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PTE > 1.2 - Mind, soul, body > Flashcards

1.2 - Mind, soul, body Flashcards

1
Q

Substance Dualism

A

The claim that the mind and body are two separate and distinct things

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2
Q

soul

A

The immaterial personal self that controls our thinking, actions, and possibly life after death

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3
Q

Hyperbolic scepticism

A

Extreme doubt used to establish what is true

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4
Q

‘I think…’

A

‘I think therefore I am’ - Descartes

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5
Q

Who was Rene Descartes?

A
  • a rationalist philosopher
  • sought to establish a ‘new foundation’ for philosophy, one that would provide certainty
  • he attempted to do this through hyperbolic scepticism
  • this certainty was the certainty of the mind
  • used Leibniz Law principle to illustrate that the mind and body are separate substances
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6
Q

foundationalism/Descartes

A
  • the senses are not reliable so we need a new foundation for philosophy
  • used hyperbolic scepticism (questioned everything)
  • certainty of the mind
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7
Q

radical doubt

A
  • wishes to question everything
  • humans commonly experience unreal sense perceptions in dreams
  • ‘there exists no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished’ - Descartes
  • evil demon thought experiment
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8
Q

‘there exists no certain…’

A

‘there exists no certain marks by which the state of waking can ever be distinguished’ - Descartes

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9
Q

evil demon thought experiment

A
  • creature of great power seeks to deceive and confuse
  • it could create the impression of the external world wholly through illusion
  • the only logical thing to do would be to suspend judgement on all matters until sufficient reason has been found that is so clear even a powerful demon could not deceive us on
    Descartes uses this to show how sceptical one can be: we could doubt that the world exists, that other people exist, and even that our own bodies exist
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10
Q

certainty of the mind

A
  • thinking is an attribute of the soul
  • human beings are minds: if there is doubt, there is a doubter - even if you are being tricked in your thoughts, you are still thinking
  • shifting the emphasis for philosophy of mind onto conscious awareness
  • it would be impossible for Descartes not to exist in the act of thinking because the act is ‘inseparable from me’ as thinking requires a thinker
  • consciousness seems to be the primary characteristic of the mind
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11
Q

Descartes - moving from knowledge of the mind to knowledge of the body

A
  • he is certain that this is possible but also adamant that they are two different types of substance
  • Leibniz Law
  • the mind and body interact - interactionism: the Pineal gland
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12
Q

Leibniz law

A

if things are identical, they must exactly share all their properties - there are two key distinctions between the mind and the body:
1. you can achieve certainty of the mind whereas the existence of the body can be doubted
2. extension (thinking does not occupy space whereas the body is material - wax sphere)

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13
Q

interactionism

A

the mind and body interact despite being two distinct types of substance

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14
Q

problems with Descartes’ dualism

A
  1. the interaction problem - a kind of double standard; it both separates the mind from the body and links it to the body
  2. misuse of the Leibniz Law - masked man fallacy
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15
Q

the masked man fallacy

A

the masked man robbed the bank, I know my father is not the masked man, my father did not rob the bank. - aka. how does Descartes know the mind and body are actually different? They might only appear different.

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16
Q

Hume on Descartes’ dualism

A
  • ‘bundle of perceptions’ - there is no ‘thinking thing’ only thinking about stuff
  • if you take away thoughts, memories, etc. you are just a body
  • you cannot think of nothing (if you could then yes you would be a thinking thing)
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17
Q

cartesian dualism

A

deals specifically with the dual existence of man (Descartes)

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18
Q

Plato’s view of the soul

A
  • the soul and body are two separate entities: the body is the temporary, material aspect of the person and the soul is the essential (essence), immaterial aspect
  • in his understanding, the soul is temporarily united with a physical body, but can leave and move on (car and person)
  • the soul animates a person by giving it life so if a soul is a life-giving essence then it must always have life - it would be contradictory for the soul to die
  • ‘tripartite view’ of the soul: metaphor of a chariot being pulled by two horses (‘appetite’ and ‘emotion’) controlled by the charioteer ‘reason’ - without reason we can be led astray
  • because the soul is immortal, the body is not (as they are two different and distinct things)
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19
Q

arguments Plato used for his view of the soul

A
  • argument from opposites and cycles
  • recollection argument
  • affinity argument
  • ‘myth of er’
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20
Q

‘Myth of Er’

A

soldier called Er dies, but ten days later when it was safe to retrieve bodies, his had not decomposed at all, when on the funeral pyre it came back to life and he told everyone what he had experienced of the afterlife:
- judges who rewarded and punished the souls
- those who had been rewarded chose lives of great power not knowing what they might need to commit to get there
- those who had been punished chose more wisely, having learned
- only the philosophical benefitted from the cycle of life and death as the others simply bounced between reward and punishment
- they are then made to forget their lives
- demonstrates the necessity of seeking wisdom

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21
Q

Argument from Opposites and Cycles

A
  • every quality comes into being from its own opposite, or at least depends on its opposite to have any existence at all (eg. something is big because there are smaller things) so life comes from death and death from life in an endless chain
  • if something has to come back from death, it can’t be the body (or bodies would be immortal) so it must be the soul
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22
Q

Recollection Argument

A
  • supports the belief that the soul is immortal
  • knowledge is derived from what have already known in a previous life eg. in the dialogue ‘Meno’, a slave boy with no education can solve a geometry puzzle through questioning
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23
Q

Affinity Argument

A
  • soul has closest resemblance to things invisible and unchanging whereas the body has closest resemblance to things changing and mortal.
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24
Q

Aristotle’s view of the soul

A
  • disagreed with Plato
  • physical world and the things that could be learned about it by scientific, empirical observation - more materialistic view
  • when he considered the nature of the soul it was to try and discover the essence (or ‘substance’) of things
  • physical world is in a continual state of change but the ‘substance’ remains the same
  • not just some invisible part of a person but the matter and structure of the body along with its functions and capabilities (its ‘form’ in the sense of a ‘formal cause’)
  • that which gives a living thing its essence (in science, living things are distinguished from non-living things by what they can do, their capabilities, it is these that aristotle calls the soul)
  • he also thought there were various kinds of soul:
    ‘nutritive’ and ‘perceptive’
  • not some separate entity, distinct from the body instead it is the capacities that the body has, soul is linked with his ideas about causality (the soul is that which gives the matter its form, its efficiency, and its final purpose)
  • soul could not survive body’s death
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25
Q

‘nutritive souls’

A
  • one of the types of souls proposed by Aristotle
  • soul that can nourish and reproduce but have no ability to reason or make plans
  • plants
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26
Q

‘perceptive souls’

A
  • one of the types of souls proposed by Aristotle
  • souls that have senses to experience the world with, have enough intelligence to distinguish between pleasure and pain, and reason
  • humans
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27
Q

examples for Aristotle’s view of the soul

A
  • if an eye is unable to see then it is nothing but matter, ‘no more than the eye of a statue or painted figure’
  • analogy of wax - soul (stamp) gives wax its nature, the soul is that which gives you human nature, soul cannot be separated from the body
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28
Q

‘reason is…’

A

‘reason is the slave of the passions’ - David Hume
- Reason is unable to control our behaviour, we are easily overcome by emotions and desire and we act impulsively
- supports Plato (tripartite view of the soul)

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29
Q

tripartite view of the soul

A

metaphor of a chariot being pulled by two horses (‘appetite’ and ‘emotion’) controlled by the charioteer ‘reason’ - without reason we can be led astray

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30
Q

‘existence precedes…’

A

‘Existence precedes essence.’ - Sartre
- the existence (the mere fact of its being) of a thing is more fundamental than its essence (nature)
- against Plato: soul is essence, body is existence - Plato thought soul was more essential than body

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31
Q

‘We are survival…’

A

‘We are survival machines for the same kind of replicator - molecules called DNA’ - Dawkins
- we are programmed by DNA to survive and reproduce, our bodies are directing our behaviour and the mind is nothing more than a product of this

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32
Q

materialist

A

matter is the fundamental substance (just a physical body and everything else is a product)

33
Q

behaviourism

A
  • B.F. Skinner
  • an early materialist theory of the mind
  • denied the idea that we have any private, internal mental life
  • all our thoughts, feelings, and emotions are expressed, and can be observed as, behaviour
  • this takes a scientific approach to understanding the mind in empirical data
34
Q

‘The real question is not…’

A

‘The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. The mystery which surrounds a thinking machine already surrounds a thinking man.’ - B.F. Skinner

35
Q

support for behaviourism (experiments)

A

Behaviourists conducted experiments to illustrate their theory.
- They would demonstrate that it is possible to train animals to act in a certain way when rewarded or punished purposefully.
- This is known as ‘operant conditioning’ and it suggests that we are almost programmable by our environment to behave in predictable ways.
- Think back to the elevator. It seems clear that our actions are heavily influenced by the physical environment. Not some independent soul, or ‘ghost in the machine’.

36
Q

stubbed toe representation - BEHAVIOURISM
- problems with this representation

A

Jane stubs her toe on the coffee table -> Jane started swearing and holding her foot -> Jane is experiencing pain.
- no clear link between experience and behaviour
- differences in behaviour
- complexity of human minds

37
Q

behaviourism to functionalism

A
  • behaviourism is often seen as too radical and simplistic
  • It is counter-intuitive and reductive to suggest that we can’t have private thoughts and feelings that others do not perceive
  • functionalism is a more modern materialistic view
38
Q

functionalism

A
  • likes to use the analogy of the mind as a machine.
  • Machines perform functions, which is to say they take ‘inputs’ and produce ‘outputs’. The human mind can be understood in the same way:
    It collects inputs (sense experiences) and produces outputs (thoughts, feelings, speech, behaviour)
  • functionalism allows that this is a complex process that can create a private conscious life
39
Q

stubbed toe representation - FUNCTIONALISM

A

Jane stubs her toe on the coffee table -> electrical signals sent from body into the brain -> brain produces mental experience of pain -> Jane starts swearing and holding her foot

40
Q

Daniel Dennett

A

believed that:
- its a narcissistic idea that our minds are the most wonderful thing
- dualism comes from a lack of imagination
- and an inability to imagine how wonderful mechanism can be
- our minds are robots made of robots made of robots
Dualists like Descartes thought it was impossible that the body, with all its moving parts, could create the mind (lack of imagination)

41
Q

who said that dualism comes from a lack of imagination

A

Daniel Dennett (also said that our minds are robots made of robots)

42
Q

the knowledge argument

A

Mary’s Room thought experiment - Frank Jackson

43
Q

modern materialist views

A
  • There is no part to the person that is non-physical
  • consciousness is not something that could be anything other than brain.
  • Mental events are no more than chemical reactions (‘I feel elated’ is just ‘x neuron is firing in my brain’).
44
Q

Dawkins’ general views

A
  • reductive materialist
  • humans are ‘survival machines’ driven by genes
  • there is no animating soul
  • ‘soul’ cannot be used as an explanation
45
Q

what did Dawkins propose in The Selfish Gene

A
  • humans are nothing more than ‘survival machines’
  • vehicles for genes and only interested in passing on their DNA to subsequent generations
  • describes humans as ‘robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules as genes’ (of course selfishness here is only used metaphorically, genes cannot think and do not have intentions).
    He also thinks Self-awareness has developed only due to the evolutionary advantage it holds. Genes replicate more effectively if they ‘work together’ in ‘colonies’ (metaphorically).
46
Q

how does Dawkins describe humans?

A
  • The Selfish Gene
  • nothing more than ‘survival machines’
  • ‘robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules as genes’
47
Q

Dawkins on “Is Science Killing the Soul?”

A

he said the title mixes two different meanings of soul:
- Soul One - animating element - killed by science
- Soul Two - soulfulness and sensitivity - not killed by science
- many unsolved problems, and scientists are the first to admit this. There are aspects of human subjective consciousness that are deeply mysterious - QUALIA.
- Some people use the soul as a substitute for an explanation of this human subjective consciousness, however it is not an explanation, its an evasion.

48
Q

Soul One

A

principle of life, animates existence, spiritual part of man, surviving after death. In this definition, Soul One has either already been killed by science or will be.
(according to Richard Dawkins)

49
Q

Soul Two

A

intellectual or spiritual power, deep feeling, soulfulness, esthetic sensitivity, creativity. In this term, no, science is not killing Soul Two.
(according to Richard Dawkins)

50
Q

Steve Pinker’s book - How the Mind Works - on the killing of the soul

A
  • people claim that religions do provide something people need, we crave a deeper meaning to life
  • Pinker argues that religions are not imaginative but, instead, small minded
51
Q

‘robot vehicles…’

A

‘robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules as genes’ - Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

52
Q

problems with reductive materialism

A
  • Qualia
  • the problem of privileged access
  • cartesian argument
  • unanswered question
53
Q

qualia

A
  • a problem with reductive materialism
  • the ‘what’s-it-like-ness’ of an experience, subjective and ineffable but not accounted for in materialism
  • Frank Jackson’s Mary’s Room thought experiment
54
Q

the problem of privileged access

A
  • a problem with reductive materialism
  • as in qualia, there seems to be a difference between what we can empirically see when something is ‘thinking’ and the ‘thought’ that they are having (epistemic asymmetry).
  • if a brain surgeon opens up someone’s head, they will see neurons firing, etc, but they will not see the view of a mountain that the person is picturing.
55
Q

epistemic asymmetry

A

the assumption that each of us has a privileged epistemic (relating to knowledge) access to his own mind (and to his own mind only), making our first-personal knowledge of our own minds better in quality, more immediate, or otherwise superior to any interpersonal knowledge.

56
Q

cartesian argument

A
  • a problem with reductive materialism
  • Descartes pointed out the difference between the properties of the mind and body and argued that things with such different properties (certainty and extension) could not be identical.
57
Q

unanswered question

A
  • a problem with reductive materialism
  • reductive materialism has not ‘solved’ the problem of consciousness. There are still gaps in the explanations.
58
Q

Mary’s Room experiment

A
  • Frank Jackson
  • A scientist called Mary has spent her entire life in a world of only black, white, and grey. However, she has studied the physics of colour and knows all the physical facts there are to know about colour.
  • Imagine, one day, her screen breaks and she sees colour on her laptop, experiencing seeing colour for the first time. Does she learn something new from experiencing it that she didn’t learn before?
  • Yes? Then this knowledge must be non-physical, meaning there are non-physical facts about the world.
  • this was originally used by Jackson to support dualism however he later changed his mind, feeling that Mary wouldn’t learn anything new
59
Q

counter-arguments to Mary’s Room

A
  • only true if you assume she does learn something new (it can be read either way)
  • Frank Jackson changes his mind (we just can’t imagine Mary)
60
Q

Phineas Gage

A
  • accident was on Sept 13 1848
  • freak accident caused an explosion which drove an iron rod straight into the skull of a worker (Gage)
  • didn’t die but his personality changed drastically
61
Q

what does the instance of Phineas Gage do?

A

provides us with some rare, hard evidence that part of us that has historically been thought of as non-physical - our personality - is actually directly affected by what happens to us physically

62
Q

physicalism short definition

A

Another term for materialism (there is no non-physical part to a person)

63
Q

Epiphenomenalism short definition

A

The mind having no causal influence or control over the body

64
Q

Interactionism short definition

A

There are two entities - mind and body - and they interact with each other.

65
Q

Mysterianism short definition

A

The view that we are cognitively blocked from understanding consciousness and the mind

66
Q

reasons to support materialism

A
  • interaction problem - if the mind and body are separate substances, how can they interact?
  • Phineas Gage (physical change in body led to a personality change)
  • explanatory power (reduce parts of personality to areas of the brain)
  • simple (Occam’s Razor)
67
Q

examples of materialists

A
  • Richard Dawkins
  • Daniel Dennett
  • Gilbert Ryle
  • B. F. Skinner
68
Q

category-error

A
  • assigning something to a category when, in fact, it belongs to another
  • gilbert ryle (a materialistic view)
69
Q

1st illustration of category errors

A

You guide someone around a university, you show them the colleges, laboratories, and offices, and then they ask ‘But where is the university? I have seen where the people live, work and experiment but not seen the university in which the members reside’.
- the person is wrongly assigning ‘the university’ as another collateral institution (the colleges, labs, AND the university).

70
Q

2nd illustration of category errors

A

A child watches the march-past of a division, as they pass, the battalions, batteries, squadrons, etc are pointed out to him. If he then asked when the division was going to appear he would be making a category error.
- He is supposing that a division was counterpart to the units already seen, partly similar to them and partly unlike them. The march-past was not a parade of battalions, batteries, squadrons, AND a division; it was a parade of the battalions, batteries, squadrons OF a division.

71
Q

3rd illustration of category errors

A

A foreigner watches his first game of cricket. He learns the functions of the bowlers, the batsmen, the fielders, the umpires, and the scorers. He then says ‘I see who does the bowling, the batting, and the wicketkeeping; but I do not see whose role it is to exercise the team spirit’.
- Team-spirit is not another cricketing-operation supplementary to all of the other special tasks.

72
Q

the illustrations of category-errors

A
  • university, division, cricket
  • the mistakes are all made by people who do not know how to wield the concepts
  • their puzzles arose from the inability to use certain items of vocabulary
73
Q

what is the point made by Gilbert Ryle/category-errors?

A
  • people do not know how to use ‘mind’ and ‘soul’ and so mistakenly categories them as singular objects. In fact, the ‘mind’ is instead a term for a group of things or a physical process.
  • equally, they put people into the category or non-mechanical things when we are, actually, mechanical (wish fulfilment)
74
Q

mysterianism (developed)

A

Colin McGinn:
The hard problem of consciousness cannot be solved by humans. This hard problem is how we explain the existence of qualia. Consciousness is “a mystery that human intelligence will never unravel”.
- the brain is an evolved organ, not a miracle worker - it has also evolved to keep us alive, and understanding existence isn’t needed to survive

75
Q

eliminativists

A

there’s no such thing as consciousness (argued by behaviourists)

76
Q

reductionists

A

consciousness is a real thing and can be explained in terms of brain processing (argued by Dawkins and Dennett)

77
Q

dualists

A

brain and consciousness are separate things (Plato, Descartes)

78
Q

panpsychism (developed)

A

David Chalmers:
- What if consciousness is fundamental?

  • Rather than seek to eliminate it (behaviourism) or reduce it into a physical explanation of how the brain works (reductionism) we should accept that consciousness is a fundamental part of nature.
    This means it exists everywhere and in everything.
  • Think of how science ‘expanded’ to include the laws of electromagnetism when this was first discovered. Chalmers is arguing for a similar move with consciousness.
79
Q

David Chalmers’ psychist theories

A
  1. consciousness is fundamental (like gravity, space, time, mass, electromagnetism) - we have to start with these fundamental laws and build from there. So we need to find (simple) laws for it.
  2. consciousness is universal - every system is conscious (raw feeling not intelligence) - information processing goes along with consciousness

PTE (13 decks)

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