Final Philosophy

What are the three puzzling cases that we considered to motivate our thoughts on the subject of identity over time.

To try to appreciate the issue of personal identity, consider some puzzling and frustrating cases. You are tried for a crime alleged to have been committed five years ago. You take the stand and say that you are not the same person that committed the crime five years ago. You grant that person looks like you, sounds like you, even has the same DNA as you (and that you don't have an identical twin). You even grant remembering committing the crime. However, you claim that you have changed: your tastes have changed; you have come to learn new things; you act differently now; etc. So, you conclude, you're not the same person. Are you the same person? Is you(5 years ago) = you(now)? The class buys a wooden boat in San Pedro and sets sail for Catalina Island. Five minutes into the trip, in the middle of the sea, a wooden plank becomes damaged. A member of our class fortunately has a new wooden plank. We take out the old, damaged plank, throw it overboard, and replace it with the new one supplied by our classmate. This keeps happening throughout the trip: another wooden plank gets damaged, we replace it with a new one, and throw into the sea the old plank. By the time we get to Catalina, we have replaced all the original wooden boards with new ones. A dockworker in Catalina compliments us on our ship, and asks "Where did you get this ship?" and we respond "we bought it back in San Pedro". Are we lying or saying something false? Since the wooden boat now has every original piece of wood replaced with a new one, there is a question of whether or not the boat docked in Catalina is the same boat as the one that we bought back in San Pedro. If you think that we're not lying or saying something false, and that it's the same, then consider this: suppose one person, Sally, in our class came late and missed the boat. Sally sets sail on her own boat, trailing us by 10 minutes. Throughout her trip, she comes across wooden planks floating in the ocean. These planks are the old, damaged planks from our ship that we threw overboard after replacing it. Sally slowly puts the pieces back together as she finds them. By the time she gets to Catalina, she has collected all the planks and (re-) built the ship. Did Sally rebuild the ship we bought in San Pedro or is it now a different ship? If you think that we are lying or saying something false, and that it's not the same boat, then when it did it cease being the same boat? Right after we jettisoned the first plank? Second? A teleporter is built that is able to teleport you from one location to another, remote location. You are about to step into the teleporter, but before you step in, you inquire about how it works. The engineer says that it's safe: it's successfully teleported many people. How it works is this: the machine scans your body right down to its subatomic particles. It makes a detailed, accurate record of which particles are present and where. It maps the structural organization of all the particles. Then, the machine incinerates and destroys all the particles making up your body. In the remote location, the machine, using the information that it gathered from the initial scanning, collects new subatomic particles matching the ones that made up your body, and configures them exactly in the way that the same kind of particles were configured in your body before the teleportation. After stepping out of the machine, you will have all the same memories, dispositions, etc. as you did before stepping into the machine. You will even say "Wow, I can't believe that teleporter worked!". Would you step into the machine? A version of this is that God promises to resurrect you later on, long after you have died. After having some initial feeling of reassurance, you worry how this resurrection will happen. God responds by saying that he will gather up the same kind of particles that make you up while your alive, and then put them back together so that you will be 'reborn' with a new body. Are you then identical to the you now? There is a question that still remains if we take God to be resurrecting you from the same particles that make you up now, since it is conceivable that the same particles that make up your body now used to make up some other person's body in the past. All of these cases will certainly vex you on your pre-philosophical views about personal identity, and they will challenge your notion of personal identity. Before we begin, we need to get a couple things straight. First, the question of personal identity is about when the identity relation holds between persons. The focus is not on the sameness of body or the sameness of thing, but the sameness (identity) of persons. What, roughly, is a person? A person can be defined roughly as a being with thoughts, beliefs, memories, and dispositions, among other things. One thing we might want to include in that list is consciousness. Second, the question of personal identity is about numerical identity between persons, not qualitative identity. What's the difference? Qualitative identity holds when one thing shares the same qualities or properties or attributes as another thing. So, everything is qualitatively identical to itself. Two silver marbles might be qualitatively similar in almost every single way: same weight, same shape, same color, same dimensions, etc. Numerical identity holds when one thing is one with another thing. So, for any thing X and any thing Y, if X and Y are numerically identical, then X and Y are not two things but one. This is the sense in which it is a numerical identity. Now, personal identity is about numerical identity, not qualitative identity. So, when I point to a picture of me in Junior High School and I say "That person there is I", I am making an identification relation between that person in the picture and me. This is, then, an identity of persons, or, simply a personal identification that's being made. In doing so, I am making a claim of numerical identity: that person in the picture is one and the same as the person right here. I am not making a mere qualitative identity. (In fact, notice that the qualities of the person in the picture may drastically differ from those had by me: my height may be different; my weight may differ; I may have new scars that I did not have back then; etc.

Explain the mind-body problem?

It's the question of the discrepancy between the fact that we perceive ourselves to have a "mind" independent of the body, but which somehow manages to interact with the body. Thus far, we are unable to explain the phenomena associated with "mind" (perceptions, behaviors, etc) purely in physical terms. For a long time, it was thought that these were two distinct entities, related through some unknown mechanism. For about the past century it has become fairly clear that the phenomena attributed to "mind" are almost certainly purely a function of the physiology of the brain. However, we are still very unclear on vast portions of the mechanism. Until we know that, the mind-body problem will be considered unsolved, and is arguably the single most important scientific and philosophical problem. Each tries to explain what a mind is - what the essence and nature of a mind is, ontologically speaking - and what's at stake in this problem is our conception of ourselves as persons, our conception of ourselves as part of the larger world, and our conception of knowledge of ourselves and our world through science.

Explain physicalism and reductive physicalism

Physicalism- They acknowledge the reality of consciousness but aim to locate it within the physical world on the basis of some psycho-physical relation short of strict property identity. Among the common variants are those that take conscious reality to supervene on the physical, be composed of the physical, or be realized by the physical. reductive physicalism - Some psychological descriptions are true: they directly correspond to physical descriptions. Mental states are really just physical states (e.g., states of the brain) Do we have souls? - yes; it is physical (talk of it in physical terms)

Whats the difference between qualitative and numerical identity,

Qualitative Identity When things look the same Numerical Identity If both are one and the same thing

Explain the three views on personal identity - Soul Theory; Spatio-temporal Continuity Theory; and Psychological Continuity Theory - and the problems that they face.

Soul-Theory of Personal Identity (S): This view takes numerical identity to hold between persons if and only if one and the same soul. We can more accurately state this as the following principle: (S Principle) For any persons P1 and P2, P1=P2 if, and only if, P1 and P2 share one and the same soul. Here, the condition that needs to be satisfied for persons P1 and P2 to be the same person is stated in the underlined, italicized portion of the S Principle. Not only is it a necessary condition for P1 to be the same as P2, it is also a sufficient condition. That is, if P1 and P2 share one and the same soul, then that would be enough/sufficient to conclude that P1 and P2 are the same person. What is a soul? A soul is supposed to be some sort of non-physical substance that is responsible not only for grounding personhood, but also for being the seat and subject of all conscious mental acts, such as our conscious thoughts. There are several problems with this view. The first is that the notion of a soul is somewhat controversial, especially in the scientific age of today. There doesn't seem any good, scientific reason to think that there are immaterial souls. In fact, scientific evidence seems to suggest strongly that all of the activities that were usually attributed to the soul are actually based in the body, namely, the brain. So, the soul theory seems to be very contrary to our science. Furthermore, the problem is that it has difficulty explaining how it is that the soul is able to engage in the activities that proponents of the soul theory claim that it does. How does the soul remember or think at all? Although the scientists haven't explained how it is that we think, they have some idea based on research into neurons, neurotransmitters, etc. The soul theorists doesn't have any of that. Spatial-Temporal Continuity Theory of Personal Identity (STC): This view states that persons are numerically identical if and only if one is spatio-temporally continuous with the other. The principle of STC can be stated as follows: (STC Principle) For any persons P1 and P2, P1=P2 if, and only if, there is spatio-temporal continuity between P1 and P2 . When does spatio-temporal continuity hold between P1 and P2? One way to think about it is in terms of a video recording. If one, continuous recording can be made from P1 to P2, starting at one time, and then ending at another time, then P1 and P2 are spatio-temporally continuous with each other. There is a linear connection, as it were, that connects P1 and P2 spatially and temporally. So, spatio-temporal continuity is basically a series of space-time points. An object that exists in a continuous series of space-time points is one object. This applies equally to personal identity. If in a continuous series of space-time points, you can find a baseball in each of those points. Then, we can conclude that the baseball in each of those points in the continuous series is one baseball. If instead of a baseball we find a person in that continuous series of space-time points, then it is one and the same person throughout that series. Notice that STC says nothing about whether the person at one point in space-time has the same beliefs or has the same memories as the person at a different point in space-time. STC only cares about whether or not there is a continuous series of STC between P1 and P2. In other words, it doesn't focus on psychology or any other attributes at all. So, if you lose all your memory, are you the same person? STC will say yes, because there is spatial-temporal continuity between you now and you before the memory loss. This is where STC starts to run into some issues. The main objection is the possibility of spatio-temporal discontinuity between P1 and P2, and yet our intuitions strongly inclining us to judge that P1=P2. This is where the Prince and the Cobbler case comes in as a thought experiment to show that STC is wrong. Here's how it goes. Psychological states are a function of the physical states in the body, primarily the brain. So, what that means is that changes in the states or neural structure of the brain will result in different psychological states. If you gain a new memory, that is because some sort of change happened in your brain. Physical things can, in principle, be re-configured and re-structured. This is in virtue of the fact that they are physical things: physical things can be moved around and re-organized. Now, suppose you have a prince and cobbler. One day an alien comes down and re-configures and re-structures the brain of the cobbler so that it's exactly like that of the cobbler, and re-configures and re-structures the brain of the prince so that it's exactly like that of the cobbler (before the alteration). Given 1, the psychological states that were in the prince are now in the previous body of the cobbler, and the psychological states that were in the cobbler are now in the previous body of the prince. This is in principle possible given 2. So, where is now the prince and where is the cobbler? Since there has been a reconfiguration of the brain of both the prince and the cobbler, the psychological states have been switched. The previous body of the cobbler has all the memories, psychological dispositions, beliefs, etc. of the prince, and the previous body of the prince has all the memories, psychological dispositions, beliefs, etc. of the cobbler. Suppose now that the cobbler, before the switch, had committed a crime, and the prince was known to be a good prince. After the switch, guards catch who they think is the cobbler, who yells "I'm not the cobbler, I swear! I'm the prince! You must believe me!" All this time, the cobbler in the prince's body says "Great, I'm not going to be punished for the crime I committed!" In such a case, we have strong intuitions telling us that justice is not being carried out properly; and that the cobbler is really the one in the previous body of the prince, and the prince is really the one in the previous body of the cobbler. However, STC goes against our intuitions here. What STC will say is that after the neural alterations, the prince is still the same person as the one before the neural alterations, despite having all the memories, etc. of the cobbler; and similarly, the cobbler is the same person as the one before the neural alterations, despite having all the memories, etc. of the prince. Consider: 👦 👦 S1T1 S1T2 Suppose S1 is a spatial location, namely, the prince's bed. At time T1, the prince is laying in bed (S1). Then, at time T2, the alteration of the brain occurs and now 👦 has all the thoughts and beliefs and memories of the cobbler. Since 👦 at S1T2 is spatio-temporally continuous with 👦 at S1T1, it follows by Principle STC that 👦 at S1T1 is the same person as 👦 at S1T2. But our intuitions tell us that this is wrong! It seems very clear that 👦 at S1T2 is a different person, namely, the cobbler, not the prince anymore! Since 1 and 2 above seem true, we can generate the prince and cobbler case. And because we can generate the prince and cobbler case, we can generate a case where STC seems to get things wrong. If STC is right and our intuitions are wrong, it will need to explain why our strong intuitions are wrong. No good explanation seems available. Hence, some people take this to be reason that STC is not the right view on personal identity. Another problem that faces STC is the problem of duplication. I'm going to change things up a little from the case given by Conee and Sider. Here's our case. It's possible for a person to live and survive with just one hemisphere of the brain. Brain transplantation is in principle possible. Personhood follows the brain. There is empirical evidence that suggests 3 is possible. There have been actual cases of people surviving severe trauma that left them with just one hemisphere. While 4 is not possible given the state of our medical technology, nothing rules out that 4 is at least in principle possible. 5 seems right too: if you and I changed hands, you would still be in your body and I would still be in my body. If we did that with our organs (switched hearts; switched kidneys; etc.), then, again, you would still be in your body and I would still be in my body. However, if we switched brains, it seems obvious that you would now be in my old body, and I would now be in your old body. If that seems right, then you are accepting 5. Now, imagine that we take the left hemisphere of your brain, and then transplant it into body A. Then, we take the right hemisphere of your brain, and then transplant it into body B. Personhood follows the brain. So, personhood went with A and B. Clearly, according to Principle STC, A and B are not numerically identical. In other words, A≠B. The reason is that now A and B are spatio-temporally discontinous with each other. However, A is spatio-temporally continuous with you before the surgery, and B is spatio-temporally continuous with you before the surgery. Hence, A=you(before surgery) and B=you(before surgery) according to Principle STC. That is, according to principle STC, A = you(before surgery) = B. That means that A = B. So, A≠ B (since A and B are not continuous with each other spatio-temporally) and A=B (since both are numerically identical to you before surgery). That's a contradiction! Psychological Continuity Theory of Personal Identity (PC): This view takes person P1 and person P2 to be numerically identical if, and only if, there is psychological continuity between P1 and P2. The main principle of this theory is roughly as follows: (PC Principle) For any persons P1 and P2, P1=P2 if, and only if, there is psychological continuity between P1 and P2. When does psychological continuity hold between P1 and P2? Psychological continuity holds when one has memories of the actions of the other as their own, and if there is continuity in the psychological states or traits from one to the next. For example, if P2 remembers the actions of P1, and P2 remembers them as her own actions, then P1 = P2. This is the view that John Locke held. So, if I start to remember the actions of, say, Joan of Arc as my actions, then Joan of Arc and I are the same person. (Locke emphasizes memory, but PC could include more psychological states than just memory). So, when we think of the cobbler and the prince case, the person in the cobbler's body after the change is numerically identical in person as the person in the prince's body before the change. In other words, PC seems to agree with our strong intuitions in the prince and cobbler case: it's not spatio-temporal continuity that matters in personal identity; rather, what matters is psychological continuity. This view also faces the problem of duplication. Suppose what happens is that the brain of the prince has been duplicated in two different bodies, A and B. Now, A and B are psychologically continuous with the prince. However, A and B are not psychologically continuous with each other, at least not completely. So, what we find is that A≠B according to PC Principle. However, since A is psychologically continuous with the prince, and so is B, that means that, according to PC Principle, A=prince=B. However, that means A=B. So, A=B and A≠B. That's inconsistent!

Explain substance dualism

Substance Dualism the mind/body are two distinct and independent substances (mind non-physical and non-extended and body physical and extended) that are merely contingently connected. Remember that this theory, substance dualism is claiming that the mind and body are 2 separate things. A substance is bearer of properties, not itself property dependent on anything A contingent connection is one that happens to hold, but does not have to. The mind and body happen to occur together but not dependent on each other, mind could exist without the body According to substance dualism the mind is an entirely different sort of thing to the body, the mind and body are different sorts of substances According to substance dualism the body is a physical object located in space, its made from the atoms familiar to chemistry; it has a certain weight and height and it can be seen and touched According to substance dualism the mind is a nonphysical object. Its not located in space; its not made from the atoms familiar to chemistry; it has neither weight nor height; it can't be seen or touched According to substance dualism there are two distinct kinds of substances in the world: mental substances and physical substances, mind and body, while quite distinct, interact with one another According to substance dualism Sensory information about the state of the world is sent from brain to mind and decisions about how to react are sent from mind to brain, experiences of pain are states of the nonphysical mind; the brain itself has no conscious experiences Substance dualism argues that it is. According to a traditional metaphysics, a substance is an entity, a thing, that does not depend on another entity for its continued existence. It has 'ontological independence'. For example, this handout is a (physical) substance.

Notes From Lecture.

The Mind-Body Problem J. W. Hwang The mind-body problem starts with the question: what is the relation between the mind and body? By relation, we mean things like is the sibling of, is taller than, is contiguous with. These are all examples of relations. What, then, sort of relation holds between mind and body? You may think that the relation that holds between mind and body is a causal relation. For instance, a causal relation holds between prolonged asbestos exposure and mesothelioma: Prolonged asbestos exposure causes mesothelioma. Similarly, you might think that the body, or at least some activity in some part of the body, causes the mind to exist. So, like (1), you get: Body (or bodily activity) causes the mind Perhaps we might be more specific about a certain part or organ of the body that is causally responsible for the mind. If that is the desire, we get: Brain (or neural activity) causes the mind Even more specific versions of this would be to talk about specific brain states and specific mental states. For instance: C-fiber stimulation in the brain causes pain feelings in the mind Activity in area-group X in the brain causes sad thoughts in the mind Low dopamine and seratonin levels causes feelings of depression The left side is the brain state (or, more generally, physical state), and the right side is the mental state. Notice that when you take the relation to be a causal relation, you might be implying that mind and body are different things. When you claim that A causes B, whatever A and B may be, the causal relation seems to imply that the relata are distinct, viz., that A and B are not the same. For instance, (1) above implies that asbestos exposure is not the same thing as mesothelioma. A stroke causes speech impairment in someone, but stroke and speech impairment are not identical. If the brain activity causes the mind, then the question is what sort of thing the mind is: is it just another activity of some other part of the brain/body, or is it something different in kind from a brain/bodily state? One kind of theory about the relation between mind and body is the identity theory. Identity theory holds that the relation between mind and body is an identity relation. If we're talking about an identity relation, then we're talking about numerical identity. They are the same in number. So, if the mind is identical to the brain, then that would mean that mind and brain are not two things, but rather one thing. The claim that mind=brain is like saying Iron Man = Tony Stark. In just the way that if Iron Man = Tony Stark, there aren't two things but one, similarly if mind=brain, there aren't two things but just one things. We can get more nuanced than this, but we're going to keep it general. Identity theorists hold that the mind is something entirely physical since the mind is identical to, and nothing more than, the brain. Sometimes this is known as materialism, but it's changed to physicalism since physicalists want to allow for the possibility that the mind is not just matter but something that is essentially within the domain of physics or physical science, such as chemistry, biology, etc. Physicalism is basically the view that the mind is part of the physical universe, and is itself a physical thing among other physical things in the natural world. There are different kinds of physicalists, and they don't entirely agree with each other. Reductive Physicalism (RP) is the view that all concepts either are or are reducible to concepts of the natural sciences, in particular the concepts of physics. So, not only do they accept the central ontological thesis of physicalism that all things are physical, they go further and claim that all mental concepts (e.g. the concept of thought, belief, feeling, etc.) can be explained entirely by (reduced to) concepts of the natural sciences, namely, physics. This is called reductive explanation, and, hence, the name RP. What do we mean by reductive explanation? Take rust - what is rust? Rust can be fully explained using the concepts of oxidation and metal. The concept of digestion can be explained in terms of the concepts of organic matter, chemical decomposition, and absorption. If the reductive explanation is successful, then there should be nothing more to being a bachelor, rust, and digestion than what is found in the reductive explanation. In other words, successful reduction results in nothing about the explanandum (thing to be explained) unexplained. RP tries to do this with the mind: mental concepts like pain, depression, color sensation, and thought will be reductively explained in terms of concepts from physics (or neuroscience). For instance, it will turn out the concept of pain will be explained in terms of C-fiber stimulation, where the concept of a C-fiber applies to the particular neurons in a certain region of the brain. The concept of sensing blue will be then explained in terms of, and thus reduced to, the concept of B-fiber stimulation, where the concept of B-fiber applies to particular neurons or neural activity patterns in the occipital lobe of the brain. This kind of RP - one that reduces mental states to brain states - is identity theory, or simple materialism. So, successful reduction will show that the concept of pain is identical to the concept of C-fiber stimulation. Other kinds of RP include behaviorism and functionalism. Behaviorism holds that mental concepts are identical to behavioral concepts. So, the concept of pain is to be explained entirely in terms of behavioral concepts, namely, the concept of stimulus-input and behavioral output. The reductive explanation of the concept of pain will look something like this: concept of feeling pain = the concept of bodily injury (stimulus input) + a set of observable behavior (behavioral output), e.g. {writhing; wincing; screaming; crying; saying 'ow!'; saying 'that hurts!'; etc.}. According to behaviorism, feeling pain does not cause you to wince and writhe. Rather, feeling pain is identical to wincing and writhing (upon sustaining bodily injury). You might say: what if someone gets injured and they don't exhibit any behavior at all? According to behaviorism, they are not in pain. If someone is under general anesthesia and you cut their arm, you harmed them. However, they don't exhibit any of the behaviors found in the set of behaviors above. Hence, they are not in pain. Remember, on behaviorism, it's not that the feeling of pain causes pain-behavior, and it's not that the external behavior helps us determine if there is an internal feeling of pain. None of these are right. According to behaviorism, the feeling of pain is not an internal anything, but an outward something, namely, an outward, observable behavior. The feeling of pain is (is identical to) the external behavior of wincing and writhing, etc. Behaviorism ended up losing popularity, especially after what many considered to be decisive objections raised against it, in particular those raised by Noam Chomsky regarding linguistic behavior. Functionalism is a combination of identity theory and behaviorism. Functionalism says that mental states like feeling pain are nothing more than physical things, but not just any physical thing. Feeling pain is a physical thing that occupies a very specific functional role. The functional role is going to be defined by its inputs and outputs. So, which physical thing is pain? It's whatever physical thing that is stimulated by bodily injury (this is the input) and results in a certain set of behaviors (writhing, wincing, screaming, etc.; this is the output). In the way that a radio is a physical thing that takes in radio waves (input) and results in sounds (outputs), whether the physical thing is copper, metal alloy, iron, lead, etc., similarly, pain is going to be some physical thing that is stimulated by bodily injury (input) and results in behaviors (output), whether the physical thing be carbon based or not. Substance dualism is the view that mind and body are distinct substances. Mind is one kind of substance, and body is an entirely different kind of substance. In particular, the mind is non-physical, whereas the body is physical. Mind and body causally interact with each other. When the body gets harmed, this leads to the stimulation of the pain centers in the brain. The stimulation of parts of the brain causes in the non-physical mind the feeling of pain. The feeling of pain in your mind alerts you to the injury to your body. This then leads the mind to form the thought, "Oh, I had better move, for I am getting injured." This thought in the mind stimulates activity in the motor centers of the brain, and then the body moves: Body-to-mind causation: stimulation of nerve centers in the brain as a result of injury → feeling of pain in the mind. Mind-to-body causation: mind's realization of injury and feeling of pain → movement of body away from injuring object. Dual-Aspect theory (DAT) is a kind of non-reductive physicalism, but it is also not entirely a physicalist view either. Is it a dualism? Not exactly, since it doesn't take there to be two different things. DAT takes the mind to be something that is physical, but not entirely physical. Thought occurs within the body, namely the brain, and thought involves brain processes, but thought is not just those brain processes. This sounds confusing, I'm sure, so let's consider an analogy. Take for example a paperback novel. A paperback novel is a physical thing: it's made of paper, bound with a paper spine using threading and glue. There are printed shapes in black ink on all or most of the pages, and these printed shapes are called 'letters'. Now, we can go more into the chemical composition of the paper, the ink, etc. However, we can't just leave it as that. The scientific, physical account of the paperback novel is missing something: the story. So, a paperback novel is not just a physical thing, but something more: a story with a plot, with characters, etc. DAT holds a similar view regarding the human body, namely, the human brain: it's physical but it isn't just physical. It's also mental, which is not physical. It's got physical processes going on it, and it also has non-physical processes going on in it. So, the idea is that in order to fully grasp the brain and all that's going on in it, you need both scientific concepts and also non-scientific concepts, such as the concept of intention, value, etc. There are lots of other views, and there are problems with each of these views that I haven't gone into. (See the Nagel chapter on Mind-Body Problem for some of these issues and a more in-depth explanation of Dual Aspect Theory). Each tries to explain what a mind is - what the essence and nature of a mind is, ontologically speaking - and what's at stake in this problem is our conception of ourselves as persons, our conception of ourselves as part of the larger world, and our conception of knowledge of ourselves and our world through science. Personal Identity The issue of personal identity is the question of what conditions are necessary and sufficient for claiming that person P1 and person P2, across two different time points t1 and t2, are such that P1=P2. Notice here that we're specifically talking about persons. We say things like "I went through a difficult period ten years ago". When you say this now, you are making a claim of personal identity: the "I" refers to you now, and then you are identifying you now with the person ten years ago that went through a difficult period. The question is what makes that identification true? To try to appreciate the issue of personal identity, consider some puzzling and frustrating cases. You are tried for a crime alleged to have been committed five years ago. You take the stand and say that you are not the same person that committed the crime five years ago. You grant that person looks like you, sounds like you, even has the same DNA as you (and that you don't have an identical twin). You even grant remembering committing the crime. However, you claim that you have changed: your tastes have changed; you have come to learn new things; you act differently now; etc. So, you conclude, you're not the same person. Are you the same person? Is you(5 years ago) = you(now)? The class buys a wooden boat in San Pedro and sets sail for Catalina Island. Five minutes into the trip, in the middle of the sea, a wooden plank becomes damaged. A member of our class fortunately has a new wooden plank. We take out the old, damaged plank, throw it overboard, and replace it with the new one supplied by our classmate. This keeps happening throughout the trip: another wooden plank gets damaged, we replace it with a new one, and throw into the sea the old plank. By the time we get to Catalina, we have replaced all the original wooden boards with new ones. A dockworker in Catalina compliments us on our ship, and asks "Where did you get this ship?" and we respond "we bought it back in San Pedro". Are we lying or saying something false? Since the wooden boat now has every original piece of wood replaced with a new one, there is a question of whether or not the boat docked in Catalina is the same boat as the one that we bought back in San Pedro. If you think that we're not lying or saying something false, and that it's the same, then consider this: suppose one person, Sally, in our class came late and missed the boat. Sally sets sail on her own boat, trailing us by 10 minutes. Throughout her trip, she comes across wooden planks floating in the ocean. These planks are the old, damaged planks from our ship that we threw overboard after replacing it. Sally slowly puts the pieces back together as she finds them. By the time she gets to Catalina, she has collected all the planks and (re-) built the ship. Did Sally rebuild the ship we bought in San Pedro or is it now a different ship? If you think that we are lying or saying something false, and that it's not the same boat, then when it did it cease being the same boat? Right after we jettisoned the first plank? Second? A teleporter is built that is able to teleport you from one location to another, remote location. You are about to step into the teleporter, but before you step in, you inquire about how it works. The engineer says that it's safe: it's successfully teleported many people. How it works is this: the machine scans your body right down to its subatomic particles. It makes a detailed, accurate record of which particles are present and where. It maps the structural organization of all the particles. Then, the machine incinerates and destroys all the particles making up your body. In the remote location, the machine, using the information that it gathered from the initial scanning, collects new subatomic particles matching the ones that made up your body, and configures them exactly in the way that the same kind of particles were configured in your body before the teleportation. After stepping out of the machine, you will have all the same memories, dispositions, etc. as you did before stepping into the machine. You will even say "Wow, I can't believe that teleporter worked!". Would you step into the machine? A version of this is that God promises to resurrect you later on, long after you have died. After having some initial feeling of reassurance, you worry how this resurrection will happen. God responds by saying that he will gather up the same kind of particles that make you up while your alive, and then put them back together so that you will be 'reborn' with a new body. Are you then identical to the you now? There is a question that still remains if we take God to be resurrecting you from the same particles that make you up now, since it is conceivable that the same particles that make up your body now used to make up some other person's body in the past. All of these cases will certainly vex you on your pre-philosophical views about personal identity, and they will challenge your notion of personal identity. Before we begin, we need to get a couple things straight. First, the question of personal identity is about when the identity relation holds between persons. The focus is not on the sameness of body or the sameness of thing, but the sameness (identity) of persons. What, roughly, is a person? A person can be defined roughly as a being with thoughts, beliefs, memories, and dispositions, among other things. One thing we might want to include in that list is consciousness. Second, the question of personal identity is about numerical identity between persons, not qualitative identity. What's the difference? Qualitative identity holds when one thing shares the same qualities or properties or attributes as another thing. So, everything is qualitatively identical to itself. Two silver marbles might be qualitatively similar in almost every single way: same weight, same shape, same color, same dimensions, etc. Numerical identity holds when one thing is one with another thing. So, for any thing X and any thing Y, if X and Y are numerically identical, then X and Y are not two things but one. This is the sense in which it is a numerical identity. Now, personal identity is about numerical identity, not qualitative identity. So, when I point to a picture of me in Junior High School and I say "That person there is I", I am making an identification relation between that person in the picture and me. This is, then, an identity of persons, or, simply a personal identification that's being made. In doing so, I am making a claim of numerical identity: that person in the picture is one and the same as the person right here. I am not making a mere qualitative identity. (In fact, notice that the qualities of the person in the picture may drastically differ from those had by me: my height may be different; my weight may differ; I may have new scars that I did not have back then; etc. Let us turn now to the different views/theories of personal identity. Soul-Theory of Personal Identity (S): This view takes numerical identity to hold between persons if and only if one and the same soul. We can more accurately state this as the following principle: (S Principle) For any persons P1 and P2, P1=P2 if, and only if, P1 and P2 share one and the same soul. Here, the condition that needs to be satisfied for persons P1 and P2 to be the same person is stated in the underlined, italicized portion of the S Principle. Not only is it a necessary condition for P1 to be the same as P2, it is also a sufficient condition. That is, if P1 and P2 share one and the same soul, then that would be enough/sufficient to conclude that P1 and P2 are the same person. What is a soul? A soul is supposed to be some sort of non-physical substance that is responsible not only for grounding personhood, but also for being the seat and subject of all conscious mental acts, such as our conscious thoughts. There are several problems with this view. The first is that the notion of a soul is somewhat controversial, especially in the scientific age of today. There doesn't seem any good, scientific reason to think that there are immaterial souls. In fact, scientific evidence seems to suggest strongly that all of the activities that were usually attributed to the soul are actually based in the body, namely, the brain. So, the soul theory seems to be very contrary to our science. Furthermore, the problem is that it has difficulty explaining how it is that the soul is able to engage in the activities that proponents of the soul theory claim that it does. How does the soul remember or think at all? Although the scientists haven't explained how it is that we think, they have some idea based on research into neurons, neurotransmitters, etc. The soul theorists doesn't have any of that. Spatial-Temporal Continuity Theory of Personal Identity (STC): This view states that persons are numerically identical if and only if one is spatio-temporally continuous with the other. The principle of STC can be stated as follows: (STC Principle) For any persons P1 and P2, P1=P2 if, and only if, there is spatio-temporal continuity between P1 and P2 . When does spatio-temporal continuity hold between P1 and P2? One way to think about it is in terms of a video recording. If one, continuous recording can be made from P1 to P2, starting at one time, and then ending at another time, then P1 and P2 are spatio-temporally continuous with each other. There is a linear connection, as it were, that connects P1 and P2 spatially and temporally. So, spatio-temporal continuity is basically a series of space-time points. An object that exists in a continuous series of space-time points is one object. This applies equally to personal identity. If in a continuous series of space-time points, you can find a baseball in each of those points. Then, we can conclude that the baseball in each of those points in the continuous series is one baseball. If instead of a baseball we find a person in that continuous series of space-time points, then it is one and the same person throughout that series. Notice that STC says nothing about whether the person at one point in space-time has the same beliefs or has the same memories as the person at a different point in space-time. STC only cares about whether or not there is a continuous series of STC between P1 and P2. In other words, it doesn't focus on psychology or any other attributes at all. So, if you lose all your memory, are you the same person? STC will say yes, because there is spatial-temporal continuity between you now and you before the memory loss. This is where STC starts to run into some issues. The main objection is the possibility of spatio-temporal discontinuity between P1 and P2, and yet our intuitions strongly inclining us to judge that P1=P2. This is where the Prince and the Cobbler case comes in as a thought experiment to show that STC is wrong. Here's how it goes. Psychological states are a function of the physical states in the body, primarily the brain. So, what that means is that changes in the states or neural structure of the brain will result in different psychological states. If you gain a new memory, that is because some sort of change happened in your brain. Physical things can, in principle, be re-configured and re-structured. This is in virtue of the fact that they are physical things: physical things can be moved around and re-organized. Now, suppose you have a prince and cobbler. One day an alien comes down and re-configures and re-structures the brain of the cobbler so that it's exactly like that of the cobbler, and re-configures and re-structures the brain of the prince so that it's exactly like that of the cobbler (before the alteration). Given 1, the psychological states that were in the prince are now in the previous body of the cobbler, and the psychological states that were in the cobbler are now in the previous body of the prince. This is in principle possible given 2. So, where is now the prince and where is the cobbler? Since there has been a reconfiguration of the brain of both the prince and the cobbler, the psychological states have been switched. The previous body of the cobbler has all the memories, psychological dispositions, beliefs, etc. of the prince, and the previous body of the prince has all the memories, psychological dispositions, beliefs, etc. of the cobbler. Suppose now that the cobbler, before the switch, had committed a crime, and the prince was known to be a good prince. After the switch, guards catch who they think is the cobbler, who yells "I'm not the cobbler, I swear! I'm the prince! You must believe me!" All this time, the cobbler in the prince's body says "Great, I'm not going to be punished for the crime I committed!" In such a case, we have strong intuitions telling us that justice is not being carried out properly; and that the cobbler is really the one in the previous body of the prince, and the prince is really the one in the previous body of the cobbler. However, STC goes against our intuitions here. What STC will say is that after the neural alterations, the prince is still the same person as the one before the neural alterations, despite having all the memories, etc. of the cobbler; and similarly, the cobbler is the same person as the one before the neural alterations, despite having all the memories, etc. of the prince. Consider: 👦 👦 S1T1 S1T2 Suppose S1 is a spatial location, namely, the prince's bed. At time T1, the prince is laying in bed (S1). Then, at time T2, the alteration of the brain occurs and now 👦 has all the thoughts and beliefs and memories of the cobbler. Since 👦 at S1T2 is spatio-temporally continuous with 👦 at S1T1, it follows by Principle STC that 👦 at S1T1 is the same person as 👦 at S1T2. But our intuitions tell us that this is wrong! It seems very clear that 👦 at S1T2 is a different person, namely, the cobbler, not the prince anymore! Since 1 and 2 above seem true, we can generate the prince and cobbler case. And because we can generate the prince and cobbler case, we can generate a case where STC seems to get things wrong. If STC is right and our intuitions are wrong, it will need to explain why our strong intuitions are wrong. No good explanation seems available. Hence, some people take this to be reason that STC is not the right view on personal identity. Another problem that faces STC is the problem of duplication. I'm going to change things up a little from the case given by Conee and Sider. Here's our case. It's possible for a person to live and survive with just one hemisphere of the brain. Brain transplantation is in principle possible. Personhood follows the brain. There is empirical evidence that suggests 3 is possible. There have been actual cases of people surviving severe trauma that left them with just one hemisphere. While 4 is not possible given the state of our medical technology, nothing rules out that 4 is at least in principle possible. 5 seems right too: if you and I changed hands, you would still be in your body and I would still be in my body. If we did that with our organs (switched hearts; switched kidneys; etc.), then, again, you would still be in your body and I would still be in my body. However, if we switched brains, it seems obvious that you would now be in my old body, and I would now be in your old body. If that seems right, then you are accepting 5. Now, imagine that we take the left hemisphere of your brain, and then transplant it into body A. Then, we take the right hemisphere of your brain, and then transplant it into body B. Personhood follows the brain. So, personhood went with A and B. Clearly, according to Principle STC, A and B are not numerically identical. In other words, A≠B. The reason is that now A and B are spatio-temporally discontinous with each other. However, A is spatio-temporally continuous with you before the surgery, and B is spatio-temporally continuous with you before the surgery. Hence, A=you(before surgery) and B=you(before surgery) according to Principle STC. That is, according to principle STC, A = you(before surgery) = B. That means that A = B. So, A≠ B (since A and B are not continuous with each other spatio-temporally) and A=B (since both are numerically identical to you before surgery). That's a contradiction! Psychological Continuity Theory of Personal Identity (PC): This view takes person P1 and person P2 to be numerically identical if, and only if, there is psychological continuity between P1 and P2. The main principle of this theory is roughly as follows: (PC Principle) For any persons P1 and P2, P1=P2 if, and only if, there is psychological continuity between P1 and P2. When does psychological continuity hold between P1 and P2? Psychological continuity holds when one has memories of the actions of the other as their own, and if there is continuity in the psychological states or traits from one to the next. For example, if P2 remembers the actions of P1, and P2 remembers them as her own actions, then P1 = P2. This is the view that John Locke held. So, if I start to remember the actions of, say, Joan of Arc as my actions, then Joan of Arc and I are the same person. (Locke emphasizes memory, but PC could include more psychological states than just memory). So, when we think of the cobbler and the prince case, the person in the cobbler's body after the change is numerically identical in person as the person in the prince's body before the change. In other words, PC seems to agree with our strong intuitions in the prince and cobbler case: it's not spatio-temporal continuity that matters in personal identity; rather, what matters is psychological continuity. This view also faces the problem of duplication. Suppose what happens is that the brain of the prince has been duplicated in two different bodies, A and B. Now, A and B are psychologically continuous with the prince. However, A and B are not psychologically continuous with each other, at least not completely. So, what we find is that A≠B according to PC Principle. However, since A is psychologically continuous with the prince, and so is B, that means that, according to PC Principle, A=prince=B. However, that means A=B. So, A=B and A≠B. That's inconsistent! Mind-brain identity theory is something more than just the mind is the brain; So, each and every state of mind, is to be identified with, or is the very same thing as a state of the CNS. Mind brain theory says-there's something more than just that the mind is the brain, So each and every each and every state of mind, is to be identified with, or is the very same thing as a state of the CNS. Mind brain identity theory says basically that the mind simply is the living brain Mind brain identitiy theory is NOT saying not saying that mental states, on the one hand, and the brain states that cause them on the other, rather it's saying that mental states are the same thing as brin states. Mind brain identity theory analogy ab lights and photons now we think light is a stream of energy packets called photons. So, we identify light with a stream of photons. There aren't two things here, light on one hand and photons on the other. There is ONE thing; light-which is nothing but a stream of photons. -there is one thing, the brain and the mind are the same the mind is nothing but a persons brain. -every mental state is a state of the brain or the CNS Mind brain theory problem of interaction this problem concerns about how the mind could affect the body, if the mind is immaterial and literally could not make contact with it. Mind brain identity problem of interaction solution if the mind is the brain, then theres no mystery of mind and body interaction, because the mind is now part of the body, the brain and we obviously know that the brain affects the body. Mind brain identity problem with physics if the mind is immaterial, then it has no energy, (since e=mc2 says energy is = to mass x speed of light 2) so if mind moved the body, the body gains kinetic energy from nowhere, which violates the law of conservation of energy. Mind brain identity problem with physics solution but if the mind is just the brain, the the mind has whatever chemical energy is stored in the brain through food consumption, therefore, the mind/brain can moove the body without violating the laws of physics. David lewis argument for mind brain identity theory, the one with imputs and otputs and functionalism (summary) 1. Functionalism: mental states are differencated from one another by their causal roles: by their typical causes (inputs) and typical effects (outputs) 2. among the effects (outputs) of mental states are physical behaviors 3. but only something physical can cause something physical 4. mental states must be physical states (bc they output something physical) 5. since inputs go in your body and outputs come out of your body, mental states must be physical states inside your body 6. when science looks inside your body fro states that causally mediate the inputs and outputs that define mental states, they will find that they are states of the CNS. 7. each and every mental state is a state of the brain or CNS Functionalism mental states are differentiated from one another, or defined by, their causal roles: by their typical causes (inputs) and typical effects (outputs) Outputs are the typical effects of mental states, like physical behavior Functionalism: mental states are differencated from one another by their causal roles: by their typical causes (inputs) and typical effects (outputs) -whats next among the effects (outputs) of mental states are physical behaviors Among the effects (outputs) of mental states are physical behaviors -whats next? but only something physical can cause something physical But only something physical can cause something physical -whats next? mental states must be physical states (bc they output something physical) Mental states must be physical states (bc they output something physical) -whats next? since inputs go in your body and outputs come out of your body, mental states must be physical states inside your body Since inputs go in your body and outputs come out of your body, mental states must be physical states inside your body -whats next? when science looks inside your body fro states that causally mediate the inputs and outputs that define mental states, they will find that they are states of the CNS. When scientist looks inside your body for states that casually mediate the inputs and outputs that define mental states, they will find that they are states of the CNS -whats next? each and every mental state is a state of the brain or CNS Coffee maker is any device that takes in coffee grounds and water as an imput then outputs coffee. There are all sorts of things there are all sorts of things that can do this (electric french press, starbucks ect) but what makes them all coffee makers is what they output given certain inputs Reductive materialism it's "reducing" mind to matter, mind brain identity theory Prob with mind brain identity theoury in Lewis argument it appears to dissolve psychology as a science. If mental states are just brain states then those who study mental states are just neurologist, and of course those who study brain states are not phsychologist so if mind brain identity were true there should be no psychologist. Physicalism Everything that exists is dependent on something physical in order to exist. 'The mind' is not a separate substance, a 'thing'; it is more accurate to talk of mental properties - mental events, states and processes. These properties are possessed by a person or a brain (not a mind) Mind-brain type identity theory Mental properties just are physical properties; thinking a thought or feeling an itch is exactly the same thing as certain neurons firing or certain neural connections existing. Any particular type of mental state is a particular type of brain state. Evidence Mental events and states are very closely dependent on the brain, so many people now think that 'the mind' is just 'the brain', and everything mental is actually neurophysiological Correlation and identicality While science can prove that there is a correlation between mental events and brain processes, it cannot prove that they're identical Correlation Having a size and having a shape are correlated - everything that has a size has a shape and vice versa. But size and shape are distinct properties. Therefore Simply pointing out that everything that has a particular brain state also has a particular mental state doesn't show that mental states and brain states are the same thing. Correlation is not identity. Neuroscientific evidence Can establish correlations between mental and physical properties, but this does not establish type identity theory The mind-brain type identity theory doesn't claim that mental properties are correlated with certain physical properties. It says they are identical with them The theory is called 'type' identity because it claims that mental 'types' of thing (mental properties, states and events) are physical 'types' of thing - physical properties, states and events; mental properties are actually physical properties of the brain, mental states are brain state What do behaviorists want to do? Reduce a mental state to a particular behavior. What is Psychological behaviorism? an approach to psychology that says we should deal only with aspects of the mind which are publicly observable. What is Philosophical behaviorism? an approach to materialism which argues that the mind can be seen as an objective, 3rd-person phenomenon, because it amounts to nothing more than behavior. What do Behaviorists reject? 1. rejects the "Cartesian Theater", introspection, or the tracking of one's private mental states. 2. rejects the introspectionist (structuralist) approach to psychology pioneered by Wundt. Behaviorism will be treated as a materialist theory What were three major motivating forces behind behaviorism? 1. It was a reaction against dualism. 2. Logical Positivism was a popular philosophical movement at the time. The logical positivists held that the meaning of a sentence was ultimately a matter of the observable circumstances that would tend to confirm or verify that sentence. (think of hume and his view of ideas; if you can't trace to an impression, its bullshit.) 3. There was a popular philosophical assumption at the time that most (if not all) philosophical problems are the result of some kind of linguistic or conceptual confusion. So philosophical problems could be resolved through a careful analysis of the language in which the problem is expressed. What exactly is behaviorism? It is not really a theory about what mental states are (i.e., physical or nonphysical); it is a theory about how to analyze the way we speak of mental states. (Again, the behaviorist can't talk about things like mental states.) Specifically, behaviorism holds that talk about emotions, sensations, and beliefs, etc. is not talk about some kind of inner experience or an inner event; rather it is a shorthand way of talking about patterns of behavior (both actual and potential). The behaviorist wanted to analyze mental states in terms of dispositions to behave in certain ways. To see how this works: consider an analogy. Consider the property being soluble. To say that a sugar cube is soluble is not to say that it has some mysterious inner properties; rather it is to say that If the sugar cube were put in water, then it would dissolve. x is water soluble is equivalent by definition to If x were put in unsaturated water, x would dissolve. The behaviorist is going to say that a similar analysis will hold for mental states. Consider the mental state: wants a Caribbean vacation To say that Anne wants a Caribbean vacation is to say that: (1) If asked whether she wants a Caribbean vacation, she would answer yes. (2) If given new holiday brochures for Jamaica and Japan, she would peruse the ones from Jamaica first. (3) If given a ticket to Friday's flight to Jamaica, she would go, and so on and so on, etc. There is something compelling about this account. If someone says that Albert Einstein had an incredible mind, they are not talking about the kind of stuff it was made of; rather, they are talking about its extraordinary capacities and dispositions. Objection 1 to the behavioral analysis of mental states. The Problem With a One-By-One Behavioral Analysis: Any attempt to say that S is in a certain mental state if and only if S is disposed to certain behavior is doomed to failure, because any particular mental state only issues forth certain behavior in conjunction with other mental states. So we can't give an account of mental states in terms of dispositions to behave alone. Consider Anne's desire for a Caribbean vacation. (1) will be true only if Anne isn't secretive about her vacation plans. (2) will be true only if Anne isn't already bored with the Jamaica brochures. (3) will be true only if Anne doesn't believe that the flight on Friday will be hijacked. So now we have three more mental states to explain dispositionally. And in order to do this we will have to make reference to other mental states. So it's clear that we can't explicate mental states solely in terms of dispositions to behave. According to substance dualism the mind is an entirely different sort of thing to the body, the mind and body are different sorts of substances According to substance dualism the body is a physical object located in space, its made from the atoms familiar to chemistry; it has a certain weight and height and it can be seen and touched According to substance dualism the mind is a nonphysical object. Its not located in space; its not made from the atoms familiar to chemistry; it has neither weight nor height; it can be seen or touched According to substance dualism there are two distinct kinds of substances in the world: mental substances and physical substances, mind and body, while quite distinct, interact with one another According to substance dualism Sensory information about the state of the world is sent from brain to mind and decisions about how to react are sent from mind to brain, experiences of pain are states of the nonphysical mind; the brain itself has no conscious experiences According to substance dualism (1) If its Friday then its pay day (2) Its Friday, From (1) and (2) you work out (3) Its Payday, all of these knowledge states are states of Bloggs's nonphysical mind, the nonphysical minds being states (1) and (2) caused it to be in state (3), on this view all rational inference occurs in the nonphysical mind, the brain is just dumb Arguments for substance dualism Minds can use language, no physical object can use language. therefore, Minds are not physical objects Arguments for substance dualism (Minds and Language) Rene Descartes championed this view. To him it seemed impossible that a physical object could generate and understand the rich variety of sentences which humans could so effortlessly handle. Therefore it seemed impossible to Descartes that the human mind could be a physical object Arguments for substance dualism (Minds and Language - However) The understanding of language has evolved. Mechanical aspects of language, Syntax - sequences of words = grammatical sentences Arguments for substance dualism (Minds and Language - However However) Semantics = meanings of words, can be different, we don't have a fully worked out theory of semantics, however its also fair to say that at present there seems to be little reason to doubt that a physical object could use language meaningfully Arguments for substance dualism Could a physical object reason? Descartes doubt this, 1. Minds can engage in reasoning 2. No physical object can engage in reasoning, Therefore, 3. Minds are not physical objects Arguments for substance dualism Descartes claims are undermined by the revelation of the mechanical nature of mathematical reasoning, e.g. pocket calucator Arguments for substance dualism Could a physical object be conscious? 1. Minds can be conscious 2. No physical object can be conscious, Therefore, 3. Minds are not physical objects Arguments for substance dualism Descartes noticed that he could doubt the existence of his boy e.g. mistaking our dreams, how do we know we're not currently dreaming, a powerful alien could be deceiving us into thinking we have body's Arguments against Substance Dualism Princess Elizabeth's argument: the substance dualist makes two claims about the mind, there can be causal interactions between very different kinds of physical substances, for instance sunshine can heat metal and yet sunshine and metal are quite different kinds of substance, if quite different kinds of physical substances can interact, why can't physical and nonphysical substances interact? Arguments against Substance Dualism Physiology can be an obstacle in the way of the substance dualist, especially in acting as a counter argument to the case involving Blogg's and the lion, a detailed explanation would be given listing all the physical properties which activate in the event of seein and then running away from the lion Is the mind a substance? Substance dualism argues that it is. According to a traditional metaphysics, a substance is an entity, a thing, that does not depend on another entity for its continued existence. It has 'ontological independence'. For example, this handout is a (physical) substance. Substance 1. Substances are also understood by contrast with properties. 2. Substances are what possess properties. The chair (substance) is solid (property). Properties can't exist without substances - they depend on substances to exist. Solidity depends on things being solid; the property 'being 1 metre long' depends on something being that long; and, Descartes claimed, thoughts can't exist without a thinker. 3. Substances persist through changes in properties - something can change from being 1 metre long to being 1.1 metres long, e.g. by growing. Obviously, the property 'being 1 metre long' does not persist through this change. Or again, a thinker can think a series of thoughts - the thinker persists, the thoughts do not. What does substance dualism say? Substance dualism holds that there are two fundamentally different types of substances: physical (or material) substances ('bodies', physical objects) and mental substances (minds). It claims that minds do not depend on bodies in order to exist, i.e. minds can exist separated from any body. Minds and bodies are ontologically distinct and independent. People who believe that the mind is the soul, and the soul can continue to exist without a body after death, are usually substance dualists. If mental substance exists, it will be very unlike matter. For instance, we shall see that Descartes argues that it does not exist in space and does not have any parts What did Descartes argue? Dualism claims that both minds and bodies - physical objects - exist. It is common in contemporary philosophy of mind to assume that bodies exist, and since we are not discussing idealism, we shall share that assumption. Dualism is more controversial, therefore, in claiming that the mind is an ontologically distinct substance. In Meditation VI, p. 29, Descartes presents the following argument for substance dualism: Descartes' Conceivability Argument 1. I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as something that thinks and isn't extended. 2. I have a clear and distinct idea of body as something that is extended and does not think. 3. If I have a clear and distinct thought of something, God can create it in a way that corresponds to my thought. 4. Therefore, God can create mind as something that thinks and isn't extended and body as something that is extended and does not think. 5. Therefore, mind and body can exist independently of one another. 6. Therefore, mind and body are two distinct substances. Objections broken down In (1) and (2), Descartes appeals to his concepts of mind and body. Earlier in the Meditations, he analysed mind as something that thinks and body as something that is extended (has a size and takes up space). We can understand (1) and (2) to entail the claim that it is conceivable that mind can exist without body. Nothing in our concepts rules this out. In Meditation VI, Descartes adds (3). Assuming that God is omnipotent, the only reason for thinking that God cannot make something is that the concept of it is contradictory. The concepts of mind and body aren't self-contradictory. So God can create the mind and the body just as Descartes conceives of them - a thinking thing and an extended thing. We can summarize (3), (4) and (5) in terms that don't refer to God: it is possible that mind can exist without body. Finally, a quick reminder helps in understanding the inference from (5) to (6). A substance, we said above, is something that does not depend on another thing in order to exist. In other words, a substance can exist independently, on its own. A simpler form of the argument 1. It is conceivable that mind can exist without body. 2. Therefore, it is possible that mind can exist without body. 3. Therefore, mind and body are distinct substances. Conclusion of Descartes' Conceivability Argument It is important for Descartes' argument that our clear and distinct ideas of mind and body are complete and exclusive. The mind is nothing but thought; the body is nothing but extension. We know this to be true, he says, because the ideas of mind and body are clear and distinc Descartes' Divisibility Argument Descartes claims that mind and body have different properties - thought and extension. This provides another argument that they cannot be the same thing: if they were the same thing, they would have the same properties. Leibniz later formalized this claim in his principle of the indiscernibility of identicals: if two things are identical (i.e. are just one thing), then they share all their properties. Why? Because one thing cannot have different properties from itself. So if two things have different properties, that proves that they cannot be one and the same thing Additional argument In case we aren't convinced that mind and body really do have different properties, Descartes provides an additional argument (p. 32). The mind does not have any parts and cannot be divided: When I consider the mind - i.e. consider myself purely as a thinking thing - I can't detect any parts within myself; I understand myself to be something single and complete ... the faculties of willing, of understanding, of sensory perception and so on, these are not parts of the mind, since it is one and the same mind that wills, understands and perceives. What conclusion does Descartes arrive to? Willing, understanding and perceiving are properties of the mind, different ways of thinking. By contrast, the body does have parts. You can literally lose part of your body, e.g. a hand. So the body (physical substance) is divisible into parts, but the mind (mental substance) is not. So mind and body are entirely distinct types of thing. The unity of mind and body If the mind and body are two distinct things, how are they related? Descartes says that Nature also teaches me, through these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst and so on, that I (a thinking thing) am not merely in my body as a sailor is in a ship. Rather, I am closely joined to it - intermingled with it, so to speak - so that it and I form a unit. (p. 30) Because 'a unit' doesn't sound like 'two separate things', this claim and its implications are puzzling. Reflecting on perception, sensation and feeling, we notice that we perceive that we have bodies, and that our bodies - this particular physical object that we have a close and unique relationship with - can be affected in many beneficial and harmful ways. This is brought to our attention through our bodily appetites, like hunger and thirst, through emotions, such as anger, sadness, love, and through sensations, like pain, pleasure, colours, sound and so on. All these experiences have their origins in the body. What else does Descartes consider? However, this doesn't mean that mind and body are united as one and the same thing. Descartes carefully considers what the idea of the mind really involves. He argues that we can still conceive of ourselves existing complete without imagination or feeling, i.e. without those ways of thinking that are informed by the body. Our experiences of our bodies Nevertheless, our experiences of our bodies through bodily sensations and emotions show that the connection between the mind and body is very close: 'These sensations are confused mental events that arise from the union - the intermingling, as it were - of the mind with the body' (p. 30). If mind and body were not intermingled, then 'I wouldn't feel pain when the body was hurt but would perceive the damage in an intellectual way, like a sailor seeing that his ship needs repairs' (p. 30). Is the mind connected to the whole body? Furthermore, this union of mind and body is a union between the mind (the whole mind - it doesn't have parts) and the whole body. We feel pain in the various parts of our body. The mind does have a privileged link with the brain (a point of causal connection in the pineal gland), but the mind does not feel all pains to be in the brain! So Descartes argues that the mind is joined to all parts of the body - the point about the pineal gland is really just a physiological observation about causal pathways. Substance Dualism There are mental substances and physical substances that're not the same The mind is the same thing as the brain (T/F) False Is the brain physical or non-physical? Physical Is the mind physical or non-physical? Non-physical Argument for Property Dualism: C Conceivability argument Descartes' Conceivability argument I can conceive of my mind and body being different things, therefore they are Response to C argument What is conceivable may not be possible What is conceivable may not be possible Logically possible, but not physically possible (jumping from the Earth to the Moon) Masked Man Fallacy Equating ideas with actuality (Idea of batman as masked, idea of Bruce wayne as not masked, therefore bruce wayne is not batman) Dualism Advantages 1. Explains the seeming difference between mental and physical. 2. Explains common intuitions about minds being able to separate from bodies. Dualism Disadvantages: 1. Proposes a non-physical thing existing and acting in/on an otherwise physical world. How can the two interact? 2. Doesn't explain how the mind comes to exist. Would have to either develop along with the brain or become "attached" at some point. Physicalism Advantage: no problem of interaction, physical stuff can interact with physical stuff. Physicalism Disadvantage: Doesn't explain why mental states seem so different from physical states. Or why mental stuff exists at all? Philosophical Zombie : creature with a brain, that acts just like any other human, but without consciousness. Dual-aspect theory Advantage: Explains the seeming difference without requiring a separate kind of substance, helps to avoid the interaction problem. Dual aspect theory Disadvantage: Leaves a lot of questions - why are there mental properties rather than just physical properties? How do they arise? Personal Identity: Locke, Reid, and Parfit Identity important to note that we're NOT saying that two things are just like each other, instead we mean that they're actually just one thing. "Numerical identity," not just similarity. Leibniz's Law If x and y are identical, then x and y share all of their same properties. Identity over time is harder: Ship of Theseus case - gradual change, is the ship at the end numerically identical to the one at the beginning? Can't use Leibniz's Law. What about persons that change over time? Common views on personal identity 1. Personal identity is based on something psychological (memories, personality) John Locke and Derek Parfit, Thomas Reid argues against this. 2.Personal identity is based on some substance (physical substance, or a Cartesian mental substance) Locke -Arguing that personal identity depends on mental factors, not on the sameness of the body. -Man vs. Person in Locke's Terms "Man" (or "being"): An animal, a body, with a certain form/shape. "Person": A thinking being, but must be able to think about itself/its thoughts (consciousness) (Locke)Personal Identity over time: sameness of consciousness - if you remember previous experiences/thoughts, you're identical with the person who had those experiences/thoughts. Advantage: Personal identity continues even through extreme bodily changes. (Prince and cobbler example.) Objection: Amnesia. Response: same being, different person. Reid Objections to Locke: 1. Memory is just evidence of being the person who had the original experience. Doesn't make it so. 2. An entity cannot go into and out of existence and remain the same entity. Consciousness starts and stops, consciousness can only allow for personal identity that lasts as long as each stretch of consciousness.3.If we use memory to determine personal identity, then it's possible for multiple beings to be the same person (like Parfit's teleporter case), or to have multiple persons in the same being (like the man with no short-term memory).4.Transitivity objection: Identity should be transitive (if a=b and b=c, then a=c). On Locke's view, someone can be identical and not identical to an earlier person, but that's a contradiction. (Walt3 remembers Walt2 but not Walt1, and Walt2 remembers Walt1. Walt3 isn't identical to Walt1 because he doesn't remember that phase. However, Walt3 is identical to Walt2, who is identical to Walt1, and due to transitivity, Walt3 is identical to Walt1.) Horse analogy: similarity is just evidence that the horse is yours Parfit Denies the importance of personal identity, focuses on personal "survival" instead. Main cases: gradual replacement, teletransportation, split-brain cases. Split-brain cases (severed corpus callosum): two streams of consciousness. How can theories of personal identity account for this? Two persons? Qualitative Identity When things look the same Numerical Identity If both are one and the same thing Problem of Personal Identity It is causally impossible that a person remains qualitatively the same throughout their life (skin ages, change our thoughts, etc) Constant change is part of our existence 3 Views on Personal Identity 1. Illusion Theory 2. The Self as Substance (Body & Soul) 3. The Self as Psychic Continuity (Memory Theory) Illusion Theory Us remaining the same is an illusion The Case for the Illusion Theory Human beings undergo continuous qualitative change. The empirical evidence points the possibility that there is no permanent and unchanging self. Strengths for the Illusion Theory 1. Does not lead to logical difficulties 2. There is no logical contradiction to it 3. Empirical evidence seems to support the key elements of this theory Problems for the Illusion Theory 1. If we agree there is no permanent self, then, we will not be around tomorrow. 2. The things I do today, I do because I believe that I will enjoy them in the future. If there is no permanent self, then another person will be enjoying what I enjoy right now. 3. It seems unfair to punish people for what they did in the past Self as Substance Theory 1. Body (same body = same person) 2. Soul (same soul = same person) Body Theory As long as we deal with the same body, we deal with the same person (numerical sameness) Case for the Body Theory 1. The most intuitive and most compatible with common sense. 2. DNA, fingerprints, etc 3. It is logical Problems for the Body Theory 1. Cases of total amnesia (we depend on psychological continuity 2. Idea of life after death (we will not have the same body in the afterlife) 3. It is logically possible that we continue to exist after our physical bodies stop functioning, but how is it logically possible to survive one's death? The body is there, but the self is not. The Soul Theory Same soul = same person (centered around the idea of a nonphysical soul) According to this theory, life after death is possible. Our personal identity is not affected by the death of our physical bodies Problems with the Soul Theory 1. Souls are invisible, non physical substances that cannot be seen or heard. 2. How can you prove that someone has the same soul as the last time you saw them? 3. If the soul never ceases to exist, then we actually never die 4. How do you make sense of the concept of resurrection? Memory Theory As long as we have overlapping memories, we are the same person Case for the Memory Theory 1. The Memory Theory says that I am identical to the person who existed in the past as long as I can remember at least some events that were experienced by that person. 2. Solves the problems of the Body and the Soul theories: If after my death a person can remember what I did on Earth, it seems plausible to think that this person is identical to the person I am today. 3. Can explain how we can know that we are dealing with the same person we knew in the past. Leibnitz's Thought Experiment If you were offered to become the King of China (or any position of great wealth and power) on the condition that you have to undergo a brainwashing that will destroy all and every memory you currently have, would you accept that offer? Problem 1 for the Memory Theory 1. M can remember his life as a young boy: M=Y 2. O can remember being a middle aged officer: O=M 3. But the old general cannot remember any of his life as a young boy: O≠Y These inconsistent propositions makes the Memory Theory faulty. Solution of the Memory Theory Distinguish between direct and indirect memories. *Direct memories: memories we can recall consciously right at this moment. What did you have for breakfast? *Indirect memories: memories I cannot recall right now but a former self could. What shirt were you wearing last Monday? Problem 2 for Memory Theory False memories are not caused by actual experiences: *I seem to remember events from my past life. *False memories can be deceiving and can lead to a false sense of self. Solution for Problem 2 Distinguishing between genuine and false memories *A genuine memory is a memory of an experience that in fact happened to me. *False memories: Memories that are not caused by actual experiences. *Personal identity is defined in terms of genuine memories. Problem 3 for Memory Theory Memory does not seem sufficient condition to be the same person. *Being the same person requires that we conserve some of our psychological characteristics. What is the problem of personal identity, and what conditions must an adequate theory of personal identity satisfy? if God is all powerful, good and intelligent there should be no evil in the world What is the "soul theory", and what are the main objections to it? Person X at T1 and person Y at T2 are the same person if and only person X and person Y share the same soul. body theory and what are the main objections to it? the only thing that exist is matter or energy, all things are composed of material and all phenomena (including consciousness) are the result of material interactions. same body, same person; we persist through time as long as we continue to have the same body. memory theory avoid this circularity worry? x, identical persons are those who share at least one experience memory. Locke. We are the same person as long as we can remember at least something from the past. What is the "duplication problem", how does it arise, and why is it so problematic for the memory theory of personal identity? can there be more than one person? Problematic because how do we determine the sameness of persons or what happens to the older/younger person?

Explain the problem of personal identity

The issue of personal identity is the question of what conditions are necessary and sufficient for claiming that person P1 and person P2, across two different time points t1 and t2, are such that P1=P2. Notice here that we're specifically talking about persons. We say things like "I went through a difficult period ten years ago". When you say this now, you are making a claim of personal identity: the "I" refers to you now, and then you are identifying you now with the person ten years ago that went through a difficult period. The question is what makes that identification true? It is causally impossible that a person remains qualitatively the same throughout their life (skin ages, change our thoughts, etc) Constant change is part of our existence In the modern philosophy of mind, this concept of personal identity is sometimes referred to as the diachronic problem of personal identity. The synchronic problem is grounded in the question of what features or traits characterise a given person at one time. There are several general theories of this identity problem.Personal identity is the concept you develop about yourself that evolves over the course of your life. This may include aspects of your life that you have no control over, such as where you grew up or the color of your skin, as well as choices you make in life, such as how you spend your time and what you believe.

What is the problem with claiming that the mind is identical to the brain (i.e. a mental state like pain is identical with a brain state like C-fiber stimulation) while at the same time holding that the mind is caused by the brain (i.e. mental states like pain are caused by brain states like C-fiber stimulation?

When you claim that A causes B, whatever A and B may be, the causal relation seems to imply that the relata are distinct, viz., that A and B are not the same. For instance, (1) above implies that asbestos exposure is not the same thing as mesothelioma. A stroke causes speech impairment in someone, but stroke and speech impairment are not identical. If the brain activity causes the mind, then the question is what sort of thing the mind is: is it just another activity of some other part of the brain/body, or is it something different in kind from a brain/bodily state?

Dual-aspect theory

mind and body are two levels of explanation of the same thing mind and body are two levels of explanation of the same thing. Remember that this is saying that the mind and brain are the same Double/dual aspect theory double-aspect theory is the view that the mental and the physical are two aspects of, or perspectives on, the same substance. It is also called dual-aspect monism (Mental+Physical) Dual Aspect Theory -Einstein -the mind and body are merely different aspects of the same thing Dual Aspect Theory Bertrand Russell claimed that our experiences and ideas one aspect of some events or activities of which the various chemical reactions of the brain are another aspect. This theory has often been called the dual aspect theory. Bertrand Russell claimed that our experiences and ideas one aspect of some events or activities of which the various chemical reactions of the brain are another aspect. This theory has often been called the ____. dual aspect theory Dual-Aspect theory (DAT) is a kind of non-reductive physicalism, but it is also not entirely a physicalist view either. Is it a dualism? Not exactly, since it doesn't take there to be two different things. DAT takes the mind to be something that is physical, but not entirely physical. Thought occurs within the body, namely the brain, and thought involves brain processes, but thought is not just those brain processes. This sounds confusing, I'm sure, so let's consider an analogy. Take for example a paperback novel. A paperback novel is a physical thing: it's made of paper, bound with a paper spine using threading and glue. There are printed shapes in black ink on all or most of the pages, and these printed shapes are called 'letters'. Now, we can go more into the chemical composition of the paper, the ink, etc. However, we can't just leave it as that. The scientific, physical account of the paperback novel is missing something: the story. So, a paperback novel is not just a physical thing, but something more: a story with a plot, with characters, etc. DAT holds a similar view regarding the human body, namely, the human brain: it's physical but it isn't just physical. It's also mental, which is not physical. It's got physical processes going on it, and it also has non-physical processes going on in it. So, the idea is that in order to fully grasp the brain and all that's going on in it, you need both scientific concepts and also non-scientific concepts, such as the concept of intention, value, etc. There are lots of other views, and there are problems with each of these views that I haven't gone into. (See the Nagel chapter on Mind-Body Problem for some of these issues and a more in-depth explanation of Dual Aspect Theory). Each tries to explain what a mind is - what the essence and nature of a mind is, ontologically speaking - and what's at stake in this problem is our conception of ourselves as persons, our conception of ourselves as part of the larger world, and our conception of knowledge of ourselves and our world through science.

We learned several reductive physicalist views: simple materialism (identity theory) and behaviorism. What do these views hold?

simple materialism (identity theory) - Mental properties just are physical properties; thinking a thought or feeling an itch is exactly the same thing as certain neurons firing or certain neural connections existing. Any particular type of mental state is a particular type of brain state.now we think light is a stream of energy packets called photons. So, we identify light with a stream of photons. There aren't two things here, light on one hand and photons on the other. There is ONE thing; light-which is nothing but a stream of photons.-there is one thing, the brain and the mind are the same the mind is nothing but a persons brain. -every mental state is a state of the brain or the CNS Other kinds of RP include behaviorism and functionalism. Behaviorism holds that mental concepts are identical to behavioral concepts. So, the concept of pain is to be explained entirely in terms of behavioral concepts, namely, the concept of stimulus-input and behavioral output. The reductive explanation of the concept of pain will look something like this: concept of feeling pain = the concept of bodily injury (stimulus input) + a set of observable behavior (behavioral output), e.g. {writhing; wincing; screaming; crying; saying 'ow!'; saying 'that hurts!'; etc.}. According to behaviorism, feeling pain does not cause you to wince and writhe. Rather, feeling pain is identical to wincing and writhing (upon sustaining bodily injury). You might say: what if someone gets injured and they don't exhibit any behavior at all? According to behaviorism, they are not in pain. If someone is under general anesthesia and you cut their arm, you harmed them. However, they don't exhibit any of the behaviors found in the set of behaviors above. Hence, they are not in pain. Remember, on behaviorism, it's not that the feeling of pain causes pain-behavior, and it's not that the external behavior helps us determine if there is an internal feeling of pain. None of these are right. According to behaviorism, the feeling of pain is not an internal anything, but an outward something, namely, an outward, observable behavior. The feeling of pain is (is identical to) the external behavior of wincing and writhing, etc. Behaviorism ended up losing popularity, especially after what many considered to be decisive objections raised against it, in particular those raised by Noam Chomsky regarding linguistic behavior. Behaviorism - an approach to materialism which argues that the mind can be seen as an objective, 3rd-person phenomenon, because it amounts to nothing more than behavior.talk about emotions, sensations, and beliefs, etc. is not talk about some kind of inner experience or an inner event; rather it is a shorthand way of talking about patterns of behavior (both actual and potential). The behaviorist wanted to analyze mental states in terms of dispositions to behave in certain ways.an approach to materialism which argues that the mind can be seen as an objective, 3rd-person phenomenon, because it amounts to nothing more than behavior.

What is Functionalism

Functionalism is a combination of identity theory and behaviorism. Functionalism says that mental states like feeling pain are nothing more than physical things, but not just any physical thing. Feeling pain is a physical thing that occupies a very specific functional role. The functional role is going to be defined by its inputs and outputs. So, which physical thing is pain? It's whatever physical thing that is stimulated by bodily injury (this is the input) and results in a certain set of behaviors (writhing, wincing, screaming, etc.; this is the output). In the way that a radio is a physical thing that takes in radio waves (input) and results in sounds (outputs), whether the physical thing is copper, metal alloy, iron, lead, etc., similarly, pain is going to be some physical thing that is stimulated by bodily injury (input) and results in behaviors (output), whether the physical thing be carbon based or not.