Philosophy E156: Philosophy of Mind Week Six: Dualism & Behaviorism

Philosophy E156: Philosophy of Mind

Week Six: Dualism & Behaviorism

Is your mind your brain, or is it something different?


Are your experiences just physical aspects of your brain, or are they something beyond the physical aspects of your brain?

Cartesian Dualism



Cartesian Dualism


Something different


Cartesian Dualism


Something different


Something beyond

Cartesian Dualism

Physicalism (Central State Identity

Theory)


Something different


Something beyond

Cartesian Dualism


Theory)


Something different

Just your brain


Something beyond

Cartesian Dualism


Theory)


Something different

Just your brain


Something beyond

Just physical aspects of your brain

Cartesian Dualism


Theory)

Dual-Aspect Theory


Something different

Just your brain


Something beyond


Cartesian Dualism


Theory)

Dual-Aspect Theory


Something different

Just your brain

Just your brain


Something beyond


Cartesian Dualism


Theory)

Dual-Aspect Theory


Something different

Just your brain

Just your brain


Something beyond


Something beyond

Cartesian Dualism


Theory)

Dual-Aspect Theory

Bundle Dualism


Something different

Just your brain

Just your brain


Something beyond


Something beyond

Cartesian Dualism


Theory)

Dual-Aspect Theory

Bundle Dualism


Something different

Just your brain

Just your brain

There is no mind distinct

from your experiences


Something beyond


Something beyond

Cartesian Dualism


Theory)

Dual-Aspect Theory

Bundle Dualism


Something different

Just your brain

Just your brain

There is no mind distinct

from your experiences


Something beyond


Something beyond

Something beyond

Three Sorts of Dualism

• Interactionist Dualism– Analogy to a room and a thermostat

• Epiphenomenal Dualism– Analogy to a room and a thermometer

• Parallelist Dualism– Analogy to perfectly synchonized clocks

• These cross-categorize with Cartesian Dualism, Bundle Dualism and Dual-Aspect Theory – thus you could be an Interactionist Cartesian Dualist, an Interactionist Bundle Dualist, an Interactionist Dual-Aspect Theorist, etc.

Problem for Bundle Dualism: A “Uniting Principle of a Mind”

• Why is a group of mental experiences my mental experiences?

• The Cartesian Dualist can say, “Because my experiences today and my experiences yesterday are both states of one continuing nonphysical thing – a soul”

• The Bundle Dualist cannot say this

• Hume says “memory” – but some mental states are mine but unremembered

Bundle Dualism’s Explaining Unity of Mind by Appeal to Body’s Relation to Experiences

• There is a problem here:• If the continuing identity of my mind is logically

dependent on all my experiences being related in a certain way to a particular body, then disembodied existence of a mind must be a meaningless notion.

• Disembodied existence of a mind is not a meaningless notion.

• Therefore, the body cannot be the “thread of consciousness.”

– Armstrong’s Argument on p. 18 of A Materialist Theory of the Mind

A Problem with Cartesian Dualism

• If existing is identical to thinking, and there is no further substrate behind existing, as Descartes maintained, what happens, Locke asked, when thinking stops, as in dreamless sleep?

• We should then go out of existence, since there is then nothing to appeal to in saying what makes us the same persons before and after thinking stops.

• Neither Descartes nor Locke seems to face up to this.– Descartes, because he did not accept that thinking

stops.– Locke, because he thought that we can meaningfully

talk about sameness of consciousness without further explaining what makes it the same.

A Further Problem for Dualists: Counting Souls

• How do we count souls (i.e., spiritual substances)?

• We ordinarily appeal to position in space to count and souls are not spatial.

• We cannot appeal to past histories, since there might be two souls with identical past histories.

• We cannot appeal to correlated bodies, since souls might be disembodied.

A Further Problem for Dualists: The Origin of Minds

• Something From Nothing Problem: There would be nothing “particularly difficult in the notion that when the nervous system reaches a certain level of complexity it should affect something that was already in existence in a new way. But it is quite a different matter to hold that the nervous system should have the power to create something else, of a quite different nature from itself, and create it out of no materials.” (Armstrong)

• Sharp Break Problem: “Organisms develop by insensible gradations … so it is natural to say the mind develops in the same way. But because the Dualist sets up so sharp a gap between the material and the mental, he must find a definite point when the mental comes into existence.”

The Further Problem of Interaction of Mind and Body

• How could a soul cause anything to happen in a brain when the soul is by definition nonspatial?

• If you adopt a parallelist account, then you must explain why we are wrong to think pain is caused by a blow to a hand or to think that the pain causes one to wring his hand.

Heil’s Conservation Problem

• One source of Heil’s problem (frequently mentioned): the violation of conservation.

• Physics tells us that there is never anything gained or lost in mass-energy in a closed system – but nonphysical mental causation would violate conservation.

• But why not simply claim that nonphysical mental causation is an exception?

Problem with Heil’s Overattention to Mental Causation

• Heil takes the problem about mental causation to be devastating to the Cartesian.

• But this ignores the fact that the Cartesian position is dictated by what is supposed to be an a priori, inescapable proof of the existence of a nonphysical soul.

• Heil never presents the Cartesian position as one supposedly based on a proof.

Descartes’s Argument for Dualism

Modern dualism begins with Descartes’s argument for dualism, which grows out of the thought experiment with which he begins his book.

•“I will suppose, then, not that there is a supremely good God who is the source of all truth, but that there is an evil demon, supremely powerful and cunning, who works as hard as he can to deceive me. I will say that sky, air, earth, color, shape, sound, and other external things are just dreamed illusions which the demon uses to ensnare my judgment. I will regard myself as not having hands, eyes, flesh, blood, and senses – but as having the false belief that I have all these things.”

In the face of this deception, Descartes asks, is there anything that he can accept as certain? Yes – that he exists.

•“Surely I exist, since I am deceived. Let him deceive me all he can, he will never make it the case that I am nothing while I think that I am something.”

Van Inwagen’s Interpretation of Descartes’s Argument

• It is on the basis of these considerations by Descartes that Peter van Inwagen in his book entitled Metaphysics attributes to Descartes the following argument for dualism:

– My body can be conceived by me not to exist at this very moment in this very world.

– I cannot be conceived by me not to exist at this very moment in this very world. .

– Therefore, I am not identical to my body.

Did Descartes Make This Argument?

• This is a bad argument, as van Inwagen notes. • The difficulty is that there are many things I can

conceive of just through ignorance. • I can conceive of an unproven mathematical

theorem being true and I can conceive of its being false, just because I am ignorant which it is.

• I can conceive of water’s not being H2O just through ignorance.

• Perhaps mind & body are like this.

Ignorance of Identity?

• Similarly here, it is consistent with my being identical to my body that I can conceive of my body’s not existing at a time when it is inconceivable to me that I do not exist, just because I am ignorant, let us suppose, that I am identical to my body.

• It is easily conceivable that if I were identical to my body I might be ignorant I was.

• The fact that it is a bad argument should suggest to van Inwagen that Descartes never made it.

• But it does not.

Descartes Himself Denies Making This Argument

In fact, Descartes does not make the argument that Van Inwagen attributes to him. Actually, a contemporary of Descartes’s, Antoine Arnauld, attributes to Descartes (in Objections and Replies, in the Fourth Objections at AT VII 198) the following argument, one that very much resembles the one van Inwagen attributes to him and one which is unsound for the same reason.

• Arnauld’s Representation of the Argument from Doubt• I can doubt whether my body exists.• I cannot doubt that I exist. . • Ergo, I am not identical to my body.

In the Meditations itself (in the Second Meditation at AT VII 27-28), Descartes denies making such an argument.

Descartes’s Sixth Meditation Argument for Dualism from Conceivability

The argument that Descartes makes is in the Sixth Meditation, at AT 68. There is much more going on in it than van Inwagen would lead you to think. Let me suggest that the argument that Descartes really makes is much more like the following.

•Descartes’s Sixth Meditation Argument for Dualism•It is logically possible that I am not an extended thing.•It is not logically possible that my body is not an extended thing.•Therefore, I am not identical to my body.

My Interpretation of Descartes: The evidence for the first premise

• The evidence for the first premise (“It is logically possible that I am not an extended thing”) comes out of the first three meditations, and particularly from the thought experiment from Meditation One. – Recall that by “extended” Descartes means extended

in space or filling space. • If God really could deceive me into thinking I have a

body when I don’t, as Descartes suggests God can at the end of the First Mediation and at the start of the Second, then the possible world in which He does is the one which confirms the first premise.

The evidence for the first premise (cont.)

• In Meditation Three, Descartes concludes that he cannot go wrong about his own ideas – that, for example, if he seems to have the idea of having a human body, then he does have that idea. – But in the same passage he argues that when he had formerly

taken it to be certain that he had a body he had been mistaking the reality of his idea for the reality of what it was an idea of.

– Thus, on this basis, he has what he calls a “clear and distinct idea” of the difference between his conception and something in the external world.

• The Sixth Meditation argument takes for granted that in His omnipotence, God can make anything true that Descartes has a “clear and distinct idea” of.

• This is what is supposed to guarantee the logical possibility of disembodiment.

My Interpretation of Descartes: The evidence for the rest of the argument

• The rest of the argument (“It is not logically possible that my body is not an extended thing. Therefore, I am not identical to my body.”) makes use of something which seems perfectly obvious: – that even if I might not take up space, my body must take up

space.• Thus, the conclusion derives from my supposedly having a property

– the logical possibility of being a non-extended thing – which my body does not.

• In that way, Descartes’s argument works just the way van Inwagen’s misrepresentation of it does – distinguishing me from my body by identifying a property I have but my body lacks – though the property Descartes uses is quite different from the one van Inwagen mistakenly says he uses and creates none of the difficulties that the latter does.

Heil on Attributes

• Heil correctly asserts that Descartes’s argument rests on his associating the attribute of thought to the mind and the attribute of extension to the body.

• Since they have distinct attributes, they are distinct.

• Unfortunately, Heil does not tell us that Descartes thinks the possession of these attributes can be proven – and thus is unshakable.

• If that’s right, Heil’s criticisms are irrelevant.

The Ordinary Materialist Counterstrategy: To Attack the First Premise

• Materialists ordinarily attack this kind of argument by attacking the first premise. They just deny that it is logically possible for me not to fill space.

• Notice that the first premise conflicts with several aspects of materialism: – its idea that things are composed of parts, and– its idea that they are composed of parts in virtue of

their taking up space.

• The materialist asks: How can anything that is not composed of parts in space do anything?

Why the Counterstrategy Is Inadequate for the Materialist

• But although this seems conclusive to many materialists, making this response is in fact a bad strategy for the materialist.

• It leaves the materialist with only a standoff, and the materialist should want more.

• All the Cartesian needs is the slimmest logical possibility – the possibility in just one possible world. – It does not need to be technologically possible or even possible

in nature. – It’s enough, Descartes would insist, that God could do it. – But he would also insist that a God is not even needed to do it

either, at least conceptually, so that agnostics and even atheists could become dualists.

• Thus, the Cartesian will always insist that surely it is at least logically possible.

A Different Strategy: to Attack the Second Premise

• The materialist, however, has a better strategy against this version of Descartes’s argument – denying the second premise.

• This strategy is to allow the logical possibility that somebody might be immaterial but to assert that as a matter of fact Descartes is not.

• The problem then is to explain Descartes’s intuition that he himself, not just somebody, could be immaterial.

A Thought Experiment about Dematerialization

• Let us suppose that we were to invent a process that makes it possible for people to dematerialize.

• Let us suppose, moreover, that in the state of dematerialization people can continue to function in many normal human respects.

• H. G. Wells’ Invisible Man may come to mind, but I do not mean that it becomes possible just to become transparent.

• I mean to suppose that one might lose one’s very physicality this way.

• Suppose that we select as a guinea pig, place her in our dematerialization chamber and throw the switch.

• At the outset her vision has been directed away from her body so that while she can continue to see during dematerialization she is unable to see whether or not she any longer has a normal human body.

• Suppose that she is also able to sense the world throughout the process through dematerialized versions of her other four senses.

How the Thought Experiment Helps

• This story provides a way to account for Descartes’s intuition that he might be immaterial without contradicting the claim that he in fact is not, since our guinea pig could be entirely physical in the actual world even if she might become immaterial in some other possible world.

• Of course, the hard-headed materialist (even the soft-headed one!) will balk at supposing that such a process as this is possible.

• But Descartes should not have any difficulty supposing this. It seems conceivable, clearly and distinctly, that such a process is possible, and God, according to Descartes, can bring about anything we can conceive clearly and distinctly.

• And it does not conflict with Descartes’s claim that bodies are necessarily extended, since once our guinea pig is no longer extended she no longer has a body.

Descartes’s Sixth Meditation Argument for Dualism

Recall my interpretation of Descartes’s argument.

•Descartes’s Sixth Meditation Argument for Dualism•It is logically possible that I am not an extended thing.•It is not logically possible that my body is not an extended thing.•Therefore, I am not identical to my body.

What It Means to Deny the Second Premise

• To say, as I would in denying the second premise, that it is logically possible that my body is not an extended thing, is to say only that it is possible that a body, a thing which is now bodily, might later lose its bodily character (as an inflatable doll might lose its bodily character when it deflates, or as a red thing might lose its redness).

• It is not to say that it is possible that something might be bodily and simultaneously without bodily character (which really would be to say something false).

A Second Argument by Descartes: The Split Brain Argument

• I’ll call the argument that I just reviewed Descartes’s Conceivability Argument.

• In fact, Descartes gives a second argument for dualism in Mediation Six (at AT 85-86), which is rather different from the one we just looked at:

– A body is always divisible.– The mind is utterly indivisible. .– Therefore, the mind is wholly diverse from the body.

A Third Argument for Dualism by Descartes: the Machine Argument

• And Descartes gives a third form of argument, which we have seen already, at the end of the Fifth Discourse (at AT 56-59) to show that “the rational soul … can no way be derived from the potentiality of matter”:

– A physical machine cannot speak or act as humans do.

– A mind can speak and act as humans do. .– Therefore, the mind is not a physical machine.

Behaviorism

• It is important, in understanding Behaviorism as an alternative to Dualism, to understand what the point of Behaviorism is.

• The point of Behaviorism is to argue against Dualism.

• The point is to offer a way to embrace Materialism in light of the intuitions that favor Dualism.

Cartesian Dualism


Theory)


Something different

Just your brain


Something beyond


Cartesian Dualism


Theory)

Logical Behaviorism


Something different

Just your brain


Something beyond


Cartesian Dualism


Theory)

Logical Behaviorism


Something different

Just your brain

There is no mind


Something beyond


Cartesian Dualism


Theory)

Logical Behaviorism


Something different

Just your brain

There is no mind


Something beyond


Talk of experience – mental talk

generally – is just disguised

talk about behavior

Gilbert Ryle & The Concept of Mind

Ryle’s Conception of Descartes’s Dualism in The Concept of Mind

• He calls it “the official theory” in the first paragraph of The Concept of Mind, because it “is so prevalent among theorists and even among laymen.”

• It goes like this: “With the doubtful exceptions of idiots and infants in arms every human being has both a body and a mind…. His body and his mind are ordinarily harnessed together, but after the death of the body his mind may continue to exist and function.”

• “Human bodies are in space … subject to …mechanical laws which govern all bodies in space. Bodily processes and states can be inspected by external observers. So a man’s bodily life … is a public affair….”

• “But minds are not in space, nor are their operations subject to mechanical laws. [A mind’s] career is private.”

Ryle’s Summary of the Cartesian Picture

• “A person therefore lives through two collateral histories, one consisting of what happens in and to his body, the other consisting of what happens in and to his mind.”

• “The first [what happens in and to his body] is public, the second [what happens in and to his mind] private.”

• “The events in the first history [what happens in and to his body] are events in the physical world, those in the second [what happens in and to his mind] are events in the mental world.”

What Ryle Thinks Is Wrong with “the Official Theory”

• At the start of §2, Ryle says that he will refer to “the official theory,” using what he calls “deliberate abrasiveness,” with the label “the dogma of the Ghost in the Machine.”

• He says that it is not “an assemblage of particular mistakes” but rather “one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind.”

• The special kind of mistake that he alleges the theory to be he calls a “category-mistake.”– What makes it a “category-mistake” is that it “represents the

facts of mental life as if they belonged to one logical type or category … when they actually belong to another.”

Ryle’s Examples of Category-Mistakes

• Although he seems to give a definition for “category-mistake” in the 1st paragraph of §2, Ryle says in the 2nd paragraph that he will “indicate what is meant by the phrase … in a series of illustrations.”

• The University Example. A foreigner visiting Oxford, shown the various buildings, still asks, “But where is the University?”

• The Military Example. Seeing a parade of the battalions, batteries and squadrons making up a division, a child asks, “When will the division appear?”

• The Cricket Example. A foreigner learns what the bowlers, batsmen, fielders, umpires and scorers do but says, “But there is no one left on the field to contribute the famous element of team-spirit … esprit de corps.”

Ryle’s Summary of the Examples

• “These illustrations of category-mistakes have a common feature which must be noticed. The mistakes were made by people who did not know how to wield the concepts University, division and team-spirit. Their puzzles arose from inability to use certain items in the English vocabulary.”

• “The theoretically interesting category-mistakes are those made by people who are perfectly competent to apply concepts, at least in situations with which they are familiar, but are still liable in their abstract thinking to allocate those concepts to logical types to which they do not belong.”

How Dualism Is Supposedly a Category-Mistake

• “My destructive purpose,” Ryle writes at the end of §2, “is to show that a family of radical category-mistakes is the source of the double-life theory. The representation of a person as a ghost mysteriously ensconced in a machine derives from this argument.”

• “[A]s is true, a person’s thinking, feeling and purposive doing cannot be described solely in the idioms of physics, chemistry and physiology, therefore they must be described in counterpart idioms.”

Descartes’s Alleged Mistake

• See ¶8 of §3: Descartes “had mistaken the logic of his problem. Instead of asking by what criteria intelligent behavior is actually distinguished from non-intelligent behavior, he asked, ‘Given that the principle of mechanical causation does not tell us the difference, what other causal principle will tell it to us?’ He realized that the problem was not one of mechanics and assumed that it must therefore be one of some counterpart to mechanics.”

Ryle’s Assessment of Descartes’s Reasoning

• Look at ¶2 of §3 of the Ryle passage: “[Descartes] and subsequent philosophers naturally but erroneously availed themselves of the following escape-route. Since mental-conduct words are not to be construed as signifying the occurrence of mechanical processes, they must be construed as signifying the occurrence of non-mechanical processes; since mechanical laws explain movements in space as the effects of other movements in space, other laws must explain some of the non-spatial workings of the mind.”

• Ryle seems to accept the premise that he ascribes to Descartes, that “mental-conduct words are not to be construed as signifying the occurrence of mechanical processes.” The error he finds is with the conclusion he believes Descartes to have drawn from that premise.

Documents

Philosophy E156: Philosophy of Mind Week Six: Dualism & Behaviorism