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Chapter 10: What am I?

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

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Chapter 10: What am I?

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  1. Chapter 10: What am I?

  2. 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

  3. 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

  4. 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

  5. Meditation VIRené 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

  6. 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?

  7. Body, Mind, and GenderEve 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

  8. 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

  9. Computing the MindBruce 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

  10. 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)

  11. 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

  12. 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

  13. 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?

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

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