PHIL A100 METAPHYSICS

First-order desire

"I want another cup of coffee." These desires are about how you want things in the world to be

Second-order desire

"I wish I didn't want another cup of coffee." Desires are about how you want your desires to be.

Sober's reconstruction of Ryle's argument (in your books)

"If mental states were inner causes of behavior, then we would not have knowledge of the mental states of others. We do not have knowledge of the mental states of others. Hence, mental states are not inner causes of behavior" Denying the consequent, valid.

To be incompatible, do both of two sentences have to be true? Do they have to be false?

"There are exactly two people enrolled in this class" is incompatible with "There are exactly three people enrolled in this class" even though both sentences are false. Moreover, two sentences can be compatible even if both of them are false. "My shirt is green" is compatible with "My shirt is short-sleeved" even if my shirt is neither green nor short-sleeved.

Behaviorism

A family of doctrines whose common element is the effort to overcome the metaphysical difficulties of dualism by claiming that mental terms get at least part of their meaning from observable behaviors.

Dualism (aka Cartesian Dualism)

A mind-brain identity theory. This is the view that the mind and the brain are one and the same object and that mental events like pains and desires are the same as neuro-chemical events occurring in your brain or elsewhere in your central nervous system.

John Locke's (1632-1704) objection to Hume's view

A person may not be free to do other than what he is doing, yet if he wants to do what he's doing then he certainly seems to be acting freely. A man who enters a room and stays to chat with a friend is acting freely even if the door is quietly locked after he enters. He isn't free to leave if his desires change, but that doesn't mean he isn't free.

Incompatibilism

A position on the question of human free will. It claims that if determinism is true then we aren't free without taking any position on whether or not we are, in fact, determined or free. Think of the matter like this: there are four possibilities on the question of the truth or falsity of freedom and determinism.

Ryle's positive case

A view on what the correct understanding of mental terms is. Again, it is that the meaning of mental terms can be specified solely and completely in terms of behavior (or the tendency to behave in certain ways). An example from Ryle: to paint thoughtfully is to say that the painter is working in a certain (observable) way; it is not to say that the painting is accompanied by a second, invisible, inner process: thoughtfulness.

Methodological behaviorism's negative case

According to Skinner, psychology ought not to explain behavior by reference to beliefs an desires because such things are not observable, and because they are not observable they are not scientifically respectable, objective and measurable. Moreover, the whole enterprise of using mental terms to explain behavior is itself not testable. Sober objects that scientists often and legitimately talk about unobservable entities - remember Mendel's genes? - and an explanatory enterprise, like using mental terms to explain people's behavior, is legitimate as long as it continues to offer up satisfying explanations. That is the form that the justification of forms of explanation takes.

David Hume was a soft determinist

According to him, an action is free when the agent could have done other than what he actually did do if he had really wanted to. In other words, my actions are free if they are in accordance with my desires. So, for Hume, an action is free if its cause is inner to the person performing it. As long as my actions express my desires and my beliefs, they're free. An unfree action would be one that is counter to my desires and beliefs, for instance, staying in a room because I'm handcuffed to the floor when what I want is to leave.

If such confirmation is successful, does it show that dualism is false? If not, why not?

As mentioned earlier, one big problem for the dualist is to explain how mental substance and physical substance are supposed to interact. But this is not a problem for mind-brain identity theory since for it there is only one kind of substance, the physical kind, so there is nothing to explain in terms of interaction. This gives mind-brain identity theory an advantage: that it involves less explaining. The idea that less explaining is better than more explaining, and that theories with fewer moving parts are superior to theories with more moving parts is formally called the Principle of Parsimony (aka, Ockham's Razor, after William of Ockham, a 14th century English Franciscan who stated one especially interesting version of the principle).

So, what alternatives do the real scientists have to offer?

Based on the enormous amount of progress that has been made in understanding and controlling the mind through purely physical methods - medication, operations, and so on - that the mind is nothing more than the set of physiological processes taking place in the brain. Mind-brain identity theory claims that my mind and my brain are one and the same object and that mental events like pains and desires are neuro-chemical events occurring in my brain or elsewhere in my central nervous system.

Descarte's answer to the mind body problem

Brains, physical things, and minds are radically different kinds. Brains are physical objects and minds are non-physical objects. For Descartes, we live in a two-substance world although the two substances obviously interact.

Lady Pamela Example

But note that the none of this tells us anything about Lady Pamela or who the murderer is. All that each tells us about is the kind of relationship that exists between a speaker and a sentence. So, Sober's complaint about Descartes' first argument in favor of dualism is that it may be possible to doubt the sentence "I have a body" while it is not possible to doubt the sentence "I have a mind," but doubting is a propositional attitude and tells us nothing one way or the other about whether or not the mind and the body are one thing or two things. Dubitability (and non-dubitability) is not a characteristic of things; it is a way that a person thinks about a sentence!!

Sober's objection to Hume's view on grounds that given Hume's understanding of freedom, compulsive behavior is free.

Compulsive hand-washers, for instance, are acting in accordance with their desires - the cause of the hand-washing is certainly inner to the person doing it - yet surely such people are not acting freely.

Sober's second objection to logical behaviorism

Even if mental language can be analyzed purely in terms of behavioral or dispositional language, that wouldn't show that mental states aren't the inner causes of behavior. Using behavioral language in talking about mental states doesn't replace the use of mental terms; it simply supplements it.

Example of Tokens and Types

Example: the specific shirt I have on now is a token of the type "shirt." It is also a token of other types: clothing, cotton things, objects purchased at Macy's on sale, and other. A type can have many, one, or no tokens that fall under it; there are plenty of tokens of the type "shirt," one under "current US presidents," and none under "human beings over 200 years old."

Compatibility

Examples - "There are men enrolled in this class" is compatible with "There are women enrolled in this class" because the truth of the first does not mean that the second is false. "There are men enrolled in this class" is not compatible with "Everyone enrolled in this class is a woman" because the truth of either sentence rules out the truth of the other.

How will mind-brain identity theory be confirmed?

Experimentally, using scientific methods, perhaps by showing that every time an experimental subject is asked to visualize a palm tree a certain portion of his brain "lights up" and that the same area of the brain "lights up" in other experimental subjects when asked to visualize the same thing. Of course, such experiments won't be a knock-down argument that defeats dualism because a dualist doesn't have to deny that whenever there is a mental event there is an accompanying physical event; all dualism maintains is that brain states, like picturing the palm tree, and physical states, like a certain part of the brain lighting up, are two events, not one event.

Sober's objection to functionalism

Functionalism tends to focus on psychological states as causes of behavior and overlooks psychological states as experiences. Take pain: a person may do all of the things that would be expected of someone who is suddenly hurt and the functionalist would say that whatever caused those behaviors is what it means to be in pain. But what's missing is the fact that pain hurts. In other words, a causal account of psychological states is incomplete; it may be an adequate account of pain as a phenomenon but it is not an adequate account of pain as an experience. Does this mean that functionalism is wrong? No; it only has to mean that a completely adequate version of it has yet to be articulated.

Freedom: False Determinism: True

Hard Determinism

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

He claimed that we know others' mental states via analogy. I know first-hand that I have a mind and mental states, and by experience I discover that some of my behaviors regularly go along with some of my mental states. But others behave in many of the ways that I do, and on that basis I conclude, by analogy, that when they do so they are in the same mental state as I am when I perform the same actions. Because I and the other person have observed similarities - engaging in the same type of behavior - I conclude that we have further, unobserved similarities - being in the same mental state when we do so.

Descartes first argument in favor of dualism

He says that it is impossible to doubt that you have a mind, but that it is possible to doubt that you have a body. This means that the mind possesses indubitable existence while the body does not. There is, thus, something true of the mind (it possesses indubitable existence) that is not true of the body. Therefore, the two are not one.

Sober's dislike for Descarte's second argument for dualism

He says that just because it is odd to our ears to speak of minds being in space, located inside our skulls, weighing five pounds, having blood vessels, and so on does not mean that there's anything wrong with talking that way. All novelties, at first, are a little odd, but just because an idea is unfamiliar does not mean that it is untrue. Speaking of the mind as having extension, thus, needn't be a mistake; it's just a new practice that we will get used to in time just as we have gotten used to other new practices. Hence, Descartes' second argument for dualism is, at best, inconclusive.

What major obstacle, inadequately dealt with by Descartes, lies in the path of accepting dualism?

How can something that is not in space cause something to happen that is in space, and vice versa? Descartes was aware of the problem and stated that the point of interaction was the pineal gland inside the brain. But while that answers where the interaction occurs, the real issue is how.

A preliminary statement of the puzzle about the existence of human freedom:

If my beliefs and desires are caused by factors in the past, ones beyond my control, how can the behavior that is the result of those beliefs and desires be the result of free choices on my part? Differently, do we need the concept "freedom" in order to explain anything about human beliefs and behavior or do we only need to refer to antecedent causes? Genes Environment >> My Beliefs (Desires) >> My Actions

Freedom: True Determinism: True

Incompatiblism says that the boxed line expresses an impossibility but the other three positions are possible.

Multiple Realizability

Individual tokens can fall under the same type yet have nothing in common with one another physically - philosopher-speak for "there's more than one way to skin a cat."

Tokens

Individual, unique physical objects; a thing, instance, example, or specimen.

The idea about first and second order desires

Is that people are free when they're acting according to a desire and when they don't mind having that desire. If you're doing something that you want to do but hate yourself for having that desire, then you're not acting freely. Persons engaged in compulsive actions, like the compulsive hand-washer, are unfree because while they may be acting on the basis of their desires those desires are ones they wish they didn't have. But what if a person doesn't mind his weird or harmful compulsions??

So - Hume's conception of freedom doesn't fit every sort of case.

It excludes from the category of free acts some that are manifestly free- Locke's example - and includes in the category of free acts some that are manifestly not free - the compulsive hand-washing case.

Functionalism

It has both a negative thesis, articulating what is wrong with identity theory, and a positive thesis, a view of what our psychological states really are.

Types

Kinds of objects or properties of objects.

Freedom: True Determinism: False

Libertarianism

Methodological behaviorism's positive case

Mental terms should be dispensed with in the science of psychology and only environmental stimuli talked about in the explanation of behavior. Sober is skeptical that human behavior can be adequately explained as the outcome of past conditioning because humans sometimes engage in novel behaviors for which they have not been conditioned. Second, if only conditioning is to be used in the explanation of human behavior, not only mental states but genetics must go out the window as explanations, partial or full, of why we do what we do.

One reason to accept dualism

Mentioned by Sober but not used by Descartes. is that if the soul is part of the mind, and if the soul - and possibly the entire mind - lasts forever, and since the body obviously doesn't last forever, then the soul/mind must be something other than the body. If the mind lasts forever but the body doesn't, then the two must be different things.

BF Skinner (1904-1990)

Methodological behaviorism's negative case. Psychology ought not to explain behavior by reference to beliefs an desires because such things are not observable, and because they are not observable they are not scientifically respectable, objective and measurable. Moreover, the whole enterprise of using mental terms to explain behavior is itself not testable. Sober objects that scientists often and legitimately talk about unobservable entities - remember Mendel's genes? - and an explanatory enterprise, like using mental terms to explain people's behavior, is legitimate as long as it continues to offer up satisfying explanations. That is the form that the justification of forms of explanation takes.

Does a compatibilist have to think that determinism and freedom are both true?

No

But if indeterminism is true and if chance is part of our world, does that mean that we are free?

No - because whatever it turns out that "freedom" means, it isn't that things happen by chance. Freedom isn't the absence of causality; it's causality of a particular kind. But what kind? ... Fatalism

Fatalism

Not the same as determinism. The idea that no matter what is going on or done now, the future is cast in stone. Whether I do X or don't do X - or do Y, or Z - the future will be the same. Fatalism is about the independence of the future on the present.

Does the rejection of type-identity by functionalists mean the rejection of token-identity?

Note that this does not mean the rejection of token-identity, that is, the idea that individual psychological states are the same as some physical state. So, functionalism is a materialist view no less than mind-brain identity theory.

Compatibilism

Opposing the incompatibilists. They hold that determinism does not rule out freedom. They take the position that there could be both human freedom and determinism. That is, the first line - "Freedom?" "True!" and "Determinism?" "True!" is for the compatibilist a real possibility.

Propositional Attitudes

Propositional attitudes are relationships between persons and sentences. Take the sentence, "Lady Pamela is the murderer." Various relationships can exist between a person and this sentence. For instance: I know that... I suspect that... I hope that... ...Lady Pamela is the murderer I fear that... I pray that... Each represents a different attitude toward the proposition, or sentence, "Lady Pamela is the murderer."

Functionalism's positive thesis

Psychological states - for instance, thirst - are the same as whatever physical state you're in that causes you to do what thirsty people do. Whatever physical state you're in that causes you to reach for a glass of water, drink it down, and then say, "Wow, I really needed that," is what thirst is. This could be a brain state, a silicon chip state, or a state of some elaborate clock-like mechanism: whatever pushes you to do thirsty-person things is thirst. Hence the name "functionalism:" whatever physical state causes us to function in a certain way is what states like "being thirsty" really amount to.

Sober disagrees with Ryle's idea of mental states

Ryle says that if mental states are inner causes of behavior, we would not have knowledge of the mental states of others, that is, that mentalism leads to skepticism. Sober claims that our attribution to others of beliefs and desires based on their behavior is an abduction, a theory about why they behave whose adequacy is judged by its ability to explain and predict.

Sober disagrees with Russell's argument

Sober objects that "the evidence is limited to my own case." A sample of one is too slender a reed upon which to rest a conclusion about what mental states other people generally are in when they engage in the same behaviors as me; the sample is too small. "It is like arguing that since I own a green chair, probably everyone has one" (Sober).

What does Sober claim is wrong with Descartes' first argument in favor of dualism?

Sober thinks that Descartes' first argument contains a mistake but to understand what it is you need to know what a propositional attitude is. Propositional attitudes are relationships between persons and sentences.

Leibniz's Law (Law of the Indiscernibility of Identicals)

States that if two things are really one thing then whatever is true of one must also be true of the other.

Cartesian Dualism and Logical Behaviorism are both "armchair" views on the nature of the mind

That is, neither view is scientific; both are views that any thoughtful, bright person might come up with while comfortably seated in his or her armchair: no labs or lab coats required.

What do Tokens and Types have to do with mind-brain identity theory?

That theory can be understood as a claim about psychological tokens and psychological types and their relationship with physical tokens and types. Identity theory says that each psychological token - like a specific pain in my foot right now - is identical with a physical token, that is, some specific firing of neurons in my brain. It also says that each psychological type - being is pain as such - is identical with some physical events - being in pain means that section X of the brain is flaring.

Metaphysics

The areas of philosophy concerned with fundamental questions about the nature of reality. Metaphysics asks, "What is real?" or, "Is there a difference between how the world seems to me and how the world really is?"

Agency Theory

The claim that there are two kinds of causes operating in the world

Methodological Behaviorism

The claim that to be scientific, psychology ought to give up talking about inner mental states like beliefs and desires and instead should account for behavior solely in terms of the conditioning we receive from our environments. This is not the denial that mental states are real; it is simply a recommendation about how the science of psychology should be conducted. One of the leading proponents of such behaviorism was the American psychologist, B. F. Skinner (1904-1990). Like logical behaviorism, methodological behaviorism makes both a negative and a positive case.

Determinism

The idea that a complete specification of relevant causal antecedents guarantees what will happen next. Given the complete background of an event, it had to happen just as it did.

Indeterminism

The idea that a complete specification of relevant causal antecedents nevertheless leaves open what will happen next.

Monism: Materialism

The idea that every object that is real is a physical object. Matter is what's really real.

Monism

The idea that everything that exists, human beings and their minds included, falls into exactly one category of being; when you get right down to it, there is just one kind of stuff, one kind of reality. But monists disagree about what kind of stuff that is. On one hand, there are materialists; on the other, there are idealists.

The Could-Not-Have-Been-Otherwise Argument

The idea that given our actual beliefs and desires, we can't do other than we do.

Monism: Idealism

The idea that ultimate reality is spiritual or mental, that in giving an account of the world what is basic is what is thought or experienced. Differently, the view that an exhaustively complete account of the world will be given in terms of our experiences of it.

How the Principle of Parsimony is relevant to the choice between dualism and mind-brain identity theory

The identity theory is more parsimonious than dualism because it claims that experiences and brain states are one and the same event, while the dualist say that they are two events. One is less than two so identity theory has fewer moving parts than dualism and is thus to be preferred as more likely to be true than dualism. But before you agree with identity theory, there is another view on the horizon, one that finds problems with identity theory, and that is functionalism. It has both a negative thesis, articulating what is wrong with identity theory, and a positive thesis, a view of what our psychological states really are.

Sober's first objection to logical behaviorism

The logical behaviorists position is incomplete - there are many cases where even the fullest possible account of a mental state in terms of behavior will still need to fall back on mental language.

Soft Determinism

The most common type of compatibilism among philosophers. It is the view that freedom doesn't require the absence of determinism but only that our actions be caused in a certain way; we are free if there is determinism of a certain kind. Of course, the difficult part of a view like this is spelling out what kind of determinism that is. (As far as I know, there is no one who hold the position that both determinism and freedom are false.)

Logical Behaviorism

The solution that Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) offered to the mind-body problem in his 1949 book, The Concept of Mind. His idea was that the meaning of mental terms - "desire," "hope," "fear" - can be given in terms of behaviors. For instance, to say "Steve wants something to eat" is to say that Steve looks around for food, moves toward any food he sees, picks it up, eats it, swallows, then makes certain faces indicating pleasure or satisfaction; in other words, that the complete meaning of "inner states," like wanting, can be given in terms of publicly observable actions.

The idea of operating in agency theory

There is a presumption that when persons act, they are doing so freely. Hence, in speaking about the things that people do we don't need to prove that they are done freely; the burden of proof lies with the person claiming that an agent's, or person's, actions are not free. Example: Couple walking their dog. we don't wonder, "Are they free or are they determined?" The assumption is that they are acting freely unless we have some definite reason to think that they are not. Human action has a unique place in our lives.

The Distant Causation Argument

This is the idea that our behavior is caused by factors like our genes and our early childhood environment, factors beyond our control

Third-Person Skepticism

This is the idea that we can never know what other persons' mental lives are like nor can they know what ours are like. We may do and say the same things under the same circumstances - e.g., say "Ouch, that hurt!" when we accidentally hit our thumbs with hammers - but we never really know what's going on inside other persons' heads. Maybe what you do and say when you're enjoying something is what I do and say when I'm in pain. The inner lives of others are, thus, a completely and permanently closed book. But, Ryle claims, we do have knowledge of others' mental states. Therefore, the commonsense view, mentalism, must be wrong.

When are two sentences compatible?

Two sentences are compatible when the truth of one does not rule out the truth of the other, when it is possible for both to be true at the same time.

There is a difference between a cause of an event and the whole cause of an event

Usually there is an ensemble of many antecedent conditions that must be met for an event to occur. Think of all the things that must be true for a match to light: there must be oxygen, the match must be dry, the match must be struck forcefully enough, the chemical composition of the match head must be of the right sort, and on and on. All of these factors individually can be considered a cause of the match lighting, and which one we pick to identify as the cause will depend on a variety of factors such as our interests at the time. With different interests, we'll often pick out a different factor as the cause.

Principle of Parsimony (Ockham's Razor)

We should prefer explanations that minimize the number of things, processes, and events they postulate; when it comes to explanations, less is better. Sir Isaac Newton's 1690 version of the principle - "Nature does nothing in vain, and more is in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes."

Agency Theory: Event-Causation

When a prior event causes a subsequent event, as when rain erodes the earth until a rock on a hillside breaks loose and crashes onto the highway below.

Agency Theory: Agent-Causation

When an event is brought about through the action of an agent, or person, such as voting for one candidate in an election rather than another

The functionalists contended that psychological tokens are multiply realizable

it makes sense to say that (someday) there will be computers that (who?) have desires, fears, and hopes, but these types will reside in silicon chips, not in brain tissue like we have. So, functionalism rejects identity theory's insistence that psychological types must be the same as what's going on in the brain; there can be desiring, fearing, and hoping that have nothing to do with human tissue. Mental properties need not be identical with any brain state. Note that this does not mean the rejection of token-identity, that is, the idea that individual psychological states are the same as some physical state. So, functionalism is a materialist view no less than mind-brain identity theory.

Descartes' second argument for dualism

notes that physical things have spatial parts, but minds have no spatial parts. You can cut a brain in half, but can you cut a mind in half? Descartes, writing in Latin, says of physical things that they are res extensa (extended substance) while minds are res cogitans (thinking substance). Hence, brains have the property of divisibility while minds do not. Therefore, there is something true of minds (physical indivisibility, non-extension in space) that is not true of brains. Hence, minds and brains are not the same things.

What is the mind-body problem?

simply a shorthand way of asking: What is the mind and how is it connected with the body? This concerns the nature of the entities inside the gray box, below. The problem of free will concerns the relationship between #1 and #3, below; and if our beliefs and desires are caused by our genes and our environments, is there any sense in talking about people behaving freely? If #1 determines #2 and #2 determines #3, doesn't #1 determine #3?

Part of what this definition of compatibility means

that two sentences can be incompatible if one is true and the other is false or if both are false. "There are exactly two people enrolled in this class" is incompatible with "There are exactly three people enrolled in this class" even though both sentences are false. Moreover, two sentences can be compatible even if both of them are false. "My shirt is green" is compatible with "My shirt is short-sleeved" even if my shirt is neither green nor short-sleeved.

The problem of freedom is rooted in two fundamentally different conceptions of the self:

the first the idea that we are part of a world where the laws of cause and effect rule everything; all events are determined by antecedent causes. The second is our idea of ourselves as, somehow, exceptions, as (at least part of the time) free and non-programmed in our choices and actions. The problem of freedom asks: can we have it both ways?