Unit 4: Mind, Bodies and Personal Identity
Related Reading:PDF files of the related reading have been attached for reference.
• Gilbert Ryle:"Descartes' Myth"
• Paul Churchland: "Eliminative Materialism"
• John Perry: "A Dialog on Personal Identity and Immortality"
• Explanatory Material:Power Point &Notes
Unit Questions:
Answer the following Questions: Indicate Page Number & Paragraph Supporting Answer
For the Following Questions (1 - 23) Refer to:
Gilbert Ryle:"Descartes' Myth"
Paul Churchland: "Eliminative Materialism"
Explanatory Material:Power Point& Notes
1. G. Ryle's project in the article is to refute the official doctrine.
a. True
b. False
2. Consider the 'official doctrine' summarized by G. Ryle early in his article: the mind-body separation and incompatibility. For each of the properties listed below, identify it as belonging to (applying to) the mind (as consciousness) or to the body (as matter) - as each property appears in G. Ryle's summary of the named doctrine.
• Occupying physical space. - Choose: (a) (b)
• Subject to mechanical laws. - Choose: (a) (b)
• Public. - Choose: (a) (b)
• Capable of being inspected by external observers. - Choose: (a) (b)
• Part of the external world. - Choose: (a) (b)
• Internal. - Choose: (a) (b)
• Private. - Choose: (a) (b)
• Not subject to mechanical laws. - Choose: (a) (b)
• Not in physical space. - Choose: (a) (b)
• Available for direct observation only to oneself. - Choose: (a) (b)
(a)Body
(b)Mind
3. G. Ryle explains why treating the mind as a separate entity from the body is a category mistake. For each example below, identify it as a category mistake, or as false but not a category mistake.
• Washington is dysfunctional.- Choose: (a) (b)
• McDonald's Corporation lied to its customers when it claimed that there was real chicken in the chicken nuggets.- Choose: (a) (b)
• We inspected every part of the engine but we still haven't located its power. - Choose: (a) (b)
• The U.S. Government has five branches of power.- Choose: (a) (b)
• Virtue is pink. - Choose: (a) (b)
• The Sun revolves around the Earth.- Choose: (a) (b)
(a)category mistake.
(b)False but NOT a category mistake.
4. G. Ryle's defends as correct what he calls the "double-life theory": human-life as physical-life distinct from but somehow connected to mental-life.
a. True
b. False
5. In section (3), G. Ryle explains that Descartes accepted, as Hobbes did, that human nature differs only in degree of complexity from a clockwork that functions according to strict mechanical laws.
a. True
b. False
6. G. Ryle argues that the second crux of the category error committed by Descartes or anyone who holds a dualist view of human nature (mind-body duality), is to consider the mind and the body as if they belonged to (or were) the same category.
a. True
b. False
7. G. Ryle explains that believing that the mind and the body belong to the same category, leads to the mistake of thinking that mechanistic laws that are known to govern interaction between physical bodies must have some counterpart (must somehow be also applicable to) mental processes, and also govern the relation between metal processes and physical ones.
Example:
- My thought that I am thirsty causes my willing to drink. (mental-to-mental)
- My will causes my hand to move. (mental-to--physical)
- My hand causes the cup to move. (physical-to-physical)
This chain of causation (deterministic laws of interaction) lead to all of the following irresolvable problems, except:
a. How to explain the physical world in terms of deterministic laws of cause-effect.
b. How to account for moral responsibility when every interaction occurs under rigid laws of cause-effect (note that I have to be the cause of my actions, or I cannot be held responsible or praised for them).
c. How freedom of the will fits in a chain of cause-effect relations.
d. How to explain mental process in less-than-rigid (allowing for exceptions) mechanistic laws in order to make room for freedom of the will but not lose the causal determination (or I lose responsibility or merit for action I could not have caused)
8. G. Ryle reminds us that the inner life of someone else, say Q, is available to person P (different from Q) based on all of the following, except:
a. Analogy between observed behavior of person Q and that of person P's own conduct in similar circumstances.
b. Problematic inferences by P from observed behavior of person Q.
c. Supposed arguments from bodily movements of person Q similar to person's P's own mental workings while P is engaging in bodily behavior similar to Q.
d. Person P has direct access to the events of the inner life of person Q.
9. All of the following are category mistakes of the kind as those discussed by Ryle (whether explicitly or not), except:
a. Learning about the role each member of a team plays in the respective sport, yet asking who plays the team-spirit role.
b. Meeting the parents and all of their three children, yet asking when they can meet the family.
c. Meeting the parents and two of their three children, yet asking when they can meet the third child.
d. Visiting each college and building of a university, yet asking when they can visit the university.
10. G. Ryle identifies as the "para-mechanical hypothesis" the type of category error that resulted in the erroneous belief that minds are ___________________ but different sorts of things from bodies while ___________________ processes are causes and effects but different sorts of causes and effects from bodily movements.
a. Blank 1: _________________________.
b. Blank 2: _________________________.
11. G. Ryle explains that the category error of talking about minds and bodies as 'existing' as if they belonged to the same category, lead to the other error of regarding minds as governed by non-mechanical laws (but laws of similar nature, nevertheless) of cause-effect (similar to those governing physical processes) just not as rigid as the physical ones (which allow for no exceptions, hence the term "rigid"). He explains that postulating (without evidence) the "only rather rigid" (rather than wholly rigid) nature of the laws presupposed to govern mental processes was required in order to account for all of the following, except:
a. Free will.
b. deterministic nature of physical systems.
c. choice and responsibility.
d. merit and blame (de-merit) for one's actions.
12. The phrase "the Ghost in the Machine" is used by G. Ryle in referring to the official dogma of mind-body dualism.
a. True
b. False
13. G. Ryle denies that there are mental processes such as doing long divisions or making a joke.
a. True
b. False
14. G. Ryle argues that "there occur mental processes" does not mean the same as "there occur physical processes".
a. True
b. False
15. P. Churchland argues that folk psychology is a reasonable interpretation of our inner nature, states and activities.
a. True
b. False
16. P. Churchland explains that, despite earlier theories about heat as a fluid held and traveling throughout bodies, it became known by the end of the 19th century that heat was not a ___________________ at all, but just the ___________________ of motion of the trillions of jostling molecules that make up the heated body itself.
a. Blank 1: _________________________.
b. Blank 2: _________________________.
17. P. Churchland reminds us that kinetic energy is a form of ___________________.
a. Blank 1: _________________________.
18. P. Churchland explains that observables (visual or otherwise) and non-observables are all understood in a particular conceptual framework, and that changing that framework changes the interpretation of that which we observe or infer. All examples below are offered to support this position on the role of a conceptual framework, except:
a. The phlogiston.
b. The motion of the starry sky relative to earth.
c. Witches.
d. A and B only.
e. A, B and C.
19. P. Churchland argues that when neuroscience will mature (as it is still under development) it will provide a conceptual revolution that will provide enormous benefits to humanity as it will be capable doing which of the following:
a. Understand the factors involved in learning.
b. Support the common-sense folk psychology.
c. Understand the varieties and causes of mental illness.
d. Explain behavior by appeal to neuropharmacological states.
e. Explain behavior as neural activity in specialized areas of the brain.
f. Understand the neural basis of emotions, intelligence and socialization.
20. P. Churchland explains that one reason (argument) why folk (classical) psychology, that has endured some 2000 years, will have to be replaced by eliminative materialism with support from neurosciences lies in the widespread ___________________, ___________________, and ___________________ failures of folk psychology, evident in its enduring inability to explain sleep, learning, intelligence, memory, the causes of mental illness.
a. Blank 1: _________________________.
b. Blank 2: _________________________.
c. Blank 3: _________________________.
21. P. Churchland explains that the bald statement of eliminative materialism is that the familiar mental states (such as pains, beliefs, desires, fears, and so forth) do not really exist.
a. True
b. False
22. Consider the following paragraph offered by P. Churchland in order to illustrate a classical error in reasoning (fallacy).
"My learned friend has stated that there is no such thing as vital spirit. But this statement is incoherent. For if it is true, then my friend does not have vital spirit, and must therefore be dead. But if he is dead, then his statement is just a string of noises, devoid of meaning or truth. Evidently, the assumption that a vitalism is true entails that it cannot be true!"
P. Churchland reminds us that this type of erroneous reasoning is the kind of argument that ___________________ the question.
a. Blank 1: _________________________.
23. P. Churchland concludes by affirming that current folk psychology will be completely (across-the-board) eliminated and replaced by the eliminative materialism.
a. True
b. False
__________________________________________________________________________________________
For the Following Questions (24 - 33) Refer to:
John Perry: "A Dialog on Personal Identity and Immortality"
24. Descartes distinguished between the mind as thinking substance and material objects that occupy space.
a. True
b. False
25. What possibility does Weirob ask to be argued for by Miller.
a. That she will merge with being and make contribution to life.
b. That she will gain an afterlife in some hereafter.
c. That her thinking, reasoning, and memory will survive.
26. Weirob uses John Locke's Essay on Understanding, arguing that personal identity amounts to different phases of consciousness in which the second one contains memories of earlier ones.
a. True
b. False
27. Weirob makes a distinction between actually remembering and merely seeming to remember.
a. True
b. False
28. According to Weirob, what is wrong with the suggestion that personal identity consists in sameness of soul?
a. If that were true, then we couldn't know who we are.
b. If that were true, then we wouldn't be able to see ourselves.
c. If that were true, then physicalism would be false.
d. If that were true, then God could connect our soul up with two bodies.
29. What is the challenge that Weirob issues to Miller?
a. To persuade her that an afterlife is likely.
b. To persuade her that an afterlife is possible.
c. To persuade her that belief in an afterlife is rational.
d. To persuade her that God exists.
30. According to Weirob, the case of Julia North amounts to a perfect counter example to the claim that a person is just a human body.
a. True
b. False
31. Miller uses an analogy for identity that does not satisfy Weirob's quest because what is called the same name is not necessarily identical.
a. True
b. False
32. Weirob argues that similarities of states of mind account for the identity between the mind or soul before and after death.
a. True
b. False
33. Miller argues that a person can be known as:
a. The soul.
b. The mind.
c. Consciousness.
d. Body
e. A, C, D
f. None of the above.
g. All of the above.