History of Philosophy A

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History of Philosophy A

• Lecture Five Descartes Ontology (again)

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Last Lecture

• Last lecture we discussed Descartes view of
  ontology.
• We concentrated on what he had to say about the
  material world, and the objects within it.
• We introduced certain terminology
• Substance Tables, mountains, and other
  individual things.
• Modes Properties, such as shape

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Last Lecture

• At the deepest level, Descartes thinks there is
  only one substance.
• Of which what we think are substances (tables,
  mountains etc.) are only modes of it.
• So there is only a single, giant extended soup of
  being which fills up and makes the entire
  universe.

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Last Lecture

• This monism permits his mechanism.
• Everything in the material world is governed by
  mechanistic laws, saying how this soup acts and
  reacts.
• Finally, there were the primary and secondary
  qualities.
• The world itself has no colour or sound, and
  these things are just a result of the primary
  qualities of the world inducing in us certain
  sensations.

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This Week

• That was what Descartes had to say about material
  things.
• But Descartes thinks that minds are very
  different.
• That you and I (and all people!) are very
  different.

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This Week

• Last week we looked at four features of
  Descartes material ontology.
• This week we will look at four features of what
  he says about the mind
• Physiology.
• Why the mind doesnt fit this picture.
• The minds relation to the body.
• The minds relation to the world.

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This Week

• Last week we looked at four features of
  Descartes material ontology.
• This week we will look at four features of what
  he says about the mind
• Physiology.
• Why the mind doesnt fit this picture.
• The minds relation to the body.
• The minds relation to the world.

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Physiology

• Again we turn to what the establishment said.
• Aristotle said that the distinction between
  living and non-living things was the possession
  of an animal soul.
• An animals having this soul was what explained
  why it did certain things, and acted in certain
  ways.
• Just as teleological purpose didnt really fit
  into the Cartesian picture, nor do these souls.

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Physiology

• Given Descartes ideas on Mechanism, this is all
  wrong.
• The human body, and its behaviour, is an entirely
  mechanical affair.
• The heart is a heat pump, shoving blood into the
  arteries.
• The nerves are canals along which travel nerve
  impulses.
• Nerve impulses are just very tiny, very fast
  particles (animal spirits).

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Physiology

• So the body is just a very complex mechanism.
• An uber clock.
• As clocks break down, so too will your body.
• At that point you die.
• Of course, Descartes believes you have a soul.
• But its the death that causes the soul to move
  on, not the other way around.

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This Week

• Last week we looked at four features of
  Descartes material ontology.
• This week we will look at four features of what
  he says about the mind
• Physiology.
• Why the mind doesnt fit this picture.
• The minds relation to the body.
• The minds relation to the world.

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Why the mind doesnt fit into this picture

• Descartes thinks that this idea of mechanism has
  limits though.
• It didnt explain certain aspects of what human
  beings do namely, thinking.
• Thinking splits into two parts willing and
  understanding.
• Understanding covers the intellectual thoughts we
  have about the world.
• The will covers our ability to make decisions.

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Why the mind doesnt fit into this picture

• Lets look at four examples of things Descartes
  says mechanism cannot account for
• Planning
• Choosing
• Abstracting
• Consciousness
• In each case, ask whether Descartes is right
  concerning whether mechanism can account for
  these things.

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Why the mind doesnt fit into this picture

• Planning
• Birds build nests to keep their future chicks
  warm.
• People save money for their old age.
• How similar are these processes?
• Descartes thinks they are very dissimilar.
• The bird doesnt know what its doing.
• Its just reacting to certain stimuli when the
  season changes, and the day lasts a certain
  length, it just starts building.

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Why the mind doesnt fit into this picture

• The bird is just following simple mechanical
  instructions.
• Like a tree that sheds its leaves in autumn, or
  the light in your fridge switching itself off.
• Its perfectly explicable in terms of the
  mechanical motion of physical things.
• Descartes thinks people saving money is quite
  unlike this.
• People save for the future not because they are
  responding to stimuli, but because they can think
  about how the future will turn out.

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Why the mind doesnt fit into this picture

• Choosing
• Humans can override their immediate needs,
  impulses and present stimuli.
• People can diet, and ignore hunger.
• People can become celibate, and ignore having the
  horn.
• People can stick their hands in fires for money,
  and ignore pain.

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Why the mind doesnt fit into this picture

• Animals cant do this.
• No animal goes on a hi-carb diet to shed the
  pounds.
• No animal turns down the chance to get its end
  away.
• No animal will willingly suffer pain.
• Or, at least, when they do, its solely because
  they have urges to do these things
• Dieting bears and their young cubs.
• Pandas.
• Nicotine addicted mice.

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Why the mind doesnt fit into this picture

• So the point is that humans can ignore their
  urges, whereas animals cannot.
• We can choose which urges to act upon, and which
  to ignore.
• We have will whereas animals do not.

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Why the mind doesnt fit into this picture

• Abstracting
• Animals cant do maths.
• They might be able to respond differently to
  different numbers of things (a dog fighting one
  cat versus fleeing from seventy of them).
• But they cant do calculus, long division,
  understand the Riemann Hypothesis or know that
  0.999 is equal to 1.
• They cant engage in abstraction and
  generalisation.

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Why the mind doesnt fit into this picture

• Similarly, they cant do language.
• They cant learn to talk, and communicate.
• They can learn to respond to certain words, but
  only in so far as those words are stimuli (No
  Fido! Bad dog! and Fetch).
• Our linguistic capabilities so far outstrip such
  a basic mechanism, its clear (to Descartes) that
  what we do could never be explained in such a
  manner.

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Why the mind doesnt fit into this picture

• Consciousness
• We are conscious, animals are not.
• Animals are aware, but theyre not aware that
  they are aware.
• But this is again something that Descartes thinks
  cannot be explained mechanistically.

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Why the mind doesnt fit into this picture

• Descartes concludes that only humans can will and
  understand.
• (And angels. Dont forget the angels)
• So there must be something else involved
  something not explained mechanistically.
• This is where the mind comes in.
• For Descartes, the mind is a totally different
  substance.
• A non-physical substance.

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This Week

• Last week we looked at four features of
  Descartes material ontology.
• This week we will look at four features of what
  he says about the mind
• Physiology.
• Why the mind doesnt fit this picture.
• The minds relation to the body.
• The minds relation to the world.

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The Minds Relation to the Body

• But where did this mind come from?
• Well, Descartes says it comes from God.
• God creates it before my birth, and then hooks
  it up to my body.
• Its responsible for all the intellectual and
  mental activity it is the source of will and
  understanding.

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The Minds Relation to the Body

• When I die, it moves on.
• Not that my body is alive because of my soul it
  doesnt animate my body.
• Remember, the body is explained mechanistically
  in a large part. Itd do a lot of things even if
  it didnt have a soul.
• When I die, the soul moves on for it is immortal.

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The Minds Relation to the Body

• Whys it immortal?
• Well, things cease to be and break down when
  their parts dissipate.
• A clock stops working when its parts stop
  interacting correctly.
• An animal dies when its parts stop working, and
  then eventually they dissipate as it rots.
• In other words, its when the parts separate in
  space.

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The Minds Relation to the Body

• But for Descartes the mind is not a physical
  thing.
• A physical thing is a thing extended in space.
• So it follows that the mind is not in space.
• If its not in space, then theres no way for it
  to have parts that become separated in space

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The Minds Relation to the Body

• But for Descartes the mind is not a physical
  thing.
• A physical thing is a thing extended in space.
• So it follows that the mind is not in space.
• If its not in space, then theres no way for it
  to have parts that become separated in space no
  way for it to dissipate

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The Minds Relation to the Body

• But for Descartes the mind is not a physical
  thing.
• A physical thing is a thing extended in space.
• So it follows that the mind is not in space.
• If its not in space, then theres no way for it
  to have parts that become separated in space no
  way for it to dissipate no way for it break
  down

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The Minds Relation to the Body

• But for Descartes the mind is not a physical
  thing.
• A physical thing is a thing extended in space.
• So it follows that the mind is not in space.
• If its not in space, then theres no way for it
  to have parts that become separated in space no
  way for it to dissipate no way for it break
  down no way for it to cease to be.
• It is immortal.

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The Minds Relation to the Body

• So where is my mind if its not in space?
• Its no where!
• Its not in my head, or my heart, or my stomach.
• But it is in time.

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The Minds Relation to the Body

• How does it interact with my body?
• This was raised as a serious difficulty for the
  Cartesian theory.
• Descartes thinks the mind interacts with the
  physical world.
• How, people asked, does this non-physical
  substance interact with the physical?
• If theyre radically different, how does this
  take place?

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The Minds Relation to the Body

• Elizabeth, Princess of Bohemia, raised this issue
  with Descartes.
• He argued that it achieved this by interacting
  with a certain part of the brain.
• The pineal gland.
• But does this help?

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The Minds Relation to the Body

• Other alternatives were mooted by other
  philosophers who had similar views about the
  mind.
• Occassionalism God does the interacting for us.
• Parallelism God set it all up originally to make
  it look as if interaction were taking place.
• No-one really took seriously that it wasnt a
  problem, but that has been the view of some
  contemporary philosophers.

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The Minds Relation to the Body

• There are also other questions to be asked.
• For instance, animals have sensations.
• So things can apparently have sensations without
  having minds.
• Descartes was never clear on how this was to be
  solved.
• Although sensations were to play an important
  role.

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The Minds Relation to the Body

• For Descartes the mind is trying its best to
  think clearly.
• But the sensations that flood into it cause it to
  make mistakes.
• Sensations lead us into sin and error
• Thinking objects have colour.
• Thinking the Earth doesnt move.
• And the only way to avoid these mistakes is of
  course to listen to the rational intellect.
• So this is a big part of Descartes epistemology.

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This Week

• Last week we looked at four features of
  Descartes material ontology.
• This week we will look at four features of what
  he says about the mind
• Physiology.
• Why the mind doesnt fit this picture.
• The minds relation to the body.
• The minds relation to the world.

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The Minds Relation to the World

• So what is Descartes ontology of the mind?
• For Descartes he is a monist about the physical
  world.
• But for the mental hes a pluralist.
• He thinks there are lots of separate minds that
  really are, fundamentally, different.
• Unlike objects like trees and mountains, which
  are reducible to talk about modes of the one big
  soupy material substance, minds are irreducible
  to other things.

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The Minds Relation to the World

• So the mind isnt really part of a bigger thing.
• Its not part of a bigger mind.
• Quite unlike the material world and the things we
  find there.

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Dualism?

• So this might explain why Descartes is called a
  dualist.
• He believes in a dualistic conception of the
  types of things that exist.
• But he obviously believes in more than two
  substances (he believes in one material and lots
  of immaterial substances).
• There are some issues here over whether this then
  deserves the name dualism.
• But I dont like those kinds of debates.
• So, I shall continue to call Descartes a dualist,
  as long as you keep in mind what that is meant to
  amount to.

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Recap

• Weve surveyed some reasons why Descartes thinks
  the mind cannot be accounted for by his material
  ontology.
• Weve looked at what it is meant to be.
• How it interacts with the world.
• And what this means to his ontology of mental
  things.

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Next Lecture

• We will look, in detail, at some of the arguments
  Descartes gives for believing dualism to be true.