3 Questions

(1) What is a Mind?
(2) What is a Body?
(3) What is the relation between the two?


A Few Terms

Monism: the view that there is only one kind of stuff or thing or substance in the world.
Dualism: the view that there are two kinds of stuff or things or substances in the world.
Mental Properties: all of those properties typically associated with the mind--e.g., thinking, sensing, feeling, private, internal experiences, etc.
Physical Properties: all of those properties usually associated with bodies--e.g., whatever it is that empirical science deals with, and obeys the laws of nature.
Materialism: the view that there is only one kind of stuff in the world (i.e., monism), and that that stuff is physical or material.
Immaterialism: the view that there is only one kind of stuff in the world (i.e., monism), and that that stuff is mental.
Mind/Body Dualism: the view that there are two kinds of substances in the world--physical stuff (or bodies) and mental stuff (or minds).


5 Principles

The following 4 principles are ones that we general tend to hold of any theory; they are commonsense theoretical virtues.

1. Occam's Razor: All things being equal, the simplest explanation is the best; do not multiply entities beyond necessity. This means that if we have two competing theories, A and B, that account equally well for certain phenomena, yet A is a simpler, more elegant theory, which posits only one kind of entity, whereas B is a complicated, less elegant theory, which posits more than one kind of entity, than all else being equal, we should choose theory A over theory B.
   
2. Anti-Spooky Principle: Do not posit 'spooky' entities in your ontology; i.e., no magic. We want our theory of the world to be explanatorily useful and detail-rich; no hand-waiving!
   
3. Account for All the Data: It is not enough that a theory is simple and un-spooky. It must also account for all of the data that we need an explanation for.
   
4. Leibniz's Law: For anything x and anything y, x and y are identical if and only if x and y have all the same properties. Conversely, if x has a property y does not have, x and y are not identical.
5. Non-Ad-Hoc. In class (3/20/08) we discussed another theoretical virtue: the virtue of not positing ad hoc theses or addendums to a theory in light of seemingly disconfirming evidence. I will leave it to you to figure out where and when this principle applies, or when we seem to be in violation of it when we adopt particular theories of mind.
   

The Problem

The Mind/Body Problem comes about when we try to reconcile all of the above four principles with our intuitions about our mental and physical life.

(i) First Case: Dualism

Descartes in his meditations argues for a Mind/Body Dualist view: that there are material bodies and immaterial minds. Material things are extended, spatial, observable, public, etc. We bump into them and touch them and see them and trip over them. Look around. Everything you see is a material object. Immaterial objects, on the other hand are non-extended, aspatial, unobservable, private (i.e., no one else can have your exact thoughts or feel your exact feelings), etc.

[In class (2/26/08), we discussed the difficulty of defining what immaterial souls or minds are supposed to be, since they are often described as being anything material thing are not. Hence, we are told that they are not observable, and not extended, and not spatial, and not located, etc. This doesn't give us a very clear notion of what an immaterial thing is. One of the only positive attributes that souls or minds are typically given is that they are private (but even this, as we shall see, is a bit of a mysterious attribute).]    

One of the ways that Descartes argues for Mind/Body Dualism is epistemically. He claims that he can know for certain that he is a thinking thing, a thing that doubts, confirms, imagines, wills, and desires, etc., but that he cannot know for certain that he has a body. Since he can know for certain that he is a mind, but cannot know for certain that he is a body, then his mind and his body must be distinct. Notice that Miller, in the Perry Dialogues, echoes this same argument when he claims: "...we can judge who we are, and that we are the very person who did such and such and so and so, without having to make any judgments at all about the body." (p. 20)

The idea that we have immediate, private, and seemingly infallible knowledge of our minds, but mediate, public, and seemingly fallible knowledge of our bodies, has led many to conclude that the mind must not be identical to the body--i.e., that mind/body dualism is true. [In class, we discussed how this kind of argument might be committing the intensional fallacy, which was also discussed in relation to the first night of the Perry dialogues.]

Moreover, and as we discussed in class (2/26/08), there are many different, seemingly convincing arguments for why mind/body dualism is true, such as the following:

• After images Problem
• Leggo Example
• Ineffability of Quaila--e.g., the "Mask" movie example, and the Giant Tablet of Truth example [See below: Problems for Identity Theory]
  
• Intentionality worries
• Failure of "solutions" to Puzzles of Objects
• Recognition of other immaterial stuff--e.g., numbers, sets, propositions, meanings, etc.
• Apparent non-location of thoughts, beliefs, feelings, etc. [See below: Problems for Identity Theory]
  
• Kafka-esque experiments
• Argument from Free Will
  
• Ghosts and Zombies

In short, Dualism seems to be an intuitive theory of the mind, especially if we are looking to account for our rich, inner, private mental life. This rich, inner, private mental life--this qualia--counts as data. And according to our principle 3, it needs to be accounted for in our overall theory of the mind.


Problems for Dualism

Yet while it seems to account for the data in some respects, it doesn't in others. For example, we treat our mental ailments as physical--or at least, as problems that can be solved by physical means. If we have a headache, we take an aspirin. If we are nodding off but need to wake up, we drink caffeine or take some no-doz. If we are wired and can't sleep, we drink some warm milk or take some sleeping pills. Depression, anxiety, mania, restlessness, and various different mental and psychological ailments are all commonly treated with (physical!) medication. And if you are not sick, but would like to alter your state of mind, there are many different ways you can do that, all involving (physical!) pills, liquids, or other substances. And never mind ingesting something physical to alter your state of mind, a mere snip here and a sliver removed there or a carving out of certain parts of your brain will certainly do the trick. That we have countless cases of removing parts of brains to alter personalities (e.g., lobotomies), or serious trauma to the brain causing drastic personality changes, shows that we hold a tight connection between the mental and the physical. So tight, in fact, that it is hard to see why we need a separate "mental" substance, distinct from the physical, at all.

For one thing, the causal story about just how an immaterial substance interacts with a material substance is utterly mysterious, violating our principle 2. This is called the Problem of Interaction.

And let us not forget that souls or immaterial stuff seem to violate principle 2 outright! Souls are certainly spooky!

For another, science (especially neuroscience) is and has been extremely successful without positing an immaterial, aspatial, soul. If science is successful without positing souls, then to do so--to be committed to Mind/Body Dualism--would be violating our first principle, Occam's Razor. Souls, in other words, are seemingly explanatorily impotent.

Finally, that we treat the mental as something that can be influenced by, and can influence, the physical needs to be counted as data, and we must account for this by our principe 3. A dualist must not ignore the connection between the physical and the mental, and so must account for why there is such an apparent connection between the two. But she must be cautious that her explanation here does not violate principle 2 by way of slipping into the Problem of Interaction.

(ii) Second Case: Material Monism

So if Mind/Body dualism cannot satisfy all of our principles 1-4, perhaps Material Monism can.

One popular Material Monist Theory is the Identity Theory. This theory states that the mind is simply identical to the brain; more accurately, that each mental state (such as believing, hoping, desiring, feeling pain, the sensation of seeing red, etc.) is numerically identical to some brain state or processes or other (e.g., certain neurons firing here, or certain neural activity there, etc.) It may not be that neuroscience has figured out all of the identity claims yet; there are many details of the brain that still remain unknown. But the defender of the Identity Theory claims that all mental activity is identical to some brain activity or other, and that material monist disciplines such as neuroscience are headed in the right direction for uncovering the thorny details.

There are several reasons that might lead one to adopt the Identity Theory.

First, there is the purported failure of Mind/Body Dualism as an adequate theory of the mind. All of the objections spelled out above against Dualism could count for the only plausible alternative--Identity Theory.

Second, one might point to the overwhelming success of neuroscience. Neuroscience has proceeded with the assumption that all mental phenomena is ultimately explained in terms of neural activity. The advances made in making such an assumption have been overwhelming. One of the best explanations for the success of neuroscience is that it is fundamentally correct in it's assumptions about the mind--mental states just are brain states.

Third, the Identity Theory seems to cohere with our ideas of how a human being begins. Consider. A man meets a woman at a bar. They talk, they laugh, they find themselves in love. One thing leads to another, and soon the woman is housing a single fertilized egg. The evolution of a single human being from the moment of conception until birth is filled with various stages of development. But at some point, however dualistically you may be inclined, you must admit that there is just a grouping of cells. Maybe it is before conception, maybe it is just right after, but at some point, even if you are a dualist, it seems you must admit that there is just a grouping of cells, and at another, there is a human being. The Mind/Body Dualist has a confusing story to tell here, since it must be admitted that at one point there is just physical, material stuff (e.g., cells) and at another there is physical, material stuff plus a soul. The Identity Theory on the other hand, has a very nice, coherent story to tell of how one individual being can develop from an elementary few material cells. Since everything is just material stuff anyway, the Identity Theorist will argue, there is no particular point at which the magic happens. The evolution of a single human being follows the same laws of organic growth and evolution that other living beings follow, it's just that it reaches a point of neural complexity that allows it to have brain and cognitive activity, resulting in what we have called, in folk psychology, mental states such as beliefs, desires, pains, sensual feels, etc.

Fourth, Identity Theory seems to easily satisfy principles 1 and 2: having just brain states, instead of brain states plus a (mysterious and spooky!) soul, is much more elegant--much simpler--and is far less mysterious. There is no need to posit an intangible, aspatial, nonextended substance when a material monist theory will do all of the work that Mind/Body Dualism can do, minus the ghosts a ghouls.


Problems for Identity Theory

Yet despite all of these reasons in support of Identity Theory, it seems to nonetheless violate two of our principles: 3 and 4.

To see how it seemingly violates 4, recall that one of the ways to determine whether an object, A, and an object, B, are distinct is to see if one of them has a property that the other does not. An Identity Theorist claims that mental states are identical to brain states. So if we can find a property that mental states have, that brain states do not, then the Identity Theory cannot be correct. Here are some (apparent) differences between mental states and brain states:

• Location: Like our esteemed kitten, Tibbles, suppose you have also had an unfortunate run-in with a lawnmower. You walk into the doctor's office with your left foot--or what's left of it--covered in blood. The doctor asks you, "Where does it hurt?" You reply flatly, "My arm." Immune to sarcastic remarks, the doctor replies, "You must be mistaken. There is no way that your pain can be in your arm, for all mental states are identical to brain states. You say that your pain is in your arm, but pain is just identical to C-fibers firing, and C-fibers only fire in that lumpy gray mass of yours. So I am sorry to be the one to tell you, but despite how you may feel about it, the pain is in your head."

• Semantic Properties: Imagine that you and a friend are arguing about whether Celine Dion is the greatest Canadian female adult contemporary vocal artist on the planet. You say yes, your friend says no. (And let us suppose that there is an objective fact about such matters.)  You have a belief--namely, the belief that Celine Dion is the greatest Canadian female adult contemporary vocal artist on the planet. As it so happens, your belief is false. Nonetheless, this case presents us with a property common of beliefs: truth or falsity. Yet if the identity theory is correct, then beliefs are just identical to some brain state or process. But physical objects cannot be true or false! Imagine that I take you around the classroom, pointing to various objects and I say, as I point to each item, things such as, "Chair? False. Table? True. Whiteboard? False. Dry erase marker? True." And so on. This wouldn't even make any sense. Similarly, it wouldn't make any more sense if a neuroscientist were to open up your head, see a few neurons firing, and say, of various goings on in your head, "Oh, did you see that? That was true. And that there? That's false. Oh, and that one over there....that's so true." What would such a performance even mean? We do not attribute semantic properties such as truth and falsity to concrete, material objects. And so, the Identity Theorist, who claims that mental processes such as beliefs are identical to physical processes in you head is simply mistaken.
  

• Aesthetic Properties: Similar to the above line of reasoning, we also attribute aesthetic properties to certain mental states. We say that seeing a sunset is beautiful, or that the feel of summer rain on your skin is invigorating, or that the smell of rotting flesh is disgusting, or that the sensation of hearing an aria from La Bohemme for the first time is soul-shattering, etc. But if the Identity Theorist is correct, then each of these sensations is identical to some brain process or other. And so, by Leibniz's Law, if the mental state has a certain property, then the brain state has it, too. But then this leads to the absurd result that certain brain states or processes are beautiful or invigorating or disgusting or soul-shattering, etc. Thus, Identity Theory must be false.
  

• Modal Properties: Finally, one might think that beliefs and desires have certain modal properties, that differ from the modal properties that any material thing (that the identity theorist claims that beliefs and desires are identical to) has. For example, is it possible for you to believe that 2 + 2 =5? Or is it possible for you to desire that an elephant is both in the room and not in the room (in the same way, at the same time, etc.)? Remember how we have been cashing out possibilities and impossibilities: if there is a possible world in which p, then it is possible that p; if there is no possible world in which p, then it is impossible that p. So the question now is: is there a possible world in which you believe a necessary falsehood (such as 2 + 2 = 5)? Is there a possible world where you desire a logical contradiction (such as there being an elephant in the room and an elephant not in the room)?  You might think that mathematical falsehoods and logical contradictions simply cannot be the object of our beliefs and desires. For insofar as such things are impossible, they are inconceivable, and if they inconceivable, then what sense can make out of having such inconceivable things as the objects of our beliefs and desires? However, according to Identity Theory, beliefs and desires--no matter what they are about--are mental states that are identical to some brain state or other. Yet for any material, physical brain state, whether this brain state takes place or not is a purely contingent matter. So, for example, You think: It is impossible that I believe that 2 = 2 =5. Identity Theory claims that my belief that 2 + 2 = 5 is identical to Brain State B taking place. So, by Leibniz's Law, it is impossible that Brain State B takes place. But we know that any physical activity or event--including Brain State B taking place--is a contingent matter (i.e., it is neither necessary nor impossible that Brain State B takes place), so Identity Theory must be false.
  

The above arguments are just first passes at why we might think that the Identity Theory of the mind violates Leibniz's Law, or if, in using Leibniz's Law, we can show that the Identity theory is false. We will discuss in class whether we think any of the above arguments are convincing, or good.

To see how the Identity Theory violates Principle 3, consider the following arguments.

<>Ineffability of Qualia: One of the main intuitive pushes for dualism was to rely on the very vivid and seemingly indescribable nature of qualia--i.e., the what-it's-like-ness of your rich, inner qualitative feels. Insofar as the vividness of qualia counts as data, you might think that Identity Theory is lacking in a satisfactory explanation for how it is--or how it could possibly be--that a purely material monist view of the world can count for the private and indescribable nature of our inner, phenomenal experiences. Consider the movie Mask (the older one with Cher in it; not the one with Jim Carrey). In it, a boy is trying to teach a blind girl what colors look like. She has been blind since birth and so, presumably, has no experience of colors. He takes her into a kitchen and puts in here hand a rock that has been sitting in the freezer. "This is blue," he says. Then he gets a rock that he has been keeping in a pot of hot water, dries it off, places it in the blind girls hand, and says, "This is red. And when it cools down, it will be pink." Then he puts a bunch of cotton in here hand and say, "This is white." And so on. At some point the girl says, in utter delight, "Oh! I see!"<>

Sadly, however, the girl doesn't see at all. Despite the sweet gesture of the boy, the experience of feeling a hot rock is really nothing like the experience of seeing red. And when the rock cools, the sensation of it in your hands will be nothing like the sensation of seeing pink. And the feel of cotton between your fingers is nothing like the experience of seeing white, etc. One cannot substitute the qualia of one thing (tactile experiences) for the qualia of another (visual sensations). Qualia are irreducibly brute experiences; they are fundamentally ineffable. Yet if this is right, then a material monist theory of the mind--such as the Identity Theory--is going to lack the theoretical tools to adequately account for this attribute of our mental life. And this violates principle 3.

• Jackson's Mary Argument: Along the same lines as the above sort of reasoning, is the following thought experiment. Imagine that there is a color scientist, Mary, who is locked up in a black and white room from the time of her birth until she is 35. She has access to all sorts of information--she has a computer where she can download anything she likes, where it is piped to here through a black and white screen. She is given all of the information there is about the brain, and vision, and the cones and rods in the human eye, and equipment with which to do various experiments. She is even outfitted with some fancy goggles that guarantees that nothing but black and white images will reach here eyes. So here Mary is, locked away in here room, learning everything there is to know about color. In fact, she even says one day, after 35 years of study, "Well, I think my work is done. I now know everything there is to know about color. I know that when the eye is functioning correctly, and light waves hit it just so, and the brain is functioning the way it should, then the subject experiences "red." And I know that this is distinct from what happens when someone experiences blue. Etc." In fact, we can imagine that her knowledge of the descriptive facts are so complete that there isn't a single descriptive fact about color that she doesn't know. If the world is a material monist world, as the Identity Theorist supposes, then there should be nothing more to know about color than all of the many descriptive facts that Mary knows.
<>
However, we can imagine that one day, Mary is released from her black and white laboratory, and walks out to find herself looking at a red rose. "Oh!" she exclaims. "So that's what red looks like!"

Now, according to Identity Theory, Mary was supposed to have known everything there was to know about color. Yet the fact that she is surprised, upon leaving her room, and seeing red for the first time, seems completely natural and realistic. But this seems to indicate that she is learning something new when she leaves her black and white room. But how could she be learning anything new if it was already supposed that she knew all of the facts about color before she steeped outside?  

That there is something else, in addition to the descriptive facts, that we need to know in order to know everything about color, seems to show that the Identity Theory of mind is ignoring some of the data--namely, qualia!

• Multiple Realizability: One final consideration against the Identity Theory is as follows. Imagine that we travel to one of the moons of Jupiter and find that there are these gelatinous, gooey inhabitants, that are somewhat humanoid in shape, but made of pure silicon. Much to our amazement, these aliens speak English. So we hang out with them for awhile, and we find that they act very similar to us. For example, if you take a sledgehammer and whack one over the "head" with it, the alien will scream and shout and say something like "OW! What in the heck did you do that for? That HURTS!" If you give them a hug, and lots of attention, they hug back and make sounds like, "Aw. I love you, too." If you tickle them in their "armpits" or on the bottom of their "feet," they giggle and laugh and say, "Hahaaha! That tickles!" Intuitively, these aliens are feeling pain and pleasure and are feeling ticklish. But, by hypothesis, these aliens are made of pure silicon. They do not have brains--or, more carefully, they do not have our brains, since they are made out of entirely different stuff. Yet the Identity Theorist claims that certain mental states are numerically identical to certain other brain states.  Pain, for example, is just identical to C-Fibers firing. But these aliens do not have C-Fibers, so they certainly don't ever have them firing! So, these aliens must not be able to feel pain. Nor pleasure. Nor a tickling sensation. If mental states are identical to brains states, in other words, then a being must have a brain in order to have mental states. So, the Identity Theorist seems committed to the controversial claim that mental states (or qualitative experiences) cannot be multiply realized. Because such scenarios as this alien one seem highly possible, it counts as data that our theory of mind should capture all of our modal intuitions about the mental. Since the Identity Theory doesn't do this, it seems to be an inadequate theory of the mind.
  

A Compromising Proposal:

In class (3/20/08), we discussed a compromising proposal. Perhaps, we said, we need not look for a theory that satisfies all of our principles. Perhaps the best we can hope for is a theory that satisfies the most of these principles, overall. We will have to weigh these virtues, much like you might weigh various different factors in making a decision.

Do you want to go to the gym tonight? Or stay in and study? Or go out and play pool and drink until the cows come home? Well, if you go to the gym, you might feel good, physically, but you might fail your test. If you stay in and study, you will pass your test, but you won't get to socialize with that cutie from class you've been eyeing. If you go play pool and drink until the cows come home, you may get to socialize with that cutie you've had your eye on, but you might fail your test and you will feel terrible physically, overall and the next morning, and (let's be honest now) you're never all that charming when you've had a few, so you might really blow your chances with the cutie. OK. So. None of the options is ideal; none of them satisfy all of your desiderata for the all-around pleasure-maximizing evening. But one of them will presumably satisfy more of your desiderata than the others, and this might be how you ultimately decide on what you should do tonight..

Similarly, when we are hunting around for the best theory of mind, the best might just be the best of all of the options in front of us, none of which is absolutely satisfying. We will discuss this sort of option in class. In particular, we will discuss whether such a strategy is available to someone who is looking to solve certain issues like the Puzzles of (mere) Objects (which we went over in the first section) and the Puzzles of Death (which we will go over in the third section).

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Resources:

Paul Churchland, Matter and Consciousness, Revised Edition, 1994. MIT Press.

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