Lecture 3 Flashcards
The mind body problem: Dualism
At what age does this happen
What do religions say?
Is the most prominent view in the world
Most people are dualists
At 4-5 kids start dividing things into mental and physical things
Major religions are almost all dualist eg spirit
Cartesian dualism
Mind is made of non physical, non extended space
Body is physical and extended
The problem with dualism
How does mind and body interact?
This problem is so hard, most people give up with dualism
Why is consciousness often neglected in psychology (2 reasons)
Neglected by behaviorism and cognition because
1 - it is hard to study with psychological methods
2 - Once we understand cognitive processes, the mystery of consciousness might explain itself
Idealists (monists?)
What is the issue with this?
posit that the mind is fundamental. The issue with this is that a consistent physical world emerges. How and why is the mind is so fundamental?
“the mind is fundamental. It creates the physical world and thus, matter”
Dr. Boyles stroke changed her reality - dpes that mean her mind created it?
Neutral monists
mental and physical are two different ways to represent the same reality, which is neutral (not physical or mental)
“there is only one reality, neither physical nor mental. Mind and matter are just two ways to represent that one reality.
Materialists
most popular among scientists
Matter is fundamental
“the mind is an illusion, there is only brain”
Materialism - the hard problem
How to account for consciousness?
Most scientists dont and work on easier problems like perception
Massimo Pigliucci
The hard problem is an illusion because consciousness is an illusion
Will there be something left when easy problems are solved?
Patricia Churchland
It is impossible to decide in advance what is a hard and what is an easy problem. Will there be something left when all the easy problems are understood?
The problems with non-dualism (2 things)
Placebo - we believe in a treatment and we get better. Why?
Very hard to explain
Optical illusions
We SEE movement but it isnt moving. Does this imply a disconnect between matter and mind?
Dualism - interactionalist
Mind influences the body and vice versa
Dualism - epiphenomenalism
Brain gives rise to mind. There isnt any interaction, the brain can influence the mind as it creates it but the mind cannot influence the brain
Psychophysical parallelism
Mind and body are perfectly aligned
The world is perfectly set up fot this
2 sides of the same coin
How? Often invoke God - God informs the mind every time something happens to the body. Not really contemplated in science
What is it like to be a bat?
We have no idea!
Thomas Nagel
Paper on experience of a
What is it like to be a bat
Can we ever know what it is like?
Nagel argues this is impossible because consciousness is subjective and privately experienced (phenomenality)
Reductionists argue that careful understanding of the bats brain and perceptual system would make it possible to understand what a bats experience is like
Tracey thought experiment
People vary on their ability to discriminate colours. Tracey, in an experiment, discovered she can see a colour no one else can see.
Stacey can see red1 and red 2. We only see red1
She tried to teach people about red2 but she learned everyone else was red2 colorblind. And so she just uses the term red
Red1 and red2 are not different shades of red. They are as different for tracey as blue and yellow to us
Nonscientific experiments show traceys optical system can separate two wavelengths of light in the red spectrum as clearly as we do yellow and blue
What kind of experience does Tracey have when she sees red2 and red1?
No amount of physical information about traceys optical system will answer this
Even if we modified our brains so we could see red2, we would not know if out experience was the same as hers
It follows that reductionism cannot discover everything, something is left out
How can we think of consciousness (two ideas for ways to study it)
What is it?
We have two options to investigate this.
Use consciousness itself to investigate itself
Take ourselves out of the thing we wish to study
As neuroscientists, we have to explain how the electrical firing of millions of neurons produces private, subjective, conscious experience.
This leads directly into the bloody mind-body problem!!!
The mind-body problem
In human experiences there arte two things that cannot be brought together
1) our private experiences
2) the physical world
The physical world is in fact assumed to exist and we share it with others (whom we assume see it the same way)
Our own experience is inner and private and cannot be shared with anybody
The hard problem (David Chalmers)
The hard problem is to explain how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience.
It is the modern version of the mind-body problem.
There is an EXPLANATORY GAP between the material brain and the subjective world experience
In contrast to the hard problem, there are easy problems, according to Chalmers.
The easy problems are like perception etc
Some claim ther eis no hard problem as the mind does not exist. Some claim there will be nothing left when all the easy problems are solved
Qualia
The content of conscious experiences
Philosophers use qualias (singular quale) to refer to the introspectively accessible, phenomenal, private aspects of our mental lives
these have an ineffably subjective quality eg
the redness of red
indescribable smell of turpentine
Some philosophers however claim they dont exist at all (like always, if there is no consciousness or conscious experiences, this is why)
how is understanding done?
Edgar Allen Poe
understanding is done by mimicking.
When I wish to find out how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or how wicked is any one, or what are his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the expression of my face, as accurately as possible, in accordance with the expression of his, and then wait to see what thoughts or sentiments arise in my mind or heart, as if to match or correspond with the expression.
facial expressions to understand someone elses expereince
If you see a facial expression and it creates a visual percept there is activation of the sensorimotor system as the brain begins to prepare you to do this expression. You do not need to make the expression, simply making the pattern is enough
Making that pattern evokes the inner state we would experience were we to make that facial expression on our own, normally
Hence we generate an experience in ourselves by imitating what we saw in someone else and this leads to understanding their experience
A reductionist approach would not be able to do this
