 to webcast these classes so we have to be wired for sound and I just forgot. We'll have a couple of seconds technical delay while I put a battery in here. Okay well I was hoping not to destroy my credibility at this early stage but with a bit of a struggle we now have the on switch on. Okay let's take it from the top. So for the first three quarters of the class we'll be looking at consciousness and the mind-body problem and in particular we'll spend a lot of time on functionalism which is the most important single idea in philosophy of mind and in the sciences of the mind in the last 50 years. It's really how should I put this sciences philosophy of mind so we will spend a lot of time looking at the functionalist approach to the mind and what it can do and what it can't do what its limitations seem to be and we'll then go on to questions about the self-personal identity. All this is on the course website which you can now get to through B-space. Has anybody tried to get to the course website through B-space? Did you manage? The papers know but a website? Okay so okay well if you I'll try and sort I thought oh it is on B-space now. Well look at that look at all these problems coming up and being resolved so roughly. Okay so the use is you can get to the course website through B-space you can get to it through my faculty webpage and you might particularly want to look at the link on the course website where it says lectures because that tells you what reading there is for each day of the semester. Okay we won't go the full distance today because the most important thing you'll have to do today really is initiate the bonding process with your GSI and find a time for a section that will work for you. The GSI's are Jackson Kirlian and Austin Andrews. Do you want to identify yourselves? You can see what good likenesses the photos are. Say hi guys. Okay there are two set books for the class. David Chalmers collection of philosophy of mind classical and contemporary readings and John Perry's book Personal Identity. These are full of wonderful papers and we'll actually only sample them. Okay and today and on Tuesday we'll be looking at Descartes meditations. The extracts from the second and sixth meditations in the Chalmers collection. So it's a 10 page reading and we'll start in it today and it would be good if you could read that 10 page extract for Tuesday. Most of the readings we do in this class are pretty brief. They're six pages, ten pages long. This is not to make it easy. It's because the readings themselves are pretty dense. Actually it's not so much that they're dense. They're often introducing unfamiliar and difficult ideas and it will often happen to you that when you read a paper for the first time you simply can't make head or tail of what is going on in the thing. This is perfectly normal. At this point you will experience a strong desire to sleep or attend to do something else and your mission is to resist that you have to have faith in both the reading and yourself. This is really good stuff. It really does make sense and you really can do it but it does mean you have to you may have find yourself spending a couple of hours on a single paragraph and that's fine that's okay that doesn't mean you're being dumb or it doesn't mean that the author's being needlessly difficult. It's just that these are unfamiliar ideas and it takes a while to grasp them. Yeah so I sympathise if you find the experience at first highly disagreeable but if you persist and crack through there is really some wonderful stuff that we're going to do. We're going to be doing the greatest hits over the last 300 years in thinking about the mind. Okay so we'll start out with the Descartes and then the next up which we'll do next Thursday are extracts from Royal in the Chalmers collection. So again that's just seven pages but give yourself plenty of time to address those seven pages. Are there any questions just about the basic setup of the class right now? I think most of your questions should be answered on the on the website. Yeah you don't need to bring the textbooks to class you may want to it may be helpful to to work through it but I'm anything I quote will be on the screen so you don't need to have a text here I mean but you may want to it's your choice. Okay so there are three things I want to do today one is just to get stated the mind body problem how the mind body problem comes up in the first place I mean it's a familiar phrase but how did it first arise how did people start out thinking about the mind body problem and then one resolution of the mind body problem is dualism dualism says there's two different kinds of stuff there's material stuff and there's a stuff your mind is made of and they're just different and that solves the mind body problem because it's just two different things and there isn't really a big issue about how they're connected and then finally today I'll look at problems with dualism we'll go back over this stuff too on Tuesday. Okay so what sets up the mind body problem is back in the 17th century when mathematical physics first came on the scene it is really physics that generates the mind body problem. Physics really destabilizes our picture of the ordinary world and what we're doing in the universe what's going on in the universe it really destabilizes it in ways that are still puzzling today that we still haven't really come to terms with. Here's a remark by Koyere the historian Koyere about how the implications of the new physics started to be seen back in the 17th century not only are the heavenly spaces empty and void but even the so-called solid bodies are full of void. The particles that compose them are by no means closely packed together but are separated from one another by void space. The Newtonians from Bentley on took an enormous pride and pleasure in pointing out that matter proper occupies a practically infinitesimal part of space you get the impression that this was a particularly annoying thing that Newtonians used to do but really when you think about it think about what physics is telling you about what is in this space-time zone this classroom right now and what is here according to physics are we talking about people colors projects or screens no all we have are the fundamental particles floating in the void there are just was mostly empty space in this room occasional clumps of gluons the operation of basic physical forces and that's the whole thing that is all that's going on now that really destabilizes our picture of the world think about how the world would have looked to say a 16th century peasant innocent of mathematical physics someone who'd never heard of mathematical physics you look at let us say a flower and the flower itself with its coloration with all this delicate tremulous beauty is just out there a fact about the world that you simply encounter the world is full of these medium-sized physical objects with all their delicate colorations with all their wonder and variety and you just happen to be plunged in amongst them and you start finding out about them so before physics when you're innocent of physics you can think that what's going on when you see a flower is that there's that thing out there there's you and you see it what could be planer than that your conscious experience of the flower is it's a relation between you and a bit of the world there's there anyway that flower would have been as it is whether or not humans had ever existed whether or not there were ever minds at all but after physics what physics is telling you is out there in the world there is nothing like that delicately beautiful flower there are only the fundamental particles what is going on is that those fundamental particles are generating in you sensations of color and taste and smell and so on but physics doesn't talk about color or smell or taste and physics gives you comprehensive coverage of the universe physics tells you there's just one world and it's a physical world and there is no more to it than that there's no more to it than that then the flower as it seems is not something that's out there independent of you what's out there it's just a configuration of gluons and they generate these sensations in you of color and smell and taste so physics takes away the regular world it also condemns us to a kind of loneliness a real existential loneliness because what's going on when I look at the scene right now is these layers of atoms are generating sensations in me when you look around the room now these layers of atoms are generating sensations in you but for all we know they're generating different sensations in you and in me our minds might be completely different you don't know whether your color sensations are just the same as mine in fact when you think about it is not just that you don't know whether your color sensations are the same as mine I mean consider this don't look now but think about the person sitting right next to you I mean is entirely possible that although they are physically just like a regular human they have no sensations at all maybe they are a kind of zombie they're physically just like a human but with no consciousness why not maybe that would explain some puzzling things but you don't know I mean maybe the person next to you is having sensations maybe they are just the same as yours but if that's true it's just an accident you have no way of telling so this picture of physics a configuration of atoms out there generating sensations in us and seems to drive us into a complete loneliness you don't know what sensations other people are having you don't even know whether they're having any other sensations so this is just an artist's impression of the fundamental particles and the fundamental physical forces but that's all that's really there and the thing about the world the way physics describes it where it's all are there any physics figures in the class what is there gluons gluons right quarks yeah there's gamma ray bursts there's spectroscopic emissions there's black holes the thing about the world is described by physics is that there is absolutely nothing in the world that it would be possible to care about all the world of people of ordinary concerns or beautiful things is just not there in the description of the world given by physics so when you think of the problem that physics is really a complete description of the world then the implication of this is well it would be natural to feel a kind of terror at this point I mean I kind of scream seems to be a reasonable reaction to maybe that's just a liberal arts reaction to physics if that's all that's really there then the world is really very alien to the world of ordinary concerns always going on when you look at the flower is that there's a collection of atoms out there there's an atomic structure out there and your sensations are projecting the colors and smells and tastes onto that atomic structure as you look around the room there is nothing in the room but collections of atoms but you are projecting different things your mind is projecting different things onto that scaffolding of atoms like being in a movie theater your mind is projecting this stuff onto the world out there well that's already a little bit distressing but at this point the really hard question is where does the mind itself fit in the mind itself doesn't seem to be capable of being described mathematically the mind itself doesn't seem to be capable of being brought under basic physical laws so you can say that the color of the flower is a projection by the mind onto the atomic reality that makes sense but you can hardly say that the mind itself is a projection of the mind if you see what I mean that that doesn't make any sense at all the mind itself is not a projection of anything so how can that be either physics is incomplete or else we have a really hard problem of trying to understand where the mind fits in to the physical world so something like that I think is the background to where the mind body problem comes from it comes from physics because it's only once you have physics that you have a sharp conception of what matter is and then once you know what matter is you can ask about the mind and is that matter how does that work how's it connected okay that's the origin of the mind body problem comments protests anyone sorted out is come on yes yes right thinking yeah I wasn't really distinguishing between thinking and sensation but you're right there does seem to be a difference there thinking I guess is something like what you do in language right what you what you and I are doing right now thinking out loud yeah sensation seems how should I say you don't need a language to do that when you look at the flower and you get that sensation of color that's not itself thought yeah but some connect between them that the the sensation that makes the thought possible you wouldn't be able to think about colors unless you had sensations of colors yeah and maybe it's only thinking about color that actually does the projection of the color onto the world that allows you to judge that there are colors in the world so I guess I'm thinking of the mind as a kind of package with both sensation and thinking and something like that is constituting the projection apparatus of the mind you see what I mean and then the question is that package of sensation and thinking how does that fit into the world of the physical world yeah I think that would be true too but that's a kind of intramural question about the relation between thinking and sensation at the moment I'm asking a much broader thing which is take thinking and sensation however they're related how do they connect to physics yeah yeah yeah but think about what you see in a physics textbook and in the 17th century the big move was to do two things to say matter is ultimately made out of atoms little round hard billion balls yeah that was the picture and the atoms are governed by mathematical laws you can measure everything that that's the whole idea everything is measurable that's a very counterintuitive idea if you were just as an suppose you're in an intelligent child of six or an intelligent medieval and you want to find out how the world works how a tree works for example well if you want to find out how a tree works how do trees grow how do they originate you want to understand what goes on with a tree well you could measure the tree but that seems this seems obvious that's not going to tell you anything very much right so until the 17th century people thought numbers don't have much to do with it and if you want to understand how a tree works what you have to do is read Aristotle and think about it really hard yeah and that was the wrong answer but it is a very natural answer I mean you know what measuring it was going to do with it and and the really bold move in the 17th century was to say no measurement can tell you the answers to everything the measurable quantities solve the whole thing tell you everything so they are the mathematical characteristics of fundamental particles you can get all the rest from that but the trouble is that the sensations are in themselves atomic they don't seem to be constructions from the atomic yeah so they don't fit in to the mathematical physics picture yep yep yeah that must be right I mean your brain must have something to do with it if you bash someone's brain you're going to make a difference to what sensations are having so no argument about that but the question isn't really can the physical stuff affect the mind the question about the mind is what is it anyway we know we're thinking that maybe the whole world is describable by physics but what's the mind and it's not really does the physical stuff affect the mind it's what's this thing what are we talking about not does this affect that but do we even know what this is how we're going to say what this is we're going to come on to that very question in just a second to that question about existence okay let's take this one too quickly and then we should move on but yes well what I said what I meant there was it's really two things that matter is made of atoms and that all the characteristics of the atoms are mathematically describable now the the if you take sensations of color or test yeah the question is can you measure those is there a way of putting a ruler against your test sensations and measuring them and that's the thing it doesn't seem to be yeah that was how it seemed back then I mean I think Galileo was the first person to make this point but back in the 17th century most I mean Galileo was really the father of mathematical physics and that was how it seemed to him and I think back in the 17th century they're thinking that's right how are you going to measure itches you know yeah last one and the I saw you first okay let's take this to quickly but yeah yeah I'll try to be quick yeah well yeah can't it be a concept I thought what's not made it matter oh color yes right right right okay but how can it be a concept to describe if it describes does it describe something physical or not the software exists and the software part of the physical world that's really weird so software is non-physical well there's something that is not quite right but there's something that is importantly right the software is a good model and we'll actually spend quite a bit of time on the idea that the mind is the software of the brain that is actually quite a powerful idea that just as a computer runs programs your brain is a bit of hardware running software which is the mind that's what it is to have a mind is to be a computer running the appropriate software yeah that your brains so that's an important idea but I just want to get that this big block busting thing I'm asking is this physical or not if you want to really bring that to bear on that big question then you have to be very clear about whether you're saying software is physical or not yeah last one very good okay there are two different things here one is to say sensation is based on neurochemistry the other is to say that sensation is just the same thing as in neurochemistry yeah and again that's an important idea that we're going to spend a lot of time on actually the whole line of thought you just set out but in a moment I'm going to give Descartes argument that is one thing to say the sensation is caused by the neurochemistry but it's not right Descartes is going to argue to say that the sensation is just the same thing as in neurochemistry that's really the critical thing yeah now the really last one okay I mean these are all excellent questions these are all bringing up things that were big themes yeah yeah right yeah yeah you guys are basically inventing functionalism here and the computer model of the mind which is going to take us another couple of weeks to labor up to so bear with me as we labor up to these questions but let me put it right back to you if if what you're saying is correct if there's no more to sensation than the brain running a particular kind of software then it should be child's play to make a computer that has sensations making computers that have sensations I have one right here is it does it have sensations you can do that yeah I mean look suppose you have a set of laptops orchestrated all over the world right you could run soft and you wouldn't even yeah I mean you got a powerful enough laptop you're not going to need a network just amp up the processing power of this laptop couple of years will be there and then that's going to have sensations that's what you're saying well okay we're going to spend a lot of time on this idea I just want to be clear about what you have to be saying if you really mean that yeah but here's Descartes arguments that none of this can be right yeah none of these important ideas can be right Descartes says there are two different kinds of stuff there's mental stuff and there's physical stuff and one argument there are three arguments he gives for this in the meditations and just going to look at one of them the argument he gives is the certainty with which you know of your own existence is greater than the certainty with which you could know of the existence of any physical thing therefore the mind and the body can't be identical so well here's what he's thinking how do you have knowledge of the world around you anyhow how do you have knowledge of the physical world well you get your knowledge of the physical world from your sensations and what's going on according to physics is that the sensations you have are just caused by the atoms out there so if that's what's happening you the sensations that you're having are being caused by the atoms out there well if that's what's well if that's your hypothesis about what's causing those sensations well actually those very same sensations could have been caused in endlessly many different ways as you sit here full of intellectual stimulation you're inquiring mind questing into the depth of the mind body problem you take it for granted that what's going on is that the physical stuff is configured in just you're in a room full of other people and so on but of course it's also possible that you could maybe you didn't make it to the lecture after all maybe you're still at home maybe you fell asleep by the fire and you're simply dreaming that you're in the lecture room maybe you're actually in an astrophysics lecture dreaming that you're in the philosophy lecture that could be that could happen you could be having the very same sensations with a quite different cause they can't put this point in a lot of different ways you see as well maybe there could be a malicious demon causing those sensations maybe your roommate is an evil neuroscientist who whipped your brain out just as you were about to set off for lecture and is stimulating you to think that you made it the physical world could be radically different to the way you think it is the idea that you're living in a university town with lots of other people around that you're in the room with tables and chairs this is one hypothesis among many to explain the sensations you're having and this is not just an idle speculation there really are people that are the insane there are the dreamers who think you're having the sensations of a unicorn at midnight there may be no unicorn it may not be midnight but you could be having those sensations anyway or as Descartes more prosaically gives the example you could be looking at a square tower from a distance and it could seem round so even in the worst case though suppose that you're an insane madman who's fallen asleep and is dreaming about a square tower that that actually just looks round right suppose there's nothing there but a collection of mistaken sensations in your part do you still know of your own existence you could be completely wrong about every aspect of the physical world none of it might be as you think it is but do you know about your own existence even in that worst case Descartes says you still know of your own existence he famously says this proposition I am I exist that's necessarily true whenever it's put forward by you or conceived by your mind so the physical world might not be there but you still know of your own existence so you can't be a physical thing because your knowledge of your own existence is greater is more certain than your knowledge of the existence of any physical thing that proposition I am I exist this is Descartes that's necessarily true whatever it's put forward by me or conceived by my mind so just to go over that argument the sensations you have are merely being caused by atoms in the world around you so those very same sensations could be caused in endlessly many different ways that means that your current conjectures about how the physical world is there does one hypothesis among many about the causes of your sensations so your knowledge of the physical world is always uncertain there's always something provisional about it is maybe just your best guess as to what's actually going on but your knowledge of your own existence is not like that so what is the self if the self is something non-physical then what is it and Descartes says well what shall I now say that I am what I am supposing that there is some supremely powerful and if it is permissible to say malicious deceiver you see the caution that if there really is some evil genius who's manipulating all your sensations to make you think you're sitting in a lecture room then you really ought to be respectful if you're going to say malicious you better do so cautiously but so I'm now supposing my sensations are just manipulations by some demon deceiving me but what can I say that I am can I assert that I have even the most insignificant of attributes that I said belong to the nature of a body can you say that you have a particular weight that you have a particular height that you have blood you can't say any of that stuff because all that might be just generated by the demon giving you sensations or being a particular height or weight or having blood or whatever so what is it that you always encounter when you think about what must be there what definitely exists no matter what is going on in the physical world yourself yeah but can you say a bit more about what characteristics of yourself but I'm very good right you have a thought at last I have discovered it you guys could do this in your own actually so okay so we just had functionalism and the mind is software and okay who said thought who said thought okay very good right that's what Descartes says all this could be a dream your thoughts are still there your thoughts are definitely there you have certain knowledge of your own thoughts in a way you don't have certain knowledge of anything else and that thinking you will always find when you find your own existence so the self as a thinking thing must be something non-physical that's the argument plenty enough yes oh good questions in the back one two wonderful somebody could be manipulating your thoughts yeah right that's really an interesting idea but notice that there's there's a way in which is quite commonplace to try to manipulate people's thoughts and that's what you do in a conversation right I try and make you have thoughts you try and make me have thoughts yeah manipulation suggest something a bit stronger that you've actually taken charge of what thoughts someone is having yeah but notice that even if someone has taken charge of what thoughts you're having even if Bill Gates really has got in there and is making me have all those thoughts when I think I am I exist I am still being confronted with thoughts I may not be in charge of them but they're still thoughts there if I weren't having the thoughts I wouldn't even there would be anything to be manipulated if you see what I mean and I wouldn't be able to say I am I exist because to say I am I exist is already to be thinking whenever I think even if I'm just a pawn in the hands of this evil wizard then still I have thoughts so it's not much of a claim if you see what I mean is it is not yet to say I am a free agent or something like that but it's just to say I exist and that thinking knowledge of my thinking is bound up with my knowledge of my own existence yep that is Descartes cogito I think therefore I exist yeah oh sorry there's no question so is it going away there's something no it's going away that's very good yes yes okay we're talking here just about what Descartes is really getting is when he says that proposition I am I exist is necessarily true whenever is put forward by me yeah so what he's getting is the existence of the self at a moment that's the certain thing and you're certain of that in a way that you couldn't be certain of the existence of any physical object yeah but when you say I remember happy days in ancient Egypt or as one does right or when you say I remember that weekend back in 1970 then if possible those memories are implants yeah it's possible your memories of what happened yesterday are implants you could have been got at maybe though the truth will just be revealed to you later you your current memories are implants yeah so when you say I'm the same as that person back then that's not certain yeah it's just the existence of the self at a time well okay one two three yeah if you yeah I mean it's not even it's not all the schizophrenia if I say well Campbell thinks you know I just got a bit taken away with my taking away with myself say well you know set of saying my view is well you know this is a combo yeah that's one does right then that's not going to have certainty yeah because it could happen just as you say that you're you're carried away and you're saying Napoleon thinks yeah because you think you are Napoleon and so on yeah yeah these delusions so there is no certainty there even if I mean who knows maybe I'm actually a millionaire playboy and I just think I'm a humble philosophy pedagogue yeah then when I say Campbell I'm actually that's just a mistake that's not me no such person exists yeah so that's not certain it's really something special about the use of I to refer to yourself that has a kind of certainty but you use of a name doesn't and that's what your example brings out I think oh you maybe there's no physical stuff oh boy right that I agree that's the next move if we're getting it that the existence of the mind is a completely certain thing then why not say look the physics the atoms and so on and there just projections of the mind to yeah I agree that's a very good move that but where we got to is we started out by thinking about the flower that you encounter yeah and taking everything for granted and then physics blows that up and what you're talking about is really the revenge of the mind if you see what I mean he's okay now we blow physics up and we say that's just a projection of the mind that again is an important move yeah yeah yeah I don't wish to say any more about about this at this point except to say that is a big important idea that needs a lot of discussion yeah yeah last one yeah yes we can both relate to this I think that that's a very natural idea and the and it is it is still an important idea that idea that social life and communication is a big piece to have in place here because somehow isn't that just as basic as having a mind in the first place being embedded in a community yeah that's an important idea but remember that part of the way that physics destabilizes just going back quite a bit here part of the way that physics destabilizes our picture of what's going on is that it seems to raise the possibility that your sensations might be entirely different to my sensations so when I talk about redness I'm talking about one kind of sensation when you use the word red you're talking about a quite different kind of sensation it might be the sensation I call green it might be the sensation I have when I hear middle C on an organ it might be something completely alien you know those sensations might be completely different so ordinary the impact of physics here is to really destabilize ordinary communication to yeah because you're just a collection of atoms I'm just a collection of atoms there can be these causal interactions and you're interpreting it in terms of the other person having the same kind of sensations you are but that might just be a mistake yeah that's what I mean about the loneliness of the picture generated by physics huh that poignant note let me make some last remarks about problems with dualism I hope is fairly clear the dualism is it has something going for it it's not just a daft idea in fact it's still popular today dualism but although this argument that so this argument your knowledge of the existence of the mind is more certain than your knowledge of the existence of anything physical actually maybe we shut the door it's just on free so there's gonna be a lot of racket from things so I just talk for another 10 minutes or so and then we should get sections going yep yes doubting yourself doubting your own existence that's kind of hard who is it that's doing the doubting do you think I know what you mean don't even exist I think but isn't it right that where it's natural to say that is in a social context what are you saying don't you what you mean is don't you even realize that I exist you pigs I'm sorry maybe maybe this is just autobiographical but you see what I mean but really to doubt your own existence it's hard to see how that even makes rational sense because somebody's got to be doing the doubting so who is it that's doing the doubting if not you you see what I mean that was really the point about Descartes saying I think therefore I exist that doubting that you think doubting that you exist doesn't seem to make any sense except in that social kind of way this is important we will come back to it as you might challenge this but I just want to get over the what Descartes is thinking you see what I mean yeah that's right that's right yes exactly the demon may be cheating me in every possible way but I have to be there to be cheated for this to be going on yeah that's the point yeah no that's very good okay so Descartes thinking like this there are two kinds of stuff in the universe there's a physical stuff that's made out of atoms and governed by mathematics and there's the ectoplasm or whatever you call it the stuff that the soul is made out of now the thing is once you put it as bluntly as that there's two different kinds of stuff there's the ectoplasm and there's a physical stuff then a number of things become obvious first of all if they're turned out that there was ectoplasm I mean it's not made out of atoms it's not governed by regular mathematical physics physicists would just be delighted the physicist who demonstrated that this was so would immediately be extremely famous and popular I'm because what you'd want to do is say well how can we find out about the ectoplasm how do we find out what I mean with dark matter that's exactly what happened they said this is not the regular physical stuff made out of regular atoms this is made out of something else and it's all very exciting to find out what it is so to say there are two kinds of stuff is actually it's a perfectly I mean it really could be true that there are two different kinds of stuff I do not have have you guys ever come across the amber spyglass no you're really missing out as it put your hand up if you've read the amber spyglass put your hand up if it's any good it's great right it's an absolutely fantastic set of books by Philip Pullman I mean they're aimed at 12 year olds why I'm glad I'm not alone here but they're absolutely wonderful but I'm Pullman in late in the series this is a little bit of a spoiler it's not much of a spoiler but it turns out that there's a kind of gold and dust and there is what's responsible for consciousness and the great thing about the amber spyglass is that unless you see the golden dust so you'd you know doubtless see huge billowing clouds over over the room at the moment if you kind of looked out as all this mental frenetic mental activity is going on and the thing is if you think well there is that ectoplasm there is the golden dust that generates consciousness and it's not like regular physical stuff well that really might be true and then you'd have to find out how there can be such a stuff but the thing is it's not as if the problems you have at that stage are any easier than the problems you had before I mean your knowledge of your own existence is still going to be more certain than your knowledge of the existence of the golden dust or the ectoplasm or whatever it is and then you're still going to have the question how can that be generating a mind the physiologist Susan Greenfield said what really got me into physiology this must have been about 40 years ago I guess but what got her into physiology was looking at a human brain and thinking that it's all there as you sit here at the moment a flame with intellectual curiosity longing for coffee memories of your family thinking of your friends it's all there how can that be that's that really is the that's the kind of basic puzzle about the mind how can your life be being sustained by that that seems so amazing how could that be happening and it doesn't really help to say well maybe it's not a brain maybe it's golden dust or maybe a ectoplasm I mean that you still have that same basic puzzle how could that stuff be generating this my whole conscious life yeah that's that's the fundamental puzzle and moving to saying well I've got a kind of ghostly brain here doesn't help a bit you just shuffled it off and if you say as Descartes says something like thinking is the essence of the soul the soul I mean when you that sounds pretty deep right yes come on you guys shouldn't be doing philosophy that doesn't seem pretty deep but the thing is when you think about what is actually saying thinking is the essence of the stole you're just saying well look the soul is a kind of ectoplasm or golden dust or something and it just does that it just does thinking that's all you need to know and that's really just a fake that is a phony explanation and look here's an analogy suppose that some intelligent Martians I mean everybody knows that Martians are extremely smart right suppose that some very smart Martians landed on earth and they start finding out all about us and our civilization and they make a lot of progress they understand us pretty well but TV really puzzles them for some reason they look at it and they think I just can't see how they're getting those colored images in the screen that's really weird it defeats their best physicists they don't understand how that works how do TVs work but then someone says look we've all been working on the wrong track the reason we're finding it so hard to understand how TVs work is they're not physical at all they're made of a special TV stuff and it's TV stuff if you ask how TV stuff is generating all those brightly colored images well that's of the essence of TV stuff that's just what TV stuff does and people say that's brilliant and there's a career to be had there but the whole thing is obviously fake and similarly if you're puzzled about how the brain can generate the mind it doesn't really help it's just a fake to say well actually the brain doesn't generate the mind and what we've got here is some special ectoplasmic stuff an ectoplasmic stuff well that's just the kind of stuff that generates minds that hasn't made any progress at all and what is TV stuff how does it make those images what's its relation to physical stuff that's what you really want to know so postulating a special TV stuff wouldn't help with any of the problems that you're trying to understand how can your knowledge of this thing be so certain for example and so postulating mental stuff doesn't really solve the problems about mind and brain it's just making them obscure because with the brain we at any rate know what that is we you can look at it you know what the thing is you know how to study it when you talk about a special ectoplasmic stuff that's not physical all you know for sure is I have no idea what that is or how you go about studying it it's true I mean Descartes was really right about this and this is a problem that is still alive and well today is very hard to see how the mind can be physical but the trouble is it's not really just a problem about how the mind can be made of atoms it's a problem about seeing how the mind can be made of any kind of stuff at all so it really doesn't help to postulate non-physical stuff we should really if you can bear it it's kind of a gory photo I promise you that I won't show this in any other classes but but really we should just stick with the problem how can that be generating the buzzing blooming world of every day sensation that is the puzzle we should be sticking with and okay let's couple of questions and then another dimension yeah right very good that's really a wild idea that's interesting I've never heard that before that's really a wild imaginative idea okay so I don't know people got that the idea is that there are the physical dimensions then there's an extra dimension that the mentalism is that a way to put it yeah yeah I mean it's a great idea and I don't want to just close it off the basic starting questions though would be the ones I just raised and we need to know how could you know if this is a dimension how could your knowledge of it be so much certain more much more certain than your knowledge of any other dimension how is that working how come that the other dimensions don't do sensations and this one does you know the demand to understand what's going on is just starting here yeah so but I don't want to close that off I've never heard that I often you have that Jackson okay we don't know that but it really is interesting it's not it's not just a dafter or it's any of it let me put it like this there's no dafter than most of the mainstream ideas yes yes I Descartes certainly thinks there are interesting aspects or ability to think about the infinite but on the face of it I mean are our minds really infinite we can think about infinity but that's not the same thing as yourself being infinite yourself if you see what I mean I mean do you get tired I mean I'm constantly aware of my mind running out on me and I constantly I'm wishing that I had something a bit better and bigger and sharper yeah so I my own sense is that my own mind is highly finite I mean it would be good to read Descartes look at the Descartes passages with questions about infinity in mind yeah because he does say interesting things about that but that's not what I mean the argument we were disemphasizing was your knowledge of this thing is provisional and uncertain yeah it might all be a dream and so on but your knowledge of your own mind is not so that can't be the same thing as a mind yeah and if you think about yourself I mean it's that that thing you said at the start about smelling and tasting it and so on that I mean I know that whenever I look at that it makes me think of how would that be fried anyway I'm sorry I shouldn't have said that anyway what we're just talking about yeah the basic thing is if you think of your own conscious life at the moment the basic puzzle is imagine the top of your head sliced off and you're given a mirror on a stick so you can look at your brain from the top and it looks kind of like this and you're being asked to believe this is all the same thing my conscious life right now all my sensations and memories and thoughts that's the same thing as that stuff how could that be yeah so it's not really something special about infinity it's a much more basic difficulty of understanding than that okay so for next time try and look at those 10 pages of the meditations make as much progress as you can and right now your task is to bond with your GSI