Descartes and mind-body problem Flashcards
Descartes (1596-1650)
Dualism: distinction mind and rest of material world. Mind = domain of philosophy and religion, body can be studied by science.
- establishment of Mechanism. Rejection of all goals and emotions from anything but human soul. Soul interacts with brain in pineal gland, where the flow of animal spirits through tubes in body produce a mental state in brain.
- localization of mental functions in brain
- innate and derived ideas distinction
Who/what else was important for mechanism
- Galilei: everything composed of corpuscles that come into contact. Experiments of falling bodies and cannonballs, desciribing it in mathematical laws.
- Newton: adds contact-less forces like gravity. First physical laws of gravitational forces that explain why planets orbit sun. Showed science could describe mechanisms underlying reality.
- automata: machines looking like people. People as mechanisms?
- emancipation of burger/artisan class. Technology in science.
- inventions (clock, microscope, telescope, printing press). Showed things previously not understood or not observable existed and could be studied mechanistically.
- dualism. Mechanized the brain and the body.
- Bacon (experiments)
What was effect of mechanization
Mechanization + dualism made people think if the body and later also the mind could also be seen as a machine and studied.Reduction of mental processes to physiology.
Different methods of historians to study history
- progressive: assume knowledge accumulates in a straight line up
- phenomenological: look at sociocultural context in which people were living, what was their method, what did they do wrong and how can you explain why did that
What is modern science according to hooykaas
- mechanistic
- experimental
- not based on any authority
- quantifies in mathematic terms
Practical uses of science vs theory
Practical use knowledge often precedes, afterwards the process (theory) becomes known
An argument of science authority is derived of the practical use, but this is wrong bc often something is practically used thats in theory wrong, or something which should be right in theory does not work in practice.
How did Descartes change the mind body problem?
It used to be in one direction: mind influences body
He said it does both, and body influences mind a lot too. So the body was also believed to now be responsible for perception, movement etc.
Which other important theory was Descartes’
Undulatio reflex, precursor of SR psychology. Reflex action theory. Unconscious reflex, mechanic.
3 critical insights that made scientific revolution happen according to Brysbaert
- awareness that humans could be understood as machines
- heliocentrism
- awareness that many things could be described with mahetmatical laws, laws of physics
Descartes: empiricism or nativism?
Innate ideas and derived ideas. Innate ideas notion inspired Gestalt, eg God, intuition, deduction,, the self, produced by consciousness.
Galileo’s primary and secondary sense properties: what are they and why are they important
Primary sense: has an external base like vision of forms, motion
Secondary sense: subjective things that only exist in the mind like smell, taste, color, sound
The secondary sense properties create consciousness, for it is only in consciousness that they exist. A New World populated by Ideas, the Way of Ideas. (realism vs idealism?)
Psychology would then fill the empty spot to be the study of this consciousness and its relation with the physical world. (Descartes’ dualism)
Descartes’ way of introspection and implications for psychology
In Cartesian Theatre, thinking about the image on the projection screen as an image without reference to the actual outside object. Inspecting the image is inspecting your own consciousness as an object. The self is pointlike observer in the theater, separeted from experience. This makes it possible to study experience.
Psychology was then defined as the reflective, introspective study of sensations/experience (nonexperimental in contrast to natural philosophy)
How did Descartes’ influence Gestalt
In le homme, he talked about a theory of eyes, nerves, brain to deliver the signal of vision as the addition of all the little points on the retina. Whole = sum in his view
Other ideas on on consciousness and the self?
Hume: there is no self, it is merged with consciousness itself, self is just sum of all its ideas
Kant: the self is a logical necessitiy, and can do great things
Cognitive and behaviourists: ignore the self and consciousness, we dont need it to study what we do
Freud: the self is the ego
Problems with Cartesian philosophy (dualism) and proposed solution by descartes
- homunculus problem: how do the mind and body interact (i.e. what happens between the screen and the homunculus in the chair) -> animal spirits and pineal gland
- the problem of other minds: how do i know other peoples have minds? -> language
