I’m a student in intro philosophy…and I recived a very bad grade on a midterm…and I get to rewrite it…but I have to tie in all 3 questions into a single paper with a single thesis…and I am so confused…the first question deals with descartes meditations and the cogito, and then the second deals with the real distinction ( mind and body…descrates dualism) and how searle sees a problem with descartes dualism, and the third deals with how consciouness is a problem from a scientific world view according to searle
I keep trying to write thesis…an intro paragraph…and I am so lost…please help me!!!
You should post the three questions in their entirety. It’s impossible to steer you in the right direction when the three questions you need conglomerated into a thesis are so ambiguous. Also, this site may help you: http://plato.stanford.edu/
I like it, …consciousness is the inseperable, emergent function of the brain, the way digestion is the inseperable, emergent function of the stomach/intestines/etc., the way respiration is the (i., e.) function of the lungs, circulation is the (i., e) function of the heart, etc. I recently came to a similar conclusion and wrote about it elsewhere, but you’re prob’ly up to your eyeballs in readings as-is, so I’ll spare you.
And here’s a funny piece where Ernie (Sesame Street) meets Descartes’ Demon:
question 1: what is the overall aim of descartes meditations? What is the aim of the first meditation? How does descartes reason. over the course of the first two meditations, to the conclusion “I exist?” What am “I” according to decartes at the end of the second meditation?
question 2: What am “I” accoring to the 5th meditation. How are my mind and body related? Hopw are they distnct? What sorts of considerations does descartes advnace to prove/explain the “real distinction?” What problem does searle see for desacrtes dualism. How does searle solve this problem?
question 3: What is consciousness a problem for our scientific world view, according to searle? Explain the four properties of mind that are problematic for the materialist, and the problems they present. How does searle solve these problems?
…I need to make a single thesis with these three questions…and make them into a complete essay…I jsut need some advice in wqhat direction I should eb going in…or how I can relate question 2 to question 3. thanks!
As a mostly classical philosopher, i would be interested in materealists’ thoughts on this and how they (think) they solve them. i.e. Do they deal with the classical proofs of non-physical intellect?
Second, i hope you give those people credit who work on this problem with you (like, footnote the website, at least.)
I’m a long time philosopher, but only recently a philosophy student. I am a materialist, I know that much, but I am unfamiliar with the “classical” arguments you refer to. If you’ll post them, I’ll be pleased to give you my beliefs in response.
Thanks for the invitation. I know of two. There is a highly complex one in the De Anima, and a simpler one. Here’s the simpler one.
Thought experiment:
A dog. Visualise a dog. First, standing, facing you, cocker spaniel. Now, from the side, sitting, great dane. You imagine them completely different, but you know they are both dogs. But the abstract dog you know is not imagined – non-physical.*
While your imagination must be physical because it deals with the physical, the part of human intellegence which abstracts knows the non-physical – hence abstract thought is non-physical.
That’s the bare bones of the argument. Hows that?
*By physical, i basically mean (bodily) material, and by n on-physical i basically mean non-(bodily)material. You may point out any problems with that that you wish.
I don’t know hoe useful this is, but I’ll give it a go.
Descartes draws the distinction between mind/body by showing the difference between humans and machines/animals.
1 Both human and animal bodies operate in the same way as machines
2 But humans have a rational capacity that machines and animals don’t have. These are called ‘marks of a ‘mind’
A- Language
1 machines and animals cannot use words or construct meaningful sentences
2 Humans can use words and construct meaningful sentences
3 Humans have a property that is lacking in animals and machines and so are distinct from them because of it
B- Reasoning flexibility
1 The behaviour of machines and animals sow tht they behave through physical programming, not rationality
2 Humans do act through rationality
3 Humans have a property that is lacking in animals and machines and so are distinct from them because of it
3 Rational capacities cannot come from the ‘disposition of organs’ because if this was true both machines and animals would have a rational capacity, which they don’t
4 Therefore the rational soul is independent of the body
5 This non-physical soul is distinct from the body through its immortality as there we cannot detect a physical way to destroy it.
If I am picturing specific dogs, like a cocker spaniel or a great dane, I am remembering to be best of my ability what I have observed about the entities which those words represent. If I am pictureing Dog, the form, I am generalizing. It’s just nominalism, there is no Dog, there isn’t even any cocker spaniel or great dane, they’re just words used to categorize certain groups of sensory input, i.e. if it has the characteristics I have been taught to group together as dog, then it is a dog, and all of those characteristics are things I have observed, so where does anything non-physical come in? There is no distinction, no form, just a word used to categorize for the convenience of people.
Well, “those characteristics” you “have observed”, are those the formality of “dog”? If i show you something you haven’t seen before, how do you know if it is a dog when nothing imagined unites the particular dogs? Imagined dogs can look very different.
Can you state what makes a dog? Then the similarities could be nominal, but i don’t think that’s the way we think. We often know the differences without being able to state yet why it is. The difference seems intuitive and not nominal.
(But mine are probably not the best arguments that can be given to support this position.)
