Mind and Morality Lecture 2: Cartesian Dualism

2.1 Can the Brain Think?

What is the brain? A couple of kilos of grey matter the consistency of yoghurt. Zoom in, and it consists of lots of neurons connected up in complex ways via synapses. The connections across synapses depend on neurotransmitters. Neurons "fire", i.e. electro-chemical pulses run along them. Certain areas of the brain are particularly active (i.e. lots of neural firing) when certain types of mental activity are taking place. Neuroscientists are getting better at predicting and altering behaviour by noting or altering neurological conditions in a person's brain, e.g. by changing the level of a particular neurotransmitter to alleviate depression, or by cutting neural pathways between hemispheres to stop epilepsy. The discovery that the brain is crucially involved in thinking is what makes talk about the mind challenging. As we have seen, attribution of mental states is perfectly ordinary, and we have been explaining behaviour in this way for many thousands of years. But neuroscientists make the revolutionary claim that thinking goes on in the brain - perhaps, that thoughts are events in the brain. For many people, this revolutionary claim seems ludicrous. It cannot be that a lump of grey matter can experience, believe, decide, suffer, etc.. Many people say that thinking requires something spooky and nonphysical, and hence claim that the mind is a non-physical thing. Yet scientists and many philosophers say that the brain can think. Hence, the big problem in the philosophy of mind is: How can this (the brain) ((({{}{})) (((({{}}{{})) ((({}}})) do this (thinking) ? believe choose feel

2.2 Historical Conceptions of Matter Earlier in the course I claimed that, in everyday life, we attribute mental states to humans and higher animals, but not to lower animals, plants and inanimate objects like chairs, nor to machines like cars or automatic doors. But philosophers didn't always think that the behaviour of only humans and higher animals could be explained in terms of mental states. e.g. In the ancient world philosophers claimed that the behaviour of types of ordinary matter is explained in psychological terms, e.g. the water knows where the ocean is and wants to get there, or the fire seeks out the heavens, or nature abhors a vacuum. Are these merely metaphorical attribution of mental states to water, fire, etc.? Not if, along with Aristotle, you think that the parts of physical universe have proper places, and literally seek them out. According to this ancient view, it seems that ordinary matter has the power of self-directed motion. Just as we humans seek out our respective homes, so to the elements seek out their respective homes - they move themselves, not blindly, but towards their goal. We certainly do not think this way now. We claim that water will go blindly wherever physical forces (usually gravity) push it. In contrast, when we go somewhere, we push and steer ourselves. It seems to us that there is huge difference in the appropriate form of explanation of our behaviour and the explanation of the behaviour of the water. What can explain this shift in view between the Ancient Greeks and contemporary Western culture? With the rise of science in the 16th and 17th centuries, our conception of matter changed. Scientists such as Descartes and Newton began to see the natural world as consisting not of matter capable of self-directed motion, but of inert matter being pushed around by physical forces in accordance with the mathematically describable laws of nature. In this natural world, there is no room for spirit or thought, and no room for self-directed motion. The dominant metaphor for describing the universe switched - before the scientific revolution people described the universe as an organism or collection of organisms; after the scientific revolution they described the physical universe as a machine, consisting of interconnected gears and levers. Motion of physical objects might look as if it is intelligent and responsive, yet in fact the physical universe runs blindly on according to mechanical laws. There is no spirit or thought in a clock, and if the natural world is clockwork, likewise there is no spirit or thought in nature.

Hence, we get the idea that matter can't think. The brain consists merely of matter, and matter is incapable of self-directed motion. But to have a mind is to be capable of self-directed motion. Therefore, it cannot be the case that a material object like the brain can think. Another argument against the claim that thoughts are just physical events in the brain comes from the 17th Century philosopher Leibniz: Suppose the mind were a physical machine. Zoom in and what do you see? You see the components of the machine, i.e. cogs and wheels and levers, like the workings of a mill. You do not see thoughts - beliefs, desires, sensations, emotions. But in a mind we do find thoughts. Therefore, the mind is not a physical machine. (This is an early example of the kind of thought-experiment that have become very popular and very controversial in philosophy of mind.)

2.3 Cartesian Dualism

One of the scientists at the forefront of the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century was the Frenchman Ren Descartes (1596 - 1650), who lived in Holland while publishing. He is now more famous as a philosopher, but was also a very important scientist and mathematician. Descartes' project in his book Meditations on First Philosophy primarily an epistemological project (i.e. it is aimed at showing how we have knowledge). In the first Meditation (i.e. the first chapter), Descartes begins doubting things, in order to provide certain foundations for his beliefs, and hence establish genuine knowledge. He discovers that he cannot doubt his own existence (the famous "Cogito, ergo sum", "I think, therefore I am", although this phrase is not written in the Meditations), and then goes on to prove the existence of God (so he thinks) and to place his knowledge on secure rationalist foundations (so he thinks). You have excerpts from Descartes' Meditations in your course reader. In this course, we are not focussing on Descartes epistemic project. Instead, we are interested in the claims he makes in the Meditations about the nature of mind and body.

In the second Meditation, Descartes, having established that he exists, tries to figure out what he is. Originally Descartes says he has a physical body. What is a body? (i.e. What is matter?) According to Descartes, one of its features is that it can be moved in various ways, not by itself but by whatever else comes into contact with it. For, according to my judgment, the power of self-movement, like the power of sensation or of thought, was quite foreign to the nature of a body; indeed, it was a source of wonder to me that certain bodies were found to contain faculties of this kind. (p.22) This is a version of the argument about self-directed motion. Since matter is inert, Descartes wonders, how do some seemingly material objects (i.e. we humans) have the power of self-directed motion? Descartes concludes, eventually, that we humans are not just material objects - we have a non-physical mind that exists independently of the body. Descartes offers other arguments to show that the mind must be separate from the body. For instance, he notes that he can doubt whether he has a body, but he cannot doubt that he has a mind. Later on, in the sixth Meditation, Descartes claims that, because he can conceive of his mind separate from his body (e.g. he can doubt his body exists but not that his mind exists), he knows that his body is not his mind. He claims to know that he (i.e. his mind) could exist without his body. (p.26) Later again, Descartes notes that physical objects have spatial locations and spatial parts. Bodies are to the left or right of other bodies, and can be divided into pieces. However, Descartes argues, mental states are not spatially located (e.g. one thought is not to the left of another), and do not have spatial parts (you cannot chop a belief in half). Hence, it cannot be that thoughts are physical objects. (p.28) Therefore, Descartes concludes that there are two kinds of stuff in the world: material stuff (of which his body is made) and mental, spiritual stuff (which contains his mind). He is thus a dualist. He thinks mind and body are separate entities. The spiritual stuff which dualists think contains mental states is usually referred to as the soul or the spirit. According to Descartes, your soul is a non-physical entity that contains your mental states. Sometimes dualists use the word "mind" to mean "soul". I think this creates confusion. It makes it seem as if neuroscientists say that we have no minds, and this is clearly false: what neuroscientists say is that our mental states are in our brains, and what dualists say is that our mental states are in our non-physical souls.

What dualists (and everyone else) ought to say is that your mind is the collection of your mental states - your beliefs, desires, intentions, memories, emotions, etc. Dualism is not the view that your mind is your soul, but the view that your mental states are contained in your soul, or are states of your soul. It might be helpful to compare the dualists' notion of a soul with a lump of clay, into which many different shapes or signs can be pressed. The clay is not equivalent to the signs, because the signs can be erased or changed, and it is still the same lump of clay. According to early-modern dualists like Descartes, the soul is like a non-physical lump of clay, and the mental states are like the shapes that can be pressed into the clay. They think your mental states are contained in your non-physical soul, or are states of your soul. Dualists, such as Descartes, claim that the soul, and hence the mind, is separate from the body. But Descartes also notes that he (i.e. his non-physical soul containing his mind) is not unaffected by his body. He writes "I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship" (p.26). The physical events which happen in his body are felt in his mind. e.g. If you smash the side of the boat with a hammer the sailor sees that the boat has been damaged, but if you hit Descartes' thumb with a hammer, he feels the pain directly. Moreover, Descartes' mental states and events, e.g. his sensations, desires and decisions can have an effect on the material world. e.g. His pain causes him to scream, and his fear of being hit again prompts him to seize the hammer and throw it out the window (or hit you back). There appears to be two-way causal interaction between mental states/events and physical states/events. Thus we arrive at Descartes' view of the mind: Interactionist Dualism (Cartesian Dualism): - mental stuff and physical stuff are essentially different - physical events cause mental events - mental events cause physical events. Soul and body are separable things that are intimately tied together, and causally interact with each other. How does this interaction take place? Descartes says it happens in the pineal gland in the brain, where animal spirits transmit sensory impressions to the nonphysical soul. NB Cartesian Dualism is a particular theory of mind - one option amongst many.

It is a very popular option (although not amongst philosophers), and is assumed in many religions (e.g. most forms of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism) and works of fiction (e.g. Ghost, Ghostbusters, Casper the Friendly Ghost, The Ghost and Mrs Muir ). However, this conception of the mind is not our starting assumption. Our starting assumption was that we attribute beliefs, desires etc. to humans (and some animals) to explain their behaviour, but do not attribute these states to other things. It is very important to realise that rejecting Cartesian Dualism is not equivalent to saying that the mind does not exist, or that people do not possess mental states. The majority of philosophers claim that dualism is false, but claim that it is true that we have beliefs desires, etc.

2.4 Implications of Cartesian Dualism Exercise: According to Cartesian Dualists, what happens when a) You catch a ball? b) You are born? c) You "astral travel"? d) You deliberate and make a decision? e) You walk in front of a bus? Cartesian Dualism is attractive in some respects: * It does seems to be the case that there is two way causal traffic between mental events and physical events. Decisions make things in the world happen, and things happening in the world cause us to hold beliefs, etc.. * Bodies possess properties that thoughts seem not to possess. e.g. spatial location, mass, size, momentum. Thoughts do not seem to be physical. * If you believe that you are going to go to heaven when you die, you might think that your body must be preserved so you can walk around and see things when you get there (cf. mummification). Alternatively, you might think that your body will be reconstructed for you (but then you literally don't exist in the period between your death and your ressurection, and, arguably, the person walking around in heaven who looks just like you is merely a copy of you). However, those who believe in an afterlife or in

reincarnation usually believe that you do not need a body in order to survive. If you have a soul which is separable from your body, then you can float out of the room and off to heaven or off to your nest body, while your old body is being hacked to pieces by the infidels. Cartesian Dualism fits neatly with these religious views.

2.5 Problems for Cartesian Dualists

The most serious set of objections to Cartesian Dualism relate to causation and the difference between physical and non-physical properties. These are discussed by Keith Campbell, in "Dualisms", in your course reader.

Campbell sets up four incompatible propositions, all of which seem plausible to begin with. He calls this the "inconsistent tetrad". (1) The human body is a material thing (2) The human mind is a spiritual (non-material) thing (3) Mind and body interact (4) Spirit and matter do not interact Any three of these claims can be true, but that would mean that the fourth has to be false. We can understand the various options available by seeing which of the four propositions has been abandoned by each particular theory. Cartesian dualists accept the first three claims, and hence reject (4). Is this plausible? Many critics of Cartesian dualism say that (4) must be true, and hence that Cartesian dualism must be false. * Interaction Problem - How can something with no physical properties (Descartes' spiritual mind) push around physical objects (Descartes' limbs)? How can something non-physical have any causal oomph? Physicists tell us that the only way an object will move is if a physical force is exerted upon it (e.g. collision with another object which has momentum, electromagnetic force, gravity, etc.). If the spiritual mind is not part of the physical world, it has none of these properties. Hence, it cannot push things around. Placing the interaction at a unique point - the pineal gland - does not make the idea of physical/spiritual interaction any more coherent. If it can happen there, why can't it happen everywhere? (Important implication: If thoughts do push things around, they must have physical properties.)

Cartesian Dualists' response: "It seems mysterious that a non-physical object can push around a physical one, but so what? Just because the interaction is mysterious doesn't mean it isn't real." (Is it ok to respond to an objection in this way?)

* Conservation of Energy Problem - Physicists tell us that the total physical energy of a closed system is conserved, and hence remains constant. i.e. Energy is transferred from one body to another, and from one form to another. It does not come out of nowhere. Physicists also tell us that causation consists of a transfer of energy. So, if A causing B is a transfer of energy, a decision causing a bodily movement must be a transfer of energy. But, physicists argue, the physical world is a closed system. The total energy in the physical universe remains constant, and is simply transferred from one physical event or form to another physical event or form. But Cartesian Dualism suggests that mental states from outside of the physical world can cause physical events. This would mean that energy does come from outside of the physical world, and the physical world is not a closed system. Therefore, either physicists are mistaken, or Cartesian Dualism is false. If Cartesian Dualism were true, it would violate conservation of energy laws. But we see no evidence of violation of conservation of energy laws. (On p.352 Campbell argues that not all causation requires a transfer of energy, e.g. the string of pendulum. Is this plausible?) Cartesian Dualists' Response: "The conservation of energy law correctly describes closed physical systems, but we humans are not closed physical systems. When physicists get really good at measuring levels of energy, they will see that new energy comes into our brains, and it is coming from the non-physical mind." (A very bold prediction!) * Overdetermination Problem - If the physical world is causally complete, then there are no gaps in the physical causal chain which stretches from sensory impact to action. The physical processes alone are sufficient for our actions. This is the assumption under which neuroscientists and physiologists work - they trace through an unbroken chain of neural events from sensory input to behavioural output. Campbell calls this the "shadow of physiology" (p.353). But if this physical chain is sufficient to cause our actions, what work is left for a non-physical mind do? Even if there is a non-physical mind, it will not make anything happen that wouldn't have happened otherwise - it will

merely overdetermine what was going to happen anyway. Neuroscience suggests that, if a non-physical mind exists, it is superfluous. If the non-physical mind does cause behaviour which always would have happened anyway, we would have "double causation" in all cases of mind-body interaction. Is this totally implausible? Could it be that mental states always overdetermine actions that would have happened anyway? There are many instances of overdetermination in causal interactions (e.g. shooting plus stabbing overdetermine death), but in these cases we can test the causal power of each individual cause by separating them, e.g. see if the shooting on its own is enough to kill, and if the stabbing on its own is enough to kill. But we can't do this in the case of mental overdetermination. We ought to be suspicious of causal powers that always overdetermine - how could we know they exist? Cartesian Dualists' Response: "Admittedly, we can't test the causal power of the non-physical mind separately from the causal power of the brain, but they both have that power nonetheless! We know this because, by introspection we know that our decisions cause our actions, by science we know that our brain states cause our actions, and from Descartes' arguments we know that our decisions cannot be the same thing as our brain states. The best solution to this puzzle is to say that there are two independent and sufficient causes for every action - a physical cause and a non-physical cause." (Is this plausible?) Alternative Cartesian Dualists' response: "The neuroscientists and physiologists are wrong. In fact, the physical causal chains in our heads are incomplete. They contain gaps. Hence, the physical signals leading up into the brain are not sufficient for causing our actions. We only act when the nonphysical mind jumps in. We will be able to see these gaps in the physical chains of causation when we get better at neuroscience." (Again, a very bold prediction!)

2.6 Alternative Forms of Dualism The causal problems have deeply troubled dualists. In the 17th century, Descartes'

critics were aware of the interaction problem. Some agreed that mind is non-physical and the body is physical, but did not see how they could interact. Hence, a range of interesting (but now very unpopular) alternative forms of dualism were developed (Campbell, p.354-5). Parallelism - Mind and body are different kinds of substance, but can't interact. Why does it look as if they can? Only because the timing of events in both realms coincide, e.g. a hammer hits your thumb the instant before you experience pain. This regular temporal conjunction of mental and physical events creates the illusion of a causal connection between the two events. (cf. Clapping when the streetlights come on. Did your clapping cause the lights to come on? How could you tell?) This story raises a problem: If the events are not causally connected, why do they coincide? Two different answers to this question give us two different versions of parallelism: Occasionalism - Malbranche suggests that God intervenes at every moment to sustain the illusion. God watches the physical events, and adds in appropriate mental events at each instant, like a person watching the visuals in a film and adding in dialogue and sound effects. Pre-Established Harmony - Leibniz suggests that God arranged the two realms so as to run in sync, like two well designed clocks that keep the same time without influencing each other. Once God has set them running, He doesn't need to interfere. Parallelists think claims (1), (2) and (4) are true, and hence they reject claim (3) out of the inconsistent tetrad. Epiphenomenalism - Mental states and events are the inert by-products of physical states/events in the brain. Hence decisions always occur with actions, and seem to cause actions, but really decisions are the effects of brain events, and those brain events (not the decisions) are the causes of our actions. According to epiphenomenalism, mental states and events cannot cause anything physical (which makes the view unattractive). Epiphenomenalists think claims (1) and (2) are true, but reject part of claim (3) and part of claim (4) out of the inconsistent tetrad. Exercise: According to parallelists (of each type) and epiphenomenalists, what goes on when you:

a) You catch a ball? b) Your brain begins functioning for the first time? c) You deliberate, make a decision and act? d) You walk in front of a bus and are squashed?

2.7 Monism: Idealism The interaction problem is deeply troubling, and non-interactionist forms of dualism seem implausible. How could we avoid this problem? By suggesting that there is only one kind of stuff. This view is known as monism, as opposed to dualism. There are two ways of moving from dualism to monism: eliminating spiritual substance or eliminating matter. The second of these monist options is known as idealism or phenomenalism. Idealists claim that everything which exists is a non-physical substance (like a soul) or is a state of such substance, i.e. everything which exists is a non-physical thought, or "idea". In effect, idealists ditch claim (1) from the inconsistent tetrad (although they also ditch claim (3)). (NB This kind of idealism has nothing to do with being idealistic - pursuing your dreams, having high standards, etc.) Since they claim that there are no physical things to be pushed around by thoughts, idealists have no interaction problem. The main motivation for idealism, though, was epistemological (i.e. to do with experience and knowledge). George (Bishop) Berkeley, who wrote in the early 1700's, was a famous exponent of idealism. He argues that we can know only what we experience (empiricism), but that the contents of our experiences are not independently existing physical objects. Rather, they are what we might call "sense data". Thus, he argues, we have no reason to believe that the world is anything more than sensory "ideas". (This is beyond the scope of our course, so don't worry about it.) Idealism is generally considered an extreme and deeply implausible view - to call a theory "idealist" usually is to denigrate it. The main objection to idealism is that it appears to remove the distinction between the way things are in the world and the way things seem. If what exists is merely our sensations, then our sensations could never be misleading. But it is a commonplace fact that often things are not the way they appear. Visual illusions (e.g. the Muller-Lyre illusion) and hallucinations (e.g. pink elephants)

show that we need a distinction between what is there and what looks to be there. Also, we think that objects exist when they are not being looked at. e.g. The tree in the Quad exists at midnight when there is no one around, the Sun and Earth existed before anyone had any sensory experiences. How could this be possible, if idealism were true? (Berkeley's solution was to claim that God observes everything always, and hence that the tree in the Quad exists when we are looking away.) 2.8 Monism: Materialism / Physicalism The most popular way out of the interaction problem is to adopt the other form of monism - to claim that mental states are part of the physical world, and hence can cause and be caused by physical events. This view, which became popular in the 20th century, is called materialism or physicalism. Materialists ditch claim (2) from the inconsistent tetrad. As we have seen, materialists face the big problem: How can a lump of mushy grey matter think, believe, desire, feel , choose, experience, etc.? Materialists claim that mind is not a different substance to matter, or that mental properties are not fundamentally different to physical properties. Materialism (or Physicalism): - Everything which exists has physical properties, and is part of the material world. - If the mind exists, it must be part of the material world, and mental states must be physical states. It is important to differentiate two sub-branches of materialism: The first, vastly more popular kind of materialism suggests that mental states do have causal power, and hence that mental states are real states of the physical world. This position is usually referred to simply as "materialism" or "physicalism". NB Materialists of this kind do not deny the existence of the mind - they do deny the existence of a non-physical spirit or soul, but this is only one suggestion as to what is required for a mind. Materialists say that people do have beliefs, desires, sensations, etc., and that these states cause things to happen. Hence, they say the mind exists and is part of the physical world. These materialists reduce the mind to the body; sometimes they are called reductive materialists. (cf. Other reductions in science: chemical valencies are reduced to electron shell structures, Mendel's genes are reduced to stretches of DNA

molecules.) The second branch of materialism suggests that only physical things exist, that mental states are not physical states, and hence that mental states do not exist. This view is called "eliminative materialism" or "eliminativism". Eliminativism is very radical and most philosophers think it is implausible. When you see or hear the label "materialism", don't assume that it refers to eliminativism. In general, materialists do not think that all physical objects have minds. That view, known as panpsychism (i.e. mind everywhere) is implausible for many reasons, but mainly because we are unable to attribute specific beliefs, desires, decisions, sensations, etc. to rocks, molecules, etc. Most materialists think that only particular kinds of complex arrangements of matter have mental properties, e.g. bodies with brains (and some would say computers).