Notes for Metaphysics
1-17-2002

Mind-Body problem dualist answers;

~Descartes: “You are a thinking thing joined to a body.”
~Pilot & ship analogy: our mind and body are not related like this, it’s much more intimate.
~Animals are automata; no soul, no consciousness, no pain. (machine)

~Reading parrot, Alex, trainer, Irene Pepperberg from the University of Arizona.

~Given that humans and non-human animals behave similarly it seems that either we must say that animals have souls or human beings do not.

~Why is it that complexity of nervous system correlates with the complexity of consciousness? (Especially if consciousness resides in an immaterial soul)

~Cartesian Interactionism:
The mind and the body causally effect one another.
Body affects Mind.
Mind affects Body.
~Analogy with Gravity:
“We don't know how it works, but this doesn't mean it doesn't exist.”


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1. Cartesian Interactionism.
2. Parallelism (occasionalism)-Leibniz. The mental and physical are two parallel processes which appear to, but never actually interact. “Pre-established Harmony”

~Mental things cause other mental things
~Physical things cause other physical things.
MOVIE ANALOGY
Two separate tracks ordained by God.

3. Epiphenomenalism- the physical causally affects the mental but not vise-versa. The mental is a by-product of brain activity. (Brain activity is the physical.)