DESCARTES epistemology: the PROBLEM
- can we know anything with certainty?
- everything can be called into doubt
descartes method to solve his problem
-hyperbolic doubt
* finds a belief where there is no doubt
* concludes there are fundamental truths we can know with certainty
what are his solutions
- doubting senses
- the reliability of the senses and dreaming
- what if there were a decietful demon at every corner
why does he think there needs a bridge between the mind and world
- our ideas can misrepresent the world through our perception
cogito ergo sum
i think, therefore i am
- a foundational truth, we are thinking things
what are descartes 2 kinds of substance
-extended- bodies and material things that take up space
-un0extended things- the mind and thinking
what are the 2 types of mind body distinctions
real: reflects a difference between mind and body
conceptual: reflects a difference in only thinking
his premises for the mind body distinction
- My essence consists only in a thinking thing, unextended
- My body is extended
- Therefore, my mind and body are distinct
It is conceivable and then possible, my mind can exist without my body
mind body interaction solutions
2 of them
- causation: interactionism
- mere correlation: parallelism
WEAK AI
computer models can be useful for studying the mind
strong AI
thinking is the manipulation of formal symbols
-the mind is to the brain as the program is to the hardware, no understanding
hard problem of consciousness, how do we account for it
- How do physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience?
How do we account for this? The explanatory gap
reductionism
*a complex system is only the sum of its parts
* leaves out the first person perspective
anti reductionism
- complex things will never be understood
physicalism
-mental events are physical events
-mental states are physical states of the body
the mind-body identity theory
- strongest reductionist theory
- type-type identity
*
type-type identity
- Every mental event of type X is identical with a brain state type Y
- Being in pain, this mental event is identical to a certain brain state
- Tight correlation between mental and brain states
- Conclude they are identical
- Reduction in the strict sense, mental states are eliminated
easy problem of consciousness
-How does the brain utilize information to control behaviour
-How can humans verbalize their internal states
-These questions concern objective mechanisms of the cognitive
Phenomological
- To experience something under subjective experience
the master argument
against reductionism
- piece by piece of each theory and review each one
- Point out one aspect of all pieces to deny, a problem for reductionism itself
Is physicalism false?
explanatory gap problem
- The problem is, it is possible that these cognitive functions occur without any accompanying consciousness
Qualia
- internal subjective components of sense perceptions, what it is like to see or experience the ‘blueness’ of blue or taste the tartness of a lemon
