Metaphysics

Personhood

 people can be considered part of our moral community. What makes beings people?

Social criteria

people can be considered part of our moral community. What makes beings people?

Sentience criteria

 a beings capacity to suffer, to feel pain or pleasure. It is wrong to cause pain to anything that can feel therefore if it can't feel, there is no harm by excluding from beings that matter.

• Excludes brain dead people, or people with impaired senses.

  

Cognitive criteria

Communication, consciousness, awareness, self-motivated activity, and reasoning- Mary Ann Warren.

• Discards those with impaired cognitive ability

• Allows for some non-human beings such as KOKO the gorilla.

  

Genetic criteria

if you have human DNA

• Discards those who have other cognitive abilities that aren't human such as KOKO the gorilla.

  

Gradient Theory

Personhood comes down to a matter of degrees and can be gained or lost.

Free will

capacity to act in certain situations independent of external influences

free will libertarianism

 free will as rational beings use rational minds to rise above biological impulses.

Alternate possibility

an action is free if the agent could have chosen/done otherwise.

Arguments for

Feels like we have free will

Overcomes instincts or desires

Can make different decisions in similar situations

Morallresponsibility

People can only take blame/responsibility for their actions if they have free will.

determinism

events are determined by prior events or conditions.

event causation

physical events can only occur caused by a previous physical event.

agent causation

 a being propelled by a mind can start  a whole chain of causality that wasn't controlled by anything else but influenced through belief, desire and temperament.

reductionism

all parts of the world and own experiences can be traced down to one singular thing EG, thoughts can be tracked down physical states, and since the physical world is deterministic- not free thoughts.

Causation

actions are determined but when an action of an agent is determined by causes internal to themselves (agent causation), it should be considered free.

Mind Body

 identifying location and features of the mind. Is the mind and the brain separate?

Dualism

Mind and matter are separate 'stuff'

matter

what physical sciences deal with

stuff:

all thigns in the universe

mind

not subject to physical sciences and exists within conscious beings such as ourselves

leibniz law

if a and b are identical, any property of a is a property of b.

principle of indiscernible

 If a and b is identical, they are the same thing

features of mind v brain

Exists in time v exists in time and space

Private v public

Not subject to laws of physics v subject to laws of physics

Can't be divided v can be divided

Descartes

'Cognito ergo sum'- I think therefore I am (certainty of being a thinking thing- a being able to think)

caonceivability argument

if you can conceive the mind existing separate from the body, then they are two different entities.

Pineal gland

 is said to connect the physical brain and the spiritual mind.

Materialism

 only physical matter exists therefore the mind and the body must be the same thing as no non-physical matter can exist.

mind

a function of the brain. The way thoughts are passed through and stored within the brain.

Science will eventually discover the minds structure and function.

hobbes

 man is a machine

• Nothing without matter can exist

• Everything in the universe is physical

• A human is entirely physical

• The mind cannot exist separately from the brain.