An Introduction to Philosophy Lecture 03: Philosophy of Mind James Mooney Open Studies The University of Edinburgh j.mooney@ed.ac.uk www.filmandphilosophy.com @film_philosophy

1. An Introduction to Philosophy: 03
© James Mooney 2012

2. Philosophy of Mind
As we saw in our last session, if there is one thing of
which we can be certain it is the contents of our own
minds. However, there is a great deal of debate
concerning the nature of our minds.
– Is the mind separate from the body?
– How do mental phenomena interact with the physical
world?
– Can our conscious states be explained in terms of physical
states and events in the body?
– Is it possible that artificial intelligence could give rise to
consciousness?
– Am I my mind or my body?
These and related questions make up the philosophy
of mind.

3. The Mind/ Body Problem
The mind/ body problem is as old as philosophy itself.
Usually, people fall into one of two camps:
1. Materialism/ Physicalism: materialists believe that there is
essentially one kind of thing in the world - matter. As such,
everything - including our thoughts, feelings, and conscious
experience in general - can be reduced to no more than the
function of neurons firing in our brain (or whatever science tells
us happens in there).
2. Dualism: dualists believe in the existence two fundamental
‘substances’ - matter and mind. Mind, they argue, is non-
physical.
Today, the vast majority of philosophers advocate some
form of materialism and support for dualism is, sadly,
waning.

4. Plato and the origins of Dualism
• Theory of Forms
• Tripartite account of
the ‘Soul’
– Reason
– Spirit
– Appetite
• Transmigration/
metempsychosis
• Innatism

5. Dualism
• René Descartes was one of the leading proponents
of dualism. In his Meditations he famously stated
that what we are, essentially, is thinking things.
As such, mind is distinct from body.
• However, if mind and body are distinct we are left
with a significant problem:
• The problem of causal interaction
Dualism simply doesn’t fit with the modern scientific
view of the universe. How can it be that something
non-physical (the mind) can interact with something
physical (the body)? This contravenes the laws that
govern causality. It is for reasons such as these that
materialists have lampooned the idea of ‘the ghost in
the machine’ (Gilbert Ryle).

6. • One way to avoid the problem is to
Monism
reject dualism and adopt a monist
approach.
• Monism claims that there is only one
type of substance in the world, either
mental (Idealism) or physical
(Materialism).
• George Berkeley (1685-1783, pictured
left) famously took the Idealist path,
claiming, much to the annoyance of
Samuel Johnson (below), that reality
consists of nothing more than minds and
their ideas.
Esse est percepi
I refute it thus

7. Materialism
• Materialism fits neatly with our modern science.
• The universe, as we know it, (including our brains
and bodies) is made up of matter.
• Science can explain a great deal about the brain
and how it operates; neuroscientists can measure
the brain activity that accompanies our conscious
experience and can point to examples of brain
damage which limit or alter this experience.
• All in all, there are many reasons to opt for
materialism; however, there are also some
unfortunate consequences.

8. Problems with Materialism
• The Problem of Free Will
– If we are just complex material machines (physical objects in a
physical universe) then the laws of physics - including the law of
causality - apply to us as much as anything else (Determinism).
This entails that human free will is just an illusion. [We will be
covering this topic in more depth later.]
• The Puzzle of Consciousness
– Mental states are unique in terms of their intentionality
(‘aboutness’) and subjectivity. (How) can the world of conscious
experience be explained in terms of the objective physical world?
– The subjective quality of our mental existence has prompted a
great many arguments from contemporary philosophers unhappy
with physicalists’ attempts to reduce the mental world to that of the
physical (reductionism).
– The problem, they state is that no reductive/ physicalist account of
the mind can explain ‘qualia’ (the what-it-is-like-to-have-ness of
our mental states).

9. ‘What is it like to be
a bat?’
“… imagine that one has webbing
on one’s arms, which enables one
to fly around at dusk and dawn
catching insects in one’s mouth;
that one has very poor vision, and
perceives the surrounding world
by a system of reflected high-
frequency sound signals; and that
one spends the day hanging
upside down by one’s feet in an
attic. In so far as I can imagine
this (which is not very far), it
tells me only what it would be
like for me to behave as a bat
behaves. But that is not the
question. I want to know what it
is like for a bat to be a bat.”
Thomas Nagel, ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ (1974)

10. Mary’s Room
“Mary is a brilliant scientist
who is, for whatever reason,
forced to investigate the world
from a black and white room
via a black and white
television monitor. She
specializes in the
neurophysiology of vision and
acquires, let us suppose, all the
physical information there is
to obtain about what goes on
when we see ripe tomatoes, or
the sky, and use terms like
‘red’, ‘blue’, and so on.
She discovers, for example, just which wavelength combinations from the sky stimulate the
retina, and exactly how this produces via the central nervous system the contraction of the vocal
cords and expulsion of air from the lungs that results in the uttering of the sentence ‘The sky is
blue’. [...] What will happen when Mary is released from her black and white room or is given a
color television monitor? Will she learn anything or not?”
Frank Jackson, ‘Epiphenomenal Qualia’ (1982) or ‘What Mary didn’t know’ (1986)

11. Turing Test Can
Alan Turing (1950)
machines
think?
Chinese Room
John Searle (1980)

12. The
Ship of
Theseus
Personal Identity
What ensures my survival over time?
• The Bodily Criterion
• The Brain Criterion
• The Psychological Criterion
John Locke

13. Psychological Continuity
“Personal identity
consists not in the John Locke,
identity of substance, Essay Concerning Human Understanding
(1689)
but... in the identity of
consciousness”
Bundle Theory
David Hume,
A Treatise on Human Nature
(1740)

14. Details
James Mooney
Open Studies
The University of Edinburgh
j.mooney@ed.ac.uk
www.filmandphilosophy.com
@film_philosophy