Metaphysics

1. Metaphysics

2. “After or next to Physics” Created by Aristotle (because it was written after his physics!)

3. What is Metaphysics? • “To reach beyond nature (physis) as we perceive it, and to discover the "true nature" of things, their ultimate essence and the reason for being.” • Metaphysics is the study of the basic structures and categories of what exists, or of reality. • The big question: how to work out a logical account of everything that we know or believe about existence • Concerned not only with the nature of things that exist in space and time, but also with the nature of things that might not.

4. Also known as… • Ontology • a branch of metaphysics relating to the nature and relations of being • a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of existence

5. Bell Ringer Review… • Define Metaphysics and Ontology • Agenda and Objectives: • Though notes and discussion students with identify metaphysical theories and its critics

6. Permanence and Change(Answer Questions below) • Are you the same person now as you were when you were born? Why/why not? • Are you the same person now as you were yesterday? Why/why not? • If you had been to a different school, would you be the same person? • If you had your limbs amputated and replaced with synthetic ones, would you still be you? • If you lost your fingerprints would you still be you? • If you changed brains would you still be you? • What are the essential factors that make up you?

7. Permanence and Change • questions to think about: • What makes something the same thing over a period of time? • What kinds of changes in a thing would make it a different thing? • So, If everything changes, is anything permanent? • And, If something is permanent, how can it be part of a system that changes?

8. Identity over time • We tend to consider ourselves and other people to be single identities who exist through time. • Even though many of our characteristics may change, we are known personally and legally as the same person at different points in time. • Many theories out there to support this.

9. First theory…Same Body Theory • Justification: The importance to be able to trace the existence of one body through a continuous spatio-temporal path. • continuous path through space and time will connect your current body to the body you will have in forty years’ time. • also point to the factor of causal continuity, (that what happens to the earlier body will have effects on the later body. ) • someone’s personality can change radically, depending on their experiences and circumstances, but they remain the same person because they inhabit the same physical self. • But, how can we say that the body of a baby is the same body as that of a teenager, and then of a 60-year old?

10. Challenges to this theory • Cosmetic surgery • Organ transplants • Facial Transplants • Brain Transplants??? • Multiple Personality theories • “Am I the same person if I carry the kidney, liver or heart that used to belong to someone else? “ • Would you still be “you” with a totally different face?

11. Isabelle Dinoire Before 2006 After

12. Left to right: Isabelle Dinoire before the dog attack, one year after the transplantation with makeup; and 18 months after the transplant without makeup.

13. Second Theory… Same Brain Theory • Critics- Are “you” nothing more than the electrical impulses and chemical activity of your brain? • Do you think that there is some kind of soul, or essence of “you”, that could not be captured and transplanted physically? • being the same person over time is a matter of having the same brain. • argues that if the brain in one body were switched with the brain in another body (i.e. a double transplant), the person or identity would follow the brain.

14. Third Theory Same Mind/Soul Theory • Critics: Neuroscientists are producing more evidence all the time that everything we associate with the mind has a physical explanation - i.e. can be located and accounted for within the brain. • Ex. brain damage can radically alter someone’s personality, removing some traits and capacities and adding others • What gives someone identity over time is their possession of the same mind. • Believe that the mind or soul is a different substance to any material thing – i.e. it is not physical like the brain and the body. • Basis for the theory of reincarnation. • seems no logical reason why the death of the body should harm the person – i.e. their mind – in any way.

15. Phineas Gage (1848)Phineas Gage Information

16. Fourth Theory Mental Connections Theory (memory Theory) • Critic: Unable to remember something-are we not that person who had those experiences of which we have no recollection? • Would you still be you if you had your memories erased? • argues that personal identity over time is a matter of being able to trace coherent connections and psychological characteristics over time (memories and experiences aka casual connections)

17. Some questions to think about… • Decide if you have direct or indirect memories of the following events in your life. • Your 16th B-day • Name of your best friend when you were 8. • The name of the lead singer of your favorite band • Title of the first book you ever read • Name of your favorite elementary school teacher

18. Podcast… • As you listen… • What illness caused Clive to have amnesia? • What seemed to help can some of his memory back? • Is Clive the same person before his amnesia?

19. Review! • What are the four theories dealing with identity over time? • Same body • Same brain • Same mind/soul • Memory theory

20. Phrenology • once considered a science, by which the personality traits of a person were determined by "reading" bumps and fissures in the skull. • based on the concept that the brain is the organ of the mind. • believed that the mind has a set of different mental faculties, with each particular faculty represented in a different area of the brain.

21. Question… • What makes a human being the same person over time, given after only a few months your body changes most of its cells?

22. The Problem of the Ship of Theseus

23. The Ship of Theseus is a grand, old, wooden battle ship. After sailing out to war, she returns damaged. Various small parts of the ship are replaced. This happens after all her ventures, and eventually large beams and other major structural features are replaced. Ultimately, over a period of many years, every part of the Ship of Theseus has been replaced. • Is it the same ship after all of this?

24. And now here is a twist. At the port where the ship was repaired, there is a shed in which an old man has been storing all the screws, nails, planks, beams and other parts that were removed from the ship and replaced over many years. One day, the old man decides that he will put all the parts back together to make a ship. And this is the result: we now have a very battered worn ship, just built, docked at the same port. Interestingly, although it has been newly put together, it looks much older than the other, and in fact every one of its parts is older. • So which ship should be called the original ship? Which shall we call the Ship of Theseus?   • Can you make a case for both?   • Now, what if one of them was destroyed - would that make any difference?

25. With your group try to categorize the following items… (Body, Mind, or Both)

26. Dreams • Beliefs • Pains • Thoughts • Feelings • Adrenalin Rush • Ears • Tongue • Heart • Touch • Heart ache • Wishes • Desires • Heart burn • Anxiety • Lust, • Anticipation • Mind • Body • Eyes • Sight • Hearing • Taste • Memories • Illusions • Bravery • Central Nervous System • Anxiety • Anger

27. Mind/Body Problem • Philosophy of mind is branch of philosophy that studies the concept of the mind, mental events, functions, properties and consciousness. • Mind-Body Problem concerns the relationship of the mind to the body. • Two major schools of thought that attempt to resolve this mind-body problem is Dualism and Monism.

28. Monism • belief that ultimate reality is entirely of one substance • Two types… • To describe the view that only matter, or the physical body, exist. (materialism) • To describe the view that only mind, or spirit, exist. (idealism)

29. Dualism • Dualismclaims that mind and matter are two separate categories. • The mind is a nonphysical substance. • Substance (Cartesian) Dualism-view that the universe contains two fundamental types of entity: mental and physical • Led by Descartes who was the first to identify the mind with consciousness and self-awareness and to distinguish this from the brain, which was the basis of intelligence. (minds and bodies are different kinds of entities.) • the mental is private, that though each of us has access to our own mind through introspection, no one can directly observe anyone else’s mind

30. Part II The Mind/Body Problem And are we truly free? Are we always responsible for what we do? Agenda and Objectives: Through questionnaire and notes students will identify the differences between Free Will and Determinism

31. The Mind/Body Problem • The mind allows us to engage in a wide range of activities. • To have self-awareness • To have dreams and hopes • To reason about the world • To communicate • To feel emotions • To perceive, smell, and touch the world.

32. Free will vs. Determinism (Am I really Free?)

33. True or False? • All events are caused. • We are responsible for all our actions. • In some situations people perform actions, but they are not responsible for what they do. • In each and every situation in my life, I could have acted otherwise than I in fact acted. • If we were to roll back time to the year 1950, history would unfold in the same way as it actually did (i.e., JFK would be shot in 1963, Obama would be elected in 2008, etc.). • God knows what will happen in the future. He knows especially what will happen in my life later on; that is, he knows when I will die and what I will have for dinner tomorrow night, etc. • Nobody (not even God) can know what will happen in the future because the future has not yet happened.

34. True or False? • If I had experienced a different childhood, then I would make different decisions right now. • Even if one has a terrible childhood, one still can pull oneself together and make free and responsible choices about one’s life. • Some people have no choice when it comes to drinking alcohol. They are bound to become alcoholics. • We sometimes act on desires that are not our own, but which are implanted in us by advertising or peer pressure.

35. Bell Ringer: Responsible or Not? • A very drunk person decided that he can still drive home. • A student who has been told by everybody that he is bad at Math fails another math exam. • A person who had a back injury is told to take painkillers, then he becomes addicted. • A 15 yr old girl who has been told all her life by her mother that she is too ‘fat’ becomes anorexic • A 15 yr old boy who grows up in a violent neighborhood drops out of school and starts selling drugs. • A person who is chronically depressed and with out health insurance, and therefore without medical treatment for the depression, commits suicide. • A 55 yr old man takes his first Viagra pill. The pill has a very strong effect. He subsequently decides to spend about $1000 on a sex hotline.

36. A question to ask… • What is Freedom? • “surface freedom” • Being able to ‘do what you want’ • Being free to act, and choose, as you will • BUT: what if ‘what you will’ is not under your control?

37. Another question… • Why is freedom important? • We ‘feel’ that we are free; that we are the originators of our own actions • We need to be free in order to be responsible for our actions

38. Welcome Back • Bell ringer….What is free will? • Agenda and objectives: Through notes/discussion students will identify the various theories of Free Will

39. Free Will • The freedom of personal choice • Being an agent capable of influencing the world • Source of ones own actions • Actions and choices are “up-to-us”

40. The main Philosophical problem is to explain how the past is connected with the future and what impact this connection has on our ability to make free choices.

41. Against free will-Determinism(Freedom is an illusion!) • The assertion that every event in the universe has a cause, and, since human acts are events, they also have causes. • Furthermore, if every event/action has a cause, then every event/action is predictable. • Theory that the future is fixed by the past.

42. Argument against Free Will(for Determinism) • 1 – All events have causes. • 2 – Our actions are events. • 3 – All caused events are determined by the past. C1 –Therefore, our actions are determined by the past. • 4 – If our actions are determined by the past, then we have no power to act other than we do indeed act. • 5 – If we have no power to act other than how we do act, then we have no free will. C2 – Therefore, we have no free will.

43. Could we be mistaken about‘feeling free’?

44. “Let us imagine a man who, while standing on the street, would say to himself: ‘It is six o’clock in the evening, the working day is over. Now I can go for a walk, or I can go to the club; I can also climb up the tower to see the sun set; I can go to the theatre; I can visit this friend or that one; indeed, I also can run out of the gate, into the wide world and never return. • “All this is strictly up to me; in this I have complete freedom. But still, I shall do none of these things now, but with just as free a will I shall go home to my wife.’ This is exactly as if water spoke to itself: ‘I can make high waves (yes! in the sea during a storm), I can rush down hill (yes! in the river bed), I can plunge down foaming and gushing (yes! in the fountain) I can, finally, boil away and disappear (yes! at certain temperature); but I am doing none of these things now, and am voluntarily remaining quiet and clear in the reflecting pond.” • 19th Century, Arthur Schopenhauer

45. The point of Schopenhauer? • is that we do not lose our sense of freedom even if our future is already determined. • You have the ability to think about all your choices, but given your past, you will choose the one most logical.

46. Limitations to Free Will • Constraints- one is constrained from acting as he or she would normally act given a choice. • Obstacles- prevents an action

47. Going Further-Hard Determinism • The past completely determines the future • The belief that free will is an illusion • People are not morally responsible for their actions • The key is Causality, that the past causes the future. Causality is the link which determines how the future will look like (relationship between events.)

48. Objections… • cannot predict how people will choose or act when they have had a chance to think through their decision.  • Furthermore, it cannot account for our ability to challenge and change the attitudes and desires that we have learned. • Determinism assumes that there is only one way to explain behavior (causes), when in fact there is another way of explaining behavior (reasons) which is just as good.

49. Argument against Determinism • 1 – If hard determinism is true, then we have no free will. • 2 – If we have no free will, then we are not responsible for our actions. • 3 – We are responsible for our actions! C1 – Therefore, hard determinism is false.

50. Indeterminism • Some events are not caused by anything • they are pure chance events; they simply happen, having nothing to do with the person doing it. • Example: Tourette’s syndrome.