>> Hi.

My name is Dr Suilin Lavelle.

And today, I'd like to talk you through
some of the core issues in philosophy of
mind.
Unfortunately, we're not going to be able
to answer a lot of the questions that we
pose because that's the nature of
philosophy.
We're looking at questions and we're
trying to work out what good questions
there are to ask.
So, I'm going to point out some of the
questions that philosophers have asked
about the mind and some of the ways to
which we've tried to answer those
questions.
In particular, I want to focus on why
philosophers and psychologists often talk
about the mind using the metaphor of a
computer.
Why has this so gripped the imagination?
Well, first of all, what is it to have a
mind?
Okay.
Well, one is the philosophical technique
that people use when you're trying to find
out more about a particular property, is
that you look at something which
definitely doesn't have that property.
Here's a tennis ball.
What happens to a tennis ball in an
average day?
Well, if it's my tennis ball, it gets
thrown about, it gets bounced on the floor
and it annoys the people in the flat below
me.
Then, I'll take it out in the garden and
chuck it around a bit, leave it on the
ground, the dog will come pick it up.
Maybe it will get rained on, it will get
slightly eroded, it will get soggy, maybe
the rubber will contract and expand a bit.
And that's it for the tennis ball.
Tennis balls don't have a very interesting
existence.
They get beaten about, things happen to
them, but they don't really instigate
things happening in the world.
The second example is a dog.
Now, what kind of day does a dog have?
Well, a dog gets up and the first thing
it's usually thinking about is food.
So, dogs think about food, they think
about staying warm, they think about
finding shelter.
They think about belly rubs or try and
find you and get your attention.
Sometimes, dogs go out into the garden,
find a tennis ball, play with that a bit,
come back, and have a sleep.
That's the day in the life of the average
Scottish dog.
Now, take me, in many ways, I'm like the
dog.
I woke up this morning, and the first
thing I thought was, it's cold.
Don't want to get out of bed.
Like the dog, in my life, I seek warmth
and shelter.
The second thing I thought when I woke up
was, hm, what's for breakfast?
Like the dog, I think a lot about food.
So, what I have in common with dogs allows
certain traits such as wanting food,
wanting warmth, wanting shelter.
And I'm able to change my environment to
bring those things about.
Just like a dogs able to go inside if it
wants to keep warm, I can go into my flat
if I want to keep warm.
Tennis balls, well, they don't have that
same sort of desire to keep warm, they
just stay where they're put.
But while I'm very similar to the dog in
some respects, I'm also quite different.
Here's some ways in which my mind is
different from the dogs.
First of all, I can evaluate my own
thoughts.
So, maybe I'm thinking about the party I
went to last night and I think, God I
really didn't like that guy.
I can't really put my finger on what it
was about him that I didn't like.
But, I didn't like him.
And, then I catch myself thinking these
thoughts and think hey, Suilin, you're
being really prejudice.
Why are you thinking this?
And then, I like think back and think, oh,
he has the mannerisms of someone I didn't
like very much at school.
And I shouldn't hold that against him.
So, I'm wrong to think that this person
isn't very nice.
So then, I had a thought.
Hm, I've got negative reactions to this
person.
But then, I can have a thought about a
thought.
I can think about why I have that thought
and try and evaluate why I have it.
And to be honest, a lot of human gossip is
centered around thinking about our
thoughts.
It's one of our favorite things to do when
we go for coffee with people is, I thought
this, and I thought, why did I think that?
The second thing about human minds which
is interesting, is that we can think about
things.
So, I've just said that we can think about
thoughts, but thoughts aren't the only
things we can think about.
We can make plans for the future.
I can think about states of the world that
don't actually exist yet.
I can think about what I might be like
when I'm 60 and whether I'm going to wear
purple.
I can think about, what it would like if I
owned a 5-legged fire-breathing unicorn?
5-legged fire-breathing unicorns don't
exist, as far as I'm aware, but that
doesn't preclude me thinking about it.
So, as humans, we're able to think about
not only things that are immediate and
around us in our environment that we can
see.
But we can also think about 5-legged
fire-breathing unicorns that don't exist.
And this is a very tricky aspect of human
thought.
It comes to us so naturally that we can
think about things.
I can think about a 5-legged
fire-breathing unicorn.
I could think about what I want for my
lunch later on.
I can think about non-actual things, or I
can think about things here in the room,
like the tennis ball that's on the floor.
But what is it that makes thoughts about
things?
If we're going to give a description of a
thought, how are we going to capture that
aboutness, that this thought is about a
tennis ball, that right now, I'm thinking
about my holiday in Paris.
How can we capture that aboutness?
That's one of the big questions in
philosophy of mind.
The other way in which I'm slightly
different from the dog, is that I have
conscious awareness.
Philosophers like to call this the what it
is like, so there is something it is like
when I sit down and I smell my beautiful
bacon sandwich for breakfast in the
morning.
I start salivating.
There's a distinctive experience, a
distinctive awareness of that smell that I
can experience.
If you like, there's something that it's
like for me to be sitting in a chair and
thinking very hard about a particular
problem.
There's some kind of awareness or
experience that accompanies that thought
process.
So, what is its likeness is the other
tricky aspect in philosophy of mind.
Philosophers of mind are trying to pin
down, how do we characterize that what
it's likeness to have a particular
experience.
Now, of course, I'm not saying that
animals don't have experiences.
I'm just saying that this is a very
distinctive part of human thought and that
if we want to characterize human thought,
then this is something that we need to
taken into account.
So, any story of how the mind works is
going to have to explain why we have this
what it's likeness.
And it's also going to explain how it is
that we're able to think about things.
Think about things that are here in our
environment, that are non-existent, and
even think about our own thoughts.
So, those are the core issues in
contemporary philosophy of mind.
Perhaps, the most iconic philosopher of
mind is the 17th century philosopher, Rene
Descartes.
Now, Descartes was very famous for putting
forward a particular view of how the mind
worked.
Descartes believed that minds had to be
made of fundamentally very different stuff
from physical bodies.
So, he thought that there were two types
of substance in the world.
There's physical stuff, stuff that our
bodies are made out of, stuff that trees
are made out of, irons, metals, things in
the world.
But then, there's this other fundamentally
different substance which was immaterial,
couldn't be studied by science.
It couldn't be tracked by our best
scientific instruments.
It was an immaterial substance and that
was what our minds were.
So, Descartes thought that for every human
being, there were two bits of stuff, if
you like.
Each human be, being has a physical form,
which is your kind of average compounds of
H2O, other chemicals, hormones that make
up the human body.
And in addition to this, there was this
immaterial stuff.
This immaterial stuff, and that was the
mind.
Now, this view is often known as substance
dualism.
Dual because it poses two things, and
substance because it's posing two
different substances.
Material substances, which worldly things
are made out of, including human bodies,
and immaterial substances, which minds are
made out of.
It's also known as Certesian Dualism.
Now, there are some significant problems
with Descartes' view, including problems
with the argument that he uses to argue
for why minds and bodies have to be made
out of fundamentally different things.
And if you'd like to find more about that
particular argument, you can look it up in
the supplementary materials.
However, the problem I'd like to draw your
attention to, is the problem of causation.
Now, the problem of causation was brought
forward to Descartes by Elisabeth of
Bohemia.
Now, she was one of Descartes' pupils, and
a very bright pupil she was as well.
As she wrote to Descarste, asking, if we
have this immaterial substance, then how
doesn't it, how does it affect changes in
the physical body?
So, she says, look, in order to, for
physical things to move, they have to be
moved by another physical thing.
So, for a rock to roll down the hill,
someone has to push it, or perhaps, you
need to have an earthquake if it shakes
it.
But it needs some impetus from another
physical object to start its journey down
the hill.
And she says, look, human beings, they're
exactly the same.
In order for them to move, in order for
them to affect changes in the world, there
has to be some kind of physical impetus
that changes the physical state of us, of
our body, such that we can move.
Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia said, look,
if thoughts are made out of a material
substance, then that substance isn't
physical.
But how can we then interact with the
physical body so as to affect changes in
the world?
Because it's a fundamental feature of
thoughts that the can cause our bodies to
move.
If I think I know the answer to a question
in a test, I'll put my hand up.
What caused me to put my hand up?
Well, it was my thought I knew the answer
to that particular question.
If I want to buy some chocolate, then I'll
set off, and I'll get my coat, and I'll
walk out the door and go to the shops.
What caused that particular behavior?
Well, it was my desire for chocolate.
It was my particular thought.
So, thoughts, beliefs, and desires can
cause particular behaviors.
Behaviors happen in physical bodies.
Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia wanted to
know how on earth an immaterial substance
which was so fundamentally different from
the physical stuff, how this immaterial
stuff could cause a physical thing to
move?
This is known as the problem of causation,
and it's a very tricky one for Descartes
and for substance dualism.