The document discusses the identity theory as it relates to the mind-body problem. It provides 3 key points:
1) The identity theory claims that mental states are identical to brain states - for example, that pain is identical to C-fiber activation in the brain. It aims to reduce the mental realm to the physical realm.
2) Advantages of the identity theory include that it solves Descartes' mind-body dualism and allows derivation of mental causation from the physical. However, it violates Leibniz's Law by treating mental and physical properties as identical yet different.
3) The document outlines the identity theory and compares it to alternatives like dualism, discussing thinkers like Place, Smart,
The document discusses the identity theory as it relates to the mind-body problem. It provides 3 key points:
1) The identity theory claims that mental states are identical to brain states - for example, that pain is identical to C-fiber activation in the brain. It aims to reduce the mental realm to the physical realm.
2) Advantages of the identity theory include that it solves Descartes' mind-body dualism and allows derivation of mental causation from the physical. However, it violates Leibniz's Law by treating mental and physical properties as identical yet different.
3) The document outlines the identity theory and compares it to alternatives like dualism, discussing thinkers like Place, Smart,
The document discusses the identity theory as it relates to the mind-body problem. It provides 3 key points:
1) The identity theory claims that mental states are identical to brain states - for example, that pain is identical to C-fiber activation in the brain. It aims to reduce the mental realm to the physical realm.
2) Advantages of the identity theory include that it solves Descartes' mind-body dualism and allows derivation of mental causation from the physical. However, it violates Leibniz's Law by treating mental and physical properties as identical yet different.
3) The document outlines the identity theory and compares it to alternatives like dualism, discussing thinkers like Place, Smart,
The document discusses the identity theory as it relates to the mind-body problem. It provides 3 key points:
1) The identity theory claims that mental states are identical to brain states - for example, that pain is identical to C-fiber activation in the brain. It aims to reduce the mental realm to the physical realm.
2) Advantages of the identity theory include that it solves Descartes' mind-body dualism and allows derivation of mental causation from the physical. However, it violates Leibniz's Law by treating mental and physical properties as identical yet different.
3) The document outlines the identity theory and compares it to alternatives like dualism, discussing thinkers like Place, Smart,
Blutner/Philosophy of Mind/Mind & Body/Identity Theory
Mind & Body
The Identity Theory
Cartesian Dualism Mental Cause
Duality
Parallelism Occasionalism Epiphenomenalism
Causal Closure
Idealism Double-aspect theory Logical Behaviourism Identity Theory Functionalism
Blutner/Philosophy of Mind/Mind & Body/Identity Theory
Mind-brain correlations Common observations (alcohol and other drugs) and neuropsychological evidence (electroencephalography, magneto-encephalography, evoked potentials, positron emission tomograms) suggest strict correlations between mental occurrences and neurological goings-on in the brain. Ideally: The mind-brain correlation thesis Each mental state (or process) correlates with some neurological state (or process) Different mental states correlate with different neurological states (though one and the same mental state can have different neural correlates)
Blutner/Philosophy of Mind/Mind & Body/Identity Theory
Four possible reactions
1. The correlations are based on causal interactions between minds and brains (Cartesian Dualism) 2. The correlations are the result of epiphenomenal by-products of neural activity (like the shadow of a billiard ball rolling across the table (Epiphenomenalism) 3. Each mental and material event is willed by God in such a way that they occur in orderly patterns (Parallelism, Occasionalism) 4. Mental occurrences can simply be taken as brain processes (Identity Theory)
Counting silent
Counting aloud
Blutner/Philosophy of Mind/Mind & Body/Identity Theory
The identity thesis
Mental states/processes are brain states/processes. Hence, we can identify sensations and other mental phenomena with (physical) brain processes.
pain = C-fiber activation.
Visual consciousness = continuous firing in cortex area V1.
Some philosophers hold that though experiences are brain processes they nevertheless have fundamentally non-physical, psychical, properties, sometimes called qualia. The identity thesis is denying the existence of such irreducible non-physical properties. We can take the identity theory (in its various forms) as a species of physicalism. However, this is an ontological , not a translational physicalism. It would be absurd to try to translate sentences containing the word brain or the word sensation into sentences about electrons, protons and so on. Nor can we so translate sentences containing the word tree. After all tree is largely learned ostensively, and is not even part of botanical classification. If we were small enough a dandelion might count as a tree. Nevertheless a physicalist could say that trees are complicated physical mechanisms.
Blutner/Philosophy of Mind/Mind & Body/Identity Theory
Proponents of the identity theory
H. Feigl: The "Mental" and the "Physical" (1958) J.J.C. Smart: Sensations and Brain Processes (1959) U.T. Place: Is Consciousness a Brain Process? (1956) D.M. Armstrong: A Materialist Theory of the Mind (1968) See J. J. C. Smarts paper The Identity Theory of Mind in the Online Reader
Blutner/Philosophy of Mind/Mind & Body/Identity Theory
Motivation
Simplicity (Occams razor): Identification in general reduces the number of entities
and thereby enhances ontological simplicity. Simplest way to explain the causal efficiency of mental states in agreement with the assumption that the domain of physical phenomena is causally closed. Allows speculations about law-like psycho-physical correlations (consider the phenomenon of colour perception, for example).
Blutner/Philosophy of Mind/Mind & Body/Identity Theory
The concept of identity: Three kinds of empirical identification
Identification of two observable entities
The morning star is the evening star (cf. Frege)
Uluru is Ayres Rock (travelling in Australia)
Identification of an observable with a theoretical phenomenon
Water is H 2O (on earth)
Temperature is mean kinetic energy of molecules Lightning is an electrical discharge
Identification a functionally defined phenomenon with a theoretical phenomenon
Gene is DNA Pain is C-fiber firing Consciousness is a particular brain process
The logical objections which might be raised to the statement consciousness is a
process in the brain are no greater than the logical objections which might be raised to the statement lightning is a motion of electric charges. [Place 1954]
Blutner/Philosophy of Mind/Mind & Body/Identity Theory
Type vs. Token Identity
When asking whether mental things are the same as physical things, or distinct from them, one must be clear as to whether the question applies to concrete particulars (e.g., individual instances of pain occurring in particular subjects at particular times) or to the kind (of state or event) under which such concrete particulars fall. Token Identity theories hold that every concrete particular falling under a mental kind can be identified with some neurophysiological happening or other: instances of pain, for example, are taken to be not only instances of a mental state (e.g., pain), but instances of some physical state as well (say, c-fiber excitation). Token Identity is weaker than Type Identity, which goes so far as to claim that mental kinds themselves are physical kinds. So the Identity Theory, taken as a theory of types rather than tokens, must make some claim to the effect that mental states such as pain (and not just individual instances of pain) are contingently identical with physical states such as c-fiber excitation.
Blutner/Philosophy of Mind/Mind & Body/Identity Theory
A potential counter example:
How can we know that others have at all? You cannot observe others state the possibility of zombies, to use in every material respect, lacking conscious experiences. The apparent conceivability of zombies has philosophers like Chalmers that there is a explanatory gap between material qualities and conscious experience.
Zombies (conscious) minds of mind. There is creatures identical but altogether
the
convinced unbridgeable qualities of
However, Robert Kirk has argued for the impossibility of zombies. If the supposed zombie has all the behavioural and neural properties ascribed to it by those who argue from the possibility of zombies against materialism, then the zombie is conscious and so not a zombie.
Blutner/Philosophy of Mind/Mind & Body/Identity Theory
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Advantages of the identity theory
It solves Descartes problem by reducing the mental realm to the physical. The strictly materialist position taken by the identity theory shares its simplicity with Berkeleys idealist position. The identity theory, however, is able to explain the causal efficiency of mental states in agreement with the assumption that the domain of physical phenomena is causally closed. It allows to derive the causal role of mental phenomena from their physical substrate. This is a principle possibility, seldom realized in detail. It highlights the role of empirical investigations about the mind and mind-brain correlations. ing the role of dispositions. An agents is in a certain state of mind not only in virtue what he is actually doing, but also in virtue what he is disposed to do.
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Disadvantages of the identity theory
Violations of Leibniz's Law, which states that if A is identical with B, then A and B must have in common all of their (non-intensional) properties. After-images, for example, may be green or purple in colour, but nobody could reasonably claim that states of the brain are green or purple. And conversely, while brain states may be spatially located, it has traditionally been assumed that mental states are non-spatial. The possibility of zombies (??) Putnam's multiple realizability argument: (1) according to the Mind-Brain Type Identity theorist, for every mental state there is a unique physical-chemical state of the brain such that a life-form can be in that mental state if and only if it is in that physical state. (2) It seems quite plausible to hold, as an empirical hypothesis, that physically possible life-forms can be in the same mental state without having brains in the same unique physical-chemical state. (3) Therefore, it is highly unlikely that the Mind-Brain Type Identity theorist is correct.
