What do we mean by ‘mind’?

What are the different types of mental experiences?

P - Perceptions

E - Emotions

S - Sensations

T - Thoughts

What are the different types of mental states?

1. Mental state → Physical

• Wanting fish for lunch → eating fish for lunch

2. Physical → Mental state

• Stubbing your toe → feeling hurt

3. Mental state → Mental state

• One thought leads to another, thinking about your holiday leads to think about needing to pack

4. Mental states are phenomenal

• You can only grasp a phenomenal quality by experiencing it yourself, eating an exotic food

5. Mental states are intentional

• Mental state is about something, outside of our mind, Paris is the capital of France

6. Mental states correlate with brain states

• Mental state of thinking about tennis correlates with activation in the brain’s motor areas

What is dualism?

There are two types of thing:

1. Mental (the mind)

2. Physical (the body)

The mental cannot be reduced to the physical

What is Physicalism?

Substance monist (only one type of thing)

The mental can be reduced to or explained by the physical

Intentionality definition

Some or all mental states are…

a) about something beyond itself: an intentional object

b) have aspectual shape: representing a particular point of view

c) are adopted with a propositional attitude to the object (e.g belief / hope / desire)

Qualia defenition

Qualia are…

a) Intrinsic phenomenal properties of mental states

b) which are non - intentional

c) accessible via introspection

What is substance dualism?

1. Minds exist and are not identical to bodies or to parts of bodies

2. There is a non-physical realm (res cogitans) distinct from the physical realm (res extensa)

3. That non-physical minds exist as seperate things which persist through property changes

What are the reasons for supporting substance dualism?

1. Ordinary talk about the mind - reflects substantial difference

2. Leibniz and the microscopic human - over and above the physical

3. Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) - separability of the mind and the body

What is the indivisibility argument?

P1. All physical objects are divisible because I can conceive of them being divided

P2. All minds are indivisible because I cannot conceive of them being divided

P3. According to Leibniz law: x and y are numerically identical IFF they have the same properties

C. Therefore minds are not identical to bodies or to parts of bodies

What are the examples of the mental being divisible?

1. Split brain patients - someone who has the corpus callosum severed, someone in the shop, her right hand collected the item she wanted, and placed it in the basket, then her left hand set about returning it to the shel, as though part of her had a different idea about what she should be shopping for

2. Dissociative identity disorder (DID) - the different personality states tend to have executive control of the body at differently times

3. ‘Hume’s bundle of experiences’ - we are immediately aware of a series of conscious experiences, the mental is divisible because it can be separates into different experiences

What is the not everything physical is divisible argument?

• There are many ‘physical’ things / states which are not divisible

• E.g being too hot / being wet / running / the solubility of sugar / beauty / forces

• We do not infer from their indivisibility that they must comprise a distinct, separate indestructible substance, so why do so with the mind?

• If it is possible that being indivisible is a property of the physical, it could be that the mental is physical

Counter argument :

• You can imagine half the heat, half the strength and half of the dampness, just not actually split

What is Physical possibility?

• It is possible without breaking the laws of nature as they are in the actual world

• It must also be logically and metaphysically possible

What is Logical possibility?

• Conceivable without self - contradiction or breaking logical laws

• It is what our concepts of things allow as making sense

What is Metaphysical possibility?

• Could be the case in another possible world with different natural laws

• If it does not violate the essential nature of the things involved

• Logical possibility entails that it is metaphysically possible

What is the conceivability argument?

P1. If I can have a clear and distinct idea of the essential natures of two things separately, their separation must be metaphysically possible

P2. I have a clear and distinct idea of my mind as something that thinks and isn’t extended

P3. I have a clear and distinct idea of my body as something that is extended and does not think

C1. Therefore, it is metaphysically possible for mind to be a thinking, unextended thing and body to be an extended and unthinking thing

C2. Therefore, mind and body can exist independently of one another

C3. Therefore, mind and body are two distinct substances

What is the conceivability does not entail metaphysical possibility response?

• The nature of things are sometimes discovered a posteriori, and a posteriori discoveries can sometimes show that what is conceivable is metaphysically impossible and therefore could not be metaphysically actual

• So, although you can logically conceive of water as H30, it does not follow that it is MP. In the same way, we may, though a posteriori discoveries discovery shows that the mind, although conceivably seperate from the body, cannot actually be separable from the physical

• Therefore, here we cannot assume that conceivability entails metaphysical possibility when it comes to body/mind

What is the metaphysical possibility tells us nothing about the actual world response?

1. Metaphysical possibility does not entail physical possibility

• Even if dualism is metaphysically possible and there are possible worlds where minds are distinct from bodies that does not entail that it is physically possible in our world

• Natural laws governing physical behaviour in our universe might actually prohibit consciousness from existing separately from a mind

• But that tells us nothing about what is actually the case

• The correct ontology requires a posteriori, empirical reasoning

2. Monism is equally possible

• Physicalists could just do the same as dualists and claim that consciousness is a product only of the brain and that this is logically conceivable, therefore metaphysically possible, too

• You can easily conceive of the body as something extended and as something which could also think: they could be properties of the same substance

What is the mind without body is inconceivable response?

• We cannot conceive of a mind without body, because we fail when we try to do so. This suggests that it is not actually conceivable. Bodies are something we always connect with the mind

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