March 25, 2025
Human beings are entirely physical.
Application: If consciousness can be explained in physicalist terms, then any reference to the mind/soul is superfluous.
From Jeffrey Olen:
Some people who have never seen a watch find one alongside a road. They pick it up and examine it, noticing that the second hand makes a regular sweep around the watch’s face. After some discussion, they conclude that the watch is run by a gremlin inside. They removed the back of the watch but cannot find the gremlin. After further discussion, they decide that it must be invisible. They also decide that it makes the hands go by running along the gears inside the watch. They replace the watch’s back and take it home.
The next day the watch stops. Someone suggests that the gremlin is dead. Someone else suggests that it’s probably sleeping. They shake the watch to awaken the gremlin, but the watch remains stopped. Someone finally turns the stem. The second hand begins to move. The person who said that the gremlin was asleep smiles triumphantly. The winding has awakened it.
For a long time the people hold the gremlin hypothesis, but finally an innovative citizen puts forth the hypothesis that the watch can work without a gremlin. He dismantles the watch and explains the movements of the inner parts. His fellows complain that he has left out the really important aspect, the gremlin. “Of course,” they agree, “the winding contributes to the turning of the gears. But only because it wakes up the gremlin, which then resumes its running.”
But gradually the suggestion of the innovative citizen converts a number of others to his position. The gremlin is not vital to run the watch. Nevertheless, they are reluctant to reject the gremlin altogether. So they compromise and conclude that there is a gremlin inside, but he is not needed to run the watch.
But the man who figured out that the watch worked without the intervention of a gremlin is dissatisfied. If we do not need the gremlin to explain how the watch works, why continue to believe that it exists? Isn’t it simpler to say that it does not?
— Jeffery Olen (in Pojman 2006, 189)
Occam’s razor does not apply in this circumstance. Why? Because the arguments for dualism that we looked at last class show that mental states cannot be reduced to physical states. It does no good to propose a simpler theory if that theory is inadequate for explaining the relevant facts.
Mental states are brain states. A mental state or process is really a physical state or process in the brain or central nervous system and neuroscience will eventually advance to the point that we will have a successful reduction of mental states to brain states.
Issue: Humans, Dogs, Martins, and many other creatures can feel pain despite having very different brains.
Mental events can be exhaustively described in terms of sensory inputs, behavioral outputs, and other internal states. Functionalists reject the identity theory because, in their view, mental states are multiple realizable—that is, mental events can be realized in many different forms and structures.
The other argument for physicalism
\(+\) the multiple realizability objection to identity theory.
Like other forms of physicalism, functionalism has difficulty accounting for qualia.
Issue: It is entirely possible for two systems to be functionally isomorphic (to parallel each others’ input, output, and internal states) while only one of those systems has intentional states.
Identity theorists hope neuroscience will lead to a reduction of mental states to brain states. Eliminative materialists reject reduction and argue that neuroscience will eliminate the need to talk about mental states altogether.