Other views on the mind-body question

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  • Other views on the mind-body question
    • A) Gilbert Ryle
      • Gilbert Ryle was one of the great analytic philosophers of the twentieth century. His best-known work is "The Concept of Mind", it's famous for its attempts to refute substance dualism as proposed by Descartes.
      • Ryle used the term "ghost in the machine" to describe Descartes' concept of the mind. His philosophy is possibly monist but not materialist, though even to say he is 'monist' probably oversimplifies the issue.
      • Descartes himself described in "Meditation VI" the mind as the pilot of the body, and the body itself as a sort of mechanism. So Ryle, when using this description, is quite close to Descartes' own language. It is important to be clear about Ryle's project, as an analytic philosopher he is not attempting to create an alternative theory of the way things are, but is attempting to provide clarity on mental concepts.
      • He saw his work as an exploration of the phenomenon of consciousness. His main objection to Descartes is that he is guilty of category error, Descartes incorrectly assumes that two terms, in this case 'mind' and 'matter' are of the same logical type. Ryle argues they are not, even though, on the surface, sentences about mind and matter might look similar, such as 'there are physical processes' and 'there are mental processes'.
      • One of his famous example to explain category error was the Foreigner at Cambridge.
        • Suppose a foreign visitor went to Cambridge to look at its sights, He is shown the different colleges, the museum, the library, and so on. At the end of the tour, he then asks, 'But where is the university?' He is guilty of a category error because he assumes that the University' is something separate from and other than all those individual bits which collectively are the university. 
          •   In the same way, Descartes is guilty of a category error because he presumes that sentences about causes, sensations, or events must be either mental or physical, he assumes that they cannot be both. To describe an action as mental is not to suggest that it is something different from what I, as a whole do. 
    • B) John Hick
      • John Hick approached the question in a similar way. He strongly opposes Plato's view of the soul, particularly for assuming that the soul is immortal in itself.
      • For Hick, as for Aquinas, 'my soul is not me'. His outlook is not dissimilar to that of Aristotle, and is often described as 'soft materialism'.
      • We are our bodies, but those bodies have a spiritual dimension. There is no mind without matter, and to be a person is to be a thinking material being. 
      • Thinking in this way is not reductionist, as the mental depends on the body, but is more than simply a behaviourist reaction to stimuli. He proposes that we are in general material beings, but that does not mean that we are just material beings. 
        • Hick is very opposed to any approach which assumes that to die is something not to be feared. For Plato's Socrates, as the soul cannot die, death is simply like moving from one room to another. But for the Christian, to die is to be before God. He alone can bestow eternal life, it is something we should prepare ourselves for.
    • C) Anscombe
      • In her essay 'Analytical Philosophy and the Spirituality of Man', she considers the phenomenon of pointing. If I point at something, the mere action of me pointing is not what I am necessarily trying to tell you.
      • If I point at the king on a chessboard, my bodily action is what it is — a gesture, but the meaning of the gesture, that I am pointing out that it is this piece here, and not that bishop, or that am indicating that it is this colour, or has this texture or design feature, cannot be indicated by that bodily gesture alone.
        • The meaning and the significance could not be deduced from even the most complete physical action. Just looking at the action of a body, in this case my pointing body, does not explain the action. For that, we need to have a description of the thought, i.e. "l am pointing at the chess piece because…"
          •   But it is still my body that does the pointing: the action would be impossible if I not a body. A disembodied soul could not point. It is my body that points. She argues that 'this bodily act is an act of man in the function of my spirit'.

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