 oFFfer mewn y tro, heddyn o'r hyn dryl am y dyf dependsio lleol yn yr oeduc cal freaking o bhlyw, gyda hyn mae ymddialol oriaeth i dynunio, a dy na chi oedd, mae rahot mae yn yma rhoi dyff piecesio lŷn yn syny o hy我有 bod harnto nawr mae'r gysig hefyd ac weld mae hynny yn floppa dros graf, ond dewis bod chi'n gofynpa stra wnaeth ar dros wiret a'i ei wneud nhw 모르 tua. Roedd ydych yn ofŷol y gallwn, fel yng Nghymru sefydliw nawr bod yn yr o compol. We've seen that reductive physicalism, identity theory, is probably false, if you remember that was Kripke's argument, which suggests that if mental states and physical states have entirely different properties, how could they be the very same thing, how could they be numerically identical? Ond we looked at non-reductive physicalism, and we looked at two types of non-reductive physicalism, functionalism and anomalous monism, and we saw that both of them faced serious difficulties. Can anyone tell me what the problem was with functionalism in a sentence? Okay, what was, what, no what? No qualia. That's not quite a sentence. Could you manage to put that into a sentence? No, that's true. It fails to explain experience. It fails to explain experience, but in what way does it fail to explain, do you remember talking about the gap? What was the gap that looked as if it might scupper functionalism? Too much wine, that's a... The gap between external behaviour and internal feelings. Feelings, yes, okay. So the idea was that if you can produce a robot that behaves exactly as we do, the functionalists would have to say that that robot experiences the world as we do. Well, okay, you might believe that, but if you think that there's the possibility of a gap here that you might get a robot that behaves exactly as we do, but doesn't experience the world as we do, then that's a problem for functionalism. So that's functionalism. What's about anomalous monism? What's the serious difficulty for anomalous monism? Can anyone tell me? It leads to epiphenomalism. It leads to epiphenomalism. What do you mean by that, Frank? It doesn't mean anything for the mental to do if the physical is doing everything. So it appears, perhaps, according to Kim, that he's wrong. We won't have any gloss on that. Okay, so the worry about anomalous monism is that mental states have physical properties, sorry, if causally efficacious states have both mental properties and physical properties, if it's the physical property that's lawfully related to the behaviour, then in what sense does the mental have any work left to do? That's the problem for anomalous monism. So we saw that neither of those problems are conclusive. Functionalism can maybe come back from the problem of the gap, but maybe when it comes back from the problem of the gap, it does so by having to say that qualia don't exist at all. That's difficult. We can see that anomalous monism can come back on the causal exclusion argument, but in order to do so, it has to say that causation is something very different from what we usually think it is. That's the argument I didn't have time to go into. Therefore, we'll need to talk about that a little bit tomorrow. But the fact is that both those theories of the mind can come back on the problems that we're facing them, but whether they can come back sufficiently and in a way that's convincing is very much open to question. So we haven't shown that physicalism is false, but we have shown that it faces serious problems. So what we're going to do is take those serious problems at face value just for the moment and say, well, okay, if we've shown that reductive physicalism and non-reductive physicalism are facing difficulties that actually it's really quite difficult to see how people are going to get over those difficulties, what is the alternative? What do we do if we're not physicalists about the mental? One possibility is that we should simply accept that mental states exist, but that they're not physical and that they're not causally efficacious. That's one thing that we might do. Another thing we might do is just say, well, mental states, let's get rid of them. What do we need them for? We don't need them in our ontology at all. Remember what an ontology is? It's your list of what exists, and so if you say that ghosts don't exist, ghosts are not on your ontology, and if you eliminate mental states from your ontology, then what you're saying is that mental states don't exist either. Okay, and in this session what we're going to do is look at both these possibilities in the order given. So we're going to look at epiphenominalism. Ooh, I only just managed that one, didn't I? And then we're going to look at eliminativism. Okay, epiphenominalism is the view that mental states exist, but they're not physical and they're not causally efficacious, and you see why these two things go together, if you remember from earlier on. The biggest problem for a dualist is the question of causality. So long as we adhere to the view that physics is causally closed, do you remember what physics is causally closed means? It means that any state that causally interacts with a physical state must be itself physical, and so if mental states interact with physical states, they must be physical in some sense. So if mental states are not physical, and that's what we looked at both by looking at dualism and at looking at the problems for reductive and non-reductive physicalism, it means that mental states just can't causally interact with physical states. And that's hugely counterintuitive. You think that I pick up this glass because I want a glass of water, I want a drink of water and I believe that by doing this, I will get a glass of water. But actually, if mental states are not causally efficacious, then my behaviour must be other than that. It can't be that my belief and my desire are causally efficacious. Okay, this is usually deemed a problem, as we saw when we looked briefly at Cartesian dualism, but the epiphylomalists don't see it as a problem at all. The epiphylomalists have three arguments for the view that mental states are not physical states. There's the knowledge argument, the modal argument, and the what-is-it-like-to-be argument. So let's look at each of these in turn. This is an argument for the view that mental states are not physical. So far what we've looked at is arguments for the view that mental states are physical, and then we've looked at problems for that view. But now we're looking for a positive argument for the claim that mental states are not physical. Okay, let's look at the knowledge argument. The knowledge argument, Mary, a scientist who knows all there is to know about the physical world. So, for example, she knows that people who claim to experience red have been looking at an object that reflects light at 650, I'm told, nanometres. But Mary, since birth, has been living in a monochrome world. She has never experienced red. She's never seen a tomato. She's never seen a pillow box. She's never seen Susie's lovely coat, et cetera. All she's ever seen is black and white, but she knows all there is to know about colour vision and she knows all there is to know about what causes colour vision and what causes somebody to say that they see something as red and so on. But she's never actually experienced red. And the epiphenomolists will claim that when she comes out of her room and bumps into Susie, she thinks, wow, that's what they mean when they say they experience red. Wow, this is different. And the thought is that she acquires knowledge that's new to her, but the thought goes the knowledge that she acquires is not physical. She already knew that objects reflect light at 650 nanometres. She already knew that human beings say that object is red when the object reflects light in that way and so on. She knew all that. What she didn't know was what it is to experience redness. And the thought is that what she's learnt is not something physical. Therefore, it can't be the case that all information is information about the physical world. It can't be the case that everything you could know is knowledge about the physical. Why wasn't it a physical experience? It would have involved a physical experience. She would have known that when she experienced red your jacket was reflecting light at 650 nanometres and she would have known that when the reflected light hit her that she was experiencing this and that and the other was happening in her brain. But what she had never experienced before is what it felt like to see red. But she's experiencing it now? Now she's experiencing it. Or she can see what other people are talking about when they mean they see red. But I don't understand why it's not physical knowledge. Because she had all the physical knowledge before. So the knowledge she's learnt now is what it feels like to experience red. That's the only knowledge she didn't have before. She had only ever experienced black and white before. Do you see? No, I don't think you do. Sorry, I can see that there are lots of people dying to come in. Susie, Leo. Couldn't you argue that if she knows all that there is to know about physical world an automatic spin-off of that is that she's going to... She knows what it's like to experience red. If you think that you would have to think that the experience of red is a physical thing. And actually we don't usually. Do you remember when we asked for people's intuitions and I haven't got the flip charts here but we put qualia on the side of the mental rather than on the side of the physical. You don't have to say why she has to think it. Why she has to think it. No, she doesn't think it's a physical thing. She believes that she's learnt something that she didn't know before. The gentleman back there is saying she knows everything there is to know about the physical world. Why can't she not infer from that the experience of seeing red? OK, well if you're going to say that what you need to be able to say is that you can somehow infer from nothing other than the physical data what it is to experience red. I don't see how you could infer that. I think you could know a lot about objects reflecting light. I think you could know a lot about the human visual system without knowing what it's like to experience red. The point is that this is Jackson's example, isn't it? Mary. Jackson has to know that Mary can't work that out. He doesn't have to know that because he's postulating that. This is a hypothesis. You can reject the hypothesis. Of course you can. You can say actually if Mary had all the physical understanding she would also know what it's like to experience red. I suppose as usual you get out what you put in. But the reason you might think that it's not the case because can you imagine knowing about nanometers knowing about light reflecting from objects knowing about the human visual system et cetera and being blind? I mean could a blind person know everything about the human visual system that would explain why somebody claimed to see red? I mean a blind person hears other people say the tomato's red. Okay he may not know what it's like to see red but he knows what someone means when they say that in the sense that he knows that this is a property they're ascribing to an object et cetera. I don't see why Mary couldn't be perhaps a blind person who knows a lot about the human visual system a lot about how light is reflected from objects et cetera and impacts on the human visual system but doesn't know what it's like to experience red. If you think there is a gap between what she could know physically and what she could experience then you're thinking the experience is something that is over and above the physical. That's what the epiphenomenolists say on this argument. I can see lots of questions I'm going to allow them if they're very quick and I'm going to interrupt you if they're not. Frank? I think it's Lewis in fact arguing against this who gives a lovely example of marmite and they've done the same. You can't possibly know what marmite is like until you've tasted it which is the same as Jackson. It would be the same. I mean you could know what the ingredients of marmite were like et cetera and what people say when they eat marmite but you couldn't know what it was like until you'd actually experienced it. Chris? Physicists know quite a lot about what it's like to travel near the speed of light but I can guarantee nobody's ever experienced it. You're saying there is a gap between physical knowledge and experience. If you're an epiphenomenolist you believe that this argument is an argument for saying that there's a gap between knowing things about the physical world and knowing about colour experience from a physical point of view and knowing about colour experience from the point of view of one who actually experiences it. The second argument we considered earlier the possibility that there might be a robot who's physically identical to and behaves exactly like you but who lacks consciousness. Well the epiphenomenolists say if you really think there could be such a world really could be a robot who is exactly like you but who lacks consciousness then again you believe that everything physical about this world can be duplicated without the mental being duplicated. In other words you can have a molecule for molecule doppelganger of Alan and yet not physical doppelganger of Alan without producing his mental state and if you think that says the epiphenomenolist then you're saying that the mental is not physical. If preserving the physical isn't enough to preserve the mental then the mental can't be physical it must be something over and above the physical. Genesis there would be a good thing if you could do what you suggested. What produce exactly him but without the... That's his wife by the way. Okay and then finally there's the what it is is like to be argument. We may know everything physical there is to know about bats says the epiphenomenolist but we still don't know what it's like to be a bat. Indeed actually we could know everything physical there is to know about you but still without knowing what it's like to be you. For each of us here there's a peculiar something Tom Fischer there's something it's like to be Tom Fischer but I don't know exactly what that is. No matter how often I've talked to Tom and da da da I still do not see the world through his eyes I don't know what it's like to be him and again the epiphenomenolist says that to the extent that there's something it's like to be something that falls outside the physical facts about that thing so I could learn everything physical there is to know about Tom and I still wouldn't know what it's like to be Tom that something it is to be like isn't physical. Okay so according to the epiphenomenolist even when all the physical information is in we still won't know about the awfulness of pains, the itchiness of itches, the pang of jealousy etc so the epiphenomenolist thinks the mental is real and he thinks it isn't physical so he accepts there are such things as what it's like to be Tom what it's like to experience red what it's like to have pain etc he thinks all these things are real and he thinks they're not physical what's more he also thinks that the mental is caused by the physical so it's your your God I can't think of a single case of physical psychocausation come on help me the physical world causing a mental state yes okay I put my hand on a hot plate and I feel pain or I see the traffic light change and experience red okay so that's alright the epiphenomenolist thinks that's fine physical states cause mental states but we've seen that the problem for the idea of psychocausal interaction is if mental states aren't physical then how can mental states cause physical things answers says the epiphenomenolist they don't mental states cause nothing they simply they're causally inert they don't even enter into the causal nexus except in virtue of the fact that they are themselves caused by physical states so mental states are causally inert they are the upshot of complex physical systems they're undetectable by anything other than introspection because they make no difference at all to the physical world now going back to where we were before do you remember we looked at dualism and the problem with dualism is that if mental states are not physical then how can they causally interact with the physical world we looked at anomalous monism and we looked at the causal exclusion argument which says if mental states are not physical how can they interact with the causal world well the epiphenomenolist just says they can't end of story it's not a problem as long as we accept that mental states are epiphenomenol we can still accept that they're real and it's not a problem that they don't interact with mental states with physical states there is a big question here why shouldn't mental states cause other mental states but I'm going to ignore that because epiphenomenolists do say that mental states are causally inert and I don't quite see why they can't cause other mental states but anyway here are three objections to the epiphenomenolist claim and we're going to look at three responses to these objections in a moment surely we might say ah there's a question okay is it going to be fairly quick just fairly quick I wanted to I was interested in the arguments that you put for the epiphenomenolist but it didn't seem to me that although I agree with those arguments about the Mary and knowing everything about the visual system but not the experiences but I mean this essentially seems to me to be a difference between a third person description and a first person experience and you don't have to be an epiphenomenolist to take that learn about it well but remember the epiphenomenolist thinks that mental states make no difference to anything other than introspection therefore the only way you can discover about mental states is by the first person perspective so you can't if you're an epiphenomenolist you rely on introspection the first person perspective to say that mental states exist but surely anyone who takes consciousness seriously recognizes that there's something very special about consciousness and that that subjective experience isn't the same as or can't be exactly deduced from a third person description well and the epiphenomenolist takes consciousness very seriously indeed they believe that mental states exist and that's the only way you can get to them is by the first person experience through introspection and that's why they make the arguments they make I'm not going to take any other questions at the moment don't forget we have a whole session of questions tomorrow so save up your questions okay I'm going to make three objections to the epiphenomenolist claim the first one is how can you say that mental states are causally inefficacious that's ridiculous why am I doing what I'm doing here now it's because I like teaching and I believe that coming to Rulee House and doing what I'm doing is enabling me to teach somebody about philosophy that's what I want that's what I believe that's what I intend to do that's why I'm here how can you tell me that I'm not doing what I'm doing because I believe what I believe and what I want and so on it's ridiculous okay that's the first objection second objection is if qualia have evolved and I found it very difficult to persuade any of you I think maybe some of you but most of you refuse to accept when I put an argument forward earlier for the non-existence of qualia you refuse to go along with me okay you all think qualia exist well if you think that qualia exist you'll probably think that they've evolved and that if they've evolved they must be adaptive because how can anything evolve if it's not adaptive to the environment the whole mechanism of evolution is that you get a mutation that's adaptive for some reason within the environment and the things that have that mutation survive and flourish and pass on that mutation until eventually all the people things in that species have that mutation that's what it is to evolve how can it be adaptive without being causally efficacious okay third argument we looked earlier at functionalism which says that mental states are theoretical states a mental state is the state it is because of the function it plays within our folk psychological theory so we look at the environmental stimuli that cause these states and we look at the behavioural output of these states and we say so and so is feeling pain janet is in pain I just kicked her and caused tissue damage and she went therefore she's in pain how can that how can her behaviour provide me with any evidence for the fact she's in pain for her having a state with a certain quality or qualia if her states are not causally implicated in the production of her behaviour I mean the idea that mental states are causally inert is just surely rubbish okay let's have a look at the responses to this argument now actually let's see if any of you can come up with responses to these responses so okay we've got this claim mental states are causally inefficacious they're causally inert they do nothing these are three objections to them can you come back on these objections and say why they're not objections comment on the third one got it if you kick the lady and she's in pain you can infer that she's got qualia but you don't know just as you can only infer that she's a a mental person like yourself it's true that there is a a gap if you like I can't experience janet's qualia for myself but I do my theory my whole theory of janet's behaviour is that when she acts as if she's in pain and when she tells me she's in pain it's because she's in pain it's not actually a mental state it's a physical state I kick someone when I kick the leg of someone else and then there is some I don't know there's a physical response there's a physical response which provokes another physical response and this is why I I act and I do not act in pain but I act to the physical I think we might look at those let's look at the answers to these one of which I think might be the one that you're giving ok so the first one was surely we do what we do because we believe what we believe and feel what we feel well how do we know that our actions and our mental states aren't both the effect of some common cause so if here's your behaviour your owl here's your mental state your pain here's a physical state let's call it C-fibre firing I mean why not ok why don't we think that that causes both these things which means that there's a correlation between these things which falsely causes us to believe that pain causes pain behaviour and pain is that what you meant yeah pain experiences do you see what I mean could be caused by the C-fibre firing just as the owl is caused our only reason for thinking that pain behaviour and pain experiences are caused by pain is because there's a correlation isn't there between feeling pain and saying owl so it causes us to but actually we all know about causation that if C-fibre firing were to cause both these things these things would be correlated in a way that would give us evidence for thinking that there's a causal relation so the idea that we think that our pain causes pain behaviour well we would wouldn't we if they were both the common cause sorry both the cause of some common third thing ok let's look at the second one if coelia have evolved then they must be adaptive and how can they be adaptive without being causally efficacious well actually quite easily and properties can evolve as byproducts of something that is adaptive without themselves being adaptive so the heavy coat of the polar bear is not adaptive heavy coats are actually not a good thing to have if you live in somewhere where it's cold you're swimming a lot are they heavy coats are a bad thing but thick coats are adaptive and you can't have a thick coat that isn't a heavy coat do you see that thick coats have evolved because they help protect you from the cold and heavy coats have come along with thick coats but heavy coats are not adaptive they haven't evolved themselves or rather they have evolved but only as a byproduct of something that is adaptive in exactly the same way perhaps mental properties have evolved as a byproduct of something that is adaptive sea fibre firing perhaps without themselves being adaptive because how could they be adaptive if they're not causally efficacious but the fact that you can happily say they've evolved without insisting that they must be causally efficacious ok, let's have to quit the third one how can behaviour provide us with evidence for qualia if qualia are not causally implicated in the production of behaviour do you remember I said if I kicked Janet and she screams why do I think that her behaviour is evidence for her pain if her pain didn't cause her behaviour well if qualia and behaviour are correlated in this way this would explain this one too I mean in the same way my reading in the times that Spurs won this is not my example by the way I'm not even sure who Spurs are except I suspect it's something to do with football ok, my reading in the times that Spurs won is evidence for believing that the telegraph is also going to report that Spurs won but not because the times caused to write to what it did by the telegraph's writing what it did at least we hope not ok, so Spurs winning caused both the times and the telegraph to report that Spurs won and for that reason my seeing that the times reported that Spurs won gives me evidence to think that the telegraph would also report it and exactly the same way my in taking that as evidence for that that would be perfectly well explained by the fact that that is evidence for both that and that so Spurs winning causes both the times and the telegraph to write that Spurs won with the result that seeing that the times writes that Spurs won gives me evidence to think that the telegraph would write that Spurs won so actually the arguments for epiphenominalism are perhaps a little better than you might think they are nevertheless I completely understand that epiphenominalism is hugely counterintuitive for one thing if mental states really are causally inert then do we really need to admit them into our ontologies at all and actually you might want to say now well of course I do, I feel it I look at Susie's jacket and I think I experience red my experience of redness is something I see introspectively I can't deny it actually Bertrand Russell had the he really wanted to be a behaviourist and he said but I can't convince myself that Aqualia don't exist therefore behaviourism must be wrong well I hope I convinced you a little bit at least earlier that actually if your C-fibers firing cause you to believe you're in pain you don't need Aqualia at all I think anyway why do we need these things if they're causally inefficacious we think we see them introspectively but there are actually good arguments that explain why we think that and our thinking that is false okay so why don't we just accept epiphenomolism but if you don't like that if you think that it's better to eliminate them let's look at the next view epiphenomolism but before we do does anyone want to ask any questions about epiphenomolism sorry the next view we're going to look at is eliminativism not epiphenomolism it's amazing I can do this after two glasses of wine isn't it can I just take up your argument that you were making about the reason that you teach philosophy is because you feel good about philosophy I understand you well I might like to suggest that teaching philosophy makes you feel good that too so I don't see why the first should apply I don't think it really matters because I was using that as an example to say surely it's obvious that I do what I do because I believe what I believe feeling good then isn't causing you to teach philosophy no I believe that teaching philosophy will make me feel good is what causes me to teach philosophy I mean why it makes me feel good is open to question but the thought is that it's because I believe that teaching philosophy will make me feel good that I do it I want to teach philosophy because I believe it will make me feel good but as we've seen actually the question is is it really the case that I do what I do because I believe what I believe the epiphenomolists say no sorry I do not understand the essence of the argument I am crazy this is a state of mind being crazy I am mad I am completely out I commit suicide you commit suicide I have a mental state and then there is a physical state there is a body isn't it causing effect so what you're saying is that your belief that you would be better off dead causes you to commit suicide ok so a mental state is causally efficacious ok what the epiphenomolist would say is you just think that well sorry you don't think at all at this point but the rest of us think I've forgotten your name Eleanor poor Eleanor she's dead that was because she wanted to die she believed she'd be better off dead actually why couldn't it be a case of this there's a physical state here that caused you both to believe that you'd be better off dead and to kill yourself so from your point of view you thought it was that causing that but as a matter of fact that was causing both that and that so what caused you to kill yourself was this physical state here and at the same time this physical state caused your belief that you'd be better off dead and you saw that correlation of course that's completely invisible to you introspectively that's all you see introspectively you don't see that so if there is a malfunction in my brain no it's not a malfunction no there's no malfunction epiphenomolism thinks that this is how the mental works it's no malfunction it's a chemical or something yes but you're right well the fact is if you're thinking that any state that caused you to commit suicide is a malfunction then that's the malfunction not that one it's that that's the malfunction but your third circle down there on the bottom left that you say is the hidden cause of the other two reflects doesn't have much weight as indeed God for instance doesn't have much weight until you actually show what that is well epiphenomolist would say that all you need to do I mean all you need to find and actually I was reading about this in Scientific American Mind last week and so if I could remember what it actually said which I can't there is apparently a neural state that correlates with committing suicide it also happens to cause feelings of depression so I mean you might say that science has already shown that there is this which causes that and that but of course we all know that that's not true because of identity theory in Cripke and you have to show that in every case well yes but can't we extrapolate from the logical compellingness of this case I mean you think that our mental that your mental states cause you to act I've just given you another explanation of why you think that which fits very nicely with the facts that duelism has the problem that it can't explain how mental states cause physical states physicalism has the problem that it can't explain how mental states cause physical states epiphenomenamlys says well no suprise that it can't because actually mental states don't cause physical states it is just epiphenomenal yw'r ysgolwch, ond yw'r ddweud o'r ddweud o'r gaelio'r gwahanol? Yn ymweld, mae'n gweithio'r ysgolwch, ond rwy'n gweithio'r ysgolwch i'n gweithio'r ddweud o'r ddweud. Rwy'n ddweud. Rwy'n gweithio'r eliminatif. Eliminatifau ysgolwch yn cael y ddweud ymgyrch yn ei ddweud. So far, all the theories of mind that we've looked at have accepted that mental states are real. So dualism thinks that mental states are real and they're different from physical states. Identity theory thinks that mental states are real and they're identical to physical states. You can reduce them to physical states but they're still real. Functionalism thinks they're real, albeit reducible to functional states. Anomalous monism thinks they're real and what's more, they're sweet generous, they're real in their own right. Epiphenomalous thinks they're real, just causally inefficacious. Eliminativists don't think they're real. There are no physical mental states. Like the functionalist, the eliminativist believes that mental states are theoretical states, states drawn from folk psychology. Do you remember what I said about theoretical states? A theoretical state is a state of a theory. You've got something you want explained, something you can observe, something you can point to, see, etc. and you postulate something unobservable in explanation of this observable thing and you call that thing the Higgs boson or whatever you call it. You give it a name because it's that state that plays that role. Now the functionalists believe that but so do the eliminativists. The theory from which mental states are drawn is folk psychological theory. So why did Janet leap up when I kicked her answer because she was in pain. She experienced pain. Why did Penny cross the road answer she wanted an ice cream and believed that she could buy one from the ice cream van. So there's this theory, folk psychological theory from which I derive mental states and I therefore postulate the theory. It works. The theory is a good theory. I can make intelligible Jane's behaviour. I make intelligible Janet's behaviour, etc. Let's postulate that it's true. There are mental states and they act in this way. But where is the functionalist thinks that folk psychology is a true theory. A eliminativist thinks that folk psychology is a false theory. According to the eliminativist, folk psychology should be eliminated along with all its theoretical states just like other false theories with their theoretical states. I forgot what I'm about to say. I was going to add Lib from here on in. Until the next slide. This will do. Okay. Why is folk psychology a false theory? Why should we reject it? Okay. Woodlice. Woodlice, nasty little things you find in the garden all the time in your plant pots. Why are they always found under rocks, under logs, things like that? Answer, they like the damp. And they believe that that's where the damp is to be found. Whenever you see them, they're scuttling away to find themselves a damp place. That's what they like. Actually, this is not at all what woodlice do. Woodlice embody a mechanism called a kinesis, I think. Which means that as the air around them gets drier, they move. They move in whatever direction they happen to be pointed. And they move at a speed determined by how dry the air is around them. And as the air gets damper, they slow down. And as it gets damp enough, they stop. That's why woodlice are found under rocks and logs and things like that. And the minute you know that, you no longer think that they like the damp and believe that it's damp under rocks and things like that. You don't need all the panoply of belief, desire, explanation once you've learnt about these kinesis. Dead easy. We use Occam's razor. Somebody was taking me to ask for Occam's razor. We use Occam's razor to get rid of the theory, it was Eucharist, to get rid of the theory that attributes woodlice, beliefs and desires and intentions and so on. Actually, all we need to do is attribute them a kinesis and we've got what we want, which is an explanation of why they always end up under logs and things. And so here we've got a case where science has shown us that we don't need to postulate beliefs and desires to explain any woodlouse behaviour. Once you learn that all woodlouse behaviour can be explained in terms of kinesis, taxis, fixed action patterns, you don't need belief desires, you don't need a theory of mind to explain woodlouse behaviour. Okay, now, in the beginning, in the beginning, everything was explained by appeal to reasons and causes were very small. So mountains exploded because they were angry and you had to make sacrifices of beautiful maidens and plump young children and things like that in order to stop the mountain getting angry so it wouldn't explode. Rivers wanted to get to the sea. Aristotle believed that the reasons stones fell to the ground when you dropped them is because they wanted to get to their natural place, which was the centre of the earth. Why did fire rise? Because the natural place of fire where it wanted to go was up into the air. So all these explanations were reason explanations, attributing beliefs, desires, et cetera, to mountains, streams, trees, et cetera, et cetera. We didn't know many causal explanations so we didn't use them. And the advance of science has been to actually turn it round completely the other way. Now reason explanation is here and causal explanation is here. Do you remember we were looking at the difference between reason explanation and causal explanation before when we looked at causation is law governed and reason is charity governed, do you remember? Well actually science has just taken over, hasn't it? It's now the reason explanations apply to us and to the apes, perhaps computers, wherever you want to put reason explanations, but the vast majority of things in the world can now be explained in that way rather than that way. And the eliminativists believe that this is going to march on until there is no reason explanation needed. Eventually science will be able to explain all your behaviour without any appeal to beliefs, desires, pains, et cetera. I will know neurophysiologically why you do what you do. I mean I'll still you. If a child says why is the woodlouse doing that, I'll say well darling the woodlice like the damp and it's going da da da. But nobody believes that that's true. That's just what I tell a child because it's much easier to explain things by appeal to reasons than it is to explain things by appeal to kinesies. I'll see you, I'll come to you in a minute. So what the eliminativist thinks is that reason explanations did for mountains and things like that until we found the proper explanation and in exactly the same way psychological explanations of our behaviour will do until we know what the real explanations are and the real explanations are going to be physical explanations, neurophysiological explanations and reason explanations will just drop out. They won't have any role left at all. So like the functionalist, the eliminativist believes that mental states, we've done this, hang on. Okay, so they think it's a false theory and just as magic is eliminated, so folk psychological theories are going to be eliminated once neuroscience gets its act together and enables us to explain all the things that we want to explain without any appeal to mental states etc. Let me just see. Okay, what were you going to say? You've eliminated free will, haven't you? Oh, certainly. If you're an eliminativist, you're also a hard determinist. The difference here is the hard determinist believes that everything we do is caused. All our behaviour is caused by the initial conditions, the conditions surrounding us and the laws of nature. So initial conditions include what's going on in my brain etc. and the laws of nature and what's going on in my environment produce my behaviour. I don't make any choices at all. Soft determinist thinks that causal determination is consistent with free will, which is logically difficult because if you get one action, a token action, how can it be both determined and free? That's the problem for the soft determinist and then there's the libertarian who believes that we have free will and the eliminativist is fairly and squarely here. The hard determinist believes there's no such thing as truth. How could there be truth? Because if there aren't any beliefs, there isn't any truth. The only things that are true are either beliefs or the sentences that express beliefs. If there aren't any beliefs, sentences express nothing. There are no meanings because there are no belief contents to express. There is no truth either. Nor is there any free will. This is what the world is like. I don't look so worried because the fact is if the eliminativist, if the hard determinist is right, they're already right. It's already the case now. This is not something that's going to come upon us. It is already upon us. If hard determinism is true, that's what the world is like now. We are under an illusion, not only that we have free will but that we have beliefs and desires, that there is any meaning, any content, any truth. It's a pretty bleak world but if we live in that bleak world, we're already in it. Our belief, our false beliefs in qualia. If we're in that world, we can't believe we're in it. It's certainly true that if we're in it, we can't believe. If we're in this world, if we're eliminativists, you might think how could we believe that we don't have beliefs? I can agree with that. I'm so glad. I can see that one day the whole of folk psychology will be discredited. But what is discredited is the causal relationship between mental states. There aren't any mental states. That's one thing it can't be. I have mental states, I'm telling you. Sorry. You are going on introspective evidence. I'm happy to agree that when I feel angry, it doesn't have any causal effect. There's just a parallel effect as the same cause. I can tell you that I can get angry. I'm not angry. You can tell me that you believe that you get angry or at least that you believe that you can get angry. But if the eliminativists are right, you are wrong. I can't. Didn't Mary in the color of red don't show that they can't? Mary was supposed to know everything about every farm very new or that she hadn't got experience and that couldn't give her knowledge of those tools. When she comes out of her room and suddenly thinks she's got knowledge, she's wrong. What happens is she enters into the same illusions that the rest of us are under. Illusions and experiences. Do the eliminativists know that they exist? Presumably not. Because they don't know anything. They don't have beliefs. It's very easy to poke fun at the eliminativists. But actually, unless we're going to say, they are using an inductive argument up until now causal explanation has taken over from reason explanation in every sphere we've looked at and that's true. That really is true. What they're saying is it will take over everywhere. Now, you might disagree with that. You might say no. There's some principled reason why reason explanation is the only explanation that will ever work for us. But if you believe that, you've got to come up with some reason for thinking that that's true. Actually, they're thinking, hang on a second, they're using the causal exclusion argument to say, why do you think that mental states cause anything? Even the epiphenomenists accept that causal states don't explain anything. Tell me, they say, why do you want to even believe in mental states? This introspective evidence of yours, we dealt with that, didn't we, before when we talked about functionalism? You think you have experiences of red, but actually, we can delete those with beliefs. That's an experience of belief. A belief isn't an experience. If we're doubting, then we must have a mind, a mental state of doubting. If you're doubting, that sort of transcendental argument is only good if you believe the antecedent. If you're doubting, if you're not doubting, then you think you're doubting. No, you think you're doubting, and actually you believe that you think you're doubting, but what if that belief is false? I'm playing with you now. Do you see how easy it is to play with you? You can go on forever. But what you can't do, what we don't want to do is go on forever because actually the eliminativists have a better argument than we might think. In order to engage with them, we cannot just say, it's obvious I have thoughts because actually they've dealt with that. Sorry, somebody else has to have a go. You're happy with the eliminativism. Just a second. Up to the point that I cannot disprove that because I cannot accept a theory that I cannot disprove. There isn't any point. It always goes beyond how I know that I know. It's like a psychologist talking about the subconscious. But this isn't a sceptical argument. It's like I can never say that it will never stop because I cannot prove that it won't stop and that point will never come. So there is no evidence that in the end I can say one way or the other. It either exists or it doesn't. I disagree with you. I disagree with you because I think there is a way that you can get back to the eliminativists and for that you'll have to look at some other lectures of mine and I'm going to go into it now. The thing is the eliminativists have a much better argument than might appear on the surface. I'm the idea that we couldn't possibly believe that we don't have beliefs. Well, yes. They believe that you don't have beliefs. This is not actually a logical contradiction. So how can I prove that I don't have beliefs? I cannot prove that. Well, you certainly can't prove it if it's false and that's what they're claiming. Listen, there are arguments here you can engage with. There really are. I've given the outline of the arguments and you've got the handouts and there's nothing I can do now to convince you of the truth of any of these things that I'm putting to you. In fact, I'm doing my very best to one minute convince you of the truth and the next minute convince you that they're false and what I'm hoping to do, and then that they might be true again. Because what I'm hoping to do is loosen any dogmatic views. I'm obviously failing in that. But I'm trying to loosen any dogmatic views you might have on this because actually this is really cutting edge stuff. What is the mind? We all think we have beliefs. We all think we have experiences. But there are very good arguments out there to suggest either that we don't or that we do and they're not what we think they are or that we do and that they are what we think they are. But there are big problems with this and how are we going to square this with our other theories like physics, for example, or neurophysiology, both of which are theories on the whole we probably don't want to junk. So we'd like our theory of mind to square with them. Do you see what I mean? This is stuff to think about. It's not stuff that you can do in even six hours. Was that a question or were you just holding your hand up? Is it a very quick one, David? I was wondering as we were established by the Kinesis with the Woodlows when did we understand what the Kinesis is that's brought us all here this weekend? Well, yes, indeed. Maybe you were just moving towards the light. Or that might be just me. Or the warmth. Maybe it was all cold in your house. Okay, let's move on. We've done this, haven't we? Okay, if with the epiphenomenalists we believe that mental states are causally inert then we've got to accept that folk psychology is a false theory, haven't we? Because folk psychology tells us that mental states are what cause our behaviour. That our behaviours are actions at least of such that there is causally implicated in them. Beliefs, desires, intentions, etc. So there's at least something false about folk psychology if we go along with the epiphenomenalists. That we do eliminate theories that turn out to be wrong I should have put false there. It's also true, you can see why I didn't. Oh, I've done that. Okay, so the... Did-ah, did-ah, did-ah. Okay, you understand all that? I've said all that already just in a different order. Okay? Okay, and I've said that too. The inductive argument, the whole history of science they say and they're right has been a process of eliminating folk psychological explanation and they believe that science is going to continue to do that. So do you remember I talked about the principle of the uniformity of nature? The idea that the future will be like the past. So if every time you've seen A it's been correlated with B, the next time you see A it'll be correlated with B. Well, if every time you've ever had a reason explanation it's eventually been replaced with a causal explanation. Surely you believe that the next time you come across a reason explanation that you believe can't be replaced by a causal explanation, it will be, you'll be wrong. So that's the inductive argument. Yes. Okay, when you complain to an eliminativist, but hang on, I've got beliefs, I've got desires and I can't see that we're going to go away from this. I like to have. They'd say you're a sentimental old softie. I do a little thought experiment occasion and on the online course I do this. So those of you who've done the online course in mind will know this. At birth, everyone's skull is removed. The top of their skull is removed and a perspect top is put on so you can see exactly what neural states are going. At school we're all taught the laws, the causal laws that explain our behaviour. So, actually, I can explain Mary. All Mary's behaviour, by looking at the top of her head, I don't actually have to lock eyes with her at all. I don't have to engage in interpretation. I don't have to use the principle of charity. I don't have to think, well, that's interesting. Mary believes P and I don't. Why does she believe P? Tell me and I look into her eyes and ask her. All I have to do is look into her skull. But lovers, they actually like the old-fashioned way of doing it. So when you fall in love, you buy a woolly hat and you pull it on over your perspex dome so that the only way you can interpret each other is by looking into each other's eyes and saying, what do you think, darling? And so the other can tell you rather than you just looking at there. Anyway, you can see them. So you might want to just be a sentimental old softie and keep your woolly hat on. But you don't need to. OK, from the arguments we've examined, it seems very difficult to show that mental is scientifically respectable by which I mean physical. But most people would have trouble with the idea of eliminating the mental, even if it is scientifically redundant. And the only alternative is there is something, the mental, that's real but simply not visible even in principle to science. So if we go back to dualism of some kind and say that actually science is never going to be able to see mental states because mental states are not the sort of things that can be seen by science, but then we're back into dualist territory and for all the reasons we've already looked at, we may not want to be there. Those are the references for tonight. And tomorrow what we're going to look at is whether we've got the wrong questions because we're not getting any answers, are we? All we're doing is getting ourselves and more and more and more into a difficult situation. None of these theories seem right, do they? And if everything you looked at is such that it doesn't seem right, you have to ask yourself, are you asking the wrong question? And tomorrow we'll ask ourselves that and maybe we'll come up with the idea that we are asking the wrong question.