Criticism of Dualism Flashcards
what is the problem of mental causation
by virtue of WHAT do the mind and body interact.
If they are different substances how can they interact
how can an immaterial mind cause a material body to react
what is the two balls theory and some questions to consider when evaluating the theory?
one is physical (extended) one is Cartesian (non-extended)
they are two different substances, how can one ball move the other?
how much does your pain weigh?
how tall is your envy?
where is sadness located?
does happiness have sharp edges?
these questions are nonsensical because we know these are non physical things
Ryle’s “Descartes myth” is an attack on the…
Dogma of the ghost in the machine
according to Ryle what is the official Doctrine?
the idea held commonly held by philosophers that there are two kinds of things
what are the two categories of the official doctrine?
physical, public, directly observable, time and space, external, extended.
mental, private, indirectly observable, time only, internal, thinking,
what are the two kinds of lives according to Ryle
Public, directly observable.
Private, indirectly observable.
what is Ryle’s thesis?
Dualism is false, not only in detail but in principle.
dualism makes several mistakes, A CATEGORY MISTAKE.
what is a category mistake
when someone places a concept in an inappropriate category the “additional” thing becomes ghostly because it is not something that can be found
what are the examples of a category mistake
looking for the “university” while at the university.
having left right AND a pair of gloves
what is Ryle’s first criticism of dualism
the problem of explanatory power
a theory of mind should have some explanatory power and dualism does not-it can only tell us what the mind is NOT
dualism makes things harder to understand-bad, dead end theory.
mind becomes mysterious, inaccessible, unstudyable, inexplicable, it is no where to be found
“the ghost in the machine”
what is Ryle’s second criticism of dualism
the category mistake
Descartes makes a category mistake when he takes the mind to belong to the same category as the body–the mind is not a ‘thing’ at all
Descartes treats it as a “thing separate from the body and this creates a ghost of the mind and you then will never find it .
according to Ryle, there is only a _____
body
there is no mind AND body, there is only body
what is logical behaviourism
all mental phenomena can be translated to Behaviour and dispositions to behaviour. there is nothing more to mind than that.
mind is just a bundled concept
all mental ascriptions are…
…shorthand language used to describe incredibly complex behaviours and dispositions
what is a bundled concept
mind is not an actual thing but a bundled concept– Just as there is no “university” to arrive to, there is no mind to arrive to
there are labs and rooms– and there are behaviours and dispositions to behaviour– but no uni and no mind
what is Ryle’s view of the mind
to say you have a mind is to say no more than that you engage in and you are disposed to engage in certain behaviours to which it is appropriate to apply mental concepts.
what is the goal/project of logical behaviourism
to translate mental terms/ categories into behavioural terms.
reduce mind to behaviour
meant to have more explanatory power than dualism
turn “i feel cold” into “if asked i would say i am cold”
what it is to “feel cold” is a complete list of behaviours that result from being cold
(i feel cold is a bundled concept)
mental states are ______ to behavioural states
identical
logical identity–they are not two things
what does “reductionism of the concept mind” mean
mind and B&D2B are the same thing, so take away “mind” and just call it all B&D2B.
Ryle says you are purely _______, there is no ______ _____ but only what you ____
you are purely mechanical, there is no hidden world bit only what you see
what is the first criticism of logical behaviourism
jones translation is incomplete.
it is simply not true that jones will always say he is cold.
translation:
if asked jones will say he is cold, only if he doesn’t THINK it will offend.
think is a mental term. needs further translation
we can not translate far enough to be able to eliminate mental terms–all translations will always involve a mental term.
what is the second criticism of logical behaviourism
it does not appear to be true that mental phenomena are identical to behaviour
you can act a mental state without feeling it
you can have a pain tolerance and not act pain when you feel it.
it is possible to have one without the other making it possible for them to be different.
actors and stoics
what is the third criticism of logical behaviourism
pain is supposed to be nothing more than pain behaviour. but what about the actual pain part?
pain actually does FEEL like something.
Pain has a certain quality to it. (Qualia)
what is Qualia
qualitative SUBJECTIVE content.
the subjective quality of conscious experiences
what it FEELS like to experience something
what theory did j. j.c smart subscribe to
he was a materialist. specifically the theory of identity
what do the physicists try and avoid
dualism, they believed it was a bad approach to the mind body problem
what is Smarts question regarding pain
when i repot that i am in pain, what am i reporting?
what view about the mind did Smart disagree with
that the mind is made of irreducible mental states
“It seems to me that science is increasingly giving us a viewpoint whereby organisms are able to be seen as ______________________…even the behaviour of man himself will one day be explicable in ____________________ terms. There does seem to be, so far as science is concerned, nothing in the world but increasingly complex arrangements of _______________________ constituents.” smart
“It seems to me that science is increasingly giving us a viewpoint whereby organisms are able to be seen as ____physical, chemical, mechanisms____…even the behaviour of man himself will one day be explicable in ______mechanistic____ terms. There does seem to be, so far as science is concerned, nothing in the world but increasingly complex arrangements of ________physical________ constituents.”
what is the thesis of Smart’s identity theory
For every TYPE of mental state there is a NUMERICALLY IDENTICAL brain state
simplified: minds are brains
according to smart sensations (mental stuff) are not…
…caused by brain processes(states) but ARE them
according to Smart what does reporting seeing red amount to
reporting a brain state.
“i see red” is actually just “ i am in brain state X”
“i am in pain” “my C fibers are firing”
all mental states are reducible to the numerically identical brain state that it is. “i am experiencing a neurological process”
what is mind equal to, according to Smart
Brain
what are the three steps of Smart’s argument for materialism
- It seems that everything except ____consciousness______ can be explained in physical terms.
- But it would be very strange if ______consciousness ______ were the only thing that couldn’t be explained in physical terms.
- Therefore, it seems _________consciousness __________ must be explicable in physical terms.
smart claims “That everything should be explicable in terms of physics…except the occurrence of _______________ seems to me to be frankly unbelievable.”
Non physical minds and mental states would be “_________________”
“That everything should be explicable in terms of physics…except the occurrence of ___sensations _________ seems to me to be frankly unbelievable.”
Non physical minds and mental states would be “________ nomological danglers _________”
what are nomological danglers
those things that dangle outside of the laws of physics
if the mind is inexplicable in physical terms, then it would be a nomological dangler
materialism is a theory of _____
identification
what are some examples of the identity theory
demons -> germs
heat -> mean kinetic energy
two stars -> one star
A is reduced to B
what we once CALLED A and Thought A to be is learned to be B and now understood as B even is some still call and believe it to be A
this is an issue of language and identity
what is the issue smart has to address and how does he address it?
how can i report on a brain state if i don’t know what brain state i am in?
simple answer: children do it all the time, we reference things we don’t actually know about all the time”
what does Smart mean when he says we have to overcome our intuitions
discoveries always seem counter intuitive at the time. reduction always seems to take away sacredness or mysticism
what is intertheoretic reductionism
a process in philosophy of science where one theory is reduced to another
what does smart think is hard to believe about the mind
that everything is reducible to physicality BUT the mind
are we to suppose that the mind is the ONLY irreducible thing
what does Smart use as an explanation to resistance of zero distinction between body and mind
ancient tribe and the evening and morning star
the different stories attached to each star–therefore they have different meaning
BUT the stars are later discovered to be the same star even when thought to be different
what is Descartes objection to smarts reduction and what is Smarts reply to the objection
D: i can understand myself as thinking quite well but i cant understand what is actually happening in my brain–how then can they be identical
S: you can think of things diffrently even if they are the same
Lightning is just electrical discharge
water is just H2o
mind is just brain
you don have as clear and distinct an understanding of your mind as you think you do.
what are the conclusions Smart makes
Ryle is wrong–the mind IS a thing, it is just not a separate thing
Descartes did not make a category mistake but just didn’t make the connection of mind and brain (like the stars)
what is the first criticism of smarts theory of reductionism
chauvinism
Identity theory is too restrictive, smart cant account for even our other mental states
identity theory eliminates every other species from having mental states
and for every single mental state that one shares with someone their brain state has to be EXACTLY the same. identical, indistinguishable neurological configuration. this seems highly unlikely
