what are the metaphysical issues? metaphysics: questions about the nature of reality nature of...
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What Are the Metaphysical Issues?
Metaphysics: questions about the nature of reality
Nature of ultimate reality permanence and change appearance and reality
Nature of human reality mind-body problem freedom and determinism
Metaphysical Positions
Monism Materialism Idealism
Dualism
Conceptual Tools for Metaphysics
Simplification of complexity Ockham's razor
Inference to the best explanation used by both science and
metaphysics
Ontology
Questions about what is most fundamentally real
Fundamental reality that upon which everything
else depends that which cannot be created
or destroyed
Metaphysical Categories
Things that are not real: eliminativist strategy
Realities reducible to more fundamental realities: reductionist strategy
Things that are fundamentally real
Plato’s Metaphysics
Nonphysical realities: Platonic Forms
Degrees of reality
Allegory of the cave
Propositions of the Mind-Body Problem
The body is a physical thing The mind is a nonphysical thing The mind and body interact and
causally affect one another Nonphysical things cannot causally
interact with physical things These four statements cannot all be
true
Positions on the Mind-Body Problem
Mind-body dualism Interactionism Parallelism Occasionalism
Physicalism Identity theory (reductionism) Eliminativism
Functionalism
Descartes’s Arguments for Mind-Body Dualism
Principle of the nonidentity of discernibles
Argument from doubt
•Discourse on the Method Argument from divisibility Argument from consciousness
•Meditations on First Philosophy
The Cartesian Compromise
Division of reality
• Science’s authority in the physical realm
•Religion’s authority in the spiritual realm
Interactionism
Physicalism: An Alternative to Dualism
Four problems of dualism: Where is the mind-body
interaction? How does the interaction occur? Conservation of energy? Success of brain science?
The Positive Case for Physicalism
Correlation between mental events and brain states
Consciousness may be a by-product of low-level physical processes
Forms of Physicalism
Identity theory, or reductionism Mental events are identical to brain events Brain research will answer all questions
about the mind
Eliminativism Labels traditional psychological theories
as folk psychology No beliefs or desires, only brain states and
processes
Functionalism
Minds are constituted by a certain pattern or relation between the parts of a system
Minds have multiple realizability Mental states are defined in terms of
their causal role (how they function)
Artificial Intelligence
Can computers think? Turing test Strong AI thesis: an appropriately
programmed computer can think Weak AI thesis: a computer can only
simulate mental activities
Issues of Freedom and Determinism
How do nature/nurture, heredity/ environment affect us ? consider identical twins, separated at
birth
What is the origin of our actions? What implication does determinism
have for moral responsibility?
Types of Freedom
Circumstantial ability to do what we choose freedom from external forces
Metaphysical free will relates to our internal condition, not
external forces Most philosophy is concerned with
metaphysical freedom
Positions on Freedom Determinism
Libertarianism
Incompatibilism
Hard determinism
Compatibilism
Hard Determinism
Problems with libertarianism
Positive arguments for determinism
Denial of the possibility of moral responsibility
Objections to Libertarianism
Conflicts with the scientific world view
Requires the problematic notion of uncaused events
Fails to explain that we can influence other people's behavior
The Positive Case for Determinism
1. Every event, without exception, is causally determined by prior events
2. Human thoughts and actions are events
3. Therefore, human thoughts and actions are, without exception, causally determined by prior events
Determinist Thinkers
Spinoza pantheism free will is an illusion
B.F. Skinner radical behaviorism reduction of all mental terms to
scientific statements about behavioral probabilities
Tenets of Libertarianism
We are not determined We do have freedom of the will We have the capacity to be
morally responsible for our actions
Objections to Determinism
Determinism makes an unwarranted generalization from a limited amount of evidence
Determinism undermines the notion of rationality
Determinism confuses methodological assumptions of science with metaphysical conclusions
Types of Antideterminism
Indeterminism Some events are uncaused
Agency theory Event-causation Agent-causation
Radical existential freedom Jean-Paul Sartre
Arguments for Libertarianism
Argument from introspection
Argument from deliberation
Argument from moral responsibility
Compatibilism
Soft determinism
We are both determined and morally responsible for our actions
Voluntary actions take place when the determining causes reside within the agent, not externally
Hierarchical Compatibilism (Frankfurt)
First-order desires
Second-order desires
Second-order volitions
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