Metaphysics notes - class Thurs. Jan. 17th

DESCARTES' PILOT/SHIP ANALOGY (EXAM SUBJECT)
"Our mind and body aren't related like this - it's much more intimate," "I" only refers to mind or soul, you are a thinking thing joined to a body, the body is the way consciousness expresses itself in the physical world, not WHO you are.
example: "I" need to lose weight (no)
"My body needs to lose weight(yes)

DESCARTES' VIEW ON ANIMALS
"The mind is the seed of consciousness, animals don't have souls, they don't have a consciousness, they don't feel pain." (Borrowdale)
*Animals are "automata," that is, they have no feelings of pain, so can be compared to a sophisticated, biological machine like humans, but without a soul.
example: mechanical wind-up clock.
opposition example per Borrowdale: Alex, Irene Pepperberg's reading parrot.

(arguments for and against animals' memory)
(class discussion facilitated by Borrowdale raising question: do animals know the difference between right and wrong?)
*terms "altruism", "symbiotic relationships" brought to the table.
*right/wrong, good/bad relative terms.
*great point: similarities confronted, differences ignored.
"Given that human and non-human animals behave similarly, it seems that either we must say animals have souls or human beings don't." (Borrowdale)
It's not size, but functional complexity that matters here.
"Why is it that complexity of the nervous system correlates with the complexity of the consciousness, especially if consciousness resides in an immaterial soul?" (Borrowdale)

MORE ON CARTESIAN INTERACTIONISM
The mind and body causally effect one another: see pizza, get hungry/squeamishness at the suggestion of pain (power of suggestion)/placebo effect/hypnosis
*Descartes' gravity analogy: what is gravity? "We don't know how it works, but we know that it works, and just because we don't know how it works doesn't mean it doesn't work or exist at all." (Borrowdale)

DUALIST ANSWERS TO THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM
1) Cartesian interactionism
2) Parallelism (occasionalism - Leibniz)
(Leibniz-inventor of calculus at same time as Newton.)
*"The mental and physical are two parallel processes which appear to, but never actually interact." (processes which run side by side)
*"Pre-established harmony" view:
MENTAL PHYSICAL
causes only mental causes only physical
things things

(Borrowdale's example:)
he intends to stroke he strokes his beard
his beard at 3:40:02PM at 3:40:03PM on
on 1/17/02 1/17/02

Further analogy: movie-sound/picture, foreign films, lips not matching sound.
3) Epi-phenomenalism:
*"The physical causally effects the mental, but not vice-versa."
*"Thoughts, feelings, emotions are merely a by-product of brain activity."
Borrowdale's gas gauge analogy:
contents in gas tank directly affect where the gas gauge pointer sits, but just because the gas gauge points to half-full doesn't mean the tank is going to comply and automatically stay half-full.