Consciousness #17 - Speaker Deck

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Consciousness #17

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The final seminar for 2015-16 The final countdown! The finale! The dénoument! The coup de grace!

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Seminar 17 1. Approaches to the mind-body question 2. Causation and the mind 3. The non-physicalist vision

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1. Approaches to the mind-body question (A) Accept the traditional categories in terms of which the debate is formulated: dualism, materialism (physicalism), substance, property etc. Take a stand on one of the traditional positions and defend it

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Or…. (B) Critically examine the categories in terms of which the traditional question is posed the hope of pulling the problem apart: substance in the Cartesian sense ‘property dualism’ the ‘material’, or matter the ‘physical’ the ‘mental’?

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These categories Are they clear? Are they empirically acceptable or are they the relics of an outmoded metaphysics and/or science? Should we accept any/all of them?

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And then… The next stage is to ask what remains of the mind- body question once we have dispensed with (some of) these categories

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For example: false contrasts What is the alternative to physicalism? Immortal souls? ‘Mind-stuff’? (‘Ectoplasm’) ‘Fairies’!

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But why? Why should you be committed to any of this just because you deny: ‘Any minimal physical duplicate of the actual world is a duplicate simpliciter’ ?

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The ﬁrst step How is the traditional mind-body problem posed, and which of its categories are problematic?

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Some traditional aspects of the mind- body problem If the mind is not spatial, how can it interact with the body? Does everything supervene on the physical? How can the mind ﬁt into the world described by science/physics?

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Other questions How can we explain consciousness? What is the place of the ‘subjective’ in an ‘objective’ world?

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What’s the connection? The questions seem concerned with very different things: • the causal role of the mental • the explanation of consciousness What have they got to do with each other?

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The mind-body problem as a dilemma First horn: if the mind is not physical, how can it affect the body and the physical world? Second horn: if the mind is physical, how can we explain consciousness?

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(2) Causation and the mind Is there a quite general ‘interaction problem’? Because Descartes had an interaction problem, does that mean we do?

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False starts ‘If the mind is not spatial, how can it interact with the body?’ Who says the mind is not spatial and why should anyone accept that?

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What is the problem with mental- physical interaction? Mental things cause physical things Is this because of something about the mental? Or something about causation? Or something about the physical?

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The mental? What is it in the very idea of the mental that gives rise to a mental causation problem? It’s not like the case of numbers, for example

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Causation? Theories of causation: regularity: Hume, Mackie counterfactual dependence: Lewis probabilistic: Mellor interventionist: Woodward agency theories: Price (energy transfer: Dowe)

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The physical? The only plausible source of the causal problem is the idea that it is an empirical fact about the physical world that it is, in some sense, ‘causally closed’ If the physical world is ‘causally closed’, then how can the mental get in there to make a difference?

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The causal closure of the physical Not: everything can be explained by physics (too strong) Nor: every physical effect has a physical cause (too weak) But: every physical effect has a sufﬁcient physical cause

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Sufficient causes All sufficient causes are only ‘sufficient in the circumstances’

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Why believe the causal closure of the physical? We should not base our understanding of the mind on half-understood generalisations about contemporary physics Many of those who defend physicalism appeal to physics with a looseness that they would not tolerate in the rest of their philosophical endeavours

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3. The non-physicalist alternative Forget about trying to investigate the mind by philosophising about physics Back to the things themselves!

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The things themselves The organism The organism’s capacities The exercises of these capacities Some of these capacities are mental

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The mind-body question How are our mental capacities embodied in our brains, bodies and lives?

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Mental capacities What makes a capacity (mode) mental? My answer: intentionality