Reading question 1

Question

LOOKING THROUGH THE DUALIST'S LENS

1. How does the dualist's view of the mind and body imply that scientific, physical explanations of persons are incomplete?

2. How does Descartes's dualism allow for deterministic explanations of nature while preserving human freedom?

3. How does Descartes's dualism allow for a compromise between science and religion?

4. How does Descartes's dualism serve to explain immortality?

5. If you were a disciple of Descartes, how would you improve on his explanation of the interaction of the mind and body? 6. Artificial intelligence programs are now able to play superior chess and do many other tasks that duplicate what human intelligence can accomplish. What would be Descartes's view of artificial intelligence programs? Would he agree that computers can think? Why?

7. In what ways is Chalmers in agreement with Descartes? In what ways do they seem to differ?

Examining The Strengths of Dualism

Positive Evaluation

Q1. Descartes's view allows him to accept the scientific account of the physical world while retaining traditional notions of the mind and human freedom. How important is this advantage?

Q2. Descartes's view claims that the properties of matter could never produce something as mysterious and marvelous as consciousness or self-awareness, because these qualities could come only from a type of reality that is nonmaterial. Do you think Descartes's theory explains consciousness better than any physicalist theory ever could?

Negative Evaluation

1. Descartes had a major problem explaining how a nonspatial mind can influence a spatially located brain. Do you think Descartes's account of where and how mind-body interaction takes place is satisfactory? If not, can you even conceive of another explanation that does not fall into the same problems?

2. If the mind is the seat of our mental life and consciousness whereas the body is simply a machine made out of flesh, as Descartes thought, why does physical damage to the brain have such a dramatic effect on a person's mental life?

3. What happens to your mind when you are knocked unconscious or are given anesthesia? Both situations cause a disruption to the brain's normal functioning. But if the mind is separate from the body, we would expect that in these situations we would continue to experience mental awareness even though the connections between the mind, the brain, and the body were temporarily impaired. If the real you is your mind, and your mind is identical to your conscious mental life, as Descartes maintains, then where does your mind (and you) go when you are unconscious?

2.3 PHYSICALISM

1. Why is it not a good idea to have an all-night party before a big test? Why do the labels on cough and allergy medicines caution against driving or operating machinery while taking the medicine? Why do most people have trouble concentrating in class after they have had a big meal? What effects do multiple cups of coffee tend to have on a person's mental state or temperament? Why do these sorts of changes in our bodies affect not only our physical performance but our mental performance as well?

2. Why do animals such as frogs or rabbits have relatively small brains, whereas highlevel mammals such as dogs, apes, and humans have larger and more complex brains? Why is there a correlation between the size and complexity of the brain and the level of intelligent behavior exhibited by a species?

3. You think to yourself, "I am thirsty." You then decide to get a drink. Obediently, your hand reaches out to grab a glass of ice water. How did your thoughts produce this motion in the physical world? What sort of links in the causal chain run from your thoughts to your body's muscles?

4. We know that our nervous system automatically governs such functions as our digestion and heartbeat apart from our conscious control of them. However, we like to think that our mental life is under our conscious control. But how do we explain the fact that images, thoughts, or unpleasant memories spontaneously intrude into our consciousness? Why is it that thinking about one idea often will cause another idea to spring up unexpectedly within our mind? How can the contents of our minds be affected by causes that we do not voluntarily control?

Can you please give solutions to all questions please use your own words no copy from the internet

Answer 1

Descartes was skeptical of everything, but built his philosophy on one axiom, "I think therefore I am," so he placed thinking, consciousness as the basis of his philosophy of mind

Take a philosophy course called "Philosophy of Mind." Major materialist view is the Mind/Brain identity theory and some category mistake, a misuse of language to distinguish the two. They call Descartes' dualism the "ghost in the machine."

Major problem with the materialist view is consciousness. there is no fully adequate theory to explain it. Epiphenominalism tries to futilely analogize it to smoke to a fire.

another view is Bishop Berkeley where there is nothing material, as all is perception, a theory called Idealism. To Berkeley nothing exists except perception and ideas. Solipcism is considered the most defenseible view or the hardest to refute. It holds there is only your own perception and no reason to believe in other minds, it's all just you and a misleading image that others or their minds exist.

Oddly, Einstein and quantum physics have led to a further erosion of materialism, as what's material has slowly disappeared. Energy is equivalent to matter. Matter is now just energy at the quantum level. The material is an illusion at higher levels of perception.

then there's information which seems to exist independent of matter or mind. a 3rd category of existence.

or numbers which exist but no in the material world, and there's a philosophical argument among mathematicians whether numbers and math concepts exist independently of the human mind or whether they're just artificial constructs of the mind.

then there's the placebo effect, mind over matter in curing some diseases, a mind body connection which also works in reverse the mind can make the body sick with mental stress and anguish.

then there's the Twins' paradoxes. Two identical twins share similar thoughts, feel pain when the other twin feels pain, as if their separate minds were connected in some cyber space.

It's really the hard core deterministic materialist who would believe AI and robots can think and have "minds," as they believe the mind is identical to the body/brain the physical manifestation of what dualists or idealists call a "mind"

then there's the joke about a super computer robot. The programmer feeds it all the information in the world, then types out a question, "Does God exist?" the AI super computer robot answers: "There is now."

Watch the movie "The Ghost" starring Patrick Swayze, Whoopi Goldberg and Demi Moore, for other ideas on how the ghost interacts with the material world. It's a romance comedy, as well as partly a horror movie.

Quantum physicist Hugh Everett used the parallel worlds interpretation of quantum physics, that alternative universes exist, and when we biologically die in this world, we survive in an alternative universe. Or read Prof. Gary Schwartz The Afterlife Experiments where he contacts the dead. He received a $2 million grant from the National Institute of Health to study communication with the dead. Schwartz office is located right next to a university building where a ghostly image of a woman appears on an upper floor, believed to be the ghost of a long deceased woman whose burial spot was disturbed nearby by construction.

Basic way to reconcile hard core materialist determinism with free will is John Stuart Mill's soft determinism or "compatiblism" There are also two Princeton mathematicians who prove free will from quantum physics in a peer reviewed math journal article.

there may also be 3 types of general views: Determinism, Free Will and Indeterminism (Random Chance) Darwinists/evolutionists, largely atheists, seem to go under the 3rd category, Indeterminism, that things just happen by chance, seemingly violating the 2nd law of thermodynamics and entropy.

Or there's limited determinism. We all are physically determined , completely in many respects, time of birth, place of birth, economic limitations, physical appearance, but in other respects there is a degree of free will. All legal systems operate under the belief in some free will. and no matter how much some hard core determinists claim to believe in no free will, their interactions with other human reveals an unavoidable belief otherwise. we all judge other people, to some extent.