POOM Flashcards
What is POOM
We have a privileged access into our own subjective thoughts and our mind. However, we are unable to ever observe what is subjective to any other person and thus we can never access anyone else’s mind. Therefore, how are we justified in believing that other people have minds
What is solipsism
The belief that there are no other bodies and minds, only your own – you can only know your mind. Descartes came close to being trapped in solipsism.
What is an analogical argument
Argument from analogy is a special type of inductive argument, whereby perceived similarities are used as a basis to infer some further similarity that has yet to be observed
What is J.S Mill’s analogical argument
Imagine a fact (m) – it is true of (A), and thus as (B) resembles (A) in many properties, it is likely to be true of (B). What he is saying is that I know I have a mind (m), and I know you and I resemble each other in many ways (same species, same behaviour etc.), therefore what is true of me is likely to be true of you – this is only a probability. We observe your physical behaviour and compare it with my own experience and correlation to mental states
Problem with the analogical argument
An analogical arguments are by nature inductive, and prone to the usual criticisms of induction – inferring other minds from my own experience is unreliable, moreover, just because there are connections is one case does not necessitate this will be the same in all cases – e.g. just because I have seen one white swan does not mean all swans are white – you cannot generalise from one example
What is Ayer’s defence of the analogical argument
Instead of just saying behaviour correlates to the existence of the mind, he said we can correlate individual actions to particular brain states (When I’m hungry, I eat, when I’m thirst, I drink etc.) – therefore the multitude of correlations point to the fact that it is reasonable to infer the existence of your mind from your behaviour.
Where does Ayer fail
This still unfortunately fails as most philosophers reject the idea that “like effects have like causes” – your behaviour doesn’t point to anything, and also my cause for eating could be because I’m bored, greedy etc. different causes – also if you only ever knew English people, you wouldn’t assume everyone speaks English just because of the magnitude of correlations.
What is the inference to the best explanation
Instead of inferring minds from my behaviour, I infer it to the best explanation – this is also called abduction. The best explanation for why people behave as they do is because they have minds. This is common in scientific reasoning
What is the problem with the inference to the best explanation
Applying abduction is problematic since mental states are not objectively verifiable unlike other scientific features – we lack means of confirming – we cannot use experience, reverts to analogical argument. It is also difficult to falsify the claim against minds.
What is Folk Psychology
Folk psychologists believe the best possible explanation is that the mind exists and therefore they are justified in believing it
How did Descartes deal with POOM
In Discourse, he offers us two tests concerning whether a [robot] is minded:
- Language: “It is not conceivable that a machine should produce different arrangements of words so as to give us an appropriately meaningful answer” – robots can construct sentences and talk, but they could not improvise and create new sentences
- Adaptability: Any machine made of just matter would not be able to create or understand anything new beyond what it is already programmed by the ordering of its parts to behave in certain ways – it could not adapt to changes in its environment
