Time, Self and Mind (ATS1835) Introduction to Philosophy B Semester 2, 2014 Dr Ron Gallagher Office Hours: Caulfield: Wed 12-1pm H/810 (please for appointment) Week 9 (3 left): Self: Parfit, Williams, Lewis What makes something the same thing over time? Locke: Memory; Reid: Persons are continuing entities; Butler: Memory presupposes personal identity, because there needs to be a consciousness to do the remembering; Parfit: Not identity, survival; Williams: Not psychological survival, bodily survival; Lewis: Connected temporal-person-stages.

Week Beginning TopicAssessmentReadings W1 28-Jul-14 Time - Introduction and Time Travel Readings 1.1 & 1.2 W2 04-Aug-14 Time Travel; Freedom, Determinism, and Indeterminism Readings 1.5 & 1.6 (sections 1-2 & 6-10) W3 11-Aug-14 Logic Primer AT1 Mon Aug 11, 10amReadings W4 18-Aug-14 Mind- Dualism vs Materialism about the Mind Readings W5 25-Aug-14 Mind - Can Machines Think? Computationalism and the Turing Test Readings 3.3 W6 01-Sep-14 Mind - Can Machines Think? Objections to Computationalism AT2 Mon Sep 1st, 10am Reading 3.4 W7 08-Sep-14 Off Week: Revision W8 15-Sep-14 Self - Lockean Psychological Theory and Identity Readings W9 22-Sep-14 Self - Identity, the Body & Person Stages AT3 Mon Sep 22nd, 10amReadings Sep-14 Mid-semester Break W10 06-Oct-14 Knowledge What is Knowledge and Gettier's Account Readings W11 13-Oct-14 Knowledge - Nozick's Account and Scepticism AT4 Essay Fri Oct 17th, 6pmReadings W12 20-Oct-14 Knowledge - The Moorean Response Readings 5.5

Due DateAssessment TaskValue Mondays 10amReading Quizzes (10)5% Mon Aug 11thAT1 words)5% Mon Sep 1stAT2 words)10% Mon Sep 22ndAT3 words)10% Fri Oct 17thAT4 Essay words)30% TBA Exam40% Hurdle Requirements To pass this unit (i.e., get a grade of 50 or higher) the following requirements must be fulfilled: You must achieve a grade of 40% or more on the final exam You must attend at least 75% of your tutorials You must not fail more than one assessment task otherwise grade capped at 50% Assessment

Essay Topics Write on one of the following topics. AT4 Essay - Fri Oct 17th, 6pm words – 30% 1. Time Travel How can David Lewis's solution to the Grandfather paradox be used to solve the problem of the logically pernicious self- inhibitor discussed in your Unit Reader? Be sure to clearly lay out the problem and solution to the grandfather paradox, draw the parallels between that paradox and the logically pernicious self-inhibitor problem. Required reading: David Lewis, 'The Paradoxes of Time Travel’

1. Time Travel How can David Lewis's solution to the Grandfather paradox be used to solve the problem of the logically pernicious self-inhibitor discussed in your Unit Reader? Be sure to clearly lay out the problem and solution to the grandfather paradox, draw the parallels between that paradox and the logically pernicious self-inhibitor problem. Required reading: David Lewis, 'The Paradoxes of Time Travel’ The Logically Pernicious Self ‐ inhibiter If time travel is possible, it must be possible to build ‘a logically pernicious self inhibiter’. Here is an example devised by John Earman: Imagine a rocket ship that can fire a probe into its own recent past. Suppose the rocket is programmed to fire the probe unless a safety switch is set to on, and that the safety switch is turned on if and only if the rocket detects the return of the probe. The rocket will fire the probe if and only if it does not fire the probe. That is impossible. (TSM Reader Page 10) That is: it can fire the probe and it can’t fire the probe.

Earman asks us to consider a rocket ship that at some space-time point x can fire a probe that will travel along a timelike loop into the past lobe of x's light cone. Suppose the rocket is programmed to fire the probe unless a safety switch is on and the safety switch is turned on if and only if the "return" of the probe is detected by a sensing device with which the rocket is equipped ( ). Is the probe fired or not? The answer is that it is fired if and only if it is not fired, which is logically absurd.This contradiction does not suffice to show that time travel per se is impossible. Rather the whole situation is impossible, and this includes assumptions about the programming of the rocket, the safety switch, the sensing device, and so forth. But, although the contradiction could be avoided by giving up some of these assumptions, Earman suggests that we have good evidence that rockets can be so programmed. Earman concludes, "Thus, although we cannot exclude closed timelike lines on logical grounds, we do have empirical reasons for believing that they do not exist in our world" (232). omniscience#ixzz3E7PIvINl Earman, John (1972) Implications of causal propagation outside the null cone. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 50 (3). pp ISSN

Logical Paradoxes This sentence is false. Everything I say is always a lie. The Barber Paradox and the Set of All Sets. “The male barber shaves every man in town who does not shave himself. Who shaves the barber?” Assuming that every man in town has to get shaven, there is no escape from this dilemma. Bertrand Russell used this exercise to show that certain kinds of classification were impossible.

2. Free Will Consider this argument: 'If the future is already determined, then it must be possible to know in advance what will happen. But, if that is so, then free will is impossible.' Do you agree? Is there any satisfactory way of acting freely if determinism is true? Required reading: David Lewis, 'The Paradoxes of time Travel' Richard Taylor, 'Freedom, Determinism and Fate' Kane, ‘Libertarianism’

2. Free Will Consider this argument: 'If the future is already determined, then it must be possible to know in advance what will happen. But, if that is so, then free will is impossible.’ Do you agree? Is there any satisfactory way of acting freely if determinism is true? Required reading: David Lewis, 'The Paradoxes of time Travel' Richard Taylor, 'Freedom, Determinism and Fate' Kane, ‘Libertarianism’ Lewis – The future is as fixed as the past. Taylor – Determinism entails fatalism. Kane – The complexity of ‘free agents’ ensures that choices are real and free. TIP Define determinism and the space-time system you are referring to. Don’t attempt to reconcile all three papers (Lewis, Taylor, Kane).

3. Thinking Machines On the question whether machines can think, Descartes and Turing are in strong disagreement. Evaluate the arguments on either side. Does Searle's 'Chinese Room' argument help resolve the debate? How does Descartes’ argue against thinking machines? How does Turing’s argue for thinking machines? How does Searle argue against thinking machines? TIP Don’t confuse thinking, intelligence and consciousness (or syntax, semantics, understanding and intentionality).

4. The Self If you teletransport to another planet, we might wonder whether the resulting individual is you---whether you've really survived. Parfit argues that identity is not what matters when we consider our futures in such cases. How does he reach this conclusion by considering the problem of fission? Is this a good argument? Is there more reason to think that identity does matter to survival? (Here you might focus more on Williams or Lewis, rather than discussing them both in detail.) Parfit: Not persistence of identity but concern for survival. Williams: Not psychological continuity, but physical (bodily) continuity) Lewis: Connected time-stages of personal timelines ensure perdurance.

Teleportation Imagine a teleport machine that works as follows. It scans and records everything about your body, down to the atomic level. That information is then sent to the receiving teleport machine, which reconstructs your body exactly from a stock pile of raw material. The scanning process destroys all the original atoms of your body. Question: Is this really a way to travel? Would you use it?

Teleportation

Imagine the machine breaks down. An exact duplicate of you is created at the destination, but the original you is not destroyed. Or what if two copies of you were created at the other end? Again, the person / people at the other end are psychologically continuous with you, But are they really you? Most people answer no – this kind of machine is not a way to travel. It just creates a duplicate of you (like an identical twin). Perhaps it is bodily continuity that really matter then, rather than psychological continuity. (Williams)

Parfit’s argument (1) Identity is a one-one relation that does not admit of degrees. (2) Psychological continuity need not be one- one and can come in degrees. (Fission and fusion cases) (3) What matters in survival is psychological continuity (whether your mental life continues on) Therefore: (C) What matters in survival is not identity. Lewis wants to accept all three premises, but reject the conclusion.

Temporal stages Lewis makes use of the idea that a person is a unified whole consisting of temporal stages or temporal parts. Think of a person as a four-dimensional object which is stretched out in time. At any particular time, only the temporal parts are present, never the whole person. This conception of identity through time should be distinguished from an endurantist conception, according to which the whole person is present at all the times that it exists.

Tensed Identity “You may feel certain that you count persons by identity and not tensed identity. But how can you be sure? Normal cases provide no evidence…. The problem cases provide no very solid evidence either. They are problem cases just because we cannot consistently say quite all the things we feel inclined to, We must strike the best compromise among our conflicting opinions. Something must give way: and why not the opinion that of course we count by identity, if that is what can be sacrificed with the least total damage?” Lewis, ‘Survival and Identity’, p. 227

5. Knowledge Gettier raises some serious challenges for the traditional account of knowledge. Nozick develops his tracking account in part to answer the problems identified by Gettier. After explaining both Gettier's challenge and Nozick's proposal, evaluate the strength of Nozick's proposal as a response to Gettier's challenge.