The Mind-Body Question

The Mind-Body Questionby A. Besa (2010)

How do we distinguish the mental from the physical?Lack of spatial featuresPrivileged accessSubjectivityIntentionalityAnomalousness

Lack of spatial featuresPhysical events happen somewherei.e. when you listen to music, sensory and neural processes occur in your eardrums and brainBut where is your experience of music happening?

Privileged access

You know what youre thinking and feelingYou have first person authorityOthers can only infer what youre experiencing.In contrast, someone else might know what you can only guess, i.e. your ankle is not just sprained but broken!

Subjectivity

Your exact sensations/feelings are yours alone at a given moment or on a particular occasion These token sensations are unique to you Phenomenological: the subjective or felt qualities that your sensations & feelings seem to you to have Qualia: what its like-ness

IntentionalityMental states are directed at something.Thoughts, feelings, wishes, fears, etc are about something (the object)

AnomalousnessNo scientific laws relating mental events to one another or to physical events.

Donald Davidson: mental states are lawless and not predictable.The physical world is governed by laws.

Are these features exclusive to or distinctive of mentality?

Some items that are not mental events dont really havea location (i.e. geometrical theorems or TV series)Some mental states are clearer to others than to ourselves (i.e. love or infatuation?)Maps, pictures have intentionality but are not about mental statesIts possible that mental events are not lawless. More research needed.The TheoriesDualismSubstance (Cartesian) dualismProperty dualismMaterialism/PhysicalismBehaviorismIdentity theoryFunctionalismEliminative materialismThe appearance of mind/body interactionOccasionalismThe interaction of M & B is just coincidenceGod produces a mental sensation that corresponds to the stimulusAlso vice versa!Epiphenomenalism

The physical causes the mentali.e. lack of food hungeri.e. Lack of sleep inability to think straightThe mental cannot cause the physical !Parallelism

Mental states are systematically correlated with physical statesThe will of God (pre-programming)The problem of other minds--SOLIPSISMNothing outside your own mind existsWe know our own minds, but how can I know that anyone else has a mind?

Descartes Criteria of MindednessCapacity to act in a highly flexible and adaptable wayUse of language

The argument for other minds

From AnalogyFact: you KNOW you have a mind.Other beings are similar to you.3. Therefore you resemble each other in having a mind.

FlawAn analogy does not necessarily lead to a logical conclusionAn argument from analogy needs to have a broad basenot just one caseThe argument relies too much on superficial similarities. What if someone did not resemble you at all physically?A better argument:Mills Inference to the best explanationInductive reference from many past cases of resemblance between causal chains whose links were observed, and other similar chains with a missing link

Your own experience of cause-effect another persons similar experience. Note how he reacts to the same stimulus, i.e. he hugs himself after entering a very cold room. There is a gap in the chain which must indicate the same mental event/state.

The End

Source: Philosophy for AS and A2, Ed. by Elizabeth Burns & Stephen Law (2004)