Mind and body

The mind and body problem

1. The ontological question: what are physical states and what are mental states? Is one class
a subclass of the other, so that all mental states are physical, or vice versa? Are mental and
physical states entirely distinct?
2. The causal question: do physical states influence mental states? Do mental states influence
physical states?
Additionally, different aspects of the mind-body problem arise for different aspects of the mental, such
as consciousness, intentionality, the self.
3. The problem of consciousness: what is consciousness? How is it related to the brain and
the body?
4. The problem of intentionality: what is intentionality? How is it related to the brain and the
body?
5. The problem of the self: what is the self? How is it related to the brain and the body?
Other aspects of the mind-body problem arise for aspects of the physical. For example:
6. The problem of embodiment: what is it for the mind to be housed in a body? What is it for a
body to belong to a particular subject?

Dualism
- Dualism is an idea that there are two main fundamental kinds or categories of things or
principles (physical body and consciousness).
- The main supporters of dualism were Rene Descartes and Plato. Both of them believed that
the mind is a non-physical entity, and therefore different from the body.
- Cartesian dualism or Substance dualism is a view that argues that there are two fundamental
entities: the mental and physical one
- Physical properties are observable to anyone, but mental properties are not
- One of the arguments for dualism is that mental events have certain subjective quality to the,
which is qualia
- Qualia cannot be reduced to any physical state because it is a solely mental event
- emergent materialism argues that there is such a thing as consciousness but it emerges from
the brain (but is more than the brain)
- Rene Descartes argued that there a two fundamental entities (physical state and
consciousness) that combined create a human being

Materialism
- Materialism is the idea that objects exist physically independent of us who view it.
- Reductive physicalism argues that everything can be explained in terms of the brain,
consciousness and our existence.
- However, does that mean that we can build robots that are exactly like us?
→ (Turing’s test)
- Non-reductive materialism argues that our mind is the brain, but not everything can be
explained in terms of the brain.
- For example, science cannot explain how it would feel like to be a bat or a cow
(qualia).
- Thus, not all facts that explain how it would feel like to be an animal, actually let you
feel like an animal (against reductive physicalism)

Physicalism has trouble explaining the feeling and sensation of things known as qualia.

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Idealism
- Objects exist only because our mind exists. Somewhat similar to rationalism and opposes
empiricism in the field of epistemology. We can only know that we exist, but not know whether
the world around us exists.
- Objective idealism accepts that objects exist independent of the mind, but that rejects
naturalism, that our mind and spirit exists because of materialism.
- Subjective idealism says that everything is dependent on human perception.
- George Berkeley argues that everything is immaterial, and the everyday objects we perceive
are only ideas of the object, not the objects themselves.

Epiphenomenalism
- A philosophical view which argues that physical states can affect mental states, but
mental states can’t affect physical states
- Epiphenomenalism is the view that mental events are caused by physical events, but have no
effects upon any physical event.
- Behavior is caused by muscles that contract upon receiving neural impulses, and neural
impulses are generated by input from other neurons or from sense organs. On the
epiphenomenalist view, mental events play no causal role in this process.

Mysterianims

- Mysterianism is a philosophical view that argues that human minds are not able to solve the
problem of consciousness.
- One of the main supporters of the idea is philosopher Colin McGinn, who proposed
an argument that our brains are compartmentalized.
- McGinn argues that we understand our minds through reflection, which is personal
and therefore subjective.
- However, the way we understand our bodies is objective and therefore verifiable.
His argument is that no amount of empirical data will ever explain how it feels to see
a colour through someone else’s eyes and no amount of reflection will ever lead to
neurons firing.

Monism

Monism proposes that the mind and the body are a unity, aspects of the same thing.
There are four different monisms:

Where does the mind reside?

Reductive physicalism: The view that the world is made only of physical stuff, including us
Substance dualism: the world is made of both physical stuff and mental stuff
→ Minds are a separate, nonphysical substance that cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of,
physical stuff, like brains.
Interactionism: The theory that there are two entities, mind and body, each of which can have an
effect on the other → they interact with each other so one can affect the other.

Descartes response to the problem: The mind is tethered to the body at the pineal gland → all
mind-body interactions are filtered through that portal, if you will, between the mind and the body
→ pineal gland however is a physical object so how is this possible?

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Frank Jackson’s thought experiment→ Mary wants to become a neurophysicist and is stuck in a black
and white room → she learns everything about the light, optics and physics of colour. However she
has never seen colors for herself. When she steps out of the room and sees colors for the first time
has Mary learned something new?
→ against reductive physicalism
→ The qualitative experience of seeing a color red isn't the same as knowing facts about red
→ it wouldn’t have contributed to her knowledge as much
→ if physicalism is true, and if she really knows everything physical about color, then of course seeing
it for herself isn’t going to add to her understanding of it in anyway

Qualia is something the reductive materialism doesn’t take into account → instances of subjective,
first- person experiences. How something feels

Begging the question

A philosophical fallacy in which the premises assume the conclusion they’re supposed to be proving.

Epiphenomenalism: physical states can give rise to mental states, but mental states can’t affect
physical states
→ Your beliefs, desires, and temperaments do exist, but they have no power over anything physical
about you

Mysterianism: The question of consciousness is unsolvable by human minds

The way we understand our mind is through reflection. It’s deeply personal and subjective. But the
way we understand our brains and bodies is objective, and verifiable

No amount of reflection could lead to any claims about neurons firing, and no amount of empirical
research is going to give rise to what it’s like to see color through someone else’s eyes

Identity

Philosopher who discuss the issue

- John Locke
- David Hume
- David Armstrong
- Amitai Etzioni

Personal Identity

- Who are you? What am I? What makes me, me?

- David Hume
→ Argues that since there are no impressions of ourselves that remain constant and
invariable there is no self. Basically argues that there is no continuous self.
- Continuity of soul is consistent with Cartesian ideas, with notions of reincarnation and
experiences of the self remaining despite physical changes to the body. The body plays no
part in a person's identity

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 - The body may still change, changes can still occur within the same structure and the person
has the same identity. Spatio-temporal continuity is required. The body traces a continuous
track through space and time
- Continuity of psychology states that personal identity depends on the ability to link past,
present and future consciousness and awareness.
Qualitative Identity: Being exactly similar in qualities
Numerical identity: Being exactly the same person but with different qualities
- What things influence our identity? Our identity is dictated by a variety of external and internal
factors such as society, loved ones, family, race, culture, location, appearance, interests, self
expression, media and past life experiences. Everything that we encounter makes an
impression or impact on us. “We are products of our environment”
- I would say that the upbringing that one has along with their experiences have the most
impact on one’s personal identity

Identity over time

- “If you replace small parts of a ship over time it will not be the same in the end” → ship of
theseus → Locke

John Locke
→ Argues that identity extends as far back as an individual can recall his/her past experiences and
thoughts. “Only the actions my consciousness reaches are mine, if I have no consciousness of an
action, the action is not mine.” Basically our identity is dictated by our memory, does this mean that
our childhood is no longer part of our identity since most of don't remember a lot of it
→ This is basically the point of view of brain continuity.--> memory theory

- Bodily continuity: Materialist philosophers claim that the physical body is the seat of identity.
So as long as one keeps the same body throughout their life, they are guaranteed to maintain
their unique identity.

- Religions and eastern philosophy claims that the immaterial soul is an intrinsic part of our
identities. Our identity continues as long as our soul is intact.

“Think of the example of the book again. If I tear a page, is it the same book? If I tear half the pages,
same book? How about if I white out the pages and write new words on every page, same book? The
questions are endless. Identity claims seem to fall prey to the problem of vagueness, but, rather than
focus on the problem I’d like to turn to some possible answers. In light of what has been said
Thus far regarding the book example, what would it mean for any of ‘us’ to have an identity? First, I’ll
mention the initial arguments that one might have before moving on to David Hume. Keep in mind that
this is a gross generalization.”

Social and cultural identity

Communitarianism - not to be confused with communism or communalism

- a philosophy that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community
- based upon the belief that a person's social identity and personality are largely
molded by community relationships, with a smaller degree of development being
placed on individualism
- understood as collection of interactions
- challenges the supposition of a self-sustained, “atomistic” individual that stands alone
separate from the world of objects

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The term is primarily used in two senses:

- Philosophical communitarianism considers classical liberalism to be ontological and

epistemological incoherent, and opposes it on those grounds. Unlike classical liberalism,
which construes communities as originating from the voluntary acts of pre-community
individuals, it emphasizes the role of the community in defining and shaping individuals.
Communitarians believe that the value of community is not sufficiently recognized in liberal
theories of justice.
- Ideological communitarianism is characterized as a radical centrist ideology that is
sometimes marked by socially conservative and economically interventionist policies This
usage was coined recently. When the term is capitalized, it usually refers to the Responsive
Communitarian movement of Amitai Etzioni and other philosophers.

Identity theory

Identity theory is a family of views on the relationship between mind and body: “What am I?”.

- The identity theory of mind states and progresses the mind, where each state would provide
different explanations to identity and thus divide philosophers to different explanations of
identity.
- David Armstrong claimed that all mental stages (including all intentional stages as
well) would be identical with physical states, that philosophers of mind divided
themselves into camps over the issue.
- It is one view of modern materialism that asserts that mind and matter are in actuality but
different expressions of a single reality that is material.
- Leibniz’s Law of Identity: Two things are identical if, and only if, they simultaneously share
the same qualities.
- The double-aspect theory is similar to identity theory, with one notable exception: reality is not
material; it is either mental or neutral.

Physicalism:
- explains mind and identity by the physical world
- mental events can be grouped into types, and can then be correlated with types of
physical events in the brain
- provides a solution that satisfies the physicalist point of view:
- “mental stages are just stages of mind and brain function”

Are we the same over time?

→ the thing that stays constant is our name

The body theory: Personal identity persists over time because you remain in the same body from birth
to death
→ we have replaced our cells many times as well as red blood cells → we are all the time
replacing the physical stuff about ourselves / changing our hairstyles, gained weight → not the same
body as we we were born with

John Locke didn’t agree that the essential aspect of a person is their body → rather the non-physical
stuff such as consciousness
- memory theory: Personal identity persists over time because you retain memories of yourself
at different points and each of those memories is connected to one before it.

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 - memory chain so we can remember back to our first day of kindergarten, we maintain a
memory link to that person
- critique → nobody remembers being born. if personal identity requires a memory, then none
of us became who we are until our first memory. which we all lost at least a couple years at
the beginning
- false memories → how do we remember different things. How have these false
memories affect our identity → are partly a fictional character
Do we have obligations to particular people in our lives?
- if those people don’t persist as distinct identities, then your obligations might not either.

Arguments against personal identity

David Hume: the idea of the self doesn’t persist over time. There is no you that is the same person
from birth to death → the concepts of self is an illusion
→ If having a certain identity means possessing the same set of properties, then how could anyone
really maintain the same identity from one moment to the next?
→ The so-called “self” is just a bundle of impressions, consisting of a zillion different things - my body,
my mind, memories, emotions, preferences even labels that are imposed by others
→ The “self is just shorthand for all the junk in the box. and the fact that there is no box points out that
there’s no single underlying thing that holds it all together
→ new stuff come in and go out
→ we’re all just ever-changing bundles of impressions that our minds are fooled into thinking of as
constant, because they’re packaged in these fleshy receptacles that basically look the same from one
day to the next

Derek Parfit → thought experiment replicating someone atom by atom to Mars → is this still you?
→ you yourself didn't’ travel to mars → that's just a new you that shows up on Mars, whether the old
you was destroyed or still on earth
Psychological connectedness→ new links form other just fall off → we are a chain
→ not the same person that i was in elementary school and i won't be the same person when I die
parts of me survive this
→ none of you that existed at birth is still around - your physical matter is almost all different, and you
have no memory of that time, and your preferences have completely changed. → baby you hasn’t
survived but from last year parts have survived
→ the most updated versions of others

→ What does it mean for my understanding of myself, and for the people I love if there is no single,
constant me?
→ How can we hold someone accountable for their actions, if they’re not the same person now that
they were before?
→ How can you be responsible for something that you did if you’re always changing?

if I’m not the same me over time, how do I make promises, obligations, and responsibilities?
→ Parfit: Your degree of responsibility and obligation corresponds to the person who made the
promise or incurred the responsibility.
→ we have changed as persons so promises and a “bully” status would wipe away if you
totally different now

Identity: The relation that a thing bears only to itself

→ Things change over time so nothing really ever stays the same → we acquire new attributes

Can two things be identical → share the same identity?

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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz principle(Indiscernibility of identicals): If any two things are identical, the
they must share all the same properties → with a new property comes a new identity

Essential properties: core elements needed for a thing to be the thing that it is
Accidental properties: Traits that could be taken away from an object without making it a different
thing.
→ the more the thing changes the harder it is to determine its identity
→ Nothing is identical to itself because everything is changing all the time

Fungibility: the property of being interchangeable with objects of the same kind → value of money

Human nature
Definition “The general psychological characteristics, feelings, and behavioral traits of humankind,
regarded as shared by all humans

Rationality
- The concept of rationality can be defined in different ways, but at its core includes
objectivity
- Self-control
- Justifying beliefs according to sound reasoning rather than personal interests
- Separation of ourselves from interests and values
- Reasons for our beliefs that can persuade ourselves and other “rational
being”

- The human success of fields of knowledge seems to suggest that we’re more than irrational
animals
- Often based on ideas of something “higher” (or divine) that makes it special for only humans

Plato
- Rationality according to Plato → ability to master impulses and think objectively
- His example: thirsty man who has to control his desire to drink poisoned water
- When exercising control of our impulses, we have to use different part of ourselves to
overcome desire

Division of soul (chariot):

1. Appetitive part
- Our basic desires
- Rational and moral impulses
- E.g. righteous indignation
2. Spirited/passionate part
- More irrational desires
- E,g, Anger
- Will for self-expression and recognition
- Provides an example of a child that refuses to eat out of anger despite being hungry
→ overcomesthe basic desire to eat
3. Reason
- Ability to make correct judgments about the world and choose a course of
action based on good reasons (rationality)

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 - “Center” of the self

- “Turmoil of soul” → we are conflicted when making many choices → one option is appealing
to our appetitive impulses, whereas other is appealing us to not act for the sake of long-term
goals
- Rationality is the charioteer that drives and guides these two different horses - it needs to
master and control these two parts of the souls that are battling for the dominance
over oneself
- This idea of rationality demonstrates that we are capable of sacrificing short-term benefits
for long-term ones
- The example of the man who refused to drink poisoned water
- Rationality → more complex form of self-interested instinct that even other beings can
have (if it’s natural)

Descartes and the self-evident premises

- Rationality is something distinct from simple desires by the aspect of reasoning
- Rationality → reasoning from self-evident premises
- These premises are indubitable, as they provide their own clear evidence that makes
it impossible to challenge them
- For Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.”
- The truth of this statement is demonstrated in the very act of thinking it

Self-evident premises for rationalists:

- Law of identity a=a
- Thing always is itself
- Law of non-contradiction a ≠ -a
- Nothing can be true and false at the same time
- Law of excluded middle
- Everything is either true or false, and there isn’t a third option
- Principle of sufficient reason
- Principle of causality → There is a sufficient explanation for everything that exists or
occurs
- Not always included to the list
- Rationalists: Denying any of these is to state an absurd contradiction’
- These self-evident premises allows to take a rigidly objective look at the world and everything
in it
- One aspect of rationality: understanding the difference between logical and illogical thinking

Similarities to Plato’s ideas:

- Ability to be objective and control emotions and desires
- True knowledge can be acquired through rationality
- Autonomy (self-control) to master the impulses by choosing our actions is important
- Humans aren’t “automatically” fully rational → they need to learn to master the
impulses

Counterposition
- Critique of human rationality is often based on the critique of reason that is viewed as
fundamental for it

- Nietzsche’s perspectivism
- Any acquired knowledge is filtered through our individual perspective

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 - Interpretation through our personal values, ideas and experiences
- One knower can only possess one perspective
- “Rational” theories are vast falsifications and simplifications of reality

Darwin and evolutionary psychology

- Darwin’s idea of natural selection challenged theological accounts of human
- Rather than being created by god we have biological origins not unlike other
organisms
- Evolution → our body (both mind and the body) is a result of natural processes
that have increased our likeliness to survive by adapting to our environment
- Most of our actions are driven by evolutionary adaptations (instincts)
rather than reasoned judgment

Examples of behavior from evolutionary perspective:

- Male aggressiveness
- acquiring mates and protecting them from competitors
- Reason
- building weapons, outthinking enemies
- Mating preferences
- finding physical features that indicate signs good of health and strength attractive
(increasing likelihood of healthy offspring)
- Reciprocal altruism
- Altruism = any behavior that costs organism but doesn’t provide any benefit
- Found from chimpanzees
- Social benefits → cooperation that allows more efficient hunting, defending, finding
and producing resources
- Reciprocal altruism → we are altruistic when others will be altruistic back at some
point
- Vampire bats often return from feeding trips without success. However, those
who were successful in finding food will often take more than what they need
and share it with those who were unsuccessful. In return, it is expected that
they’ll be provided food when they are unsuccessful.
- Connections to morality → people who fail to return generosity in society can
be harshly punished by exclusion from the group
- Altruism is therefore neither rational or traditionally moral, but rather an unconscious
impulse that serves one’s purpose

Feminism and critique of evolutionary approach

- Views that see fundamental or innate features to human beings are often based on
patriarchal assumptions
- Used to oppress women and other minority groups
- Critiques Darwin’s approach → not solely based on facts, but also prejudices and
assumptions of patriarchal society
- Cultural bias
- Universalization of human nature that doesn’t exist (men’s nature)
- Simone de Beauvoir rejected idea of “femininity” as a myth
- No essence of a woman
- Another thing to consider is the difficulty to provide clear evidence from evolutionary
psychology → research is often based on the assumption that certain thing is true, and the
evidence must be directly relevant to it

Cognitive bias

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Our instinctive information processing is “predictably irrational”

- Confirmation bias
- Watson’s selection task
- Participants were shown 4 cards with a letter on one side and a number on another
- The participants were asked which cards they would have to turn over to determine if
the following rule is true
- “If a card has a vowel on one side it has an odd number on the other”
- The correct answer is E and 4
- E → even number on the other side would disapprove the rule
- 4 → vowel on the other side would also disapprove the rule
- Most people picked E and 5
- Whether 5 has an even or odd number is insignificant, as no rules for
consonants were given (so it couldn’t prove the rule false)
- Rather than looking ways to disprove ideas, humans tend to look for information that
supports their expectations
- Our ability to make inferences is not just faulty, but systematically so
- “Built in error tendencies” highly hinder the concept of rationality
- According to this theory, we look for patterns even when they’re not there, ignoring
evidence opposing these

Can humans be rational

- Despite our natural tendencies, Plato’s idea of a separate rational self makes it possible to
learn how to master them
- Knowledge of our biases necessary
- Cooperation between humans → objectivity (significant part of rationality)
- Nagel
- Our individual knowledge may be narrowed to our own particular perspective
- However, we have the capacity to extend thought beyond our local experiences
(globally)
- Although we are subject to the cognitive biases, we can remain detached from them
- Distinguishing mind from the physical body can explain human mind as something
beyond our physiological factors
→ why rationality can exist despite the strong evolutionary arguments
- Perhaps a more reasonable question to ask would be to what extent humans are rational?

Nature vs Nurture
Debate between nature vs nurture → Is our behavior a direct result of our nature (essence -- soul,
genes, etc) that we’re born with, or do external forces cause us to become certain people?

Tabula rasa = Blank state

- We are born as “blank states” -- we’re born with empty minds that will be filled with ideas from
our direct experiences

Empiricism
Core arguments:
1. We are born without ideas already in our mind
2. Everything we know and believe comes from our experiences of the world around us

- Idea of tabula rasa is at the core of empiricism

- All knowledge comes only/primarly from our sense experiences

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Associationism
- The way by which we build ideas from experience
- Experiences have been “written” on the tabula rasa of the mind
- When these experiences occur together, over time they become associated
- Shape of cat brings to mind other sights, sounds and colors that have occurred
simultaneously
→ associated ideas are given a general name, such as “cat”
Behaviourism followed

Kant’s critique
- Means of processing information is a precondition of having thoughts and experiences
- Sense data on its own is meaningless
- We need to be able to derive useful information out of it
- Otherwise we would remain as blank states
- We can’t make “associations” without recognizing aspects of the
experience first
- Experiencing the world is active process that requires processing the sensory data, rather
than passively “soaking” in it
- Learning to learn
- Learning to play football requires you to previously have learnt at least partially what
the game is about
- We have a mechanism of “categories”
- Prerequisites of experience
- Not ideas or knowledge, but a mechanism that helps us to organize and deal with the
sense data
- Examples of categories: cause-and-effect, substance and unity
- Example: time and space
- We perceive and understand things in terms of space → therefore it cannot
be derived from our perceptions
- All experiences are imaginable spatially: dreams, events, objects, actions...

Essentialism
- Essence = Essential properties of human nature that is necessary for it to be what it is
- Each human is born with unique essence that determines their purpose
- Soul, biological nature (discussed earlier)...
- Famous essentialists
- Aristotle

Existentialism
- Humans are born without essence and have no predetermined purpose
- It is up to each of us to determine essence for ourselves
- No human nature
- Freedom
- Human condition, not nature
- The absurd
- Conflict between the search for meaning of life and the inability to do so
- Searching answers in an answerless world
- Reason and logic won’t explain the purpose for existing
- Authentic living
- Deciding actions by what feels morally right to an individual
- Famous existentialists
- Søren Kierkegaard, considered the

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 - Albert Camus

Freedom
What is free will?
- the power or capacity to choose alternatives or to act in certain situations independently of
natural, social or divine restraints
- most people are convinced that free will exists because they believe they are free to choose
what they want to do, without anything controlling them
- e.g. one would believe that they chose to eat cereal for breakfast for the sole reason
that they wanted to eat it (without any outside factors affecting this decision)
- connected to Agent Causation - a being propelled by a mind -
→ an agent can start casual chains that were not caused by anything else
→ belief + action + temperament = action

Libertarian free will

- Robert Kane advocates for Libertarian free will:
1) the existence of alternative possibilities is a necessary condition for acting freely,
and
2) determinism is not compatible with alternative possibilities
- The belief that some human actions are freely chosen and there is free will
- defines free choices (or actions) according to the
Principle of Alternate Possibilities
- “an action is free only if the agent could have done otherwise”
- Libertarian Free Will believes that humans have options
- we can choose what we want to do
- critique: Libertarian Free Will has no real evidence
- it just feels like we have our own choices
- it is hard to disregard the feeling of freedom

Determinism
- argues that all events are completely predetermined by previously existing causes
- opposes the idea of human free will
- humans are not able to act from their previous action
- this means we do not have options
- determinism holds that every event, decision and/or action are causally determined by an
unbroken chain of prior occurrences

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 - e.g. Someone ate cereal for breakfast because they forgot to buy a pancake mix the
previous day. Since they forgot to buy the mix, it led them to eat cereal (because they
have no other choice) the next day.
- !!!! This opposes the idea of agent causation as determinism argues that there
is an existing cause for the actions agents do !!!!
- determinism does not mean that agents have no control or effect over their actions and
decisions
- this just means that the effects human have on their decisions is dependent on prior
occurrences

Hard determinism
- opposes the idea of free will; the belief that all events are caused by past events and there is
no free will
- argues that determinism is what we see as real and free will is just an illusion
- an illusion: to make ourselves feel better from the fact that everything is deterministic
and out of our control

BARON D'HOLBACH's view on hard determinism: believes that none of our actions are free
- everything that happens right now is the result of an unbroken chain of events
- even actions we think we do ‘freely’ are actually caused by past events
- actions we do are inevitable results of what happened in the past
- it cannot be changed

- determinists argue that we have invisible causes in our brains → leads us to do the actions
we think are not caused by any past events
- physical world = deterministic
- mental states → brain states → biological states = physical states
- therefore, what goes on in our minds are deterministic
- if our brains have invisible causes which lead us to act on things, it means our
decisions are deterministic
- as well as our wants and desires since they come from our mental states

Combatibilism
- Like hard determinism, compatibilism believes that our actions are determined by our past
- Unlike in hard determinism, compatibilism believes that some actions are free
→ compatibilism is sometimes referred to as soft determinism
- Compatibilism argues that actions which are self-determined are free even though they are
predetermined because we are the ones taking the action
→ this gives room for moral responsibility unlike in determinism

- Principle of alternate possibility: if you are not free to act differently from the
way you acted, you are not free
→ if we agree that all actions are free and there is no other way things go, can we agree with
compatibilism and say that our choices are free and we are morally responsible for them just
because they are the choices we make?
- Patricia Churchland: we need to take in social aspects such as how many
external influences do we have on our decisions, we are social creatures so it
is natural to try and blame people for their actions

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Existentialism
Existentialism is a philosophical theory which emphasizes the actuality of an individual being as a free
and a responsible agent. The individual determines their
own development through their acts of will.

- Jean Paul-Sartre questioned essentialism:

- What if we exist first? What if we’re born without inherent purpose and it’s up to us to
find our own essence?
- Existence precedes essence: we write our own essence through the way we choose
to live. There is no set path that we are supposed to follow! → abundance of freedom;
Sartre says that “we are condemned to be free”
- If we accept Sartre’s notion, we accept that everything in our lives is the result of our
own choices.
→ So did we choose illness, poverty, and other misfortunes?

- Theistic existentialists deny teleology; that god may have created the world, but didn’t do it
with any significant purpose.
- Concerned with an individual’s choices in relation to a divinity (god)
- Atheistic existentialists say that there is no god and we carve our own paths.
- Concerned with an individual's choices in a godless universe
- Kierkegaard:
- Freedom signifies a specific kind of dread that relates to limitless numbers of
possibilities introduced to us by freedom.

Reductionism: The view that all parts of the world, and of our own experience, can be tracked back -
or reduced down to one singular thing
randomness → as determined as everything else
Frankfurt cases → we are responsible for action that we have chosen

Personhood
Human vs person
Definitions Can non-humans be persons?
- Human is a biological term - to be - Crash course uses the example of
human you need to have human DNA. Superman: he acts like a person, has
- Person is a moral term - beings who morals and deserves moral
are part of our moral community. consideration, yet he possess zero
- Persons deserve moral consideration. human DNA, because he is
Kryptonian.
Losing personhood
- One of the main arguments for capital Lex Luthor
punishment is that a you lose your - Crash course also offers the example
personhood by committing a horrible of Lex Luthor, Superman’s arch
crime. → you can be executed since nemesis. Luthor is human by DNA but
you are no longer considered a wouldn’t be considered a person due
person. to his horrible crimes and hunger for
power.

Genetic Criterion - John Noonan

- If you have human DNA you are a person. If you do not have human DNA you are not a
person.

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 - This means the cells in your mouth would be persons as well as corpses.
- Things such as robots or aliens would be excluded from the idea of personhood, even if they
happened to seem more like persons than cells in your mouth.
- In this case, robots and aliens would not hold the same moral standard as “persons”

Criteria for personhood - Mary Anne Warren

1. consciousness 3. self-motivated activity
2. reasoning 4. capacity to communicate
5. self-awareness
→ known as the cognitive criteria
- “Some humans aren’t persons, either not yet, or not anymore”
- Therefore, if a being doesn’t possess one or more elements of the criteria they can’t
be considered as a person even if it had human DNA
- These criteria rule out fetuses and small children
- kids don’t become self-aware until at least 18 months

Social Criterion
- You are a person when society recognizes you as one, or when someone cares about
you
- When someone doesn’t care about a human, they would not therefore be a person
- Someone who is a fully functional human may not be considered a person if no one cares
about them

Peter Singer
- The ability to feel pleasure and pain makes one a person
- In this case, animals would be considered to be on the same moral grounds as humans
- It ignores the idea of species
- Singer’s idea suggests that it is wrong to cause unnecessary pain to something which can
feel it
- If it cannot feel the pain, there is nothing wrong with excluding it from the group of beings
which matter
- Fetus’ under 28 weeks do not feel pain, therefore they aren’t considered persons
- People in a vegetative state would also not be considered persons

Personhood as a right
- People are able to “give away” their personhood “ticket” by doing unthinkable acts, such as
cold blooded murder.
- This justifies capital punishment, as if one were to give away their personhood ticket, they
would not anymore be considered a person.

Gradient theory of personhood

- personhood comes in degrees, and you can have more or less of it
- e.g a fetus can slowly grow in personhood throughout pregnancy as cognition
develops
- personhood can be lost gradually as it can be gained
- Some beings can have more personhood than others
- This doesn’t deny either being, but it allows that some beings have more personhood
than others
- e.g mother and a newborn baby

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 - the mother has lived longer and gained more personhood in contrast to a newborn
baby

Other Western Philosophers

Descartes, Locke and Hume
- Person refers to any agent who
a) possesses continuous consciousness over time
b) is capable of framing representations about the world, formulating plans and acting on
them.

Charles taylor
- Disagrees with the previous “performance criterion”. Rather argues for significance criterion,
things that are only in humans.

Francis J. Beckwith
- Personhood is not related to function, a human person who can’t speak is still a person
because of their human nature.

Mary Midgley
- defines a person as being a conscious, thinking being, which knows that it is a person,
highlights self-awareness.

Thomas White
(1) is alive,
(2) is aware,
(3) feels positive and negative sensations,
(4) has emotions,
(5) has a sense of self,
(6) controls its own behaviour,
(7) recognises other persons and treats them appropriately, and
(8) has a variety of sophisticated cognitive abilities.
White’s criterion is very anthropocentric, but it would fit animals such as dolphins.

Artificial intelligence and personhood

Weak AI→ e.g autocorrect, siri, calculator

Strong AI is a machine or system that actually thinks like us. Whatever it is that our brains do, strong
AI is an inorganic system that does the same thing.

→ Alan Turing
The Turing test is to answer the question of whether machines are able to think or be considered as
being conscious. A machine is hidden on the other side of a wall questioned by a human. If that
person thinks that on the other side of the wall is another human the machine has passed the test. It
is then concluded that the machine can think. Thus, this experiment indicates that the machine could
be considered as a person. We could, in theory, apply this test to assessing whether any conscious
being could be considered thinking. However, we can’t conclude that the beings on the other side of
the wall actually possess self-awareness which is one significant issue with the Turing test.

William Lycan: A lot of people still say that you can make a person-like robot, but you could never
actually make a robot that’s a person

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Can’t be a person because its programmed → However, aren’t we all to some sense
programmed ---> genetic code

Robots don’t have souls→ How do we know though if God hasn’t put a soul into a robot as well
We mislabel a lot of things as well as humans as non-person if they can’t reproduce or don’t have
blood

What if a program would pass the Turing test? → There is more to a person than thinking

John Searle’s Chinese room analogy. Searle argues against the Turing test using the Chinese
room analogy in which the objective was to show that even if a machine passed the Turing test it still
isn’t able to think. In this experiment, there is a non-Chinese speaker that gets cards with Chinese
characters on them. Also, they get a rule book and can place the symbols following the rule book. To
the people outside the room, it seems like the person knows and understands Chinese. However,
Searle argues that they are merely “manipulating symbols that are meaningless to them according to
the rules.”Therefore machines only have in light of this case the possibility to manipulate rules without
actually grasping the meaning of what they are putting out. This could as well as indicate that the
machines do not understand what is said. Hence, machines can’t be considered as thinking beings in
the case of the Chinese room analogy.
→ Strong AI should inhibit actual understanding which it doesn’t have or can’t ever have
→ Sure you don’t know chinese but no particular region of your brain knows english either. The whole
system that is your brain know english
However, the Chinese room analogy notes that we don’t have to know the meaning of a pile of
Chinese characters given to answer questions. The man sitting in the room still needs to think about
how he is going to arrange the characters to create a sufficient answer. He has to identify the
characters, follow the instructions in the rule book, and be able to identify the characters. Michael
Philps stated that “if computers are like the Chinese room, the analogy suggests that they can do
some thinking too.” Searle also mentions that computers can’t grasp the meaning. Therefore there
might arise some problems regarding the Chinese room analogy. The machines in the room
additionally grasp some meaning to the cards and what their output is going to be. In this case, they
should be regarded as somewhat conscious as they have to use some thinking. However, machines
most likely use algorithms to respond to the users' needs. When these algorithms are developed
highly they do know how to respond in a way that might make them act and feel like real beings.

The Self and the other

Existentialism
- What gives meaning?
- What is the meaning of oneself?
- What is the meaning of others?

Preceding Existentialism
Essentialism (Plato/Aristotle):
- Everything/Everyone has a bare minimum in order to be something/someone (an essence).
- E.g: A knife may have a wooden or metal handle and still be a knife but a knife is not
a knife without a blade.
Nihilism (Friedrich Nietzsche):
- Finding the meaninglessness in life

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Jean -Paul Sartre (Existentialist)
- What if we exist before essence?

In short:
- We were not born with a purpose but the purpose is imbued, built and set as we live. Against
the idea that God finds a way for you.

Freedom
- Sartre finds meaning in freedom. If there is no theology in existentialism then God does not
pave guidelines and it is up to us to make our moral code to live by. All higher authority is
fake, there are no answers from a higher being. He calls this Authenticity.
Absurdity:
- All action or meaning that we give ourselves inherently lacks importance. It is the search for
answers in an answerless world.
Theistic Existentialism:
- There was no purpose in mind for the creation of everything. God may exist but we are not his
responsibility. Existentialism is anti-theology not atheism.

Authenticity - Sartre
What is authenticity?
- Authenticity describes a way to live a life without authority.
- Finding your own reason to exist
- It describes the overwhelming amount of freedom (Sartre’s opinion)

Authority refers to any being with a higher say e.g governments, parents, gods etc. As a part of
existentialism and anti-theology, God cannot give meaning to any object and any “higher” person is
just a person going through a similar process to find meaning and hence on the same level as you.

To answer
“what gives meaning”
- Sartre’s authenticity states anything that has meaning to you is only given meaning by
you. There is no higher being that can exert its value on that object onto you.

An issue against Sartrean Freedom is that we are always defined by others. He claims that it is
wrong to put a title on anyone as it goes against the freedom that defines existentialism and
authenticity.

Example:

Person A is looking through a keyhole in a hotel for some reason. Person B, come down the hallway
and notices and calls A a voyeur; “You are a Voyeur!”.

This objectifies A as a voyeur and thus restricts his freedom. If A is labelled a voyeur, should A only
do things a voyeur would? If A was a voyeur and he had no freedom would he do every voyeuristic
action in perfect repetition?

Even to call A, A or a self is objectifying. Is it possible to not be a ‘self’?

Sartre would say A is not a voyeur, A is free.

More freedom of oneself

If one is to deny Sartre’s freedom and absurdity, they have bad faith.

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Sartre states that if a person is unwilling to live free in a free world where only value can be placed by
oneself, that person has bad faith.

For example:
If a child grows up only wanting to do what his parents want him to do or to look at them as guidelines
for his future, the child is not truly free in this free world. More on Freedom of oneself

One of the building blocks of existentialism is freedom. Whether it is theologic, atheistic or authentic
existentialism they must be free to have a self imposing purpose. Hence why it is talked about.

Why does this idea of freedom stand?

The world has no god-given purpose. Things only acquire purpose when individuals give it purpose.
Hence, in such cases, we are not bound by any purpose and we give ourselves purpose.

In a world where anything is possible and is only up to us to make it possible, to be bound by

someone else’s purpose is voluntary. Being bound voluntarily is a poor way to utilise freedom, hence
bad faith. Faith here refers to the belief that we are free.

To have good faith, is to have no materialistic binding where one is completely free.

Simone de Beauvoir’s applications

An influence and influenced to and by Sartre
- Feminist and existentialist
- Sartre’s partner with similar ideologies with further applications

De Beauvoir, heavily influenced as one of the creators of existentialism, applied to real world to
combat feminism.

If existentialism is to claim that all is free and how God has given us no purpose, then there is no
logical reason why our world should be a ‘man’s world’. If everyone is free, why should she be
restricted for being a woman? This restriction is not natural, it is cultural.

This is also highly objectifying as having to even be called a woman is objectifying - “one is not born,
one becomes a woman and to become a woman is to become the other” To be the other is
systematically restrictive in our strive for freedom

How do I know that others have minds?

- “The traditional epistemological problem of other minds is often associated with scepticism.
The sceptic raises a doubt about the possibility of knowledge in connection with the mind of
another, a doubt which is thought to follow from a more general doubt raised by Descartes
concerning our knowledge of the external world … (including) other minds.”

- “Philosophers, thus, find themselves saddled with the question, How do I know that others
have minds?
- emphasis on the word “know” = raises a sceptical question parallel to the one
Descartes raises in connection with our knowledge of the external world
- emphasis on the word “how” = questions the source of our knowledge, given that I
am not in a position to have direct knowledge of the mind of another.”
Descartes’ View: We cannot know that others have minds, or that there ‘really’ are others.
- “Cogito, ergo sum” (“I think, therefore I am”): As Descartes explained it, "we cannot doubt
our existence while we doubt”.

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 - Basically that one's own mind is the only thing one can be sure of. If your mind did not
exist, there would be nothing to think with.

The other shapes the self

- “The concept of the Self requires the existence of the Other as the counterpart entity required
for defining the Self.”
- “In the late 18th century, Hegel introduced the concept of the Other as a constituent part of
self-consciousness”

How does ‘the other’ affect us?

- Hegel says we are only ourselves because we view ourselves as objects in the eye of the
other.
- The answer to the question ‘Who am I?’ is in relation to the other. For example, ‘I am a child,
a friend,etc’.
- Similarly to Sartre, who describes Person B saying “You are a voyeur”, we are
always defined by the other.

Hegel
- one’s capacity to be conscious of any external object as something distinct from oneself
requires the reflexivity of self-consciousness; it requires one’s awareness of oneself as a
subject for whom something distinct, the object, is presented as known.
- Hegel makes this requirement dependent on one’s recognition of other self-conscious
subjects as self-conscious subjects for whom any object of consciousness will be thought as
also existing.
- One’s self-consciousness, in fact, will be dependent on one’s recognition of those others as
similarly recognizing oneself as a self-conscious subject.
- Such complex patterns of mutual recognition constituting objective spirit thereby provide the
social matrix within which individual self-consciousnesses can exist as such.

Freud - Super-ego: How one observes oneself

- Freud claims that we have a super-ego (superego), or conscience, which is learnt from those
around us and internalised. The superego “controls our sense of right and wrong and guilt”,
and “helps us fit into society by getting us to act in socially acceptable ways”.

- Superego can be described as the voice of conscience, which Freud claims is learnt from
"those who have stepped into the place of parents — educators, teachers, people chosen as
ideal models". A child’s superego is not based on their parent’s actions directly, but from the
parents’ super-egos. In this way, the ‘other’ has a strong influence on the ‘self’.

P1 practice

- introduction
- argument
- counter argument
- evaluation
- argument
- counter argument

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- evaluation
- add some own position
- conclusion

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