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AQA Philosophy – Philosophy of MindFeatures of mental states HYPERLINK \l "Descartessubstancedualism" Descartes’ Substance Dualism HYPERLINK \l "zombiesargument" Zombies argument HYPERLINK \l "knowledgeargument" Knowledge argument & Qualia HYPERLINK \l "theproblemofotherminds" The problem of other mindsThe category mistake HYPERLINK \l "theinteractionproblem" The interaction problem HYPERLINK \l "epiphenomenalism" Epiphenomenalism HYPERLINK \l "behaviourism" Behaviourism HYPERLINK \l "mindbraintypeidentitytheory" Mind-Brain Type identity theory HYPERLINK \l "eliminativematerialism" Eliminative Materialism HYPERLINK \l "functionalism" FunctionalismFeatures of mental statesQualia are ‘intrinsic and non-intentional phenomenal properties that are introspectively accessible’. It feels like something to have a mind. It feels a certain way to be you right now. If your previous life or current environment were shifted, it might feel a different way to be you right now. That “what it is likeness” fact that there is a discernible quality to particular mental states is called qualia.Intrinsic suggests that qualia are intrinsic to mental states and some think they cannot be reduced to physical states, otherwise they wouldn’t truly be ‘in’ the mental state but in some physical state instead.Phenomenal in philosophy refers to your subjective first-person conscious perspective.Introspection is the ability of a mind to observe and feel its own mental states. It is a form of knowing some think is immediate and direct.Intentionality refers to the seeming fact that minds can be goal-orientated such that certain objectives are their directive focus.Objects like rocks cannot be said to have intentionality. It makes sense to say a rock falls down a cliff, but not that a rock intends to fall down a cliff. What is it about minds that makes sense to talk of them as having intentionality?Descartes’ Substance DualismDescartes was a dualist which means he believed there are two substances (a substance is a fundamental type of existence which doesn’t depend on anything else) - mental and physical. The essence of mental substance is thinking, the essence of physical substance is extension.?The indivisibility argument. Leibniz’ law is that identical things must share the same properties. The physical has the property of being divisible but the mental does not. Therefore they are not identical.Indivisibility issue #1: The mental is divisible. Step 1: The mind can be divided into perception, memory, emotions and so on. Freud proposed the Id, Ego and Superego.Step 2: Descartes argued that although the mind has these separate abilities or modes, that does not count as division of the mind because it is still the same mind that perceives, that remembers, that has emotions, experiences the animalistic desires of the Id and conditioned information of the Superego, and so on.Step 3: blindsight & separate awareness of the brain hemispheres.Indivisibility issue #2: Not everything thought of as physical is divisible e.g. quarks.Step 2: Arguably science might one day discover that quarks can be divided. The conceivability argument - we can conceive of the mind without the body, therefore it is possible for the mind to be separate from the body, therefore the mind is not identical to the body.P1 – I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a thinking non-extended thingP2 – I have a clear and distinct idea of my body as a non-thinking extended thingP3 – what is conceivable is possible (clear and distinct ideas)C1 – therefore the mind and body can possibly be separate therefore they are not identicalE.g. we cannot conceive of a triangle without 3 sides because it is truly identical with the property of having 3 sides.Conceivability argument issue #1: The mind without body is not conceivable. Step 1: Daniel Dennett argues anyone who thinks they are imagining a mind without a body is simply not thinking hard enough. He argues it’s like trying to conceive of health separate from the functions of the body. It can be imagined, but only by someone who thought health is something ‘additional’ to the proper functions and workings of the parts of the body. Dennett claims that while that would be an obvious mistake in the case of health, the case of consciousness is no different. Conceiving of consciousness removed from the body while leaving all cognitive systems intact is an ‘entirely bogus feat of imagination’ dependent on imagining consciousness to be some sort of consciousness-module that might or might not be present in the body.The mind can only be conceived separate from the body by someone ignorant of the nature of its connection to the body. E.g imagining yourself as a ghost floating through walls not interacting with the physical. What is being conceived of there is actually not the true mind, but a concept of the mind based on ignorance.Step 2: Dennett seems to be presupposing that consciousness is the sum of the parts of bodily functions and not anything additional.Step 3: Dennett’s point is that it is dualists who use conceivability arguments to claim to be imagining consciousness separate from the body whose conception of consciousness presupposes its separability from the body in order for what they are imagining to genuinely be consciousness. Until we have decided what consciousness actually is, how are we to decide that what people claim to imagine it to be really is consciousness? This seems to cast doubt on the validity of any conceivability argument.Conceivability argument issue #2: What is conceivable may not be possible. E.g the masked man fallacy. Imagine I heard that someone had robbed a bank wearing a mask. I can conceive that they are not my father. However, if they really were my father then it wouldn’t be possible for them to not be my father. Therefore, I had conceived of something that was not possible. Therefore, what is conceivable isn’t necessarily what is possible. Just because we can conceive of the mind and body as separate, doesn’t mean it’s actually possible for them to be separate.Conceivability argument issue #3: What is metaphysically possible tells us nothing about the actual world.Water is identical to H2O, but it seems logically possible for a universe to exist in which water was not H2O but some other chemical formula, or indeed composed of some fundamental unit of reality other than particles. Before we discovered that water was H2O, it was logically possible for it to have been something else. In this universe however, the laws of physics are such that when certain particles arrange into a sufficient quantity of H2O molecules, it gains the properties that we know water to have. Therefore, while it is metaphysically possible that H2O not be water, that tells us nothing about the actual world. Similarly while it may be metaphysically possible for the mind to exist without the brain, that tells us nothing about whether it does let alone can exist without the brain in this universe.Zombies argumentPhilosophically, a ‘zombie’ is a human physically identical to us in all respects but with no consciousness – no mind. Physicalism claims that there is only the physical. In that case, a physical duplicate of a conscious being must be alike in all respects, including being conscious. However, Chalmers claims that a physical duplicate without consciousness – a zombie – is possible because no contradiction arises in conceiving of it. Since Physicalism seems committed to the view that zombies are impossible, Chalmers argues physicalism is false.Chalmers uses modal logic which is the attempt to argue from what is possible to what is actual. This employs the thought experiment of ‘possible worlds’. In this world, the laws of physics which rule the mind and body make a being with my physical structure conscious. So a physical duplicate of me in this world must also duplicate my consciousness. However, in a possible world with different laws of physics, a physical duplicate of me might not be conscious if those laws regarding mind and body, whatever they are, were different. No matter how different the laws of physics are, there can’t exist possible worlds with impossible objects such as triangles with 4 sides. We cannot conceive of such objects. However Chalmers claims we can conceive of a zombie and therefore it is possible.Chalmers’ argument seems a valid form of modus tollens argument: If P, then QNot QTherefore, not PIf Physicalism is true (P) then a possible world with identical physical facts to ours must be identical to ours in all respects. (Q). However, we can conceive of a zombie world, identical in physical facts yet with no consciousness, therefore not identical to ours in all respects (not Q). So, physicalism is false (therefore Not P).Modus tollens is a valid form of deductive argument, so the truth of the conclusion follows logically from the truth of the premises. Attacking the truth of the premises (the soundness) is thus the only way to object to the argument.Zombies argument issue #1: A ‘zombie’ world is not conceivableStep 1: If Physicalism is true, a zombie would is not conceivable. Anyone who thinks they are conceiving of a physical duplicate of a conscious person with no consciousness are confused. This confusion results from their ignorance of how certain physical systems just are consciousness (e.g. type/token identity theory).Step 2: This response depends on physicalism being true. The zombie presupposes the theory its criticising is false in order to disprove it.Step 3: Arguably we can’t yet know for sure whether physicalism is true however since a physical account of consciousness has not been discovered. So this argument is seen as a draw by many Philosophers, who find the next issue, discussing whether what is conceivable guarantees possibility, as a more fruitful focus for the discussion.Zombies argument issue #2: What is conceivable is not necessarily what is possible. Step 1: Although it may be possible to conceive of a zombie world, that would not establish its possibility. Kripke argued that if two things are identical, they must be identical in all possible worlds, i.e. it’s impossible for them to be separable. We know that in this world water is H2O and might think that there could be another possible world in which there is a substance which has the same properties as water yet is not H2O. There could indeed be, but Kripke claims that would not be water as H2O is the essential property of water. An essential property is one which cannot be removed without altering the concept or definition of a thing. If water is H2O, there cannot be a possibility that it isn’t, or something could possibly not be what it is! Applying this to the zombie argument, if phenomenal properties are identical to physical properties, they must be identical in all possible worlds. There is therefore no possible world in which a physical duplicate of a conscious person could exist without consciousness, so a zombie world is not possible. So again, the zombie argument relies on physicalism being false in order to establish that what is conceivable is possible. Step 2: Property dualists respond that the analogy between water and consciousness is flawed. Water is the sort of thing which has a chemical formula as its essential property, but phenomenal properties have qualia or what it is like to experience them as their essential property, not some physical property. In that case, the correlation of phenomenal properties with physical properties is contingent and it therefore is possible for one to exist without the other, so a zombie world is possible.Step 3: To claim that the phenomenal character of experience is the essential property of consciousness is arguably to presuppose some form of dualism to be true. From a first-person perspective it does seem like qualia are an essential property of consciousness, but if qualia are identical with some physical property and Kripke is correct to think that identities hold in all possible worlds then a zombie world is not possible. Zombies argument issue #3: What is metaphysically possible tells us nothing about reality.Step 1: The zombie argument at most shows that a zombie world in which physical and phenomenal properties are separate is possible, but that does not rule out their identity in the actual world. There may be possible worlds in which physicalism is false and others in which it is true.Step 2: Kripke’s argument about identities being necessary applies here.Chalmers views his argument as questioning whether anything needed to be ‘added’ to the physical stuff in the universe for consciousness to exist also. Physicalism seems committed to the view that the phenomenal properties are fixed by the physical properties, so nothing extra is needed. But then the phenomenal properties cannot vary independently from the physical properties, so physicalism is a claim about what is metaphysically possible. If the zombie argument is correct that a zombie world is metaphysically possible, then that does tell us that reality is not physicalist. Knowledge argument & QualiaFrank Jackson made the Knowledge argument to argue against physicalism/materialism which is the claim that all that exists is the physical. Jackson invites us to consider the case of a neuroscientist called Mary who has lived her life in a black and white room during which she has gained a complete knowledge of the physical. One day she leaves the room and sees a red object. Jackson asks the question: ‘does she learn something new?’ – in other words, does she learn what it is like to perceive red objects? If she learns something new then her previous knowledge was incomplete. Since her previous knowledge was a complete knowledge of the physical, it follows from her learning something new that there is more to know about the mental than just the physical. Therefore, there is more in existence than just the physical, so physicalism is false.Knowledge argument issue #1: Mary gains ability knowledge, not new propositional knowledge.Step 1: There is more than one kind of knowledge. Propositional knowledge is knowledge of facts whereas your ability to ride a bicycle for example isn’t about only knowing facts. So perhaps when Mary learns what it is like to see red, she learns the ability to imagine of recognize the colour red rather than a fact. In that case, there are no facts Mary didn’t know and so her previous knowledge hasn’t been proven incomplete and thus the knowledge argument fails.Step 2: However, while there may indeed be ability knowledge involved, arguably there is still propositional knowledge. Mary learns not just the ability to imagine red, but also knowledge of what having that ability is like. She could then ask whether the ability of others to see red involves the same qualia as her ability. That is propositional knowledge about ability knowledge. Knowledge argument issue #2: Mary gains acquaintance knowledge, not new propositional knowledge.Step 1: This issue requires some version of identity theory to be true, in which case knowing the qualia of seeing red is identical with some type or token brain state. Although the qualia and the brain state are identical, there are different ways of knowing one without the other. Knowledge of the brain state is propositional as it is a fact, but knowledge of qualia can arguably be gained by acquaintance knowledge. On identity theory, the brain state of seeing red just is the qualia of seeing red. So, Mary gains the acquaintance knowledge of the brain state of seeing red, which she already knew propositionally. Step 2: This argument depends on identity theory and is therefore subject to its issues.Knowledge argument issue #3: Mary gains new propositional knowledge, but this is knowledge of physical facts that she already knew gained in a different way (the New knowledge / Old Fact’ response).Step 1: According to this objection, Mary does not learn new facts, she apprehends a fact she already knew but in a new way. Phenomenal concepts are those which your imagination derives from your experience (similar to Hume’s impressions/ideas, see epistemology notes). Physical concepts are those informed by science (i.e. wavelengths of light, neurons, light sensitive cells, etc).It is possible in the case of red for both the phenomenal concept of red and the physical concept of red to be two different ways of conceptualizing the same thing. Just as it’s possible for the phenomenal concept of water and the physical concept of H2O to refer to the same thing. The new knowledge/old fact argument claims that Mary had a physical concept of red but gained the phenomenal concept of red which was a new concept that nonetheless was of the same old fact.D. Papineau claims that while our brains are only capable of forming a phenomenal concept from sense experience, it is theoretically possible for an organism to exist with the ability to imagine phenomenal concepts like colours that it has not sensed. This is strengthened by Dennett’s argument that Jackson has sneaked in the idea of being omniscient about physical facts as if it’s possible for us to understand what that would involve. Perhaps the kind of mind capable of knowing all physical things would be the sort of being Papineau mentioned.Step 2: is learning what it is like to see red really reducible to gaining the phenomenal concept of red? Is there, for example, something non-conceptual or pre-conceptual about phenomenal experience? More complex mental states like love might be an example which better shows that.The problem of other mindsThe problem of other minds is an issue with dualism which is that if minds are non-physical substances or properties which cannot be reduced to physical properties then it looks like empirical science, which can only investigate the empirical, cannot grant us epistemic access to a mind. The only method left for gaining such access is introspection, however introspection can only grant knowledge of the mind of the person introspecting, not other minds. Therefore if dualism is true it seems impossible to ever know anything for sure about the minds of other people, including whether they even have one. Cruciality: The problem of other minds being true does not seem to make dualism false, it just means it leads to solipsism.Mill’s argument from analogy responseStep 1: Mill argues that he knows his mental states cause his behaviour and that other people have bodies which exhibit behaviours similar to his, by analogy he can infer that their behaviour has the same type of cause as his behaviour, namely mental states. So, other people have minds.Step 2: The one case response by N. Malcolm points out that the analogical arguer is making a generalization based only on one case; their mind. Step 3: A.J. Ayer attempted to improve the argument from analogy to avoid Malcolm’s objection. Instead of just the one case of my behaviour and my mind, we can note multiple links between multiple behaviours and multiple mental causes. We can then know, from our own experience, that many behaviours have a mental cause. Other people exhibit similar such behaviours, therefore those behaviour also have mental causes, so other people have minds. Step 4: We also know from our own experience that there are involuntary behaviours which do not have a mental cause, however, e.g. hiccupping. Induction to an alternative conclusion is therefore possible, that all the behaviour exhibited by others are of the involuntary sort.Furthermore, as Hume points out regarding the teleological argument, like effects do not imply like causes. E.g. the different causes of fire and dry ice cause the same (like) effect of smoke.Step 5: The existence of other minds is the best hypothesis.The best hypothesis means inference to the best explanation. The best explanation of human behaviour is that it is caused by mental states; that they have minds. This is because it is the most metaphysically conservative and simple scenario. It’s hard to conceive of a simple reason why solipsism might be true. This is a scientific inference because it is an inference to the best explanation and doesn’t rely on private direct observation of private mental states, unlike the argument from analogy. This feature supposedly gets around Malcolm’s one case objection because it avoids relying on the one case of our own experience.Step 6: By cutting out the role of our own mind, however, inference to the best explanation seems to make beliefs about qualia impossible, since such beliefs can only be inferred from our own experience. If we cannot justify belief in people having qualia then arguably we cannot justify belief in their having minds.The category mistakeRyle claimed Descartes was making a category mistake. Descartes says that physical things are extended, divisible and non-thinking. Descartes argues that since the mind is non-extended, indivisible and thinking, it must therefore be a non-physical thing. Ryle argues that conclusion does not follow. Just because the mind is not like a physical thing, that doesn’t mean it must be a non-physical thing. Ryle told the story of someone being shown around a university. After they had been shown the various buildings, they then asked ‘but where is the university?’ They had mistakenly thought the university belonged to the category of ‘buildings’, rather than in the category of ‘a collection of buildings’. It’s as if they asked ‘what is the taste of blue’? Ryle argues that the language we use to describe the mind confuses us about the logical category it belongs to. We use the word ‘state’ and ‘process’ to describe physical things, but also use those words to describe mental terms. Since only physical ‘things’ can be in physical states or undergo physical processes, we thereby confuse ourselves into thinking that the mind must also be a ‘thing’ as it can be in mental states or undergo mental processes. Descartes, on the basis of that confusion, finds himself unable to locate a physical ‘thing’ that could be the mind and so wrongly concludes that it must be a non-physical thing – mental substance. Ryle claims Descartes mistakenly puts the mind into the category of ‘things’ when really Ryle believes the mind is a set of dispositions and so in the category of ‘dispositions’.E.g. the brittleness of glass is the disposition of the glass to shatter upon impact. Is the brittleness of the glass a ‘thing’? Where is it? Clearly such questions don’t make sense. Dispositions are not things. So for Ryle, who thinks of the mind as a disposition, it makes no sense to treat the mind as belonging to the category of ‘things’ or ‘substances’. It is the way we talk about the mind that confuses us on that point.Step 3: Ryle’s argument seems to rely on his behaviourism being true. If an objection is successful against his behaviourism, then his category mistake argument against dualism seems to fail also.Step 2: Ryle’s soft behaviourism might be wrong that the mind is a set of dispositions, but arguably he’s at least correct to point out Descartes’ assumption that because the mind is not a physical thing, the only option is for it to be a non-physical thing. Who knows what other options there could be, aside from dispositions. Descartes’ conclusion at the very least requires much more justification than he gives.The interaction problemDualist arguments do so much work to separate the mental from the physical, it opens up the question of how, then, it could be that they seem so connected and thus perhaps unseparated when they interact. E.g. I have a mental desire to move my hand and then my physical body moves. This seems to be the mind causing the body. How can two such radically different kinds of substance or property interact such that they can be in causal relationship? Conceptual problems for interaction are philosophical issues with conceptualising such interaction. Empirical problems for interaction are those raised by science.Conceptual problems for interaction. Step 1: Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia argued that only physical things can interact with other physical things. She says interaction is when one thing pushes against another. A non-physical thing cannot do this. Therefore, if the mind is non-physical it cannot interact with the physical. However, it appears that the mental can cause the physical e.g my desire to touch a water bottle causes my arm to move and touch it. Therefore, dualism is false. Step 2: Descartes responds by pointing to gravity. He claims that is an example of interaction with no pushing or touching of things. When I drop an apple, nothing pushes or pulls it. So therefore interaction with physical things doesn’t require pushing, as the princess supposed.Step 3: This assumes that gravity doesn’t in fact work through some sort of push or pull mechanism. Perhaps it does! No one knows.Step 4: Descartes also tried to solve the interaction problem by suggesting that the mind and body interact at the pineal gland. Step 5: There is no evidence or argument given in support of Descartes’ claim. He wrongly thought only humans had a pineal gland, but biologists later proved that false. More importantly, Descartes is saying where he thinks the mind and body interact but the interaction problem doesn’t question where but how. Descartes is not providing an answer.Add – princess elizabeth’s definition of physical interaction is primitive. It’s not merely two physical things touching, it can also relate two physical things exerting fields of force in accordance with the laws of physics. This would nullify Descartes’ gravity example.Empirical problems for interaction. Step 1: Physicists say that the universe is ‘causally closed’ because of the second law of thermodynamics that energy can be neither created nor destroyed – only transferred from one state to another. This means that energy cannot come from outside the physical universe and affect things within it. However that seems to be how substance dualism would have to work since the mental is supposedly outside the physical universe. Therefore substance dualism is false.Step 2: What if, however, the total amount of energy passed into the universe by the mental causing the physical was equivalent to the energy passed out of the universe by the physical causing the mental? In that case the exact amount of energy would not change.Step 3: Step 2 misunderstands Step 1. It is not the total amount of energy which must be conserved according to the law of the conservation of energy, it is each individual unit of energy that can be neither created nor destroyed. EpiphenomenalismEpiphenomenalism is a form of dualism which is not succeptible to the interaction problem as it claims the mental and physical do not interact. It is the view that the physical causes the mental but the mental does not cause the physical. The mental is ‘causally inert’ or ‘causally inefficacious’. Epiphenomenalism issue #1: the challenge posed by introspective self-knowledge.Step 1: Introspection is the act of observing one’s own mind. We normally think that we can gain knowledge of the workings of our mind in this way, however if epiphenomenalism is true that appears to be impossible. For example, if I hit my foot on a chair and then, through introspection, notice that I am in pain, it appears that the mental state of pain has caused my belief that I am in pain. However, epiphenomenalism claims that mental states cannot cause anything. This goes against our experience.It leads also to a deeper issue. If epiphenomenalism is true then the mental state of the feeling of pain and the mental state of the belief that I’m in pain must both have a physical cause which could possibly be two distinct physical causes. In that case, it is possible that the physical cause which caused my belief that I’m in pain might occur without the physical cause which causes the feeling of pain. This could be the case for every mental state which leads to radical scepticism about all of our knowledge of our own mind. Step 2: an epiphenomenalism could respond that this does not make their theory false. Epiphenomenalism issue #2: The phenomenology of our mental life (ie as involving causal connections, both psychological and psycho-physical)Step 1: counter-intuitive. It appears to us that when I have a desire to touch my water bottle, my arm then goes out and touches it. Phenomenologically it feels like my mental state causes my physical body to move. It also feels like my mental state of, for example, repeating motivating mantras causes increased mental energy, focus and determination which would be a case of mental states causing other mental states. It is counter-intuitive to suggest that is not what is really happening. Step 2: what is counter-intuitive is no basis for an argument unless you grant the hidden premise that what we feel to be true must be true. Experiments from psychology have shown that what we are consciously aware of is a very superficial surface layer of an unconscious chasm of machinery we can’t inspect. Epiphenomenalism issue #3: Natural selection/evolutionStep 1: Evolution by natural selection is the currently accepted scientific view. Epiphenomenalism has an implication which appears to conflict with it, which would mean that all the evidence for evolution would therefore count against the truth of epiphenomenalism. Natural selection means that the traits of an organism which give it a survival advantage are naturally selected for in the sense that those organisms with traits which confer less of a survival advantage are more likely to die and so less likely to pass on their genes. This suggests that only traits which confer survival advantage evolve. If the mind is causally inefficacious then by definition it cannot help an organism survive as it cannot cause anything. This means it cannot be naturally selected for and so cannot have evolved. The mind did evolve, therefore epiphenomenalism is false.Step 2: Consciousness could be a mere by-product of the superior intelligence that human brains have evolved. The intelligence certainly helps with survival and consciousness could simply be an epiphenomenon which, due to some undiscovered law of physics, is generated from a nervous system with sufficient complexity.Philosophical BehaviourismHard behaviourism was created by logical positivists like Carnap and Hempel. They applied the verification principle to the philosophy of mind. They argued that because mental states are private and so unverifiable, mental terms (linguistic attempts to describe mental states) can only be meaningful if they apply to something public and verifiable like behaviour. So hard behaviourists analytically reduce mental terms to behavioural terms.Ryle’s soft behaviourism claims that mental terms can be analysed into behavioural dispositional terms. So it is not a reductive theory nor does it try to tie mental terms to particular individual behaviours, but to a ‘disposition’ to behave in a certain way. How someone behaves might not be what their disposition to behave was. They might have had a disposition to behave in a certain way but other factors caused them to behave differently. For example if we know someone has a disposition to eat messily but didn’t in a certain situation. We might figure out why by analysing the situation – perhaps there was someone there they were trying to impress by being mannered. We could observe whether they act more polite than they usually do in other situations also involving that person. In other words, someone’s behavioural disposition can only be figured out by observing a lot of their behaviour in many contexts.Behaviourism Issue #1: dualist arguments. Conceivability, indivisibility, zombies & knowledge argument.Behaviourism Issue #2: the distinctness of mental states from behaviourStep 1: hard Behaviourism attempts to reduce mental terms like ‘pain’ to behavioural terms like ‘wincing’. However, what if someone decided not to display the pain behaviour of wincing? Then there would be pain with no pain behaviour – a mental term without a behavioural term to reduce it to. However the hard behaviourist claims all mental terms can be reduced to behavioural terms.Step 2: Ryle’s soft behaviourism doesn’t have this problem because Rlye could still claim the person feeling pain still has a disposition to pain-behaviour, but for some reason it hasn’t resulted in behaviour. So even if there is no pain-behaviour, there is still a behavioural disposition into which Ryle can analyse the mental term of ‘pain’ into. So soft behaviourism still works.Step 3: Putnam argued that if a race of ‘super spartans’ existed with a culture that involved never displaying pain, then they wouldn’t even have the disposition to pain behaviour. However, they would still have pain. Therefore there would be a mental term which cannot be analysed in terms of behavioural dispositions. Therefore soft behaviourism is false.Step 4: Ryle responds that in such a culture the term ‘pain’ could never be learned because there would be no observable behaviour for people to learn from. Such a culture could therefore not exist.Step 5: Putnam responds that it’s logically possible for the super-Spartans to be born ‘fully enculturated’.Behaviourism Issue #3: defining mental states leads to circularity and multiple realisability Step 1: hard behaviourism claims that mental terms are analytically reducible to behavioural terms. So the mental term ‘scared’ can be analytically reduced to the behaviour ‘running away’. However while being scared might cause person X to run away, it might cause person Y to attack. So the mental term ‘being scared’ can be multipally realised in different behaviours. But if ‘scared’ reduces to ‘running away’, it can’t also reduce to ‘attacks’, therefore hard behaviourism is false. Similarly, one behaviour could multipally realise different mental states. X might run towards something to give it a high five, Y might run towards something to cuddle it.Step 2: soft behaviourism argues that mental terms are analysable in terms of behavioural dispositions. Ryle argued that dispositions are not tied to individual behaviours but require observation of multiple behaviours in multiple contexts to determine. So, he would argue you could ask the person running towards something why they are, or study their facial expressions, or observe what they do when they have reached it and take that into account in determining what their disposition is. So, because Ryle doesn’t reduce mental terms into particular behaviours, he doesn’t have the issue of multiple realisibilityStep 3: Circularity:Ryle’s expansion of behaviourism by bridging mental terms to dispositions creates a problem of its own, however. It might appear obvious to bridge the mental belief that it’s raining with the disposition to carry an umbrella, for example. However, the bridge between that belief and that disposition assumes various other mental states, such as the desire not to get wet. Trying to bridge that mental state to a disposition will however simply make more assumptions of the existence of other mental states which will themselves require bridging to a disposition, and so on forever. Ryle attempts to make dispositions a more expansive loose basis for behaviourism than mere instances behaviour, but in the process creates an infinite chain of explanation and so can’t have a final analysis. Because of this, the mental states he is attempting to analyse will always be analysed into something which also involves mental states, making it a circular analysis. It’s like explaining X with an explanation that involves X. That is not a valid explanation or analysis.Cruciality: How crucial is it for Ryle’s soft behaviourism that he cannot adequately define mental states? His central premise is that mental states can be analysed in terms of behavioural dispositions. If he cannot do that, he seems wrong.Step 4: The mind is finite so presumably this chain of bridging will end at some point.Behaviourism Issue #4: The asymmetry between self-knowledge and knowledge of other people’s mental statesStep 1: Both types of behaviourism claim that we gain knowledge about a mind by observing behaviour. Since everyone’s behaviour is public, including my own, my knowledge of my own mind should therefore be symmetrical, meaning equivalent, to my knowledge of other people’s mind. However I know more about my own mind than I do others. So my knowledge of other mind and knowledge of my own mind is asymmetrical therefore behaviourism is false.Step 2: Ryle agrees that there is asymmetry but disagrees that that proves behaviourism false. He argues the asymmetry exists because we observe more of our own behaviour than that of others.Step 3: Arguably Ryle misses the point of the objection which is that we gain our self-knowledge through introspection, whereas I cannot use introspection to gain knowledge of the minds of others. So Ryle might be able to explain the asymmetry regarding the total amount of knowledge, but he cannot explain the asymmetry of the ways of gaining knowledge that are available for my own mind compared to the minds of others.Mind-Brain Type identity theoryType identity theory claims that mental properties just are physical properties. JJ Smart argued for it on the basis of neuroscience which provides evidence that parts of our mind seem to be particular parts of our brain. For example, the hippocampus stores our memories. If it is damaged then our ability to have memories is damaged. Drugs could be another example as they are physical things which when ingested cause the mind to be altered. This shows that the brain and mind are strongly correlated but Smart argued that we should apply Ockham’s razor and conclude that the mind and brain are simply identical as that is the simplest sufficient explanation given the evidence from neuroscience.Smart’s identity theory is ‘type’ identity which says that for every mental type (e.g pain) there is a physical type (e.g c-fiber stimulation) with which it is identical.Mind-brain type identity theory issue #1: dualist argumentsMind-brain type identity theory issue #2: Multiple realisability. Step 1: Putnam pointed out that the mental type of pain is multiply realised which means that it exists not merely in creatures with c-fibres but in others which don’t have c-fibres. However, type identity argued that the mental type of pain was identical to c-fibres. Therefore it is false.Step 2: We could respond on Smart’s behalf that animals without c-fibres feel a different sort of pain to the one we experience. It has the same function but different experiential quality (qualia).Step 3: It is currently unknowable whether the pain animals feel is qualitatively identical to the pain humans feel, therefore this argument results in a draw?Step 4: Qualia leads to issue number 3:Mind-brain type identity theory issue #3: Qualia are the subjective irreducible phenomenal quality of experience. They are ‘what it is like’ to experience something. What it ‘feels like’ to be conscious or to have a mind. It doesn’t make sense to think of physical things as having qualia. However the brain is physical therefore the brain cannot have qualia. Therefore mental type of qualia cannot be identical to a physical type.Eliminative MaterialismChurchland argues that our concept of the mind is based on conceptualising it as composed of beliefs, emotions, intentions and so on. We use these mental concepts to explain, understand and predict others. Our everyday interaction with the world and other people causes us to acquire a common-sense set of social laws. E.g if someone believes they have been cheated, they might be angry, and so might raise their voice. Our common sense understanding of the laws by which the mind works Churchland calls ‘folk psychology’.Churchland argues that folk-psychology is an empirical theory, meaning we base it on and use it to explain observations. We think beliefs represent the world (e.g belief in being cheated) which motivates emotional responses (anger) and then actions (raising the voice).Churchland then argues that since empirical theories can be tested according to their explanatory and predictive power, we can test folk-psychology. He argues there are three reasons to think it fails:1 – folk psychology cannot explain things like mental illness, learning or the nature of intelligence.2 – folk psychology has made no progress since the ancient Greek philosophers came up with the ideas of beliefs, emotions and so on. Neuroscience progresses continually, however.3 – folk psychology seems incompatible with neuroscience. E.g it makes sense to talk of a mind as intending to do something but makes no sense to talk of neurons as intending to do something.Churchland proposes abandoning folk-psychology as a failed empirical theory of the mind. Eliminativism does not attempt to reduce the mind to the physical, instead it argues we should eliminate the folk-psychological mind as unempirical and all we are left with is the physical and the empirical neuroscientific understanding of it.Eliminative Materialism issue #1: certainty about the existence of our mental states takes priority over other considerationsStep 1: We know that we have thoughts, desires, emotions and beliefs directly through introspective awareness. Descartes argued that “I think therefore I am” is fundamental and indubitable because to doubt that you are thinking is to assume that you exist in order to do the doubting. If we doubt the existence of our mind then arguably that puts everything else, including knowledge of the external world on which neuroscience depends, into even greater doubt. Nothing is known with more certainty or direct awareness than the mind.Step 2: Churchland does not exactly deny the existence of the mind. He instead denies the theory of folk-psychology we employ to describe it. That theory posits that the mind has aspects such as beliefs, thoughts, desires, and so on. There is indeed ‘something’ going on, Churchland admits. The problem is that all the conceptual apparatus of words and concepts we use to explain those goings on are all rooted in a failed empirical theory, so they must be discarded. Churchland does not deny that mental phenomena exist, but he argues calling those things beliefs, desires, etc, is a false explanation based on a failed empirical theory that humans have cobbled together haphazardly through trial and error throughout the messy process of the history of life. Step 3: However, introspective knowledge is arguably epistemologically prior to sense data which science is based on. However sense data + scientific method reveals things about our mind that we might not have gained from introspection, e.g. psychology, psychoanalysis, etc. Descartes is wrong to think that introspection grants a direct access to the truth of our mind. Most brain processing is unconscious, we have no sense that there are 100 billion neurons in us that are doing anything. What we perceive of our mind through introspection is revealed by psychology and neuroscience to be a very surface level awareness, hard to consider epistemologically prioritised. Therefore, sense data + scientific method is epistemologically superior to introspection.Eliminative Materialism issue #2: Folk-psychology has good predictive and explanatory power.Step 1: Folk-psychology does not aim at explaining the aspects of mental life (mental illness, learning, etc) that Churchland argued it failed to. It only aims at explaining human action and it is successful at doing that. Neuroscience on the other hand is extremely bad at doing that, certainly at the moment. Arguably Churchland is also wrong for thinking folk-psychology has not developed since the ancient Greeks e.g Freud’s claim that there are important unconscious aspects to the mind. The whole field of psychology attempts to be empirical, using experiment. Arguably it has developed our understanding of the mind, despite relying on folk-psychological concepts like beliefs, emotions, etc.Step 2: Although some progress has been made, nonetheless compared to the kind of progress and the power of explanation achieved in other sciences, it is very limited. Psychologists can at most make some probabilistic claims when predicting behaviour. However, Chemists can say for certain how various reactions will turn out and why, thereby having a more powerful theory in terms of explanation and predictive power. Neuroscience may indeed currently be just starting out as a science and therefore is also very limited, but it seems more likely than folk-psychology to provide powerful explanations in the future. Step 3: Churchland is wrong to say folk-psychology has not developed, that its failure to explain mental illness is a failure of it, that folk-psychological concepts have no place in neuroscience and that folk-psychology fails. Folk-psychology gets something right since it has at least some predictive and explanatory power. It has something going for it. That something is arguably that beliefs, emotions and other folk-psychological concepts have something to do with our brain. In fact, much of neuroscience proceeds from that assumption. E.g. anxiety and fear is an emotion and neuroscientists know it has a lot to do with the amygdala gland.Step 4: Maybe Churchland went too far to completely reject folk-psychology however it seems he is right at least to point out that much of it, perhaps even most, might in the end require elimination rather than reduction.Churchland’s objections prove at least that folk-psychology is limited in scope, at most that it does not progress. However, this does not entail that folk-psychology has no merit. That merit, the extent to which folk-psychology can explain and predict human behaviour, is likely the extent to which it will be integrated into a future neuroscience. We won’t know what extent that is until that future arrives, however. Nor will we know the manner that folk-psychological concepts like ‘belief’ will end up once integrated. However, the extent to which our current understanding of humans as having beliefs is able to predict and explain their behaviour is reasonably expected to be the extent to which a future neuroscience will discover that something like that belief, at least as like it as the extent of its explanatory success permits, is the extent to which folk-psychology has good predictive and explanatory power and will be a part of the future neuroscience. That may not be much, since there is so much of human behaviour we cannot explain nor predict, but it will be something. It at least seems just as reasonable to expect that outcome as it is to expect Churchland’s initial premise that neuroscience will eventually explain the brain sufficiently to count as a true science. So when neuroscience supersedes folk-psychology, arguably some but not all folk-psychological concepts will be eliminated. Eliminative Materialism issue #3: The articulation of eliminative materialism is self-refutingStep 1: Stating ‘I believe eliminative materialism’ is self-refuting or a performative contradiction because eliminative materialism claims beliefs do not exist.Step 2: Claiming to believe eliminative materialism being self-refuting does not refute the truth of eliminative materialism, however. The truth of the theory is compatible with the truth of this objection, so it’s hard to see how it’s an objection at all.FunctionalismFunctionalists think that what defines something is not what it is made from, but what it does. Functionalists therefore change the focus of the philosophy of mind from asking what the mind is made of to asking what it does. For example, what makes a mouse trap a mouse trap? It is normally made from wood and metal. However it could conceivably be made of plastic. Or even a group of humans could form a mousetrap with their bodies. A mouse trap is not defined by what it is made from, but by what it does – what it’s function is. Functionalists apply this to the mind and so avoid the normal questions of dualism vs physicalism. A functionalist could be a dualist or a physicalist or neither because they could think a mind could be made from physical stuff, mental stuff or neither. As long as something performs the function of a mind, it is a mind.A function is what something does. What something does is how it behaves under certain conditions. If you input something into it, you get a certain result or output. The total description of a things function is the list of all its possible inputs and the resulting outputs. If you had that list, you would know its total function and therefore you would know what it does and for a functionalist what it therefore is.So as long as a system performs the same functions as a mind, which means to have the same outputs for the same inputs, it is a mind. It could be a computer, a brain or any other ‘substrate’. As long as the substrate is able to be structured such that it performs the inputs and outputs of a mind, it can be a mind.Functionalism issue #1: functional duplicate with different/inverted qualiaStep 1: It is logically possible for what a person A sees as red, person B sees as blue and what person B sees as red, person A sees as blue. This is called ‘inverted qualia’. If that was true however, there would be no way to tell from their behaviour since they would each agree on what color each object is. The input of looking at a red object would produce the same output of saying ‘I’m seeing a red object’ in both person A and B. So, they are functionally identical. However, they are not identical in their mental qualia. Therefore, there is more to the mind than just function. Therefore, functionalism is false.Step 2: Arguably there will in fact be functional differences between person A and B. Red is an energising color, while blue is a relaxing color. This is why doctors make stimulant medication red and depressant medication blue, to add a placebo effect. Therefore, if we created a set of inputs which could indicate that functional difference – such as encouraging person A and B to look at something red and then measuring the levels of their stress hormone in their blood – we should expect the one who really sees blue to have less. Therefore, there is a functional difference and so functionalism is true. Functionalism issue #2: functional duplicate with no qualiaStep 1: Imagine a human body is connected to the whole population of china instead of a brain. The population of China is similar to the number of neurons in your brain. Imagine Chinese people, linked to each other with radios and microphones, each performed the function of what a neuron would do. The population of china collectively should then be able to replicate the function of a human mind. Block’s point is that this is a functional duplicate of a mind, so according to functionalism it should be a mind. Yet it’s hard to see how that mind would have qualia and so it’s hard to see how it could be a mind. Therefore, functionalism is false.Step 2: The functionalist response is that this ‘Chinese mind’ isn’t functionally identical to a normal human mind as its function can be affected by things like electrical interference or batteries running out. Step 3: Block argues this is irrelevant. If those disruptions occurred, then it would indeed no longer be a functional duplicate. However, it’s logically possible that such disruptions wouldn’t occur in which case it is a functional duplicate.Step 4: Functionalism isn’t committed to the view that anything can become a mind – only substrates which are capable of performing the functional role of a mind. So, the functionalist could argue that people with radios and microphones are insufficient in structure to perform the function of a neuron. Whatever technology is required to give the Chinese people in order to enable them to become functional duplicates of neurons is currently unimaginable and so for all we know might indeed be the sort of thing that could create a conscious mind.Alternatively, functionalism could be combined with either eliminative materialism or type-identity theory to solve the problem. Functionalism issue #3: The knowledge argument. No amount of facts about function suffices to explain qualia.Substance dualismProperty dualism ................
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