7: Personal Identity and Philosophy of Mind

Question 1

Definition of Philosophy of Mind

Answer 1

The philosophical study of the mind and how the mind works

Question 2

What is the problem of personal identity?

Answer 2

1. What makes a person a person?
2. What makes a person the person they are?
3. What makes a person the same person over time?

Question 3

What are persons?

Answer 3

1. Persons are blameworthy and praiseworthy
2. Persons are bearers of rights and resposibilities

Question 4

What makes a person a person?

Answer 4

Traditional analysis

Something is a person if:

1. it is rational
2. it is autonomous
3. it is a moral agent

Question 5

What makes a person the person they are?

Answer 5

1. their soul
2. their memories
3. their body/brain
4. their psychological traits

Question 6

What makes a person the same person over time?

Answer 6

1. Sameness of soul
2. Continuity of memories
3. Sameness of body/brain
4. Psychological continuity

Question 7

Sameness of soul criterion

Answer 7

1. are you the person you are because of your soul?
2. will you continue to exist after you die?
3. are you the person you are because of your soul?
   
   1. Person^{a (years ago)} is identical to person^{b (today)} only if person^{a and b} have the same soul

Question 8

What is a soul?

Answer 8

1. What properties does the soul have?
   
   1. immaterial
   2. everlasting
2. Are you you because of your soul?
3. Will you continue to exist after your body dies?
4. If yes, you are a dualist.

Question 9

What is dualism?

Answer 9

The metaphysical view that there are 2 fundamentally distinct and irreducibly different kinds of substances: body & mind (soul)

Question 10

Why is dualism appealing?

Answer 10

1. it agrees with an idea of human life that is advanced by many religions
2. it fits very well with the idea that there are certain features of our mental life that cannot be physical.

Question 11

What is Descartes’s foundation for epistemology in his second meditation?

Answer 11

1. That he knows he exists
   
   1. “What is this ‘I’ that I know?”
      
      1. He is not a body = material substance
         
         1. The body changes, but he remains the same
      2. He is a mind = a thinking substance, soul

Question 12

What are some properties of bodies?

Answer 12

1. material
2. occupy space
3. can be perceived by the senses
4. can be moved
5. divisible

Question 13

What are some properties of mind according to Descartes?

Answer 13

1. Immaterial
2. Not occupy space
3. Not perceived by touch, sight, hearing, taste or smell
4. Cannot be moved/changed
5. Indivisible

Question 14

What is Descartes argument for dualism?

Answer 14

1. “I am” is impossible to doubt
2. What I am is either a body or a mind
3. The essence of bodies is extension
4. The essence of minds if thought
5. If I am a thinking substance, I am not a body
6. I am a thinking substance
7. Therefore, I am not a body

Question 15

What are some problems with dualism?

Answer 15

1. Using doubt and property divergence
   
   1. if A has a certain property and B does not, A≠B
   2. You can’t use doubt as a basis for claiming not-identity
2. The mind-body problem

Question 16

What is the mind-body problem?

Answer 16

1. The difficulty of explaining how the mental activities of human beings relate to their living physical organisms
   
   • How then can one’s mind affect one’s body?
   • How can one’s body affect one’s mind?
   • Drinking alcohol impairs my thinking ability
   • Why will damage to the brain result in impaired thinking and cognition?

Question 17

What is monism?

Answer 17

The view that there is only one substance out of which everything is made

Question 18

What are the different kinds of monism?

Answer 18

1. Idealism
2. Pantheism
3. Materialism
4. Physicalism

Question 19

What is idealism?

Answer 19

the view that everything that exists has the character of mind/spirit/psyche

• all that exists are ideas, and not things themselves

Question 20

What is pantheism?

Answer 20

The view that everything that exists is part of the being of God

Question 21

What is materialism?

Answer 21

The view that everything that exists has the character of body or matter

Question 22

What is physicalism?

Answer 22

The view that everything that exists reduce to the things studied by physical science.

• more refined version of materialism
• it includes energy, fields, forces

Question 23

Who is Gilbert Ryle?

Answer 23

• british analytic philosopher
• Oxford
• behaviorist
  
  • nothing over the behavior, no spirituality, etc.
  • equate the mind with the behavior

Question 24

What was Ryle’s aim/purpose on his attack on dualism?

Answer 24

The central principles of the official doctrine are unsound and conflict with the whole body of what we know about minds.

Question 25

What did Ryle meant with "official doctrine"?

Answer 25

1. The Doctrine of the Ghost in the Machine 1. Every human being has (or is) both a mind and a body 2. There is a polar opposition between mind and matter 3. What the mind wills, the legs, arms, and the tongue execute 4. In consciousness and introspection he is directly and authentically appraised of the present states and operations of his mind.

Question 26

What is a category mistake?

Answer 26

1. An error in reasoning in which things of one kind are presented as if they belonged to another, or a property is ascribed to a thing that could not possibly have that property. 1. "Where is the university?" 1. University is made up of other categories below it 2. Ryle thought dualism commited a category mistake.

Question 27

What is the category mistake that the proponents of the doctrine make?

Answer 27

1. We know how to use words such as "process," "cause," "effect," etc. 2. Such words can't be referring to what is unobservable, to use them that way is a category mistake 3. Proponents of the official doctrine use those words to refer to the unobservable mind 4. Therefore, proponents make a category mistake

Question 28

What are some problems with the sameness of soul criterion?

Answer 28

1. How do we know souls exists? 2. How do we know that we have the same soul over time? 3. The mind-body problem 4. Why will damage to your brain effect who you are as a person?

Question 29

Sameness of body/brain criterion

Answer 29

1. The body plays an important in how we recognize and identify as persons 2. Are you the person you are because of your body/brain? 3. Is sameness of body/brain that which makes a person the same person over time?

Question 30

What were some things Hume said about the self?

Answer 30

1. Received view of the self 2. A problem 3. His view of the self 4. Personal identity requires sameness

Question 31

What is Hume's received view of the self?

Answer 31

1. "There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our self."

Question 32

What was Hume's problem with the received view of the self?

Answer 32

1. There is no impression constant and invariable of the self, which is what there must be if any impression gives rise to the idea of the self.

Question 33

What was Hume's view of the self?

Answer 33

1. The self is nothing but " a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux and movement." 1. there is no single, distinct, invariable that is self. 2. it is constantly changing

Question 34

What did Hume mean when he said that personal identity requires sameness?

Answer 34

1. We confuse succession with sameness, but that is a mistake. 1. identity requires sameness 2. for a = b, there can be no change 1. ANY ALTERATION destroys the identity

Question 35

Memory/Consciousness Criterion

Answer 35

1. are you the person you are because of your memories? 2. Is continuity of memories/consciousness that which makes a person the same person over time? 1. Person^a is identical to person^b only if person^b remembers all or at least some of the experiences of person^a

Question 36

What is a person according to Locke?

Answer 36

"A thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself... which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and as it seems to be, essential to it." (p.429)

Question 37

What was Locke's aim in talking about persons?

Answer 37

*To find wherein personal identity consists*, we must consider what a person stands for.

Question 38

What is personal identity according to Locke?

Answer 38

1. "Sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person." (p.430) * not sameness of soul (immaterial substance) * not sameness of body (corporeal substance)

Question 39

Is it possible for 1 body be more than 1 person over the course of his life?

Answer 39

* "it is possible for the same man to have distinct incommunicable consciousness at different times, it is past doubt the same man would at different times make different persons." (Locke) * amnesia or memory loss * part of rational being constitutes a memory of past experiences

Question 40

What are some properties of identity?

Answer 40

1. reflexive (a = a) 2. symmetrical (If a = b, Aa then Ab) 3. transitive (If a = b, and b = c, then a = c)

Question 41

What is the Gallant Officer objection of Thomas Reid?

Answer 41

(a = kid, b = adult, c = old) 1. If a = b and b = c, then a = c 2. If the memory criterion is correct, then c should have the apple memory b has 3. It is false that c has the apple memory 4. Therefore, it is false that a=c * Is it reasonable to say that you have to have *all* the memories?

Question 42

What is Psychological Continuity?

Answer 42

The bundle of beliefs, fears, desires and memories that a person holds over time.

Question 43

Psychological continuity criterion

Answer 43

1. Are you the person that you are because of psychological traits that make up your beliefs, fears, etc.? 2. Is psychological continuity that which makes a person the same person over time? 1. Person^a is identical to person^b only if 1. person^a is psychologically continuous with person^b and 2. person^a is not psychologically continuous with anyone else.