Socrates/The Mind-Body Problem

1. Socrates and Epicurus:
    a) Both agreed that death is not a bad thing but for very different reasons.
    b) Epicurus's argument:
        (1) Each person stops existing at death.
        (2) If a person does not exist, he or she does not have experiences.
   Therefore,
        (3) Being dead is not an experience.
        (4) The only things that are bad for persons are bad experiences.
   Therefore,
        (5) Being dead is not bad for the person who is dead.
    d) Socrates' disagreement: He rejects (1) and (4). (1) because he believes in something like reincarnation. But what
        about (4)?
    e) (4) is based on a doctrine known as Hedonism. This is the view that the only thing that has positive intrinsic value is
        happiness or pleasure and the only thing that has negative intrinsic value is unhappiness or pain. But is Hedonism true?


2. Objections to (4):
    a) Consider the story of Nozick's experience machine (explained in class).
    b) Contrast the life of Wonmug and Milton Friedman (explained in class).
    c) Both of the above suggest that there is something else that has intrinsic value besides states of mind or experiences.
        Question: What else?
        (1) (genuine) accomplishments
        (2) friendship
        (3) respect
        (4) honor
        (5) Perhaps others.
    d) These are all components (for lack of a better word) of what C. I. Lewis called, 'a life that is good on the whole.'


3. Survival:
    a) Socrates believed in survival and this gives us some insight into why he believed death is not a bad thing.
    b) If the most important thing is to live honorably (this may not be true, but suppose it is for the sake of discussion),
        then if one dies in dishonor, one's honor could be reclaimed in another life.
    c) But is survival possible?


4. What is it That Survives?
    a) That something survives wouldn't mean much. Suppose I had a halo and the halo survived. Unless that halo were
        somehow me, that would be cold comfort. It would be like a finger or thumb surviving.
    b) What is required is self-consciousness--awareness of oneself and/or one's experience. E.g., I am bored. One is aware
         of oneself persisting through a time during which nothing much is going on.
    c) And since we know that the body does not survive--it decays and turns to dust--it must be something else, what we
        call the soul. By the way, the early Christians believed in the eternal life of the body. The Second Coming of Christ
        would be accompanied by people rising up from their graves, i.e., being physically resurrected.
    d) But that is no longer the dominant view; it is the soul that survives and the soul is not a material object.


5. The Argument for Survival:
    (1) If something can go out of existence, then it has parts.
    (2) The soul has no parts.
    Therfore,
    (3) The soul cannot go out of existence.


6. The Premises:
    a) Discuss (1)--smashing, burning, melting, etc.
    b) Premise (2) looks suspicious.
    c) Descartes, the 17th century French philosopher and mathematician argued that the soul is simple because it is
        non-physical and only physical things have parts.
    d) The Argument:
        (2') Something has parts only if it is physical.
        (2") The soul is not physical.
        Therefore,
        (2) The soul has no parts.


7. Premise (2"):
    a) The rationale behind (2") is that to be physical, something has to be understandable in terms of the physical
        (i.e., natural) sciences. Furthermore, persons, i.e., souls cannot be understood that way. Thus the conclusion, (2).
    b) Why can't persons be understood by the physical sciences?
    c) Frank Jackson's story: Harry never has an "I-thought" though he knows everything there is to know about the
        workings of the brain.
    d) Claim: The neurosciences do not give us knowledge of the self, so the self isn't really physical.


8. An Objection:
    a) In the Harry story we have merely different ways of knowing--the way of neurophysiology and the way of self-
        awareness. But it does not follow from that that we know different things. Maybe what we call the soul is nothing
        but the brain and it just so happens that we have ways of knowing things about the brain--at least our own--that do not
        seem to be part of the methods of the physical sciences. But just because there are different ways of knowing the brain,
        it doesn't follow that there are different things known.
    b) Compare different ways of knowing the city of San Francisco. We might know the city in different ways (you through
         books, me by experience) but it does not follow that there are different things known.


9. Dualism:
    a) Descartes (and Socrates) were dualists.
    b) Dualism consists of the following claims:
        (i) Persons are (are identical with) souls.
        (ii) Souls are purely non-physical.
        (iii) Persons (i.e., souls) have bodies.
    c) This implies that you could not have a different soul--you are your soul--but it is at least logically possible for you to
        have or have had a different body.
    d) In what sense do you have a body? Descartes believed that the connection was very close--so close that some
        people confuse the self and the body.
    e) On 62 and 63, Descartes tries, unsuccessfully, to clarify the relationship between the mind and the body. He says both
        that the soul is united to the entire body and that it acts on the body through the pineal gland. These may not be
        consistent. The bottom line is the fourth element of dualism:
        (iv) two-way causal interaction.


10. Problems With Interaction:
      a) Many philosophers find this notion troubling. Here's why: Recall what Graham calls the Distinction Principle:
            Distinction Principle: If something is physical, then it is understandable in terms of the physical sciences.
      b) But if the body is a physical object, and it surely seems that it is, then it is understandable in terms of the physical
           sciences. There really is no need to bring the mind in as a causal agent. Indeed, there is no room for the mind as
           a causal agent. Read the 2nd full paragraph of p. 31.
      c) This is the problem of interaction, which is well illustrated in the passage from Richard Taylor's Metaphysics (read in class).



Fodor, AThe Mind-Body Problem@


A Brief History of the Philosophy of Mind:

1. Dualism was the dominant view from Descartes down to the 20th century, though it had obvious problems from the
    outset, viz.,
    a) The "how" problem of mental causation.
    b) The closed physical system objection.
    c) The methodological problem for psychology. This warrants some explanation. A science of human nature seems to be
        a definite possibility. Indeed, there have been attempts to apply the experimental methods of the physical sciences to
        human beings from at least the 18th century onward. But what is the rationale for this if the mind is a fundamentally
        different kind of entity? Why expect that these methods can be used to understand human behavior?


2. Methodological Behaviorism: What Fodor calls Behaviorism, I will call ‘Methodological Behaviorism.'
    Psychologists John Watson and B.F. Skinner proposed that we could study human behavior without postulating
    mental causes. The job of psychology was to discover laws relating environmental circumstances and behavioral
    responses.
    a) Two models of psychological explanation:
        (1) The "Folk Psychology" Model: This model, which we always use when we are 'walking around in the world,'
              so to speak, supposes that there are mental states that interpose themselves between environmental circumstances
              and behavioral responses.
        (2) The Behaviorist Model: This is the same as the Folk Psychology Model, except without the mental states.
              It attempts to explain behavior by discovering correlations between enviornmental circumstances   (stimuli) and behavioral
              responses.
    b) Motivations for Methodological Behaviorism:
        (1) avoids the problems with dualism
        (2) makes psychology "scientific" since mental states are not publicly observable.
    c) Do mental states exist? The behaviorist says that's a "philosophical" question. Human beings are treated as "black
        boxes" (i.e., entities whose inner workings are unknown.), and the psychologist is only interested in correlating inputs
        and outputs. That said, Methodological Behaviorists don't think that mental states, as Descartes conceptualized
        them, really do exist. Why?  There is no need to suppose the existence of mental states to explain human behavior.
    d) Occam's Razor then applies.  This principle, named for the medieval philosopher, William of Occam, says that one
        should not multiply entities beyond necessity, i.e., don't suppose the existence of anything more than you have to.
        Methodological Behaviorism as practiced by psychologists is really a form of Materialism.
    e) Problems for Methodological Behaviorism: Perhaps the most important is that this approach had only limited success
        in explaining animal & human behavior. It does well on a certain range of phenomena
        (1) maze learning
        (2) foraging strategies
        (3) certain dysfunctional human behavior (phobias, etc.)
       But it does poorly on others
        (1) single shot learning
        (2) language learning } can't explain language learning by reinforcement schedules
    f) As Daniel Dennett says, being a Behaviorist is not very reinforcing these days. A second problem is that it just seems
        odd to deny not only the existence of mental states but their causal efficacy in producing behavior and other mental
        states. (see p. 65, toward the top)


3. The Central Dilemma:
    a) In the 30s and 40s, the central problem for philosophy of mind can be stated as follows: We need to find a way to talk
        about mental causes of behavior without supposing the existence of a Cartesian soul. (Rehearse the difficulties with the
        latter.)
    b) How is this possible? Two approaches emerged: Logical Behaviorism and Central State Identity Theory, which I will
        usually call "Reductive Materialism."


4. Logical Behaviorism:
    a) What the view is: All talk about (sentences describing) mental phenomena can be translated into talk about disposi-
         tions to behave in certain ways.
    b) 'translates' here means: equals by definition. There are two kinds of definitions, explicit and contextual.
    c) In an explicit definition, two particular terms are said to have exactly the same meaning. E.g. 'brother' =df 'male sibling'
    d) In a contextual definition, the term is defined in the context of a particular sentence. No one term in the defining
        sentence has the same meaning as the term that is being contextually defined. E.g., 'average American family'.
          'The average American family has 2.1 children' =df
            'The number of American children divided by the number of American families equals approximately 2.1.'
    e) Counterexamples to definitions are actual or hypothetical cases in which something satisfies one side of the definition
        but fails to satisfy the other side of the definition.  In a correct definition, there are no counterexamples.
    f) Dispositions. An example:: x is soluble =df if x were put in water, then x would dissolve
    g) Mental Phenomena. 3 basic types: sensations (visual, pain) emotional states (love, anger, hate, desire), and cognitive
        states (belief, knowledge).  Mental terms are just words or phrases that seem to refer to mental phenomena.
    h) Logical Behaviorism, then, is the view that all sentences employing mental terms mean the same as sentences describing
        dispositions to behave in certain ways under certain circumstances.
    i) Examples of mental terms that can be contextually defined: 'thirsty' 'finds attractive' 'believes that there is a fire nearby'
      All of these are to be defined by reference to dispositions to behave, i.e., under circumstances X, Jones would do Y.
    j) ontological implications: Because the dispositions referred to in the definitions of mental terms make reference only
       to observable environmental circumstances and behavioral responses, there is no need to suppose the existence of
       mental states as something over and above these dispositions. So, by Occam's Razor, Logical Behaviorism is
       a form of materialism.
    k) There is a subtle point here. Logical Behaviorists do not say, e.g., Jones (or anyone else) has no beliefs, desires, or
        other types of mental states. They want to say that all statements involving the term 'belief' and its cognates are
        true, but they are just shorthand ways of talking about behavior. Compare with statements using the term 'average
        American family.'  One does not want to deny that statements using the term 'average American family' are true, but
        there is an important sense in which there is no such thing as the average American family.


5. Motivations for Logical Behaviorism:
    a) Reaction against dualism and its problems
    b) The main motivation for this view is that it allows us to accept all our ordinary ways of talking about the mental, as,
        e.g., causes of behavior, without committing ourselves to the existence of Cartesian mental states. Having your cake
        and eating it too.


6. Problems for Logical Behaviorism:
    a) It ignores or denies the qualitative aspect of sensory experience (pains, visual images)
    b) Logical Behaviorists have failed to give any correct analyses of statements containing mentalistic terms.
        (1) An example: Jones believes there is a fire nearby =df If there were a fire nearby, then Jones would exhibit fire
              responses.
        (2) Counterexample: There is a fire nearby but Jones does not know it; someone instructs Jones to do a fire drill.
                                         So, there is a fire nearby, Jones exhibits the behavior, but he does not have the belief.
    c) It can't handle the seeming fact that mental states often do not cause behavior directly but only through other mental states.
        Compare typcial folk psychology explanations.  See Fodor, p. 67.1 .

7. Note the difference between Methodological Behaviorism and Logical Behaviorism.   Methodological Behaviorism is
    a view about how one should do psychology, i.e., what methods one should use in trying to explain human behavior.
    Logical Behaviorism is a semantic thesis, i.e., a thesis about the meanings of words, specifically mentalistic terms.


8. Reductive Materialism or the Central State Identity Theory: (Fodor uses the latter term; I prefer the former)
    This view is very simple.  It says:

                                            Mental states are identical to states of the brain.

    a) Examples of mental states:
        being in pain
        having a red sensation
        believing that the moon is round
        intending to go to the store
        dreaming of Vienna
    b) Examples of brain states:
        C-fibers firing (associated with pain), other patterns of neuron firings.
    c) Contrast with Descartes, who maintains that brain states cause mental states & vice-versa


9. Examples of identity statements:
    a) Sound is a train of compression waves
    b) Light is electromagnetic radiation
    c) Heat is the motion of molecules


10. Why Reductive?
      a) Consider the following reduction statement:
          (1) Heat is nothing but the motion of molecules.
          The theory of heat (thermodynamics) turns out to be a special case of mechanics (matter in motion)
           One theory is reduced to another.
      b) Reductive Materialism postulates an intertheoretic reduction of the mental to the physical.
      c) What this means:
         There are two theories involved here:
          (1) The Neurosciences: The sciences of the human brain, central nervous system, including the biochemistry of it all.
          (2) Folk Psychology: Psychological theories that use mentalistic terms; these theories explain human behavior by
                talking about beliefs, desires, etc. They range from the simple (John got on the bus because he believes X
                and desires Y) to the complex. (John repeatedly drops out of courses because he has an inferiority complex.)
      d) The Reductive Materialist says that Folk Psychology is reducible to the Neurosciences in the sense that all the laws
          of Folk Psychology can be restated in terms of the neurosciences. Needless to say, most of the details have to be
          worked out. Very few "reductions" have taken place. But this gives us a conception of how
           psychological explanations using mentalistic terminology are eventually supposed to be replaced by explanations
           that make reference to the neurophysiology and the biochemistry of the brain.


11. Motivations for Reductive Materialism:
      a) The practice of psychology has not gotten rid of mental states, and RM is compatible with that. Indeed, it allows
           that behavior has mental causes and that the causal processes may be complex, involving a series of mental causes
           and effects ultimately resulting in behavior.
      b) Because the identities are not based on definitions of terms or words , the problems of Logical Behaviorism with
          counterexamples do not arise.   Essentially, we have a kind of Double Language Theory, in which there are two
          languages (the language of folk psychology and the language of the neurosciences) to talk about one and the same
          phenomenon, the neurosciences.


12. Objections to Reductive Materialism:
      a) There are two kinds of objections to Reductive Materialism: some objections are intended to show that mental states
           can't be or aren't brain states, because they have different properties. I'm going to skip those, since Fodor does.
      b) The main problem is that it seems that beings with very different physical make-ups could have the same types of
           mental states.
      c) Consider the belief in the Pythagorean Theorem. If Reductive Materialism is true, believing this just is being in brain
          state B where this is specified in biochemical terms.
      d) Problem: Martian (& computers).  Martians and humans could have the very same (type of) belief but their brain
          states would be radically different from a biochemical standpoint.
      e) This problem with Reductive Materialism has been regarded as devastating.  It led to the development of another
           philosophy of mind, Functionalism.


13. Functionalism:
      a) Mental states are defined in terms of their causal role in the mental & behavioral life of an organism.
      b) mental states: beliefs, desires, hopes, fears, visual sensations, pains, etc.
      c) This means that, unlike the other views, the nature or essence of a mental state is not determined by what it is made out
          of. Contrast with Dualism and Reductive Materialism.
      d) Instead, mental states are functionally defined. As an example of functional definition (and this is not a mental state),
           consider what makes something a can opener.
  

14. An Extended Example:  (see diagram used in class)
      Let OS = overcast sky D1 = desire not to get wet
      P1 = perception of overcast sky BH1 = behavior of carrying an umbrella
      B1 = belief that an overcast sky means rain
      B2 = belief that the weatherman said it would rain
      B3 = belief that it will rain today
      B4 = belief that an open umbrella will keep me dry
      B5 = unspecified belief; D2 = unspecified desire

      OS causes P1; P1, B1, and B2 cause B3; B3, B4, and D1 cause BH1.

    The point: What is the true nature or essence of B3? Or perhaps more simply, what is B3? B3 is the sort of thing that
      is caused by P1, B1, and B2 and which in turn causes BH1 when D1 and B4 are present.


15. Functionalism and Behaviorism:
      a) What is the difference? The Logical Behaviorist says that all talk about mental states is shorthand for talking about
          dispositions to behave in certain ways, dispositions that can be spelled out in terms of environmental circumstances
          and behavioral responses. The Functionalist denies this because he thinks mental states are partially defined in terms
          of other mental states. This is something Behaviorism cannot allow.
      b) Consider the two Fodor Coke Machines.
      c) The Simple Coke Machine:

      d) The Complex Coke Machine

       e) Note that the states S1 and S2 are (functionally) defined in terms of inputs, outputs, and other program states.


15. What Are Mental States Made Of?
      Functionalism has no official position on this question. It is compatible with Dualism and Materialism, though most
      functionalists favor some form of materialism because of the problems with Dualism. But officially, they have nothing
      to say about this question.


16. First Objection to Functionalism:
      a) Functionalist explanations are all trivial. Visual perception is explained by a visual processing mechanism. We're
          supposing an intelligent little man or woman inside each of us (a homunculus) who is carrying out these tasks.
      b) The charge then, is that these explanations are all question-begging pseudo-explanations (i.e., not genuine explanations)


17. Reply to the First Objection:
      a) The way out of this problem is to explain the mechanism, i.e., to explain how the processor works. To understand
          how this is done, we need to introduce the concept of a Turing Machine.  Essentially, a Turing machine is something
          that manipulates symbols according to rules.
      b) Imagine a tape divided into squares
      c) Each square has a symbol on it from a finite alphabet, or nothing at all.
      d) The machine can execute a finite number of elementary operations: It can scan the tape, erase the symbol on the
           square, print another symbol, and move to scan another square.
      e) The program states of the machine are defined solely in terms of input symbols, output symbols, the elementary
          operations (scanning, erasing, printing, moving the tape, changing states), and other program states.
      f) To illustrate the concept of a program state and how program states are defined in terms of inputs, outputs, and other
          program states, consider Fodor's Complex Coke Machine again (which is not a Turing machine because it does not
          manipulate symbols).
      g) Digital computers are Turing Machines.


18. Cognitive Science:
      a) It is a working hypothesis of Cognitive Science that human beings are simply very complex Turing Machines.
      b) To put it another way, Cognitive Science answers "Yes" to the following question:
         Can all of human behavior ultimately be understood in terms of the rule-governed manipulation of symbols?
      c) Progress in Cognitive Science consists of writing computer programs that model human behavior or, more exactly,
          subsystems thereof:
          (1) face recognition
          (2) chess playing
          (3) language
          (4) arithmetical operations
     d) In general, the more narrowly we segment or delimit the domain of the relevant behavior, the easier the task
     e) A potential problem: Many different programs could turn the same input into the same output ex: A checkers-playing computer may work by
         "brute force," but a checkers-master will not.
      f) Solution: Impose a restriction. The program has to be compatible with the capabilities of the hardware, which in the
         case of human beings is the brain.
      g) Artificial Intelligence research ignores this limitation since it is concerned with intelligent behavior in general and not
          just human intelligence


19. Second Objection to Functionalism:
      a) Functionalism appears to ignore the qualitative aspect of sensory experience. A red sensation is defined in terms
          of its causal role, so the qualitative aspect of one's sensory experience is not part of the nature of the idea.
      b) This is brought home most clearly in the inverted spectrum problem.  This is a crucially important objection to
           functionalism.


20. Eliminative Materialism:
      a) a) It would be nice if we could think of Eliminative Materialism as a reaction to problems with functionalism, but that is not quite right.
      b) Rather, it is a response to the problems with the reduction thesis.
      c) E.M. holds that mental states are not reducible to brain states. Instead, Eliminative Materialists hold that mental states do not exist.


21.To clarify this, Churchland discusses 3 cases of ontological elimination from the history of science:
      a) Caloric theory of heat
      b) Phlogiston theory of combustion
      c) Possession theory of psychotic behavior
      to which we can add a 4th:
      d) Ancient Greek theory of lightning
      There is no such thing as Zeus throwing thunderbolts. But there is lightning. Note that in each case, the identity statements are not true. (Heat is
      a form of motion, not a substance.)


22. Analogy with Folk Psychology:
      a) There really are no beliefs and desires
      b) There are things that happen in the brain that cause behavior. And, we call them 'beliefs' and 'desires,' but that radically misdescribes them.
          Beliefs and desires do not really exist.

23. Arguments in favor of Eliminative Materialism:
      These are less than conclusive. Reasons in favor might be a better description.
      a) First Reason: Widespread explanatory, manipulative, and predictive failue of Folk Psychology in connection with, e.g., sleep, learning, memory.
      b) Second Reason: Inductive Argument from the history of science: Folk medicine, folk astronomy etc. (primitiveness)
      c) Third Reason: The other main competitor, R.M. is probably false.


24. Criticisms:
      a) Eliminative Materialism denies the obvious, specifically, the apparent fact that there are sensations.
      b) Response: Any description presupposes a certain conceptual framework. The terms refer but the entities don't exist.
      c) Total elimination is implausible--Some folk psychological concepts will remain and be reduced. Eliminative Materialism as a global thesis may 
          well be implausible. Reductive and Eliminative Materialism should not be thought of as mutually exclusive, but as complementary.

 
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