Professor: Dr. Mason D. Cash
Click here for his website, or click here to email him
Just the typical introduction for the first day of class. Nothing special.
Malcolm is saying that only you can know what is in your mind because I can only know what is in my mind and not what is in other people's minds.
Ryle is a behaviorist. (can argue against this for a short paper topic)
Something happens to the body -> pain occurs in the head -> sends signals back to the body -> causes the body to flinch or wince, etc... You become a certain way. Our mental state is observable through our behavior.
Malcolm states = "If I have no criteriea for coreectness, then I have no certainty of what is in my mind."
The criteria for using any term correctly, must have something external or physical to compare with.
Words are labels for public entities. Words can't label things in our minds.
Pain is labled through similar public behavior and is external. Internal pain cannot be known by anyone other than the self.
Knowing the meaning of pain is knowing how to use the word correctly. i.e. your pain is expressed in your behavior.
Physicalism-> No cartesian Minds
Identity Theory-> The mind really is nothing but the brain
Referents of Expression
"is" composition/"is" definition
Identity Theory
1) Persuasive Redefinition (of what a mind is): The mind is whatever it is that causes our behavior.
2) Covert assumption about science: Science is the sole arbiter of what is real and what is not real.
3) Newly-Discovered Empirical Fact: Science has discovered (or will soon discover) that what in fact causes our behavior are complex states and processes of the central nervous system.
4) First Conclusion: What we have been calling "The Mind" really is nothing else than complex states and processes of the central nervous system. "The mind really is nothing but the brain."
5) Second Conclusion: If there is any role left for our ordinary ways of speaking about the mind and mental
states and processes, it is not the role of stating truths about the way things really are.
1) There is an entity refered to by the expression "X" and
2) There is an entity reffered to by the expression "Y".
3) It turns out that expression "X" and expression "Y"refer to one and the same thing. i.e. the Lois Lane analogy between
Superman and Clark Kent (seen below)
Here "X" expressions are Psychological expressions
about mental items and states and processes.
"Y" expressions are Physiological expressions about
neurological items and states and processes.
Identity Theorists claim that psychological talk does not refer to cartesian entities but to physiological entities.
Two items are identical if every property of one thing is also posessed by the other.
If "X has property P" is true
and "X" refers to the same thing that "Y" refers to
then "Y has property P" must also be true.
1) My mental states are known by introspection as
states of my conscious self.
2) My brain states are not known by introspection as states of my conscious self.
Therefore, by Leibniz'z Law
3) The expression "my mental states," cannot refer to the same thing that "my brain states" refers to.
1) Superman is widely known to be impervious to bullets.
2) Clark Kent is not widely known to be impervious to bullets.
3) "Superman" cannot refer to the same entity that "Clark Kent" refers to.
However,
4) "Superman" does refer to the same entity that "Clark Kent" refers to.
5) Therefore, this case must in some ways be an exception to Leibniz' Law.
We need to think seriously about what our words mean.
Nomological Danglers
After Images-> "Report"? What do we observe? What does the observing?
Topic Neutral
Brainscans?
Is this a scientific hypothesis?
Feigl says these are kinds of laws that would relate physical with the non-physical items.
i.e. The image one sees after staring into a bright light. There is no physical image, but yet the image is observable by the person.
Above the phenomenon. Laws that apply to these phenomenon do not apply universally or not at all.
The way we learn words is by associating them with objects. i.e. look at that "red" shirt. We don't see the color red, but we associate the shirt as being red. Therefore, we are recalling experiences when looking at the red shirt.
It is only after we have learned to describe the things in our environment that we can learn to describe our consciousness of them.
For Descartes, there are 2 substances of the body. The Physical and the Mental (Non-Physical)
An analysis that is neutral between Dualism and Materialism
What goes on when I look at an Orange? Or, what goes on when I look at a red shirt? One way to find out is to take a Brainscan of the process as it happens.
Experiences are events that are happening.
What are we really imagining when we see or hear something in our minds? Are we actually seeing the color red or are we simply associating a red shirt with the color red? We are recalling a past experience and equating it to the color red. We just think we are visualizing the color red.
Would a brainscan tell you that you are seeing an orange shirt when you think you are seeing a red shirt?
A brainscan can only show the process, it can't interpret what experiences you are drawing upon to make your desicion. What if your version of red is actually different from the standard version of red? You can tell the machine what process makes up the color red and if you do not show the same process then the machine will say that you see a different color.
Richard Rorty: Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories
Identity Theorists (Place, Smart)
Eliminative Materialists (Rorty, Churchland)
Old and New Theories
Construct identity statements that have this form:
Construct a quite different kind of argument:
i.e. referring to the Sun rising and setting. The Sun doesn't actually rise or set, but we commonly refer to the day and the night as sunrise and sunset.
| Old Theories | New Theories |
| Unicorns | Norwahl (whale horn) |
| Caloric Fluid | Ek (molecules with kinetic energy) |
| Table | Clouds of gas |
| Demon Posession | Germs, viruses, and bacteria |
Identification of observable entities with observable entities.
"Unicorn horns are nothing but narwahl horns (whale horn)."
"X" and "Y" refer to observable entities.
"This is an X" (this is a unicorn horn) commits one to an empirically false belief. There are no Unicorn horns.
Identification of observable with non-observable entities.
"The table is nothing but a cloud of molecules"
"X refers to observable entities "Y" does not.
"This is an X" (This is a table) does not commit one to an empirically false belief. The identity tells us something
more about the situation reported.
"What people call sensations are nothing but brain processes."
This case is importantly different. hat does the truth of this identity statement tell us?
It is observable entities (we don't simply postulate the existense of (our own) sensations, nor of brain processes),
so it is unlike Case II.
We are not tempted to conclude "there are no sensations" (I don't make an empirical mistake when I say "ouch! There's that paiun again.") So it is unlike Case I.
Paul M. Churchland
Folk Psychology is a bad theory
Defects in Folk Psychology
Stagnation?
Advantages of Folk Psychology
Conceptual analysis: Beliefs (say) are entities which have XYZ causal properties.
Empirical discovery: Nueroscience has shown (will show) that nothing has XYZ causal properties.
Therefore
- There exist no beliefs.
Conceptual analysis: Folk psychology theorizes that beliefs have XYZ causal properties.
Empirical discovery: Nueroscience has shown (Will show) that nothing has XYZ causal properties.
Therefore
- Beliefs are not things that have XYZ causal properties.
The cause of my saying and the cause of my doing turn out to be two totally different things.
Vision for doing stuff is different than vision for reporting (telling) things. i.e. the ability to grab an object but not being able to report what that item is.
Memory for how to do things is quite different from the memory for facts.
Folk psychology has not changed in over 2000 years.
It doesn't integrate well into other sciences.
A.I. (Artificial Intelligence) depends on Folk Psychology
Folk Psychology is really important for getting to the brain state in the first place.
Functionalists want to focus on the fact that there is a job being done by a brain not by the area of the brain
that is processing the job.
i.e. Token identity and Type identity.
Token, your brain works differently than most brains.
Type, your brain works similar to most other brains.
Scientific accuracy: What's the point? Is it really better to be accurate or is it fine to just know something
is wrong (F.P.) as opposed to knowing exactly what is wrong and reporting it?
i.e. My arm hurts, there are 6 C-Fibers firing in the 4th quadrant of my central cortex.
Folk Psychology is convenient and simple to understand.
Ethics = The ability to help people get along with each other. Not real, only S.C.R. (Socially Constructed Reality)
David M. Armstrong
Ryle (Behaviorist?)
Scientism (science worship?)
Defining the Mental
Functionalism
Consciousness
"It is only as a result of scientific investigation that we ever seem to reach an intellectual consensus about controversial matters." (p.137,I)
If you want to know if something really exists, ask a scientist.
Science is good at proving P.B.R. (Physical and Biological Reality), not at S.C.R.
What's going on in the brain when we have an after-image of an object?
There is something going on that produces an after-image.
Psychological Behaviorism = There is only behavior. The mind is a substance within the world. How would a person would behave, have the dispoition to behave. -> Abilities and Dispositions
Philosophical Behaviorism = All there is is the body, there are no mental states.
It's not that anger is the behavior, to be angry is to have the disposition to being angry and anger is the criteria for a person to be angry.
"Our notion of a mind and of individual mental states is logically tied to behavior. For perhaps what we mean by a mental state is some state of the person that brings about a certain range of behavior." (p.139,II - p.140,I)
The mind could be considered the inner cause of certain behavior.
Behavior is evidence for a mind.
The mental state performs a job, does this function.
"Mental states are in fact nothing but physical states of the central nervoue system." (p.141,II)
Mental state that responds to the environment.
"...think of perceptions as inner states or events apt for the production of certain sorts of selective behavior towards our environment." (p.143,I)
A special process whose job it is to keep track of other brain processes.
