CHAPTER THREE METAPHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND Key Terms Metaphysics: The study of the most fundamental nature

of things. A subfield of philosophy which treats first principles. Typical metaphysical questions involve the existence of a deity, the nature of causality, and the mind/body problem. The word itself is sometimes said to derive from a mere accident, in which the text of Aristotles (untitled) treatise on First Philosophy was randomly bound after (meta in Greek) the volume entitled Physics in an early edition of the Philosophers works. Ontological: Relating to or based upon being or existence. Dualism: The theory that there are two fundamentally different kinds of things in the world, bodies and minds. Materialism: The theory that physical objects in space are the only things that exist. Everything else is simply a combination of physical objects. Simply put, the doctrine holding that physical bodies are the only things that exist. The history of the view admits of rather more complex articulations, however. For Democritus, for example, materialism consisted in viewing as real only what he called atoms, or un-cut-ables. Aristotle opposed it to the notion of Form, while for Berkeley, it was any view other than his Idealism, or immaterialism. The notion has become wedded to the Mind/Body problem in recent times, and thus to the question of Behaviorism. Idealism: The theory that minds or spirits are all that exist. Physical objects are only ideas in minds. In Berkeleys system, the doctrine holding that the only things that could be known to exist are what is immediately perceived: to wit, ideas. Berkeley acknowledges, however, that by inference we can gather some notion of the subjects of these ideas-spirits (i.e., minds) and God. There are other forms of Idealism, however, particularly the absolute idealism of postKantian German philosophy. For Fichte, and for Hegel after him, Kants distinction between noumena and phenomena was mistaken: such distinctions can only be drawn within consciousness, and thus (especially for Hegel) the object of consciousness, consciousness itself, and self-consciousness apparently reduce to the same thing (the Absolute). Consciousness: Being aware of ones self. Self-Consciousness: An awareness of ones own awareness. Free Will: Voluntary choice or decision. Determinism: The theory that acts of the will are causally determined by preceding events or natural laws.

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Free (Hobbes notion): Nothing external to an individual stands in the way of him doing what he is inclined to do. Autonomous: Having the right or power of self-government. Mind-Body Problem: The problem of explaining the exact relationship between our minds and physical bodies in space. Contingent Identity: When two terms describe the same thing or phenomena; this identity must be discovered by science. Key Figures Democritus (460 B.C.E. to 370 B.C.E.): Greek philosopher who traveled in the East, and was the most learned thinker of his time. He wrote many physical, mathematical, ethical, and musical works, but only a few pieces of these works survive. His atomic system assumes an infinite multitude of everlasting atoms, from whose random combinations springs an infinite number of successive world-orders in which there is law but not design. Diogenes Laertius, whose testimony is often more entertaining than reliable, relates that Democritus was schooled in theology and astronomy by Magi from Xerxes train. Petronious describes him as an herbalist. Among the Ancients, he was called the Laughing Philosopher or, more bluntly, the mocker. Hobbes, Thomas (1588 to 1679): Political philosopher, born in England, UK. He studied at Oxford, then he traveled widely. After being introduced to Euclidian geometry, he thought to extend its method into an inclusive science of man and society. Worried by the civil disorders of his time, he wrote several works on government, including his masterpiece of political philosophy, Leviathan (1651). He also translated Homer and Thucydides, and wrote a history of the English Civil War. Oddly, Hobbes brags about his timidity in reference to the struggle, claiming to be one of the first to flee England for France. Malcolm, Norman (1911 to 1990): Philosopher; born in Kansas. Earning a Harvard PhD, he joined the Princeton University faculty in 1940; after serving in the U.S. Navy, he spent most of his remaining American career at Cornell University, and then emigrated to Great Britain. He wrote a 1958 memoir of Ludwig Wittgenstein, who significantly influenced his own philosophy. Among the many charming details therein is a picture of the philosopher at workor more accurately, stumpedby the written word, cheeseburger. Malcolm also wrote a book, Nothing is Hidden, about the later Wittgensteins criticism of his earlier work. Shakespeare, William (1564? to 1616?): Playwright and poet, considered by many to be the greatest writer in history. Little is known of the writer to whose work the Shakespeare name has been applied. Modern scholars debate whether the Shakespeare of Stratford upon Avon, who was apparently an illiterate merchant, actually wrote the works attributed to him; some believe the author of Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and scores of other works was Francis Bacon, while some evidence points to Edward de Vere. Presumably, this speculation is prompted by views like Ben Jonson, who accused him of small Latin and less Greek.
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Swift, Jonathan (1667 to 1745): Clergyman and satirist, born in Ireland. He studied at Dublin, then moved to England. During a visit to Ireland, he was ordained in the Anglican Church (1695). He wrote several poems, then turned to satire, exposing religious and intellectual complacency in A Tale of a Tub (1704), and produced a wide range of political and religious essays and pamphlets. His world-famous satire, Gulliver's Travels, appeared in 1726. Despite declining mental powers in his dotage, he preserved enough (non-) sense to leave a provision in his will for a hospital for idiotes and lunaticks in Ireland, for, as he wrote, no other nation wanted it so much. The Principal Philosopher: Hobbes The central question of this chapter, posed three different ways in the course of the chapter, is the material basis of consciousness, or to put it somewhat differentlythe possibility of explaining the self in physicalistic fashion. Hobbes himself was the most thoughtful, thoroughgoing, inventive materialist of the classical period of modern philosophy. His ingenious accounts, in atomistic terms, of familiar psychological phenomena have never been surpassed for their cleverness, for all that the scientific study of the brain is worlds beyond anything he could imagine. This same question is raised again in the debate over free will and determinism, for the plausibility of the determinist position derives mainly from the fact that consciousness is grounded in the nervous system, which, as a construction of bodily cells, must obey the customary laws of physics. Despite the contemporaneous character of the questions he asks, Hobbes is of course very distant from us, and that presents a problem for an introductory class. If I may revert once again to my favorite Star Trek analogy, Hobbes is as distant from us as we are from the characters of that television showfour centuries, more or less. So some way must be found to bridge the gap, especially since Hobbes gorgeous seventeenth-century English is well nigh incomprehensible to many of our students. The materials in the last section of the chapter may help students to make some of the connections. Oliver Sacks striking accounts of clinical neurological pathologies allow us to see, in modem dress, just the sort of connection between the physical and the psychological that Hobbes was arguing for. If you can get hold of a copy of the Robin Williams movie Awakenings, taken from another of Sacks books, you might screen it for your students as a way of bringing the subject to life. Suggested Lecture Outlines Lecture One: Metaphysics and Hobbes Materialism I. A. B. The Nature of Metaphysics First Philosophy is the study of the most fundamental categories of the real. Three theories of the nature of the real:

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1. 2. 3. II. A. B. C.

Idealism is the theory that what is truly real has the nature of ideas, Plato, as a classical Idealist. Materialism is the theory that matter in space is the only reality. The classical atomists of Greek philosophy. Dualism is the theory that there are two fundamentally different kinds of reality, ideal and material. Descartes dualism. Hobbes Materialism Brief account of Hobbes lifethe English Civil War, the Restoration, Hobbes exile to France and the composition of his greatest work, Leviathan. Consciousness as a movement of atoms. Are computers conscious? Could they be? Could there be consciousness without matter? How? What would it be like? Hobbes attempt to explain desire and aversion, love and hatred, as nothing more than a movement of atoms.

Lecture Two: Free Will and Determinism I. A. B. C. II. A. B. C. III. A. B. Hobbes Account of Will, Deliberation, and Choice Review of Hobbes account. Deliberation as an oscillation of atoms. The complete determination of all action by physical motions of bodies, in conformity with the laws of nature. The Gulliver's Travels example as a way of explaining what Hobbes means by motions too small to be observed. Objections to Hobbes Account The inner, subjective sense we all have that we are genuinely free to choose. The apparent impossibility, if Hobbes is right, of making sense of our evaluations of people, and their actions. If everything is physically determined, why do we sometimes praise and sometimes blame? Humes reply to this objection: We make predictions of human behavior all the time, and this would be impossible if behavior were not causally determined and regular. Kants Defense of Freedom of the Will The distinction between appearance and reality (Chapter Six). Causal determination belongs to the realm of appearance. The freedom of the conscious person belongs to the realm of reality.

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Lecture Three: The Clinical Evidence of the Link Between the Physical and the Mental I. A. B. Commonplace Examples of the Mental/Physical Link Psychological causes of physical responses: blushing, fainting when you hear bad news, sexual arousal, adrenaline flows at the sight of danger. Physical causes of psychological responses: drug-induced alterations of moods, physically induced visual perceptions (i.e., seeing), an elevation of mood caused by coffee, or by fresh air, or by a good nights sleep. Clinical Examples of the Mental/Physical Link Oliver Sacks reports of odd psychological consequences of traumas to the nervous system. The loss of cognitive abilities as the result of a severing of the link between the left and right brain. What do these examples tell us? What is the nature of the mental?

II. A. B. C.

Goals for Students and Teacher Primary Goals: 1. 2. 3. To develop a coherent understanding of Hobbes materialist account of psychological phenomena. To grasp the essential features of the problem of free will and determinism, and to understand some of the ways in which philosophers have dealt with it. To grasp the connection between the metaphysical theories of idealism, materialism, and dualism, and the ethical discussion of responsibility and freedom.

Secondary Goals: 1. 2. To get a sense of the way in which philosophical problems reappear in modern dress as scientific knowledge advances. To make connections between metaphysics and the science of psychology, and begin to see how facts and philosophical analysis interact.

Suggested Teaching Techniques 1. If you have a colleague who deals with computers and artificial intelligence, invite him or her in to talk about whether computers can think. Perhaps have a computer play a chess game with a student. Alternatively, invite in a specialist from psychology who deals with the neurophysiology of thought processes, and confront the students with the question, how does the brain think?

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2.

3.

4.

Make as many connections as possible with material earlier in the book. This would be a good time to go back to Chapter One and ask students to connect the discussion there of different sorts of philosophical enterprises with what has been talked about in subsequent chapters. Try to get students to imagine science-fiction scenarios in which some of the usual assumptions about space, time, and the relation of mind to body are apparently controverted. Use this as a way to explore the nature of the questions metaphysicians ask. Are they empirical? Methodological? A priori? If your college or university has a program in clinical psychology or neurology, perhaps you can get a colleague to come in and discuss the Sack readings from that point of view, adding his or her own examples to those in the text.

Contemporary Application: Do Computers Think? This reading ought virtually to teach itself: The obvious first step is to set up the classroom as an experimental laboratory and actually run Turings test. Try the gimmick of seeing how well a male and female student can conceal their true sex from a questioner. Then let students devise their own versions of Turings test, and stage a running of it. These days, there is no telling what level of computer sophistication you are liable to find in a philosophy class. I have a graduate student who built his own personal computer and routinely writes complicated programs on it. So find out what resources you have in your class, and then tailor the pedagogy to fit. It might be provocative to stage the debate in the reading with your own students. See whether they can come up with better arguments and counter-arguments than the characters in the selection do. Note particularly Hofstadters treatment of the wetness issue. How significant is it that computers are physically unlike human beings? Our students easy familiarity with the notion of space travel and alien intelligence makes it possible to raise in an interesting way a question that bears directly on the issue of whether computers can think. Suppose we were to encounter what appeared to be intelligent beings from another star system, in which physical characteristics reminded us more of our own computers than of ourselves. How would we go about determining whether they were living, sentient, conscious rational beings or mere machines? Would Turings test do the trick, or might its failure simply show us that we did not know enough about this new life form?

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Essay Questions 1. Hobbes was both a materialist and a believing Catholic. But if materialism is true, what does that suggest about the nature (and location) of God? About the possibility of life after bodily death? Some say we should count a machine as conscious if it mimics human behavior well enough to fool actual humans. (Imagine a chat room in which one participant is a computer posing as a human) Do you agree with this criterion of consciousness? Why or why not? What would a machine have to do before you would consider it conscious? If people are just complex machines, what does that suggest about the moral status of machines? Could I be committing murder every time I turn off my computer? Explain your answer. If Kant is right, and the laws of science only apply to the world of appearance, does s science have any real value? Should we care about, for example, the laws of physics, if they don't apply to the realm of ultimate reality? Explain your view. Explain Hobbes notion of what a voluntary action is. Using an example or two, show how Hobbes idea of voluntary action differs from our everyday notion. Explain how a materialist, a dualist, and an idealist might explain the way in which the formation of a will to do something leads to a voluntary action (such as, say, your reaching out for a cup of coffee) taking place. Which of these accounts seems most appealing to you? Does your chosen view face any philosophical difficulties? Explain. Frank Jackson poses the following thought experiment: Mary, a brilliant scientist, has lived her entire life in a black- and-white room, investigating the outside world through a black-and-white TV monitor. As a student of perception, she masters all the physical phenomena inherent in our experiences of, for instance, a red apple, a blue sky, and so on (i.e., all the data involving retinal stimulation by certain light wavelengths, etc.). Imagine that Mary is suddenly given (perhaps as a result of a government grant) a color TV monitoror, happier still, imagine that she is freed from her black-and-white cell. Will Mary learn anything new with her new equipment? If so, isnt there something beyond the merely physical which she has been heretofore missing? Leibniz asserts the following in his Monadology: Suppose that there be a machine, the structure of which produces thinking, feeling, and perceiving; imagine this machine enlarged but preserving the same proportions, so that you could enter it as if it were a mill. This being supposed, you might visit its inside, but what would you observe there? Leibniz thinks there must be more to perceiving than the perceiving brain. Is there something to his argument: Or, as has been objected, does it fall prey to charges of assuming the whole is only the sum of its parts?

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