Minds and Computers : An Introduction to the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence
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physical substance.
As before, the failure of the argument from essential properties does not entail that minds cannot be non-physical – it merely shows that a radical distinction in properties (essential or otherwise) between minds and canonical physical objects is not su fficient to establish that minds are non-physical. 2.4 ARGUMENTS AGAINST CARTESIAN DUALISM We have now seen three arguments in favour of dualism. The argu- ment from introspective appearance and the argument from essential properties both seek to establish a broad mind-body dualism. Coupled with certain common-sense intuitions concerning the e fficacy of the mind in bringing about changes in the body and vice versa, they become arguments supporting Cartesian dualism. The argument from religion seeks to establish Cartesian dualism in particular, as the inter- action between mind and body is essential for the argument. We should already be concerned for the theory, given that we have actively sought the strongest arguments in its favour and have dis- covered that none of them succeed in establishing their conclusions. Even more troubling for the Cartesian dualist though are the follow- ing negative arguments. 2 . 4 . 1 T H E P R O B L E M O F OT H E R M I N D S The first objection to Cartesian dualism we will consider identifies a problematic consequence of the view. We have become quite adept at investigating the physical universe and have all manner of methods and equipment at our disposal for doing so. We are at a loss, however, when it comes to investigating the non-physical. If minds are immaterial, then they are clearly not investigable by known empirical methods. Not only does this put minds beyond the scope of science, it also means that there is no way to know whether or not other people have minds. As far as the Cartesian dualist is able to discern, she may well have the only mind in the universe – all other human bodies may well just be mindless automata. This is an epistemological concern – a concern about what we can know – which comes with a methodological concern for the possibil- ity of a science of mind. The objection is not insuperable, however. The Cartesian dualist can help herself to a reply, of sorts, to each of these concerns. 9 With respect to scientific methodology, she might point out that it is not unknown to science to postulate, and investigate, unobservable entities by examining their observable consequences. So, while she will have to maintain that minds are simply not amenable to direct empirical investigation, she can hold out hope that there will be observable consequences of mentality that can be investigated, thereby giving science indirect access to minds. With respect to our everyday knowledge of the minds of others, the Cartesian dualist can reason by analogy to her own mental life and its role in mediating experience and behaviour. Presumably – she might say – you do, in fact, think that other people have minds (it is fairly di fficult to get around in the world without proceeding on that assumption). Why then do you think this? Presumably because you’ve observed that the best explanation for the way other people behave involves attributing mental states to them. In other words, you know that if you have certain experiences, this will lead to certain beliefs and desires (mental states) which in certain situations will lead you to behave in particular ways. You’ve further observed other people in just such situations acting in just such ways and consequently assume that they share certain of your beliefs and desires (like the belief that it is lunchtime and the desire for food) and recognise that these mental states play an important explanatory role in understanding their behaviour. This reply to the problem of other minds appeals to an inference to best explanation: the best way to explain the way other human bodies move around in the world is to attribute to them the kind of mental states I know that I have. It should be apparent, however, that while this reply su ffices to demonstrate the utility in assuming that other people have minds (the assumption confers useful predictive capac- ities), it certainly does not establish that they do. The problem of other minds remains for the dualist. 2 . 4 . 2 O C K H A M ’ S R A Z O R William of Ockham was a medieval philosopher and notable logician of the early fourteenth century. You may well have heard a common corruption of Ockham’s razor that is something along the lines of ‘the simplest explanation is often the best’. Properly construed, Ockham’s razor is intended to serve as a methodological constraint on theory construction. The most accurate gloss of Ockham’s razor in the realm of meta- physics is ‘don’t expand your ontology beyond necessity’. Another way of putting it is to say that one shouldn’t postulate any more 10 entities than are absolutely necessary to explain the phenomena about which we are theorising. This can be deployed as a methodological objection to Cartesian dualism – the contention being that the dualist does, in fact, expand her ontology beyond explanatory necessity, that postulating non- physical entities is not required in order to explain mentality. This a moderately weak objection so I shall give it short thrift. At best – if you think that the principle should constrain theory con- struction – it entails that when presented with two explanatorily ade- quate theories of mind, one of which postulates non-physical entities and one of which accounts for mentality in purely physical terms, one should prefer the latter. This will be something to bear in mind once we have surveyed the space of available theories of mind. 2 . 4 . 3 T H E P R O B L E M O F I N T E R AC T I O N A considerably more potent objection – one which is generally con- sidered to be the rock on which Cartesian dualism founders – centres on the problem of interaction. The physical universe is held to be causally closed, which means that every physical e ffect has a physical cause. A physical effect brought about by a non-physical cause would contravene the first law of thermodynamics. While science has certainly got it wrong about many things in the past, our theory of thermodynamics is a found- ational theory which most of modern science rests on. The problem here for the Cartesian dualist, if it is not already apparent, is their contention that the non-physical mind is causally e fficacious in the physical world, that the non-physical mind causes change in the physical body. What might the Cartesian dualist say to the problem of interac- tion? The only possible response seems to be to deny that the physical universe is, in fact, causally closed. This, however, seems rather implausible. Were it the case that our physical actions were caused by non-physical minds, then energy would be added to the physical uni- verse every time a mental action resulted in a physical action and this addition of energy would, one might think, be measurable. There is a theistic response available here, which is to claim that in every case of scientific observation, an omniscient, omnipotent divin- ity intervenes and adjusts the observer accordingly, such that we think that energy is always conserved and that the amount of energy in the physical universe is constant, but in fact it is constantly increasing. Taking such a line, however, brings with it a raft of troubling epistem- ological concerns. 11 There seems to be no secular way to rescue Cartesian dualism from this objection. We can, however, advance modified forms of dualism which retreat from the commitment to interaction. 2.5 OTHER DUALISMS Recall from section 2.2 the four propositions [D1]–[D4] which charac- terise Cartesian dualism. One way to recover the core ontological intu- itions of Cartesian dualism from the damning criticism of the problem of interaction is to give up the commitment to propositions [D3] and [D4], leaving us in want of an account of the relation between the physical body and the non-physical mind. This strategy leads to the theistic dualist theories known as parallelism and occasionalism. Another possible strategy is to give up only [D4] and maintain a commitment to propositions [D1]–[D3]. Again, this requires a Download 1.05 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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