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    rosescore's Avatar
    rosescore Posts: 2, Reputation: 1
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    #1

    Jan 22, 2011, 09:42 PM
    What does it mean to be human? (philosophical approach)
    I am just wondering from a philosophical approach; what does it mean to be human?
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    #2

    Jan 23, 2011, 12:22 PM
    There a lot of philosophers that broached this subject. Different explanations about what it means to be human have varied from the most pointless object to think about, to the most important concept of human thought, and everything in between. Suffice to say that as humans we have a responsibility to maintain a moral and economic equality for the purpose of continuing our lineage through protecting innocent children and people from avoidable hardships at all cost... or **** it let the world burn?
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    #3

    Jan 23, 2011, 12:44 PM
    Quote Originally Posted by rosescore View Post
    what does it mean to be human?
    Hello r:

    Your question presupposes that there IS a meaning to being human - as opposed to, say, what it means to be an ant. From my point of view, you can't figure out what it means to be human, separate from figuring out what it means to be an ant.

    excon
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    #4

    Jan 23, 2011, 02:00 PM
    Quote Originally Posted by rosescore View Post
    I am just wondering from a philosophical approach; what does it mean to be human?
    Hi Rosescore,

    If you ask, " what it is like to be human?" rather than, "what does it mean to be human?" then you would be talking philosophy of mind.

    Thomas Nagel first introduced the idea thirty years ago and it still won't go away. Nagel proposed an unusual way of looking at the old problem of consciousness. In his famous paper, "What is it like to be a Bat?" Nagel claims that consciousness has a unique subjective character about it. In other words, a unique what it is like aspect to it,

    For Nagel there is nothing like what it is to be a bat. In exactly the same way there is nothing like what it is for me to be you and you to be me.We are uniquely ourselves.

    Naturally enough Nagel is a dualist. That is, he believes that are two distinct entities when it comes to humans. They have a physical body and a non- physical consciousness. Philosophers who are non-dualistic when it comes to consciousness would strongly disagree with Nagel.

    Regards

    Tut
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    #5

    Jan 23, 2011, 03:28 PM
    Can u give an example of a philosophers
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    #6

    Jan 23, 2011, 04:29 PM
    Quote Originally Posted by rosescore View Post
    can u give an example of a philosophers
    Descartes was the first philosopher to separate mind and body. He believed that mind was a thinking substance and body( including the physical world) is an extended substance. I discussed Descartes in a recent post, "I think therefore I am" Really? I discussed Descartes in relation to what I saw as very difficult question to answer ( well, difficult for me anyway). My answer was somewhat 'over the top', but ignoring that you will get an idea of what Descartes was on about if you go back and find that post.

    There are a number of approaches that can be used, but I think it can be looked at in terms of substance dualism versus property dualism. Substance dualism supports Descartes position that mind and body are two different substances. Because the mind is a non-physical property of humans this makes humans unique in terms of ' what is it like?' experiences. In other words, we have 'something extra' that all other living things don't. Some people also refer to this as a soul. This 'something extra' is quite recognizable to us in our everyday experiences For example, 'what is it like?' -to experience a beautiful sunset or 'what is it like?'- to feel sad when looking at the news on T.V.

    Opposed to this idea are the property dualists. They say the world only consists of one type of substance; physical things to be exact. When we talk about a mind and a body we are not talking about two different things. In reality we are talking about a physical substance consisting of two different physical properties. It is only an illusion to think that the mind is non-physical. So called non- physical events such as beliefs, emotions, desires etc are really just physical events happening in the brain; neurons firing in a particular fashion.

    This is also a reductionist explanation of the mind and is typically found in the sciences such as psychology.

    I hopes this helps.

    Regards

    Tut
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    #7

    Feb 22, 2012, 05:54 PM
    TUT317:

    I got totally the opposite view from Nagel's essay when I read it initially. I must have misunderstood. I'd like to understand better.

    If Nagel is a substance dualist, wouldn't he argue that your soul/mind/whatever would have a totally different subjective experience if it entered a bat's body?

    Whereas I would expect a property dualist to argue there's nothing it's like to be a bat, because there's no way for one being to ever become another...

    ... Because there's nothing that it is to be a being. To know what it's like to be a bat, you'd have to stop being yourself and become a bat. You could never know, because you would have to stop being a thing that could know, beforehand.
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    #8

    Feb 23, 2012, 05:01 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by nicholasjm View Post
    TUT317:

    I got totally the opposite view from Nagel's essay when I read it initially. I must have misunderstood. I'd like to understand better.

    If Nagel is a substance dualist, wouldn't he argue that your soul/mind/whatever would have a totally different subjective experience if it entered a bat's body?

    Whereas I would expect a property dualist to argue there's nothing it's like to be a bat, because there's no way for one being to ever become another...

    ...Because there's nothing that it is to be a being. To know what it's like to be a bat, you'd have to stop being yourself and become a bat. You could never know, because you would have to stop being a thing that could know, beforehand.
    Hi Nicholasjm

    Upon rereading my original post I discovered an error. I have mistakenly attributed property dualism for physicalism.

    What I should have said is, "Opposed to to that view are the physicalists" ( not substance dualists).

    I'm not sure if that changes your position. What we actually have for the purpose of this discussion is physicalism versus substance dualism.

    Sorry about the clumsy error. I should proofread my posts.

    Tut
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    #9

    Feb 23, 2012, 11:20 AM
    I actually liked your previous answer even better. I thought it was a lot more informative.

    I had no idea there were two different types of dualism, so I was confused when I saw you contrasting one dualism with another. I would have expected something a lot more like what I saw in your more recent reply, dualism versus physicalism.

    For other people who are as ill-informed as I was before I read your initial response:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substance_dualism#Substance_dualism

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property_dualism
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    #10

    Feb 24, 2012, 02:30 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by nicholasjm View Post
    I actually liked your previous answer even better. I thought it was a lot more informative.

    I had no idea there were two different types of dualism, so I was confused when I saw you contrasting one dualism with another. I would have expected something a lot more like what I saw in your more recent reply, dualism versus physicalism.

    For other people who are as ill-informed as I was before I read your initial response:

    Dualism (philosophy of mind) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

    Property dualism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Hi again Nicholas,

    Yes, I think it is better to look at this problem in terms of dualism versus physicalism. Once we get a handle on this then I think we can expand into various types of dualism.

    Substance dualism is a good starting point because it is easily recognisable. In exactly the same way physicalism ( science ,psychology) is also easily recognisable.

    Substance dualism has proven unsatisfactory to some people because it shows there are two distinct substances; mental and physical stuff. The problem is that physical things can be explain in terms of three dimensions (science) while mental things don't lend itself to these types of explanations. Obviously it makes no sense to ask,"How long or wide is a thought?". What makes it even more difficult is that it is obvious the mental and physical interact with each other.

    This dissatisfaction has lead to the development of many dualist theories in order to overcome the problem. The important difference between substance dualism and property dualism is that property dualism claims the mental connot exist separate from the body.

    Following on from this you were saying that with property dualism there is no way one thing can be another. Taken at face value it would seem that it can, but you might like to expand further on this.

    The other question seems to be centred on question of Nagel's poition in relation to dualism. Is Nagel a property dualist or is he a substance dualist? He is probably some type of property dualist, but you could probably also argue both ways.

    Nagel being a substance dualist would make it easier to answer you question. "If Nagel is a substance dualist wouldn't he argue that your soul/mind or what ever would have a totally different subjective experience if it entered a bat's body"

    THe answer is probably yes, except for one important point. If I am the reincarnation of King Geroge the fifth then I have absolutely no way of experiencing things King George the fifth experienced at this moment in time. There also appears no way I can claim that I am somehow able to compare my experience to Kinge George. I would think it is a comparison of experiences that is the problem here.

    Our soul/mind may well have a different subjective experience once it entered a bat's body, but we have no way of making a comparison. If this is true then we are forced to conclude there is no possible way we can know what it is like to be a bat. Being a bat or a human demonstrates from Nagel's point of vew that subjective experience is unique regardless of where it resides.

    Tut
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    #11

    Feb 24, 2012, 08:15 PM
    From what I'm reading, it seems rational that a substance dualist would argue that an individual can know what it's like to be a bat. That's because each person has a soul, capable of exiting their body and entering another body. So your soul could leave your human body and enter a bat's, experiencing bat-hood.

    A physicalist, on the other hand, would argue that there's no soul, so there's no way to ever actually know what it's like to be a bat. A physicalist would therefore also argue that it's nonsensical to ask questions like, "What would I be like if I had been born in another country? Or in another time?"

    Those questions would be irrational to a physicalist, because there's no sense in which you could ever be anything other than exactly what it is that you are. Not even for a moment during a thought experiment.

    Conversely, a dualist would approach questions without reservation, because they believe the human soul can move between bodies. So to a dualist, it would seem to make sense to ask questions that split a person from their physical body and

    I was always under the impression that this bat essay by Nagel was just gesticulating broadly at the hard problem of consciousness. Not that it was pushing dualism of any kind. I always understood him to be saying that there is something that it is like to be a bat.

    In other words, I've always taken him to be saying that there is a subjective reality associated with every sentient being. A self-nature, something that it is like to be a living thing.
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    #12

    Feb 24, 2012, 08:22 PM
    Substance dualists believe we have immaterial minds, yeah? So if each person has a soul, capable of exiting their body and entering another body, your soul could leave your human body and enter a bat's, experiencing bat-hood.

    That means a substance dualist should argue that we can know what it is like to be a bat.

    A physicalist, on the other hand, would argue that there's no soul, so there's no way for any person to ever actually know what it's like to be a bat. Because "you" can never be anything but you.

    Look at this another way... A physicalist would also argue that it's nonsensical to ask questions like, "What would I be like if I had been born in another country? Or in another time?" Those questions would be irrational to a physicalist, because there's no sense in which you could ever be anything other than exactly what it is that you physically are.

    Conversely, a dualist would approach those same questions without reservation, whether they'd be right to do so or not, because they believe the human soul can move between bodies. To a dualist, it would seem to make sense to ask questions that split a person from their physicality.

    I was always under the impression that, in this bat essay, Nagel was simply gesturing broadly at the hard problem of consciousness. I'm not sure that it was pushing dualism of any kind. I always understood him to be saying that there is something that it is like to be a bat.

    You seem to have taken away the opposite perspective. You believe he was arguing that there is not something that it is like to be a bat, yeah? Or do you simply think he was saying there's something it's like to be a bat, but we can't know what that something is like..

    Anyway, one more time, I think he was saying that there's a subjective reality associated with every sentient being. A self-nature, something that it is like to be a living thing. I think he was just talking about consciousness.

    Here's a link to the essay we've been talking about, in case anybody else becomes interested. If it's already been posted in this thread, then sorry for being redundant, I didn't see it.

    "What is it like to be a bat?" By Thomas Nagel
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    #13

    Feb 25, 2012, 12:17 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by nicholasjm View Post
    Substance dualists believe we have immaterial minds, yeah? So if each person has a soul, capable of exiting their body and entering another body, your soul could leave your human body and enter a bat's, experiencing bat-hood.

    That means a substance dualist should argue that we can know what it is like to be a bat.

    A physicalist, on the other hand, would argue that there's no soul, so there's no way for any person to ever actually know what it's like to be a bat. Because "you" can never be anything but you.

    Look at this another way... A physicalist would also argue that it's nonsensical to ask questions like, "What would I be like if I had been born in another country? Or in another time?" Those questions would be irrational to a physicalist, because there's no sense in which you could ever be anything other than exactly what it is that you physically are.

    Conversely, a dualist would approach those same questions without reservation, whether they'd be right to do so or not, because they believe the human soul can move between bodies. To a dualist, it would seem to make sense to ask questions that split a person from their physicality.

    I was always under the impression that, in this bat essay, Nagel was simply gesturing broadly at the hard problem of consciousness. I'm not sure that it was pushing dualism of any kind. I always understood him to be saying that there is something that it is like to be a bat.

    You seem to have taken away the opposite perspective. You believe he was arguing that there is not something that it is like to be a bat, yeah? Or do you simply think he was saying there's something it's like to be a bat, but we can't know what that something is like...?

    Anyway, one more time, I think he was saying that there's a subjective reality associated with every sentient being. A self-nature, something that it is like to be a living thing. I think he was just talking about consciousness.

    Here's a link to the essay we've been talking about, in case anybody else becomes interested. If it's already been posted in this thread, then sorry for being redundant, I didn't see it.

    "What is it like to be a bat?" By Thomas Nagel
    Hi Nicholas,

    A bit of a misunderstanding. Yes, I agree Nagel is arguing there is something it is like to be a bat. In exactly the same way he would say there is something it is like to be you or me.

    I think the issue is clouded by considering 'migration' of the soul/mind.

    You seem to be saying that somehow it is possible to compare my experiences with a bat's experience because at some stage my consciousness was representative of my experiences. Now I am a bat I experience 'bat things'. Therefore, I have the ability to do a comparison.

    On this basis we would be forced to accept that I know what it is like to be a bat in exactly the same way a bat knows what it is like to be me.

    A physicalist would probably want to argue that it is possible to know what it is like to be a bat because bats and humans are nothing more than super computers. Humans obviously being 'more super' than bats.

    For the physicalist consciousness doesn't really exist it is a well founded illusion based on the workings of the brain. This complicated process results from our ability to monitor and cross-check information we are presented with. A physcalist would probably argue that once we are able to build computers to do the same process the computer will be 'conscious'.

    Bats work in a similar fasion except they don't monitor and cross-check information the same way humans do. Bat brains are somewhat limited compared to a human brain, but the important thing is that a bat brain and a human brain work in the same way. That way being the process carried out can be explained in terms of deterministic laws.

    Basically, a physicalist would say that if we understand these scientific laws and explanations we can know what it is like to be a bat.

    When someone like Chalmers talks about. 'the easy' problem of consciousness and 'the hard problem' of consciousness a physicalist would agree with 'the easy problem'. But to say there is, 'a hard problem' of consciousness it to make up something that doesn't exist.


    Tut
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    #14

    Feb 25, 2012, 06:53 PM
    Tut, in a reply that's appearing for me on the second page at this point, you said "For Nagel there is nothing like what it is to be a bat". So that was the source of the confusion.

    A couple years back I saw an essay by a pair of professional philosophers, husband and wife, who argue just what you said. That consciousness is an illusion, produced by material phenomena. We might reasonably ask people who make that argument what in the world they mean by using the diminutive "illusion". Whether there's an immaterial mind or not, we are certainly aware. Such a person might instead try pulling the subject down out of the clouds of mythology by insisting that there's nothing supernatural about awareness.

    I'm much more engaged by materialists who agree that consciousness is "real", currently inexplicable, and that it is eventually going to be explained in terms of material processes. Wayne Wright argues something like that in a paper called "Explanation and the Hard Problem". He says that there is a hard problem, but it doesn't even come close to invalidating materialism.

    [The hard problem] is generated by reasoning that ignores or distorts the tools, methods, and goals of (current and historical) actual scientific practice.

    [... ] nothing that has been said so far evaporates or chips away at the mysteriousness of consciousness. It still seems just as puzzling that physical activity of any sort could produce a state with phenomenal character.

    Think about the way we're forced to understand molecules in chemistry, and you'll be on the same page with me about what I think he's saying. There's an excessive intelligbility requirement being demanded by those who say that science can't explain consciousness. It's basically a bunch of people saying that energetic reactions in the brain can't be awareness because they can't imagine how this could be the case.

    But it doesn't take much to see through this argument. Whatever awareness is, it's obviously possible to get outside of it and look in on it. We can know this, because we don't experience one anothers' subjective reality. Whatever it is to be aware, and yet also apart from somebody else's awareness, would obviously render others' awareness something other than a subjective experience. An event that can't be experienced as a sight, or a taste, or a thought.

    So what else are non-materialists expecting to find? Why shouldn't experiences appear as neurochemical bubbles jumping across synapses in the brain?

    I really liked what this professor had to say about property dualism.

    http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/courses/mind/notes/supervenience.html

    "The property dualist, on the other hand, says that whether you have a given mental property is in principle independent of the physical facts about you. Certain physical facts about you may typically cause you to be in given mental states [but] there is nothing metaphysically impossible about there being someone who is just like you physically, but who has different mental properties than you, or perhaps no mental properties at all."

    Tut, I'm wondering why it would be the case that a property dualist would believe this? While a materialist says that another brain like yours will be exactly like you, a property dualsit argues that a brian just like yours might bear quite a different mind. But I don't understand why, and the professor doesn't explain at that link I posted.

    Can you shed any light?
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    #15

    Feb 25, 2012, 09:16 PM
    Hi Nicholas,

    Yes, I did say, "For Nagel there is nothing what it is like to be a bat". This was rather clumsy of me. It was another case of me using the wrong word.

    For Nagel there are some experiences beyond our understanding. We can imagine and even try to imitate flying around the room and hanging upside down in a cave with our fellow bats. However, this is just us imagining what it is like to be a bat. No amount of imagination and pretending can do the job. We can never actually know what it is like to be a bat. This is what I was trying to get at.

    I agree the hard problem of consciousness is unsatisfactory in terms of scientific explanations. Science does not try and tell us what experience actually is. However, this doesn't solve the problem from my point of view. This problem can be look at in terms of an argument from knowledge (perhaps later).

    Can I shed some light on the problem? I don't know, but I'll give it a go if you like.

    Your second link didn't come out my end, but I think I know what you are getting at.

    Property dualism argues that consciousness even though a different property of the brain is dependent upon the brain. From a property dualist point of view you can not have consciousness existing in a world of its own, independent of the brain. In other words you cannot have an 'x' difference without a 'y' difference.

    This would mean that two people who are physically the same must be mentally the same. It also means that two people who are mentally different must be physically different.

    However, the reverse does NOT apply.

    Even though being the same physically means being the same mentally. Being the same mentally doesn't mean being the same physically. I think you can see where this is leading. It allows the same mental property to be realized by different physical properties.

    This also poses the problem as to whether supervenience and property dualism are incompatible

    I don't know if this clears things up.

    Tut
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    #16

    Feb 26, 2012, 05:05 PM
    I just looked back at the original question and realized there's a heavy thread of nihilism running through the original post, and I think that's worth addressing. There's more to being human than a rigorous logical approach to consciousness, and I definitely do not believe we should be entertaining the possibility that we should let the world burn.

    Anybody reading this question is living in the most extraordinary time in human history. There is now more knowledge available at your fingertips through the internet than it is possible for any human being to learn. The human race has attained more knowledge period than any person can ever know; our brains just aren't big enough.

    That could be taken to be overwhelming or disheartening if you were thinking wrong-headed about the subject. What it means in practical terms is that there's an amazing diversity of human lives and livelihoods, and it's more true than ever before that no two lives will ever be the same. The uniqueness of each human identity in our modern world is truly profound.

    It's also the case that, with our understanding of the natural world, we've managed to achieve an incredible amount of control over our own lives. We have ready access to food and clean water and shelter. It's possible for even the poorest members of our society to survive indefinitely on social welfare programs like EBT. We are getting our priorities in line in the Western world, although admittedly it is taking time. There is noticeable social progress occurring with each generation.

    The difference between living in a jungle or on a plain somewhere and living in a modern society is immense. We are growing more and more conscious of the physical, sexual, intellectual, and physical rights of all members of society; women, children, ethnic minorities and so on. There are literally pre-human skeletons that have been unearthed in subsaharan African with other pre-human bones inside them, tooth-marks on them and everything. We started as a cannibal race. We now are not. We've grown a lot, and we'll get better and better as time goes on.

    People like Vonnegut who say **** like "The world is going to get worse and it's never going to get better again!" don't know what they're talking about, and don't deserve a public podium. Steven Pinker is much closer to the mark:

    http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-...iolence-pinker

    There's a couple of philosophy professors at Stanford named john Perry and Ken Taylor, and they do a show called Philosophy Talk that airs every Thursday night on NPR where I'm at. They were talking about nihilism at one point, and basically said that there's attitude nihilism and analytic nihilism.

    The latter (analytic nihilism) is a valid philosophical perspective that says we don't get our ethics and meaning from any outside source, but rather have to create it ourselves. It's not that there is no meaning, but rather that there's no such thing as natural meaning. It's the perspective that it's nonsensical to even speak about such a thing as innate purpose or value. These are qualities that have to be projected onto phenomena by sentient agents like human beings.

    The former (attitude nihilism) is the result of psychological or behavioral problems that need to be addressed with appropriate techniques, such as pharmaceuticals or new habits— diet and exercise, discipline and education.

    Getting back to our discussion, Tut:

    I think you've got the property dualism thing a little mixed up. I say that because of what that Harvard professor wrote on his site, not because I'm familiar with the arguments of PD. You write:

    "[... ] being the same physically means being the same mentally. Being the same mentally doesn't mean being the same physically [... ]"

    But this Jim Pryor says:

    "Certain physical facts about you may typically cause you to be in given mental states [but] there is nothing metaphysically impossible about there being someone who is just like you physically, but who has different mental properties than you, or perhaps no mental properties at all."

    So being the same physically does not mean being the same mentally. Two people with identical brains could easily have very different minds.
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    #17

    Feb 26, 2012, 05:27 PM
    Tut, I wanted to note one more thing. I really liked your original mention of property dualism, which launched our discussion. What I thought I was seeing initially when I went and research it was an alternative to materialism.

    I think it might be important to have an alternative to pure materialism. That's because we don't have any empirical explanation for consciousness yet. So you have physicalism versus dualism, and both are pretty absurd. But then you mentioned this third alternative, property dualism; where everything is material, but there's these other properties of mind in addition to the brain that are not quite the same as the brain. That seems in line with what we can currently know about consciousness.

    The only problem is that the more I research property dualism, the more mired I become in all these subtle variations. The people who are making the arguments in favor of each variation seem to deliberately write over the heads of their readers, using logic symbols and unnecessarily-convoluted English and failing to explain phrases. Their papers read like attempts to mimic physics articles, rather than attempts to actually communicate information. That's frustrating, because I know that if they really tried they could get the information across really clearly. But instead they try to sound self-important, making it really difficult to get a handle on the viewpoints that are being expressed.

    So I'm having a really hard time pinning down what property dualism actually is, and deciding whether I was right in the first place. Physicalism versus materialism, with property dualism somewhere in the middle. PD as an acknowledgement that yes, consciousness is not quite the same as brain operations, however there is nothing supernatural about it.

    Does that sound about right, in your experience?

    Anyway, it might be most right to say that we shouldn't have any argument about consciousness yet, since we don't understand what it is. In a thousand years, today's arguments about consciousness will look as silly as arguments about the cosmos from a thousand years ago. A big crystal sphere holding the planets in place, with the earth at the center of everything. All our arguments about consciousness are obviously wild speculation, like conjecturing about the planets without telescopes to see them properly.
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    #18

    Feb 26, 2012, 06:30 PM
    Quote Originally Posted by nicholasjm View Post

    Getting back to our discussion, Tut:

    I think you've got the property dualism thing a little mixed up. I say that because of what that Harvard professor wrote on his site, not because I'm familiar with the arguments of PD. You write:

    "[...] being the same physically means being the same mentally. Being the same mentally doesn't mean being the same physically [...]"

    But this Jim Pryor says:

    "Certain physical facts about you may typically cause you to be in given mental states [but] there is nothing metaphysically impossible about there being someone who is just like you physically, but who has different mental properties than you, or perhaps no mental properties at all."

    So being the same physically does not mean being the same mentally. Two people with identical brains could easily have very different minds.
    Hi Nicholas,

    I'm not ignoring the main part of your post but I though I better get this out of the way first.

    Basically it was a bad move on my part. I was unable to get into the Jim Pryor link you provided. At the end of the web address I noticed the word 'supervenience'. Property dualism expresses a relationship as does supervenience. I was wondering how the two were going to be linked in the lecture. Seemed a bit strange since at face value the two ideas seem in contradiction.

    If you could prove the address again I would be interested in reading Pryor's lecture. Probably would stop my bad habit pre-empting what people are going to say.

    Tut
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    #19

    Feb 26, 2012, 07:45 PM
    Quote Originally Posted by nicholasjm View Post
    Tut, I wanted to note one more thing. I really liked your original mention of property dualism, which launched our discussion. What I thought I was seeing initially when I went and research it was an alternative to materialism.

    I think it might be important to have an alternative to pure materialism. That's because we don't have any empirical explanation for consciousness yet. So you have physicalism versus dualism, and both are pretty absurd. But then you mentioned this third alternative, property dualism; where everything is material, but there's these other properties of mind in addition to the brain that are not quite the same as the brain. That seems in line with what we can currently know about consciousness.


    So I'm having a really hard time pinning down what property dualism actually is, and deciding whether I was right in the first place. Physicalism versus materialism, with property dualism somewhere in the middle. PD as an acknowledgement that yes, consciousness is not quite the same as brain operations, however there is nothing supernatural about it.

    Does that sound about right, in your experience?

    Hi again Nicholas,

    This is how I read it.

    Substance dualism: Mental and physical have nothing in common (made of different substances) but they do interact. No satisfactory explanation how this works.

    Physicalism: Consciousness and brains really the same stuff. Consciousness is an illusion.

    Property dualism: Consciousness and brains are the same stuff but consciousness is a PROPERTY of the brain. ( This can lead into a supervenience)

    Physicalists tend not to like property dualism because we are still left with the problem of property dualism giving us an 'over and above' account of consciousness.
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    nicholasjm Posts: 11, Reputation: 1
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    Feb 26, 2012, 09:42 PM
    I wanted to throw in a quick definition of "supervenience" as I'm understanding the term.

    Fact 1: I'm writing in an internet forum.
    Fact 2: I'm using a computer.

    Fact 2 is supervenient upon Fact 1. That is, 2 follows directly from 1; it's logically necessary that I am using a computer if I'm writing in an internet forum.

    So physicalists believe that mental activity is supervenient upon brain activity, in the sense that one follows directly from the other. Two identical brains will have identical mental activity.

    Whereas property dualists believe the opposite. Identical brains can support entirely different mental activity. I'm wondering what the reason is that property dualism gives for this.

    I was thinking it might have something to do with free will. Whereas materialists would tend to assert that free will is an illusion, and that we obey strict laws like we were a chain of dominoes.

    But that's what I was wondering if you could offer some perspective on, Tut. What the reasoning is that leads a property dualist to say that identical brains could produce distinct mental activity.

    Also, what do you mean when you say 'over and above'? Physicalists reject PD because it's like a mind-over-matter attitude on awareness? I don't quite get what you mean, that's just my best interpretation. Mind explaining some more?

    Here's a clickable version of the link I posted earlier. Pryor brings up supervenience only to show that property dualism is opposed to the idea.

    http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/cou...rvenience.html

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