Chapter 10: What am I?

Introduction What does the word I refer to? Mind-body problem – What are the mind and body, and how are they related to each other? Dualistic theories hold that the mind and body are two different substances Interactionism – causal relationship between mind and body; mental events can cause physical events Parallelism – A physical event occurs, and parallel to that event, but uncaused by it, a mental event occurs Epiphenomenalism – mental events are by-products of physical events

Introduction Monistic solutions to the mind-body problem deny that the mind and body are two different substances Identity theory – mental events are identical with brain processes in much the same way as lightening flashes are identical with electrical discharges Idealism reduces matter to mind Double-aspect theory – mind and body should be thought of as qualities, characteristics, or aspects Neutral monism – view that what exists is neither mental nor physical but neutral

You are Your Mind Descartes believed that physical objects exist outside our minds He believed that he existed because he thought Believed in the existence of a perfectly good God Material things are essentially different from mental things The mind exists as a mental substance

Meditation VI René Descartes Establishes mind-body dualism and supports interactionism. The mind causally interacts with the body. The essence of a person is that they are a thinking thing (mind or soul) The person is distinct from the body, which is an extended and unthinking thing Body is divisible, but mind is indivisible

You Are an Embodied Self How can an immaterial substance that is nonspatial cause a material substance (the spatial body) to do anything? If the mind can act on physical bodies, it contradicts the law of the conservation of energy Can human behavior be explained in physical terms according to the activity of the brain?

Body, Mind, and Gender Eve Browning Cole Critiques Descartes from a feminist philosophy Argues that Descartes’ pays insufficient attention to the fact that self is embodied and exists in a network of relations to others Descartes’ ideas have reinforced masculine notion of self as autonomous, detached, and dominant over matter

You Are a Computing Machine What if our conscious life is the result of a particular pattern of rules (software) being imposed on fixed structures (hardware)? Behaviorism – materialistic theory of the mind; so-called mental events are the same thing as behaviors or dispositions to behave

Computing the Mind Bruce H. Hinrichs Argues that the brain, which creates the mind, is a computing machine The brain is a computer in that it is a computational device How does the brain create a mind? The mind is a property or quality of the brain The scientific answer would examine the physical activities of the brain that create a mental experience The brain is a physical thing in the natural world, but the mind is personal experiences produced when brains are in a state of awareness of their own functioning

You Are Not a Machine Can computers have consciousness? Functionalism – mental states are defined completely by their functions or causal relations “the mind is to the brain as a computer’s software is to its hardware” The behavior of the computer is not explained by it’s physics and chemistry (hardware)

Can Computers Think? John Searle Argues that machines cannot think (be conscious) and thus, by implication, that functionalistic theories of the mind fail The Chinese room argument – shows that computers will never be able to produce consciousness and hence the human brain must be significantly unlike a computer because the brain can cause consciousness Computers manipulate symbols according to syntax, or a set of rules, but that does not mean that they understand the meaning (semantics) of the symbols

Can Computers Think? John Searle Premises: Brains cause minds Syntax is not sufficient for semantics Computer programs are entirely defined by their formal, or syntactical structure Minds have mental, semantic contents Conclusions: No computer program by itself can give a system a mind The way that brain functions cause minds cannot be solely in virtue of running a computer program If anything other than the brain caused the mind, it would have to have causal powers equivalent to the brain Any artifact we might build would have to have powers equivalent to the brain in order to produce equivalent mental states

You Are Meat What if intelligent, conscious, and feeling robots visited earth. Would they be amazed that flesh and blood humans can think, feel, and communicate?

They’re Made Out of Meat Terry Bisson Science fiction in which robots visit a planet to study creatures that have been sending radio messages into outer space