MindBody Dualism

1
Mind/Body Dualism
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Mind/Body Dualism

• Belief that human human beings have a dual
  nature spiritual part (soul, mind, inner self)
  and a physical part
• Accepted in some form by all the major religions
  of the world
• Descartes Plato are the most famous western
  philosophical defenders of this view

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Platos Phaedo

• All learning requires pre-existing abstract
  concepts (forms) as the building blocks from
  which new learning can occur
• In other words, all learning proceeds from
  recollection (amnesis)
• If the soul exists before life, why not after?
  (Law of opposites)
• Just as the abstract idea of triangle does not
  perish when we forget or ignore it, neither does
  our soul

4
Descartes Cogito

• The Cogito Cogito Ergo SumI think therefore I
  am.
• It cannot be doubted without logical
  contradiction that one is thinking when one is
  doubting
• Everything else can be doubted
• Once one accepts that one exists (as a thinking
  substance), the next logical conclusion is that
  ones thinking can be affected by an external
  world of matter (non-thinking substance)
• Mind-Body Problem If these two substances are
  completely independent, how and where (and why)
  do they interact? Pineal Gland?!

5
Reductionism

• Reductionism The attempt to explain all
  phenomena in terms of (to reduce all phenomena
  to) physical processes (brain states, behavior,
  software) that can be, in principle, explained
  in terms of the basic laws of physics
• Positivism Unless claims can be shown to
  correspond to physical facts, such claims cannot
  be true

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A.I.

• Turing Test If a computer (whose identity as a
  computer is somehow veiled) can consistently fool
  people communicating with it into believing
  theyre actually communicating with a person,
  then such a computer can be thought to be a
  thinking being like a person
• Chinese Box Response Would the person in the
  box understand Chinese?

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Problems with the Notion of Self

• If as Locke claims, memory is key to the notion
  of I then am I someone different when my
  memories change?
• If as some claim, the body is key to the notion
  of I then when my body changes am I someone
  different?
• Buddhism the whole idea of self is an illusion

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Humes Empiricism

• Empiricism the belief that all knowledge comes
  from senses
• Mind is just a kind of theatre in which sensory
  impressions of the nervous system appear
• We have no sensory experience of an I
• When the brain shuts down, so do we