Minds, Machines, and Persons Midterm Review

The Mechanical Mind Thesis

• thesis: the mind is a natural machine

• rejection of Aristotelian explanations

• natural world is a clock metaphor

• hidden mechanisms explain the mind: mental states/reps → theoretical entities explained by mechanisms in the brain; backed by cog sci

• mechanical explanations following natural laws in chemistry, biology, physics,

• Thomas Hobbes, Galileo, Julian de La Mettrie, Descartes*

• challenges: comets, ghosts, God, the Mind, gravity, spiritual/mystical stuff

• does it rule out free will?

Renes Descartes

• believed everything EXCEPT minds (e.g. humans, angels, God) had a mechanical explanation

• animals don’t have minds

Intentionality

• def: the power/property for smth to be abt, to rep, or to stand for objects, properties, and states of affairs (property that mental states have when they represent smth)

• all mental reps have intentionality: beliefs, desires, intentions, imaginings, perceptions, memories

• og vs derived intentionality: mental states (OI) and gas gauges (DI)

Physicalism/Materialism

Physicalism: everything in the universe is physical, no nonphysical identities exist

• all facts are physical facts

Materialism: matter is the fundamental substance of nature

• mental states result from material interactions

Naturalism

nature is all that exists, and that only natural laws and forces (rather than supernatural or spiritual ones) operate in the universe

methodological: view about the aims of scientific investigation using natural causes, doesnt ocmment on whether supernatural exists or not) (compatible with supernaturalism, but viewed as a last result

metaphysical: view about what exists naturally -→ rejects supernatural

problem of intentionality

naturalistic philosophers struggled to offer explanation of intentionality

• bc of this some atheists denied the existence of intentionality

• Craig argues that if intentionality exists its only bc of God so God exists

• physicalists can now explain a lot of things (like life force), but aboutness isn’t abt to be one of them — according to Fodor

Mental State vs Mental Representation

mental state: emotions, beliefs, desires

mental representation: a mental state that represents some object, person, situation, or proposition; has the following attributes

• attitude: the kind of MR one is having

• content: the thing being represented

• success: whether the representation is accurate of what it’s supposed to represent

Brentano’s thesis

intentionality is the mark of the mental

B1) All mental states have intentionality (necessary condition)

• counterexample: pain, tickles (bodily sensations)

  • dretske and tye argue that pain can be representations of tissue damage occuring at location x

B2) Mental states are the only things that have intentionality (sufficient condition)

• counterexample: computers, books, gas gauges all represent stuff

  • rebuttal: books only have meaning/represent things bc the readers interpret them in that way

many philosophers argue at least one of these are false

Teleosemantics

• naturalistic theory of representation

• “representations are states whose biological function is to guide behaviour in ways appropriate to such-and-such conditions”

• Representations are accurate if they those conditions obtain

• Representations are inaccurate (misrepresent) if those conditions do not obtain

Intentional Systems Theory (IST)

• Dennett’s framework for predicting and explaining the behavior of entities (humans, animals, or machines) by treating them as rational agents holding beliefs, desires, and intentions

• metaphysical implications of IST:

  • Some entities really have beliefs, desires, and expectations (realism)

  • An entity has a belief, desire, etc. if it is an intentional system

• physical stance: for hypothetical being (laplacepn demon) that knows everything since the begining of time

• design stance: if we can successfully predict how smth will behave baed on the assumption that it’s designed to carry out some function (e.g. biological objects, etc)

• intentional stance: if you can successfully predict how smth will behave based on the assumption that it has beliefs and desires

The mind-body problem

Descartes: there are good reasons to believe that the mind and body are distinct (can exist without eachother)

• mind isnt a material object:

  • Descartes: Minds fall under a completely different category than material objects

Minds are made up of an immaterial substance

Substance Dualism

substances of the universe split into Mind and Matter

• material substances: exist in time and space

• mental substances (souls): exist only in time

• humans are a union of matter and mind

  • mind controls what some of the body does

• implications: possibility of minds without brains, ghosts, angles, afterlife, telekinesis/telepathy(mind interacting w bodies w/o physical contact)

causal interactionism

• Mental states and physical states casually influence each other

• if theyre made of completely different things, how does the mind and body interact?

• Descartes: they dont interact in space bc minds dont exist in space

• Descartes: Pineal gland is the intermediate step between mind and body (contact point); how either the mind or body reach the contact point is a mystery

Epiphenomenalism

• the view which states minds (souls) exist but have no causal powers

• mental states caused by changes in brain

• the soul is a mere spectator of the movements of its body

• suggests no free will→ controlled by the machine of our bodies

Behaviorism

• materialists about the mind

• minds and mental states can be reduced to behaviors or dispositions to behave

• methodological claim: psychologists should just study the minds of humans

• metaphysical claim: mental states and causes don’t exist (more radical view)

• problems: same behaviors, different psychology

  • someone acting in pain isn’t the same as someone being in pain, but behaviorism says they’re the same

Identity Theory

def: mental states and properties are identical to brain states and biochemical properties

• internal causes are physical mechanisms

• 1-1 mapping between types of brain states and types of mental states

• instance of materialism

• argument from simplicity

  • No need to posit the existence of an immaterial soul or nonphysical properties to

    explain mentality

Functionalism

• def: mental states and events are defined by their causal

  relations to other mental states, triggering stimuli (inputs), and behavioral

  responses (outputs)

• mental states are given a functional description and defined by their causal roles (the effects they have on other parts of the system)

• mind is treated as a black box

Phenomenal Consciousness

• subjective feeling that comes with mental states

  • what its like to feel sensations, emotions, thoughts

the hard problem of consciousness

Why do processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences?

• “Could not an unconscious automaton have performed the same tasks just as well?” (Chalmers)

• easy problems could be explained by objective mechanisms in the brain

Property Dualism

Two fundamentally different kinds of properties: Physical and Nonphysical (mental)

• many property dualists reject substance dualism

• everything is a physical object but some have nonphysical properties (like consciousness)

• some believe this is compatible with physicalism (e.g. Fodor, Putnam)

Philosophical Zombies

• Chalmers

• P1. If zombies are (logically) possible, then physicalism is false

• P2. Zombies are conceivable (or imaginable)

• P3. Zombies are possible

  If something is conceivable, then it is (logically) possible (Conceivability

  principle)*

• C. Physicalism is false

Libertarianism

conception of free will

Determinism

• def: whatever happens in universe x (including human actions and decisions), given its laws of nature and history, must happen of causal necessity

• follows from laws of physics

Incompatibilism

free will and determinism are incompatible

• only one or the other can be true

• Nagel: “I would feel trapped. …”,”a lot of puppets”

Compatibilism

free will and determinism are compatible

• no one is completely free or responsible, but some people can be more responsible/free than others

  • degrees of free will

  • libertarians and hard determinists are wrong about what free will is

• non-libertarian view where two conditions must be met:

  • The person is acting in pursuit of what they desire, and their actions

    are a result of their own decisions

  • There are no obstacles in the person’s way that prevent them from

    acting as they choose

The Swampman Thought Experiment

• if an exact replica of a person is created, given the same physical structure and memories, but lacks causal history, are those two people the same?

• Davidson: these two are NOT the same bc thought, meaning, and identity rely on a causal history

• P1. If teleosemantics is true, then Swampman wouldn’t have any mentsal representations

• P2. it seems like Swampman would have mental representations

• P3. we should accept how things seem

• C. Teleosemantics is false

The Divisibility Argument

mind and body are distinct entities because the body is divisible (extended in space) while the mind is indivisible (a unified, non-spatial consciousness)

The Conceivability Argument (+ Mirror Thought Experiment)

Conceivability argument:

• P1. It is conceivable that the mind can exist without the body (Mirror T.E.)

• P2. If something is conceivable, then it is possible (Assumption)

• C1. Therefore, it is possible that the mind can exist without body

• P3. If it’s possible for the mind to exist without the body, then the mind and the body cannot be one and the same thing (Assumption)

• C2. Therefore, the mind and body are distinct things

Mirror thought experiment:

• is it coherent to conceive of my mind existing without a body?

  • Descartes: yes

The Knowledge Argument (Mary and the black and white room)

• mary knows everything (physical) about color, but hasn’t experienced color for herself

• when she experiences color for the first time, does she learn something knew?

  • if yes, she must learn about something nonphysical

• color qualia (non physical aspects to color) → physicalism is false

Argument from Multiple Realization (Putnam)

• If aliens feel pain without having a brain or central nervous system:

  • there are different ways to realize mental states

• mental states are defined by their causal roles, not their specific physical systems

• P1. other animals probably feel pain

• P2. other animals may not have brains like ours

• C. therefore, pain isn’t identical to the type of brain state and identity theory is false

The Chinese Nation Thought Experiment

• Suppose we have a billion citizens carry out the causal roles that neurons play in our brain

  • together works and functions like a brain

  • functional organization identical to that of the mind

• would this system have mental states and be concious?

  • intended intuition: the Chinese nation wouldn’t have a mind

  • something “special” about our brains that would be missing

  • Putnam: the nation WOULD have a mind

The Causal Interaction Problem

• the mind and body interact with one another

• if they are made of compeltely different stuff, how do they interact?

  • the pineal gland is the contact point

    • in a good area, small and movable, int he center of the brain

    • how the gland reaches/interacts with an object outside space is a mystery (Descartes)

Neuroscientific Arguments against Free Will

Libet:

• P1. Neuroscientific evidence (e.g. results of the Libet Experiment) suggests that epiphenomenalism is true

• P2. If epiphenomenalism is true, then we don’t have free will

• C. Neuroscientific evidence suggests that we don’t have free will

Sapolsky

• determinist

• P1. You had no control over your (early) biological history and environmental

  interactions

• P2. Your brain is a product of biology and environmental factors that you had

  no control over → so you don’t control how it works

• P3. What you do in each situation is determined by your brain

• P4. If you do not have control over anything you will ever do, then you don’t have free will

• C2. You don’t have free will

The Consequence Argument

• if determinism is true, free will cannot exist

• sapolsky

The Argument from Introspection (Huemer)

• challenges the idea that the mind is purely physical

• If materialism is true, then every mental state is a physical state of the brain.

• When we introspect, our mental states do not appear physical.

• Introspection is generally reliable about the nature of our mental states.

• Therefore, mental states are probably not purely physical.

The Perfect Actor Objection

Suppose theres an actor thats so good that they experience the same emotions they perform:

• they feel the same thing internally

• but their actual state is different

• introspection says “I feel sadness” but doesn’t reliably reveal what kind of state produced it

Qualia

individual, subjective qualitative properties: the redness of red, the sharp pain of a headache