Philosophy of mind
What is the relation between the mental and physical?
Mind-body problem
Problem, because of the problem of understanding how mentality as we know it ‘from the
inside’ relates to the brain activity that we believe (if we are materialists)
underlies/constitutes it.
Contrast other scientific reductions:
e.g. Heat = molecular motion: no residual sense of mystery: we feel that we understand how
this could be true.
Health warning:
Do not assume without argument that your mind is a substance. It may be that all that
‘having a mind’ is, is possessing mental properties (e.g. believing, perceiving, hoping).
Two features of mentality thought to make it especially difficult to understand:
1. Intentionality [nb: nothing to do with intention]
‘Aboutness’: we have thoughts (of all kinds [beliefs, desires, hopes intentions, emotions
memories, etc.] that are about things)
Why intentionality is problematic
a) Calculators/cameras/computers are very good at processing data according to
algorithms. But we don’t believe that they actually think about numbers/things. (It’s
not clear that even the most sophisticated digital camera ‘sees’ the world as
containing distinct objects, as we do. – let alone that it has thoughts about such
objects.)
b) Hilary Putnam’s famous argument for the view that intentionality can’t be an
intrinsic property of the brain.
“Twin-Earth” thought experiment.
Real waitress on earth is thinking about water, the reference for this is H2O.
A clone of the waitress on a clone of the earth is thinking about water, the reference
for this thought is the chemical formula for water on this planet, which happens to
be XYZ.
The idea is: real waitress and twin earth waitress are exactly alike. But twin thoughts
about what they both call ‘water’ have different references.
Thus, meanings are not in the head.
Donald Davidson’s ‘swamp man’ case.
Person created a moment ago by a change grouping of molecules. She is exactly,
down to the atom, a duplicate of the ‘real’ waitress.
The real waitress is thinking about David
The fake waitress cannot think David, she’s never met him. At best she has
experiences ‘as of’ remembering and thinking about them.
Physical duplicates; but they are mentally different.
,Lesson: what we think about is a function not just of what what’s going on in our brains, but
of our causal links to things around us. (You can’t think about H2O unless you have H2O in
your experience).
However, intentionality doesn’t necessarily make a huge problem for the materialist
because we may be able to see intentionality as a relational proposition.
Intrinsic proposition = propositions that a subject has within itself without reference to
anything else (e.g. being human, being blue)
Relational property = propositions that are only specified in relation to something else (e.g.
being taller than David, being NW of Oxford)
(Real man and swamp man are intrinsically identical but differing in relational properties).
2. Qualitative consciousness
This is the source of hard problem. Much of our mentality is conscious.
Being conscious – having some things seem some way to you, this involves qualitative
experiences.
Qualia is a qualitative aspect of experience (the way embarrassment feels to you).
Syllabus definition of qualia – intrinsic and non-intentional (not about anything)
phenomenal (seem someway) properties that are introspectively (look into our minds)
accessible.
The qualitative side of mentality seems hard to believe is just physical. We may be able to
think of states like believing as being characterizable in ‘functional’ terms.
We already speak of machines as ‘thinking that p’ – but we don’t think any current machines
are actually conscious. There isn’t a, ‘what it’s like to be a computer’.
The reason the problem is so hard:
1) Our understanding of the brain is objective and observational.
BUT
2) Our understanding of the consciousness is subjective and introspective
We simply experience consciousness and cannot understand it any other way.
Maybe (says Colin McGruinn) these understandings are so different that we cannot say one
constitutes the other, or that consciousness is physical.
,Views on how the mind and the body relate:
Substance – individual entity
Substance dualism (Descartes) Property – a way something is or can be
The mind and body are distinct (i.e. non-identical, but NOT separate) substances.
Syllabus definition: minds exist [there are substances called minds] and they are not
identical to bodies or parts of bodies.
The world contains two different types of substances
3) Material/physical ones, including human bodies and other physical objects
4) Immaterial ones
Each of us has a body which is material substance.
The essence of material substances – according to Descartes – is to be extended, i.e. to take
up space.
Each of us also has an immaterial substance.
The mind is an immaterial substance – which is responsible for mentality. The essence of
the mind is thinking.
(Essence = without which you cannot be that thing).
Arguments for substance dualism (1) Conceivability argument
1. I have a clear and distinct idea of myself as a thinking, unextended thing.
2. I have a clear and distinct idea of my body as an unthinking, extended thing.
3. If I can clearly and distinctly conceive of one thing apart from another, then they are
non-identical and therefore, distinct.
4. Via the first two premises, I can clearly and distinctly conceive of mind and body
apart from one another
5. Thf: mind and body are distinct substances
“It is sufficient that I am able clearly and distinctly to conceive one thing apart from another
in order to be certain that the one is different from the other.”
“I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in as far as I am only a thinking and unextended
thing, and as, on the other hand, I possess a distinct idea of body, in as far as it is only an
extended and unthinking thing, it is certain that I, [that is, my mind, by which I am what I
am], is entirely and truly distinct from my body, and may exist without it.”
Can challenge premise 3 (we can clearly and distinctly perceive evening star and morning
star as different even though they are the same thing).
, Syllabus objections
1. Mind without body is not conceivable
2. What is conceivable does not tell us what is metaphysically possible**
3. What is metaphysically possible** tells us nothing about the actual world
**Explaining ‘metaphysically possible’
Actual world – our world
Physically possible world – ways the world might have been, consistent with the laws of
physics.
Logically possible worlds – ways the world could have been consistent with the laws of
thought (that don’t involve contradiction)
Metaphysically possible – either within or the same as the logical possible worlds (don’t
involve contradiction AND necessarily true)
Logically possible worlds
Metaphysically possible
Physically possible world
Actual world
The metaphysically possible is a narrower set of worlds than the logically possible:
This is because some things are necessary, whose denial does not involve a contradiction.
Thus, they cannot fail to be the case, so it is metaphysically impossible that they should be
false. But because their denial involves no contradiction, it is logically possible.
e.g. Statements of identity are necessary: Hesperus (evening star) is phosphorus (morning
star). All such true statements are necessary.
‘Hesperus is not phosphorus’ this is not a contradiction as we can’t detect its falsity from the
armchair.
Therefore, “the evening star is not the morning star” is logically possible but not
metaphysically possible.
Logically possible: Because there is no contradiction in the meanings of the terms.
But the statement is necessarily false and therefore, it cannot be metaphysically possible.
