Scientific Knowledge

According to Aristotle, there are three types of knowledge:

1) Perception of particulars; knowledge given by the senses

2) Experience; memories arrived at by induction based upon experience, e.g. this is a chair and so I can sit on it

3) Scientific; knowledge both of what is the case, and why it is the case

When deducing from experiental knowledge, the premises can be true but the conclusions false. For example, I might conclude from my experience of chairs that all chairs I sit on will take my weight. But this is not necessarily true, and cannot be thought of as scientific knowledge since we have no reason to believe the conclusion, no reason why it should be the case.

An example of deduction that would yield scientific knowledge:
1) Lights that are relatively near the earth do not twinkle
2) All visible planets are relatively near the earth
All visible planets do not twinkle

An example of deduction that wouldn't yield scientific knowledge:
1) All visible planets do not twinkle
2) Every light that does not twinkle is a relatively near light
Every visible planet is a relatively near light

Example two is unscientific because we have no reason to accept the first assumption without reference to the second assumption and the conclusion. With example one, although the two assumptions aren't self-explanatory, they don't assume each other nor the conclusion, and so the conclusion is scientific.

All scientific knowledge can therefore be reduced to certain first principles that are self-explanatory. For example:
Q) why are cows deficient in teeth?
A) because they have four stomachs to digest the food
Q) why do they have four stomachs?
A) because they are ruminants

The final answer is self-explanatory. To be a ruminant is part of the essence of a 'cow', and so no further explanation is needed.

Objection: Do we not have scientific knowledge of contingent and particular matters of fact? Does the theory of coherence, in contrast to the foundationalist picture offered by Aristotle's theory of scientific knowledge, suggest that we can have scientific knowledge without necessarily needing to derive that knowledge from first principles? For example, can we treat the theory of evolution as scientific knowledge? According to Aristotle, it is merely experiential knowledge, conjecture. But then science must either concern itself equally with conjecture and that which Aristotle considers scientific knowledge, or admit that it knows very little indeed.

Objection: furthermore, Aristotle's conception of scientific knowledge negates the use of interpolation and extrapolation, of quantitative prediction, since the only reason we have to believe some knowledge based upon those methods is experience. Whilst it is true that science generally seeks more reliable explanations than those that are by nature experiential, it again seems to be an essential part of science that Aristotle would neglect.

Objection: Can we really find self-explanatory first principles for all of science? It seems that often we find even our first principles require other first principles to be explained, and that we tend to generalise explanations until a first principle that coheres can be found. Gravity is a good example here, since it itself is not self-explanatory, but we treat it as a first principle in order that we might understand almost all physics, except that which attempts to explain gravity of course.

In general, regardless of the problems specific to Aristotle's division between experiential and scientific knowledge, one can draw out a general method of learning from his distinctions:

Perception --induction--> Experience --dialectic--> scientific knowledge

And finally, Aristotle tackles the question of metaphysics, and how that is different from physics and the other sciences. He concludes that there is a special kind of scientific knowledge, wisdom, that concerns itself with the most universal causes, and that wisdom is that which metaphysics supposedly yields.

Dialectic

If scientific knowledge is based upon first principles, how can we come to know first principles? If we claim that 'all cows are ruminants' is a first principle, in that it described the essence of a cow, then we need to be able to develop it into a full explication of the essence of a cow (e.g. 'cows are herbivorous, hoofed animals...'). Dialectic allows us to do this.

The process of dialectic is:

1) Begin from existing and conflicting opinions of reputable sources
2) Deduce the implications and problems that the endoxa face, and the implications of these problems
3) Evaluate the conflicts and problems according to agreed beliefs to which there is no worthwhile opposition (endoxa)
4) Reconcile the differences and conflicts until you arrive at an unobjectionable compromise

Why trust dialectic?

Since the opinions taken from (1) have been formed from some reasoning, it is plausible that each of them will have some truth in them, and that therefore the conclusion (4) will contain some truth.

Through taking step (2), we gain a clearer understanding both of the problems we must resolve, without which we cannot begin the process (akin, Aristotle says, to trying to untie yourself without first studying the knot). And through taking step (3) we can evaluate each opinion with this clearer understanding and so be in the best possible position to recognise and deduce the elements of truth, and weed out false aspects of the beliefs.

Objection: Dialectic undoubtedly gives us a coherent set of beliefs, but why should we assume that these accurately represent the objective truth? Particularly when we use dialectic to establish first principles, are we not just allowing our methodology to deceive us, when in fact we may deduce entirely false first principles and so build all of our knowledge on false foundations?

Reply: Though one may be able to make quite a large web of coherent beliefs that are entirely false, at some point you will inevitable find anomalies, and so will be forced to evaluate the entire web against those anomalies.

Objection reply: But if we are evaluating these anomalies in the context of their coherence with the web, and in particular with endoxa, they will simply discounted. To allow for radical new ideas to upset the web, and so to assure us that dialectic is able to get us closer to an objective truth, we must ignore the endoxa or be open to the idea that the endoxa may be entirely wrong, e.g. evolution upsetting ideas of creationism, anthrocentrism, etc.

Aristotle's responses:
a) We have no choice but to rely on the beliefs we have, and the beliefs that these lead us to
b) Those reputable beliefs we start out with are intrinsically justified, and so do not require justification from other beliefs, though some may be undermined by enquiry in the future
c) Some beliefs are necessary conditions for rational discourse

Objection 2: Through dialectic, Aristotle wants to establish first principles. In Metaphysics, Aristotle says dialectic will also establish universal truths. But necessary truths are objective, and coherent truths can only be contingent, since we have Little reason, except that it hasn't yet happened, to suppose those belief will always be true.

Possible replies: That we have no better way of knowing of objective truth; that, as in (c) we have no choice in accepting certain beliefs in discourse

Can, then, metaphysics have any claim on truth? Or is it simply experiential deduction?

And my essay on this subject:

Does Dialectic enable knowledge of reality? Why or why not?

In his enquiries in metaphysics, the natural and social sciences and mathematics, Aristotle employed a method of acquiring knowledge called dialectic; he thought that dialectic was the only method available that could be said to establish knowledge as opposed to belief. This view predominated for over one and a half millennia, and has in the past few hundred years been further developed and extended in various different ways to provide many quite different understandings of what constitutes knowledge, and by what methods we can acquire knowledge, and even if we acquire knowledge at all. Given the epistemic ambiguity of dialectic itself, it is perhaps best to begin by studying its roots in Aristotle's writings, and to analyse its key problems there.

In Topics, Aristotle set himself the task of explaining and justifying dialectic as the only method of acquiring knowledge because he wanted to "find a line of enquiry whereby we shall be able to reason from opinions that are generally accepted" (Topics, 100a 19-20). In other words, he wanted to avoid situations where critics could doubt his premises and so undermine his arguments, and so sought to establish, in most of his works, first principles upon which his other fields of enquiry, from philosophy to botany, could be soundly and unobjectionably based. Once established, these principles could be employed in further dialectic, expanding our field of knowledge in a reasonable manner.

So what is dialectic? As a form of learning, it involves four stages: One begins with two or more conflicting opinions that come from reputable sources (that is to say from those whom we deem to be learned already); then, one deduces the problems posed by each opinion and the implications of these problems, and the problems and implications of the conflict between the two opinions; thirdly, one evaluates each opinion according to a set of agreed beliefs; and finally one can reconcile the differences between the two opinions, finding, according to Aristotle, the truth within the resultant unifying opinion.

Why take this approach? To begin with, Aristotle suggests, we are more justified in our certainty if we have good reason to believe the opinions we begin with, as opposed to taking two radical and unpopular views, since they will be based upon good rational or commonsense arguments. Though this may be the case, it does present a significant problem, since it doesn't allow for radical changes in our belief system; we might instinctively ask whether or not we would have taken Darwin or Einstein at all seriously if we were to only allow dialectic as a route to knowledge. This however slightly misses the point, since both Darwin and Einstein did base their work upon the ideas of others, and so developed their radical theories in the context of an acknowledged new belief system that itself was worked upon by reputable sources. In fact, it is common sense that we don't take a proposition seriously unless we have reason to believe that the proposer is at all likely to be correct. Quite how far we take this is unclear in Aristotle's writing, and could range from only accepting the work of already-eminent theorists (which begs the question as to how anyone could ever ascend to that position unless they were apprentices to eminent theorists) to accepting any opinions from anyone with a reasonable formal education.

Once we have the two conflicting reputable opinions, Aristotle says that there must be some truth in each opinion, else the sources would not hold them to be true, and so we must begin to find what truths can be found in each. This is best done by first isolating the key problems with each; Aristotle compared this to untying a knot, and pointed out that one could not begin to untangle the knot until one first appreciated that the knot exists, and further by appreciating the nature of the knot. By analysing the endoxa we not only find that seems unlikely about them, but also points in common between the differing views. From here, it is a matter of employing rational arguments to find the truth within the statements, almost as if in a dialogue between two people.

So it seems that we have some reason to trust that dialectic might provide us with relatively unobjectionable conclusions, but why employ this method at all, since no other academic disciplines use it? 'Philosophy', according to J. D. Evans, can be 'distinguished by its methods and focus of interest' (Evans, p.2). If its primary method is dialectic, then it is because philosophy is not just 'occupied with purely conceptual problems rather than substantive issues of fact' (Evans, p.3). Philosophers must appreciate ideas from a diverse range of disciplines that may not have a single method acceptable to each discipline that could unite them. For example, one might want to use substantive facts of biology to influence an argument over the nature of the mind; since these two discussions are methodologically incompatible, one needs a method that can unite them and cross over axiomatic bases. That method is dialectic.

But if this is true, then we must accept the assumption that all knowledge needn't reduce to the same axiomatic bases, which seems like a fairly troubling conclusion, especially given Aristotle's commitment to first principles. If we are to accept the idea of first principles, we must consider the possibility that there is at least a substantial number of principles that form more than a collection of priori and logical truths upon which all disciplines are based. We must do this if we accept the epistemological position known as foundationalism, according to which every belief is based upon some others, and those others are based on yet more fundamental beliefs, and that this pattern continues until one finds foundational beliefs that are based upon no other, i.e. they are self-evident or a priori truths. If we accept foundationalism, then we must accept that every truth can reduce to the foundational truths, and can be explained purely in terms of these foundational truths, in the same way that all of mathematics can be proved in terms of a few logical and observed truths. So in this case, why should we think of dialectic as a useful way of discovering foundational beliefs, let alone other less fundamental beliefs, if it doesn't work from a single axiomatic base, but rather covers all it encounters? Should we not, as Descartes proposed, begin from the foundations and work our way up the 'knowledge tree'?

Aristotle provides a clear answer to this, but one that confuses his epistemological position and brings into doubt his claims for first principles. He emphasises, through his justifications for dialectic, that what is important is that the beliefs we acquire cohere, hence dialectic is such a good method, since it finds incoherence in conflicting beliefs and resolves it, until, conceivably, we have one coherent set of knowledge that is the truth about everything. According to this view, there simple aren't any foundational beliefs, they're an illusion or misconception; those truths that are self-evident or a priori are simply not 'knowledge' at all, at least not in the sense that 'John is wearing a green hat' is knowledge. To say: 'a bachelor is an unmarried man' is not to express any knowledge about those two terms, but rather to express an appreciation of their nature, their definition. To say: '1+1=2', meanwhile, is simply to show that one appreciates the way in which language conceptualises logical truths about reality. To then say: 'John has one green hat and has bought a new green hat, and so has two green hats' is to express knowledge, based upon its coherence with one's observations of John's hat collection according to logical truths. Other supposedly 'foundational' beliefs may simply have very small 'webs' of coherence upon which they are based, and so appear foundational when compared to more complex beliefs, e.g. how trees grow.

So, if we take a coherentist epistemological stand, the role of dialectic is to work on beliefs until we eventually find entirely self-contained webs of truths. Of course, Aristotle still holds that we can use strong dialectic to find first principles, but in a sense strong dialectic only helps us to discover the logical, a priori and linguistic truths upon which all of our arguments are based.

There remains, however, a serious worry about this stand, for 'coherence within common beliefs does not seem to be a ground for claiming to have found objective principles' (Irwin, p.8). Aristotle can't ever be immune from scepticism, from the doubt that his whole web of knowledge is in fact wrong and that, if he were to reassess his first principles or find a major new coherent web that conflicted with his current web, he might find that all that he had once believed was untrue. This criticism is especially telling of Aristotle's dialectic, because he placed such a lot of value on intuition, upon which many endoxa are founded. Aristotle himself believed the world to be spherical, but had he not, one wonders what he might have said to Copernicus when he challenged one of the most fundamental endoxa of his time. Again this susceptibility to doubt is made worse by the possibility of radical and unpopular opinions being closer to the objective truth than received and accepted opinions. Aristotle might have given this more thought had he considered his example of the knot more closely, for what use is it knowing that there is a knot if one refuses to take seriously the suggestion that one has completely missed the most important threads in the tangle? To work with a coherntist epistemology, one must surely scrap Aristotle's first step in dialectic and allow for all views, endoxa or not, to be considered. This really oughtn't be a big problem for Aristotle, since if a radical view is really completely false and baseless, then it won't take long under rational analysis and in comparison to endoxa to determine that it is in fact totally false. If, on the other hand, it is true, or closer to the truth than any endoxa, then it ought to animate in a dialectical investigation sufficient problems and questions to make it worth serious consideration, and so the truth ought to come out.

In this way also we can forget the worry of epistemological reduction, because even if they do all reduce to certain axiomatic or logical bases, we needn't know those bases nor the relationship of all knowledge to those bases in order to make a claim to knowledge, although being able to do such a thing would certainly strengthen a case for coherence.

Furthermore, because dialectic concentrates more on conserving endoxa where appropriate and developing them to resolve incoherence, and is interdisciplinary, we are more likely to acquire knowledge of reality, since any incoherence with reality will immediately be considered as a problem. Other methods of knowledge acquisition, on the other hand, may take the inquirer down one route ignoring other evidence, and so may ignore apparent facts of reality altogether in order to develop a particular theory or paradigm. In this sense, though we cannot say that dialectic gives us absolutely objective knowledge of reality, it does seem to give us more knowledge of reality, and a better knowledge of reality, than other possible methods and other epistemological systems.

Bibliography

Aristotle, Metaphysics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. R. McKeon, 2001

Aristotle, Topics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. R. McKeon, 2001

J.D. Evans, Aristotle (Philosophers in Context), The Harvester Press, 1987

T.H. Irwin, Aristotle's First Principles, Clarendon Press, 1998

Metaphysics and Being Qua Being

In tackling metaphysics, Aristotle starts with Plato's views, and more specifically of Plato's science of Forms and the Good. Thus Aristotle holds metaphysics to be the science of the first and most universal causes, rather than the attributes of things that have a contingent existence. Metaphysics is the study of "being qua being", or the study of attributes that belong to things merely insofar as they exist, e.g. existence, unity, sameness and difference.

The fundamental question posed by metaphysics is: what is true of existents insofar as they exist?

But by inheriting this definition of metaphysics, Aristotle is confronted with a problem, since he rejected Plato's theory of Forms and the good, and instead suggested that there are many senses of 'good', depending on what it is that you are evaluating. So too, he said, are there many senses in which things can be said to exist. Thus, it seems, there can be no science of existence and of universal causes, and so there can be no metaphysics.

Aristotle's solution is to demonstrate that there is a single, 'fundamental' sense of 'exist' from which the other senses derive, and that that sense of 'exist' is the subject of metaphysics. To do this, he first sets up some distinctions to distinguish between the various senses of 'exist':

Homonymous things are those which are both described by the same predicate but with different definitions, e.g. "I am Polish" and "I polish the floor"
Synonymous things are those which are both described by the same predicate and each with the same definition of that predicate, e.g. "I polish the floor" and "I buff the floor"

In some cases, one thing can be Homonymous with another because it is dependent upon it, in what is called non-coincidental homonymy. Where this is the case, there will be one word that has focal meaning amongst the homonyms, in that it is the one from which all other meanings are derived.

Thus, for Aristotle, the central question of metaphysics becomes: what is true of substance insofar as it exists?

Aristotle held 'existence' to be a collection of homonyms, with a focal meaning that applies to substances (e.g. the meaning it has in 'Socrates exists'). The two most distinct meanings of 'exist' that Aristotle drew out in relation to substances were:

1) Primary: a substance that exists in its own right, independent of others
2) Secondary: a substance that exists by virtue of its relation to a substance, dependent upon primary substances, e.g. colour (that flower is red), jogging (I am jogging)

Thus Aristotle draws two distinct areas of study for metaphysics.

Aristotle also tackled the question of mathematics; Plato held "1+1=2" to be a statement of substance, but Aristotle disagreed, thinking that numbers can only exist in relation to other primary substances, and so only a statement like "1 dog + 1 dog = 2 dogs" could be a statement about substance (in this case in particular it is a statement about dogs qua unity)

This marked a fundamental departure from Plato, since Aristotle suggested that we cannot understand truth without reference to physical things, in contrast to Plato's emphasis on the immaterial Forms.

The Principle of Non-Contradiction

The PNC: A property cannot both belong and not belong to a subject at the same time and in the same respect

The PNC is the most certain principle, i.e.:

1) It is not possible to be wrong about it
2) If you know anything, you know it (all statements of knowledge imply it)

But there are those who deny it, including para-consistent logicians. One possible objection is that this law only appears to apply to our use of language, and the way in which we frame our reality. One might also go so far as to say that the principle is, or could be, both true and false. Quantum mechanics might suggest that often we can't know either way, and so must deem the principle to be void and meaningless in many situations.

In response to the kinds of criticisms he could have anticipated or received, Aristotle said that those who deny the principle merely think they deny it, and that since they have knowledge they in fact do believe it. And in response to all those criticisms that still want to retain an understanding of truth and falseness, one can say that by simply asking the question, is the PNC true, you are assuming that it must either be true or false, and so affirming its truth.

But if the principle is so self-evident, and the criticisms so weak, why bother to mention it? Aristotle thinks that not only will it give us a clearer understanding of the role the principle plays in logic and therefore in philosophy, but also once irrefutably established it informs other discussions, in particular:

If the PNC is true, then not everything can be changing in every way, and so radical change must be false (more on this in the next article on change).

If the PNC is true, then relativism as a theory of reality must be false. If Jack believes the sun is shining, and Jill believes it is not shining, then one of the two must be false. This in particular is where the PNC contradicts physics, and so questions either the PNC, the theories of quantum physics, or the nature of the quantum level in relation to the super-quantum level.

Change

Aristotle asks: how is change possible?

For context, the pre-Socratic philosopher Parmenides thought that nothing can come from nothing, that what is cannot come or cease to be, and that change is therefore impossible. Change is merely an illusion, he thought, and the sum of reality, or even every aspect of reality, is an unchanging whole. Others contended that at all times everything changes in every way.

Aristotle agrees with Parmenides in his two assumptions, but instead concludes that there must be something permanent in all change; all change, in other words, is in a subject. For example:

1) The unmusical becomes the musical (Plato) must be false, since something is coming from a lack of that something
2) Socrates becomes musical is possible, since it is a change in the subject; Socrates acquires this musical ability from somewhere else.
3) The bronze is moulded into a statue is possible, since it is also a change in the subject; the subject, bronze, remains, whilst its form changes from unmoulded to moulded statue

Where does this change in the subject come from? According to Aristotle, from his potential for musicality and from his interaction with other objects and subjects; but Socrates takes nothing from the world when observing and learning from rhythm, harmony etc. and so the change is all in the subject, in the conversion from potentiality to actuality.

But given that Aristotle rejected the notion that everything changes in every way, what underlies change when a subject comes into existence? If we are composed of matter and form (and are therefore substantial complexes, e.g. a house is composed of bricks, and the particular arrangements of those bricks), then what changes: matter, form, or both? Aristotle thought that it was the form that changed, whilst the matter unerlies the change. The matter that Socreates' body was composed of didn't change, but its form did. The same applies to the bronze.

The form/matter distinction

This is a logical distinction useful in understanding the nature of substance. It holds that things (subjects & objects) are not identical to the matter that they are made up of:

1) My body's cells will die and be replaced as time passes
2) I will not be a different person because of the changing cells
I am not identical to my matter (according to Leibniz's law)
I am my matter + my form = my substance

Change is the actuality of the potential qua such, i.e. the actualisation of a potential within a substance whilst aspects of that substance's matter (and form) persist

This means:
1) Change is directional / teleological
2) Change is understood in terms of its culmination
3) Every change has a cause

Objection: quantum physics again makes some of Aristotle's ideas questionable. Changes at the quantum level and in the zero point energy field suggest that matter can come in and out of existence from nothing, and without direction. The quantum level seems so random that it disobeys all of his laws of change. This either means that we can allow for two sets of rules, or that one set is wrong; either change at the quantum level does obey Aristotle's laws, and we have yet to see evidence, or at the super-quantum level all change is random.

The Four causes

Causes are cited as answers to questions of the form: "Why is S P?", e.g. "Why is Socrates musical?". The Greek word Aristotle used was aition, for which there is no suitable translation in English; a cause, to Aristotle, was more than just a reason behind an event, it was the reason behind almost any "why" question. A complete answer, to accord with Aristotle's thoughts on knowledge, must take the form:

1) S is M
2) M is P
S is P

There are four distinct kinds of cause:

1. Material cause: "that out of which a thing comes to be, and which persists"
a) The statue is made of bronze
b) Bronze things are malleable
The statue is malleable.

2. Formal cause: "the essence," "the account of what-it-is- to-be, and the parts of the account."
a) The moon is deprived of light when screened by the earth
b) Things deprived of light by screening are eclipsed
The moon is eclipsed.

3. Efficient cause: "the primary source of change"
a) The child has a snub nosed father
b) Children of snub nosed fathers are snub nosed
The child is snub nosed.

4. Final cause: "the end (telos), that for the sake of which a thing is done"
a) Houses are shelters for belongings
b) Shelters for belongings are roofed
Houses are roofed.

Material and formal causes are preconditions for change, in that they allow for the distinction between matter and form in terms of change. They are static, in that they tell us what the world is like at the moment.

Efficient and final causes explain why things actually come to be what they are. They are dynamic, in that they explain why matter has come to be formed in the way that it has, and in doing so explain change.

Final causes require further elaboration:

1) The final cause of something is its proper functioning, its essence
2) Final causes are not something anyone need be conscious of

The essence of something could also be stated as a formal cause (a particular configuration of DNA) or even as an efficient cause (explanation of their DNA and environment as formative in their character). The final cause might today be considered to be 'ensuring its DNA persists', but Aristotle would definitely have said 'to perform its proper function in its community'.

Objection: suggesting natural things, as opposed to man-made things, can have final causes surely places an anthrocentrist or similarly deterministic view on the world. Even if we were to say the final cause of a tree is to absorb CO₂ and give out oxygen, we would be implying the sustainability of the earth's ecology determines the worth of every object on that earth. Whilst this might be acceptable to ecologists, it surely raises a serious problem for those who wouldn't subscribe to this deterministic view, nor any other.

This determinism seems to be particularly problematic in nature, but Aristotle attempts to address this. He says that the final cause of an object in nature isn't its purpose or intention, but rather the end of a regular development, e.g. the final cause of a developing tiger is to be a tiger. Natural objects that cannot have final causes in the way that Aristotle claims humans can therefore have final causes that can be identified with formal causes, though that is not to say that at any point in time a natural object's final and formal causes must be the same, since the formal doesn't take into account development and only describes the form at the time, whilst the final would describe the formal at the point of completion of the object's development.

Objection: suggesting everything has a final cause implies that substances have causes posterior to their effects. This isn't necessarily a problem for Aristotle, but it does make final causes seem even more deterministic. One could allow for final causes changing, e.g. a house becomes a tourist attraction, and so its final cause would change from being to be roofed to being to be a good tourist attraction.

Objection: the familiar theme of quantum physics again rears its head, but so too does randomness and chaos theory. Aristotle's theory of change doesn't allow for any randomness nor chance, which certainly coheres with the basis of the scientific methodology, but which runs aground in contemporary physics.

Primary substance

What could primary substance be?

Composite substances (e.g. a human being, a chair)
Matter (e.g. the stuff from which the chair is made)
Form (e.g. the essence of a chair)

What are the criteria for being a primary substance?

1) Separable (i.e. capable of existing independently of anything else)
2) Primary in knowledge (i.e. x is primary in knowledge iff knowledge of it is not dependent on knowledge of anything else.
3) An individual (i.e. a 'this something', thereby excluding the imaginary since the imaginary cannot have attributes that are matters of fact)

Composite substances cannot be primary substances because their existence is quite obviously not seperable from that of their form and matter. Though one can can be consider it in terms of its component parts, one cannot separate it from them and be left with a 'this something'. Because of this, it is also not primary in knowledge; matter and/or form are.

Matter cannot be a primary substance either. Though it seems to pass both the separability test (one can break a tree down into logs of wood) and the individuality test (one can say 'this tree' and 'this log'), it cannot pass both at the same time, i.e. one cannot take 'this tree', separate the matter from its form (e.g. chop it into logs) and maintain that same individual, since it is no longer 'this tree' but now 'these logs', and you are now dealing with a new substance (has new form).

Indeed, by separating matter from its form, it ceases to be individual, since one can no longer refer to it as a 'this anything'; whenever one refers to matter, one implicitly refers to its form as well. It therefore isn't primary in knowledge either, as to know of matter one must also know of that matter's form.

Therefore form must be primary substance, and Aristotle begins to substitute form for essence, perhaps to disassociate himself from Plato, since his theory of forms doesn't hold them to be universal constants instantiated in physical things, but as the arrangement, or essence, of matter, that disappears with that matter. It might also be because when we talk of something's form, we can mean many different things, e.g. "Aristotle is a botanist", "Aristotle is a philosopher", however when we talk of essence we focus on that which is universal and central to an object, e.g. "Aristotle is a human being that is most fulfilled in a polis"

But then is primary substance the essence of an individual object, or of a class or species of objects, e.g. "humans", "cliffs", etc.? In terms of solving the problem of 'what is primary substance' this really doesn't matter, but it should matter to Aristotle. According to his criteria, it could be either, depending on how you define and deploy the term "essence". To make as safe a definition of essence as possible (by safe I mean one that makes essence most unobjectionably primary) one ought to lean towards a species interpretation, but then we can also assert a very individualistic sense of each person on earth having their own unique essence, and so lean towards an individual interpretation.

Objection: even though essence can persist whilst the underlying matter changes, the essence couldn't survive the total removal of that matter except in language, where we can talk of A without mentioning A's matter. But even in language we implicitly posit the existence of A's matter when discussing A's form, and we cannot conceive of form without matter. One could also say that essence is separable in time, in the 4th dimension, since it is in that dimension that essence doesn't depend upon any particular matter. But again, it still depends upon some matter to exist, unless we can think of essence as existing solely in the 4th dimension and not having the three spatial dimensions.

Aristotle seems to share this assumption that form cannot persist entirely without matter, as he rejects Plato's theory of universal forms and physical instantiations, suggesting he was caught in between a theory of materialism and a theory of forms. If one were to interpret Aristotle's criteria for primary substance strictly, essense doesn't seem to comply; in other words, it looks as though Aristotle has simply been liberal with his interpretation to fit his form/matter distinction with his theory of primary substances.

Objection: if I melt down a bronze statue, the matter doesn't change, and underlies the change between two forms. I can also, in a sense, refer to the bronze as a 'this something' in saying 'this bronze' on both occasions. That appears to be two honomonous uses of the term 'this bronze', suggesting that matter is both separable, individual and primary in knowledge, something we can accept if we interpret Aristotle's criteria liberally. So Aristotle's loose interpretation runs into trouble here again.

Objection: can anything be considred primary? If neither complex substances nor their form nor matter can be definitively described as primary according to a strict interpretation of Aristotle's criteria, we must conclude either that his criteria are flawed or that there is no such thing as primary substance. Given the fairly arbitrary nature of any other criteria for primary substance, it would seem that the very idea is simply false, a philosophical illusion that Aristotle conjured up to fit into his theory of coherent knowledge with foundations.

Beliefs and consistency

Critical thinking is the art of evaluating the judgements and decisions we make by examining the process the leads to them. It improves our rationality, and helps us evaluate arguments.

Arguments

Arguments aim to persuade, as opposed to explanations, which aim to clarify:

Argument: You shouldn't change currency at the border because the exhange rate is bad
Explanation: You lost money when you changed currency are the border because the exhange rate is bad

A good argument is not necessarily convincing, nor necessarily saying things that are true. A good argument must simply have acceptable premises and a conclusion that follows from them. Typically, the conclusion is less certain than the premises, whilst in explanations the converse is the case.

Arguments can have premises that aren't explict, called enthymematic premises, e.g.

"Of course I won't vote for Blair. Do you take me for a fool?"
Implictly presumes that only a fool would vote for Blair.

Consistency

A set of beliefs is consistent if they can all be believed at the same time. Consistency isn't a matter of them persisting through time, i.e. one can be fickle over time but consistent at any one point in time when all your beliefs could possibly be true. Consistent beliefs can even be false. For example, "Anyone with at least one brother or sister is not an only child and Bart is an only child. Bart has no bothers, but he does have two sisters" is an inconsistent belief, whilst "The earth is a planet with one satellite, which revolves around the sun. Planets are spherical. The earth is not flat" is consistent.

A belief is consistent if it could be true, and inconsistent if it is self-contradictory. Again, it needn't actually be true, but only possible. For example, "I invented a new sedative that makes people faster and more excited" is inconsistent, whilst "that tree is made of wood" is consistent.

Sentences express beliefs, but it is not always clear which belief(s) a sentence expresses. Thus it is important to be able to find what beliefs a sentence is expressing before we can establish whether or not it is consistent. Beyond finding enthymematic premises, we face other challanges.

Declarative sentences

A declarative sentence is one that in English can be put in the form "Is it true that X?". For example, one might ask, "Is it true that cats can swim?" In this case, "cats can swim" is a declarative sentence, and so unambiguously expresses a belief. Spotting declarative sentences is usually easy, but there are more difficult cases, e.g. "Blackmail is wicked" might be said to be declarative, but at the same time could equally be considered imperative.

But even once isolated, declarative sentences can be made difficult to analyse by several problems:

Lexical ambiguity occurs with homononyms, e.g. "she went to the bank". Without further information on the context it is difficult to analyse the semantics of this sentence.
- Equivocation is a special case of lexical ambiguity, in which two different meanings are used in the same sentence, e.g. "It is right to do X, and no-one has a right not to do X"

Structural ambiguity occurs when the words in a string of words can be meaningfully grouped together in two or more different ways, e.g. "fruit flies like a banana". Here there are two possible structural units, "fruit flies" or "fruit", i.e. the sentence could be describing what fruit flies like to eat, or how fruit travels through the air.
- Ambiguity of cross-reference is a special case of structural ambiguity in which a word or phrase in a string of words refers to something mentioned elsewhere, but it is not clear to which thing it thus refers, e.g. "He stood on his head"; on whose head did "he" stand... his own, or somebody else's head?

Vagueness occurs when a claim's meaning is indeterminate, unclear, e.g. "Ted is thin"; what do we mean by "thin"?

Indexicality occurs when sentences that contain indexical terms say different things in different contexts, e.g. "It is raining now" could be referring to this moment in time, or it could have been referring to 12pm on 01/05/2003, etc.

Propositions

"Pierre est chaud" and "Peter is hot" express the same proposition/belief, despite appearing semantically different. "It is cold today", on the other hand, can express different propositions depending on the context, despite being one single declarative sentence. In other words, a declarative sentence must be understood as distinct from a proposition, and so when analysing sentences, we must look for propositions rather than for declarative sentences, to avoid the problems described above.

Good and bad arguments

Bad arguments

A bad, or fallacious argument is a misleading one. It leads to a conclusion, often very persuasively, by illicit steps of argumentation. There are three types of fallacious argument:

1) Those that depend on dubious premises
2) Those weakened by irrelevance
3) Those that draw hasty conclusions

Dubious premises

Dubious premises needn't be obviously false, but are nonetheless unacceptable. They are often deployed in the hope that the audience will misunderstand or completely fail to understand the argument, or to benefit from them in a particular context, e.g. an advertisement might premise that its product is of a high quality.

A fallacy may often arise from equivocation, ambiguity or vagueness in the premises, making it impossible for the audience to accept them.

A fallacy might also occur when the argument begs the question, i.e. where the argument's conclusion supports the premises, or when the conclusion merely restates the premises. For example: "Older people should avoid psychotropic drugs because they should stay away from mind-altering drugs".

An argument might present a complex question, whereby a question, possibly question-begging, is presented as a premise, and so forces the audience to accept the loaded conclusion of that embedded question in answering the argument as a whole. Thus one can only refuse to acknowledge the argument. For example: "Have you stopped cheating?" assumes that you were cheating in the first place

Finally, an argument may contain premises that are either insufficiently informative for us to accept them as true, or that are simply nonsense.

Fallacies weakened by irrelevance

Arguments often bring in irrelevant information, intended to divert the audience's attention from the argument, and often particular dubious parts of an argument. Fallacies of irrelevance are also used to illegitimately strengthen or weaken arguments.

Ad hominem fallacies are perhaps the most common, where criticism is directed at the opinion holder rather than their argument. They can be abusive attacks (totally irrelevant) or circumstantial (to shed doubt upon a particular aspect of the argument).

Tu quoque fallacies involve accusing the opinion holder of hypocrisy or inconsistency. Whilst they may seem persuasive, they fail to address the opinion holder's argument itself. For example, one person says "You shouldn't take cocaine, it's bad for your health", and the other retorts "You can talk, you're an alcoholic".

Often people will deploy straw man fallacies, setting up uncharitable or inaccurate reconstructions of another's argument to make it easy to criticise it.

Often to strengthen straw man arguments, people will improperly manipulate emotion, providing guilt by association. Appeals to sympathy, vanity, rewards, threats and associations to other loaded subjects can distract from the argument in question. For example: "Positive discrimination is just another form of Naziism"

Association also works in other ways. Ad populum fallacies are deployed to convince the audience that the argument is popular and therefore correct. The opinion holder can also make an improper appeal to authority to lend weight to an argument, in particular to the authority of experts, tradition, and often to nature.

Hasty conclusions

Often an argument will employ enthymematic premises that are supressed deliberately or accidentally overlooked, and that are dubious. Thus the argument, as presented, is hasty in its conclusions. Such arguments will often employ various other kinds of fallacies as diversions to fool you into thinking that the supressed issue has in fact been addressed.

An argument may also appeal to ignorance to support a conclusion, by trying to suggest that because something hasn't been show to be true, it must be false. For example: "That theory doesn't prove God's existence, therefore God doesn't exist".

Finally, an argument may affirm to consequent. For example, in the following form of argument, it can only be accepted if both A and B are sound
1) If A, then B
2) B
A

Good arguments

There are two kinds of good argument - deductive and inductive. Good deductive arguments guarantee the truth of their conclusions, whilst good inductive arguments make their conclusions probable.

Evaluating inductive arguments

Inductive generalisations usually involve projecting general conclusions from particular observations, where by particular we understand a truth that describes a property of an individual entity. For example:

1) Hackers eat a lot of pizza
2) Tom is a hacker
Tom (probably)eats a lot of pizza

The strength of an argument by inductive generalisation can be affected by the size of the sample, the size of the population and how representative of the whole population the sample is; one might be more or less correct by using linear, modal or random sampling methods when determining the generalisation. So in the example, if premise (1) was established after studying the eating habits of ten hackers out of the hundreds of thousands that exist, you might doubt the conclusion. The content and context of the argument may also be important, for example the hackers who did eat a lot of pizza might have lived above a pizza restaurant.

Arguments by analogy draw on similarities between things to suggest that further similarities might exist. In other words, they rest on the assumption that if certain similarities X and Y exist between A and B, then it is reasonable to assume that A and B might also share similarity Z. Such arguments therefore take the form:

1) A and B share important characteristics X and Y
2) A also has important characteristic Z
B (probably) also has characteristic Z

The strength of an argument by analogy rests on the degree of similarity between the objects being considered, and the relevance of these known similarities to the inferred similarities. For example, suggesting that both potatoes and carrots grow in the ground, and that since potatoes are brown carrots must also be brown, is a bad argument by analogy since the colour is not relevant to the place of growth.

Arguments by inference to the best explanation are used when we attempt to formulate a hypothesis that best explains data that cannot be explained otherwise. We infer the correctness of a hypothesis according both to how good the explanation is, and how much better it is than any competing explanations.

Evaluating deductive arguments

Since valid deductive arguments can't ever be false, if we can determine absolutely the validity of deductive arguments, we ought to be able to extend our knowledge indefinitely without ever risking falsehood. Formal logic is the tool we can use to do this, by reducing the complicated syntax of natural language into a symbolic language of logic, which can be more easily and accurately appraised.

The first task of formal logic, then, is to come up with a more formal definition of an argument, which is as follows: a set of sentences that are its premises, and a sentence that is its conclusion. The premises may be empty, since it's possible to state a conclusion without any evidence to support it.

An argument is valid if both whenever its premises are true, its conclusion is also true, or in other words the conclusion logically follows from the premises and cannot be false if the premises are true. An argument is sound if it is valid and its premises are true.

The general form of an argument is very simple:
1) If A, B (if there is a relationship between A and B)
2) A
B

Validity needn't always be a matter of form, however. Consider the following:
1) A (e.g. 'John is a bachelor')
B (John is unmarried)

In that example, the validity is semantic, not syntactic. But it can be made syntactic, like so:
1) A, x (bachelors are unmarried men)
2) Y, A (John is a bachelor)
Y, x (B)

Mental states and processes

To distinguish the faculties of our mind from the features of our brain (which allows for dualism but doesn't necessarily imply it), we can divide our mind into categories of states and processes. Some are ambiguous in their nature, and may be either a state or a process.

Conscious experiences - from these we form beliefs about experiences that may become knowledge. The opposite would be representational experiences, e.g. the knee's reflex, whereby its reaction is merely a representation of the input; no conscious process takes place

Beliefs, desires, emotions

Thought - language representing a conscious experience

Action - the manifestation of a conscious experience in the body; as opposed to mere behaviour based upon representational experience

Unconscious experiences

Interpersonal relationships develop around representations of mental states; I am aware of you, and I know about your various mental conditions. I do not know what it is like to have your mental states, hence relationships are purely representational.

Mental states and processes are susceptible to judgement; this implies some responsibility for our mental states, though in the case of many, this is dubious (e.g. unconscious processes, emotions, and especially actions based on them).

The mind-body problem is essentially this: how are mental states and processes linked to bodily states and processes?

Can a state of mind merely be a bodily state? I.e. can meat experience? What does studying a person?s brain tell you about their mind, their experiences and emotions?

Can a state of the body merely be a mind state?

Dualism

Here are two essays I have written on the subject, rather than notes. The first focuses more on the metaphysics of dualism and dual-aspect theory, whilst the second focuses on dualism as a theory of mind.

Descartes' substantive dualism and the problem of interaction

In his quest for knowledge about which we can be absolutely certain, Descartes developed a theory of the nature of our world called Dualism, which proposes that the world consists of two entirely distinct kinds of substance: extended substance (res extensa) and thinking substance (res cogitans). He suggested that our bodies, including our brains, are made up of extended substance, and that our mind is made up of thinking substance. But this left him a problem which he could not satisfactorily resolve - how do the mind and body interact, if they are fundamentally different in nature? His problem can only be resolved when we reject his substantive dualism, and instead work from the premise that mind and body are different, but not different kinds of substance, such that they can still interact.

Descartes developed his substantive dualism through reasoning, and it can be backed up by experiential evidence. He began with the definition of substance offered by Aristotle: that which depends on no other for its existence, meaning that everything else is merely an attribute of some substance. So grass is a substance, whilst green is not, because green can only exist as an attribute of grass, or some other substance. To Descartes, the most important property of a substance, that distinguishes it from all other things, is that it can (in thought experiments, at least) exist independently of anything else.

In his first meditation, Descartes considered the nature of his existence, and he found he could doubt everything about it except that he was thinking. He even doubted he has a body, because he could conceivably be no more than a brain in a scientist's laboratory, or even an electrical charge being carried by some other substance. So he believed that he could, in thought experiments, conceive of himself as nothing but a mind, without a body. This meant that his thoughts could exist independently of his body, and as our body can, for short periods of time whilst unconscious, still function, it is true to suggest that our body can exist independently of our mind (Meditations).

So Descartes concluded that our mind and our body must be two fundamentally different kinds of substance. This idea may be supported by an examination of music. A scientist could take a short piece of music and explain in great detail the physics of the sound waves and how they produce a vibration in our ear which our brain then interprets as sound. But the scientist couldn't explain what the music "sounds" like; he could never experience the music without playing it. Furthermore, that music might be transmitted through the air in sound waves, written down on paper as shapes in ink, or stored on a computer's hard drive as magnetic signatures; here the nature of the extended substances is quite different, and yet the nature of the music remains the same. In other words, the essential qualities of the music have nothing to do with the vibrating molecules that transmit then, or the paper that stores them. So thinking substance and extended substances are quite distinct in their nature.

So there may be two kinds of substance that are distinct, but they cannot separate; rather they are "closely conjoined" since we can think about "pain and other sensations... quite unexpectedly" (Principles). So if they are not separate, and indeed are closely conjoined, they must in some way interact, but how can this be possible if they are fundamentally different? How can something material be affected by something wholly immaterial? Descartes thought that there was a particular section of the brain through which mind and body interact, but that explanation is far from satisfactory as it still doesn't provide an explanation of how the material and immaterial interact.

In fact, when one considers it, it seems wholly inconceivable that such a thing could occur. No satisfactory material analogy might be used here, but it is as absurd as suggesting that a bachelor might be married, or that one equals two. It is simply a logical impossibility, and so it is on this problem that Descartes' dualism fails. But this does not necessarily mean that we should do away with the idea that mind and body might be in some way different, even distinct. I have only shown that we cannot support Descartes' substantive dualism, meaning that we cannot support the notion that mind and body are fundamentally different kinds of substance. But what if they were simply different aspects of the same substance, and so could be distinct and separable, but not substantially different?

This idea was first entertained by Spinoza in his work entitled Ethics. Spinoza was a strong theist, and was interested both in resolving the problems raised by substantive dualism, and in demonstrating the existence of God, and God's "role" in the cosmos. He accepted many of Descartes' arguments, including his idea that while we may use the term "substance" to describe mind and body, they do depend on God to exist. Spinoza disagreed both with the notion of an immaterial mind, and a wholly material cosmos. He believed that not only did both mind and body depend on God's existence, but that they were in fact God's existence, manifested in substance. All of the cosmos is a manifestation of God's essence, and so there is only one substance, God, leaving no room for any substantive dualism.

By this theory, mind and body are one and the same thing - God's essence - but there is room for distinction, as, for Spinoza, they are different attributes of this essence. This dual attribute theory, also called dual aspect theory, seems to resolve Descartes' problem of interaction, because in Spinoza's model there is no interaction. As mind and body are manifestations of the same thing, they need not interact, because they simultaneously share the properties of God's essence.

But this raises its own problems! If everything that exists is the manifestation of this essence, how can one mind by separate from another? As it is quite obvious that we do not all share a very complete collective consciousness, our minds cannot be simultaneously sharing all of God's essence. It seems almost contradictory to suggest that mind and body share this whole essence, and yet different minds have only a subset of this essence. There must either be something external to God in which individuality can reside, or God's essence cannot be shared as a whole.

Similarly, it seems odd to suggest that music might be manifested in its physical and mental attributes, and for the physical attributes to be mutable, and the mental attributes to be immutable. For it follows from Spinoza's conception of God's essence that the essence is mutable, and attributes are immutable manifestations of this essence. So if one attribute seems mutable, then it must be the essence which is mutable, and yet how can the other attribute not be mutable? I cannot see a way to resolve this problem.

In The World as Will and Idea, Schopenhauer developed a slightly more sophisticated dual aspect theory. To begin with, he rejected the notion that God is at the centre of all things, wanting to remove what he saw as speculative theism from philosophy. He thought that the cosmos consisted of manifestations of a universal Will, much like Spinoza's essence, except that it was not God, and its manifestations were subtly different. Schopenhauer borrowed a distinction from Kant to explain the manifestation of the Will: he said that there were two aspects of the Will, nouminal and phenomenal. A nouminal aspect is a manifestation of the Will as it is in itself, independent of a conscious being's knowing it. A phenomenal aspect is the Will as it appears to a conscious being, in relation to our knowledge of its nouminal aspect.

So in the case of music, the nouminal aspect is the essential quality of that music, which is independent of our knowing it, and so to us it is immutable. The phenomenal aspect is then the various ways in which we can know this music, be it in sound waves, stored on paper or magnetic signatures, or any other manifestation. Our minds would then also have both nouminal and phenomenal aspects, and so they are both manifestations of the universal Will, but they do not necessarily simultaneously share the whole of the Will, and so the limits of our knowledge limit the phenomenal aspect, providing scope for separable individuals in the universal Will.

So Schopenhauer allows for a distinction between two kinds of aspect, whilst resolving the problems raised by Spinoza's theory. But his theory does leave the question of how this might fit into our understanding of the physical world, or what Schopenhauer would call the phenomenal world. For we cannot divorce the world from the dimensions of space and time. Substance must exist in these dimensions, as otherwise there can be no explanation for what we experience. Kant firmly believed that only the phenomenal aspects of the Will exist in space and time, and that the nouminal aspects and the Will itself exist outside of these dimensions.

So we might extend Schopenhauer's theory, and conclude that there exists a universal Will, and that in that Will there are discernible individual subsections, each representing something we see in our experiential world. As each of these subsections exist, they are manifested in nouminal aspects, about which we can have no knowledge. The cosmos therefore is a "mass" of nouminal aspects of the Will (I put mass in quotation marks because there is no word that can describe a collection of immaterial things). As conscious beings perceive these nouminal aspects, there pop into existence in our spacial dimensions phenomenal aspects of those subsections of the Will.

We, as individual consciousnesses, experience the Will most directly in ourselves, as our mind is the nouminal aspect of the Will, and our body is the phenomenal aspect of the Will, simultaneously aware of one another and yet with only phenomenal knowledge of oneself. Of others, we are aware only of their phenomenal manifestations, and they are manifested only when a conscious being perceived them. But they continue to exist, outside of spacial dimensions. Whilst this seems like a mind-boggling-ly complex conception of the cosmos, it seems the least objectionable, and coheres with experiential and rational evidence most closely.

Bibliography

Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Cambridge University Press

Descartes, Principles, Cambridge University Press

Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, (in J. Cottingham (ed.), Western Philosophy, Part III, pp. 160-164.)

Spinoza, Ethics, (in J. Cottingham (ed.), Western Philosophy, Part III, pp. 152-154.)

What are the problems associated with dualism? Are they insoluble?

The ontology of the mind has puzzled philosophers and scientists for millennia, providing an unusual diversity of theories. However one theory, or rather one superset of theories, has dominated the discussion since Descartes first proposed it in Meditations. Despite its prominent place in the history of the subject, however, dualism has been the focus of many criticisms, some of which seem to suggest insoluble problems with the distinction between mind and body. These criticisms have, in turn, prompted philosophers to widen the scope of dualism from Descartes' original substantial dualism, creating theories whose objections are as unsubstantiated as the theories themselves.

Descartes' original dualist theory was based upon a few observations he made about the nature of our thoughts. In Meditations he claimed that the only thing about which he can be certain is that he exists, since otherwise he would not have been able to have that thought. From this he determined that he could clearly and distinctly perceive his self (his mind) as distinct from his body, and so suggested that the mind and body are two entirely different and distinct substances, which are closely conjoined so as to allow them to interact. Descartes offered various other observations to support his theory, such as that we may cut off a foot and still have our body, but that we cannot conceivably take away a part of our mind since it is an indivisible whole, and hence the two must be distinctly different kinds of substance. An important part of Descartes' writings on dualism are also based on rationalism, and his emphasis on the creation of knowledge through reason as opposed to pure observation, but such topics are outside the scope of this essay. Suffice to say that Descartes set-up the mind body problem in terms of two distinct substances that interact.

It is in this short definition that we find the most troubling problem with substantial dualism; how can two entirely distinct kinds of substance, material and immaterial, interact? When we talk of interaction between two substances, we generally do so in terms of physics, observable laws of nature, yet many have charged that physics has nothing to say about the immaterial, and that we know of no discoverable causal mechanism between the mind and body.

The first allegation is false, an out of date assumption based upon the Newtonian paradigm, and can be quickly discounted by pointing to work on multiple dimensions, gravity, and other such fields generally associated with quantum relativity. Indeed, the more physicists explore and theorise these contemporary problems, the more they begin to sound like dualists, or even idealists. In one leading theory, loop quantum gravity, things "do not live in space and are not made of matter. Rather their very architecture gives rise to space and matter" (Gefter, Amanda, Throwing Einstein for a Loop, Scientific American, December 2002).

The question of how the material and immaterial might interact is more difficult to solve, however; physics may have a lot to say about the material and immaterial but one cannot generalise based on a mix of conflicting and ever-changing theories. To sustain dualism, its critics charge, one must be able to point to a causal relation between a process or state in the mind and a process or state in the body that ?should in principle be discoverable? (Smith and Jones, 1986, p. 53). That no dualist has been able to do so is made all the more damaging by the fact that a materialist can quite easily provide an alternative explanation; that is that the causal relation between a thought and a resultant action is as simple as changes in one's physical state, in terms of neurological and physical relations and reactions.

But this picture looks less certain that its proponents claim, since the observations we can make may merely be correlations, caused by some other factor. For example, when a barometer needle drops, a thermometer might rise; does this show that one causes the other? No, because in this case, both are caused by an increase in cloud cover. In the same way, the patterns we can observe in the brain may merely correlate with the actions we see in the rest of the body, both being caused by an immaterial mind, or some other agent.

Besides, the fact that we have not yet discovered a causal relation that fits dualism does not mean that one won't be discovered, and hence one cannot say based on the lack of a discovery that such a relation isn't discoverable. Moreover, ?as Kant put it, experience teaches us that a thing is so-and-so, but not that it cannot be otherwise?. Therefore an appeal to monism based upon the lack of experience of the immaterial may be appealing, but it is not proof one way or the other. It does, however, leave us with problems that have no apparent solutions, unless our understanding of physics changes radically.

One can also question the intelligibility of the immaterial affecting the material, as many have done. However this again seems based upon an outdated understanding of physics that has been internalised since school, and is as likely to be due to a lack of understanding as to a lack of any truth in the suggestion. It might have seemed unintelligible to a mediaeval person that the world was a sphere, but we can be fairly certain now that that is true.

Ayer went further to suggest that the very idea of an immaterial entity is unintelligible. First, he said that if we are to call X an entity, we must be able to ask: ?how many Xs have we got??; in this way we can distinguish between, for example, a billiard ball and the property ?red?.One possible reply to this is that it is conceivable that we each have many minds, working together but giving the appearance of a single agent, just as a flock of birds may appear to have a group consciousness. There seems no conceptual reason as to why one cannot apply numerical properties to the immaterial. The many-minds possibility does raise a large number of other problems that monist theories needn't worry about, but again they are not problems that can be solved unless we can solve the problem of the existence and nature of the immaterial.

Ayer's second criticism was that we must be able to individuate between entities, in the way that we can say that two billiard balls are different entities. The only way that we can do so, when inherent physical and subjective properties are discounted, is to refer to their position in space-time, since no two entities can exist in exactly the same place at exactly the same time. If the immaterial does not exist in the dimensions of space-time, then we must ask how we can possibly distinguish between minds? It becomes equally possible that there is only one mind inhabiting many bodies and applying different characteristics to each, but that is not a theory that many dualists would want to sustain, so how can we show that we each have our separate minds, or that, to return to the many-minds theory, that we each have our own single mind? The only solution seems to be to demonstrate a much closer connection between mind and body than Descartes suggested, such that the mind and body share enough properties to be one-body-one-mind but without reducing to a dual-aspect theory.

A solution can be found in the answer to a further problem: at what point do you consider an animal to have a mind, rather than pure behavioural instincts? The materialists reply would be that it will depend upon the capacity of the central nervous system to hold experiences sufficiently complex to allow for consciousness, and psychological mechanisms to translate these into thoughts (in terms of language). In other words, particularly advanced configurations of matter can provide the means for consciousness. An analogous answer can be given by the dualist; that particularly advanced configurations of mind can provide the means for consciousness. But if the dualist is correct here, what of the correlation in the complexity of the brain? To reduce the brain to a mere physical container seems strange.

An answer can be found in property or panpsychic dualism, which hold that all matter has immaterial, mental properties, closely tied to the physical properties, so that particular configurations of mental or physical entities will necessarily entail a correlative configuration in the opposing property. This not only provides as unobjectionable an answer to the question of consciousness as the materialist's answer, but it also provides a close connection between mind and body, such that each individual will only have one mind, and one that can be individuated from other minds, by virtue of the fact that the mind is the configuration of the mental properties of the body. According to its original proponent, this position is ?an innocent version of dualism, entirely compatible with the scientific view of the world?since ?nothing in this approach contradicts anything in physical theory; we simply need to add further bridging principles to explain how experience arises from physical processes?.

No matter how innocent the position is, however, it does not solve, many of the problems associated with dualism. It cannot say with certainty whether or not matter has mental properties, nor how these mental properties might interact with the physical properties; as with all dualist theories, it can only offer conceivable possibilities, and contrast those with opposing monist theories with a view to making dualism seem more attractive. On the other hand, materialism is afflicted by many of the same problems, and many more of its own, and so it is not yet proven either. In other words, neither dualism nor monism are proven, and both are faced with tough problems, some of which may be resolved or tempered by the discoveries of scientists, and others which we are unlikely to ever answer, unless we discover a way to measure that which is currently unobservable, if indeed it exists: the immaterial.

But to say that the problems are tough is not to say that they are insoluble, rather that we are unlikely to solve them any time soon. In claiming that the problems of dualism are insoluble, one would be implying that it is a position that cannot be sustained, and that is a conclusion that cannot itself be sustained.

Bibliography

Chalmers, David, Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1995

Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, ed. John Cottingham, Cambridge University Press, 1996

Hart, W. D., Engines of the Soul, Cambridge University Press, 1988

Heil, John, Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction, London: Routledge, 1998

Smith, P &Jones, O. R, The Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction, Cambridge University Press, 1986

Logical behaviourism

Behaviourism closely followed psychology in the early 20th century, and wanted to concern itself only with publicly observable events and processes in the mind. Along with psychological behaviourists, philosophical behaviourists wanted to resolve the metaphysical nature of the mind and show that terms gained from introspection like 'feeling', 'lived experience' and 'will' are either meaningless or can be boiled down to statements about publicly observable, physical events and processes.

They wanted to construct a semantic theory of the mind that would explain the meaning of mental terms, which could only be achieved by being able to verify if a particular term or statement was accurate or false. Since immaterial notions aren't publicly observable and verifiable, behaviourists concluded that psychology and the philosophy of mind should only concern itself with the material... i.e it is a physicalist theory.

Logical behaviourism therefore holds that any mental term can be understood in terms of observable physical processes or events. For example, if I say I have a toothache, a scientist should be able to point to a problem with my gums, the transmission of information regarding this problem through my central nervous system to my mind, and the characteristic changes in the chemical makeup of my brain. Conversely, if those particular physical events and processes were observed, a scientist would be able to say "he has toothache".

In other words, all meaningful psychological statements are translatable into statements which refer only to physical concepts, without any loss of content; all 'conscious experiences' can be reduced to mere behaviour. Psychological concepts, according to Hempel, serve merely to abbreviate "the description of certain modes of physical response characteristic of the bodies of men or animals" (Hempel, 1980, p.19)

Objection: One can feign a mental state (e.g. actors)
But according to Hempel (1980) a full examination of the central nervous system and other physiological conditions will uncover a feign. But then are there not mental terms, all of whose verifiable criteria can be feigned? In this case, Hempel says, the event or process must be genuine, i.e. if Paul shows all the signs of having the flu, then Paul has the flu.

Objection: How can physical tests capture the qualitative nature of an experience, i.e. what is is to be in pain? Surely such experiences are neither behavioural nor dispositional (e.g. being disposed to be angry), and so can have no physical basis? Even if they do have some physical basis, how can we be sure that the mental states exactly correspond with physical states?

This problem is further complicated by the presence of other people. Let's say I experience the sensation of the colour red, and I find that correlates with a brain state X. Another person then says they are also experiencing the sensation of the colour red, and again we find the same correlation in their brain state. One might conclude from this that the two correlations point to an obvious connection. But how can I know that my mental state is the same as that other person's? Our descriptions might coincide whilst our actual mental states are qualitatively very different, suggesting no connection between mental and brain states, or at least no simple correlative connection.

Behaviourists have no satisfactory response to this objection, since they are interpolating the nature of the mental and brain states from the relationship between inputs and outputs, and so can say nothing of the nature of those states themselves if they are qualitatively different but produce the same measurable behaviour. Wittgenstein discussed this problem by way of the 'beetle in the box' analogy:

(paraphrased)Suppose everyone owns a box, and in each box they keep a 'beetle'. Nobody can see inside anyone else's box, nor know anything of its contents, except that its owner says it contains a 'beetle'. How am I to know my 'beetle' is the same as your 'beetle'? If people then used the term 'beetle' in their language, it couldn't refer to any physical object, and so would, gramatically speaking, drop out of consideration. (Wittgenstein)

In other words, not only can we not know anything about these qualitative experiences, they must in fact be considered non-entities, and so any attempt to explain mental states and processes in physical terms merely through demonstrating correlations in input-output scenarios will be completely flawed.

Though logical behaviourism must be wrong about a lot of things, it does correctly identify the non-contingent, conceptual connection between mental and behavioural descriptions. We learn mental concepts in their application to behaviour, and mental phenomena can often be individuated by their behaviour rather than by their subjective internal features. So there does appear to be a strong connection between behaviour and some mental states and processes, but suggesting that behaviour is all that they are seems far fetched.

Indeed, we can know about our own mental states without needing to observer our behaviour, and often without even observing our own mental states; I know I dislike Big Brother without need for any kind of observation. So logical behaviourism is either asymmetrical in terms of how it suggests we understand mental states and processes, or simply unnatural. This criticism was further developed by Malcolm, who pointed out that if one really were a logical behavourist, one would see people's emotions and mental states merely as physical alterations in the three dimensions, and so one wouldn't see someone as being angry, but as having a particular face. This is enough to know that we aren't logical behaviourists.

Finally, one can undermine the behaviourist thesis by arguing from regress. Suppose a logical behaviourist wanted to explain my belief that it is about to rain. Perhaps I bring the clothes in off the washing line, or put on my coat. To explain that behaviour, the logical behaviourist must make further reference to my belief that I will get wet if I don't put my coat on, and my desire not to get wet, and all in terms of behaviour. Clearly to explain the beliefs and desires, the logical behaviourist will have to go in circles, or run out an extremely long string of behavioural explanations without ever leaving mentions of psychological terminology in the final explanation. It would seem that the ambitions of the reductionist, trying to reduce all psychological terminology into verifiable behavioural terms, are simply too ambitious.

References:

C.G.Hempel, 'The Logical Analysis of Psychology' [originally published in 1935], as reprinted in N.J.Block (ed.), Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, Volume I, (London: Methuen, 1980), p.16

Mind-brain identity theory

Identity theory is a kind of materialism developed as a reaction to work in psychology and the physical sciences in the mid 20th century. It essentially boils down to these statements:

1) Minds are identical to brains
2) Mental states are identical to brain states
3) The realm of the mental is a subset of the realm of the physical

Proponents of this theory state that this claim is a contingent fact about the nature of the mind and the brain; it makes no attempt to explain the meaning of mental terms and so isn't a semantic thesis like logical behaviourism (e.g. 'pain' means physiological state X).

One identity theorist, Smart, claimed that it ought to be a strict identity statement. By this he meant that mind and brain refer to exactly the same thing, i.e. if minds are identical to brains, then brains are identical to minds. Strict identity statements are therefore logically symmetrical. An "un-strict" identity statement would be assymmetrical, for example: rain is identical to bad weather, but bad weather could be rain, sleet, snow, etc.

Identity theory is deemed to be contingent because of the history of the theory. Generally, necessary facts are deemed to be a priori, and so discoverable through study of language, e.g. "one plus one equals two", or "a bachelor is an unmarried man". But because identity theory came from scientific discoveries, the thought is that it cannot be necessary. But then if two things are identical, must that fact not be necessary? One cannot say that in conscious beings on earth, their brains are identical to their minds, but that it is possible that that wouldn't be the case, since that contradicts the theory.

One can however point out that the strength of gravity at the earth's surface is a necessary fact, and yet we only discovered that after thousands of years of scientific investigation. Necessary facts needn't be a priori facts accessible through analysis of language.

Type-type or token-token?

One problem that arises from identity theory is just how identical these two states, mental and brain, are. There are two kinds of identity theory one can subscribe to:

1) Individual mental states are identical to individual brain states (token-token identity theory)
2) Types of mental states are identical to types of brain states (type-type identity theory)

Type-type identity theory would hold that if my mental state for seeing red, X, were identical to my brain state Y, then whenever I saw red I would always have mental state X and therefore brain state Y. In other words, conscious experiences can be categorised into types, each with its characteristic mental and brain states.

Objection: the brain is labile (open to change), type-type identity theory seems difficult to maintain. For example, if one part of my brain is damaged, my brain will often route around this problem, resulting into two different brain states for ostensibly the same mental state. The context of a mental state also seems important, since the mental state of an experience of red may result in an entirely different brain state if I am feeling hot or cold (not least because of the related symbolism).

This becomes especially problematic between different brains. If I share the belief: "the capital of Italy is Rome", with another person, must our brain states be the same? What do we mean by brain states here? An analogy with a hard drive might be useful, since a hard drive may store the data in any number of ways across the surface of the disc, whilst still retaining the same information. Are all these many combinations of possible storage states to be considered as a single information state? If so, then the many ways in which a mental state may be represented in brain states may all be considered to be the selfsame brain state.

But is this not beginning to sound more like token-token identity theory, in which each mental state is said to be identical to an individual brain state, allowing for no generalising categorisation, but still not explaining how one can have a logically symmetrical identity statement when one single mental state can have many different brain states. That is unless one can claim that each different brain state means that there is an entirely different mental state.

Realisibility and species problems

Obviously, humans aren't the only species that can realise consciousness and therefore mental states. Given that this is the case, type-type identity theory must either be rejected or become species-specific. For example:

Human mental state X is identical to human brain state Y
Gorilla mental state X is identical to gorilla brain state Y
Human mental state X is not identical to gorilla mental state Y
etc.

This one retreat for type-type identity theorists opens up a can of worms though, since it again begs the question: should one not take into account the physical nature of individual brains, the contexts of mental and brain states, the age of the subjects, etc? In this case, one either draws up an extremely long, comprehensive list of possible mental-brain states, or one admits token-token identity theory.

A final objection

There is one thing identity theory still has little to say on, however, and that is: what is it to have a particular conscious experience?. To answer what it is to be in pain, an identity theorist might look up you in a table and find the corresponding physical properties of the brain, or simply the latter, and tell you that to be in pain is to have a particular physiological state. But does that tell us all there is to know about pain? It somehow seems unsatisfactory.

References:

http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/mind-identity/index.html

What follows is my essay on this topic:

Is the thesis of Central State Materialism true, false, or of doubtful intelligibility?

Central state materialism, the dominant branch of identity theory, grew out of a desire in philosophy to explain mental phenomena in terms of the material sciences, which in turn was a result of the growing potential in the mid-20th century of the neurosciences. Its central claim is that all mental phenomena are physical phenomena, identifying thoughts, beliefs, dispositions and other mental states and processes with events and processes that the neurosciences can study in the brain. But although may at first seem commonsense, central state materialism fails to provide a framework by which we can understand most mental phenomena, and when scrutinised in this light it is clear that it also makes next to no sense at all.

First, we need to understand the theory itself. Learning from behaviourism and its objections, U. T. Place made the extraordinary claim that mental processes can be identified with brain processes in the same way that lightning can be identified with an electrical discharge; when we speak of a thought and of a particular brain state, we speak of exactly the same thing but in different terms. Because this identity theory is usually proposed by materialists, and because what philosophers call 'brain', neuroscientists call the 'central nervous system' (CNS), this theory is often called central state materialism (CSM).This means that all mental states are identical to CNS states, so that if one were to say "I can see an ostrich", one could identify that state with a particular state in the CNS and say that that thought is a particular neurological state and nothing more. To put it in perspective, since the idea that a thought might be reduced to a few neurons doesn't seem too odd, a CSM would have to hold that the phenomena known as 'loving one's parents' can be similarly reduced to certain material phenomena in the CNS.

Note that CSM says nothing about what it means to love one's parents, nor what it is like to have that experience; it is simply a statement of fact, that that is the ontology of the experience. This in itself seems like a shortcoming, since if we are to reduce all mental concepts to physical concepts and in doing so demonstrate that they are identical, surely we must be able to provide physical explanations or descriptions for concepts like 'what it is like to love one's parents'? A CSM might reply that one can say simply that what it is like can again be explained in terms of the CNS states and processes that are identified with the sensations caused by the experience; that an explanation of what it is like to experience mental state X and what that mental state X is are different needn't invalidate CSM, since we can find parallels in everyday language that we find unobjectionable. For example, I might refer to "the table", by which I mean an object with legs on which I can rest other objects; I might also refer to "that lump of wood", by which I mean an object created out of pieces of wood that sits in my room. Though each statement appears to refer to different physical concepts, they each refer to the selfsame object, and so a CSM can claim that one can reduce all mental concepts to material concepts, even if this seems counter-intuitive.

A general problem that any counter-intuitive theory brings up is that it must be contingent, since if it were necessary, we should have been able to discover it through analysis of language rather than through scientific discovery. Its contingency suggests that it is tied to a particular understanding of physics, in this case a materialist account of reality. Smart, one of the leading proponents of identity theory, thought this didn't matter: "there can be contingent statements of the form 'A is identical to B', and a person may well know that something is an A without knowing that it is a B" (Smart, p. 58) He further defended the materialist conception, stating that "there does seem to be, so far as science is concerned, nothing in the world but increasingly complex arrangements of physical constituents" (Smart, p. 53) By physical, of course, he means material, since if physics were to posit the existence of immaterial substances, they would become physical. But this is not a good reason because it is based upon a field of study that conceptually limits itself to the physical (neuroscience), and so will inevitably provide a physicalistic view of the cosmos. That we can provide physicalistic explanations of things does not mean that those things are wholly physical, just as my explaining the exchange of information over a network in terms of bits and processes doesn't mean that there is nothing more to this thing, because if we look we can also explain it in terms of sub-atomic particles in cables and circuits. What it does suggest is that we don't need purely mental concepts to explain mental phenomena, and so it makes sense to stop at material explanations rather than speculate about immaterial concepts for which we have no empirical evidence.

Or so Smart and colleagues thought back in the 1960s. If we were to start from scratch and write an account of the mind/brain problem framed in terms of contemporary science, it might look quite different. For example, since in introduction and development of string theory from the 1960s, we can now, within the confines of acceptable theoretical science, suggest that reality is composed of 26 dimensions, 22 of which are so tightly wrapped up in our four dimensional spatial-temporal reality that they needn't have spatial or temporal properties. This allows for effects like gravity and quantum effects like action at a distance to be described in terms of the interaction of spatial and non-spatial 'things', and so conceivably the mind could be an immaterial thing wrapped up in our four dimensions and in some way closely connected to our CNS. In this case, physicalist identity theorists must commit themselves to the possibility of dualism, leaving central state materialists cohering only with the larger, more proven subset of scientific theory.

A materialist identity theory also introduces a question of how we locate thoughts in our CNS; though we never imply or apply any spatial properties when using mental terms, according to CSM "we must begin to locate thoughts in the head". But how can we do this? According to Malcolm, Smart's criteria for strict identity are that "if x occurs in a certain place at a certain time, then y is strictly identical with x only if y occurs in the same place at the same time". But this is impossible to test empirically, since if we locate a particular CNS process in the CNS, then how do we separately locate the mental process in the exact same location? Not only is it impossible, but it is also unintelligible (Malcolm, p. 174), therefore we must conclude that identity theory can be nothing more than a hypothesis, an irony considering identity theory's emphasis on the material sciences.

Furthermore, it is questionable whether or not the material sciences are compatible with identity theory. When I have a sudden thought, that mental process has what Wittgenstein called 'surroundings', the circumstances that contributed to the formation of the thought. To borrow Malcolm's example, my thought that I need to take the milk bottles out may be tied to the circumstance that the milkman is about to arrive. According to Smart's strict identity theory, CNS processes must also have these circumstantial properties, but these cannot be explained in terms of physics; one couldn't explain the milkman's arriving soon in terms of physical properties of the CNS.

Further problems with CSM arise when we analyse the two varieties of the theory: type-type CSM and token-token CSM. According to type-type CSM, types of mental states are identical to types of CNS states, e.g. every time I think 'that is a table', we have a mental state X that is identical to CNS state Y, and that state is always the same, every time I have that thought. This is quite obviously ridiculous, not least because of context, but also because of the lability of the CNS. We can say, for example, that one time I think 'that is a table' I will be looking to lay some cutlery, whilst another time I have that thought that has the selfsame description in language, I may be looking to buy a chair in a furniture store. Each time the thought seems the same, and yet it makes sense that the CNS state would be quite different because of the context. And what if the part of my CNS that deals with that thought was slightly damaged? Neuroscience tells us that the CNS will often be able to route around the damage, creating an entirely new CNS state for the same mental state.

Type-type CSM creates further problems when you consider the differences in individual's brains, and the fact that other species can have conscious mental experiences with completely different CNSs. For the theory to work and avoid species chauvinism, we would have to create a complex table listing, for each type of CNS, their characteristic types of CNS states, and then identifying these types of states with types of mental states, which seems extraordinarily complicated. In fact, it begins to resemble token-token CSM, which holds that though every event or process may be different, for each token mental state there is an identical CNS state. This resolves all of the problems associated with type-type CSM, and can be well explained by analogy. We can store information in many different ways, be it in a bit travelling over a network cable, as a magnetic signature on a hard disc, an indent on a CD or an ink mark on paper. According to token-token CSM, as each different form of storage is entirely different, so the information in each case must be different, such that the information stored in the ink mark is identical to that ink mark, and the information stored as an indent on a CD is identical to that indent, but those two bits of information are slightly different, each perhaps containing the nuances of context and the state of the CNS at the time.

But even accepting this resolution, we still find ourselves unable to provide a scientifically intelligible account of that CNS state since we are unable to make reference to nuances of context. And even if we did, we would not be providing any reason to accept CSM, except that ontologically it doesn't posit anything that we don't know about empirically, and so is the simplest. Perhaps in a completed neuroscience we will be able to provide material-material explanations for all mental concepts, and we will resolve the problems in physics returning to a purely materialistic reality. But then CSM relies entirely on a weighted possibility, and at the same time is fraught with conceptual and ontological problems. We have no reason to believe that neuroscience will be able to tell is 'what it is like to love one's parents' nor 'what it means to love one's parents'; trying to show that something so complex as a thought with surroundings can be reduced to something explicable in terms of physics seems wrong; suggesting we can categorise mental experiences seems chauvinistic and naive; positing the identity of token mental states with token CNS states seems to do no more than highlight the close relation between the two. In other words, CSM does little to enhance our understanding of the relation between the mind and the CNS, and is so riddled with problems that it quite simply must be wrong.

Bibliography

Gefter, 'Throwing Einstein for a Loop', Scientific American, December 2002

N.Malcolm, 'Scientific Materialism and the Identity Theory', in C.V.Borst, The Mind/Brain Identity Theory, 1970

J.J.C.Smart, 'Sensations and Brain Processes', in C.V.Borst, The Mind/Brain Identity Theory, 1970

Functionalism

Functionalism emerged in the 1960s from cognitive science, and replaced identity theory and central state materialism as the dominant philosophy of mind. It was developed mostly within the materialist tradition, and is therefore generally considered to be anti-dualist, though this is not necessarily a feature of functionalism.

Functionalism first emerged as a criticism of type-type identity theory, claiming that it was wrong to locate mental phenomena in matter because that implies:
1) Mental phenomena can only be had by beings with a central nervous system similar to ours
2) Beings with similar central state nervous systems must have similar mental states
Functionalism developed the idea that mental phenomena can be had by beings with very different physical constitutions (e.g. humans, cats, computers), and that the same mental phenomena can conceivably be had by physically different beings.

Functionalism's central thesis is that mental phenomena depend not upon the matter in which they 'reside' but in their organisation; i.e. mental states are functional states. A functional analysis of mental phenomena would therefore explain the working of the component parts, or functions, of a psychological organism, and their overall organisation. The mind could therefore be explained in terms of (admittedly complex) flow charts. The mind, and mental faculties, are defined in terms of what they do, rather than what they are, just as one would define 'crank shaft' as 'something that opens and closes valves', rather than identifying the definition with a particular physical object.

Functionalism solves one of the most damaging problems of behaviourism, which is that one could have two stimuli cases providing quite different responses, or indeed several cases of the same stimuli-response relationships with different associated mental states. With functionalism, having the same inputs and outputs needn't mean having exactly the same mental phenomena, since the functions that process the inputs and provide the selfsame outputs can differ. This implies quite a startling conclusion: if one could map out the entire functional process of one thought, one could make a computer 'think' in an identical fashion, and so it is quite conceivable that a machine could love a human, and vice versa.

On this theme, functionalism can be summed up as follows: mind is to brain as software is to hardware. Two systems can be computationally equivalent by physically different.

Is functionalism dualist, materialist or idealist?

By defining itself in terms of function rather than in terms of its substantial instantiations, functionalism remains ontologically liberal (identity theory was thought to be 'chauvinistic') and so avoids the problems of what kinds of beings can have mental phenomena, and of dualism. Functionalism could be considered compatable with a very liberal token-token identity theory, however, as one could claim that each mental state is identical to a particular physical state (e.g. my pain Y, happening right now, is identical to brain state X) but that mental states in general needn't be thought of as identical to physical states in general (e.g. pain Y is always identical to brain state X). An identity theory this liberal, however, without the additional ideas of functionalism, becomes more or less meaningless as nothing that it can tell us can ever be proven in any sense (in positing an identity one needs to be able to know of each honomonous entity distinctly, and show a pattern of coincidence with reasons why it is more than coincidence; here one can find no pattern).

It is this distinction between functional states and physical states that leaves functionalism open to forms of dualism, in particular property dualism. Mental phenomena can be thought of as functional properties of brains, with sufficient detachment for entirely different functional states to be associated with the same physical state, and vice versa. In fact, it is conceivable that functionalism might fit with idealist theories. There are no contradictions in functionalism in supposing that a conscious being might have a mind but no brain, and so it is logically possible. Materialism cannot therefore be considered a conceptual truth based on functionalism alone.

Functionalism and consciousness

According to functionalism, one might be tempted to say that a conscious system is a computational system that is capable of posessing functional properties. If we consider Bill Gates, aside from his obvious physical properties, the kinds that any physical thing might have (e.g. his weight, height, his particular chemic