Cartesian dualism
Substance dualism:
There exist an essential separation between mind and body.
The mind is an immaterial substance attached in a special way to a bodily machine.
Radical thesis, going against philosophical (Aristotelian) tradition that:
there is an essenti
Descartes' arguments on Animals
Argument that animals lack thought:
"language sign is the only sure sign of rational thought and no animals other than humans use language" (in Crawford 2010, p. 2).
We simply cannot know as "the human mind does not reach into [the beasts'] hearts" (Desca
Descartes on mechanisms
Not only rejecting the connection between life and mind, but also rejecting the separation between life and mechanism
= Living and non-living things operate the same way: mechanistically. We can use mechanical principles to explain the workings of the bod
Substance Dualism argument cont.: mechanical body (matter) vs. immaterial soul (mind)
There is one power only that cannot be explained by mechanical principles: mind/thought/soul
Everything else can be explained by mechanical principles.
Therefore, the soul must be made of 'different stuff', a.k.a. immaterial substance.
Since bodies do not
Why does Descartes think it is possible for the mind to exist without the body?
Argument form Doubt, or "Cogito Ergo Sum"
P1. I can doubt that I have a body.
P2. The only thing I cannot doubt is the doubting itself.
C: Doubting (thinking) is real.
P3: What truly belongs to me (what makes my essence) is something I cannot doubt.
P1: I
Connection between mind and body after all?
However, acc. to Descartes, there is no reason that the immaterial soul could not be united with a machine.
Pineal gland: the magic meeting point in the brain
It mediates between bodily sensations and immaterial thought
"The path of burning pain".
Ryle: Logical Behaviourism
Mental ascriptions simply mean things about behavioural responses to the environment
E.g., to say 'Edmund is in pain" means not something about Edmund's inner life or an episode taking place 'within' Edmund, but that Edmund is either actually behaving in
The Ghost in the Machine (GITM)
Targeting the official doctrine, which says that:
1) There are two worlds (physical and mental).
2) First is composed of matter, second of consciousness/mind.
3) Matter is located in space (bodies), the mind is not.
4) Since matter is located in space, bo
GITM leads to the 'Problem of other minds'
Criticism of the official doctrine: it gives rise to the problem of other minds
If you can only observe my body and its behaviour then how do you know what is going on in my mind? How do you know I have a mind at all?
Since the private 'inner' world is no
GITM leads to 'Privileged access'
Only we have access to our own minds
Each minds have largely perfect, indubitable knowledge of its own states and processes, or 'privileged access'
Our minds have a special kind of perception called introspection. We can observe the passing stream of of o
Category mistakes
Category mistake = mistake of assigning something to a category to which it does not belong, or misrepresenting the category to which something belongs.
E.g.1: To think that since we can lose our tempers, and lose our wallets, tempers and wallets belong t
Cartesian category mistake
-is to think that the mind is not an entity additional to the body, and that mental phenomena are not things over and above bodily phenomena.
"Minds are things, but different sorts of things from bodies; mental processes are causes and effects, but differ
Looking for the University example
...
Ryle's concept of mind
The mind is the capacity or ability to engage in various kinds of outward behaviour, all of which is public and observable by others.
Mental states are dispositions to behave in certain ways.
Dispositions are tendencies to exhibit or manifest something in
Rylean solution to the problem of other minds
Descartes: mind is private and behaviour is public.
Only contingent connection between mental states and behaviour (mental states cause behaviour).
Ryle: Mind is to be disposed to behave in a certain way = necessary connection between mind and behaviour,
Challenges to behaviourism/ problems for Ryle
Behaviourism (of any kind) is leaving out something real and important:
1) Anyone who is not anaesthetised knows that he/she experiences and can introspect actual inner mental states or occurrences (there is something it is like)
2) That need not be accom
Physicalism - definition
Physicalism (Materialism): theory of mind that holds that all mental phenomena are states of the body
What Armstrong accepts about behaviourism: individual mental states are logically tied to behvaiour
What he doesn't accept: individual mental states are
Comparison to Cartesian Dualism
Descartes:
Connection between mind and behaviour is contingent (dependent, accidental).
Consciousness is self sufficient and independent of bodily behaviour. The mental can cause behaviour, but it doesn't have to.
Armstrong:
Connection between the physica
Identity Theory
Armstrong's definition of the mental: "a state of the person apt for producing certain ranges of behaviour" (1981) = the mental as the cause of the behaviour
How does it fit with Physicalism? (= all mental states are states of the body)
Science tells us t
Types v Tokens
Armstrong's identity theory is a 'type identity theory': It identifies types of mental states with types of physical states.
Types = kinds of things
Tokens = instances of types
E.g., type: dogs; tokens: your dog, my dog, that dog, Napoleon's dog, Lassie.
Type Identity Theory (Armstrong)
Mental type 'pain' is identical with certain physical type (c-fibre simulation).
Just like type 'water' is identical with certain chemical type (H2O).
Every token of the type pain (my pain, your pain, his pain) is token of the same physical type (c-fibre
Compare: Token Identity Theory
Token Identity Theory: each token mental state or event is identical with a token physical state or event.
What follows?
My token pain and your token pain need not be tokens of the same type pain; the types of pain could be different.
E.g., my pain is ide
Armstrong's method: 2 stages
Stage 2: Empirical stage - science discovers a posteriori (through empirical investigation) physical states and processes.
Stage 1: Conceptual stage - we find out using logic (or assume) a priori (independently of experience) that mental states are states
Caveat
Making use of empirical data only!
Gathering information from people through surveys (usually intuitions of regular folk) in order to inform philosophical questions
Are intuitions good enough?
Are intuitions of non-philosophers good enough
Problems with physicalism
Problem 1: Why focus on causation?
Is the starting definition good one? Are all mental states "essentially states apt for causing behaviour"?
Ryle: they are not causes
Descartes: they are contingent causes
Strawson (1994): they are causes of other mental
Functionalism - definition
The mind is a system of mental states.
The essence of the mental is not the kind of stuff it is made of
Consciousness (Cartesian Dualism)
Behaviour and dispositions (Rylean Behaviourism)
Neural activity (Armstrong's Identity Theory)
but the functional rol
Similarly, Pain
What is important is not that the c-fibres are firing, but that their firing contributes to the operation of the organism as a whole.
To be in pain is to be in some state or other (of whatever biochemical description) that plays the same causal role as do
Putnam: Machine Functionalism
Putnam compared mental states to the functional or logical states of the computer.
To be in a state 'M' is to be in some physiological state or other that plays role 'R' in the relevant computer program
Computer programs mediate between the inputs and out
(Chronic) Problems with Functionalism
We have still not answered:
How it is that pain feels a certain way? (phenomenal character)
Propositional attitudes represent certain states of affairs: beliefs and desires are about something, they have content. How can a purely physical entity or state
The Computational Theory of Mind (CTM)
The prevailing view in philosophy, psychology and artificial intelligence is one which emphasizes the analogies between the functioning of the human brain and the functioning of digital computers. According to the most extreme version of this view, the b
Like Turing machines
Analogy with Turing machines: Any creature with a mind can be regarded as a Turing machine, whose operation can be fully specified by a set of instructions (a "machine table" or program) operating on abstract symbols.
A Turing machine is an idealised comp
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
The project of getting computer machines to perform tasks that would be taken to demand human intelligence and judgment.
Can computers think?
1: What intelligent tasks will any computer perform?
2: Given 1, does it do like like humans do?
3: Given 1 an 2:
Strong AI
Strong thesis: computers can be programmed to think, and human minds are computers that have been programmed by 'biological hardwiring' and experience.
Strong AI: correctly written program running on a machine actually is a mind
"mind is to the brain as t
Weak AI
machine running a program is at most only capable of simulating real human behavior and consciousness.
Machines can act 'as if' they were intelligent.
Limits of CTM
How many aspects of mind can it account for?
1. Reasoning: keeping a 'rational relation' in sync with causal relation. But when does a mental process count as reasoning? Three types of theoretical reasoning:
A) Deductive: conclusion is logically entailed
Syntax vs. Semantics
Searle (1984, p. 31): "There is more to having a mind than having formal or syntactical processes". We need semantics, or mental content.
Syntax: formal/grammatical structure; how we present information.
Semantics: meaning; what is the information about.
Chinese Room experiment
Searle's thought experiment begins with this hypothetical premise: suppose that artificial intelligence research has succeeded in constructing a computer that behaves as if it understands Chinese. It takes Chinese characters as input and, by following the
Searle's main premises and arguments
Premises:
P1. Brains cause minds
P2. Syntax is not sufficient for semantics
P3. Computer programs are entirely defined by their formal/syntactic structure
P4. Minds have mental (semantic) contents
Arguments:
P2+P3+P4 = C1: Computer programs by themselves
Arguments against Searle's Chinese room:
1. The Gestalt argument: whole is more than sum of its parts. The total system understands Chinese.
Searle: If I (the central processing unit) cannot know what the symbols mean, then the whole system cannot either (p. 34).
2. Interaction argument: If the
Externalism
Semantic externalism: after having been baptized, reality determines whether a word has been used correctly or not . (This is what we call 'cat')
Externalism in the philosophy of mind: the content of thoughts is determined by the environment of the thinke
Twin Earth
Putnam's original formulation of the experiment was this: We begin by supposing that elsewhere in the universe there is a planet exactly like Earth in virtually all respects, which we refer to as "Twin Earth". (We should also suppose that the relevant sur
Brain in a vat
All experiencing is the result of electronic impulses traveling from the computer to the nerve endings
Epistemology: against skeptical argument
If you were a brain in a vat, all your thoughts would be false! Why?
Brains in a vat cannot refer to things out
Eliminative materialism/ Eliminativism - definition
...is the thesis that our commonsense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoot
Folk Psychology
FP = 'na�ve psychology' = commonsense psychology = theory of mind
Weak: refers to particular set of cognitive capacities that allow for prediction and explanation of behaviour
Having beliefs and desires
Strong: theory of behaviour represented in the brain
Is eliminativism a form of reductionism?
No! FP won't be reduced to neuroscience because it is wrong and will be replaced by neuroscience
Reductionism: All mental states reduce to the physical/neurological phenomena.
Eliminativism: There are no mental states (they do not exist), there are just n
Why is FP wrong?
FP is an empirical theory (can be true or false) and it happens to be false.
Its ontology (beliefs, desires) are illusion.
FP as a theory cannot explain many things:, such as:
mental illness
creative imagination
differences in intelligence
function of sle
Save FP! - functionalist arguments against elimination
1) FP is not an empirical theory (is not refutable by the facts). It is a normative theory:
it doesn't describe how people actually act, but characterises an ideal: how they ought to act if they were to act rationally on the basis of beliefs and desires
h
Instrumentalism (in PoM)
The view that propositional attitudes such as beliefs are not actually concepts on which we can base scientific investigations of the mind and brain, but that acting as if other beings do have beliefs is often a successful strategy.
The value of a positio
Intentional stance
- method for attributing beliefs and desires
"Here is how it works: first you decide to treat the object whose behavior is to be predicted as a rational agent; then you figure out what beliefs that agent ought to have, given its place in the world and its
What is Extended Cognition?
The idea that mind exists not only in ourselves but is extended to the objects and technology we use
Active role of the environment in driving cognitive processes
Cognition/computation is distributed across brain, body and the environment
How is it differ
Parity Principle
If (...) a part of the world functions as a process which, were it done in the head, we would have no hesitation in recognizing as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (...) part of the cognitive process."
Parity = consistency, e
Otto's Notebook: Situation
Otto and Inga are looking for the MoMA
Inga consults her biological memory: she remembers that MoMA is on E 53rd str
= Inga believed that MoMA is on E 53rd str; not occurrent, but waiting to be accessed
Otto has Alzheimer's Disease. He consults his notebo
Thomas Nagel: The "What is it like?" Argument
Argument for insufficiency of reductionism: against limitations of our current concepts and theories for understanding human consciousness
Reductionism = trying to reduce A to B
(Reduction of the mental to the physical = Physicalism/Materialism)
"Any redu
The Knowledge Argument
Argument against physicalism altogether
Jackson's position:
"I think that there are certain features of the bodily sensations especially, but also of certain perceptual experiences, which no amount of physical information includes. Tell me everything phys
Mary is seeing red
Mary lives in a black-and-white room.
She is a scientist who knows everything there is to know about the science of colour (all the physics, chemistry, neurophysiology, causal and relational facts), but she has never experienced colour.
Jackson asks: once
Epiphenomenalism
Qualia are epiphenomenal: secondary phenomena, by-products
"They do nothing, they explain nothing, they serve merely to soothe the intuitions of dualists, and it is left a total mystery how they fit into the worldview of science" (p. 135).
Two arguments:
The Easy Problem (psychological consciousness)
Directly susceptible to the standard methods of cognitive science, whereby a phenomenon is explained in terms of computational or neural mechanisms.
The easy problems of consciousness include those of explaining the following phenomena:
the ability to dis
The Hard Problem (phenomenal consciousness)
The problem of experience.
Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C?
How can we explain why there is somethin
Phenomenal vs. Access Consciousness (Ned Block)
Phenomenal (P-) Consciousness: Cannot define, can only point to it:
Qualia, raw feels, 'What it is to be like', Whatever is experienced; e.g., sensations, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, wants, emotions
Access (A-) Consciousness: All items of access cons
What is a Philosophical Zombie?
Computationally' identical to people: act like people, talk like people
A-conscious but not P-conscious: dead inside, have no experience
There is nothing it is like to be a zombie
(Note: Many people would say that zombies have no consciousness)
A 'zombie'
The Inverted Spectrum
The idea of the inverted spectrum goes back to John Locke. It is the idea of a person whose colour-experience is systematically inverted.
Imagine a situation in which we wake up one day and � without any physical change having occurred in the world or in
Dennett: Characteristics of Qualia
Four characteristics of Qualia:
Ineffable: Can't describe them
Intrinsic: Don't depend on anything else
(Intrinsic property = a property that an object or a thing has of itself, independently of other things, including its context. Pertaining to its essen
Intuition Pumps
Intuition pump 1: watching you eat cauliflower
Someone who hates cauliflower watches someone else eat cauliflower. It leads the person to wonder how someone could possibly enjoy the taste.
Hypothesis: cauliflower tastes different to them. Plausible: surel
Intuition pump 7+8: Chase and Sanborn, the coffee-tasters
Chase and Sanborn have been tasting coffee for many years, but they both don't like it anymore.
Difference?
For Chase, coffee tastes the same. So Chase bases his distaste for coffee on a change in his tastes.
For Sanborn, coffee tastes different. So Sanbo
Dennett's argument against intrinsic and accessible qualia
Dennett denies that qualia can be both intrinsic/non-relational (2) and directly knowable (4)at the same time.
non-relational: they do not play a part in the kinds of causal relations analysed by physicalists
directly knowable: known non-inferentially fro
Theory Theory
We understand other minds thanks to possessing and making use of a 'Theory of Mind'
(It's a theory about using a 'Theory', hence TT)
A 'Theory of Mind' is a set of principles outlining very general psychological laws - laws which tell their users how ment
Modular Theory Theory
Your Theory of Mind forms a specific functional module of your mind
Imagining, Remembering, Theory of Mind
Modules = domain-specific, special purpose 'cognitive mechanisms'
Characteristics of modules:
Informationally encapsulated (i.e. only receptive to c
Scientific Theory Theory
The basic idea is that children develop their everyday knowledge of the world by using the same cognitive devices that adults use in science. In particular, children develop abstract, coherent, systems of entities and rules, particularly causal entities
Simulation Theory
We understand reasons for action and ascribe mental states not by theorizing about the other, but by replicating a target's thoughts/feelings in ourselves imaginatively.
Understanding minds essentially involves modeling those minds by making use of our ow
Narrative Practice Hypothesis
Engaging in socially supported story-telling activities is the normal route for developing our FP competence.
Stories provide the crucial training set needed for understanding reasons.
"A special kind of narrative is used - 'folk psychological' narratives
View from Phenomenology
Four suppositions challenged by the Phenomenological Account:
(1) Hidden minds: The problem of social cognition is due to the lack of access that we have to the other person's mental states. Since we cannot directly perceive the other's beliefs, desires,
Interaction Theory (Gallagher)
An account of basic forms of intersubjectivity that emphasizes embodied face- to-face interaction in pragmatic and social contexts"
TT - detached/based on observation- observing the other and inferring their mental states
ST - detached/based on observati
John McDowell on perception
All perception is conceptual. It is judgmental.
Perception is an ability. This ability is already conceptual, even though it is unreflective.
McDowell (1996) sees the normal mature human being as a rational animal.
"Having the concept requires the ability
Inspiration: Kant
Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind"
Reconciling rationalism and empiricism: no knowledge without sense data, and no sensory experiences without reason (concepts) to order those experiences.
Interested in phenomena:
Case: animal in danger
The animal does not know why it is fleeing, does not act for reason: 'danger'. It has not concept of 'danger'. Do you agree?
To be aware of danger, one must possess a concept of danger.
To respond to danger, the animal need not be rational! Yet, to have a
Alva No�: Perception as Action
What we experience visually outstrips what we actually see
Perception as action (1)
How do we bring the detail into view?
"To bring detail into consciousness, it is necessary to probe the environment, by turning your eyes, and your head, by shifting your
The problem of perceptual presence
When you see a tomato, you can't see its back. Yet, you do see it as a whole. The object is perceived in its entirety.
The problem of perceptual presence: how can we have perceptual awareness of wholes without adequate sensory data?
Tomato as whole, plate
Presence in absence
Knowing does not change the way things look
Presence in absence: we know the triangle is not there, but it's absence is seen, visually present to us. The way we take it to be perceptually present is not cognitive, but visual.
Explaining presence in absen
Michael Tye
Animals do not have linguistic concepts or HOT contents
Some animals have consciousness
Paramecia, caterpillars do not
Fish and honey bees do!
We can know that they do; no problem of 'simple minds'
(We cannot know what it is like for them; we have differe
The 'PANIC' Theory
Poised (balanced)
Abstract
Nonconceptual
Intentional Content
Perception has this content
Phenomenal character is (=) this content
Phenomenal character of experiences is already introspectively accessible and representational
"...your perceptual experience
Which animals feel? Criteria
Capable of changing behaviour in light of assessments they make, based on sensory stimulation
Must be flexible, modifiable by learning from experience, from trial and error
Goal-directed behaviour, purpose
Not only responding to stimulus; exploring
Making
Tye: conclusion
Animal consciousness: like our or unlike ours?
Unlike ours: no cognitive awareness of their sensory states; they do not bring their own experiences under concepts like we can
Like ours when we are not aware of it: "they function perpetually in a state lik