Philosophy of Mind (Feb. 25, 2003)
How would you summarize the relationship between these concepts – person, memory, happiness – in Graham’s Chapter 9?
Locke:
Personal Identity, Book 2, ch. 27, section
9 – “A thinking, intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can
consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and
places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from
thinking … and … essential to it: It being impossible for any one to perceive,
without perceiving that he does perceive.”
And, it is “the sameness of a rational being: And as far as this
consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far
reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now it was then; and
it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that
action was done.”
Identity of the Man (Human Being). Book 2, ch. 27, section 8 – “An animal is a
living organized body; and consequently the same animal … is the same continued
life communicated to different particules of matter, as they happen
successively to be united to that organized living body.”
Problems with Locke’s view:
a. Memory determines the self/person. What of lapses of memory/gaps in
consciousness? This question is of
particular importance with respect to the problem of moral responsibility.
b. For Locke, mind is a spiritual substance in
which ideas reside. But if we have
access only to our own ideas, then we have no “idea” of our own mind. (Consider Locke’s view of the origins of
knowledge here and his comments in Book IV, chapter 3, section 6 of The Essay Concerning Human Understanding.) So if mind won’t account for personal
identity, consciousness will. For
Locke, self-consciousness is what tells us that we are the same person over
time. In essence, then, it is
questionable whether, for Locke, personal identity has anything to do with
“mind” itself.
An alternate view:
From Mary Ann Warren’s “On the Moral and Legal Status of
Abortion,” from The Monist, 1973 and
reprinted in John Arthur, Morality and
Moral Controversies, 5th edition (Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1999), pp. 180-186.
Although the article is about abortion, Warren lists 5 criteria that
appear to constitute what it is to be a person. They are:
1. Consciousness … and in particular the
ability to feel pain;
2. Reasoning …
3. Self-motivated activity …
4. Capacity to communicate … on indefinitely
many topics
5. The presence of self-concepts, and
self-awareness, either individual, or racial, or both.
Warren notes that it
is possible that a being might be a person without possessing all these
characteristics, but it is clear (to her) that a being not possessing any of them cannot
be a person. She notes that “All we
need to claim, to demonstrate that a fetus is not a person, is that any being
which satisfies none of (1)-(5) is
certainly not a person. I consider this claim to be so obvious that I think
anyone who denied it, and claimed that a being which satisfied none of (1)-(5)
was a person all the same, would thereby demonstrate that he had no notion at
all of what a person is—perhaps because he had confused the concept of a person
with that of genetic humanity.”
Freedom:
Nagel –
one possibility for action is made actual by what we do. See also William James’s position that all but one possibility for action is
made impossible by what we do. William James considered himself an indeterminist. He says: "Possibilities may be in excess of
actualities" and "of two alternative futures . . ., both may now be
really possible; and the one only become(s) impossible at the very moment when
the other excludes it by becoming real itself."
Searle: Our conviction of freedom is built into us,
but it is inconsistent with science.
See below on Searle’s notion of the “Dilemma of Free Will” and William
James’s “The Dilemma of Determinism.”
Freedom’s
Incompatibility with Science:
Local
incompatibility – example of alcoholism – inability to act otherwise
than one does is specific to an individual
Global
– all of our decisions/actions are
unfree – this is HARD DETERMINISM.
Global
incompatibility in externalist
explanations
The
externalist explanation assumption – all decisions have a sufficient
cause or explanation outside themselves.
(Consider the modernist’s statement of the PRINCIPLE
OF SUFFICIENT REASON). This
principle is, generally, that For every
action or event that does or does not occur, and for everything that exists or
does not exist, there is an explanation, a reason, for that thing’s occurrence
or non-occurrence.
Externalist explanations
are a kind of mechanistic materialism combined with the PSR to create a form of
HARD DETERMINISM/FATALISM.
Mechanistic Materialism:
1. Hobbes –
From Leviathan, Introduction: “Nature (the art whereby God hath made and
governs the world) is by the art of man, as in many other things, so in this
also imitated, that it can make an artificial animal. For seeing life is but a
motion of limbs, the beginning whereof is in some principal part within; why
may we not say, that all automata (engines that move themselves by springs and
wheels as doth a watch) have an artificial life? For what is the heart, but a
spring; and the nerves, but so many strings; and the joints, but so many
wheels, giving motion to the whole body, such as was intended by the
artificer?”
a. Hobbes holds the position that we are
nothing more than matter in motion, and all matter is governed by external,
irresistible, physical laws. We are no
different. We are therefore determined.
b. See also Leviathan, Part I, ch. 6 for a more complete statement of Hobbes’s
position on motion and “voluntary” motion.
2. D’Holbach (a
hard determinist) and William James: see notes at http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~stanlick/holbachjames.html
There are two kinds of externality: subpersonal/vertical and backtracking/horizontal.
Subpersonal/vertical
= people have no control over their own choices and actions and this is to be
explained in terms of neuroscience – “brain facts.”
Backtracking/horizontal
= people have no control over their own choices and actions, but the
explanation is NOT in terms of neuroscience.
It is instead in terms of the historical, autobiographical past of the
person which explains choices and actions.
Searle’s position that there is a “Dilemma of Free Will” is explicable from the point of
view of Van Inwagen’s consequence argument.
Statement of the
consequence argument:
From this argument, Searle’s position on the dilemma of free will is
clear. If there are exceptionless natural
and physical laws (or even if there is some sort of less severe form of the
principle of universal causation that Searle adopts), then it is impossible
that we can make free choices or act freely.
Yet we continue to believe that we possess dual power. In essence, we
cannot abandon the feeling of freedom, but we should abandon it.
Compare the “Dilemma of Freedom” to William James’s “Dilemma
of Determinism.” James’s
statement of the dilemma revolves around the fact that we make “judgments of
regret” regarding things that happen and yet, when we adhere to determinism, we
believe that everything must be exactly as it is. For William James, determinism implies pessimism. (Perhaps, too, Searle’s “dilemma of freedom”
also implies pessimism. Consider the
dilemma of determinism as James puts it forth.
He says: "Murder and
treachery can't be good without regret being bad; regret can't be good without
treachery being and murder being bad. Both, however, are supposed (by the
determinist) to have been foredoomed, so something must be bad in the
world. It must be a place of which either sin or error forms a necessary
part. . . ."
In your
view, does the dilemma of free will lead also to a sort of pessimism? If so, about what?
An alternative to explanatory externalism: explanatory internalism. This is the view that at least some of our
choices/actions are self-explaining and have a sufficient explanation in
themselves.
The idea
in compatibilism (a form of determinism,
according to William James) is an anti-dual power model. A compatibilist holds that people make
rational decisions and perform actions, but their decisions and actions are
explained by reference to outside events that can change. See A.J. Ayer, John Stuart Mill, and John
Hospers for full statements on compatibilism and the essay in the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy on free will
at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/freewill/
Aristotle’s
account of happiness (eudaimonia). The highest good - ultimately has no further
justification. See notes on Aristotle’s
ethical theory at:
http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~stanlick/aristotleethics.html
There is a difference
between happiness and feelings of happiness (Graham’s text):
1. Just because a person feels happy, it does not mean that the person is happy.
2. Happy people are not “crushed by
negativity.”
Graham’s position is
(1) that an essential component of happiness is self-worth/self-respect. (Interesting articles on the issue of
self-worth/self-respect are by Jean Hampton in “Selflessness and Loss of Self”
and Robin Dillon in various works, including – “How to Lose Your Self-Respect.”) He also holds that (2) autobiographical memory is necessary to
happiness. Consider his references to
the work of Tversky and Griffen on two components of Happiness (endowment [how
a person feels now]) and contrast (how a person now feels versus that person’s
past). Do you see any glaring problems
with this account of things by Tversky and Griffen?