PHILOSOPHY - Mind: Mind-Body Dualism [HD]

Are we just physical things? Or perhaps just mental things? Maybe both? In this video, Alex Byrne (MIT) explains a modern argument due to Saul Kripke for mind-body dualism.

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[jemmadevoti]

I had a slight understanding of mind body dualism before watching this video. After watching I’m 10x more confused and all I gained is a stick man in my notebook that is just as confused as me.

[flowerprincess]

Ah, I came here and left with nothing. Thank you sir

[rgromes]

So if you accept mind-body-dualism as a premise you can conclude mind-body dualism? Yeah, sure...

[SciPunk]

7:17 "... it seems like a possible situation. You could have existed without Bert existing."
The phrase "seems like" is quite different than the word "is".
Just because it seems like You could have existed without Bert doesn't mean that You could have existed without Bert.
The ability to imagine a situation is different than that situation actually being possible.
Premise 2 should read "I can imagine 'It could have been false that you are Bert.'"
Instead it was misrepresented as "It could have been false that you are Bert."
It is stated without proper demonstration of its veracity. Imagining it to be the case does not imply that it is the case.
Moreover, the ability to imagine that it is the case doesn't imply that it is the case. It simply implies that it might or might not be the case. You can't use that as a premise.
"There is no there there."

[CovertGamer]

To help anyone who is confused to understand it better, here is the same argument reworded differently:
1.) If it's true that you are your body, then it could not have been false that you are your body.
2.) It could have been false that you are your body. (For example, you can imagine yourself being born with a body other than the one you currently have.)
3.) Therefore, it's not true that you are your body.

So, from the argument's conclusion, if it's not true that you are your body, then what are you? Obviously, you consciously know that you exist, so you must be your immaterial mind, also known as your soul. Hence, the argument also supports the idea of incarnation and reincarnation.

(Remember, imagining yourself being born with another body is not like imagining a round, square table or a married bachelor. A round, square table or a married bachelor is impossible, but there is nothing impossible about you being born with another body. For the second premise, you need to understand how to distinguish between situations that are possible and situations that are impossible. To prepare for both premises, you need to understand how to distinguish between things that could have been false and things that could not have been false.)

Edit: I don't think I should have said that you are your immaterial mind. No one really knows what you are. This is still an ongoing mystery in the philosophy of personal identity. How do first-person perspectives come into existence if third-person matter is eternal? Where do ideas come from? Are thoughts physical? And so on...

[harryharman]

This argument is just pure sophistry. It circular as it presupposes that the mind and body are separate entities and not one being the property of the other.

[FarFromZero]

You eventually reach the point, when such words, terms and ideas lose their meanings. Finally there is nothing else than experinces. Everything we talk about, are just parts of our experiences. The body is the experience of the body. The mind is the experience of the mind. "We", "me", "you" are just part of "our" experiences. "My" experiences are just experiences including the experience of myself. But if I'm part of "my" experiences, how can be a part of an experience the owner of the experience? So, it's simply senseless, to ask, what I am. To be something or something different or nothing refers to relations in experiences, there is no meaning of these terms outside these relations. At this point someone can harmonize his experiences with the extermination of questions of this kind.

[Daruqe]

Well, the first problem is just that premise 1 is false. It claims to be identical to the "He is Barack Obama" example (and I'll just say it is for now), but that example is NOT tautological, as the argument claims.

Saying that the sentence "He is Barack Obama" is tautological is an abuse of language. This touches on Russell's discussion on the distinction between "names" and "descriptions, " but that's not too relevant to natural language, since his concept of "names" (a kind of empty bucket like a mathematical variable) don't exist in natural language. And this is the problem: the example treats the words "he" and "Barack Obama" like they're the kind of "names" Russell describes, but they aren't.

"He" in this context means simply the man I'm pointing at. It's not arbitrary, so I can't have just said "X is Barack Obama, " because "X" has no meaning. It's not a description. "He" IS a description, meaning "the man I'm pointing at, " it's not the person himself, and it's not even a SYMBOL for the thing itself; it's a DESCRIPTION. So the sentence is just abbreviated for "The man I'm pointing at is Barack Obama." "Barack Obama" is also a description, even though it is linguistically a name, but not the Russellian "name." It means "the person named 'Barack Obama' who's the current President of the United States" + whatever background knowledge the listener has about him. So the sentence becomes "The man I'm pointing at is the person named 'Barack Obama' who's the current President etc." There's no logical connection between "he" and "Barack Obama." They aren't two ways of saying the same thing; they're two descriptions that—in this case—have the same referent. So it's not a tautology, and therefore premise 1 is false.
—
The second, probably more fatal flaw, is that premise 2 is complete bullshit, only substantiated by the imagination. And yeah, it may be possible to imagine being in other bodies, but I don't even think it's possible to imagine a COMPLETELY disembodied experience.

[Paradoxarn.]

It's an argument that seem plausible but only due to it not making a clear distinction between epistemological and metaphysical possibilities. In short it is epistemologically possible that we can be without our bodies, that is: we don't know either way if that's the case, but it might not be metaphysically possible or in other words it might not actually be the case that it is possible that we can be without our bodies.

I we view Kripke's argument charitably it is not equivocating but is referring to metaphysical possibilities (in which case the conclusion follows from the premises) and therefore needs to support it's premise that it is possible that we can be without our bodies. The only supporting argument for that premise is that we can imagine it to be so. The problem with that however is that it only addresses epistemological possibility since it only shows that to the best of our knowledge it is possible (in truth it fails to even do that since actual observations and tests would be more reliable methods, tests and observations which seems to indicate the opposite it should be added) in that we don't find any inconsistencies in existing without ones body. Just because we don't find these inconsistencies in our imaginations is hardly however any good assurance that they don't actually exists.

[chuhokyinhkbuas]

so you assume 1+1=2 to prove that 1+1=2??? In 7:01, you already assume dualism is true by stating that "bert" and "you" are separated, so further argument is meaningless.

[HeriJoensen]

I disagree with the second premise. You could not not have been your body as well. The mind is software that runs on the hardware that is the brain. The mind is an emergent property of the brain. We don't know nearly all about the brain yet, but to suppose that the mind can somehow be detached from the brain is just ridiculous.

[captainkielbasa]

this entire thing is propped up on vaguely defined assumptions

[Dennis]

The fallacy here is pretty simple. If Dualism is not true than the mind is a product of the body (brain). Even if you somehow manage to get an identical mind through a nother process that wouldn´t be the same. Like a clone of me isnt me even if he is identical. So that it couldnt be false that I am my body.
Your argument only makes sense if you presuppose that my mind is not product of my body so that it could be in an other body or without one.
What you saying is: Since the mind can be without the body - the mind can be without the body.

[MrFLAIMEBRAINE]

I have a question, when objects ( sutch as the watch ) are broken , are they not transformed from one form of matter to another ( exe. burning wood for fire, and the wood breaks down into ash and smoke particles)? Great video, keep up the good work

[nimim.markomikkila]

This kind of analytic philosophy isn´t really up to solving the mind-body-"problem":)

[lefteriseleftheriades]

I reject premise 1. If you don't then please follow the sophistry below:

If it's true that you are smart, then it could not have been false that you are smart
It could have been false that you are smart
Therefore: It's not true that you are smart

[jakuleg]

I found this video confusing as it seems to mix implicitely different concepts.
I can make an example:
- a piece of software running on my PC is definitely a material thing since it is a magnetic or electric pattern on my hard drive or flash drive which controls transistors on the CPU
- I would assume that nobody would argue that this software is "mental" or "non-material"
- If I move that piece of software onto another PC, it is still the same software, but it runs on another PC (if we grant, that the PC itself is not part of the "software").

Same thing here: "I" am electric/chemical patterns (or whatever) that run on a "human body" (called Bert). If I transfer this exact electric/chemical pattern to Bertha or to a non-human substrate like a quantum computer, I'm still "me", just running on other hardware.

So assuming, that I accept the hypothesis which excludes the body as being part of "me", "I" remain still a physical thing.

Therefore I think the following two concepts are mixed in one, but are actually different in nature:
a) I'm not equal to my body
b) I'm a non-material, mental thing

Proposition b) does not follow from a) and is definitely not equal to a).

[rletzin]

So is it me or are these videos rarely about proving or solving something and just talking? I only saw one "equation" at the end and that was it. The last video didn't even have anything that fully proved the point of it.

[thomaskist]

I am the wave not the water. But this does not mean a wave is immaterial and eternal.

[TheRaNetwork]

I think the noumenon is the objective aspect of reality. The phenomena of the universe is the subjective aspect of reality. All concepts like the body, the brain, time, motion, behavior, nouns and verbs are all subjective abstractions. The noumenon is beyond subjective understanding but yet it is speculated that the subjective aspect of reality is in fact a projection/ interpretation of the noumenal object. Therefore, in some sense, the noumenon is truly physical and the phenomena is the metaphysical. Or by the typical metaphors, the noumenon would be the "mind" and the phenomena would be the "body".
both aspects are equally real.
The noumenon is the objective state but the subjective phenomena is the assemblage of orderly experiences.
Rather than the body underlying mental activity, in my solipsistic philosophy, the MIND underlies concepts such as BODY.
So, in effect, I am proposing the reverse order of epiphenomenology.
There can be no mind without concepts nor concepts without a mind. Yet, time exists subjectively in the phenomena. So, the noumena would act as a causal generator or phenomena (as an illusion) but the phenomena would not generate the noumena other than as subjective abstractions of it - not adding to nor taking away from its integrity in any way.
However, there can be no proof of an objective reality beyond the phenomena. So. There can be no proof of a mind, or a physical nature underlying the abstract subjective reality.
All we can know exists is phenomena. And since we know it subjectively, we must presume that the mind and the body are both one and the same, as well as the physical and the metaphysical. And if all that exists is illusion, then illusion is a misnomer.
There is no reason to believe in a noumenon. This subjective reality is all that is necessary. And all interpretations and abstractions and concepts exist as equally valid elements of reality in a relativistic pluralism.