Daniel Dennett’s essay “Where Am I?” tries to argue against dualism. In this essay, Dennett tackles the difference between mind, body, and a person’s identity. Dennett’s views seem to be of empirical monism. In his story, Dennett has his brain removed and preserved in a vat. His body stays alive, and radio transmitters make it so he can still function. Dennett starts to question who “he” is and where he is.
When Dennett first goes to look at his brain, his first thought is that he is outside of the vat, looking at his brain. This confuses him, because Dennett believes that he should think, instead, “Here I am, being suspended in fluids, being stared at by my own eyes.” Puzzled, Dennett starts naming things so it’s easier for him to make sense
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He then starts wondering about committing a crime in a different state. Where would he be tried? The state where his brain is? Or where he committed the crime? Coming to a third alternative, he suggests that Dennett is …show more content…
Property dualism is an attempt to solve the interaction problem. It suggests that there is one type of stuff, with different properties. Property dualism tries to address the interaction problem by saying that there’s only one type of stuff, with different properties. That doesn’t make sense, though. How could a soul and table be made of the same stuff? How can two things of the same kind act so different? This would also mean that the soul decays as the body does. However, I believe that the soul lives in and acts through the body- and continues to exist forever, can’t be physical because all physical things decay and souls last forever.
Dennett is saying you are where you want to be, which I believe is true. If the situation Dennett proposes were to occur, I believe what he tells us up to a point- that point being that he is where he thinks (or chooses) he is. But I also believe that once the body dies, the soul is done living. The soul can’t just jump around from human to human. Once the human body dies, the soul moves onto to something greater… something that lasts
Alter, Adam. "Where We Are Shapes Who We Are." The New York Times. The New York Times, 15 June 2013. Web. 07 Apr. 2014.
As an extension to the short story “Where am I?” by Daniel Dennett, Dennett is taking the government to court, claiming that NASA owes him a new body, because he is currently forced to share his body with another person (Hubert). Wanting to make usage of my philosophical expertise, the government called upon me to give my recommendation to the court as to what validity, if any Dennett’s claim has, and whether or not Dennett should be awarded a second body transplant. After careful consideration on various philosophical issues pertaining to this case, I have concluded that there is absolutely some merit to Dennett’s claim, and that Daniel Dennett should be given a new body. I will expand upon the details of each specific issue that I investigated,
Dualism believes that there is more in us than just physical matters. They believe that there is a body where all the physical components are and in addition there is a mind where all our mental states happen. They explain that if a crazy scientific will open our head to look while we are eating a chocolate bar, he will never get the results of what chocolate tastes like. The reason that they gave us is that inside everyone’s’ brain there is a mind and that experienced are locked inside that mind. So while the crazy scientific is looking inside our head, he will see the brain activity, but he will never have access in our mind that is where our mental experience are. On the other hand, physicalism thinks that human are the results of physical matters, and our next paragraph will be about
What I find most appealing about dualism is the belief in the soul and body, spirit and matter. Although materialism is a valid theory scientifically and philosophically, I find dualism to cover a wider spectrum of possibilities. I do not believe that our body and our thoughts and everything that surrounds us are a result of the physical. Materialism removes any problems of relatedness between mind and body by eliminating the spiritual altogether. But as I will show, materialism might have the upper hand in proof but it cannot fulfill or support my need for the spiritual like dualism can.
Descartes' formulation of what he calls the “Real Distinction” has proved foundational to our modern concepts of being and consciousness. His contention has irreversibly influenced the fields of psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, and others while cementing into the popular consciousness the notion of a definite dichotomy between the mind and the body. In this paper, I will flesh out what Descartes' meant by the term “real distinction,” discuss the arguments he uses in its' defense, and then argue myself that this distinction between mind and body (at least as Descartes frames it) goes much too far, and that it is a much more viable probability to believe that mind and body are actually intertwined, one and the same.
A dualist may respond with a type of property dualism (epiphenomenalism or interacionism) by saying that mental states supervene on brain states. Therefore, if the brain is damaged, particular mental states will have no supervienence base, and the mind will be affected. This seems to save the duali...
Physicalists believe in the philosophical position that everything, which exists, is no more extensive than its physical properties, and that the only existing substance is physical (Mastin 2008). Another term used to describe two-way interactive substance dualism is Cartesian dualism, which was defended by Descartes. Cartesian dualism is the idea that mind is not the same thing as matter, although they do causally affect each other.
1. "RENÉ DESCARTES AND THE LEGACY OF MIND/BODY DUALISM." Rene Descartes and the Legacy of Mind/Body Dualism. Web. . .
Berger and Luckmann offer a treatise to the social construction of reality that outlines how we formulate the idea of the “self” in social society and how reality itself is socially constructed. “Knowledge must always be knowledge from a certain position.” It is our social position that guides our perceptions of reality and allows us to embrace our idea of “self” within reality. Everyday life presents itself as a reality that is interpreted by others and is subjectively meaningful because of such interpretations.
Dualism claims that the mind is a distinct nonphysical thing, a complete entity that is independent of any physical body to which it is temporarily attached. Any mental states and activities, as well as physical ones, originate from this unique entity. Dualism states that the real essence of a person has nothing to do with his physical body, but rather from the distinct nonphysical entity of the mind. The mind is in constant interaction with the body. The body's sense organs create experiences in the mind. The desires and decisions of the mind cause the body to act in certain ways. This is what makes each mind's body its own.
. There are two kinds of dualism. One is Substance dualism which holds that the mind or soul is a separate, non-physical entity, but there is also property dualism, according to which there is no soul distinct from the body, but only one thing, the person, that has two irreducibly different types of properties, mental and physical. Substance dualism leaves room for the possibility that the soul might be able to exist apart from the body, either before birth or after death; property dualism does not. A substance dualism is something with "an independent existence". It can exist on its own. This holds that each distinct non-physical entity mind composed a different kind of substance to material objects. Substance dualist believed only spiritual substances can have mental properties. It is “soul” along with certain memory and psychological continuities that constitutes the survival of the person. Physical properties of property dualism are properties like having a certain weight, conducting electricity and mental properties are properties like believing that 1+1=2, being in love, feeling pain, and etc. Property dualism allows for the compatibility of mental and physical causation, since the cause of an action might under one aspect is describable as a physical event in the brain and under another aspect as a desire, emotion, or thought; substance dualism usually requires causal interaction between the soul and the body. Dualistic theories at least acknowledge the serious difficulty of locating consciousness in a modern scientific conception of the physical world, but they really give metaphysical expression to the problem rather than solving it.
Daniel named his brain separately from the rest of his body. His brain in referred to as “Yorick” and his body is “Hamlet” and he himself is “Dennett”. Daniel was having a hard time grasping that if his brain, Yorick, was in the vat and his body, hamlet, was down the hall in the patient room, or wherever, then where was Dennett really at? He came up with some principles that could explain and possibly answer this question. The first principle was, “Where Hamlet goes there goes Dennett” in which he states that “it was clear enough, then, that my current body and I could part company, but not likely that I could be separated from my brain” (Dennett, 3). With this principle he then thought that maybe perhaps the truth was actually the second principle which was, “Where Yorick goes there goes Dennett”. The second principle states that in such an example if Dennett were to rob a bank in California and Yorick, his brain, was in Texas then where would the crime case take place and what kind of charge would come from it, “who” would go where for the punishment of the crime. If this principle were to be true then that leads to a third principle; “Dennett is wherever he thinks he is”. This third point of view states that “ at any given time a person has a point of view and the location of the point of view (which is determined internally by the content of the point of view) is also the location of the
Cartesian dualism is a form of dualism which states that there are two kinds of substance which is material and mental. According to Rene Descartes’s philosophy, the material cannot
The Theory of Mind-Body Dualism is the view that there are two different kinds of things or substances that make up human beings: a physical body and a non-physical mind or soul. “Many dualist believe that a materialistic account of the mind is insufficient to explain everything we want to about the nature of mind and that the mind can be ‘embodied’ or ‘disembodied’” (Mind Body Dualism 1 Notes). Two famous arguments that breaks down dualism a little is The Argument from Conceivability says that the mind can exist without a body like a “disembodied mind” and the body cannot exist without a mind. And The Argument from Divisibility saying the mind cannot be identified with body because the body is divisible while the mind is indivisible.
Descartes is a very well-known philosopher and has influenced much of modern philosophy. He is also commonly held as the father of the mind-body problem, thus any paper covering the major answers of the problem would not be complete without covering his argument. It is in Descartes’ most famous work, Meditations, that he gives his view for dualism. Descartes holds that mind and body are com...