Philosophy 52B: Aesthetics

1
Philosophy E156 Philosophy of Mind
Week Six Dualism Behaviorism
2

Is your mind your brain, or is it something different?

3

Is your mind your brain, or is it something different?
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain?
4
Cartesian Dualism
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different?
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain?
5
Cartesian Dualism
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain?
6
Cartesian Dualism
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Something beyond
7
Cartesian Dualism Physicalism (Central State Identity Theory)
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Something beyond
8
Cartesian Dualism Physicalism (Central State Identity Theory)
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different Just your brain
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Something beyond
9
Cartesian Dualism Physicalism (Central State Identity Theory)
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different Just your brain
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Something beyond Just physical aspects of your brain
10
Cartesian Dualism Physicalism (Central State Identity Theory) Dual-Aspect Theory
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different Just your brain
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Something beyond Just physical aspects of your brain
11
Cartesian Dualism Physicalism (Central State Identity Theory) Dual-Aspect Theory
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different Just your brain Just your brain
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Something beyond Just physical aspects of your brain
12
Cartesian Dualism Physicalism (Central State Identity Theory) Dual-Aspect Theory
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different Just your brain Just your brain
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Something beyond Just physical aspects of your brain Something beyond
13
Cartesian Dualism Physicalism (Central State Identity Theory) Dual-Aspect Theory Bundle Dualism
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different Just your brain Just your brain
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Something beyond Just physical aspects of your brain Something beyond
14
Cartesian Dualism Physicalism (Central State Identity Theory) Dual-Aspect Theory Bundle Dualism
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different Just your brain Just your brain There is no mind distinct from your experiences
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Something beyond Just physical aspects of your brain Something beyond
15
Cartesian Dualism Physicalism (Central State Identity Theory) Dual-Aspect Theory Bundle Dualism
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different Just your brain Just your brain There is no mind distinct from your experiences
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Something beyond Just physical aspects of your brain Something beyond Something beyond
16
Three Sorts of Dualism

• Interactionist Dualism
• Analogy to a room and a thermostat
• Epiphenomenal Dualism
• Analogy to a room and a thermometer
• Parallelist Dualism
• Analogy to perfectly synchonized clocks
• These cross-categorize with Cartesian Dualism,
  Bundle Dualism and Dual-Aspect Theory thus you
  could be an Interactionist Cartesian Dualist, an
  Interactionist Bundle Dualist, an Interactionist
  Dual-Aspect Theorist, etc.

17
Problem for Bundle Dualism A Uniting Principle
of a Mind

• Why is a group of mental experiences my mental
  experiences?
• The Cartesian Dualist can say, Because my
  experiences today and my experiences yesterday
  are both states of one continuing nonphysical
  thing a soul
• The Bundle Dualist cannot say this
• Hume says memory but some mental states are
  mine but unremembered

18
Bundle Dualisms Explaining Unity of Mind by
Appeal to Bodys Relation to Experiences

• There is a problem here
• If the continuing identity of my mind is
  logically dependent on all my experiences being
  related in a certain way to a particular body,
  then disembodied existence of a mind must be a
  meaningless notion.
• Disembodied existence of a mind is not a
  meaningless notion.
• Therefore, the body cannot be the thread of
  consciousness.
• Armstrongs Argument on p. 18 of A Materialist
  Theory of the Mind

19
A Problem with Cartesian Dualism

• If existing is identical to thinking, and there
  is no further substrate behind existing, as
  Descartes maintained, what happens, Locke asked,
  when thinking stops, as in dreamless sleep?
• We should then go out of existence, since there
  is then nothing to appeal to in saying what makes
  us the same persons before and after thinking
  stops.
• Neither Descartes nor Locke seems to face up to
  this.
• Descartes, because he did not accept that
  thinking stops.
• Locke, because he thought that we can
  meaningfully talk about sameness of
  consciousness without further explaining what
  makes it the same.

20
A Further Problem for Dualists Counting Souls

• How do we count souls (i.e., spiritual
  substances)?
• We ordinarily appeal to position in space to
  count and souls are not spatial.
• We cannot appeal to past histories, since there
  might be two souls with identical past histories.
• We cannot appeal to correlated bodies, since
  souls might be disembodied.

21
A Further Problem for Dualists The Origin of
Minds

• Something From Nothing Problem There would be
  nothing particularly difficult in the notion
  that when the nervous system reaches a certain
  level of complexity it should affect something
  that was already in existence in a new way. But
  it is quite a different matter to hold that the
  nervous system should have the power to create
  something else, of a quite different nature from
  itself, and create it out of no materials.
  (Armstrong)
• Sharp Break Problem Organisms develop by
  insensible gradations so it is natural to say
  the mind develops in the same way. But because
  the Dualist sets up so sharp a gap between the
  material and the mental, he must find a definite
  point when the mental comes into existence.

22
The Further Problem of Interaction of Mind and
Body

• How could a soul cause anything to happen in a
  brain when the soul is by definition nonspatial?
• If you adopt a parallelist account, then you must
  explain why we are wrong to think pain is caused
  by a blow to a hand or to think that the pain
  causes one to wring his hand.

23
Heils Conservation Problem

• One source of Heils problem (frequently
  mentioned) the violation of conservation.
• Physics tells us that there is never anything
  gained or lost in mass-energy in a closed system
  but nonphysical mental causation would violate
  conservation.
• But why not simply claim that nonphysical mental
  causation is an exception?

24
Problem with Heils Overattention to Mental
Causation

• Heil takes the problem about mental causation to
  be devastating to the Cartesian.
• But this ignores the fact that the Cartesian
  position is dictated by what is supposed to be an
  a priori, inescapable proof of the existence of a
  nonphysical soul.
• Heil never presents the Cartesian position as one
  supposedly based on a proof.

25
Descartess Argument for Dualism

• Modern dualism begins with Descartess argument
  for dualism, which grows out of the thought
  experiment with which he begins his book.
•  
• I will suppose, then, not that there is a
  supremely good God who is the source of all
  truth, but that there is an evil demon, supremely
  powerful and cunning, who works as hard as he can
  to deceive me. I will say that sky, air, earth,
  color, shape, sound, and other external things
  are just dreamed illusions which the demon uses
  to ensnare my judgment. I will regard myself as
  not having hands, eyes, flesh, blood, and senses
  but as having the false belief that I have all
  these things.
•  
• In the face of this deception, Descartes asks, is
  there anything that he can accept as certain?
  Yes that he exists.
• Surely I exist, since I am deceived. Let him
  deceive me all he can, he will never make it the
  case that I am nothing while I think that I am
  something.

26
Van Inwagens Interpretation of Descartess
Argument

• It is on the basis of these considerations by
  Descartes that Peter van Inwagen in his book
  entitled Metaphysics attributes to Descartes the
  following argument for dualism
• My body can be conceived by me not to exist at
  this very moment in this very world.
• I cannot be conceived by me not to exist at this
  very moment in this very world.
  .
• Therefore, I am not identical to my body.

27
Did Descartes Make This Argument?

• This is a bad argument, as van Inwagen notes.
• The difficulty is that there are many things I
  can conceive of just through ignorance.
• I can conceive of an unproven mathematical
  theorem being true and I can conceive of its
  being false, just because I am ignorant which it
  is.
• I can conceive of waters not being H2O just
  through ignorance.
• Perhaps mind body are like this.

28
Ignorance of Identity?

• Similarly here, it is consistent with my being
  identical to my body that I can conceive of my
  bodys not existing at a time when it is
  inconceivable to me that I do not exist, just
  because I am ignorant, let us suppose, that I am
  identical to my body.
• It is easily conceivable that if I were identical
  to my body I might be ignorant I was.
• The fact that it is a bad argument should suggest
  to van Inwagen that Descartes never made it.
• But it does not.

29
Descartes Himself Denies Making This Argument

• In fact, Descartes does not make the argument
  that Van Inwagen attributes to him. Actually, a
  contemporary of Descartess, Antoine Arnauld,
  attributes to Descartes (in Objections and
  Replies, in the Fourth Objections at AT VII 198)
  the following argument, one that very much
  resembles the one van Inwagen attributes to him
  and one which is unsound for the same reason.
• Arnaulds Representation of the Argument from
  Doubt
• I can doubt whether my body exists.
• I cannot doubt that I exist. .
  
• Ergo, I am not identical to my body.
• In the Meditations itself (in the Second
  Meditation at AT VII 27-28), Descartes denies
  making such an argument.

30
Descartess Sixth Meditation Argument for Dualism
from Conceivability

• The argument that Descartes makes is in the Sixth
  Meditation, at AT 68. There is much more going
  on in it than van Inwagen would lead you to
  think. Let me suggest that the argument that
  Descartes really makes is much more like the
  following.
•  
• Descartess Sixth Meditation Argument for Dualism
• It is logically possible that I am not an
  extended thing.
• It is not logically possible that my body is not
  an extended thing.
• Therefore, I am not identical to my body.

31
My Interpretation of Descartes The evidence for
the first premise

• The evidence for the first premise (It is
  logically possible that I am not an extended
  thing) comes out of the first three meditations,
  and particularly from the thought experiment from
  Meditation One.
• Recall that by extended Descartes means
  extended in space or filling space.
• If God really could deceive me into thinking I
  have a body when I dont, as Descartes suggests
  God can at the end of the First Mediation and at
  the start of the Second, then the possible world
  in which He does is the one which confirms the
  first premise.

32
The evidence for the first premise (cont.)

• In Meditation Three, Descartes concludes that he
  cannot go wrong about his own ideas that, for
  example, if he seems to have the idea of having a
  human body, then he does have that idea.
• But in the same passage he argues that when he
  had formerly taken it to be certain that he had a
  body he had been mistaking the reality of his
  idea for the reality of what it was an idea of.
• Thus, on this basis, he has what he calls a
  clear and distinct idea of the difference
  between his conception and something in the
  external world.
• The Sixth Meditation argument takes for granted
  that in His omnipotence, God can make anything
  true that Descartes has a clear and distinct
  idea of.
• This is what is supposed to guarantee the logical
  possibility of disembodiment.

33
My Interpretation of Descartes The evidence for
the rest of the argument

• The rest of the argument (It is not logically
  possible that my body is not an extended thing.
  Therefore, I am not identical to my body.) makes
  use of something which seems perfectly obvious
• that even if I might not take up space, my body
  must take up space.
• Thus, the conclusion derives from my supposedly
  having a property the logical possibility of
  being a non-extended thing which my body does
  not.
• In that way, Descartess argument works just the
  way van Inwagens misrepresentation of it does
  distinguishing me from my body by identifying a
  property I have but my body lacks though the
  property Descartes uses is quite different from
  the one van Inwagen mistakenly says he uses and
  creates none of the difficulties that the latter
  does.

34
Heil on Attributes

• Heil correctly asserts that Descartess argument
  rests on his associating the attribute of thought
  to the mind and the attribute of extension to the
  body.
• Since they have distinct attributes, they are
  distinct.
• Unfortunately, Heil does not tell us that
  Descartes thinks the possession of these
  attributes can be proven and thus is
  unshakable.
• If thats right, Heils criticisms are irrelevant.

35
The Ordinary Materialist Counterstrategy To
Attack the First Premise

• Materialists ordinarily attack this kind of
  argument by attacking the first premise. They
  just deny that it is logically possible for me
  not to fill space.
• Notice that the first premise conflicts with
  several aspects of materialism
• its idea that things are composed of parts, and
• its idea that they are composed of parts in
  virtue of their taking up space.
• The materialist asks How can anything that is
  not composed of parts in space do anything?

36
Why the Counterstrategy Is Inadequate for the
Materialist

• But although this seems conclusive to many
  materialists, making this response is in fact a
  bad strategy for the materialist.
• It leaves the materialist with only a standoff,
  and the materialist should want more.
• All the Cartesian needs is the slimmest logical
  possibility the possibility in just one
  possible world.
• It does not need to be technologically possible
  or even possible in nature.
• Its enough, Descartes would insist, that God
  could do it.
• But he would also insist that a God is not even
  needed to do it either, at least conceptually, so
  that agnostics and even atheists could become
  dualists.
• Thus, the Cartesian will always insist that
  surely it is at least logically possible.

37
A Different Strategy to Attack the Second
Premise

• The materialist, however, has a better strategy
  against this version of Descartess argument
  denying the second premise.
• This strategy is to allow the logical possibility
  that somebody might be immaterial but to assert
  that as a matter of fact Descartes is not.
• The problem then is to explain Descartess
  intuition that he himself, not just somebody,
  could be immaterial.

38
A Thought Experiment about Dematerialization

• Let us suppose that we were to invent a process
  that makes it possible for people to
  dematerialize.
• Let us suppose, moreover, that in the state of
  dematerialization people can continue to function
  in many normal human respects.
• H. G. Wells Invisible Man may come to mind, but
  I do not mean that it becomes possible just to
  become transparent.
• I mean to suppose that one might lose ones very
  physicality this way.
• Suppose that we select as a guinea pig, place her
  in our dematerialization chamber and throw the
  switch.
• At the outset her vision has been directed away
  from her body so that while she can continue to
  see during dematerialization she is unable to see
  whether or not she any longer has a normal human
  body.
• Suppose that she is also able to sense the world
  throughout the process through dematerialized
  versions of her other four senses.

39
(No Transcript)
40
(No Transcript)
41
How the Thought Experiment Helps

• This story provides a way to account for
  Descartess intuition that he might be immaterial
  without contradicting the claim that he in fact
  is not, since our guinea pig could be entirely
  physical in the actual world even if she might
  become immaterial in some other possible world.
• Of course, the hard-headed materialist (even the
  soft-headed one!) will balk at supposing that
  such a process as this is possible.
• But Descartes should not have any difficulty
  supposing this. It seems conceivable, clearly
  and distinctly, that such a process is possible,
  and God, according to Descartes, can bring about
  anything we can conceive clearly and distinctly.
  
• And it does not conflict with Descartess claim
  that bodies are necessarily extended, since once
  our guinea pig is no longer extended she no
  longer has a body.

42
Descartess Sixth Meditation Argument for Dualism

• Recall my interpretation of Descartess argument.
•  
• Descartess Sixth Meditation Argument for Dualism
• It is logically possible that I am not an
  extended thing.
• It is not logically possible that my body is not
  an extended thing.
• Therefore, I am not identical to my body.

43
What It Means to Deny the Second Premise

• To say, as I would in denying the second premise,
  that it is logically possible that my body is not
  an extended thing, is to say only that it is
  possible that a body, a thing which is now
  bodily, might later lose its bodily character (as
  an inflatable doll might lose its bodily
  character when it deflates, or as a red thing
  might lose its redness).
• It is not to say that it is possible that
  something might be bodily and simultaneously
  without bodily character (which really would be
  to say something false).

44
A Second Argument by Descartes The Split Brain
Argument

• Ill call the argument that I just reviewed
  Descartess Conceivability Argument.
• In fact, Descartes gives a second argument for
  dualism in Mediation Six (at AT 85-86), which is
  rather different from the one we just looked at
• A body is always divisible.
• The mind is utterly indivisible.
  .
• Therefore, the mind is wholly diverse from the
  body.

45
A Third Argument for Dualism by Descartes the
Machine Argument

• And Descartes gives a third form of argument,
  which we have seen already, at the end of the
  Fifth Discourse (at AT 56-59) to show that the
  rational soul can no way be derived from the
  potentiality of matter
• A physical machine cannot speak or act as humans
  do.
• A mind can speak and act as humans do.
  .
• Therefore, the mind is not a physical machine.

46
Behaviorism

• It is important, in understanding Behaviorism as
  an alternative to Dualism, to understand what the
  point of Behaviorism is.
• The point of Behaviorism is to argue against
  Dualism.
• The point is to offer a way to embrace
  Materialism in light of the intuitions that favor
  Dualism.

47
Cartesian Dualism Physicalism (Central State Identity Theory)
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different Just your brain
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Something beyond Just physical aspects of your brain
48
Cartesian Dualism Physicalism (Central State Identity Theory) Logical Behaviorism
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different Just your brain
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Something beyond Just physical aspects of your brain
49
Cartesian Dualism Physicalism (Central State Identity Theory) Logical Behaviorism
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different Just your brain There is no mind
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Something beyond Just physical aspects of your brain
50
Cartesian Dualism Physicalism (Central State Identity Theory) Logical Behaviorism
Is your mind your brain, or is it something different? Something different Just your brain There is no mind
Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain? Something beyond Just physical aspects of your brain Talk of experience mental talk generally is just disguised talk about behavior
51
Gilbert Ryle The Concept of Mind
52
Ryles Conception of Descartess Dualism in The
Concept of Mind

• He calls it the official theory in the first
  paragraph of The Concept of Mind, because it is
  so prevalent among theorists and even among
  laymen.
• It goes like this With the doubtful exceptions
  of idiots and infants in arms every human being
  has both a body and a mind. His body and his
  mind are ordinarily harnessed together, but after
  the death of the body his mind may continue to
  exist and function.
• Human bodies are in space subject to
  mechanical laws which govern all bodies in
  space. Bodily processes and states can be
  inspected by external observers. So a mans
  bodily life is a public affair.
• But minds are not in space, nor are their
  operations subject to mechanical laws. A minds
  career is private.

53
Ryles Summary of the Cartesian Picture

• A person therefore lives through two collateral
  histories, one consisting of what happens in and
  to his body, the other consisting of what happens
  in and to his mind.
• The first what happens in and to his body is
  public, the second what happens in and to his
  mind private.
• The events in the first history what happens in
  and to his body are events in the physical
  world, those in the second what happens in and
  to his mind are events in the mental world.

54
What Ryle Thinks Is Wrong with the Official
Theory

• At the start of 2, Ryle says that he will refer
  to the official theory, using what he calls
  deliberate abrasiveness, with the label the
  dogma of the Ghost in the Machine.
• He says that it is not an assemblage of
  particular mistakes but rather one big mistake
  and a mistake of a special kind.
• The special kind of mistake that he alleges the
  theory to be he calls a category-mistake.
• What makes it a category-mistake is that it
  represents the facts of mental life as if they
  belonged to one logical type or category when
  they actually belong to another.

55
Ryles Examples of Category-Mistakes

• Although he seems to give a definition for
  category-mistake in the 1st paragraph of 2,
  Ryle says in the 2nd paragraph that he will
  indicate what is meant by the phrase in a
  series of illustrations.
• The University Example. A foreigner visiting
  Oxford, shown the various buildings, still asks,
  But where is the University?
• The Military Example. Seeing a parade of the
  battalions, batteries and squadrons making up a
  division, a child asks, When will the division
  appear?
• The Cricket Example. A foreigner learns what the
  bowlers, batsmen, fielders, umpires and scorers
  do but says, But there is no one left on the
  field to contribute the famous element of
  team-spirit esprit de corps.

56
Ryles Summary of the Examples

• These illustrations of category-mistakes have a
  common feature which must be noticed. The
  mistakes were made by people who did not know how
  to wield the concepts University, division and
  team-spirit. Their puzzles arose from inability
  to use certain items in the English vocabulary.
• The theoretically interesting category-mistakes
  are those made by people who are perfectly
  competent to apply concepts, at least in
  situations with which they are familiar, but are
  still liable in their abstract thinking to
  allocate those concepts to logical types to which
  they do not belong.

57
How Dualism Is Supposedly a Category-Mistake

• My destructive purpose, Ryle writes at the end
  of 2, is to show that a family of radical
  category-mistakes is the source of the
  double-life theory. The representation of a
  person as a ghost mysteriously ensconced in a
  machine derives from this argument.
• As is true, a persons thinking, feeling and
  purposive doing cannot be described solely in the
  idioms of physics, chemistry and physiology,
  therefore they must be described in counterpart
  idioms.

58
Descartess Alleged Mistake

• See 8 of 3 Descartes had mistaken the logic
  of his problem. Instead of asking by what
  criteria intelligent behavior is actually
  distinguished from non-intelligent behavior, he
  asked, Given that the principle of mechanical
  causation does not tell us the difference, what
  other causal principle will tell it to us? He
  realized that the problem was not one of
  mechanics and assumed that it must therefore be
  one of some counterpart to mechanics.

59
Ryles Assessment of Descartess Reasoning

• Look at 2 of 3 of the Ryle passage
  Descartes and subsequent philosophers
  naturally but erroneously availed themselves of
  the following escape-route. Since mental-conduct
  words are not to be construed as signifying the
  occurrence of mechanical processes, they must be
  construed as signifying the occurrence of
  non-mechanical processes since mechanical laws
  explain movements in space as the effects of
  other movements in space, other laws must explain
  some of the non-spatial workings of the mind.
• Ryle seems to accept the premise that he ascribes
  to Descartes, that mental-conduct words are not
  to be construed as signifying the occurrence of
  mechanical processes. The error he finds is with
  the conclusion he believes Descartes to have
  drawn from that premise.