debate. If
  we agree with Nagel that consequences cannot be
  separated from authentic moral judgments then he
  is in the clear regarding the paradoxical nature
  of such judgments. The consequences are often,
  if not always, beyond a persons control and
  since they are inseparable from a moral judgment
  concerning that person, then we are holding a
  person responsible for factors that lie beyond
  their control.

48
Supporting Argument

• Nagel provides the following supporting argument
  for his position
• That these are GENUINE moral judgments rather
  than expressions or temporary attitude is evident
  from the fact that one can say in advance how the
  moral verdict will depend on the results. If one
  negligently leaves the bath running with the baby
  in it, one will realize, as one bounds up the
  stairs toward the bathroom, that if the baby has
  drowned ONE has done something awful, whereas if
  it.

49
Supporting Argument

• has not one has merely been careless. (370,
  emphasis mine)
• So here Nagel appears to be adopting our
  stronger requirement arguing that it is a part
  of genuine moral judgments, and not just
  deficient ones in need of reform, that
  incorporates consequences in its assessment. Do
  we agree? Does he have a point that our judgment
  OF THE PERSON changes and must change if the act
  of leaving the water running causes a death as
  opposed to just a mess?

50
Rebuttal

• But shouldnt we pare down (371) each act to
  its morally essential core (371) by considering
  only the individuals will?
• 1. Contrary to our actual moral judgments (so?)
• 2. A move to the inner world wont work since
  inner factors can also be vulnerable to
  instances of luck i.e., a coughing fit (so?
  We ignore such factors as well)
• 3. The inner is also vulnerable as a whole to
  such luck this leads us to Constitutive Luck

51
Constitutive Luck

• For Kant, ones emotional states and dispositions
  are irrelevant for morality the key thing is to
  do ones moral duty. Yet
• A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold,
  ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited but behave
  perfectly by a monumental effort of will. so he
  is alright on the Kantian picture To possess
  these vices is to be unable to help having
  certain feelings under certain circumstances, and
  to have strong spontaneous impulses to act badly

52
Constitutive Luck

• But it is largely a matter of constitutive bad
  fortune. Yet people are morally condemned for
  such qualities, and esteemed for others equally
  beyond control of the will they are assessed
  for what they are like..We may be persuaded that
  these moral judgments are irrational, but they
  reappear involuntarily as soon as the argument is
  over. (371).
• Do we agree? If a person is an envious type do
  we believe that they can, and should change, and
  that is why we hold them responsible?

53
Constitutive Luck

• Do we agree? For example, do we think that the
  most moral person could still be emotionally
  cold?
• What do we hold a person responsible for here?
• Circumstantial Luck
• The things we are called upon to do, the moral
  tests we face, are importantly determined by
  factors beyond our control. It may be true that
  in a dangerous situation he would behave in a
  cowardly or heroic fashion, but if the situation
  never arises, he will never have the chance to.

54
Circumstantial Luck

• .distinguish or disgrace himself in this way,
  and his moral record will be different. (371)
• Are you so sure that you would not have become a
  Nazi in 1930s Germany where the gas chambers were
  not advertised and the injustices of the treaty
  of Versailles prevailed? Hind sight in always
  20/20 but do we know? And yet such circumstances
  beyond our control will help determine our moral
  standing. Is this paradoxical?

55
Antecedent Circumstances

• It is here that we have the problem of Freewill.
  Nagel considers the compatibilist solution
  .we may admit that if certain antecedent
  circumstances had been different, the agent would
  never have developed in the sort of person who
  would do such a thing but since he did develop
  (as the inevitable result of those antecedent
  circumstances) into the sort of swine he is, and
  into the person who committed such a murder, that
  is what he is blamable for.(372)

56
Antecedent Circumstances

• Nagel is not happy with such a solution for it
  does not explain the paradoxes involved in our
  moral judgments Something in the ordinary idea
  of what someone does must explain how it can seem
  necessary to subtract from it anything that
  merely happens even though the ultimate
  consequence of such subtraction is that nothing
  remains. (372)
• We need a deeper diagnosis of the problem.

57
The Diagnosis

• It is fundamentally a problem of bringing
  together a first person, internal, subjective
  viewpoint and understanding together with a third
  person, external, objective viewpoint and
  understanding. We are odd in that we can be
  considered as simultaneously subjects of internal
  awareness and action and objects of investigation
  and analysis.
• First person inner awareness, evaluations,
  forming of our motives to act. We are subjects.
• Third person all acts are events and we are
  analyzed accordingly as a series of events.

58
The Diagnosis

• Third Person people are studied as objects and
  things as all natural phenomena are studied. We
  appear to be both in the world as natural
  objects and the acts we perform as events in such
  a world of causation and yet we appear to be not
  in the world as subjects who perform such acts.
• How do we bring the two viewpoints together into
  a satisfying synthesis?

59
The solution?

• There is no solution to this problem of
  viewpoints. This is the deepest nature of the
  paradox we feel compelled to hold on to both
  viewpoints as necessary and legitimate however,
  they cannot be so held together.
• About ourselves we feel pride, shame, guilt and
  remorse and agent-regret. We do not regard our
  actions and our characters merely as fortunate or
  unfortunate episodes though they may also be
  that. We cannot simply take an external
  evaluative view of ourselves of what we most
  essentially

60
The solution?

• .are and what we do. And this remains true even
  when we have seen that we are not responsible for
  our own existence, or our nature, or the choices
  we have to make, or the circumstances that give
  our acts the consequences they have. Those acts
  remain ours and we remain ourselves, despite the
  persuasiveness of the reasons that seem to argue
  us out of existence.(373)
• Internally we cannot take the external viewpoint
  with all that that entails.

61
The Solution?

• And from an external viewpoint, we cannot
  understand such feelings as pride, shame, guilt
  and remorse for the course of events are just
  going to happen as they do, externally viewed
  no shame in that.
• And yet we seem unable to abandon both
  standpoints. Hence, the paradox.
• Question Suppose we adopt agent causation.
  In what manner would such a move help here?
  Would it solve all the problems and eliminate all
  paradox?

62
Ryles Exorcising Descartess Ghost in the
Machine
63
The Official Doctrine

• Descartes Dualism
• Every human being is both a body and a mind where
  body and mind are distinct substances or things
• Distinguishing marks of the mental
• Thoughts in the way we experience them do not
  have size, shape, weight, colour, dimension etc.
  The only characteristic they seem to share with
  physical things is duration in time.

64
Distinguishing marks of the Mental

• Furthermore, certain mental concepts i.e.,
  truth seem to have no correlate in a purely
  physical description
• Thoughts are private and unobservable. When I
  want to know what a physical object is I can take
  a look and see. If I want to know what you are
  thinking I cannot so observe I have to ask you
  and then trust that you are telling the truth.

65
Distinguishing marks of the mental

• As private, inner and unobservable we have the
  problem of knowing that others have minds
• We have direct immediate awareness through
  introspection of our thoughts.
• We do not infer our thoughts from evidence or
  observation not usually.
• We know them with a special privilege immune from
  error for the most part sometimes we have
  self-deception and Freudian considerations but
  these are not the norm immune from illusion.

66
Some Initial Problems

• Even when inner and outer are construed as
  metaphors, the problem how a persons mind and
  body influence one another is notoriously charged
  with theoretical difficulties (353)
• The familiar problem of Interactionism How
  can that which is purely immaterial, not physical
  or in space, interact with a material substance?
  Does such telekinesis happen? How are we to
  think of the connection? Can we?

67
Some Initial Problems

• When someone is described as knowing, believing
  or guessing something, as hoping, dreading.these
  verbs are supposed to denote the occurrence of
  specific modifications in his (to us) occult
  stream of consciousness. Only his own privileged
  access to this stream in direct awareness and
  introspection could provide authentic testimony
  that these mental-conduct verbs were correctly or
  incorrectly applied..

68
Some initial problems

• this would entail that there could be no
  regular or effective use of these mental-conduct
  concepts in our descriptions of, and
  prescriptions for, other peoples minds (355)
• If all mental terms and states were completely
  unobservable as they are on the Cartesian
  conception, then how are we able to know that we
  are applying them in the same way?

69
Some Initial Problems

• If I say that you are smart in characterizing
  your mental processes how can I know that you and
  I are using this word in the same way to
  characterize the same process if we cannot
  observe each others mental states?
• Ryle repeats this type of argument later in the
  essay

70
Some initial problems

• According to the theory, external observers
  could never know how the overt behaviour of
  others is correlated with their mental powers and
  processes and so they could never know or even
  plausibly conjuncture whether their applications
  of mental-conduct concepts to these other people
  were correct or incorrect (358)

71
Some Initial Problems

• This argument is Wittgensteins
• The Cartesian view states the mental to be
  essentially private and subjective. This gives
  rise to the problem of other minds. However,
  just as serious a problem is this Wittgensteinian
  one that Ryle presents.
• Such a view of mind seems to make interpersonal,
  intersubjective, communication utterly mysterious
  if not impossible

72
Some Initial Problems

• Borrowing from Wittgenstein, I have a beetle in
  my box the mind here is like our own box with
  only ourselves to peer into Me too! But how
  could you possibly initially establish what is
  meant by beetle without any possibility of
  comparison since each of us has access only to
  our own inner box? By describing it? This just
  pushes the same problem back one step without
  removing it. How do we develop any criterion of
  description in the first place?

73
Some initial problems

• We describe it by relating it to observable
  features in the publicly share world? Now we are
  getting somewhere but notice, this requires us to
  start abandoning the notion of the mind as a
  private inner theater. Language itself appears
  to be a miracle if we start with a self-enclosed,
  self-contained subjectivity as we find in
  Descartes.

74
Some Initial Problems

• One of the reasons why Wittgensteins arguments
  concerning the beetle in the box and against a
  private language can be used to show that
  Descartes initial starting position was
  misguided I think, therefore, I am, okay, but
  you have learned a language first to utter such a
  phrase so start by asking what that entails
  i.e., that language can only be language if it is
  publicly shared.
• The moral Ryle draws here the mind must in
  some sense be public

75
The Absurdity of the Official Doctrine

• What are category-mistakes? Examples
• (1) I see the North Building, the South
  Building, the Kaneff Centre but where is UTM?
• UTM is not a building it does not belong to the
  same category
• (2) I see battalions, batteries, and squadrons
  but where is the division?

76
Examples

• (3) She came home in a flood of tears and a
  taxi
• What would be an incorrect understanding of the
  above statement?
• Similarly, it is claimed, with the mind/body
  problem
• The official doctrine rest on a mistake a
  category-mistake

77
The Category-Mistake

• Because, as is true, a persons thinking,
  feeling and purposive doing cannot be described
  solely in the idioms of physics.., therefore,
  they must be described in counterpart
  idioms.(356)
• This is a fascinating point one that Ryle took,
  I would argue, from Heidegger when he reviewed
  Heideggers Being and Time

78
The Category Mistake

• Why believe that the mind has the same mode of
  being or existence as physical objects or
  things?
• Yet are we not doing just that when we state that
  the mind is a type of substance just like things
  but an immaterial one?
• Are we not taking the ontological understanding
  of an object and then attempting to conceptualize
  ourselves in like manner?

79
The Category mistake

• But what if we are not objects of any kind?
• What, if anything we are not objects but rather
  projects projecting the possibilities of our
  being as being towards death ( this is Heidegger
  not Ryle here but the same basic argument
  pattern)
• What if we have a different mode of existing?
• Wouldnt referring to ourselves as substances,
  as possessors of a mind as if it were some
  kind of thing or object, be then a mistake a
  category mistake?

80
The Origin of the Category Mistake

• What drove Descartes to the category-mistake?
• What drove Descartes to affirm that there exists
  a ghost in the machine?
• The rise of mechanism
• In two respects (a) we seem no longer to be
  unique or special

81
The Origin of the Category Mistake

• (a) our bodies moves according to the same
  mechanistic principles and natural laws as all
  bodies move i.e., clocks, stones, animals.
  This just could not be accepted thus, the mental
  must be construed as signifying the occurrence
  of non-mechanical processes(357) and while some
  movements of human tongues and limbs are the
  effects of mechanical causes, others must be the
  effects of non-mechanical causesfrom workings of
  the mind (357) we still are special.

82
The Origin of the Category Mistake

• (b) a loss of freewill and moral responsibility.
  In a mechanistic universe it appears that we can
  have neither. Thus, a non-mechanistic form of
  mental causation was needed to be secured in
  order for us to be free and responsible.
• As a form of causation the mind had to become
  some kind of thing hence, the category-mistake

83
Consequences of Abandoning the Category Mistake

• First, the hallowed contrast between Mind and
  Matter will be dissipated, but dissipated not by
  either of the equally hallowed absorptions of
  Mind by Matter or of Matter by Mind, but in quite
  a different way (358)
• Interesting (a) the dualist is wrong to say
  that the mind is a separate distinct substance
  since they do not belong to the same logical
  type( the same category). Therefore, we do not
  have minds or souls not like things
  anyway.

84
Consequences of Abandoning the Category Mistake

• (b) the materialist/neuroscientist is also wrong
  to say that the mind is the brain, since mind
  and body are NOT counterparts and thus as in
  (a) do not belong to the same logical type
• Is this a satisfying position?

85
To complete the presentation

• This is not part of or included in our reading
  but is strictly FYI
• The question naturally arises So if the mind
  is neither a separate distinct substance nor
  brain states for Ryle, then what is it?
• Ryle adopts what is called logical behaviourism
• Whats that?
• It is a form, derivative, of what is called
  radical behaviourism.

86
To Complete the Presentation

• Oh, ..whats that?
• Radical Behaviourism
• Mind black box
• mental states as inner entities are
  scientifically irrelevant for the understanding
  of human behaviour
• human action, behaviour, understood as a
  conjunction of stimulus input (environmental
  effects) and behavioural outputs, conjoined via
  causal laws

87
To Complete the Presentation

• Logical Behaviourism
• mental states are referred to and examined as a
  logical construction of behavioural outputs
• (i) behavioural hypotheticals the
  ifthenstatements
• i.e., Jane is thirsty if there were water
  available then Jane would drink it

88
To Complete the Presentation

• The analogy Glass is fragile if the glass
  were struck then it would break
• Just as fragile is not an ontological entity
  but a description of a disposition to behave in a
  certain manner, so too mental events just are
  dispositions to behave in a certain manner
• That a person has a mind is publicly manifested
  and observed through such rich patterns of
  behaviour in fact, rich patterns of behaviour
  just are what we mean by mind

89
To Complete the Presentation

• To have a thought just means to be disposed to
  behave in a certain manner
• Another analogy the clock
• Nothing about the inner workings of a clock will
  tell us whether it is reliably telling the time
• We have to already know what reliably telling
  the time means in order to see if the inner
  workings of the clock are malfunctioning we
  know this through outward observation of the
  clocks behaviour

90
To Complete the Presentation

• According to Nature there is no
  malfunctioning going on the clock is
  operating perfectly according to natural laws
• Similarly with mind nothing about the inner
  goings on in terms of brain states tells us what
  having a mind is its outward observation of
  behaviour is what counts

91
To Complete the Presentation

• Some Problems with Behaviourism how it became
  ultimately rejected
• (1) I have a headache, I am in pain maybe
  due to this lecture does it make sense to
  believe that all that you are describing here are
  patterns of observable behaviour?
• (2) Mental states yet no behaviour (the
  Spartans)
• (3) Behaviour but no mental state this is
  possible demonstrating that we do make a
  distinction here

92
To Complete the Presentation

• (4) Two different people have the same stimuli
  yet different behavioural outputs.
• How so?
• Behaviourists answer their past histories of
  positive or negative reinforcement are different
• However, unless one has some weirdo notion of
  causation where past events in ones past history
  can temporally leap to the present in order to
  have such an effect, we seem compelled to speak
  of such reinforcement in terms of inner states

93
To Complete the Presentation

• The same point generalizes to dispositions.
  Think of the fragility example if a glass is
  struck and does not break what explains this. We
  can explain this by appealing to the internal
  microstructure of the glass with respect to its
  strength and resistance and thereby explain it.
  However, no such appeal is possible for the
  logical behaviourist if mental states just are
  such hypotheticals.

94
To Complete the Presentation

• As equated with such a hypothetical it is simply
  a brute fact when such a hypothetical is false
  this appears unsatisfying.
• Yet Ryle could not countenance such inner
  appeals or even inner states this would be a
  category mistake for him.

95
(No Transcript)