Announcements

1
Announcements

• For Tuesday read Dennetts The Intentional
  Stance and Searles Minds, Brains, and
  Programs
• Skip Parfits Personal Identity if we get
  time we will return to him at the end of the
  course
• Midterm average 68 C

2
Ryle continued Some Initial Problems with the
Cartesian Mind

• 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..

3
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?

4
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

5
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)

6
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

7
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?

8
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.

9
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

10
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?

11
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

12
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

13
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?

14
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?

15
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

16
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.

17
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

18
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.

19
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?

20
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.

21
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

22
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

23
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

24
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

25
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

26
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

27
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

28
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.

29
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.

30
Nagels What is it like to be a bat?
31
A. An example of the debate

• Nagel begins by stating that every reductionist
  has his favorite analogy from modern science
  (361)
• What does he mean by this?
• To give an example Argument A
• The anti-materialist i.e., the dualist
  argues
• (1) I know what my mental states are and what
  mental states I am in i.e., whether I am now in
  pain or not, i.e., what I am thinking now

32
An example of the debate

• (2) I do not know what neurons are firing or any
  such brain processes
• (3) If mental states just are brain processes,
  then when I know what mental states I am in, I
  should know what brain processes are going on
  they are supposed to be the same thing.
• (4) Therefore, the mind is not the brain from
  (1) (3)
• (5) Therefore, at best, we can correlate mental
  states with brain states without any such
  reduction.

33
An example of the debate

• Argument B the materialists rebuttal
• The materialist begins by distinguishing concepts
  from properties or facts. The materialist claims
  that all mental facts or properties are just
  physical facts/properties. The materialist does
  NOT claim to be able to translate mental concepts
  into physical ones mental concepts are brain
  facts differently described. Mental states
  appears to us differently than physical states
  however, their reality is the same.

34
An example of the debate

• She then argues by analogy drawn from the
  sciences
• (1) I know what water is, what my concept of
  water is it quenches thirst, is transparent,
  puts out fires, is a liquid, can have a bath with
  it etc.,
• (2) I do not know that water is H2O. My concept
  of water is not the same as my concept of H2O
  which involves chemical theory (or if you think
  that water-H2O is too commonly known, then think
  of/insert temperature/ mean molecular kinetic
  energy)

35
An example of the debate

• (3) If water is H2O, then when I know what water
  is, I should know what H2O is they are supposed
  to be the same thing.
• (4) Therefore, water is not H2O.
• (5) Therefore, at best, we can correlate water
  with H2O without any such reduction.
• This argument is obviously false. Water is not
  correlated with H2O it is H2O. Yet, this false
  argument is the same basic argument the
  anti-materialist presents in argument A!!

36
An example of the debate

• Therefore, by analogy, Argument A is false. The
  fact that we are ignorant of what our mental
  states are, doesnt tell us that they are not
  physical brain states they are.
• Every reductionist has his favorite analogy from
  modern science (361)
• You can repeat this same basic argument with
  temperature/mean molecular kinetic energy,
  gene/DNA, lightening/electrical discharge etc.

37
An example of the debate

• The argument depends upon analogy so if there is
  a weakness to then that weakness must show itself
  in the analogies drawn. When we understand
  temperature and mean molecular kinetic energy
  we understand both concepts, though not identical
  to each other as concepts, as belonging to a
  physical framework defined by physical criteria
  i.e., public observability, having size, shape,
  weight, movement, colour etc.

38
An example of the debate

• The knowledge difference between temperature
  and mean molecular kinetic energy is considered
  as a difference in degree as we dig deeper into
  our physical framework the natural scientific
  analysis. The problem with mind and
  consciousness as Nagel will try to convince us in
  this article is that mental concepts have no
  place, no commensurability, within such a
  physical framework and physical criteria.

39
An example of the debate

• Therefore, the knowledge difference is not that
  of degree where we can say the identity can still
  hold but rather that of kind or type. If mental
  facts just are brain facts then knowing
  EVERYTHING about brain facts should translate
  into knowing everything about mental why should
  the translation fail if they are just the same?
  And yet it does as Nagel will try to convince us.
• To dig a little deeper

40
B. The Subjective Character of Mental States

• But fundamentally an organism has conscious
  mental states if and only if there is something
  that it is like to be that organism something
  it is like for the organism (362)
• Consciousness an awareness of self, I, ones
  own being or, not to conflate self-consciousness
  with consciousness in general, an awareness of
  what if is like to be in a certain state of
  existence.
• This leads to.

41
C. The Nature of the Problem

• The First Person Standpoint vs. the Third Person
  Standpoint
• The Subjective vs. the Objective
• Being-for-us vs. Being-in-itself
• Phenomenological vs. the Representational
• The problem with reductionism the idea that
  the mind smoothly reduces to the brain is going
  to be to negotiate all these vs.

42
The Nature of the Problem

• Two Key quotes
• It is impossible to exclude the phenomenological
  features of experience from a reduction in the
  same way that one excludes the phenomenal
  features how something appears to us
  qualitatively of an ordinary substance from a
  physical or chemical reduction of it namely, by
  explaining them as effects on the minds of the
  observers (362)

43
The Nature of the Problem

• If the subjective character of experience is
  fully comprehensible only from one point of view,
  then any shift to greater objectivity that is,
  less attachment to a specific viewpoint does
  not take us nearer to the real nature of the
  phenomenon it takes us farther away from it
  (365)
• Gloss the natural sciences in accord with their
  methodology abstracts us out of the equation in
  order to say what things are in-themselves,
  objective reality, apart from us.

44
The Nature of the Problem

• Remember Descartes distinction between primary
  and secondary qualities. However, when precisely
  what we wish to understand is ourselves, it is
  foolish and distorting to adopt the same methods
  and standpoint.
• We can accentuate a supporting argument in the
  spirit of Nagel in the process of objectifying
  ourselves, a subjective residue remains namely,
  that process of objectification. We see things
  as objects it is our interpretive activity.

45
The Nature of the Problem

• This process this seeing as itself leads to
  objectification and therefore is not itself
  objectified.
• The central problem is that we cannot go all the
  way in objectification in accordance with the
  demands of the natural sciences when it comes to
  the mind and consciousness this is what
  distinguishes mind and consciousness from
  physical objects where we can go all the way.

46
Three Arguments in support of the problematic

• (1) The to be argument
• We have a conscious awareness or what it is like
  to be ourselves. Nagel concedes that this
  existential awareness of what it is like to be
  is elusive and extremely difficult to elucidate.
  Nevertheless, we can be compelled to recognize
  the existence of such facts without being able to
  state or comprehend them (364).

47
Three Arguments

• (1) continued
• Example the bat
• All the physical information of the bats
  physiology and its way of dwelling in its world
  i.e., sonar, detecting through reflections of its
  own shrieks (echo-location) etc., - will still
  not tell us what kind of conscious experience it
  would be like to live in our world in such a
  fashion. Similarly, an extra-terrestrial could
  learn all there is of our brain physiology.

48
Three Arguments

• (1) continued
• Yet such an extra-terrestrial would not have the
  faintest idea, sense or meaning of being human.
• Third person objective standpoint ? First person
  subjective
• Phenomenological ? Representational
• Nagels claim Though we do not know what it is
  like to be a bat we can appreciate, from our own
  conscious experiences, that there is such a
  conscious experience of what it is like to be a
  bat.

49
Three Arguments

• We are confident that there is something that
  it is like to live in such a bat world.
• An important qualification a number of
  philosophers misread Nagel here stating that his
  argument rests solely upon limitations of our
  knowledge. And Nagel can appear to be arguing
  just this Even if I could by gradual degrees be
  transformed into a bat, nothing in my present
  constitution enables me to imagine what the
  experiences of such a future stage of myself
  thus...

50
Three Arguments

• metamorphosed would be like. The best evidence
  would come from the experiences of bats, if we
  only knew what they were like (363)
• So the argument appears to be (1) we can know
  ALL the physical information (2) we still would
  not know all the mental information what it is
  like to be therefore (3) the mental cannot be
  reduced to the physical. And indeed we can
  detect this argument in Nagel.

51
Three Arguments

• However, this is NOT the central point of the
  example. In an endnote to the published version
  of this article that Pojman unwisely edited out,
  Nagel states
• My point, however, is not that we cannot know
  what it is like to be a bat. I am not raising
  that epistemological problem. My point is rather
  that even to form a conception of what it is like
  to be a bat (and a fortiori to know what it is
  like to be a bat) one must take up the bats
  point of view

52
Three Arguments

• If our powers of imagination and empathy were so
  great that we could possibly know what it was
  like to live in a bats world, to be a bat, these
  powers are still adopted from our subjective
  first person point of view and therefore the
  central argument is not affected namely, the
  first person standpoint is not equal to the third
  person standpoint. The point is that we would
  still need to employ such powers of imagination
  even if we were to have all the physical
  information.

53
Three Arguments

• (2) The Appearance/Reality Distinction
• Third Person Objective Representational point of
  view the distinction makes sense
• First Person Phenomenological Point of View the
  distinction makes nonsense. Appearance is the
  reality of conscious mental life
• It is difficult to understand what could be
  meant by the objective character of an
  experience, apart from the particular point of
  view from which its subject apprehends it. After
  all, what would be

54
Three Arguments

• (2) continued
• ..left of what it was like to be a bat if one
  removed the viewpoint of the bat?(364)
• We apply a reality/appearance distinction in
  physical reductions. When we define heat as mean
  molecular kinetic energy or colour as light
  reflectances of a certain frequency we have in a
  sense redefined heat and colour in such a manner
  that no reference to subjective experience is
  necessary.

55
Three Arguments

• (2) continued
• The subjective experience is left unreduced. The
  subjective experiences are carved off, so to
  speak, from such a definition. Such experiences
  are simply the appearances of heat or colour for
  us while the underlying physical processes are
  said to be its reality. Such moves are
  inappropriate when we wish to understand
  ourselves

• the subjective experience is left

56
Three Arguments

• (2) continued
• The idea of moving from appearance to reality
  seems to make no sense here (365)
• By way of elucidating Nagels argument, consider
  the following quote from Colin McGinn ( from The
  Mysterious Flame, p.20-1) it is basically the
  same argument.
• The trouble with this reply think of Argument
  B above is that there is no way to distinguish
  mental and physical concepts without appealing

57
Three Arguments

• to a distinction at the level of facts. What
  makes the concept pain different from the concept
  C-fiber firing is precisely that the two concepts
  express distinct properties, so we cannot say
  that these properties are identical. The
  materialist is forced to introduce the idea of
  two different appearances of the same fact, but
  this notion of appearance itself depends upon
  there being facts of appearance that cannot be
  identified with brain facts. The appearance of
  pain cannot be reduced..

58
Three Arguments

• to C-fiber firing, just as the appearance of
  water cannot be reduced to H2O. But appearances
  are what the mind consists of. So the mind
  cannot be reduced to the brain.
• How something appears to us is what it means to
  be conscious of it appearance with respect to
  consciousness is the reality. Thus, to state
  that a conscious state may appear to us in a
  certain manner i.e., qualitative feels, belief
  states while its reality is an underlying
  physical process..

59
Three Arguments

• not only misunderstands what is involved in
  physical reductions a methodological mistake
  but mistakes what consciousness itself is.
• Lets relate this argument to last term with
  respect to Descartes distinction between primary
  and secondary properties. The mind-brain
  identity theorist wishes to state that the
  primary property of the mind is just the brain.
  It just appears that we have a mental thought
  that is distinct from this primary property.

60
Three Arguments

• In having a thought we are utterly unaware of
  what brain processes are going on so it appears
  to us that the thought is different. However,
  such a mental thought is just a different
  description of this primary property. This
  appearance is, in effect, its secondary property.
• But now, where do we locate such secondary
  properties? In our observation of the external
  world this is unproblematic the secondary
  properties are subjective, in our heads.

61
Three Arguments

• However, we have now internalized the distinction
  itself so we can no longer state that it is
  subjective. So where are these secondary
  properties or as Nagel and McGinn would say,
  these facts of appearance?

62
Three Arguments

• (3) Failures of Analogies to Other Fields of
  reduction
• Key quote here The idea of how a mental and
  physical term might refer to the same thing is
  lacking and the usual analogies with theoretical
  identification in other fields fail to supply it.
  They fail because if we construe the reference
  of mental terms to physical events on the usual
  model, we either get a reappearance of separate
  subjective events as the effects through which
  mental .

63
Three Arguments

• .reference to physical events is secured, or
  else we get a false account of how mental terms
  refer(366)
• We do not have a clue when it comes to ourselves
  how we would perform a reduction how we bridge
  the interlacing of the subjective and the
  objective. From other fields of scientific
  reduction this is unproblematic the
  species-specific viewpoint is omitted from what
  is to be reduced.

64
Three Arguments

• However, will this approach be appropriate when
  we wish species specific understanding? Nagel
  No. In two respects. First, as mentioned, when
  what we precisely wish to understand is
  ourselves, thinking subjects, adopting a method
  of subtracting the subjective omitting the
  species-specific viewpoint to get to pure
  objectivity is counter-productive, not to mention
  silly. Second, understanding what a term means
  in order to reduce it to a physical event
  presupposes an

65
Three Arguments

• ..understanding not explainable in physical
  terms, in physicalist theory. Therefore, the new
  theory does not encompass or replaces the old but
  rather depends on it.

66
D. Conclusions

• Physicalism where do we go from here?
• Has Nagel refuted physicalism?
• Nagels response No.
• It would be truer to say that physicalism is a
  position we cannot understand because we do not
  at present have any conception of how it might be
  true. (365) and
• But nothing of which we can now form a
  conception corresponds to it nor have we any
  idea what a theory would be like that enabled us
  to

67
D. Conclusions

• to conceive of it.We cannot genuinely
  understand the hypothesis that their nature is
  capture in a physical description unless we
  understand the more fundamental idea that they
  have an objective nature (or that objective
  processes can have a subjective nature) (366)
• If we are to understand what physicalism is
  saying, how it could be true, we need greater
  conceptual shifts and conceptual resources than
  we presently have according to Nagel.

68
D. Conclusions

• We have to derive a way theoretically of bringing
  together the first person introspective account
  of knowing conscious experience with the third
  person perceptual account of brain science in
  such a way that we can conceive how neural tissue
  is connected to and generates consciousness.
  Some philosophers are not as optimistic on this
  score as Nagel. For example, McGinn quoted
  earlier, who is a materialist believing there
  must be some physical property that explains
  consciousness,..

69
D. Conclusions

• .believes the very dichotomies that Nagel
  mentions points to consciousness forever being an
  intractable natural mystery.
• What we need (1) a developed phenomenology
• (2) a re-conceptualization of the subject/object
  distinction

70
D. Conclusions

• Problem given (1) and (2) above, it will no
  doubt result in quite a conceptual revolution in
  the understanding of our terms, it it can be
  pulled off. Why assume that physicalism will
  not be altered in such a revolution? What we
  mean by the physical and by object will no
  doubt change. We know perfectly and exhaustively
  what physicalisms claims are presently, what it
  is saying and what its concepts are.

71
D. Conclusions

• Therefore, if we cannot incorporate, as Nagel
  states, this what it is like phenomenon, as
  Nagel concedes, then should not one conclude that
  in the very least that physicalism as presently
  understood is simply false and who knows what it
  will look like, if anything at all, consequent to
  theoretical revolutions?