Metaphysics of mind Substance: needs no other thing to exist

Metaphysics of mind Substance: needs no other thing to exist
Dualism: there are two sorts of substance, mind (or soul) and matter Mental properties are properties of a mental substance Materialism: there is just one sort of thing, matter Mental properties are properties of a material substance

Life on Mars Does death occur only when the body expires? When does this happen? What about brain death? Is there mental death as well, e.g. people on life support machines whose brain is still functioning but forebrain (most human part) is destroyed by illness? Soul theory to find out why some religious believers are not dualists. How do religious believers solve issues raised by thinking of humans as a combination of body and mind / soul?

Watch Bart sells his soul
Use Bart’s soul worksheet Evaluate whether the distinction between body and mind / soul is a helpful one. How does dualism support belief in immortality? Is the mind / soul the ‘true’ person, and the body a mere shell? Watch Bart sells his soul

What is Dualism? Am I my Body? Am I my consciousness?
The mind-body question.

Substance (Cartesian) Dualism: defined
A substance is traditionally understood as an entity that doesn’t depend upon another to exist. Substance dualism holds that there are two types of entities: material substances (bodies) and mental substances (minds). Minds do not require the existence of bodies to exist – minds can be separated from any body. People who believe that the mind is the soul and that the soul can continue to exist without a body after death are substance dualists. If mental substances exist, they will be unlike matter e.g. Descartes argues it has no parts and doesn’t exist in space and time

Materialism: defined There is only one sort of substance – matter.
Everything that exists is a material thing or depends on a material thing for existence. For example A materialist might claim that mental properties, e.g. thoughts and beliefs, are properties of a person and that a person is necessarily a material object.

Dualism: arguments for…
Plato’s arguments: In the Phaedo, Plato argued death is the separation of the soul from the body. He gave two arguments in support of this view. Souls cannot be destroyed Everything comes about from its opposite.

Souls cannot be destroyed
All unseen things are unchanging and simple: they don’t have parts If they don’t have parts they can’t be broken To destroy something is to break it into parts, so something without parts cannot be destroyed Therefore the soul cannot be destroyed. Problem: perhaps there are other types of destruction other than breaking into parts. E.g. if souls were created from nothing, then perhaps they can be destroyed by being annihilated.

Substance Dualism: Plato’s arguments Descartes' knowledge argument
The mind as a single substance

Everything comes about from its opposite
Whenever you change something you change it from what it is to what it is not. Example: when you paint a wall red, you change it from not-red to red. Likewise, life changes into what it is not, not-life or death, the separation of soul and body. To become alive is also a change from not being alive. Life must come from ‘death’ – it must be the joining of soul and body. Therefore, our souls must exist in another world first and then are born, or reborn, here.

Everything comes about from its opposite: problems
There are types of change that don’t involve change from one opposite to another. If I come into existence it’s wrong to say that I change from not existing to existing – if I didn’t exist then I didn’t have any properties at all including that of not existing. If death is the destruction of the soul rather than its separation from the body, birth could be its creation (from nothing) rather than the joining of soul and body.

Plato’s Assumption & legacy
In both arguments, Plato assumes souls exist, but this is exactly what we want to prove. Despite this, Plato was very influential, especially for Christian theology. Descartes In the 17th Century the view that humans were part angel, part beast was almost orthodoxy. Different to many of his contemporaries, Descartes tried to defend dualism not on the basis of theology but epistemology.

Plato and the Soul Influenced by Pythagorean thought, the distinction between spiritual soul (Psyche) and material body. There is no permanence in the visible world of things. Soul is immortal, it has no parts and is immortal so then cannot be created as its immortal

Plato Theory of Forms: Soul’s move from one body to another, so when a body dies the soul will inhabit another body and have no memory. So how does the spiritual body interact with our body? How does it direct our limbs? If our minds know the right things then the whole person will do it

Plato Plato does not make a separation between action and reasoning. A reason is result of force, cause of my action seems to be conscious reason to act on my reason.

Plato and Christianity
Plato is not a Christian view as the soul is eternal, For Christianity, God creates each soul anew. Plato’s eternal soul would deny the omnipotence of God. The soul is a gift from God not something that has its own right.

Plato and Christianity
Plato’s world of forms is a separate reality spiritual and physical world. What would you say about Bart’s soul? Can it be saved? Does it exist?

Aristotle and the Soul- three elements
The Vegetative Soul: shared with all living things The appetitive Soul: we finds appetites and desires such as envy Intellectual Soul: Rational and directive, thinks about the action is takes, power of memory.

Aristotle and the Soul The formal cause which gives something shape and nature. I am a person as my body is animated by the soul. Aristotle is a materialist but Plato is a dualists. But there are similarities ….

Aquinas and the legacy of Aristotle
When it is a living body, it owes it life to some principle which is called its act. Therefore the soul , which is its first principle of life, is not a body but the act of body ,just as heat … is not a body but an act of body. It is not material and should be understood as the mind.

Descartes’ dualism The mind is a separate substance from the body.
What am I? I am a thing that thinks. I cannot doubt this, yet I can doubt whether I have a body. So I can be separated from a body. The body has parts, the mind has no parts. So they are different kinds of thing.

Descartes’ Knowledge Argument
In his Meditations Descartes asks ‘What am I?’. He answers this by considering what is it for me to exist? He tires to define his essence, those properties which, if he lost them, would mean he is longer what he is. Example: an Island must be surrounded by water. If the water dried up, joining it to the mainland, it would cease to be an island.

Descartes argues be can coherently doubt he have a body since he only believes he has a body as a result of his perceptual experiences. If these experiences were hallucinations caused by an evil demon he could be mistaken for believing he has a body. However, he thinks he cannot doubt he has a mind. He cannot doubt he thinks because doubting is a kind of thinking. Equally, he cannot doubt he exists: if he were to doubt he exists, that would prove he exists – as something that thinks Therefore: he knows he exists even though he doesn’t know whether he has a body.

Descartes concludes it’s possible for him to exist without a body. He would not necessarily cease to be himself without a body yet he would cease to be himself without a mind. Note: This argument doesn’t show that substance dualism is true because it doesn’t show that bodies exist. If we assume bodies to exist (Descartes argues this later in his Meditations) then minds can exist independently of them and substance dualism is true.

The mind as a single substance
Descartes claims he is a thinking substance. Many philosophers have though Descartes is claiming he is that same thing, the same ‘I’ persisting from one moment to the next. How can Descartes, or anyone, be certain of this? Could it be that we all are just a succession of thoughts? Descartes argued that thoughts logically require a thinker. Properties cannot exist without substances: thoughts are properties of the mind Problem: what if thoughts are themselves substances?

Extra: Knowledge & Reality: problems
Does Descartes’ knowledge argument establish minds exist independently of bodies? Just because Descartes can think of his mind existing without his body, this doesn’t mean it can in reality.

Descartes uses his thought to infer what’s possible. In terms of the mind exiting independently of the body, to know what’s possible we need some independent reason to think the mind is distinct from the body – argument from indivisibility. Even then, we must be cautious as to what we can conceive of as a test of possibility. (more see p.10)

Leibniz’s law – identical things must have exactly the same properties. Is one thing (minds) really different from another (bodies)? Example Suppose I believe (rightly) that the Masked Man has robbed that bank. I also believe that my father is not the Masked Man. Is this conclusion justified? No. It’s true that if two things (in this case people) have different properties, then they cannot be identical. If the Masked Man robbed the bank and my father didn’t then my father is not the Masked Man. But it’ not true that if I believe that two things have different properties, then they cannot be identical. I could be mistaken about the properties things have. Suppose my father is that Masked Man. Then my father did rob the bank, and my belief that he didn’t is wrong. Descartes argues that the mind is independent of the body (and so not the body) because he can conceive of its existing without the body. Alternatively, if the mind is the body, then obviously it cannot exist independently of the body.

The mind as a single substance: Indivisibility
Like Plato, Descartes argued that mind doesn’t have parts and cannot be divided. “when I consider my mind, that is to say myself insofar as I am a thinking thing, I can distinguish no parts.’ It’s with the whole mind that one thinks, wills, doubts etc. These are just different ways of thinking, not parts of the mind. The body does have parts. You can literally lose part of your body e.g. a hand .

Descartes argues having parts in an essential property of bodies. Bodies exist in space, therefore they can be divided. The essential property of minds is thought. (the knowledge argument) Since minds and bodies have different essential properties, they are entirely different things.

Summing up… Descartes argument that we think with the whole of our appears sound. However, it fails to account for some mental illness, such as multiple personality syndrome. This may suggest that the mind can be divided. Freudian psychology says something similar: people may desire one thing consciously but desire another subconsciously. Note: These argument don’t assert the mind is spatially divisible yet they do make sense of talking about ‘parts’ of the mind. Descartes may then still have a point in that the way which the mind and bodies can be divided is very different. So his argument that minds and bodies have different properties remains valid. Finally, the argument assumes that minds exist. If minds do not exist as things at all, then we cannot talk about ‘their’ properties. A materialist will claim there are no ‘minds’ only metal properties which are properties of persons or brains.

Objections Just because Descartes can think of his mind existing without his body, this doesn’t mean that his mind really can exist without his body. Perhaps there is some metaphysical connection between his mind and body that would make this impossible that Descartes doesn’t know about. Cp. I think the Masked Man robbed the bank; I don’t think my father robbed the bank; Therefore, my father isn’t the Masked Man.

The problem for dualism
If the mind is just thought, not in space, and matter is just extension, in space, how could one possibly causally affect the other? All physical effects have a sufficient physical cause. Nothing physical happens needs a non-physical explanation. Mental causes would violate the laws of physics, e.g. law of conservation of energy.

Key Points Descartes argues that he can doubt the existence of his body, but not that of his mind, which shows that his mind can exist without his body. We can object that he has not shown that he/his mind exists as a substance, a unitary thing/ He could be no more than a succession of thoughts. Another objection is that we cannot legitimately infer from conceiving of the mind existing without the body that it actually can exist without the body. Being able to conceive of two things as different does not guarantee that they are two different things, rather than one thing thought of in different ways.

Key Points Plato argues that, unlike the body, the soul cannot be destroyed because it does not have parts. We can reply that there must be other kinds of destruction. He also argues that all change involves something coming about from its opposite. Becoming alive is a change from not being alive. It is the joining of the soul to the body; so the soul must exist before life. We can reply that ‘coming into existence ‘doesn’t involve changing from one thing to another.

Key Points Descartes argues that having parts is an essential property of bodies, as things that exist in space. But the essential property of minds is thought; and minds have no parts. Therefore, minds and bodies are distinct. We can object that this presupposes that minds exist (so as to have properties)

Substance Dualism Problems:
Substance dualism tends towards solipsism is two ways: The mind-body problem How is the mind and body connected? The problem of other minds If minds and bodies are independent, how does evidence from someone’s bodily behaviour show they have a mind?

The mind-body problem Substance dualism appears to make persons two separate things joined together – a mind and a body. This raises the question: how are they joined together?

The mind-body split - Objections
The notion that we are two connected things doesn’t fit with our experience as being just one thing, an ‘embodied mind’. It splits what seems to be a unified experience. Modern studies on the brain suggests the mind needs to brain to function, with it would cease to exist. Damage to the brain can affect the mind, even rendering it unable to think – therefore the mind doesn’t even have its essential property (thinking) independent of the body. Substance dualism cannot give an adequate account of mental causation. How can a thought, something mental and not in space, e.g. I want some toast, make me move to make some toast which is physical, in space and moved by physical forces?

The mind-body split – Objections Descartes’ response to no.2
Descartes may argue the mind’s dependency on the body is merely causal not logical. The mind is logically independent of the body i.e. it’s metaphysically possible for it to exist without the body. Example: Oxygen Your body needs oxygen to function yet this doesn’t mean your body isn’t a separate substance from oxygen, despite its causal dependency.

The problem of other minds
How can we know that there are minds other than our own? Each of us experience your minds directly from ‘within’ I ‘feel’ my sensations and know my thoughts (wants, beliefs) through introspection I can’t, however, have any phenomenological experience of other people’s minds of other people’s mental states nor can I know them through introspection. It seems all we can go is other people’s behaviour – what’s expressed through their bodies. Therefore, if minds and bodies are independent, how can I infer from seeing a body that there is a mind attached? Other people’s bodies could be robots programmed to behave as they do.

Gilbert Ryle Complaint against Ryle guilty Category of error, assuming mind and matter are the same things. E.g. foreigner visits Cambridge, visits all the colleges and asks where is the University? Descartes is guilty category error, assumes causes, sensations, events must be physical mental. Describe something mental is not to suggest that it is something different from what I as a whole do.

Gilbert Ryle Ryle is monist not materialist- simplistic?
Aquinas argued ‘soul is not me’ Geach ‘ In truth a man is an animal and an animal with one kind of living body, and thinking is a vital activity of a man, not of any part of him, material or immaterial, the only conception of the soul is the Aristotelian conception of the soul

Soft Materialist They believe that people are wholes, not divided as in dualism, but do not believe that all a person is, is a sum total of genes. Unlike Dawkins (a harsh materialist) soft materialists believe in life after death.

John Hick Hick’s view of personal identity, is that a person is more than the mental processes. A Person includes both the physical and the mental and the Human is therefore a psycho physical unity.

John Hick’s ‘Replica’ The important thing to remember about John Hick’s ‘Replica’ theory is the distinction he makes between logical possibility and factual possibility. He himself claims that his theory is not factually possible, but suggests that changes in the way matter functions could make it factually possible.

Hick Hick sets up three scenarios through which he attempts to demonstrate that resurrection of the person is a logically possible hypothesis.

Hick 1. A man is at a conference in London, and during the blinking of his eyes, he finds himself transported to a conference in New York. He has continuity of body, memory and personality (he’s the same person) which is verified by friends of his from London who travel to New York to see him.

Hick 2. Instead of a sudden disappearance, there is a sudden death. The man at the conference in London dies and an exactly similar ‘replica’ of him appears in New York. There is continuity of memory, body and personality and a living counterpart of a dead man in another country.

Hick What lives after death is a replica or a duplicate. The replica comes to life in heaven as an exact copy of the person who lived and died on earth. God creates this replica to live on after death.

Hick 3. A person dies and is ‘replicated’ in another world which is populated with other dead persons who have been ‘replicated.’ It is God who brings this resurrection/’replication’ about.

Hick Number 3 is Hick’s ‘replica’ theory. He suggests that it is logically possible for there to exist a separate world populated by resurrected persons (‘replicas’) who are brought back to life by God. He uses these three examples to show that logically (not factually) this can happen, but that being resurrected is quite different to merely being transported from say, London to New York.

Hick • Vardy challenges Hick. Would John Smith be the same person? Hick argues that he would if he thought of himself and others thought of himself as the same person, but is this enough? It is a replica the same person?

Hick Strengths • If you accept God’s omnipotent existence, this theory is plausible. Hick claims it is far more biblical. This theory is totally reliant on the acceptance of God. • He does not posit a soul and so does not have to verify one • Hick’s theory challenges the conflicting claims argument because by it everyone goes to heaven: Buddhists as well as theists • The theory does not depend upon dualism and is possibly acceptable to materialists. • The theory is possible in terms of logic.

Criticisms • To some philosophers there is just too much suffering. As we saw in our criticisms of Irenaeus, the end can never be worth the suffering of one innocent child. In Hick’s theodicy evil is a necessary thing, willed by God, as it the only way to achieve the aim of developing human souls.

Hick’s • Hick’s basic argument is that this theory is logically coherent and there is no evidence to the contrary. However, this is a weak form of argument. Just because something could happen, doesn’t mean that it actually happens. • Logical possibility does not equate to factual possibility.

Hick’s • Perhaps the biggest critique of the is that he doesn't successfully get over the continuity problem. Vardy thinks that there is a break in continuity so much so that the replicated could not be the same person. • Bernard Williams argues that Hick’s portrayal of an endless life of replications would be a meaningless life. It might prove a boring life.

G.E.M. Anscombe A description of my bodily actions might fully describe how my body does not explain the action. We need a description of the thought. A disembodied soul cannot point , it is my body that points, the bodily act is the act of the human as a whole.

Materialism Materialism is the view that only that which we can come to knowledge of empirically (i.e. through the senses) is real and do not accept the existence of a separate soul as it cannot be verified. It is based on and understanding of the universe that has one substance only, that being material, and generally a belief that the universe is governed by cause and effect. Richard Dawkins He is a materialist who believed that Human beings are bytes of digital information. There is no soul or consciousness as we are the sum total of our genes. He concentrates of the idea that humans are merely carriers of information and DNA. For Dawkins, the only conceivable theory is that of evolution. We are as we are because of our genetic make up, not the efforts of our soul to guide us towards the realm of ideas each change is due to evolution. There is no soul which continues, there is only the survival of DNA, the function of life

Dawkins While Dawkins does not deal with the concept of the soul he looks instead at the idea of consciousness. Dawkins addresses this feeling of individuality within each human by arguing that this is because our genes are working together. We cannot perceive ourselves as a colony but as a whole. This working together of our genes is based on the desire for survival of those genes. The development of consciousness: • If an act has bad results the animal will not repeat it • If an act has good results the animal will repeat it • Ultimately the colony of genes needs a central control in order for it to function so the colony develops the brain

Dawkins • Animals evolve so behaviour is no longer trial and error but they develop the capacity to predict the results of certain action. This enables them to choose how to behave. Dawkins claims that now that the consciousness has evolved, the genes’ need for replication is no longer the driving force behind contemporary evolution. There is a new replicator, a meme. The meme can be seen as a parasitic structure lodged in the brain

Criticisms • People can hide their feelings and can mimic the behaviour of another emotion • Are these not a conscious decision of the person? More than just an chemical response? Or environmental stimuli? • Dawkins' theory about evolution and the selfish gene, however, does not explain things like emotions. According to his theory, emotions would be a mistake since they are usually inefficient, and often only get in the way of genetic progress.

Behaviourism B.F Skinner
What we consider mental events are simply learned behaviour. The idea mental state separated from body is a radical misunderstanding. The methodological behaviourists insists with a persons genetic and environment histories , we are product of those histories.

Behaviourism Objection Daniel C Dennet
Skinner over simplifies human consciousness, due to our histories our actions are somewhat learned. Dennet argues there is something more to human consciousness than simply material cause and effect , what that something is elusive.

Key points Substance dualism entails that we are two things, mind and body, connected together. We can object that our experience is of just being one thing. Neuroscience has shown that the mind is very dependent on the brain which undermines the idea that the mind is a separate substance. Descartes can respond that the connection is casual not logical. Substance dualism faces the problem of explaining how the mind, given that it’s so different from the body, can cause physical events.

Key points Descartes assumes we can make sense of the idea of our minds existing alone, without any other mind or physical world. This entails that words must get their meaning by referring to our ideas, thoughts and sensations. But if this is true, the word ‘experience’ means my private experience. Since it is logically impossible that anyone else should have my experience it is logically impossible that anyone else should have experience. This is solipsism. Substance dualism also faces the challenge of showing that we can know other minds exist. If minds are logically independent of bodies, any evidence from someone’s bodily behaviour does not prove they have a mind.

Our experience presupposes other minds
We can reject altogether the notion that we need to infer that other people have minds. Wittgenstein argued we react to people as minded, just as we react to them as alive. This reaction is deeper and more fundamental than any beliefs we have about them. Our beliefs that other people have minds is part of human nature, not a product of any thought process. He also argued we have direct awareness of other’s mental states, particularly emotions – we can literally see anger in someone’s facial expression. This is not a process of inference, the ‘interpretation’ is part of our perception of human faces. This approach is not easily available to substance dualism, holding that there is a logical gap between any bodily and mental state.

Our experience presupposes other minds
Another approach is to say that to have a mind oneself presupposes interaction with other minds. Descartes assumes we can ascribe mental states to ourselves. We can argue this ability is learned. E.g. a child cannot learn that it is angry without also learning what it means to say that someone else is angry. This ability is learned and also interdependent with the ability to ascribe mental states to others. To learn the meaning of ‘anger’ is to learn its correct application to oneself and others, simultaneously. A sense of self develops as part of the process of sensing others as selves. If there can be no knowledge of oneself as a mind with presupposing that there are other minds, the problem doesn’t arise.

Key points The argument from analogy claims that I can infer other people have minds because they behave as I do, and I have a mind. We can object that we cannot base an inference on one case. I could be a special case. The argument from inference to the best explanation claims that the hypothesis that other people have minds is the best explanation for their behaviour. We can develop this by saying that mental states are defined by their causal relations. We can object, first, that this account of mental states is false, and second, that it presupposes that we can show that mental states cause behaviour. We can also object that the belief that other people have minds is not a hypothesis at all.

Key points Wittgenstein argued that we can see mental states expressed in behaviour, for example facial expression, and that is not an inference. We can also argue that the ability to ascribe mental states to oneself presupposes that one can ascribe them to other people. To become a mind presupposes the existence of other minds. This also provides an answer to solipsism. The private language argument says that words cannot get their meaning by referring to ‘private’ sensations or ideas, because this provides no criterion for using the word correctly. That words can be used correctly or incorrectly presupposes as public standard of meaning.

Key points Cottingham argues that we are made up of two substances mind and body. An area of human experience including passions, emotions and sensations cannot be reduced to either category.

Metaphysics of mind Substance: needs no other thing to exist

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