Metaphysics

The study of the basic structures of

reality
 What is Metaphysics?

• “To reach beyond nature (physis) as we perceive it,

and to discover the "true nature" of things, their
ultimate essence and the reason for being.”
• Metaphysics is the study of the basic structures and
categories of what exists, or of reality.
• The big question: how to work out a logical account
of everything that we know or believe about
existence
• Concerned not only with the nature of things that
exist in space and time, but also with the nature of
things that might not.
• What is reality?
• Why is there something and not nothing?
• What is it to exist?
• What is a being?
• What is a person?
• Am I Free?
• Is there a supreme being?
 What is consciousness
sensation
Philosophy of perception
reasoning
Mind? desire intentions
decisions beliefs
imagination
memory
The Philosophy of mind
is the study of mental
events, functions,
consciousness,
properties and the
nature of mind.
 Why Conciousness
philosophers Feelin
gs
study the Behaviour
Biological
structure
mind? Brain
‘I think therefore I Cognitive How it
functions works
am.’
Descartes. Beliefs
Thoughts Sensitive
and mental
The study of mind has also experiences
had a great impact on the
Psychology Neuroscience
concept of the self, and on
the concept of freewill. Philosophy of Mind
 • The Mind – Body Problem

Some topics
- Does the mind
exist?
• The Problem of Other
- What is the
nature of mind? Minds Looking
forward to
- How is the mind Afraid next
summer’s
related to the body holiday
(i.e., brain)?
- Can a machine/an
animal have mind?
 The Mind –
Body Problem
What’s the
relation
between mind
and body?

Dualism,
Monism
materialism
Idealism
 The Problem
of Other Minds
How can I be aware
of other people´s
mental states?
-By observing the
behaviour, or
analizing the
brain…
 Mind and Body Problem
• Philosophers tried to answer the question of the relationship
between mind and body.
• One answer says that there is basically no connection
whatever between any mental phenomena and any physical
phenomena.

• This view is called parallelism. It says that mental phenomena

and physical phenomena exist, as it were, in two utterly
separate realms, going on independently of each other.

• Mental events have no effect on any physical events, and

physical events have no effect on any mental events.
 Mind and Body Problem
• Another view says that there simply are no mental
phenomena. There is only the physical world.

• The existence of consciousness, therefore, must be

some kind of massive delusion: contrary to popular
opinion, nobody has any opinions, desires, or
feelings. We are all just mindless automata. This view
may be called radical materialism or eliminative
materialism.
 Mind and Body Problem
• A third view is that there are no physical
phenomena, there are only ideas in our minds.
Contrary to popular opinion, therefore, there really
aren't any pencils, mountains, or matter. The whole
physical world is all in our minds. This view is called
idealism, and it was held by Bishop Berkeley, who
preferred, however, to say that pencils were ideas
rather than that pencils don't exist.
 Mind Body Problem
• A fourth view is that mental phenomena are, surprisingly, a
subset of physical phenomena.

• All mental states, it turns out, are really states of the central
nervous systems of animals.

• "Pain" just happens to be another word for a certain kind of

brain state, just as "light" happens to be another word for
electromagnetic radiation within a certain range of
wavelengths. This view is called the mind/brain identity
theory.
MONISM:
 
Idealism: Only mind exists
Physicalism (materialism): Only the physical world exists
Identity theory: mental states are physical states of the brain.
Argument:
1. Mental states can cause physical events
2. The physical world is causally closed
3. Therefore mental states are physical states
 Theories
• Monism
– Reality is one all encompassing thing
– All particular things are expressions of this one
thing
– Thing can be material or mental
– Baruch Spinoza argued it could also be divine
• String Theory – everything
composed of one-dimensional
strings of energy

Materialism and Idealism are Monists Theories

 Monism
 belief that ultimate  To describe the view
reality is entirely of that only matter, or
one substance the physical body,
exist. (materialism)
 Two types…  To describe the view
that only mind, or
spirit, exist.
(idealism)
 Theories
• Idealism
– George Berkely 18th Century
– Denies existence of material things
– Reality is ideas and the minds that hold these
ideas
– Objects are ideas that God placed in humans
 Theories
• Materialism or Physicalism
– Pre-Socratic Philosophers
– Everything is physical; Reality consists of matter.
– Matter – particles in motion and forces like
gravity.
 Theories
• Platonic Realism
– Reality is ideal forms or ideas that are timeless,
unchanging, immaterial, and more perfect than
the world of changeable things
 Theories
• Dualism
– Descartes
– Reality consists of two things: Mind and Matter

Interactionism – Common version of Dualism

Mind and Body co-exist as separate entities
Epiphenomenalism – Mind is a byproduct of Body
 Dualism
• Dualism claims that mind
and matter are two
separate categories.
• The mind is a nonphysical
substance.
• Substance (Cartesian)
Dualism-view that the
universe contains two
fundamental types of
entity: mental and physical
• Led by Descartes who was the
first to identify the mind with
consciousness and self-
awareness and to distinguish
this from the brain, which was
the basis of intelligence. (minds
and bodies are different kinds
of entities.)
• the mental is private, that
though each of us has access to
our own mind through
introspection, no one can
directly observe anyone else’s
mind
 Materialism
• Materialism is a general view about what actually exists.
Everything that exists is material, or physical.

• Many philosophers and scientists now use the terms

`material' and `physical' interchangeably (for a version of
physicalism distinct from materialism, see physicalism).
• Materialism is an ontological, or a metaphysical, view; it is not
just an epistemological view about how we know or just a
semantic view about the meaning of terms.
 Materialism versus Dualism
• Materialism • Dualism
– Man is simply an animal, – Mental is separate from
and brains are simply Physical
chemical systems – Mind and Soul can pre-
– Computers are humans? exist the body and
– Question of souls? survive bodily death
– Believe in afterlife, and
paranormal
 What is Consciousness?
• “Consciousness poses the most baffling problems in the
science of the mind. There is nothing that we know more
intimately than conscious experience, but there is nothing
that is harder to explain.” -Chalmers
• Consciousness is not synonymous with the “mind.” This
confusion has led to the loss of some of it’s mysteries.
• Throughout history, mysteries that have plagued scientists’
minds have dwindled away and we have lost interest.
Inversely, the mind/body problem continues to grow and
capture our interests.
 When are you Conscious?
• Are you conscious?
• Are you conscious when you drive?
• Are you conscious when you sleep?
• Or dream?
 Consciousness is your own private
experience.
The colors you perceive in your mind are your property. There is no way to publicly
share the same experience.

• Some monist theories emphasize • However, this takes away from

just the mental and believe the thought that humans have
objects are just perceptions of control over their fate and future.
the individual’s mind.
• Problems arise as to how two
human beings can agree to a
physical object when the object is
outside their mind.
• Materialist monist theories say
that there is only matter and
everything is just a physical state.
 Other beliefs
• Epiphenomenalism: the idea that mental states are
produced by physical events, but have no causal role
to play.
• Physical events cause mental events but in turn,
mental states don’t have any causal effects on the
physical future.
• But then how can we speak about consciousness if
our conscious thoughts don’t have any influence
over our physical outcomes?
 Panpsychism:
• The view that mind is fundamental
• All matter has associated mental aspects or
properties; however primitive.
• But then is a rock aware?
• How about it’s contributing atoms?
• Why should there be mental and physical properties
to everything?
Arguments for dualism:

1) Qualia:
It is like something to have mental states: see colours,
feel happy, etc. Why should it be like anything to be a
brain?

2) parapsychology
Is there evidence for effects of the mental above and
beyond the laws of physics? But if there seems to be, is
that evidence for dualism or a need to revise the laws of
physics?
 Cartesian Dualism
• According to Descartes there is a dualism of mind and body,
and their interaction is clearly real.

• The brain is the major locus for the mind or consciousness of

the soul, yet mind or consciousness is distributed throughout
the whole body. The point of interaction between the two is
the pineal gland.
• Descartes lent his authority to the long-held view that the
mind is associated in a particular way with the brain, but he
made mind and brain separate entities.
Application to the “mind-body problem”
• Metaphysical Materialism: A person is nothing
but a physical organism (body only).

• Metaphysical Idealism: A person is

“consciousness only” (mind, soul, spirit); not at
all a material being.

• Metaphysical Dualism: A person is a composite

of (1) “mind” (consciousness, soul, spirit) and
(2) body.
 Cartesian Dualism
• Substance dualism is a widely known theory. The best-known
form is from Rene Descartes.
• Cartesian dualism was founded by the intention of basing the
philosophy only on firm foundations that were beyond doubt.
• “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes concluded that the
thinking self was immaterial and did not take up space like
the mechanical body.
• This view consisted of two entities – the extended stuff which
bodies are made of and the unextended, thinking stuff of
which minds are made.
• How do they interact?
• Descartes’ solution was through the pineal gland in the center
of the brain.
Arguments against dualism:

1) the neural dependence of all known mental phenomena

Take any mental phenomenon – including those most basic
to what it is to be a conscious person – and we can monkey
with it by playing with the brain
2) explanatory power
What detailed characteristics of mental states have been
explained by a well worked-out dualist theory?
3) evolution
How does gradual natural selection lead to something non-
physical popping into existence?
 Fall of Dualism
• Few contemporary scientists and philosophers agree that dualism works.
• Gilbert Rule argued that when we talk of the mind as an entity that does
things, we are making a mistake. Instead, he saw mental activities as
processes, or as the properties and dispositions of people.
• “Minds are simply what brains do.” – Minsky
• The mind carries out the functions of the brain.
• The two notable dualists are Sir Karl Popper and Neurophysiologist Sir
John Eccles who give us a modern theory of dualist interactionism.
• They argue that the critical processes in the synapses of the brain are so
finely poised that they can be influenced by a non-physical, thinking and
feeling self, thus the self really controls the brain.
• This however asks for a miracle.
Types of Causation
 The Mind/Body Problem

 The mind allows us to • To have self-

engage in a wide range awareness
of activities. • To have dreams and
hopes
• To reason about the
world
• To communicate
• To feel emotions
• To perceive, smell, and
touch the world.
 The main Philosophical problem is to explain
how the past is connected with the future and
what impact this connection has on our ability
to make free choices.
 The point of Schopenhauer?
is that we do not lose our sense of
freedom even if our future is already
determined.
You have the ability to think about all
your choices, but given your past, you
will choose the one most logical.
 Free Will
• The freedom of personal choice
• Being an agent capable of influencing the
world
• Source of ones own actions
• Actions and choices are “up-to-us”
 A question to ask…
• What is Freedom? • “surface freedom”
– Being able to ‘do
what you want’
– Being free to act,
and choose, as you
will
• BUT: what if ‘what
you will’ is not under
your control?
 Another question…
 Why is freedom • We ‘feel’ that we are
important? free; that we are the
originators of our
own actions
• We need to be free
in order to be
responsible for our
actions
 Two types of Identity Theories
• Behaviourism – Mental life and Behaviour are
the same.

• Identity Theory (or Physicalism) – Mental life

and Brain processes are the same.
 BEHAVIORISM (1890-1960)
Behaviorism arose early in the twentieth
century as a doctrine on the nature and
methodology of psychology, in reaction to
what some psychologists took to be the
subjective and unscientific character of
introspectionist psychology.
 What is Behaviour?
We may take «behavior» to mean whatever people or organisms, or even
mechanical systems, do that is publicly observable.

Four possible types of Behavior:

• Physiological reactions and responses: for example, perspiration, salivation,
increase in the pulse rate, increase in blood pressure.
• Bodily movements: for example, raising and waving a hand,
opening a door, throwing a baseball, a cat scratching at the door, a rat turning
left in a T-maze.
• Actions involving bodily motions: for example, typing an invitation, greeting a
friend, checking a book out of the library, going shopping, writing a check,
signing a contract.
• Actions not involving overt bodily motions: for example, reasoning, guessing,
calculating, judging, deciding.
 Types of Behaviourism
• Ontological Behaviourism – mind is a
behaviour itself (Watson);
• Scientific (Psychological) Behaviourism – mind
is the operational process “input (stimulus)-
black box-output (respond)” (Skinner);
• Logical Behaviourism – mind is the outer
meaning (Wittgenstein, Ryle).
 Compare…
W.James: “Psychology is the Science of Mental Life of its
phenomena and of their conditions. The phenomena are such
things as we call feelings, desires, cognitions, reasonings,
decisions, and the like”.
J. Watson: “Psychology is a purely objective experimental
branch of nature science. It’s the goal is the prediction and
control of behavior”.
 N. Chomsky’s objection (which destroyed
behaviourism)
The argument itself was concerned about Language (for
behaviourists language was a “response” to “stimulus”.
The meaningfulness of the mental state is the other mental
state or the mental state of the other person.

Example: I`m reading a lecture. It displays as a sort of

behaviour (which is outer), but the meaning of that lecture
itself refers to your and also my comprehension, which is
inner.
Category Mistake (or Ghost in Machine) of G. Ryle

“The Prime Minister is in London, and the Foreign Secretary is

in Paris, and the Home Secretary is in Bristol, but where is the
Government?”

The Government is not another person (essence) alongside its

members.

Ryle used the notion primarily to claim that mind and body
cannot be spoken of in parallel ways, but are in different
'categories'.
 Ryle
This dogma of the “Ghost in the Machine” is
entirely false, and “false not in detail but in
principle.”

“It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special

kind. It is, namely, a category mistake.”
 Ryle
Examples: ‘university,’ ‘division,’ ‘team-spirit,’
‘average taxpayer.’

“so long as John Doe continues to think of the

Average Taxpayer as a fellow-citizen, he will tend
to think of him as an elusive insubstantial man, a
ghost who is everywhere yet nowhere.”
 Ryle
Assumption that ‘mind’ belongs to the categories
of mechanics: ‘thing,’ ‘stuff,’ ‘cause,’ etc.

But, according to the official doctrine, mind has to

be a non-physical, non-mechanical
thing/stuff/cause; and it cannot be governed by
mechanical laws.
 Ryle
Thus, the mind is not a non-physical substance
residing in the body, “a ghost in a machine,” but a
set of capacities and abilities belonging to the
body.

According to Ryle, all references to the mental

must be understood, at least theoretically, in terms
of witnessable activities. (psychological
behaviorism)
 Ryle
Criticisms of Ryle’s psychological behaviorism:

- Not all mental states are shown in behavior;

- Inadequate when applied to yourself;
- Behavior is not indicative of mental states but the
other way around;
- Doesn’t account for qualia.
 Other examples:
• Water is H20;
• Heat is a molecular kinetic energy;
• Light is electromagnetic radiation.
• This chair is a cloud of particles.
FUNCTIONALISM

Mental states are functional states (software compared to hardware).

Arguments against:

1) Inverted spectra: could not my red quale be like your blue quale while our red
mental states have the same functional roles and our blue mental states have the
same functional roles?

2) zombies: Could there not be a system with all the right functional relationships
but just no qualia?
 Mind as Computing Machine
According to Functionalism it is possible to say
that there is nothing more except functional
work in the mind.
Therefore, Mind is the Function.
The multiple realizability of mental properties.

If mind is a function it can be realized in the

different devices.
It has only one requirement – it must be
embodied, but “bodies” could be different.
 Functionalism is an basic idea of Artificial
Intelligence.
If Mind it the pure Function it is plausible to
model it on the computer (realize as a
program).
Putnum’s famous thought experiment:
 Brain as a Computer
Functionalism acknowledges that having a brain of a certain
structural complexity is important to mentality, but the
importance of the brain lies exactly in its being a physical
machine.
It is our brain, computational powers, not its Biological
properties, that constitute our mentality.
In short, our brain is our mind because it is a computing
machine, not because it is composed of the kind of protein –
based biological stuff it is composed of.
 Turing Test (A. Turing)
The Turing test is a test of a machine’s ability to demonstrate
intelligence.
A human judge engages in a natural language conversation
with one human and one machine, each of which tries to
appear human. All participants are separated from one
another. If the judge cannot reliably tell the machine from the
human, the machine is said to have passed the test. In order
to test the machine's intelligence rather than its ability to
render words into audio, the conversation is limited to a text-
only channel such as a computer keyboard and screen.
 Counterarguments
Chinese Room (J. Searle)
 Syntatic engine Vs. Semantic engine
and Strong AI Vs. Weak AI
The mind is a “semantic engine”; the
computer, in contrast, is only a “syntactic
engine”.

Syntatic process is a weak AI

Semantic process is a strong AI
 Searl’s deduction
Mentality can arise only in complex biological systems, like
the human brain.
It seems that the same neurobiological causal processes will
go on matter what the neural states involved represent about
the world or whether they represent anything at all. Neural
processes seem no more responsive no meaning and
representational content than are computational processes.
Local physical – biological conditions in the brain, not the
distal states of affairs represented by them, are what drive
neural processes.
 Other types of monism
• Type and Token physicalism;
• Neutral Monism (B.Russel);
• Anomalous Monism (D. Davidson).
 Token and Type Physicalism
• Token Physicalism. Every event that falls under a mental
event kind also falls under a physical event kind (or every
event that has a mental property has also some physical
property);
• Type Physicalism. Mental kinds are physical kinds;
alternatively, mental properties are physical properties.

It’s easier to make descriptions among token physicalism and

harder among type.
 Neutral Monism (B. Russel)
There are only ONE substance of the World –
Event, which has space and time coordinates.
These events could be described by using
mentalist language (description) or physicalist
language (description). Despite these two
descriptions in fact there is only kind reality,
which is neutral and neither physical neither
mental.
Anomalous Monism (D. Davidson)
According to Davidson there are 4 possible
theories:
• Nomological Monism (Materialism);
• Nomological Dualism (Pre-Establishd
Harmony, Theory of Translation);
• Anomalous Dualism (Cartesian Dualism);
• Anomalous Monism (Davidson’s version).
 Davidson’s scheme
• Nomological Monism (Classical Materialism) - each mental event is a
physical event and therefore it is possible to predict mental state due to
psychophysical laws;
• Nomological Dualism - mental events are independent from physical, but
still are able to be predicted due to physical states which strictly
corresponds to mental;
• Anomalous Dualism – mental events are independent from physical,
therefore it’s impossible to make any predictions about mental events;
• Anomalous Monism – each mental event is a physical, BUT it’s impossible
to make any predictions about mental events. Therefore it’s called
Anomalous Monism.
 NON-REDUCTIONISM
• Mind is not Consciousness;
• There is something more (over and above)
physical events in the brain;
• It could be very plausible that human mind
has natural limitations to succeed in mind-
body problem (R. Penrouse, C. McGinn, S.
Pinker, N. Chomsky).
 N. Chomsky
“The human mind is a biologically given system with certain powers and limits . . . The fact that “admissible
hypotheses” are available to this specific biological system accounts for its ability to construct rich and
complex explanatory theories. But the same properties of mind that provide admissible hypotheses may
well exclude other successful theories as unintelligible to humans. Some theories might simply not be
among the admissible hypotheses determined by the specific properties of mind that adapt us “to
imagining correct theories of some kinds,” though these theories might be accessible to a differently
organized intelligence”.

“The naturalistic temper . . . takes for granted that humans are part of the natural world, not angels, and
will therefore have capacities with specific scope and limits, determined by their special structure. For a
rat, some questions are problems that it can solve, others are mysteries that lie beyond its cognitive
reach; the same should be true of humans, and to first approximation, that seems a fair conclusion. What
we call “natural science” is a kind of chance convergence between aspects of the world and properties of
the human mind/brain, which has allowed some rays of light to penetrate the general obscurity,
excluding, it seems, central domains of the “mental.”

(Chomsky, N. 1975: Reflections on Language).