PHILOSOPHY OF MIND Continued

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1 KCHU 228 Into to Philosophy WEEK 2 Lecture Notes PHILOSOPHY OF MIND Continued What is the relationship between mind & body? Is there an enduring self? Is there an afterlife? Are our choices made freely? I. CRASH COURSE ON METAPHYSICS A. Materialism: The belief that reality is ultimately composed of matter, energy, forces etc. Or Materialism is reductionist or mechanistic believing everything can ultimately be reduced to some mechanical process in nature. Materialism is deterministic every event has a cause. Materialism denies all forms of the supernatural. Critical Naturalism: Critical Naturalism is almost identical to Materialism. CN disagrees with the reductionism of materialism. Nature is a interrelated series of levels, each with distinctive characteristics that require different levels of explanation. Not everything can be reduced to physics and chemistry. Critiques: 1. Ultimately what is matter? if reduced to its most essential components it becomes as mysterious as sprit or mind. 2. Naturalists will allow humans to have reasons, purposes and values. But they deny the processes that created them have any of these qualities. This is a human/nature dualism. 3. Some mysteries, such as consciousness, may never be explained in mechanistic processes. B. Idealism: Is the belief that reality is essentially idea and mind rather than matter. There is order and purpose in the universe. The universe is intelligible because it is a product of the Mind.

2 We never contact the external world we encounter our own perceptions the very notion of an external world is an idea. Critiques: 1. Idealism commits the anthropomorphic fallacy : It projects onto the universe characteristics that only apply to humans. 2. It seems strange to say I perceive my perceptions. Doesn t the idea of perception imply that there must be something out there which I perceive? Metaphysical Dualism: Reality is ultimately composed of two substances one material and the other nonmaterial (mind or spirit). These two realities are completely distinct but still interact. They physical world exists but is infused with a different substance that is not bound by natural law. Critique: 1. How can a physical substance and a non-physical substance interact?

3 Philosophy of Mind II. THE MIND/BODY PROBLEM Philosophy of mind deals with the relationship between mind and body. The Mind/Body Problem: Our bodies are physical. They can be seen, they have weight, and occupy space. We can have knowledge of bodies through normal empirical methods. Our minds seem fundamentally different. They have no weight, color, taste, mass or physical dimensions mind seems to be immaterial. Yet the two clearly interact. The mind can (to some degree) control the body. And the body can affect the mind. A. Mind/Body Dualism Substance Dualism: A human is composed of two distinct substances; a material body and an immaterial mind. Bodies can weaken while the mind remains strong. Minds can deteriorate while the body remains strong. The two exibit different properties indicating they are made of different substances Experience presents itself as unified. We may have many different sensations, but as one experience. Identity survives changes in the body. Though ones ideas and attitudes change over time, most would agree that the subject of those ideas and attitudes remain the same. Critiques of mind/body dualism: 1. How can a non-physical substance interact with a physical substance? 2. Several discoveries in psychology create difficulties for the idea of mind/body dualism. Numerous cases demonstrate that someone s personality can be significantly & irreversibly altered by localized brain damage. Split-Brain Patients demonstrate a single body can have multiple streams of consciousness

4 B. Physicalism & Mind Body Monism Physicalism: The mind is made of a physical substance Monism: The opposite of dualism--mind and body are ultimately made of the same (physical) substance. a. Identity Theory States of consciousness are identical with states of the brain the mind is what the brain does. Identity theory is reductionist: it says that one kind of thing (mental events) can be defined as another, more fundamental kind of thing (brain states). Critique: Why can t some other arrangement of neurons serve the same function? If there is more than one type of neural arrangement that can produce a given mental event Than identity theory is too narrow. b. Functionalism Humans are to be thought of as informational processing systems like a computer. The particular arrangement of neurons is less important that the function it serves or the program it runs. But mind is still physical. Critique: what do we do about consciousness? A computer processes information but doesn t have subjective experience.

5 III. THE NATURE OF THE SELF A. Cartesian Ego: a simple enduring immaterial self Though the body and mind changes the self to which they belong remains the same. Ones self is immaterial in nature it is not made of the same substance of the body. Critique: Suffers from the same critiques of metaphysical& mind/body dualism. Dualism has not been a functional hypothesis (an idea that is useful for explaining observations) since the late 1800 s. B. Ego Theory: more generally, the self is a subject of experience. Ego does not necessarily need to be immaterial in nature. Ego s persistence is due to memory C. Bundle Theory of the Self: No Self or the self is in some way an illusion The self is unobservable introspection will reveal perceptions, experiences and emotions but will not reveal a subject of those experiences. What we call the self is really an aggregate of perceptions and experiences together with whatever connections there are between them. We re-identify people and objects overtime because of their organizational or functional unity. Critique: 1. Bundle theory treats experiences as objects you cannot make sense of an un-owned experience, of a thought without a thinker. 2. Monist views are usually physicalist views if the self is physical or if it does not exist, how do we explain the subjective quality of experience? Why is their experience at all?