Kessler 12 What am I

1. Kessler 12 What am I Leibniz, Spinoza, Descartes, Cole, Turing, Hinrichs, Searle, Bisson

2. Mind-body Problem • Are You a Different Person Every time you have a Different thought, Feeling, or Sensation? • Your self is your mind or body? Relationship?

3. Dualists’ solutions to mind-body problem • Dualists: mind and body are two different substances (conscious, nonspatial, private vs. unconscious, spatial, and public) • Interactionalism (R. Descartes): mind & body affect each other • Parallelism (G. Leibniz): rejected interactionalism; mind/body run parallel like 2 clocks that tick together • Blow to the arm, mental event (pain) occurs • Epiphenomenalism: mental events = by product of physical events; physical caused mental but not vice versa; brain is primary event and mental is secondary

4. Monists’ solutions to mind-body problem • Rejects dual concept • Monism = materialism = physicalism • Only bodies (matter) exist • Functionalism (a kind of materialism: brain creates mind = something other than the brain could function as a mind…say a computer • John Searle rejected this because computers can’t produce consciousness • Identity theory: mental events are identical with physical (brain) events • Like lightning flashes are identical with electrical charges • Idealism: reduces matter to mind; Berkeley: matter is an unneeded inference • Double aspect theory: B. Spinoza (1632-1677) • Rethink of mind/body as qualities, characteristics, aspects …not substance (not mental/physical) • Bertrand Russell (neutral monism) is the modern version of Spinoza

5. p. 552 You Are Meat • Let’s imagine that intelligent conscious and feeling robots visit earth. Would they be amazed that we flesh-and-blood humans can think, feel, and communicate? Would that wow them? • Perhaps they would deny that theses meat containers were capable of conscious thought? • Terry Bisson (b. 1942) wrote “They’re Made Out of Meat” p. 553

6. Renee Descartes • He wanted to prove that physical objects exist outside of our mind • “I think therefore I am” • Began with method of doubt to show that all our beliefs about an external world based on our sensations can be doubted. • Discovered that that he could not doubt that he existed as a thinking thing as long as he was thinking because very time he doubted (thought) that he existed he proved that he existed (thought) • But was trapped in his own mind • God as his way out of this trap: • “If he could prove that God exists, he could be certain that at least one thing outside his own mind exists” p. 525 • His Meditation V: “by God we mean a perfect being. A perfect being has all perfections. Existing is a perfection and, because a perfect being has all perfections, God must exist. Furthermore, god cannot be a deceiver because a perfect being must also have the perfection of goodness, and a perfectly good being would not deceive”

7. Challenges to Descartes p.529 • His interactionalism contradicts the conservation of energy law • Mounting evidence about the brain and how it operates • Computers show us that computations are due to complex mechanical arrangement and a program that provides instruction…So too…is the human brain • Reducing the body to just a container has implications: • Imagine that we had no eyes or ears, no sense of touch or smell or taste • Feminist Eve Cole’s critique: Descartes’ notion of the self ignores the fact that the self is embodied and exists in a network of relationship with others. • Accused him of sexism because his idea reinforces a masculine notion of the self as autonomous, detached, and dominant over matter.

8. Are you a Computing Machine? • Alan Turing (1912-1954) = mathematician and computer scientist • Proposed a test to see him computers can think like a human • Reflects behaviorism: materialistic theory of the mind • “If a computing machine can behave in the same way a mind does, then perhaps a mind is a computing machine, or at least the brain that produces a mind is a computing machine. Perhaps it is just lingering prejudices abut souls, or a kind of egocentric arrogance, that prevents us from recognizing that the brain is a very complex organic computing system” p.539

9. Psychologist: Bruce Hinrichs • Argues that the brain creates the mind • The brain is a computing machine • To him, this ideas should be nearly as upsetting to people as it often is • There is no good reason for humans to feel “threatened or dehumanized” by scientific studies concerning how the brain produces a mind or consciousness?

10. Kessler 13 Intro: Who Am I p. 556 • “We must be careful to distinguish the concept of “person” from the concept of “human being” • Heated debate over abortion: many claim that whereas a fetus belongs to the biological species human being, it is not a person, but only potentially a person. • Am I today responsible for stealing a cookie at age 5? Descartes’ claim that our identity is in our unchanging soul substance, then yes I am responsible • Descartes’ claim of the soul as identity is popular because it assures life after death, makes us feel special • What if there are no souls? What if human identities (persons) are not everlasting, special, and unique souls but bundles of sensations, thoughts, memories, and experiences? What if the word “I” was merely a convenient way of talking about the bundle? • Our sense of who we are is constructed in a social setting. Souls or not, we are social animals. You would be a different person than you are now if you were born in a different country • Identity is also tied to gender.

11. 13.2 There is NO Self Budhism (500 BCE) conflicts w/ basic ideas of Hindu philosophy: you are Atman vs. there’s no Atman (or anatta or anatman) • Reality is impermanent; ever-changing processes • The jiva (individual soul or ego) is not permanent, unlike what Plato or Hindus thought • Humans are made up of physical form, sensation, conceptualization, dispositions to act, and consciousness = 5 aggregates • Moral values: acceptance of no-self leads to the release of suffering (detachment) & act with compassion • Buddha prepared monks to show Hindu’s views about the soul is false • After life: Buddhists affirmed a doctrine of continuity from one life to the next but denied there is a soul.

12. 13.3 Down with the Ego p. 561 • Experiments indicate that there are two different streams of consciousness operating in a single brain. Are there two persons as well? Some argued yes • Left hemisphere and right hemisphere collaborated through a bundle of millions of nerves called corpus callosum • Derek Parfit: split-brain cases support the view that there are two streams of consciousness

13. 13.4 Where Am I • Let’s suppose that brain transplantations become as routine as heart transplantations are today • Body died of cancer, transplant my brain to a donor’s body…where am I? • Due to short supplies of bodies, scientist made replica of my brain…where am I? • When a body is found for my biological brain to go into, then where am I? • Read Daniel Dennett’s Brainstorm

14. 13.5 Social Identity • “you are what you eat” or “you are your language” • Identity and language is closely related • Gloria anzalduaexplores this theme as a Chicana “I am a borderwoman. I grew up between two cultures, the Mexican (with heavy Indian influence) and the Anglo (as member of a colonized people in our own territory. I have been straddling that tejas-Mexican border, and others, all my life” • Makes one more aware of that the personal self is a social self

15. 13.6 Gender Identity • Essentialist theories: gender is determined by nature; is fixed and stable; given by evolutionary development or by God • Nonessentialists: gender is a social construct; is fluid and unstable • Constructed by categories such as normal and deviant as a way to assert social control; to justify violence or denials of legal rights • Deirdre (Donald) McCloskey crossed the gender border to become a woman • “Gender is not in every way natural”