Socrates/The Mind-Body Problem

1. Socrates and Epicurus: a) Both agreed that death is not a bad thing but for very different reasons. b) Epicurus's argument: (1) Each person stops existing at death. (2) If a person does not exist, he or she does not have experiences. Therefore, (3) Being dead is not an experience. (4) The only things that are bad for persons are bad experiences. Therefore, (5) Being dead is not bad for the person who is dead. d) Socrates' disagreement: He rejects (1) and (4). (1) because he believes in something like reincarnation. But what about (4)? e) (4) is based on a doctrine known as Hedonism. This is the view that the only thing that has positive intrinsic value is happiness or pleasure and the only thing that has negative intrinsic value is unhappiness or pain. But is Hedonism true? 2. Objections to (4): a) Consider the story of Nozick's experience machine (explained in class). b) Contrast the life of Wonmug and Milton Friedman (explained in class). c) Both of the above suggest that there is something else that has intrinsic value besides states of mind or experiences. Question: What else? (1) (genuine) accomplishments (2) friendship (3) respect (4) honor (5) Perhaps others. d) These are all components (for lack of a better word) of what C. I. Lewis called, 'a life that is good on the whole.' 3. Survival: a) Socrates believed in survival and this gives us some insight into why he believed death is not a bad thing. b) If the most important thing is to live honorably (this may not be true, but suppose it is for the sake of discussion), then if one dies in dishonor, one's honor could be reclaimed in another life. c) But is survival possible? 4. What is it That Survives? a) That something survives wouldn't mean much. Suppose I had a halo and the halo survived. Unless that halo were somehow me, that would be cold comfort. It would be like a finger or thumb surviving. b) What is required is self-consciousness--awareness of oneself and/or one's experience. E.g., I am bored. One is aware

of oneself persisting through a time during which nothing much is going on. c) And since we know that the body does not survive--it decays and turns to dust--it must be something else, what we call the soul. By the way, the early Christians believed in the eternal life of the body. The Second Coming of Christ would be accompanied by people rising up from their graves, i.e., being physically resurrected. d) But that is no longer the dominant view; it is the soul that survives and the soul is not a material object. 5. The Argument for Survival: (1) If something can go out of existence, then it has parts. (2) The soul has no parts. Therfore, (3) The soul cannot go out of existence. 6. The Premises: a) Discuss (1)--smashing, burning, melting, etc. b) Premise (2) looks suspicious. c) Descartes, the 17th century French philosopher and mathematician argued that the soul is simple because it is non-physical and only physical things have parts. d) The Argument: (2') Something has parts only if it is physical. (2") The soul is not physical. Therefore, (2) The soul has no parts. 7. Premise (2"): a) The rationale behind (2") is that to be physical, something has to be understandable in terms of the physical (i.e., natural) sciences. Furthermore, persons, i.e., souls cannot be understood that way. Thus the conclusion, (2). b) Why can't persons be understood by the physical sciences? c) Frank Jackson's story: Harry never has an "I-thought" though he knows everything there is to know about the workings of the brain. d) Claim: The neurosciences do not give us knowledge of the self, so the self isn't really physical. 8. An Objection: a) In the Harry story we have merely different ways of knowing--the way of neurophysiology and the way of selfawareness. But it does not follow from that that we know different things. Maybe what we call the soul is nothing but the brain and it just so happens that we have ways of knowing things about the brain--at least our own--that do not seem to be part of the methods of the physical sciences. But just because there are different ways of knowing the brain, it doesn't follow that there are different things known.

b) Compare different ways of knowing the city of San Francisco. We might know the city in different ways (you through books, me by experience) but it does not follow that there are different things known. 9. Dualism: a) Descartes (and Socrates) were dualists. b) Dualism consists of the following claims: (i) Persons are (are identical with) souls. (ii) Souls are purely non-physical. (iii) Persons (i.e., souls) have bodies. c) This implies that you could not have a different soul--you are your soul--but it is at least logically possible for you to have or have had a different body. d) In what sense do you have a body? Descartes believed that the connection was very close--so close that some people confuse the self and the body. e) On 62 and 63, Descartes tries, unsuccessfully, to clarify the relationship between the mind and the body. He says both that the soul is united to the entire body and that it acts on the body through the pineal gland. These may not be consistent. The bottom line is the fourth element of dualism: (iv) two-way causal interaction. 10. Problems With Interaction: a) Many philosophers find this notion troubling. Here's why: Recall what Graham calls the Distinction Principle: Distinction Principle: If something is physical, then it is understandable in terms of the physical sciences. b) But if the body is a physical object, and it surely seems that it is, then it is understandable in terms of the physical sciences. There really is no need to bring the mind in as a causal agent. Indeed, there is no room for the mind as a causal agent. Read the 2nd full paragraph of p. 31. c) This is the problem of interaction, which is well illustrated in the passage from Richard Taylor's Metaphysics (read in class).

Fodor, AThe Mind-Body Problem@

A Brief History of the Philosophy of Mind: 1. Dualism was the dominant view from Descartes down to the 20th century, though it had obvious problems from the outset, viz., a) The "how" problem of mental causation. b) The closed physical system objection. c) The methodological problem for psychology. This warrants some explanation. A science of human nature seems to be

a definite possibility. Indeed, there have been attempts to apply the experimental methods of the physical sciences to human beings from at least the 18th century onward. But what is the rationale for this if the mind is a fundamentally different kind of entity? Why expect that these methods can be used to understand human behavior? 2. Methodological Behaviorism: What Fodor calls Behaviorism, I will call Methodological Behaviorism.' Psychologists John Watson and B.F. Skinner proposed that we could study human behavior without postulating mental causes. The job of psychology was to discover laws relating environmental circumstances and behavioral responses. a) Two models of psychological explanation: (1) The "Folk Psychology" Model: This model, which we always use when we are 'walking around in the world,' so to speak, supposes that there are mental states that interpose themselves between environmental circumstances and behavioral responses. (2) The Behaviorist Model: This is the same as the Folk Psychology Model, except without the mental states. It attempts to explain behavior by discovering correlations between enviornmental circumstances (stimuli) and behavioral responses. b) Motivations for Methodological Behaviorism: (1) avoids the problems with dualism (2) makes psychology "scientific" since mental states are not publicly observable. c) Do mental states exist? The behaviorist says that's a "philosophical" question. Human beings are treated as "black boxes" (i.e., entities whose inner workings are unknown.), and the psychologist is only interested in correlating inputs and outputs. That said, Methodological Behaviorists don't think that mental states, as Descartes conceptualized them, really do exist. Why? There is no need to suppose the existence of mental states to explain human behavior. d) Occam's Razor then applies. This principle, named for the medieval philosopher, William of Occam, says that one should not multiply entities beyond necessity, i.e., don't suppose the existence of anything more than you have to. Methodological Behaviorism as practiced by psychologists is really a form of Materialism. e) Problems for Methodological Behaviorism: Perhaps the most important is that this approach had only limited success in explaining animal & human behavior. It does well on a certain range of phenomena (1) maze learning (2) foraging strategies (3) certain dysfunctional human behavior (phobias, etc.) But it does poorly on others (1) single shot learning (2) language learning } can't explain language learning by reinforcement schedules f) As Daniel Dennett says, being a Behaviorist is not very reinforcing these days. A second

problem is that it just seems odd to deny not only the existence of mental states but their causal efficacy in producing behavior and other mental states. (see p. 65, toward the top) 3. The Central Dilemma: a) In the 30s and 40s, the central problem for philosophy of mind can be stated as follows: We need to find a way to talk about mental causes of behavior without supposing the existence of a Cartesian soul. (Rehearse the difficulties with the latter.) b) How is this possible? Two approaches emerged: Logical Behaviorism and Central State Identity Theory, which I will usually call "Reductive Materialism." 4. Logical Behaviorism: a) What the view is: All talk about (sentences describing) mental phenomena can be translated into talk about dispositions to behave in certain ways. b) 'translates' here means: equals by definition. There are two kinds of definitions, explicit and contextual. c) In an explicit definition, two particular terms are said to have exactly the same meaning. E.g. 'brother' =df 'male sibling' d) In a contextual definition, the term is defined in the context of a particular sentence. No one term in the defining sentence has the same meaning as the term that is being contextually defined. E.g., 'average American family'. 'The average American family has 2.1 children' =df 'The number of American children divided by the number of American families equals approximately 2.1.' e) Counterexamples to definitions are actual or hypothetical cases in which something satisfies one side of the definition but fails to satisfy the other side of the definition. In a correct definition, there are no counterexamples. f) Dispositions. An example:: x is soluble =df if x were put in water, then x would dissolve g) Mental Phenomena. 3 basic types: sensations (visual, pain) emotional states (love, anger, hate, desire), and cognitive states (belief, knowledge). Mental terms are just words or phrases that seem to refer to mental phenomena. h) Logical Behaviorism, then, is the view that all sentences employing mental terms mean the same as sentences describing dispositions to behave in certain ways under certain circumstances. i) Examples of mental terms that can be contextually defined: 'thirsty' 'finds attractive' 'believes that there is a fire nearby' All of these are to be defined by reference to dispositions to behave, i.e., under circumstances X, Jones would do Y. j) ontological implications: Because the dispositions referred to in the definitions of mental terms make reference only to observable environmental circumstances and behavioral responses, there is no need to suppose the existence of

mental states as something over and above these dispositions. So, by Occam's Razor, Logical Behaviorism is a form of materialism. k) There is a subtle point here. Logical Behaviorists do not say, e.g., Jones (or anyone else) has no beliefs, desires, or other types of mental states. They want to say that all statements involving the term 'belief' and its cognates are true, but they are just shorthand ways of talking about behavior. Compare with statements using the term 'average American family.' One does not want to deny that statements using the term 'average American family' are true, but there is an important sense in which there is no such thing as the average American family. 5. Motivations for Logical Behaviorism: a) Reaction against dualism and its problems b) The main motivation for this view is that it allows us to accept all our ordinary ways of talking about the mental, as, e.g., causes of behavior, without committing ourselves to the existence of Cartesian mental states. Having your cake and eating it too. 6. Problems for Logical Behaviorism: a) It ignores or denies the qualitative aspect of sensory experience (pains, visual images) b) Logical Behaviorists have failed to give any correct analyses of statements containing mentalistic terms. (1) An example: Jones believes there is a fire nearby =df If there were a fire nearby, then Jones would exhibit fire responses. (2) Counterexample: There is a fire nearby but Jones does not know it; someone instructs Jones to do a fire drill. So, there is a fire nearby, Jones exhibits the behavior, but he does not have the belief. c) It can't handle the seeming fact that mental states often do not cause behavior directly but only through other mental states. Compare typcial folk psychology explanations. See Fodor, p. 67.1 . 7. Note the difference between Methodological Behaviorism and Logical Behaviorism. Methodological Behaviorism is a view about how one should do psychology, i.e., what methods one should use in trying to explain human behavior. Logical Behaviorism is a semantic thesis, i.e., a thesis about the meanings of words, specifically mentalistic terms. 8. Reductive Materialism or the Central State Identity Theory: (Fodor uses the latter term; I prefer the former) This view is very simple. It says: Mental states are identical to states of the brain.

a) Examples of mental states: being in pain having a red sensation believing that the moon is round intending to go to the store dreaming of Vienna b) Examples of brain states: C-fibers firing (associated with pain), other patterns of neuron firings. c) Contrast with Descartes, who maintains that brain states cause mental states & vice-versa 9. Examples of identity statements: a) Sound is a train of compression waves b) Light is electromagnetic radiation c) Heat is the motion of molecules 10. Why Reductive? a) Consider the following reduction statement: (1) Heat is nothing but the motion of molecules. The theory of heat (thermodynamics) turns out to be a special case of mechanics (matter in motion) One theory is reduced to another. b) Reductive Materialism postulates an intertheoretic reduction of the mental to the physical. c) What this means: There are two theories involved here: (1) The Neurosciences: The sciences of the human brain, central nervous system, including the biochemistry of it all. (2) Folk Psychology: Psychological theories that use mentalistic terms; these theories explain human behavior by talking about beliefs, desires, etc. They range from the simple (John got on the bus because he believes X and desires Y) to the complex. (John repeatedly drops out of courses because he has an inferiority complex.) d) The Reductive Materialist says that Folk Psychology is reducible to the Neurosciences in the sense that all the laws of Folk Psychology can be restated in terms of the neurosciences. Needless to say, most of the details have to be worked out. Very few "reductions" have taken place. But this gives us a conception of how psychological explanations using mentalistic terminology are eventually supposed to be replaced by explanations that make reference to the neurophysiology and the biochemistry of the brain. 11. Motivations for Reductive Materialism: a) The practice of psychology has not gotten rid of mental states, and RM is compatible with that. Indeed, it allows that behavior has mental causes and that the causal processes may be complex, involving a series of mental causes and effects ultimately resulting in behavior. b) Because the identities are not based on definitions of terms or words , the problems of Logical Behaviorism with

counterexamples do not arise. Essentially, we have a kind of Double Language Theory, in which there are two languages (the language of folk psychology and the language of the neurosciences) to talk about one and the same phenomenon, the neurosciences. 12. Objections to Reductive Materialism: a) There are two kinds of objections to Reductive Materialism: some objections are intended to show that mental states can't be or aren't brain states, because they have different properties. I'm going to skip those, since Fodor does. b) The main problem is that it seems that beings with very different physical make-ups could have the same types of mental states. c) Consider the belief in the Pythagorean Theorem. If Reductive Materialism is true, believing this just is being in brain state B where this is specified in biochemical terms. d) Problem: Martian (& computers). Martians and humans could have the very same (type of) belief but their brain states would be radically different from a biochemical standpoint. e) This problem with Reductive Materialism has been regarded as devastating. It led to the development of another philosophy of mind, Functionalism. 13. Functionalism: a) Mental states are defined in terms of their causal role in the mental & behavioral life of an organism. b) mental states: beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, visual sensations, pains, etc. c) This means that, unlike the other views, the nature or essence of a mental state is not determined by what it is made out of. Contrast with Dualism and Reductive Materialism. d) Instead, mental states are functionally defined. As an example of functional definition (and this is not a mental state), consider what makes something a can opener. 14. An Extended Example: (see diagram used in class) Let OS = overcast sky D1 = desire not to get wet P1 = perception of overcast sky BH1 = behavior of carrying an umbrella B1 = belief that an overcast sky means rain B2 = belief that the weatherman said it would rain B3 = belief that it will rain today B4 = belief that an open umbrella will keep me dry B5 = unspecified belief; D2 = unspecified desire OS causes P1; P1, B1, and B2 cause B3; B3, B4, and D1 cause BH1. The point: What is the true nature or essence of B3? Or perhaps more simply, what is B3? B3 is the sort of thing that is caused by P1, B1, and B2 and which in turn causes BH1 when D1 and B4 are present.

15. Functionalism and Behaviorism: a) What is the difference? The Logical Behaviorist says that all talk about mental states is shorthand for talking about dispositions to behave in certain ways, dispositions that can be spelled out in terms of environmental circumstances and behavioral responses. The Functionalist denies this because he thinks mental states are partially defined in terms of other mental states. This is something Behaviorism cannot allow. b) Consider the two Fodor Coke Machines. c) The Simple Coke Machine: