Property Dualism

Question 1

What is the difference between physical and mental in Property dualism?

Answer 1

1. One of properties, rather than substances,
2. There might be only one type of substamce, but it might be possible to describe it in two ways, i.e. physical and mental,
3. Ine example, while the mind could be describe in both physical terms and mental terms, the latter cannot be reduced to the former, nor the former to the latter.

Question 2

What is the essence of Leibniz’s argument?

Answer 2

1. Emphasising how physicalism, physical language, and concepts cannot capture aspects of experience to do with sensation, perception, thought, feeling, and emotion, i.e. the subjective aspects of consciousness, what it is like to be a conscious, experiencing being.

Question 2

How does Leibniz challenge the traditional physicalist idea of the mind?

Answer 2

1. Imagines the mind reduced to the brain, that it would be a machince, even if one of immense complexity,
2. He asks what we would encounter were we to ‘enter’ this mind, which we supposedly could do if it were a machine,
3. We could see a variety of physical processes occurring analogous to the cogs and wheels of a machine turning, but nothing which we could call consciousness,
4. In other words, we would not find a trace of the mind.

Question 3

What does David Chalmers write as the properties of the mind?

Answer 3

‘Perceptual experience, bodily sensation, mental imagery, emotional experience, occurrent thoughts, and more.’

Speak, in general, of the subjective, phenomenal, qualitative aspects of consciousness, notably qualia.

Question 4

What are qualia?

Answer 4

1. The basic non-intentional properties of existence which are fundamental in experience,
2. Ine example, the redness itself of my experience of the red apple in front of me,
3. Qualia have to do with the basic qualities, and qualitativeness of expeirence,
4. So, instead of thinking in mathematical form, of the shape of the apple and the wavelengths associated with the perceived colour red, we actually experience redness in our experience.

Question 4

What are the key features of qualia?

Answer 4

1. Intrinsic - cannot be further broken down or analysed; they are basic,
2. Directly accessible - they are immediately accessible in consciousness and only by introspection,
3. Private - only the individual has access to their qualia,
4. Ineffable - you cannot describe or show what qualia are like. They must be directly experienced by the person.

Question 5

How can Chalmer’s Philosophical Zombies argument be summarised?

Answer 5

1. According to physicalism everything which exists is ultimately physical in nature,
2. Therefore, any two possible worlds which are physically identical, are identical in every way, as everything is physically determined,
3. Therefore, any world which is physically identical to the actual world must also have mental properties, and consciousness in it, as we know that there is consciousness in this one, for you know that you, at least, are conscious,
4. However, it is conceivable that there is a world which is physically identical to this one but in which everyone else is a zombie, i.e. lacking qualia,
5. So, a world which is physically identical to this one, but which is populated by only zombies is possible, contradicting (3),
6. As (3) is a consequence of (1), we must reject (1), therefore the contradiction (4) is correct. In other words, we must reject physicalism as incorrect.

Question 6

What is supervenience?

Answer 6

1. Property dualists generally agree that mental states depend on physical states, substances, processes, events, or entities broadly,
2. They think not only that mental states require physical entities to exist, but that whether they exist is determined by the type of entity and the states of that entity,
3. So, they would maintain that a change in the physical state of the being will be accompanied by a mental change, and vice-versa,
4. This is called supervenience, as the mental states are said to supervene on the physical states.

Question 7

What would an empiricist say of the zombie-human distinction?

Answer 7

We have no means of distinguishing between meeting a zombie without consciousness and a human with; the distinction is meaningless. There is no way to observe or empirically prove ‘inner life’.

Question 7

Supervenience: Summarised?

Answer 7

A set of states M, supervenes on a set of states P, if and only if you cannot change M without also changing P.

Question 8

Possibility of Zombie worlds counterpoint?

Answer 8

1. Daniel Dennett maintains that a zombie world is not conceivable,
2. Even if we think we can conceive this world, we are mistaken, and fooling ourselves,
3. Dennett argues that the very idea of the mind is in fact necessary to explain common activities of human beings, such as perception, speech, social behaviour, etc.,
4. Therefore it is confused to think that we can imagine a physically identical world without minds.

Question 9

How does supervenience apply to Chalmer’s argument?

Answer 9

1. The mental supervenes on the physical in the previous sense,
2. However, this is due to the psychophysical laws of this universe, which do not necessarily hold in other universes, meaning that while it might be physically necessary that we have minds in this world, this is not so in other worlds.

Question 10

Logical and Metaphysical possbility counterpoint - initial analogy?

Answer 10

1. A classic example of something logically possible is that water is not H2O, i.e. it could be some other formula which is not immediately contradictory if we test it, as opposed to a square circle which is immediately contradictory,
2. However, this other chemical compound would not be water. If someone says that they can imagine water with a different chemical composition, what are they actually telling us that they can imagine? They are telling us that something with exactly the same properties as water, except chemical composition, is conceivable and possible,
3. If we accept that this might be conceivable, we might also maintain that it is in fact not metaphysically possible for something to differ in chemical composition and still have the exact same properties, as the possession of these properties is intrinsically and necessarily linked to having a particular chemical composition. If the chemical composition changes, then so do the properties of the ‘water’.

Question 10

Logical and Metaphysical possibility counterpoint applied to philosophical zombies?

Answer 10

1. Perhaps the situation with water is the same with respect to the mind,
2. Perhaps we maintain, even if we accept that it is conceivable that there be a world physically identical to this one but without any consciousness, that it is metaphysically impossible for there to be such a world,
3. The nature of consciousness is such that it is intrinsically linked to, and supervenient on, other physical qualities, so to imagine that the world is physically identical yet without consciousness is not to imagine a metaphysical possibility, because the very nature of consciousness turns out to be such that it precludes it.

Question 11

The Mary’s Room thought experiment by Frank Jackson?

Answer 11

1. A thought experiment,
2. Imagines a neuroscientist, Mary, who knows everything there is to know theoretically and scientifically about perception. However, Mary has spent her entire life in a completely black and white room and has never seen colours,
3. Her only access to the outside world is through a black and white TV. However, she knows everything there is to know about vision, and thus has a complete understanding of the physical nature of colour and colour perception,
4. Now suppose that one day, Mary leaves the room, walks outside, and sees grass, trees, the sun, the sky, and flowers, sees colours for the first time,
5. Does Mary, in stepping outside, gain knowledge? Did she learn something?

Question 12

The dualist answer to the Mary’s room thought experiment?

Answer 12

1. If Mary has gained knowledge, then the knowledge that she acquired in the room must be incomplete, in that there is knowledge about colours, namely subjective, phenomenal knowledge about colours, that she did not, and could not, have acquired in the black and white room,
2. Yet we supposed that she had complete knowledge of colour vision, so the knowledge, it would seem, must come from qualia. It would seem that physical knowledge does not give us knowledge of qualia, and therefore physicalism is incomplete.

Question 13

The physicalist response to the Mary’s Room thought experiment - acquaintance argument?

Answer 13

1. They may reject the idea that Mary gains propositional knowledge,
2. Claiming that she only gains acquaintance knowledge,
3. Propositional knowledge is knowledge of facts, acquaintance knowledge is a kind of experiential knowledge we have when we encounter something.

Question 14

Dualist response to the acquaintance argument?

Answer 14

1. Jackson’s response is to accept that acquaintance knowledge is gained, but denies that no new propositional knowledge of certain facts is gained, namely, knowledge of what it is like to see and subjectively experience different colours.

Question 15

Physicalist response to the Mary’s Room thought experiment - ability argument?

Answer 15

1. Claim that Mary acquires ability knowledge, rather than propositional knowledge,
2. She may still gain acquaintance knowledge, but to the extent that her new knowledge goes beyond this, it is not propositional, but ability,
3. Ability knowledge is knowledge of skills and abilities, how to do certain acts; here, to imagine or remember the colour of objects.

Question 16

Jackson’s response to the ability argument?

Answer 16

1. Again agrees that Mary would acquire both acquaintance and ability knowledge,
2. He, again, maintains that the knowledge gained would go past this and include propositional knowledge of new facts that the physicalist account could not account for, describe, explain, or predict,
3. Jackson thinks that we have gained factual knowledge about what it is like to experience as others have, who have been seeing colours,
4. Mary can then ask, after experiencing colours, ‘do other people have the same experiences as me?’ Jackson thinks this is a factual question, which would anticipate a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, which gives her factual knowledge of what it is that other people experience, namely qualia.

Question 17

What is the ‘physical knowledge as sufficient for qualia’ response to the Mary’s Room thought experiment?

Answer 17

1. Rejects one of the premises of the argument and claims that were Mary to have full physical knowledge of colour vision, then this would already be sufficient for, and therefore imply possession of, qualitative knowledge,
2. Dennett maintains that we currently do not have much of an idea of what a full physical theory of colour vision would look like. Perhaps it happens to be the case that, were one to have knowledge of such a theory ,one would then be able to conceive or imagine what colour qualia are like,
3. Dennett’s point is that it is overly quick to judge that it is impossible, when we are not in a position where we have sufficient knowledge to make such judgements.

Question 18

What is the ‘propositional but still physical’ response?

Answer 18

1. Accepts that new knowledge is gained,
2. However, states that this knowledge is only new in that new phenomenal concepts are acquired and used, and that it remains, in fact, knowledge of the same physical facts,
3. We have new propositional knowledge of the same facts, or a new form of propositional knowledge that we already had in that the facts about which we have knowledge have not changed

Question 19

What is Dennett’s ‘Qualia do not exist’ argument?

Answer 19

1. Qualia do not exist and therefore we cannot have knowledge of them,
2. Dennett does not deny the existence of mental and phenomenal properties, and rather argues that, if something like qualia, as in qualities of conscious, phenomenal experience, do exist, they are not like we have traditionally conceived. I.e. they will not in fact be inaccessible, unanalysable, or ineffable,
3. Dennett thinks that to attribute the properties, we traditionally have to the qualia is in fact incoherent

Question 20

What is the ‘inverted spectrum’?

Answer 20

1. Do others have the same qualitative colour experiences as us?
2. Do they experience the same qualia when they see something we would call green, blue, red, etc.,
3. The linguistic terms for the colours is used in the same way, in the same contexts, patterns, for the same objects, then it would seem impossible for us to tell whether that person was seeing the same qualia as we were for the same colours.