This document discusses different views on the nature of persons and personal identity. It contrasts dualist and physicalist views. According to dualism, a person is composed of both a physical body and a non-physical mind or soul. The mind can exist separately from the body. Physicalism holds that a person is solely a physical being. The document also examines different types of dualism, such as substance dualism, property dualism, and their variations. It explores historical philosophers' stances, like Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and their arguments regarding the mind-body problem.

1. The Nature of Persons:
Dualisms VS Physicalism

2. DO I SURVIVE MY DEATH?
WHAT KIND OF A THING AM I?
WHAT IS THE IDEA / CONCEPT
OF SURVIVING?

3. Nature of Personal Identity – what is it for
somebody whose here next week to be the
same person as him?

4. Death – the end of life
Is their life after the end of life?
After you have run out of life, is there any life
left?
Is there any food after you have eaten all the
food?

5. What is survived mean?
- you did not die, and still alive.
Might I still be alive after I stop living?

6. DO I STILL EXIST AFTER THE DEATH OF MY
BODY?
WILL I SURVIVE THE DEATH OF MY BODY?
OR
WILL I SURVIVE MY DEATH?
IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH?

7. WHAT KIND OF ENTITYAM I?
WHAT AM I MADE OF?
WHAT KIND OF A THING IS PERSON?

8. TWO BASIC POSITIONS OF THE
PERSON
A PERSON IS A COMBINATION OF A BODY AND A
MIND (A MIND IS DISTINCT FROM THE BODY) –
OR A SOUL.
BODY – MATERIAL – FLESH AND BONES
MIND/SOUL – IMMATERIAL – NON PHYSICAL
DUALIST’S VIEW

9. PROBLEM OF CAUSAL INTERACTION
How something totally immaterial can
affect something totally material?

10. PLATO
Theory of Forms
Distinct and immaterial substances of which
the objects and other phenomena that we
perceive in the world are nothing more than
mere shadows. He argued that for the intellect
to have access to these universal concepts or
ideas, the mind must itself be a non-physical,
immaterial entity.

11. ARISTOTLE
If the intellect were a specific material
organ (or part of one) then it would be
restricted to receiving only certain kinds of
information (in the same way as the eye is
restricted to receiving visual data). Since the
intellect is capable of receiving and reflecting on
all forms of data, then it must not be a physical
organ and so must be immaterial.

12. Neo-Platonic Christians
They identified Plato’s Forms with souls
and believed that the soul was the substance of
each individual human being, while the body
was just a shadow or copy of these eternal
phenomena.

13. St. Thomas Aquinas
The soul was still the substance of the
human being but, similar to Aristotle’s proposal,
it was only through its manifestation inside the
human body that a person could be said to be a
person.

14. Rene Descartes
Mind-Body Problem
Mind – consciousness and self-awareness
Brain – the physical seat of intelligence

15. He realized that he could doubt whether
he had a body (it could be that he was dreaming
of it or that it was an illusion created by an evil
demon.) but he could no doubt whether he had
a mind, which suggested to him that the mind
and body must be different things. However, the
immaterial mind and the material body, while
being ontologically distinct substances, causally
interact in some unspecified way through the
pineal gland.

16. Types of Dualism
1. Substance Dualism
2. Property Dualism
3. Predicate Dualism
4. Epistemological Dualism

17. SUBSTANCE DUALISM
(Cartesian Dualism)
- The mind is an independently existing
substance.
- The mental does not have extension in
space, and the material cannot think.

18. PROPERTY DUALISM
(Token Physicalism)
- The mind is a group of independent properties
that emerge from the brain, but that is no a
distinct substance.
- There are four types of Property Dualism:
a. Interactionism
b. Occasionalism
c. Parallelism
d. Epiphenomenalism

19. Interactionism
The mental causes (beliefs and desires) can
produce material effects, and vice-versa.

20. Occasionalism
(Proponent: Nicholas Malebranche)
A material basis of interaction between the
material and immaterial is impossible, and that
the interactions were really caused by the
intervention of God on each individual occasion.

21. Parallelism
(Psychophysical Parallelism)
holds that mental causes only have mental
effects, and physical causes only have physical
effects, but that God has created a pre-
established harmony so that it seems as if
physical and mental events cause, and are
caused by, one another.
- Proponent: Gottfried Leibnitz

22. Epiphenomenalism
Asserts that mental events are causally
inert (no physical consequences). Physical
events can cause mental events, but mental
events cannot cause anything, since they are
just causally inert by products of physical events
which occur in the brain (i.e. epiphenomena) of
the physical world.
- Proponent: Henry Huxley and Thomas Hobbes (19th Cent.)

23. PREDICATE DUALISM
More than one predicate is required to
make sense of the world, and that the
psychological experiences we go through cannot
be redescribed in terms of physical predicates of
natural languages.

24. EPISTEMOLOGICAL DUALISM
(Representationalism or Indirect Realism)
it is the view in Epistemology that the
world we see in conscious experience is not the
real world itself, but merely a miniature virtual-
reality replica of that world in an internal
representation.

25. PHYSICALISM
ONE BASIC KIND OF THING – A BODY
A PERSON IS JUST A CERTAIN KIND OF MATERIAL
OBJECT – A VERY FANCY AND AMAZING
MATERIAL OBJECT.
- IT CAN DO THINGS WHAT OTHER MATERIALS
CANNOT DO – FUNCTIONING BODY
- WE CAN TALK, SING, LOVE, REASON, ETC.
- THERE ARE NO SOULS/ IMMATERIAL OBJECTS

26. THIRD POSSIBLE VIEW
THERE ARE SOULS/MINDS BUT NO BODY –
IDEALISM – ALL THAT EXIST ARE MIND;
PHYSICAL OBJECTS ARE JUST MEANS TO TALK
BETWEEN MINDS.

27. DUALIST VIEW
THE MIND/SOUL IS SOMETHING NON MATERIAL
THE SOUL CAN DIRECT OR GIVE ORDERS TO THE
BODY;
THE BODY GENERATES INPUT THAT EVENTUALLY
FELT BY SOULS/MINDS.
TWO WAY INTERACTION (MIND CONTROLS THE
BODY – THE BODY CAN AFFECT THE MIND)
BUT THEY ARE STILL SEPARATE THINGS, HOWEVER
THEY HAVE VERY TIGHT CONNECTION.

28. IF THERE IS A SOUL AS WELL AS THE BODY –
AND THE SOUL IS IMMATERIAL – AND WHEN
THE BODY DIED OR STOP EXISTING OR
DECOMPOSED – THE END OF THE BODY
BUT IF THE SOUL IS SOMETHING IS IMMATERIAL
– THAT THEREFORE WILL STILL EXIST.
NOW TO ANSWER, CAN I SURVIVE MY DEATH?
- well, if the dualist is right, a person is a
combination