Briefly describe what Mind-Body Dualism is.

Two Separate Documents Needed for 1-2 and 1-4

1. Using the IEP reading, explain why Descartes believes that the Mind and Body are distinct.

2. Using the Princess of Bohemia reading, explain Elizabeth’s question regarding how the Mind and Body interact.

.

1. Briefly describe what Mind-Body Dualism is.

2. Briefly describe Behaviorism.

3. Briefly describe Identity Theory.

4. Briefly describe Machine Functionalism.

Requirements: Answer all questions

9/15/2015Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Descartes, Rene: Mind­Body DistinctionInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Printhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/print1/13René Descartes:The Mind­Body DistinctionOne of the deepest and most lasting legacies of Descartes’ philosophy is histhesis that mind and body are really distinct—a thesis now called “mind­body dualism.” He reaches this conclusion by arguing that the nature of themind (that is, a thinking, non­extended thing) is completely different fromthat of the body (that is, an extended, non­thinking thing), and therefore it ispossible for one to exist without the other. This argument gives rise to thefamous problem of mind­body causal interaction still debated today: howcan the mind cause some of our bodily limbs to move (for example, raisingone’s hand to ask a question), and how can the body’s sense organs causesensations in the mind when their natures are completely different? Thisarticle examines these issues as well as Descartes’ own response to thisproblem through his brief remarks on how the mind is united with the bodyto form a human being. This will show how these issues arise because of a misconception about Descartes’theory of mind­body union, and how the correct conception of their union avoids this version of theproblem. The article begins with an examination of the term “real distinction” and of Descartes’ probablemotivations for maintaining his dualist thesis.Table of Contents1. What is a Real Distinction?2. Why a Real Distinction?a. The Religious Motivationb. The Scientific Motivation3. The Real Distinction Argumenta. The First Versionb. The Second Version4. The Mind­Body Problem5. Descartes’ Response to the Mind­Body Problem6. References and Further Readinga. Primary Sourcesb. Secondary Sources1. What is a Real Distinction?It is important to note that for Descartes “real distinction” is a technical term denoting the distinctionbetween two or more substances (see Principles, part I, section 60). A substance is something that does notrequire any other creature to exist—it can exist with only the help of God’s concurrence—whereas, a modeis a quality or affection of that substance (see Principles part I, section 5). Accordingly, a mode requires asubstance to exist and not just the concurrence of God. Being sphere shaped is a mode of an extendedsubstance. For example, a sphere requires an object extended in three dimensions in order to exist: anunextended sphere cannot be conceived without contradiction. But a substance can be understood to exist

9/15/2015Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Descartes, Rene: Mind­Body DistinctionInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Printhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/print2/13alone without requiring any other creature to exist. For example, a stone can exist all by itself. That is, itsexistence is not dependent upon the existence of minds or other bodies; and, a stone can exist withoutbeing any particular size or shape. This indicates for Descartes that God, if he chose, could create a worldconstituted by this stone all by itself, showing further that it is a substance “really distinct” from everythingelse except God. Hence, the thesis that mind and body are really distinct just means that each could exist allby itself without any other creature, including each other, if God chose to do it. However, this does notmean that these substances do exist separately. Whether or not they actually exist apart is another issueentirely.2. Why a Real Distinction?A question one might ask is: what’s the point of arguing that mind and body could each exist without theother? What’s the payoff for going through all the trouble and enduring all the problems to which it givesrise? For Descartes the payoff is twofold. The first is religious in nature in that it provides a rational basisfor a hope in the soul’s immortality [because Descartes presumes that the mind and soul are more or lessthe same thing]. The second is more scientifically oriented, for the complete absence of mentality from thenature of physical things is central to making way for Descartes’ version of the new, mechanistic physics.This section investigates both of these motivating factors.a. The Religious MotivationIn his Letter to the Sorbonne published at the beginning of his seminal work, Meditations on FirstPhilosophy, Descartes states that his purpose in showing that the human mind or soul is really distinctfrom the body is to refute those “irreligious people” who only have faith in mathematics and will not believein the soul’s immortality without a mathematical demonstration of it. Descartes goes on to explain how,because of this, these people will not pursue moral virtue without the prospect of an afterlife with rewardsfor virtue and punishments for vice. But, since all the arguments in the Meditations—including the realdistinction arguments— are for Descartes absolutely certain on a par with geometrical demonstrations, hebelieves that these people will be obliged to accept them. Hence, irreligious people will be forced to believein the prospect of an afterlife. However, recall that Descartes’ conclusion is only that the mind or soul canexist without the body. He stops short of demonstrating that the soul is actually immortal. Indeed, inthe Synopsis to the Mediations, Descartes claims only to have shown that the decay of the body does notlogically or metaphysically imply the destruction of the mind: further argumentation is required for theconclusion that the mind actually survives the body’s destruction. This would involve both “an account ofthe whole of physics” and an argument showing that God cannot annihilate the mind. Yet, even though thereal distinction argument does not go this far, it does, according to Descartes, provide a sufficientfoundation for religion, since the hope for an afterlife now has a rational basis and is no longer a merearticle of faith.b. The Scientific MotivationThe other motive for arguing that mind and body could each exist without the other is more scientificallyoriented, stemming from Descartes’ intended replacement of final causal explanations in physics thought tobe favored by late scholastic­Aristotelian philosophers with mechanistic explanations based on the model ofgeometry. Although the credit for setting the stage for this scholastic­Aristotelian philosophy dominant atDescartes’ time should go to Thomas Aquinas (because of his initial, thorough interpretation andappropriation of Aristotle’s philosophy), it is also important to bear in mind that other thinkers workingwithin this Aristotelian framework such as Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, and Francisco Suarez,diverged from the Thomistic position on a variety of important issues. Indeed, by Descartes’ time,scholastic positions divergent from Thomism became so widespread and subtle in their differences thatsorting them out was quite difficult. Notwithstanding this convoluted array of positions, Descartesunderstood one thesis to stand at the heart of the entire tradition: the doctrine that everything ultimatelybehaved for the sake of some end or goal. Though these “final causes,” as they were called, were not the

9/15/2015Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Descartes, Rene: Mind­Body DistinctionInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Printhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/print3/13only sorts of causes recognized by scholastic thinkers, it is sufficient for present purposes to recognize thatDescartes believed scholastic natural philosophers used them as principles for physical explanations. Forthis reason, a brief look at how final causes were supposed to work is in order.Descartes understood all scholastics to maintain that everything was thought to have a final cause that isthe ultimate end or goal for the sake of which the rest of the organism was organized. This principle oforganization became known as a thing’s “substantial form,” because it was this principle that explained whysome hunk of matter was arranged in such and such a way so as to be some species of substance. Forexample, in the case of a bird, say, the swallow, the substantial form of swallowness was thought to organizematter for the sake of being a swallow species of substance. Accordingly, any dispositions a swallow mighthave, such as the disposition for making nests, would then also be explained by means of this ultimate goalof being a swallow; that is, swallows are disposed for making nests for the sake of being a swallow species ofsubstance. This explanatory scheme was also thought to work for plants and inanimate natural objects.A criticism of the traditional employment of substantial forms and their concomitant final causes in physicsis found in the Sixth Replies where Descartes examines how the quality of gravity was used to explain abody’s downward motion:But what makes it especially clear that my idea of gravity was taken largely from the idea I had ofthe mind is the fact that I thought that gravity carried bodies toward the centre of the earth as if ithad some knowledge of the centre within itself (AT VII 442: CSM II 298).On this pre­Newtonian account, a characteristic goal of all bodies was to reach its proper place, namely, thecenter of the earth. So, the answer to the question, “Why do stones fall downward?” would be, “Becausethey are striving to achieve their goal of reaching the center of the earth.” According to Descartes, thisimplies that the stone must have knowledge of this goal, know the means to attain it, and know where thecenter of the earth is located. But, how can a stone know anything? Surely only minds can have knowledge.Yet, since stones are inanimate bodies without minds, it follows that they cannot know anything at all—letalone anything about the center of the earth.Descartes continues on to make the following point:But later on I made the observations which led me to make a careful distinction between the idea ofthe mind and the ideas of body and corporeal motion; and I found that all those other ideas of . . .’substantial forms’ which I had previously held were ones which I had put together or constructedfrom those basic ideas (AT VII 442­3: CSM II 298).Here, Descartes is claiming that the concept of a substantial form as part of the entirely physical worldstems from a confusion of the ideas of mind and body. This confusion led people to mistakenly ascribemental properties like knowledge to entirely non­mental things like stones, plants, and, yes, even non­human animals. The real distinction of mind and body can then also be used to alleviate this confusion andits resultant mistakes by showing that bodies exist and move as they do without mentality, and as suchprinciples of mental causation such as goals, purposes (that is, final causes), and knowledge have no role toplay in the explanation of physical phenomena. So the real distinction of mind and body also serves themore scientifically oriented end of eliminating any element of mentality from the idea of body. In this way,a clear understanding of the geometrical nature of bodies can be achieved and better explanations obtained.3. The Real Distinction ArgumentDescartes formulates this argument in many different ways, which has led many scholars to believe thereare several different real distinction arguments. However, it is more accurate to consider theseformulations as different versions of one and the same argument. The fundamental premise of each isidentical: each has the fundamental premise that the natures of mind and body are completely differentfrom one another.

9/15/2015Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Descartes, Rene: Mind­Body DistinctionInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Printhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/print4/13The First VersionThe first version is found in this excerpt from the Sixth Meditation:[O]n the one hand I have a clear and distinct idea of myself, in so far as I am simply a thinking, non­extended thing [that is, a mind], and on the other hand I have a distinct idea of body, in so far asthis is simply an extended, non­thinking thing. And accordingly, it is certain that I am really distinctfrom my body, and can exist without it (AT VII 78: CSM II 54).Notice that the argument is given from the first person perspective (as are the entire Meditations). This “I”is, of course, Descartes insofar as he is a thinking thing or mind, and the argument is intended to work forany “I” or mind. So, for present purposes, it is safe to generalize the argument by replacing “I” with “mind”in the relevant places:1. I have a clear and distinct idea of the mind as a thinking, non­extended thing.2. I have a clear and distinct idea of body as an extended, non­thinking thing.3. Therefore, the mind is really distinct from the body and can exist without it.At first glance it may seem that, without justification, Descartes is bluntly asserting that he conceives ofmind and body as two completely different things, and that from his conception, he is inferring that he (orany mind) can exist without the body. But this is no blunt, unjustified assertion. Much more is at workhere: most notably what is at work is his doctrine of clear and distinct ideas and their veridical guarantee.Indeed the truth of his intellectual perception of the natures of mind and body is supposed to be guaranteedby the fact that this perception is “clear and distinct.” Since the justification for these two premises restssquarely on the veridical guarantee of whatever is “clearly and distinctly” perceived, a brief side tripexplaining this doctrine is in order.Descartes explains what he means by a “clear and distinct idea” in his work Principles of Philosophy at partI, section 45. Here he likens a clear intellectual perception to a clear visual perception. So, just as someonemight have a sharply focused visual perception of something, an idea is clear when it is in sharp intellectualfocus. Moreover, an idea is distinct when, in addition to being clear, all other ideas not belonging to it arecompletely excluded from it. Hence, Descartes is claiming in both premises that his idea of the mind andhis idea of the body exclude all other ideas that do not belong to them, including each other, and all thatremains is what can be clearly understood of each. As a result, he clearly and distinctly understands themind all by itself, separately from the body, and the body all by itself, separately from the mind.According to Descartes, his ability to clearly and distinctly understand them separately from one anotherimplies that each can exist alone without the other. This is because “[e]xistence is contained in the idea orconcept of every single thing, since we cannot conceive of anything except as existing. Possible orcontingent existence is contained in the concept of a limited thing…” (AT VII 166: CSM II 117). Descartes,then, clearly and distinctly perceives the mind as possibly existing all by itself, and the body as possiblyexisting all by itself. But couldn’t Descartes somehow be mistaken about his clear and distinct ideas? Giventhe existence of so many non­thinking bodies like stones, there is no question that bodies can exist withoutminds. So, even if he could be mistaken about what he clearly and distinctly understands, there is otherevidence in support of premise 2. But can minds exist without bodies? Can thinking occur without a brain?If the answer to this question is “no,” the first premise would be false and, therefore, Descartes would bemistaken about one of his clear and distinct perceptions. Indeed, since we have no experience of mindsactually existing without bodies as we do of bodies actually existing without minds, the argument will standonly if Descartes’ clear and distinct understanding of the mind’s nature somehow guarantees the truth ofpremise 1; but, at this point, it is not evident whether Descartes’ “clear and distinct” perception guaranteesthe truth of anything.However, in the Fourth Meditation, Descartes goes to great lengths to guarantee the truth of whatever isclearly and distinctly understood. This veridical guarantee is based on the theses that God exists and that

9/15/2015Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Descartes, Rene: Mind­Body DistinctionInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Printhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/print5/13he cannot be a deceiver. These arguments, though very interesting, are numerous and complex, and so theywill not be discussed here. Suffice it to say that since Descartes believes he has established God’s inability todeceive with absolute, geometrical certainty, he would have to consider anything contradicting thisconclusion to be false. Moreover, Descartes claims that he cannot help but believe clear and distinct ideasto be true. However, if God put a clear and distinct idea in him that was false, then he could not help butbelieve a falsehood to be true and, to make matters worse, he would never be able to discover the mistake.Since God would be the author of this false clear and distinct idea, he would be the source of the error andwould, therefore, be a deceiver, which must be false. Hence, all clear and distinct ideas must be true,because it is impossible for them to be false given God’s non­deceiving nature.That said, the clarity and distinctness of Descartes’ understanding of mind and body guarantees the truth ofpremise 1. Hence, both “clear and distinct” premises are not blunt, unjustified assertions of what hebelieves but have very strong rational support from within Descartes’ system. However, if it turns out thatGod does not exist or that he can be a deceiver, then all bets are off. There would then no longer be anyveridical guarantee of what is clearly and distinctly understood and, as a result, the first premise could befalse. Consequently, premise 1 would not bar the possibility of minds requiring brains to exist and,therefore, this premise would not be absolutely certain as Descartes supposed. In the end, the conclusion isestablished with absolute certainty only when considered from within Descartes’ own epistemologicalframework but loses its force if that framework turns out to be false or when evaluated from outside of it.These guaranteed truths express some very important points about Descartes’ conception of mind andbody. Notice that mind and body are defined as complete opposites. This means that the ideas of mind andbody represent two natures that have absolutely nothing in common. And, it is this complete diversity thatestablishes the possibility of their independent existence. But, how can Descartes make a legitimateinference from his independent understanding of mind and body as completely different things to theirindependent existence? To answer this question, recall that every idea of limited or finite things containsthe idea of possible or contingent existence, and so Descartes is conceiving mind and body as possiblyexisting all by themselves without any other creature. Since there is no doubt about this possibility forDescartes and given the fact that God is all powerful, it follows that God could bring into existence a mindwithout a body and vice versa just as Descartes clearly and distinctly understands them. Hence, the powerof God makes Descartes’ perceived logical possibility of minds existing without bodies into a metaphysicalpossibility. As a result, minds without bodies and bodies without minds would require nothing besidesGod’s concurrence to exist and, therefore, they are two really distinct substances.The Second VersionThe argument just examined is formulated in a different way later in the Sixth Meditation:[T]here is a great difference between the mind and the body, inasmuch as the body is by its verynature always divisible, while the mind is utterly indivisible. For when I consider the mind, ormyself in so far as I am merely a thinking thing, I am unable to distinguish any parts within myself;I understand myself to be something quite single and complete….By contrast, there is no corporealor extended thing that I can think of which in my thought I cannot easily divide into parts; and thisvery fact makes me understand that it is divisible. This one argument would be enough to show methat the mind is completely different from the body…. (AT VII 86­87: CSM II 59).This argument can be reformulated as follows, replacing “mind” for “I” as in the first version:1. I understand the mind to be indivisible by its very nature.2. I understand body to be divisible by its very nature.3. Therefore, the mind is completely different from the body.Notice the conclusion that mind and body are really distinct is not explicitly stated but can be inferred from3. What is interesting about this formulation is how Descartes reaches his conclusion. He does not assert a

9/15/2015Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Descartes, Rene: Mind­Body DistinctionInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Printhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/print6/13clear and distinct understanding of these two natures as completely different but instead makes his pointbased on a particular property of each. However, this is not just any property but a property each has “by itsvery nature.” Something’s nature is just what it is to be that kind of thing, and so the term “nature” is herebeing used as synonymous with “essence.” On this account, extension constitutes the nature or essence ofbodily kinds of things; while thinking constitutes the nature or essence of mental kinds of things. So, hereDescartes is arguing that a property of what it is to be a body, or extended thing, is to be divisible, while aproperty of what it is to be a mind or thinking thing is to be indivisible.Descartes’ line of reasoning in support of these claims about the respective natures of mind and body runsas follows. First, it is easy to see that bodies are divisible. Just take any body, say a pencil or a piece ofpaper, and break it or cut it in half. Now you have two bodies instead of one. Second, based on this line ofreasoning, it is easy to see why Descartes believed his nature or mind to be indivisible: if a mind or an “I”could be divided, then two minds or “I’s” would result; but since this “I” just is my self, this would be thesame as claiming that the division of my mind results in two selves, which is absurd. Therefore, the body isessentially divisible and the mind is essentially indivisible: but how does this lead to the conclusion thatthey are completely different?Here it should be noted that a difference in just any non­essential property would have only shown thatmind and body are not exactly the same. But this is a much weaker claim than Descartes’ conclusion thatthey are completely different. For two things could have the same nature, for example, extension, but haveother, changeable properties or modes distinguishing them. Hence, these two things would be different insome respect, for example, in shape, but not completely different, since both would still be extended kindsof things. Consequently, Descartes needs their complete diversity to claim that he has completelyindependent conceptions of each and, in turn, that mind and body can exist independently of one another.Descartes can reach this stronger conclusion because these essential properties are contradictories. On theone hand, Descartes argues that the mind is indivisible because he cannot perceive himself as having anyparts. On the other hand, the body is divisible because he cannot think of a body except as having parts.Hence, if mind and body had the same nature, it would be a nature both with and without parts. Yet such athing is unintelligible: how could something both be separable into parts and yet not separable into parts?The answer is that it can’t, and so mind and body cannot be one and the same but two completely differentnatures. Notice that, as with the first version, mind and body are here being defined as opposites. Thisimplies that divisible body can be understood without indivisible mind and vice versa. Accordingly each canbe understood as existing all by itself: they are two really distinct substances.However, unlike the first version, Descartes does not invoke the doctrine of clear and distinct ideas tojustify his premises. If he had, this version, like the first, would be absolutely certain from within Descartes’own epistemological system. But if removed from this apparatus, it is possible that Descartes is mistakenabout the indivisibility of the mind, because the possibility of the mind requiring a brain to exist would stillbe viable. This would mean that, since extension is part of the nature of mind, it would, being an extendedthing, be composed of parts and, therefore, it would be divisible. As a result, Descartes could notlegitimately reach the conclusion that mind and body are completely different. This would also mean thatthe further, implicit conclusion that mind and body are really distinct could not be reached either. In theend, the main difficulty with Descartes’ real distinction argument is that he has not adequately eliminatedthe possibility of minds being extended things like brains.4. The Mind­Body ProblemThe real distinction of mind and body based on their completely diverse natures is the root of the famousmind­body problem: how can these two substances with completely different natures causally interact so asto give rise to a human being capable of having voluntary bodily motions and sensations? Although severalversions of this problem have arisen over the years, this section will be exclusively devoted to the version ofit Descartes confronted as expressed by Pierre Gassendi, the author of the Fifth Objections, and Descartes’

9/15/2015Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Descartes, Rene: Mind­Body DistinctionInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Printhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/print7/13correspondent, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia. Their concern arises from the claim at the heart of the realdistinction argument that mind and body are completely different or opposite things.The complete diversity of their respective natures has serious consequences for the kinds of modes each canpossess. For instance, in the Second Meditation, Descartes argues that he is nothing but a thinking thing ormind, that is, Descartes argues that he is a “thing that doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, isunwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions” (AT VII 28: CSM II 19). It makes no sense toascribe such modes to entirely extended, non­thinking things like stones, and therefore, only minds canhave these kinds of modes. Conversely, it makes no sense to ascribe modes of size, shape, quantity andmotion to non­extended, thinking things. For example, the concept of an unextended shape isunintelligible. Therefore, a mind cannot be understood to be shaped or in motion, nor can a bodyunderstand or sense anything. Human beings, however, are supposed to be combinations of mind and bodysuch that the mind’s choices can cause modes of motion in the body, and motions in certain bodily organs,such as the eye, cause modes of sensation in the mind.The mind’s ability to cause motion in the body will be addressed first. Take for example a voluntary choice,or willing, to raise one’s hand in class to ask a question. The arm moving upward is the effect while thechoice to raise it is the cause. But willing is a mode of the non­extended mind alone, whereas the arm’smotion is a mode of the extended body alone: how can the non­extended mind bring about this extendedeffect? It is this problem of voluntary bodily motion or the so­called problem of “mind to body causation”that so troubled Gassendi and Elizabeth. The crux of their concern was that in order for one thing to causemotion in another, they must come into contact with one another as, for example, in the game of pool thecue ball must be in motion and come into contact with the eight­ball in order for the latter to be set inmotion. The problem is that, in the case of voluntarily bodily movements, contact between mind and bodywould be impossible given the mind’s non­extended nature. This is because contact must be between twosurfaces, but surface is a mode of body, as stated at Principles of Philosophy part II, section 15.Accordingly, the mind does not have a surface that can come into contact with the body and cause it tomove. So, it seems that if mind and body are completely different, there is no intelligible explanation ofvoluntary bodily movement.Although Gassendi and Elizabeth limited themselves to the problem of voluntary bodily movement, asimilar problem arises for sensations, or the so­called problem of “body to mind causation.” For instance, avisual sensation of a tree is a mode of the mind alone. The cause of this mode would be explained by themotion of various imperceptible bodies causing parts of the eye to move, then movements in the opticnerve, which in turn cause various “animal spirits” to move in the brain and finally result in the sensoryidea of the tree in the mind. But how can the movement of the “animal spirits,” which were thought to bevery fine bodies, bring about the existence of a sensory idea when the mind is incapable of receiving modesof motion given its non­extended nature? Again, since the mind is incapable of having motion and asurface, no intelligible explanation of sensations seems possible either. Therefore, the completely differentnatures of mind and body seem to render their causal interaction impossible.The consequences of this problem are very serious for Descartes, because it undermines his claim to have aclear and distinct understanding of the mind without the body. For humans do have sensations andvoluntarily move some of their bodily limbs and, if Gassendi and Elizabeth are correct, this requires asurface and contact. Since the mind must have a surface and a capacity for motion, the mind must also beextended and, therefore, mind and body are not completely different. This means the “clear and distinct”ideas of mind and body, as mutually exclusive natures, must be false in order for mind­body causalinteraction to occur. Hence, Descartes has not adequately established that mind and body are two reallydistinct substances.5. Descartes’ Response to the Mind­Body ProblemDespite the obviousness of this problem, and the amount of attention given to it, Descartes himself never

9/15/2015Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Descartes, Rene: Mind­Body DistinctionInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Printhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/print8/13took this issue very seriously. His response to Gassendi is a telling example:These questions presuppose amongst other things an explanation of the union between the soul andthe body, which I have not yet dealt with at all. But I will say, for your benefit at least, that the wholeproblem contained in such questions arises simply from a supposition that is false and cannot inany way be proved, namely that, if the soul and the body are two substances whose nature isdifferent, this prevents them from being able to act on each other (AT VII 213: CSM II 275).So, Descartes’ response to the mind­body problem is twofold. First, Descartes contends that a response tothis question presupposes an explanation of the union between the mind (or soul) and the body. Second,Descartes claims that the question itself stems from the false presupposition that two substances withcompletely different natures cannot act on each other. Further examination of these two points will occur inreverse order.Descartes’ principles of causation put forward in the Third Meditation lie at the heart of this secondpresupposition. The relevant portion of this discussion is when Descartes argues that the less real cannotcause something that is more real, because the less real does not have enough reality to bring aboutsomething more real than itself. This principle applies on the general level of substances and modes. Onthis account, an infinite substance, that is, God, is the most real thing because only he requires nothing elsein order to exist; created, finite substances are next most real, because they require only God’s creative andconservative activity in order to exist; and finally, modes are the least real, because they require a createdsubstance and an infinite substance in order to exist. So, on this principle, a mode cannot cause theexistence of a substance since modes are less real than finite substances. Similarly, a created, finitesubstance cannot cause the existence of an infinite substance. But a finite substance can cause the existenceof another finite substance or a mode (since modes are less real than substances). Hence, Descartes’ pointcould be that the completely diverse natures of mind and body do not violate this causal principle, sinceboth are finite substances causing modes to exist in some other finite substance. This indicates further thatthe “activity” of the mind on the body does not require contact and motion, thereby suggesting that mindand body do not bear a mechanistic causal relation to each other. More will be said about this below.The first presupposition concerns an explanation of how the mind is united with the body. Descartes’remarks about this issue are scattered across both his published works and his private correspondence.These texts indicate that Descartes did not maintain that voluntary bodily movements and sensation arisebecause of the causal interaction of mind and body by contact and motion. Rather, he maintains a versionof the form­matter theory of soul­body union endorsed by some of his scholastic­Aristotelian predecessorsand contemporaries. Although a close analysis of the texts in question cannot be conducted here, a briefsummary of how this theory works for Descartes can be provided.Before providing this summary, however, it is important to disclaim that this scholastic­Aristotelianinterpretation is a minority position amongst Descartes scholars. The traditional view maintains thatDescartes’ human being is composed of two substances that causally interact in a mechanistic fashion. Thistraditional view led some of Descartes’ successors, such as Malebranche and Leibniz (who also believed inthe real distinction of mind and body), to devise metaphysical systems wherein mind and body do notcausally interact despite appearances to the contrary. Other philosophers considered the mind­bodyproblem to be insurmountable, thereby denying their real distinction: they claim that everything is eitherextended (as is common nowadays) or mental (as George Berkeley argued in the 18th century). Indeed, thistraditional, mechanistic interpretation of Descartes is so deeply ingrained in the minds of philosopherstoday, that most do not even bother to argue for it. However, a notable exception is Marleen Rozemond,who argues for the incompatibility of Descartes’ metaphysics with any scholastic­Aristotelian version ofmind or soul­body union. Those interested in closely examining her arguments should consult herbook Descartes’s Dualism. A book arguing in favor of the scholastic­Aristotelian interpretation isentitled Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature; Chapter 5 specifically addresses Rozemond’sconcerns.

9/15/2015Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Descartes, Rene: Mind­Body DistinctionInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Printhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/print9/13Two major stumbling blocks Rozemond raises for the scholastic­Aristotelian interpretation concern themind’s status as a substantial form and the extent to which Descartes can maintain a form of the humanbody. However, recall that Descartes rejects substantial forms because of their final causal component.Descartes’ argument was based on the fact (as he understood it) that the scholastics were ascribing mentalproperties to entirely non­mental things like stones. Since the mind is an entirely mental thing, thesearguments just do not apply to it. Hence, Descartes’ particular rejection of substantial forms does notnecessarily imply that Descartes did not view the mind as a substantial form. Indeed, as Paul Hoffmannoted:Descartes really rejects the attempt to use the human soul as a model for explanations in the entirelyphysical world. This makes it possible that Descartes considered the human mind to be the only substantialform. At first glance this may seem ad hoc but it is also important to notice that rejecting the existence ofsubstantial forms with the exception of the mind or rational soul was not uncommon amongst Descartes’contemporaries.Although the mind’s status as a substantial form may seem at risk because of its meager explicit textualsupport, Descartes suggests that the mind a “substantial form” twice in a draft of open letter to his enemyVoetius:Yet, if the soul is recognized as merely a substantial form, while other such forms consist in theconfiguration and motion of parts, this very privileged status it has compared with other formsshows that its nature is quite different from theirs (AT III 503: CSMK 207­208).Descartes then remarks “this is confirmed by the example of the soul, which is the true substantial form ofman” (AT III 508: CSMK 208). Although other passages do not make this claim explicitly, they do imply (insome sense) that the mind is a substantial form. For instance, Descartes claims in a letter to Mesland dated9 February 1645, that the soul is “substantially united” with the human body (AT IV 166: CSMK 243). This“substantial union” was a technical term amongst the scholastics denoting the union between a substantialform and matter to form a complete substance. Consequently, there is some reason for believing that thehuman mind is the only substantial form left standing in Descartes’ metaphysics.Another major stumbling block recognized by Rozemond is the extent to which, if any, Descartes’metaphysics can maintain a principle for organizing extension into a human body. This was a point of somecontroversy amongst the scholastics themselves. Philosophers maintaining a Thomistic position arguedthat the human soul is the human body’s principle of organization. While others, maintaining a basicallyScotistic position, argued that some other form besides the human soul is the form of the body. This “formof corporeity” organizes matter for the sake of being a human body but does not result in a full­fledgedhuman being. Rather it makes a body with the potential for union with the human soul. The soul thenactualizes this potential resulting in a complete human being. If Descartes did hold a fundamentallyscholastic theory of mind­body union, then is it more Thomistic or Scotistic? Since intellect and will are theonly faculties of the mind, it does not have the faculty for organizing matter for being a human body. So, ifDescartes’ theory is scholastic, it must be most in line with some version of the Scotistic theory. Rozemondargues that Descartes’ rejection of all other substantial forms (except the human mind or soul) precludesthis kind of theory since he cannot appeal to the doctrine of substantial forms like the Scotists.Although Descartes argues that bodies, in the general sense, are constituted by extension, he also maintainsthat species of bodies are determined by the configuration and motion of their parts. This doctrine of“configuration and motion of parts” serves the same purpose as the doctrine of substantial forms withregards to entirely physical things. But the main difference between the two is that Descartes’ doctrine doesnot employ final causes. Recall that substantial forms organize matter for the purpose of being a species ofthing. The purpose of a human body endowed with only the form of corporeity is union with the soul.Hence, the organization of matter into a human body is an effect that is explained by the final cause orpurpose of being disposed for union. But, on Descartes’ account, the explanatory order would be reversed: a

9/15/2015Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Descartes, Rene: Mind­Body DistinctionInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Printhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/print10/13human body’s disposition for union is an effect resulting from the configuration and motion of parts. So,even though Descartes does not have recourse to substantial forms, he still has recourse to theconfiguration of matter and to the dispositions to which it gives rise, including “all the dispositions requiredto preserve that union” (AT IV 166: CSMK 243). Hence, on this account, Descartes gets what he needs,namely, Descartes gets a body properly configured for potential union with the mind, but without recourseto the scholastic notion of substantial forms with their final causal component.Another feature of this basically Scotistic position is that the soul and the body were considered incompletesubstances themselves, while their union results in one, complete substance. Surely Descartes maintainsthat mind and body are two substances but in what sense, if any, can they be considered incomplete?Descartes answers this question in the Fourth Replies. He argues that a substance may be complete insofaras it is a substance but incomplete insofar as it is referred to some other substance together with which itforms yet some third substance. This can be applied to mind and body as follows: the mind insofar as it is athinking thing is a complete substance, while the body insofar as it is an extended thing is a completesubstance, but each taken individually is only an incomplete human being.This account is repeated in the following excerpt from a letter to Regius dated December 1641:For there you said that the body and the soul, in relation to the whole human being, are incompletesubstances; and it follows from their being incomplete that what they constitute is a being throughitself (that is, an ens per se; AT III 460: CSMK 200).The technical sense of the term “being through itself” was intended to capture the fact that human beingsdo not require any other creature but only God’s concurrence to exist. Accordingly, a being through itself,or ens per se, is a substance. Also notice that the claim in the letter to Regius that two incompletesubstances together constitute a being through itself is reminiscent of Descartes’ remarks in the FourthReplies. This affinity between the two texts indicates that the union of mind and body results in onecomplete substance or being through itself. This just means that mind and body are the metaphysical parts(mind and body are incomplete substances in this respect) that constitute one, whole human being, whichis a complete substance in its own right. Hence, a human being is not the result of two substances causallyinteracting by means of contact and motion, as Gassendi and Elizabeth supposed, but rather they bear arelation of act and potency that results in one, whole and complete substantial human being.This sheds some light on why Descartes thought that an account of mind­body union would put Gassendi’sand Elizabeth’s concerns to rest: they misconceived the union of mind and body as a mechanical relationwhen in fact it is a relation of act and potency. This avoids Gassendi’s and Elizabeth’s version of thisproblem. This aversion is accomplished by the fact that modes of voluntary motion (and sensations, byextrapolation) should be ascribed to a whole human being and not to the mind or the body takenindividually. This is made apparent in a 21 May 1643 letter to Elizabeth where Descartes distinguishesbetween various “primitive notions.” The most general are the notions of being, number, duration, and soon, which apply to all conceivable things. He then goes on to distinguish the notions of mind and body:Then, as regards body in particular, we have only the notion of extension, which entails the notionsof shape and motion; and as regards the soul on its own, we have only the notion of thought, whichincludes the perceptions of the intellect and the inclinations of the will (AT III 665: CSMK 218).Here body and soul (or mind) are primitive notions and the notions of their respective modes are thenotions “entailed by” or “included in” these primitives. Descartes then discusses the primitive notion ofmind­body union:Lastly, as regards the soul and the body together, we have only the notion of their union, on whichdepends our notion of the soul’s power to move the body, and the body’s power to act on the souland cause its sensations and passions (AT III 665: CSMK 218).

9/15/2015Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Descartes, Rene: Mind­Body DistinctionInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Printhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/print11/13In light of the immediately preceding lines, this indicates that voluntary bodily movements and sensationsare not modes of the body alone, or the mind alone, but rather are modes of “the soul and the bodytogether.” This is at least partially confirmed in the following lines from Principles, part I, article 48:But we also experience within ourselves certain other things, which must not be referred either tothe mind alone or to the body alone. These arises, as will be made clear in the appropriate place,from the close and intimate union of our mind with the body. This list includes, first, appetites likehunger and thirds; secondly, the emotions or passions . . . (AT VIIIA 23: CSM I 209).These texts indicate that the mind or soul is united with the body so as to give rise to another wholecomplete substance composed of these two metaphysical parts. And, moreover, this composite substancenow has the capacity for having modes of its own, namely, modes of voluntary bodily movement andsensation, which neither the mind nor the body can have individually. So, voluntary bodily movements arenot modes of the body alone caused by the mind, nor are sensations modes of the mind alone caused by thebody. Rather, both are modes of a whole and complete human being. On this account, it makes no sense toask how the non­extended mind can come into contact with the body to cause these modes. To ask thiswould be to get off on the wrong foot entirely, since contact between these two completely diversesubstances is not required for these modes to exist. Rather all that is necessary is for the mind to actualizethe potential in a properly disposed human body to form one, whole, human being to whom is attributedmodes of voluntary movement and sensation.Although the scholastic­Aristotelian interpretation avoids the traditional causal interaction problem basedon the requirements of contact and motion, it does run up against another version of that problem, namely,a problem of formal causation. This is a problem facing any scholastic­Aristotelian theory of mind or soul­body union where the soul is understood to be an immaterial substantial form. Recall that the immaterialmind or soul as substantial form is suppose to act on a properly disposed human body in order to result in afull­fledged human being. The problem of formal causal interaction is: how can an immaterial soulassubstantial form act on the potential in a material thing? Can any sense be made of the claim that a non­extended or immaterial things acts on anything? Descartes noticed in a letter to Regius (AT III 493: CSMK206) that the scholastics did not try to answer this question and so he and Regius need not either. Thelikely explanation of their silence is that the act­potency relation was considered absolutely fundamental toscholastic­Aristotelian philosophy and, therefore, it required no further explanation. So, in the end, even ifDescartes’ theory is as described here, it does not evade all the causal problems associated with unitingimmaterial souls or mind to their respective bodies. , However, if this proposed account is true, it helps tocast Descartes’ philosophy in a new light and to redirect the attention of scholars to the formal causalproblems involved.6. References and Further ReadingPrimary SourcesDescartes, Rene, Ouevres de Descartes, 11 vols., eds. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, Paris: Vrin, 1974­1989.This is still the standard edition of all of Descartes’ works and correspondence in their original languages. Cited in the text as AT, volume,page.Descartes, Rene, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 3 vols., trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, DugaldMurdoch and Anthony Kenny, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984­1991This is the standard English translation of Descartes philosophical works and correspondence. Cited in the text as CSM or CSMK, volume,page.Secondary SourcesBroughton, Janet and Mattern, Ruth, “Reinterpreting Descartes on the Notion of the Union of Mind and Body,” Journal

9/15/2015Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Descartes, Rene: Mind­Body DistinctionInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Printhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/print12/13of the History of Philosophy 16 (1978), 23­32.A reinterpretation of the notion of mind­body union in the correspondence with Elizabeth, which addresses Radner’s interpretation of it.See below.Garber, Daniel, “Understanding Interaction: What Descartes Should Have Told Elizabeth,” Southern Journal ofPhilosophy, Supp. 21 (1983), 15­32.Article addressing the issues of the primitive notions and how this theory should be used to explain mind­body causal interaction toElizabeth.Hoffman, Paul, “The Unity of Descartes’ Man,” The Philosophical Review 95 (1986), 339­369.Article arguing that Descartes’ theory of mind­body union is more in line with scholastic­Aristotelian theories of soul­body union thanpreviously supposed.Kenny, Anthony, Descartes: A Study of His Philosophy, New York: Random House, 1968. See especially chapters 4 and10.These chapters provide classic interpretations of the real distinction between mind and body and the mind­body problem.Mattern, Ruth, “Descartes’ Correspondence with Elizabeth Concerning both the Union and Distinction of Mind andBody” in Descartes: Critical and Interpretive Essays, ed. Michael Hooker, Baltimore: John Hopkins UniversityPress, 1978, 212­222.Short essay examining Descartes’ correspondence with Elizabeth on this issue and how it was supposed to direct her to a correctunderstanding of mind­body causal interaction.Radner, Daisie, “Descartes’ Notion of the Union of Mind and Body,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 9 (1971), 159­170.This is the first article in Anglo­American scholarship to address the issue of mind­body union. It addresses several texts, including theletter to Elizabeth enumerating the primitive notions.Rozemond, Marleen, Descartes’s Dualism, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.This book argues for a particular understanding of the real distinction between mind and body that would preclude Hoffman’s scholastic­Aristotelian account of their union.Skirry, Justin, Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature, London and New York: Thoemmes­Continuum Press,2005.This book takes issue with Rozemond’s account of the mind­body union through a close re­examination of fundamental features ofDescartes’ metaphysics and by building on certain features of Hoffman’s account.Voss, Stephen, “Descartes: The End of Anthropology” in Reason, Will and Sensation, ed. John Cottingham, Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1994.This essay provides a close textual analysis of Descartes’ account of the union of mind and body on the supposition that he maintained aPlatonic rather than scholastic­Aristotelian theory of mind­body union.Williams, Bernard, Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1978. See especially chapter 4.This is another classic account of the mind­body relation in Descartes.Wilson, Margaret, Descartes, London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978.Provides classic accounts of the real distinction argument and issues concerning mind­body causal interaction.Author InformationJustin SkirryEmail: [email protected]. S. A.

9/15/2015Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Descartes, Rene: Mind­Body DistinctionInternet Encyclopedia of Philosophy » Printhttp://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/print13/13Article printed from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/descmind/Copyright © The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. All rights reserved.

1 The Mind-Body Problem William G. Lycan University of North Carolina Human beings, and perhaps other creatures, have minds as well as bodies. But what is a mind, and what is its relation to body, or to the physical in general? 1. Mind-Body Dualism The first answer to the mind-body question proposed since medieval times was that of Descartes, who held that minds are wholly distinct from bodies and from physical objects of any sort. According to Cartesian dualism, minds are purely spiritual and radically non-spatial, having neither size nor location. On this view, a normal living human being or person is a duality, a mind and a body paired (though there can be bodies without minds, and minds can survive the destruction of their corresponding bodies). Mysteriously, despite the radical distinctness of minds from bodies, they interact causally: bodily happenings cause sensation and experiences and thoughts in one’s mind; conversely, mental activity leads to action and speech, causing the physical motion of limbs or lips. Cartesian dualism has strong intuitive appeal, since from the inside our minds do not feel physical at all; and we can easily imagine their existing disembodied or, indeed, their existing in the absence of any physical world whatever. And until the 1950s, in fact, the philosophy of mind was dominated by Descartes’s “first-person” perspective, our view of ourselves from the inside. With few exceptions, philosophers had accepted the following claims: (1) that one’s own mind is better known than one’s body, (2) that the mind is metaphysically in the body’s driver’s seat, and (3) that there is at least a theoretical problem of how we human intelligences can know that “external,” everyday objects exist at all, even if there are tenable solutions to that problem. We human subjects are immured within a movie theatre of the mind, though we may have some defensible ways of inferring what goes on outside the theatre. Midway through the past (twentieth) century, all this suddenly changed, for two reasons. The first reason was the accumulated impact of logical positivism and the verification theory of meaning. Intersubjective verifiability or

2 testability became the criterion both of scientific probity and of linguistic meaning itself. If the mind, in particular, was to be respected either scientifically or even as meaningfully describable in the first place, mental ascriptions would have to be pegged to publicly, physically testable verification conditions. Science takes an intersubjective, third-person perspective on everything; the traditional first-person perspective had to be abandoned for scientific purposes and, it was felt, for serious metaphysical purposes also. The second reason was the emergence of a number of pressing philosophical objections to Cartesian dualism, such as the following: 1. Immaterial Cartesian minds and ghostly non-physical events were increasingly seen to fit ill with our otherwise physical and scientific picture of the world, uncomfortably like spooks or ectoplasm themselves. They are not needed for the explanation of any publicly observable fact, for neurophysiology promises to explain the motions of our bodies in particular and to explain them completely. Indeed, ghost-minds could not very well help in such an explanation, since nothing is known of any properties of spookstuff that would bear on public physical occurrences. 2. Since human beings evolved over aeons, by purely physical processes of mutation and natural selection, from primitive creatures such as one-celled organisms which did not have minds, it is anomalous to suppose that at some point Mother Nature (in the form of population genetics) somehow created immaterial Cartesian minds in addition to cells and physical organs. The same point can be put in terms of the development of a singe human zygote into an embryo, then a fetus, a baby, and finally a child. 3. If minds really are immaterial and utterly non-spatial, how can they possibly interact causally with physical objects in space? (Descartes himself was very uncomfortable about this. At one point he suggested gravity as a model for the action of something immaterial on a physical body; but gravity is spatial in nature even though it is not tangible in the way that bodies are.) 4. In any case it does not seem that immaterial entities could cause physical motion consistently with the conservation of laws of physics, such as those regarding motion and matter-energy; physical energy would have to vanish and reappear inside human brains.

3 2. Behaviorism What alternatives are there to dualism? First, Carnap (1932-3) and Ryle (1949) noted that the obvious verification conditions or tests for mental ascriptions are behavioral. How can the rest of us tell that you are in pain, save by your wincing and groaning behavior in circumstances of presumable damage or disorder, or that you believe that parsnips are dangerous, save by your verbal avowals and your avoidance of parsnips? If the tests are behavioral, then (it was argued) the very meaning of the ascriptions, or at least the only facts genuinely described, are not ghostly or ineffable but behavioral. Thus behaviorism as a theory of mind and a paradigm for psychology. In academic psychology, behaviorism took primarily a methodological form, and the psychologists officially made no metaphysical claims. But in philosophy, behaviorism did (naturally) take a metaphysical form: chiefly that of analytic behaviorism, the claim that mental ascriptions simply mean things about behavioral responses to environmental impingements. Thus, “Leo is in pain” means, not anything about Leo’s putative ghostly ego, or even about an episode taking place within Leo, but that either Leo is actually behaving in a wincing and groaning way or he is disposed so to behave (in that he would so behave were something not keeping him from doing so). “Leo believes that parsnips are dangerous” means just that, if asked, Leo would assent to that proposition, and, if confronted by a parsnip, Leo would shun it, and so forth. Any behaviorist will subscribe to what has come to be called the Turing Test. In response to the perennially popular question “Can machines think?”, Alan Turing (1964) replied that a better question is that of whether a sophisticated computer could ever pass a battery of verbal tests, to the extent of fooling a limited observer (say, a human being corresponding with it by mail) into thinking it is human and sentient. If a machine did pass such tests, then the putatively further question of whether machine really thought would be idle at best, whatever metaphysical analysis one might attach to it. Barring Turing’s tendentious limitation of the machine’s behavior to verbal as opposed to non-verbal responses, any behaviorist, psychological or philosophical, would agree that psychological differences cannot outrun behavioral tests; organisms (including machines) whose actual and hypothetical behavior is just the same are psychologically just alike.

4 Besides solving the methodological problem of intersubjective verification, philosophical behaviorism also adroitly avoided a number of the objections to Cartesian dualism, including all of (1)-(4) listed above. It dispensed with immaterial Cartesian egos and ghostly non-physical events, writing them off as metaphysical excrescences. It disposed of Descartes’s admitted problem of mind-body interaction, since it posited no immaterial, non-spatial causes of behavior. It raised no scientific mysteries concerning the intervention of Cartesian substances in physics or biology, since it countenanced no such intervention. Thus it is a materialist view, as against Descartes’s immaterialism. Yet some theorists were uneasy; they felt that in its total repudiation of the inner, the private, and the subjective, behaviorism was leaving out something real and important. When this worry was voiced, the behaviorists often replied with mockery, assimilating the doubters to the old-fashioned dualists who believed in ghosts, ectoplasm, or the Easter bunny; behaviorism was the only (even halfway sensible) game in town. Nonetheless, the doubters made several lasting points against it. First, people who are honest and not anesthetized know perfectly well that they experience, and can introspect, actual inner mental episodes or occurrences, that are neither actually accompanied by characteristic behavior nor merely static hypothetical facts of how they would behave if subjected to such-and-such a stimulation. Place (1956) spoke of an “intractable residue” of conscious mental states that bear no clear relations to behavior of any particular sort; see also Armstrong (1968: ch. 5) and Campbell (1984). Secondly, contrary to the Turing Test, it seems perfectly possible for two people to differ psychologically despite total similarity of their actual and hypothetical behavior, as in a case of “inverted spectrum” as hypothesized by John Locke: it might be that when you see a red object, you have the sort of color experience that I have when I see a green object, and vice versa. For that matter, a creature might exhibit all the appropriate stimulus-response relations and lack a mental life entirely; we can imagine building a “zombie” or stupid robot that behaves in the right ways but does not really feel or think anything at all (Block and Fodor 1972; Kirk 1974; Block 1981; Campbell 1984). Thirdly, the analytic behaviorist’s behavioral analyses of mental ascriptions seem adequate only so long as one makes substantive assumptions about the rest of the subject’s mentality (Chisholm 1957: ch. 11; Geach 1957: 8; Block 1981); for example, if Leo believes that parsnips are dangerous and he is offered parsnips, he would shun them only if he does not want to die. Therefore, the behaviorists analyses are either circular or radically incomplete, so far as they are supposed to exhaust the mental generally.

5 So matters stood in stalemate between dualists, behaviorists, and doubters, until the late 1950s, when U.T. Place (1956) and J.J.C. Smart (1959) proposed a middle way, a conciliatory compromise solution. 3. The Identity Theory According to Place and Smart, contrary to the behaviorists, at least some mental states and events are genuinely inner and genuinely episodic after all. They are not to be identified with outward behavior or even with hypothetical dispositions to behave. But, contrary to the dualists, the episodic mental items are neither ghostly nor non-physical. Rather, they are neurophysiological. They are identical with states and events occurring in their owners’ central nervous system; more precisely, every mental state or event is numerically identical with some such neurophysiological state or event. To be in pain is, for example, to have one’s c-fibers, or more likely a-fibers, firing in the central nervous system; to believe that broccoli will kill you is to have one’s Bbk-fibers firing and so on. By making the mental entirely physical, this identity theory of the mind shared the behaviorist advantage of avoiding the objections to dualism. But it also brilliantly accommodated the inner and the episodic as behaviorism did not. For, according to the identity theory, mental states and events actually occur in their owners’ central nervous systems. (Hence they are inner in an even more literal sense than could be granted by Descartes.) The identity theory also thoroughly vindicated the idea that organisms can differ mentally despite total outward behavioral similarity, since clearly organisms can differ neurophysiologically in mediating their outward stimulus-response regularities; that would afford the possibility of inverted spectrum. And of course the connection between a belief or a desire and the usually accompanying behavior is defeasible by other current mental states, since the connection between a B- or D-neural state and its normal behavioral effect is defeasible by other psychologically characterizable interacting neural states. The identity theory was the ideal resolution of the dualist-behaviorist impasse. Moreover, there was a direct deductive argument for the identity theory, hit upon independently by David Lewis (1966, 1972) and D.M. Armstrong (1968). Lewis and Armstrong maintained that mental terms were defined causally, in terms of mental items’ typical causes and effects. For instance, the word “pain” means a state that is typically brought about by physical damage and that typically causes withdrawal, favoring, complaint, desire for cessation, and so on.

6 (Armstrong claimed to establish this by straightforward “conceptual analysis.” More elaborately, Lewis held that mental terms are the theoretical terms of a commonsensical “folk theory,” and with the positivists that all theoretical terms are implicitly defined by the theories in which they occur. That common-sense theory has since come to be called “folk psychology.”) Now if, by definition, pain is whatever state occupies a certain causal niche, and if, as is overwhelmingly likely, scientific research will reveal that that particular niche is in fact occupied by such-and-such a neurophysiological state, it follows straightaway that pain is that neurophysiological state; QED. Pain retains its conceptual connection to behavior, but also undergoes an empirical identification with an inner state of its owner. (An advanced if convoluted elaboration of this already hybrid view is developed by Lewis 1980; for meticulous discussion, see Block 1978; Shoemaker 1981; Tye 11983; Owens 1986.) Notice that although Armstrong and Lewis began their arguments with a claim about the meanings of mental terms, their “common-sense causal” version of the identity theory was itself no such claim, any more than was the original identity theory of Place and Smart. Rather, all four philosophers relied on the idea that things or properties can sometimes be identified with “other” things or properties even when there is no synonymy of terms; there is such a thing as synthetic and a posteriori identity that is nonetheless genuine identity. While the identity of triangles with trilaterals holds simply in virtue of the meanings of the two terms and can be established by reason alone, without empirical investigation, the following identities are standard examples of the synthetic a posteriori, and were discovered empirically: clouds with masses of water droplets; water with H20; lightning with electrical discharge; the Morning Star with Venus; Mendelian genes with segments of DNA molecules; and temperature with mean molecular kinetic energy. The identity theory was offered similarly, in a spirit of scientific speculation; one could not properly object that mental expressions do not mean anything about brains or neural firings. So the dualists were wrong in thinking that mental items are non-physical but right in thinking them inner and episodic; the behaviorists were right in their materialism but wrong to repudiate inner mental episodes. A delightful synthesis. But alas, it was too good to be true.

7 4. Machine Functionalism Quite soon, Hilary Putnam (1960, 1967a, 1967b) and Jerry Fodor (1968b) pointed out a presumptuous implication of the identity theory understood as a theory of “types” or kinds of mental item: that a mental state such as pain has always and everywhere the neurophysiological characterization initially assigned to it. For example, if the identity theorist identifies pain itself with the firings of c-fibers, it followed that a creature of any species (earthly or science fiction) could be in pain only if that creature had c-fibers and they were firing. But such a constraint on the biology of any being capable of feeling pain is both gratuitous and indefensible; why should we suppose that any organism must be made of the same chemical materials as we are in order to have what can be accurately recognized as pain? The identity theorists had overreacted to the behaviorists’ difficulties and focused too narrowly on the specifics of biological humans’ actual inner states, and in so doing they had fallen into species chauvinism. Putnam and Fodor advocated the obvious correction: what was important was not its being c-fibers (per se) that were firing, but what the c-fiber firings were doing, what they contributed to the operation of the organism as a whole. The role of the c-fibers could have been performed by any mechanically suitable component; so long as that role was performed, the psychology of the containing organisms would have been unaffected. Thus, to be in pain is not per se to have c-fibers that are firing, but merely to be in some state or other, of whatever biochemical description, that plays the same causal role as did the firings of c-fibers in the human beings we have investigated. We may continue to maintain that pain “tokens” (individual instances of pain occurring in particular subjects at particular times) are strictly identical with particular neurophysiological states of those subjects at those times – in other words, with the states that happen to be playing the appropriate roles; this is the thesis of token identity or “token” materialism or physicalism. But pain itself, the kind, universal, or “type” can be identified only with something more abstract: the causal or functional role that c-fiber firings share with their potential replacements or surrogates. Mental state-types are identified not with neurophysiological types but with more abstract functional roles, as specified by state-tokens’ causal relations to the organism’s sensory inputs, behavioral responses, and other intervening psychological states. Functionalism, then, is the doctrine that what makes a mental state the type of state it is – a pain, a smell of violets, a belief that koalas are venomous – is its distinctive set of functional relations, its role in its subject’s behavioral economy.

8 Putnam compared mental states to the functional or “logical” states of a computer: just as a computer program can be realized or instantiated by any of a number of physically different hardware configurations, so can a psychological “program” be realized by different organisms of various physiochemical composition, and that is why different physiological states of organisms of different species can realize one and the same mental state-type. Where an identity theorist’s type-identification would take the form, “To be in a mental state of type M is to be in the neurophysiological state of type N,” Putnam’s machine functionalism, as I shall call it, asserts that to be in M is to be merely in some physiological state or other that plays role R in the relevant computer program (that is, the program that at a suitable level of abstraction mediates the creature’s total outputs given total inputs and so serves as the creature’s global psychology). The physiological state “plays role R” in that it stands in a set of relations to physical inputs, outputs, and other inner states that matches one-to-one the abstract input-output-logical-state relations codified in the computer program. The functionalist, then, mobilizes three distinct levels of description but applies them all to the same fundamental reality. A physical state-token in someone’s brain at a particular time has a neurophysiological description, but it may also have a functional description relative to a machine program that the brain happens to be realizing and it may further have a mental description if some mental state is correctly type-identified with the functional category it exemplifies. And so there is after all a sense in which “the mental” is distinct from “the physical.” Though, presumably, there are no non-physical substances or stuffs, and every mental token is itself entirely physical, mental characterization is not physical characterization, and the property of being a pain is not simply the property of being such-and-such a neural firing. Moreover, unlike behaviorism and the identity theory, functionalism does not strictly entail that minds are physical; it might be true of non-physical minds, so long as those minds realized the relevant programs. 5. Homuncular Functionalism and Other Teleological Theories Machine functionalism has been challenged on a number of points, which together motivate a specifically teleological notion of “function”: we are to think of a thing’s function as what the thing is for, what its job is, what it is supposed

9 to do. Here are three reasons for thus “putting the function back into functionalism” (Sober 1985). First, the machine functionalist still conceived psychological explanation in the logical positivists’ terms of subsuming observed data under wider and wider universal laws. But Fodor (1968a), Dennett (1978), and Cummins (1983) have defended a competing picture of psychological explanation, according to which behavioral data are to be seen as manifestations of subjects’ psychological capacities, and those capacities are to be explained by understanding the subjects as systems of interconnected components. Each component is a “homunculus,” in that it is thought of as a little agent or bureaucrat operating within its containing subject; it is identified by reference to the function it performs. And the various homuncular components cooperate with each other in such a way as to produce overall behavioral responses to stimuli. The “homunculi” are themselves broken down into subcomponents whose functions and interactions are similarly used to explain the capacities of the subsystems they compose, and so again and again until the sub-sub-… components are seen to be neurophysiological structures. Thus biological and mechanical systems alike are hierarchically organized. (An automobile works – locomotes – by having a fuel reservoir, a fuel line, a carburetor, a combustion chamber, an ignition system, a transmission, and wheels that turn. If one wants to know how the carburetor works, one will be told what its parts are and how they work together to infuse oxygen into fuel; and so on.) But nothing in this pattern of explanation corresponds to the subsumption of data under wider and wider universal generalizations. The second reason is that the machine functionalist treated functional “realization,” the relation between an individual physical organism and the abstract program it was said to instantiate, as a simple matter of one-to-one correspondence between the organism’s repertoire of physical stimuli, structural states, and behavior, on the one hand, and the program’s defining input-state-output function on the other. But this criterion of realization was seen to be too liberal; since virtually anything bears a one-one correlation of some sort to virtually anything else, “realization” in the sense of mere one-one correspondence is far too easily come by (Block 1978; Lycan 1987: ch. 3); any middle-sized physical object has some set of component molecular motions that happen to correspond one-one to a given machine program. Some theorists have proposed to remedy this defect by imposing a teleological requirement on realization: a physical state of an organism will count as realizing such-and-such a functional description only if the organism has genuine organic integrity and

10 the state plays its functional role properly for the organism, in the teleological sense of “for” and in the teleological sense of “function.” The state must do what it does as a matter of, so to speak, its biological purpose. (Machine functionalism took “function” in its spare mathematical sense rather than in a genuinely functional sense. One should note that, as used here, the term “machine functionalism” is tied to the original liberal conception of “realizing;” so to impose a teleological restriction is to abandon machine functionalism.) Thirdly, Van Gulick (1980), Millikan (1984), Dretske (1988), Fodor (1990a), and others have argued powerfully that teleology must enter into any adequate analysis of the intentionality or aboutness or referential character of mental states such as beliefs and desires, by reference to the states’ psychological functions. Beliefs, desires, and other propositional attitudes such as suspecting, intending, and wishing are directed upon states of affairs which may or may not actually obtain (for instance, that the Republican candidate will win), and are about individuals who may or may not exist (such as King Arthur or Sherlock Holmes). Franz Brentano (1973 [1874]) drew a distinction between psychological phenomena, which are directed upon objects and states of affairs, even non-existing ones, and physical objects, which are not so directed. If mental items are physical, however, the question arises how any purely physical entity or state could have the property of being “directed upon” or about a non-existent state of affairs or object; that is not the sort of feature that ordinary, purely physical objects (such as bricks) can have. According to the teleological theorists, a neurophysiological state should count as a belief that broccoli will kill you, and in particular as about broccoli, only if that state has the representing of broccoli as in some sense one of its psychobiological functions. If teleology is needed to explicate intentionality, and machine functionalism affords no teleology, then machine functionalism is not adequate to explicate intentionality. All this talk of teleology and biological function seems to presuppose that biological and other “structural” states of physical systems really do have functions in the teleological sense. The latter claim is, to say the least, controversial. But, fortunately for the teleological functionalist, there is a vigorous industry whose purpose is to explicate biological teleology in naturalistic terms, typically in terms of etiology. For example, a trait may be said to have the function of doing F in virtue of its having been selected because it did F; a heart’s function is to pump blood because the hearts’ pumping blood in the past has given them a selection advantage and so led to the survival of more animals with hearts (Wright 1973; Millikan 1984).

11 Functionalism inherits some of the same difficulties that earlier beset behaviorism and the identity theory. These remaining obstacles fall into two main categories: qualia problems and intentionality problems. 6. Problems over Qualia and Consciousness The quale of a mental state or event (particularly a sensation) is that state or event’s feel, its introspectible “phenomenal character,” its nature as it presents itself to consciousness. Many philosophers have objected that neither functionalist metaphysics nor any of the allied doctrines aforementioned can “explain consciousness,” or illuminate or even tolerate the notion of what it feels like to be in a mental state of such-and-such a sort. Yet, say these philosophers, the feels are quintessentially mental – it is the feels that make the mental states the mental states they are. Something, therefore, must be drastically wrong with functionalism. “The” problem of consciousness or qualia is familiar. Indeed, it is so familiar that we tend to overlook the most important thing about it; that its name is legion, for it is many. There is no single problem of qualia; there are at least eleven quite distinct objections that have been brought against functionalism (some of them apply to materialist views generally). To mention a few: 1. Block (1978) and others have urged various “zombie”-style counterexample cases against functionalism – examples in which some entity seems to realize the right program but which lacks one of mentality’s crucial qualitative aspects. (Typically the “entity” is a group of human beings, such as the entire population of China acting according to an elaborate set of instructions. It does not seem that such a group of individuals would collectively be feeling anything.) Predictably, functionalists have rejoined by arguing, for each example, either that the proposed group entity does not in fact succeed in realizing the right program (for example, because the requisite technology is lacking) or that there is no good reason for denying that the entity does have the relevant qualitative states. 2. Nagel (1974) and Jackson (1982) have appealed to a disparity in knowledge, as a general anti-materialist argument: I can know what it is like to have such-and-such a sensation only if I have had that sensation myself; no amount of objective, third-person scientific information would suffice. In reply, functionalists have offered analyses of

12 “perspectivalness,” complete with accounts of “what it is like” to have a sensation, that make those things compatible with functionalism. Nagel and Jackson have argued, further, for the existence of a special, intrinsically perspectival kind of fact, the fact of “what it is like”, which intractably and in principle cannot be captured or explained by physical science. Functionalists have responded that the arguments commit a logical fallacy (specifically, that of applying Leibniz’s Law in an intensional context); some have added that in any case, to “know what it is like” is merely to have an ability, and involves no fact of any sort, while, contrariwise, some other theorists have granted that there are facts of “what it is like” but insisted that such facts can after all be explained and predicted by natural science. 3. Saul Kripke (1972) made ingenious use of modal distinctions against type or even token identity, arguing that unless mental items are necessarily identical with neurophysiological ones, which they are not, they cannot be identical with them at all. Kripke’s close reasoning has attracted considerable critical attention. And even more sophisticate variants have been offered, e.g., by Jackson (1993) and Chalmers (1996). 4. Jackson (1977) and others have defended the claim that in consciousness we are presented with mental individuals that themselves bear phenomenal, qualitative properties. For instance, when a red flash bulb goes off in your face, your visual field exhibits a green blotch, an “after-image,” a thing that is really green and has a fairly definite shape and exists for a few seconds before disappearing. If there are such things, they are entirely different from anything physical to be found in the brain of a (healthy) human subject. Belief in such “phenomenal individuals” as genuinely green after-images has been unpopular among philosophers for some years, but it can be powerfully motivated (see Lycan 1987: 83-93). This is a formidable quartet of objections, and, on the face of it, each is plausible. Materialists and particularly functionalists must respond in detail. Needless to say, materialists have responded at length; some of the most powerful rejoinders are formulated in Lycan (1987, 1996). Yet recent years have seen some reaction against the prevailing materialism, including a re-emergence of some neo-dualist views, as in Robinson (1988), Hart (1988), Strawson (1994), and Chalmers (1996).

13 7. Problems over Intentionality The problem arising from our mention of Brentano was to explain how any purely physical entity or state could have the property of being about or “directed upon” a non-existent state of affairs. The standard functionalist reply is that propositional attitudes have Brentano’s feature because the internal physical states and events that realize them represent actual or possible states of affairs. What they represent (their content) is determined at least in part by their functional roles. There are two main difficulties. One is that of saying exactly how a physical item’s supposed representational content is determined; in virtue of what does a neurophysiological state represent precisely that the Republican candidate will win? An answer to that general question is what Fodor has called a psychosemantics. Several attempts have been made (Dretske 1981; Millikan 1984; Fodor 1987, 1990a, 1990b, 1994), but none is very plausible. In particular, none applies to any content but that which involves actual and presently existing physical objects. Abstract entities such as numbers, future entities such as a child I hope one day to have, and Brentano’s non-existent items, are just left out. The second difficulty is that ordinary propositional attitudes contents do not supervene on the states of their subjects’ nervous systems, but are underdetermined by even the total state of that subject’s head. Putnam’s (1975) Twin Earth and indexical examples show that, surprising as it may seem, two human beings could be molecule-for-molecule alike and still differ in their beliefs and desires, depending on various factors in their spatial and historical environments. Thus we can distinguish between “narrow” properties, those that are determined by a subject’s intrinsic physical composition, and “wide” properties, those that are not so determined. Representational contents are wide, yet functional roles are, ostensibly, narrow. How, then, can propositional attitudes be type-identified with functional roles, or for that matter with states of the brain under any narrow description? Functionalists have responded in either of two ways to the second difficulty. The first is to understand the “function” widely as well, specifying functional roles historically and/or by reference to features of the subject’s actual environment. The second is simply to abandon functionalism as an account of content in particular, giving some alternative psychosemantics for propositional attitudes, but preserving functionalism in regard to attitude types. (Thus what

14 makes a state a desire that P is its functional role, even if something else makes the state a desire that P). 8. The Emotions In alluding to sensory states and to mental states with intentional content, we have said nothing specifically about the emotions. Since the rejection of behaviorism, theories of mind have tended not to be applied directly to emotions; rather, the emotions have been generally thought to be conceptually analyzable as complexes of more central or “core” mental states, typically propositional attitudes such as belief and desire (and the intentionality of emotions has accordingly been traced back to that of attitudes). Armstrong (1968: ch. 8, secn III) essentially took this line, as do Solomon (1977) and Gordon (1987). However, there is a literature on functionalism and the emotions; see Rey (1977) and some of the other papers collected in Rorty (1980). Griffiths (1997) takes a generally functionalist view, but argues that “the emotions” do not constitute a single kind. 9. Instrumentalism The identity theorists and the functionalists, machine or teleological, joined common sense (and current cognitive psychology) in understanding mental states and events both as internal to human subjects and as causes. Beliefs and desires in particular are thought to be caused by perceptual or other cognitive events and as in turn conspiring from within to cause behavior. If Armstrong’s or Lewis’s theory of mind is correct, this idea is not only common-sensical but a conceptual truth; if functionalism is correct, it is at least a metaphysical fact. In rallying to the inner-causal story, as we saw in section 3, the identity theorists and functionalists broke with the behaviorists, for behaviorists did not think of mental items as entities, as inner, or as causes in any stronger sense than the bare hypothetical. Behaviorists either dispensed with the mentalistic idiom altogether, or paraphrased mental ascriptions in terms of putative responses to hypothetical stimuli. More recently, other philosophers have followed them in rejecting the idea of beliefs and desires as inner causes and in construing them in a more purely operational or instrumental fashion. D. C. Dennett (1978, 1987) has been particularly concerned to deny that beliefs and desires are causally active inner states of people, and maintains instead that belief-ascriptions and

15 desire-ascriptions are merely calculational devices, which happen to have predictive usefulness for a reason that he goes on to explain. Such ascriptions are often objectively true, he grants, but not in virtue of describing inner mechanisms. Thus Dennett is an instrumentalist about propositional attitudes such as belief and desire. (According to a contemporary interpretation, an “instrumentalist” about Xs is a theorist who claims that although sentences about “Xs” are often true, they do not really describe entities of a special kind, but only serve to systematize more familiar phenomena. For instance, we are all instrumentalists about “the average American homeowner,” who is white, male, and the father of exactly 2.2 children.) To ascribe a “belief” or a “desire” is not to describe some segment of physical reality, Dennett says, but is more like moving a group of beads in an abacus. (It should be noted that Dennett has more recently moderated his line: see 1991.) Dennett offers basically four grounds for his rejection of the common-sensical inner-cause thesis: 1. He thinks it is quite unlikely that any science will ever turn up any distinctive inner-causal mechanism that would be shared by all the possible subjects that had a particular belief. 2. He compares the belief-desire interpretation of human beings to that of lower animals, chess-playing computers, and even lightning-rods, arguing that (a) in their case we have no reason to think of belief-ascriptions and desire-ascriptions as other than mere calculational-predictive devices and (b) we have no more reason for the case of humans to think of belief-ascriptions and desire-ascriptions as other than that. 3. Dennett argues from the verification conditions of belief-ascriptions and desire-ascriptions – basically a matter of extrapolating rationally from what a subject ought to believe and want in his or her circumstances – and then he boldly just identifies the truth-makers of those ascriptions with their verification conditions, challenging inner-cause theorists to show why instrumentalism does not accommodate all the actual evidence. 4. He argues that in any case, if a purely normative assumption (the “rationality assumption,” which is that people will generally believe what they ought to believe and desire what they should desire) is required for the licensing of an ascription, then the ascription cannot itself be a purely factual description of a plain state of affairs.

16 Stich (1981) explores and criticizes Dennett’s instrumentalism at length (perhaps oddly, Stich (1983) goes on to defend a view nearly as deprecating as Dennett’s, though clearly distinct from it). Dennett (1981) responds to Stich, bringing out more clearly the force of the “rationality assumption” assumption. (Other criticisms are leveled against Dennett by commentators in the Behavioral and Brain Sciences symposium that is headed by Dennett 1988.) A close cousin of Dennett’s view, in that it focuses on the rationality assumption, is Donald Davidson’s (1970) anomalous monism. Unlike Dennett’s instrumentalism, it endorses token physicalism and insists that individual mental tokens are causes, but it rejects on similarly epistemological grounds the possibility of any interesting materialistic type-reduction of the propositional attitudes. 10. Eliminativism and Neurophilosophy Dennett’s instrumentalism breaks with common sense and with philosophical tradition in denying that propositional attitudes such as belief and desire are real inner-causal states of people. But Dennett concedes – indeed, he urgently insists – that belief-ascriptions and desire-ascriptions are true, and objectively true, nonetheless. Other philosophers have taken a less conciliatory, more radically uncommon-sensical view: that mental ascriptions are not true after all, but are simply false. Common sense is just mistaken in supposing that people believe and desire things, and perhaps in supposing that people have sensations and feelings, disconcerting as that nihilistic claim may seem. Following standard usage, let us call the nihilistic claim “eliminative materialism,” or “eliminativism” for short. It is important to note a customary if unexpected alliance between the eliminativist and the token physicalist: the eliminativist, the identity theorist, and the functionalist all agree that mental items are, if anything, real inner-causal states of people. They disagree only on the empirical question of whether any real neurophysiological states of people do in fact answer to the common-sensical mental categories of “folk psychology.” Eliminativists praise identity theorists and functionalists for their forthright willingness to step up and take their empirical shot. Both eliminativists and token physicalists scorn the instrumentalist’s sleazy evasion. (But eliminativists agree with instrumentalists that functionalism is a pipe-dream, and functionalists agree with instrumentalists that mental ascriptions are often true and obviously so. The three views form an external triangle of a not uncommon sort.)

17 Paul Feyerabend (1963a, 1963b) was the first to argue openly that the mental categories of folk psychology simply fail to capture anything in physical reality and that everyday mental ascriptions were therefore false. (Rorty (1965) took a notoriously eliminativist line also, but, following Sellars (1963), tried to soften its nihilism; Lycan and Pappas (1972) argued that the softening served only to collapse Rorty’s position into incoherence.) Feyerabend attracted no great following, presumably because of his view’s outrageous flouting of common sense. But eliminativism was resurrected by Paul Churchland (1981) and others, and defended in more detail. Churchland argues mainly from the poverty of “folk psychology;” he claims that historically, when other primitive theories such as alchemy have done as badly on scientific grounds as folk psychology has, they have been abandoned, and rightly so. P.S. Churchland (1986) and Churchland and Sejnowski (1990) emphasize the comparative scientific reality and causal efficacy of neurobiological mechanisms: given the scientific excellence of neurophysiological explanation and the contrasting diffuseness and type-irreducibility of folk psychology, why should we suppose – even for a minute, much less automatically – that the platitudes of folk psychology express truths? Reasons for rejecting eliminativism are obvious. First, we think we know there are propositional attitudes because we introspect them in ourselves. Secondly, the attitudes are indispensable to prediction, reasoning, deliberation, and understanding, and to the capturing of important macroscopic generalizations. We could not often converse coherently without mention of them. But what of P.M. Churchland’s and P.S. Churchland and Sejnowshi’s arguments? One may dispute the claim that folk psychology is a failed or bad theory; Kitcher (1984) and Horgan and Woodward (1985) take this line. Or one may dispute the more basic claim that folk psychology is a theory at all. Ryle (1949) and Wittgenstein (1953) staunchly opposed that claim before it had explicitly been formulated. More recent critics include Morton (1980), Malcolm (1984), Baker (1988), McDonough (1991), and Wilkes (1993).

18 References Armstrong, D.M. (1968). A Materialist Theory of the Mind. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Baker, L.R. (1988). Saving Belief. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Block, N.J. (1978). “Troubles with Functionalism.” In W. Savage (ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. IX: Perception and Cognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 261-325. Excerpts reprinted in Lycan (1990, 1999) —(ed.) (1980). Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, 2 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —(1981). “Psychologism and Behaviorism.” Philosophical Review, 90: 5-43. Block, N.J. and Fodor, J.A. (1972). “What Psychological States are Not.” Philosophical Review, 81: 159-81. Reprinted in Block (1980). Brentano, F. (1973 [1874]). Philosophy from an Empirical Standpoint. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Campbell, K. (1984). Body and Mind (2nd edn). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Carnap, R. (1932-3). “Psychology in Physical Language.” Erkenntuis, 3: 107-42. Excerpt reprinted in Lycan (1990). Chalmers, D. (1996). The Conscious Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Chisholm, R.M. (1957). Perceiving. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Churchland, P.M. (1981). “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes.” Journal of Philosophy, 78: 67-90. Reprinted in Lycan (1990, 1999) Churchland, P.S. and Sejnowski, T. (1990). “Neural Representation and Neural Computation.” In Lycan (1990): 224-52. Reprinted in Lycan (1999). Cummins, R. (1983). The Nature of Psychological Explanation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books. Davidson. D. (1970). “Mental Events.” In L. Foster and J.W. Swanson (eds.), Experience and Theory. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press: 79-101. Reprinted in Block (1980) and in Lycan (1999). Dennett D.C. (1978). Brainstorms. Montgomery, VT: Bradford Books. —(1981). “Making Sense of Ourselves.” Philosophical Topics, 12: 63-81. Reprinted in Lycan (1990). —(1987). The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press. —(1988). “Precis of The Intentional Stance.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 11: 495-505. —(1991). “Real Patterns.” Journal of Philosophy, 88: 27-51. Dretske, F. (1981). Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press. —(1988). Explaining Behavior. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press. Feyerabend, P. (1963a). “Materialism and the Mind-Body Problem.” Review of Metaphysics, 17: 49-66. —(1963b). “Mental Events and the Brain.” Journal of Philosophy, 60: 295-6. Fodor, J.A. (1968a). “The appeal to Tacit Knowledge in Psychological Explanation.” Journal of Philosophy, 65: 627-40. —(1968b). Psychological Explanation. New York, NY: Random House. —(1987). Psychosemantics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. —(1990a). “Psychosemantics.” In Lycan (1990): 312-37. —(1990b). A Theory of Content. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press. —(1994). The Elm and The Expert. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press. Geach, P. (1957). Mental Acts. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

19 Gordon, R.M. (1987). The Structure of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Griffiths, P. (1997). What Emotions Really Are. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hart, W.D. (1988). Engines of the Soul. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horgan, T. and Woodward, J. (1985). “Folk Psychology is Here to Stay.” Philosophical Review, 94: 197-226. Reprinted in Lycan (1990, 1999) Jackson, F. (1977). Perception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —(1982). “Epiphenomenal Qualia.” Philosophical Quarterly, 32: 127-36. Reprinted in Lycan (1990, 1999). —(1993). “Armchair Metaphysics.” In J. O’Leary-Hawthorne and M. Michael (eds.), Philosophy in Mind. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishing. Kirk, R. (1974). “Zombies vs. Materialists.” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 48: 135-52. Kitcher, P. (1984). “In Defense of Intentional Psychology.” Journal of Philosophy, 81: 89-106. Kripke, S. (1972). Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lewis, D. (1966). “An Argument for the Identity Theory.” Journal of Philosophy, 63: 17-25. —(1972). “Psychological and Theoretical Identifications.” Australian Journal of Philosophy, 50: 249-58. Reprinted in Block (1980). —(1980). “Mad Pain and Martian Pain.” In Block (1980) Lycan, W. (1987). Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books. —(ed.) (1990). Mind and Cognition: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. —(1996). Consciousness and Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books. —(ed.) (1999). Mind and Cognition: An Anthology. Oxford: Blackwell. Lycan, W. and Pappas G. (1972). “What is Eliminative Materialism?” Australian Journal of Philosophy, 50: 149-59. Malcolm, N. (1984). “Consciousness and Causality.” In D. Armstrong and N. Malcolm, Consciousness and Causality: A Debate on the Nature of Mind. Oxford: Blackwell. McDonough, R. (1991). “A Culturalist Account of Folk Psychology.” In J. Greenwood (ed.), The Future of Folk Psychology. Cambridge University Press: 263-88. Millikan, R.G. (1984). Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press. Morton, A. (1980). Frames of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nagel, T. (1974). “What Is It Like to be a Bat?” Philosophical Review, 83: 435-50. Reprinted in Block (1980). Owens, J. (1986). “The Failure of Lewis’ Functionalism.” Philosophical Quarterly, 36: 159-73. Place, U.T. (1956). “Is Consciousness a Brain Process?” British Journal of Psychology, 47: 44-50. Reprinted in Lycan (1990, 1999). Putnam, H. (1960). “Minds and Machines.” In S. Hook (ed.), Dimensions of Mind. New York: Collier Books: 136-64. —(1967a). “The Mental Life of Some Machines.” In H.-N. Castaneda (ed.), Intentionality, Minds, and Perception. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press: 177-200. —(1967b). “Psychological Predicates.” In W.H. Capitan and D. Merrill (eds.), Art, Minds, and Religion, Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press: 37-48. Reprinted in Block (1980) under the title “The Nature of Mental States.” —(1975). “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’.” In Philosophical Papers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rey, G. (1980). “Functionalism and the Emotions.” In Rorty (1980): 163-95. Robinson, W.S. (1988). Brains and People. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Rorty, A.O. (ed) (1980). Explaining Emotions. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press.

20 Rorty, R. (1965). “Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories.” Review of Metaphysics, 19: 24-54. Ryle, G. (1949). The Concept of Mind. New York, NY: Barnes and Noble. Sellars, W. (1962). Science, Perception and Reality. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Shoemaker, S. (1981). “Some Varieties of Functionalism.” Philosophical Topics, 12: 93-119. Smart, J.J.C. (1959). “Sensations and Brain Processes.” Philosophical Review, 68: 141-56. Sober, E. (1985). “Panglossian Functionalism and the Philosophy of Mind.” Synthese, 64: 165-93. Revised excerpt reprinted in Lycan (1990, 1999) under the title “Putting the Function Back Into Functionalism.” Solomon, R. (1977). The Passions. New York, NY: Doubleday. Stich, S. (1981). “Dennett on Intentional Systems.” Philosophical Topics, 12: 39-62. Reprinted in Lycan (1990, 1999). —(1983). From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press. Strawson, G. (1994). Mental Reality. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press. Turing, A. “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.” In A.R. Anderson (ed.), Minds and Machines. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall: 4-30. Tye, M. (1983). “Functionalism and Type Physicalism.” Philosophical Studies, 44: 161-74. Van Gulick, R. (1980). “Functionalism, Information, and Content.” Nature and System, 2: 139-62. Wilkes, K. (1993). “The Relationship Between Scientific and Common Sense Psychology.” In S. Christensen and D. Turner (eds.), Folk Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: 144-87. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical Investigations, trans G.E.M. Anscombe. New York, NY: Macmillan. Wright, L. (1973). “Functions.” Philosophical Review, 82: 139-68.

THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM Tim Crane Department of Philosophy, University College London The mind-body problem is the problem of explaining how our mental states, events and processesÑlike beliefs, actions and thinkingÑare related to the physical states, events and processes in our bodies. A question of the form, Ôhow is A related to B?Õ does not by itself pose a philosophical problem. To pose such a problem, there has to be something about A and B which makes the relation between them seem problematic. Many features of mind and body have been cited as responsible for our sense of the problem. Here I will concentrate on two: the fact that mind and body seem to interact causally, and the distinctive features of consciousness. A long tradition in philosophy has held, with RenŽ Descartes, that the mind must be a non-bodily entity: a soul or mental substance. This thesis is called Ôsubstance dualismÕ (or ÔCartesian dualismÕ) because it says that there are two kinds of substance in the world, mental and physical or material. One reason for believing this is the belief that the soul, unlike the body, is immortal. Another reason for believing it is that we have free will, and this seems to require that the mind is a non-physical thing, since all physical things are subject to the laws of nature. To say that the mind (or soul) is a mental substance is not to say that the mind is made up of some non-physical kind of stuff or material. The use of the term ÔsubstanceÕ is rather the traditional philosophical use: a substance is an entity which has properties and persists through change in its properties. A tiger, for instance, is a substance, whereas a hurricane is not. To say that there are mental substancesÑindividual minds or soulsÑis to say that there are objects which are non-material or non-physical, and these objects can exist independently of physical objects, like a personÕs body. These objects, if they exist, are not made of non-physical ÔstuffÕ: they are not made of ÔstuffÕ at all.

But if there are such objects, then how do they interact with physical objects? Our thoughts and other mental states often seem to be caused by events in the world external to our minds, and our thoughts and intentions seem to make our bodies move. A perception of a glass of wine can be caused by the presence of a glass of wine in front of me, and my desire for some wine plus the belief that there is a glass of wine in front of me can cause me to reach towards the glass. But many think that all physical effects are brought about by purely physical causes: physical states of my brain are enough to cause the physical event of my reaching towards the glass. So how can my mental states play any causal role in bringing about my actions? Some dualists react to this by denying that such psychophysical causation really exists (this view is called ÔepiphenomenalismÕ). Some philosophers have thought that mental states are causally related only to other mental states, and physical states are causally related only to other physical states: the mental and physical realms operate independently. This ÔparallelistÕ view has been unpopular in the 20th century, as have most dualist views. For if we find dualism unsatisfactory, there is another way to answer the question of psychophysical causation: we can say that mental states have effects in the physical world precisely because they are, contrary to appearances, physical states (see Lewis 1966). This is a *monist* view, since it holds that there is *one* kind of substance, physical or material subtance. Therefore it is known as ÔphysicalismÕ or ÔmaterialismÕ. Physicalism comes in many forms. The strongest form is the form just mentioned, which holds that mental *states* or *properties* are identical with physical states or properties. This view, sometimes called the Ôtype-identity theoryÕ, is considered an empirical hypothesis, awaiting confirmation by science. The model for such an identity theory is the identification of properties such as the heat of a gas with the mean kinetic energy of its constituent molecules. Since such an identification is often described as part of the *reduction* of thermodynamics to statistical mechanics, the parallel claim about the mental is often called a ÔreductiveÕ theory of mind, or Ôreductive physicalismÕ (see Lewis 1995).

Many philosophers find reductive physicalism an excessively bold empirical speculation. For it seems committed to the implausible claim that all creatures who believe that grass is green have one physical property in commonÑthe property which is identical to the belief that grass is green. For this reason (and others) some physicalists adopt a weaker version of physicalism which does not have this consequence. This version of physicalism holds that all particular objects and events are physical, but allows that there are mental properties which are not identical to physical properties. (Davidson (1970) is one inspiration for such views.) This kind of view, Ônon-reductive physicalismÕ, is a kind of dualism, since it holds there are two kinds of property, mental and physical. But it is not *substance* dualism, since it holds that all substances are physical substances. Non-reductive physicalism is also sometimes called a Ôtoken-identity theoryÕ since it identifies mental and physical particulars or tokens, and it is invariably supplemented by the claim that mental properties *supervene* on physical properties. Though the notion can be refined in many ways, supervenience is essentially a claim about the dependence of the mental on the physical: there can be no difference in mental facts without a difference in some physical facts (see Kim 1993; Horgan 1995). If the problem of psychophysical causation was the whole of the mind-body problem, then it might seem that physicalism is a straightforward solution to that problem. If the only question is, Ôhow do mental states have effects in the physical world?Õ, then it seems that the physicalist can answer this by saying that mental states are identical with physical states. But there is a complication here. For it seems that physicalists can only propose this solution to the problem of psychophysical causation if mental causes are identical with physical causes. Yet if properties or states are causes, as many reductive physicalists assume, then non-reductive physicalists are not entitled to this solution, since they do not identify mental and physical properties. This is the

problem of mental causation for non-reductive physicalists. (See Davidson 1993, Crane 1995, Jackson 1996). However, even if the physicalist can solve this problem of mental causation, there is a deeper reason why there is more to the mind-body problem than the problem of psychophysical interaction. The reason is that, according to many philosophers, physicalism is not the *solution* to the mind-body problem, but something which gives rise to a version of that problem. They reason as follows: we know enough to know that the world is completely physical. So if the mind exists, it too must be physical. However, it seems hard to understand how certain aspects of mindÑnotably consciousnessÑcould just be physical features of the brain. How can the complex subjectivity of a conscious experience be produced by the grey matter of the brain? As McGinn (1989) puts it, neurones and synapses seem Ôthe wrong kindÕ of material to produce consciousness. The problem here is one of intelligibility: we know that the mental is physical, so consciousness must have its origins in the brain; but how can we make sense of this mysterious fact? Thomas Nagel dramatised this in a famous paper (Nagel 1974). Nagel says that when a creature is conscious, there is something it is *like* to be that creature: there is something it is like to be a bat, but there is nothing it is like to be a stone. The heart of the mind-body problem for Nagel is the apparent fact that we cannot understand *how* consciousness can just be a physical property of the brain, even though we know that in some sense physicalism is true (see also Chalmers 1996). Some physicalists respond by saying that this problem is illusory: if physicalism *is* true, then consciousness is just a physical property, and it simply begs the question against physicalism to wonder whether this *can* be true (see Lewis 1983). But NagelÕs criticism can be sharpened, as it has been by what Frank Jackson calls the Ôknowledge argumentÕ (Jackson 1982; see also Robinson 1982). Jackson argues that even if we knew all the physical facts about, say, pain, we would not ipso facto know what it is like to be in pain. Someone omniscient about the physical facts about pain would learn something new when they learn what it is like to be in pain.

Therefore there is some knowledgeÑknowledge of what it is likeÑwhich is not knowledge of any physical fact. So not all facts are physical facts. (For physicalist responses to JacksonÕs argument see Lewis 1990; Dennett 1991; Churchland 1985.) In late twentieth century philosophy of mind, discussions of the mind-body problem revolve around the twin poles of the problem of psychophysical causation and the problem of consciousness. And while it is possible to see these as independent problems, there is nonetheless a link between them, which can be expressed as a dilemma: if the mental is not physical, then how we make sense of its causal interaction with the physical? But if it is physical, how can we make sense of the phenomena of consciousness? These two questions, in effect, define the contemporary debate on the mind-body problem. REFERENCES Chalmers, D., 1996, *The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory*. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Churchland, P.M., 1985, ÔReduction, qualia and the direct introspection of brain states.Õ *Journal of Philosophy* 82: 8-28. Crane, T., 1995, ÔThe mental causation debate.Õ *Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume* 69: 211-236. Davidson, D., 1970, ÔMental events.Õ In *Experience and Theory*, L. Foster and J. Swanson, eds. London: Duckworth 79-101. Davidson, D., 1993, ÔThinking causes.Õ In *Mental Causation*, J.Heil and A. Mele, eds. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1-17. Dennett, D.C., 1991, *Consciousness Explained*. Harmondsworth: Allen Lane. Jackson, F., 1982, ÔEpiphenomenal qualia.Õ *Philosophical Quarterly* 32: 127-136. Jackson, F., 1996, ÔMental causation.Õ *Mind* 105: 377-413. Kim, J., 1993, *Supervenience and Mind*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horgan, T., 1993, ÔFrom supervenience to superdupervenience: meeting the demands of a material world.Õ *Mind* 102: 555-586.

Lewis, D., 1966, ÔAn argument for the identity theory.Õ *Journal of Philosophy* 63: 17-25. Lewis, D., 1983, ÔMad pain and martian pain.Õ In *Philosophical Papers Volume One*, D. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 122

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