Cartesian Dualism

Dualism:

 is the theory that the mental and the physical—or mind and body or mind and brain—are, in some sense,
radically different kinds of thing.
 Discussion about dualism, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to
consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world.

-> Distinguish three claims - the real distinction, substance dualism and property dualism:

(RD) Mind and body could each exist apart and are therefore really distinct substances.

(SD) There are essentially two kinds of matter. Any substance with material properties lacks mental
properties, and any substance with mental properties lacks material properties.

(PD) Mental properties and material properties are mutually exclusive

-> Note that one could accept (PD) but reject (SD): one could allow that a single substance had properties of two
distinctively different sorts. We can see Descartes as arguing from (SD) and (PD) to (RD).

Descartes – Cartesian Dualism:

 Dualism = material and mental substances are distinctly separate (This is because mental substances are not
extended in space, and material substances are composed purely of extension in space).
 The mind is thought by Descartes to exist in relation to the human Pineal gland although they are un-
extended.

-> Mind and body are two distinct separate kinds of substances // Descartes has 3 arguments for this:

(#1) Argument from conceivability

 If it’s possible for us to conceive that our body and mind are distinct, then they must be.

(#2) Argument from doubt

 We cannot doubt that we are cognitive being (thinking beings) – can doubt body, but not mind

(#3) Argument from Divisibility

 Can’t imagine any separation from one aspect to another aspect of the mind, unlike how we can lose an
aspect of our bodies.

Problems w/ (#1) Argument from conceivability:

P1) I can conceive myself existing without my body
P2) If I can conceive x existing without y, then it is possible for x to exist without y
P3) It is possible for me to exist without my body (from P2 & 3)
C) I am not identical with my body. I and my body are in reality distinct (from P3)

Responses:

1) reject P1 - can you really conceive yourself existing without a body?

2) reject P2 - P2 is a ‘conceivability implies possibility’ principle.

e.g. we can conceive that the morning star exists without the evening star, yet this is impossible because they are
in fact identical: they are both Venus.

Problems w/ (#2) Argument from doubt:

P1) My mind has the property that I cannot doubt its existence
P2) My body has the property that I can doubt its existence
C) Therefore, my mind is distinct from my body

Responses:

1) Problem with both premises: is ‘being doubtable’ really a property in the right sense?
2) implicitly relies on ‘Leibniz’s Law’ - holds that x and y are identical if and only if for any property x has, y has,
and for any property y has, x has
- formulation of LL needs to refer to properties, not descriptions or predicates
- to be an object of doubt is not a property
- to be able to doubt the body’s existence, but not the mind’s existence, doesn’t imply mind + body have diff.
properties  doesn’t imply that they are not the same substance!

Problems w/ (#3) Argument from divisibility:

P1) All extended things are divisible

P2) No minds are divisible
C) No minds are extended things

Responses:

1) Problem with P2: is the mind really indivisible?

-> Descartes argues:
“When I think about my mind, I can’t distinguish any parts; I understand myself to be a single, unified thing”

2) Leads to more problems:

  Now, we know that something will have been taken away from my mind if portion of brain is removed.
Only way to answer this is to assume the mind is a nonmaterial substance distinct from the brain = question
begging.
 Our minds are divided into conscious and sub-conscious? And, some mental illnesses (e.g. DID) suggest
that the mind can be divided? Perhaps Descartes reply that minds are ‘divisible’ in different way to bodies:
bodies are spatially divisible, while minds are only functionally divisible.
 is everything that is material divisible? Including quantum gravity loops or spacetime strings? If there are
indivisible material bodies, then even if the mind is indivisible this won’t necessarily mean it isn’t material.

Arguments against Cartesian Dualism

Interactionist dualism - Bodies occupy space:

 If one material body is filling a space, then another material body cannot at the same time fill that space.
 “Extension in length, breadth and depth” – defining feature of material bodies, in a way that does not apply
to immaterial minds
 Mind and body compose a certain unity (diff. substances but still related somehow)

Problem I: The Interaction Problem

 Causation - something x causes another thing y

o Mental (mind) events can cause physical events (body)
o Material events cause mental events
o Mental events cause mental events (e.g. memories causing sadness)
 Good reasons for dualists to be interactionist dualists – often thing there is causation between material and
mental events Descartes committed to interactionist dualism

-> MAIN ISSUE one of the oldest problems for dualism is to explain how M+B interact w/ each other.

 BODY-BODY interaction is easily explained by Descartes in his Physics

 MIND-BODY causation is a problem

-> Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia poses this problem to Descartes in 1643

  We can only understand material causation. So, if the mental is non-material, then we have no
understanding of mental-mental causation or material-mental causation
 How can a non-extended mind come into contact with an extended material thing?

- Responses:

1) Mind-body causation depends upon the mind-body union; perhaps there is something special about this that
allows the mind and body to causally affect one another

o Has not really offered an account of how this would work – explanatory circle

2) Mind-body causation is a ‘primitive notion’, and happens all the time. Fundamental + intelligible in its own
right. Can’t be explained in anything more than basic ideas.

o However, only works if we understand the mind-body union/interaction…do we? Ofc, doesn’t mean we
won’t in the future
o i.e. the fact we don’t currently understand mind-body interaction doesn’t mean it doesn’t occur – doesn’t
mean Descartes’ propositions are false

-> Jaegwon Kim poses – How can minds affect bodies and how can bodies affect minds?

 Response: Descartes thought the Pineal Gland was special

o Pineal Gland is the locus of the mind-body interaction – gland moved by soul moves animals’ spirits
which cause the body to move.
o Immaterial mind can tell the brain to do something, and the Pineal gland, through animal spirits, cause
action within the body.

Problem II: The argument from the causal closure of the physical

 Modern science assumes that a material world is a causally closed system – all causes and effects in the
material world that is seen has a material cause.
o A commitment to the causally closed nature of the universe is reflected in physics by conservation
principles: mass and energy are convertible, but the total amount of mass-energy is constant.
o This is a problem for immaterial mind

Problem III: The pairing problem

  For one event x to cause another event y, there must be a causal relation between them on a metaphysical
level (we don’t have direct access to this so we posit a ‘pairing relation’)
o E.g. two guns shoot at same time, trace chain to see which bullet from which gun
 Importantly, Kim argues that we can only do this if the causal relations hold between two things located in
space.
o Cannot trace the desire (which is non-physical) and the event that comes from the desire
o Substance dualism is unintelligible – cannot provide a pairing between two events.
 This is a problem for any kind of causation using immaterial minds, both mind-body as well as mind-mind.

-> Responses

1) Souls might be immaterial, but located in space.

- Kim argues: What keeps the soul at that particular place? How does my soul just tag along w/ my body?

2) Perhaps Kim’s argument relies on faulty assumptions about causation. Does his ‘pairing requirement’ rule out
the possibility of ‘action at a distance’

Concluding Descartes’ Dualism

Summary
- The mind is not identical to the body
- Bodies are defined by Descartes as things which have extension. Since minds are not identical to any bodies,
minds do not have extension
- Bodies sometimes cause effects in minds, and minds sometimes cause effects in bodies

Strengths
- it accords nicely with common sense
- it does justice to the intuition of ‘deisticness’, that the qualities of conscious experience differ dramatically from
qualities of material bodies

Weaknesses:
- Can it reply to the three problems above?

Alternatives

Reject dualism altogether, in favour of theories like...

- Materialism: the mind is identified with the body e.g. behaviourism, functionalism
- Idealism: the mind and body are both immaterial or thinking beings (e.g. Berkeley)

Personal Identity

Three main theories of personal identity

-> Substance dualism

  A person - such as ‘I’, myself - is a mental substance.
o E.g. Descartes holds the soul is an immaterial substance, and it is the soul that constitutes one’s essence
‘by which I am what I am’; in contrast, the body is merely something to which the soul is ‘closely
joined.’
 Or Ralph Cudworth, argues that ‘I’ am a partless, immaterial soul: ‘And this is properly called, I My Self,
not the Extended Bulk, of the Body... but an unextended and Indivisible Unity, wherein all Lines Meet, and
Concentre’.
o On this view, the persistence of this mental substance is what personal identity consists in: I do not
depend on any body in order to be and continue being me, which is why I can survive after death.

-> Bodily theory of personal identity

 ‘I’ am my body. A person is numerically identical to something else existing at a different time if and only if
some material bodily relation holds between them, such as being the same body, biological organism or
animal.
o This view needn’t be committed to the position that I must retain precisely the same bits of matter to
persist over time. Otherwise, it would be subject to ‘ship of Theseus’ objection.

-> Psychological accounts;

 A person is some kind of thinking thing.

o It claims two people are numerically identical if and only if certain psychological relations hold
between them, such as memories or desires or beliefs. Locke was arguably the first philosopher to
develop this account, and this is what we’ll be looking at next.

Locke’s Psychological account

 Main motivation due to ethical concerns

 Understand ‘person’ to be a forensic term appropriating actions and their merit — term ‘person’ suitable to
be used in enquiries (e.g. court of law), concerned with guilt/innocence
 Understanding as a ‘person’ necessary to hold people morally responsible for past actions, such that people
may be rewarded or punished.
o Judgement in the life and the afterlife
o Person will be considered the same as those who committed a crime
o Combining matter is identity

What is a Person?

“A thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking
thing in a different time/place.”

 Locke’s account separates the term human being from person.

 Person = thinking, intelligent being that has reason & reflection and can consider itself as itself
 Consciousness always accompanies thinking Locke argues
 o Distinguishes one thinking thing from all other thinking things - this is what Locke refers to as
personal identity (i.e. the sameness of a rational being)
 Immediately distinguishes being a person from being a member of the biological species; homo-sapiens
 Allows for human non-persons - zygotes or brain-dead patients.
 Allows for non-human persons - Martians, disembodied ghosts

How persons persist over time

 In Locke’s view, you are the same person as a past person if you can remember their past actions or thoughts
- needs to have same consciousness

-> distinguishing ‘person’ from ‘man’

 Cobbler example – If consciousness of a prince enters cobbler’s body, identity would still be the prince’s as
a person has psychological connectedness with its existence over time and that is the prince’s.
o Also, everyone can ‘see’ that the prince is the person occupying the cobbler’s body (we associate his
traits/character etc…)
 What about if someone forgets their memories and ‘changes’ into a diff. ‘person’?
 Same man but not same person (‘man’ defined by bodily account, ‘person’ defined by psychological acc.)

-> distinguishing ‘person’ from ‘soul’

 Possible that personal identity could be preserved throughout change of immaterial substance
o and that the same immaterial substance could support two diff. persons
 Amnesia example - say, Plato suffered total amnesia and subsequently developed a new consciousness, a
new person. His ‘soul’ is  supporting two diff. persons
 DID example - multiple personalities living within one body/one soul
 Theoretical possibility of simulating same memories/beliefs etc.. of one person into another ‘soul’ - is there
now one ‘person’ occupying two ‘souls’?
o Similarly, what about ‘transferring’ the same consciousness into another vessel (soul)?

Implications/Problems of Locke’s Psychological account - X is a necessary condition for Y if it is

impossible to have Y without X
 Objections from lack of memory - X is a sufficient condition for Y if the
presence of X guarantees the presence of Y
1) Thomas Reid’s response - ‘Brave-officer objection’

 Identity is an equivalence relation, and part of that means

that it is ‘transitive’ — if X is identical to Y, and Y is identical to Z, then Z is identical to X.
 BUT, this can’t be the case for Locke, as sameness of memory is not only sufficient for personal identity
over time, it is also necessary for personal identity over time.
 o A = boy stole + flogged, B = brave officer who receives award (remembers A), C = old general (rem. B
but not A)
o So B remembers A, C remembers B, but consider C doesn’t remember A!
o As C doesn’t remember the flogging, C  can’t be identical to A as he doesn’t remember A’s actions.
o But, if one accepts that a person’s identity only exists as far back one’s consciousness extends + the
transitivity of identity, which Locke doesn’t want to deny, C both is and isn’t the same as A
 Therefore, Locke’s argument commits him to an absurdity — failure of transitivity (generated paradox)

-> Response to Reid from John Perry

 Introduces idea of ‘ancestral relation’ where if each individual is related to the other by ‘R’ (B has R to A, C
has R to B), the entirety of A-C are related
 i.e. B contains memory of experience from A, C contains memory of experience from B, therefore the
‘continuity of memory’ holds
o its not as rigid as needing C to remember exactly everything from A

2) Locke acknowledges the following cases

-> Sleep, forgetfulness, drunkenness, and amnesia

 Locke seems to willingly accept the consequences of his theory in all these cases whereby there is a
difference of persons

3) Further implications on Justice Theory;

 One can’t be punished for what the same man/substance did when it can’t be conscious of it now
o Possibility to  avoid such punishment by somehow forcing legitimate memory loss?
o What about accidental drunkenness? What about scopolamine?
o Could you be acting as a ‘vessel’ for someone else’s evil intentions?
 Though Locke agrees sober person ≠ drunk person, he still argues that the punishment against them is in
some sense acceptable as one should answer for their actions (judicially speaking)
o ‘not responsible for one’s free actions ≠ not responsible for one’s actions’

 Objections from too many memories

-> Paramnesia/De ja vu - when someone (seems to) remember actions/experiences which aren’t theirs

 J.L. Mackie argues (against Williams) that it is true that we commonly use bodily continuity as evidence
for/against the truth of memory claims.
o HOWEVER, claims this is only evidence — not part of genuinely calling something memory
 In fact, such ‘evidence’ could be overturned (e.g. by remarkably accurate memory claim)
 Would have to take seriously the idea that A was remembering, by some direct causal link, B’s experiences.
   for Mackie, paramnesia is no real problem for the psychological account of identity.

Bodily accounts of personal identity

“Personal identity is constituted by sameness of body”

 This view needn’t be committed to position that one must retain precisely same bits of matter persisting over
time.
o Otherwise would be subject to the ‘Ship of Theseus’ objections

-> Bernard Williams’ bodily account

 Tries to show that bodily continuity is a necessary condition of personal identity, and memory alone could
not be a sufficient condition of it (against Locke).
 Similarly, bodily identity is not sufficient for personal identity - should ALSO take into account
psychological factors such as memory, but bodily account is NECESSARY.
 Similarly, memory criterion CANNOT stand alone, but is reliant upon bodily continuity
o To exclude paramnesia, we have to distinguish genuine from apparent memory
o However, Williams argues that we can only do that by appealing to BODILY continuity

-> Judith Thompson’s bodily account

 Argues ‘we are our bodies’ — natural intuition to resist view, because of thoughts about death
 Let’s say someone dies in their sleep — person’s body will persist over time before decomposing
o We may have intuition that the person is gone, but their body is still here  that person isn’t identical
to their body? — Thompson says we MUST RESIST this
 For Thomson, sameness of body is necessary and sufficient for personal identity
o Human beings are social creatures — how people react to us, and our bodily actions, really affects who
we are.
o Body is the only way that our minds affect the world — really matter.
o It is horrifying to imagine someone else inhabiting our bodies, pretending to be us
 Bodily account of identity is how ‘laypeople’ (non-philosophers) almost always think of identity

Teleportation and Parfit

-> Teleportation - a fictional method by which people or objects travel from one point to another, w/out having to
go through the space in between

Teleportation as an objection to the bodily account

 Imagine a teleportation machine scans your body and transmits info to second machine, where a new ‘you’
is reconstructed out of entirely new set of atoms (old body destroyed)
  At the end, you emerge w/ all of the same beliefs, memories & psychological states you had before
 Do you think you would be the same person?
o If YES, then this thought experiment objects the bodily account
o i.e. sameness of consciousness is necessary and sufficient for personal identity

Teleportation as an objection to the psychological account

 Above, scanning process destroys original body on Earth. But what if original body wasn’t destroyed? Are
‘you’ the person on Earth, or on Mars?
 Now, what if the machine transmits to a third machine on Pluto?
o Let’s call them: Jeff-E, Jeff-M & Jeff-P
o We can say: Jeff-E = Jeff-M and Jeff-E = Jeff-P, however also, Jeff-P ≠ Jeff-M
 But identity is a transitive relation, so Jeff-P should = Jeff-M  we’ve generated a paradox (Jeff-P is both =
and ≠ to Jeff-M)

-> Problem for psychological + bodily account, but have response from Derek Parfit

 Parfit argues that no view of personal identity can meet the following two requirements:

(1) Whether a future person will be me must depend only on intrinsic properties. It can’t depend on what
happens to other people.
(2) Since personal identity is of great importance, whether a future person is me cannot depend on a trivial fact

 Parfit thinks that if there is such a thing as personal identity, so some view must be able to meet both (1) and
(2).
 But, evaluating the B+P accounts show they aren’t successful in doing so

Parfit against psychological account

 We could revise this account to overcome the teleportation case:

o Person A is identical to Person B (who exists at time t) if and only if:
(i) Person A and Person B are psychologically continuous and
(ii) there’s no person other than Person B at t who is psychologically continuous with Person A
 But this doesn’t satisfy Parfit’s case!
o violates (1) because it depends on what happens to other people. And perhaps also trivial  violates (2)

Parfit against bodily account (fission thought experiment)

  Let’s say Williams is right to say that our brains are a necessary condition of personal identity.
 What if we could divide a brain in half, and place one half in a different human body?
o Would none, one or both of the resulting two people be identical w/ the original one?
 We have:
Brain X = Brain-half a
Brain X = Brain-half BUT Brain-half a ≠ Brain half b
 We could argue: b
o Person A is identical to B if and only if B has enough of A’s brain to be a living person, and no one else
does.
 Again, doesn’t satisfy Parfit’s case for same reasons as above

Parfit’s conclusion

 Although Parfit thinks psychological continuity (beliefs, desires, memories) matters, the teleportation case
shows that psychological continuity is not identity.
  he thinks we should give up on caring about personal identity
o whether it is me that survives teleportation doesn’t really matter - what matters is whether there is
someone psychologically continuous with me.
o “identity is not what matters in survival”
o Parfit thinks that one’s concern for one’s own future existence and well-being is a derivative concern: a
concern not for an end, but for a means to an end.
o The end being the existence + well-being of a future person/s, related to oneself by certain relations of
psychological continuity (though aren’t identical to original)

Hume’s Bundle Theory

Hume’s bundle theory of selves

-> Rather than asking whether ‘you’ would be the same person after teleportation, we might think there is no
‘you’ at all, as an entity that persists through time

 Hume believes: “what we call a mind, is nothing but a heap or collection of different perceptions, united
together by certain relations (where a ‘perfect identity’ is but a mere illusion)”
 He elaborates: “when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular
perception or other, of heat or cold, pain or pleasure…. I never can catch myself at any time without a
perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.”
  Sure, we may have ‘memories’, but even a memory can change the size of a room, or colour of a car (quote
Memento)
 Hume suggests ppl believe in a ‘self’ because if something changes gradually over time, we are used to
referring to it as the same thing, even if it’s actually no longer the same thing (e.g. Ship of Theseus)
 However, Hume argues there are no paradoxes here - the ship simply isn’t identical over time. The only
question is how we should talk about things - i.e. case of semantics?
o Hume thinks the case of the ‘self’ is especially prone to identity talk, because of the ‘inconceivable
rapidity’ and ‘perpetual flux and movement’ of our perceptions.
 The only way to avoid this conclusion would be to posit something other than the ‘self’ which remains the
same. But what?

Objections to Hume’s bundle theory

1) So why care about our past/future selves?

 Obviously we should care if we are identical to ourselves over time (i.e. identity matters)
o However is this true? Is it really a future, identical self we’re caring for, or is it the illusory prospect of
maintaining what we believe to be an identical ‘self’?
o It’s obvious we appear to act by maximizing our utility (e.g. we study in uni now in hopes to prosper in
the future to lead a comfortable life), however, still fails to directly address an actual persistent ‘self’
over time
 i.e. our caring for future selves doesn’t immediately imply the persistence of ‘self’
o we may argue that
 Hume would care out of ‘sympathy’ - i.e. concern for others - so he just happens to be more concerned for
the future person also known as Hume
o But an explanation for Hume won’t suffice universally - not everyone will feel this inclination to act
out of ‘sympathy’

2) Thoughts w/out a thinker? - Berkeley

 Noonan points out: “The concept of someone’s having a perception is logically prior to the concept of a
perception… the relation between the self and its perceptions is analogous to that between the sea and its
waves.”
o would explain why Hume keeps talking as if he has a self: “I never can catch myself at any time without
a perception...”
 Hume might respond:
o Analogy of sea and waves begs the question.
o Talk in terms of ‘I’ is just a useful manner of talking: all such talk can be translated into talk without
‘I’. No commitment to an enduring self.
 o What surveys the perceptions? Nothing. Instead there are current perceptions and memories of previous
perceptions
 Noonan thinks: “Hume’s wrong to think identity must be incompatible with change... Persons, in particular,
are entities which can survive many changes without ceasing to exist.”
o This is weak - meaning of ‘person’ is precisely what is being debated.

Concluding thoughts

 In a sense, bundle theorist denies the existence of persons.

 There are persons/subjects semantically speaking, however, if persons are believed to be more than this (i.e.
separately existing things, distinct from brains/bodies/mental states/events - the bundle theorist denies this.

Strengths:

- neatly answers the teleportation problem.

- selves never endure over time, so no question of whether you are the ‘same person’ as before the teleportation. -
seems to work better than the bodily or psychological accounts

Weaknesses:

- Hard to accept? Maybe that makes it implausible?

- But only because it goes strongly against our intuitions, yet otherwise, appears the most logical w/ least
significant objections! (as Hume believes: we are more influenced by our feelings than reasons)
- what about the ‘feeling’ of familiarity of our mental landscape? i.e. the unique way we feel + react to events ->
perhaps yet again an illusory bundle effect of diff. factors

Time I : Presentism & Eternalism

-> Presentism, Eternalism + Growing block theory are theories on what exists

Presentism

 Only presently existing things exist (I exist, dinosaurs do not)

 Which moment is the present one changes from moment to moment
o The moment dinosaurs existed was once present, the moment sentient robots are created will become
present
 The presentist argues there is something ‘special’ about the present moment (eternalists say no, diff povs)

Eternalism

 Past, present and future things exist

 But ofc dinosaurs don’t exist now, they exist, but aren’t spatiotemporally local
 o ‘Now’ is an indexical notion - to exist ‘now’ is to be simultaneous with me
o Everyone exists ‘now’ from their own point of view
 AKA four-dimensionalism - four dimensional block of spacetime in which all events, past, present and
future, are located. Events ordered by being earlier than, later than, or simultaneous with, one another.

Arguments FOR Presentism

-> Presentism is supposedly intuitively true (adopted by laypeople)

-> Accounting for the flow of time

 Time seems to flow: as though from the future -> present -> past
 temporal flow is result of the coming into and passing out of existence of progressive presents
o seems as though time flows, and our world is constantly changing, because it is.
 BUT by saying something flows from future into present, you’re implying that future entity exists (and that
there is a ‘past’ to recede into)
o could reinterpret as ‘what’s present changes’ - but still requires diff. in character/content - which is still
incompatible

-> Asymmetric attitudes towards future + past allowed

 We think past = fixed, and future = open (asymmetric attitude)

 Future usually spoken in terms of possibilities (could, might etc…) - seems to imply it’s not fixed
o Eternalists believe future just as real/present as past  is fixed so to speak

Arguments AGAINST Presentism

 Problem w/ truthmaking
 Presentist claims truths about the past, but denies these objects exist
 But truthmaker principle says: “for every truth T, there exists an entity - a ‘truthmaker’ - whose existence
suffices for the truth of T” (Sider, 2001)
  grounding objection:

(P1) Truths about past possess truthmakers

(P2) If presentism is true, then truths about the past lack truthmakers

(C) Hence, presentism is false

-> Response #1 - completely deny there are truths about the past

 Too bold a claim (dinosaurs did exist, Obama was the POTUS)

-> Response #2 - deny truthmaker theory

 Could argue not all truths require a truthmaker

 o but theorists say no plausible way to restrict theory w/out rejecting altogether
 Also argue the theory has its own problems - How does a truthmaker ‘make’ T true? What about
truthmakers for -ve truths?

-> Response #3 - deny P2  C

 formulate the principle instead as truth is supervenient on being

o allows present truthmakers to make past truths true (e.g. Tutankhamun’s mummy indicates he once
existed)
 But Sider argued that these expressions are mere property ascriptions that are ‘backward-oriented’
o we are inferring from the belief that P is true (Tutankhamun existed) that the world should  bear
feature X (Tutankhamun’s mummy lies in his tomb) instead of inferring P from X
o & ascribing property “having once existed” to Tutankhamun is distinct from what he actually is now (a
mummy in a tomb)  it kind of cheats as the property P points BEYOND the current state of the world

-> Response #4 - use determinism as support

 if determinism is true, then present moment (+ determinism) would ground past/future truths
 but this feature leaves the future fixed - which would make the theory substantially distinct from what we
generally understand (past no more, future yet to be) -> like ‘moving spotlight’ theory
o if something is already predetermined, does it not already somewhat ‘exist’ perhaps not materially as an
eternalist might argue, but in some otherwise transcendent manner (supports eternalism more)

Incompatibility w/ special relativity

 Presentism: all physical events simultaneous w/ each other  there is an objective present (regardless of our
knowledge/beliefs)
 special relativity (STR) holds that space + time are relative (rather than absolute) as supported by the two
postulates:
(A1) Light travels at the same speed no matter how fast you’re travelling
(A2) The laws of nature are invariant in all non-accelerating frames of reference
 consequences of STR: time dilation, relativity of simultaneity
 If accept presentism + STR, impossible to determine undoubtedly whether two events happen at same time
if those events are spatially distinct (e.g. Einstein’s train thought experiment)
  Argument against presentism from STR:
(P1) STR is true
(P2) If STR is true, then presentism must be false
(C) Thus, presentism is false

-> Response #1 - deny P1

 means we need to reformulate STR and A1/A2

 endorse neo-Lorentzian account:
o there exists a “preferred” frame of reference that can be used to determine what is present.
o hom wever, such a thing supposedly ‘concealed’ by nature in that no matter our efforts at measuring the
speed of light changing (in relative motion), always yield same results since measuring tools somehow
change as well (e.g. clocks slow down as they travel at increasing speeds).
 still not convincing enough as an alternative since we’d have to posit an unobservable frame of reference
(unmeasurable)

-> Response #2 - reject P2

 could argue compatibility of the two, but arguments primarily involve adopting observer-dependent notion
(inevitable consequence of accommodating both)
o but perhaps changes nature of presentism too dramatically (now there isn’t an objective present??)

Time II : Growing Block View

 past and present exist, but the future does not.

o as present moves and time goes by, the aggregation of things that exist gets bigger. It’s a ‘block’ of
time that’s ‘growing’.
 there’s an objective ‘now’, but unlike presentism, the current moment could be equally in the past than in
the present (actually more likely in the past).
 BUT, new problem: how do you know ‘now’ is now/present?
o in fact current time more likely to be in past because the objective present ‘slice’ would take up a much
smaller proportion of the entire growing block/salami than the past ‘slice’ would.

-> Response #1 - the real but dead past (Peter Forrest)

 there’s a kind of evidence that we have for our being at present, that is not available to people at non-present
times.
o Forrest is arguing that the present and past can be distinguished because ‘activities’ (e.g. consciousness)
only occur on the boundary of reality
o  in the past, consciousness ceases to exist + we’d be zombies
Concluding thoughts on time

 Presentism
o needs to answer problems on truthmaking + SRT + time travel
o but intuitive to most (past feels more ‘real’ to us than fut. because we know more about it from
memories/records etc…
 Eternalism
o needs to explain apparent flow of time
o still the most logical consequence of physics, even if somewhat counter-intuitive
 Growing block theory
o needs to explain why now is now

Fatalism and Determinism

 Fatalism - we cannot do other than what we do

 Many diff. kinds, e.g:
o logical/metaphysical fatalism -> concerns future truths
o determinism (physical fatalism) -> concerns physical world

Logical fatalism

 says there is a kind of necessity to every actual thing.

 premised as follows:
P1) For every statement p, either p or ¬p is true.
P2) So it is either true that it will rain tomorrow, or it is true that it will not rain tomorrow.
C) So it is already fixed whether or not it will rain tomorrow
 same argument can be made for any statement about future events, so everything that happens, happens of
necessity (either P1 or P2 must happen)

-> one way of avoiding fatalism - reject P1

  statement p or -p is neither true nor false

 one way is to adopt presentist/growing block view because now there is no future for there to be truths about
o because predictions are about the future, what makes them true or untrue is in the future, not in the
present. (truthmakers for future truths are in the future)
Causal Determinism

 holds that future events are ‘determined’, or fixed, through the physical world.
o current state of the universe + laws of nature determine the state of the universe at every point in the
future.
o combination of being determined by one’s surroundings/external stimuli/social interactions/physiology
 If determinism is true, covers both our own actions/decisions things (If you think our minds are physical) as
well as ‘non-minded’ physical things
o but also can apply even if mind is not physical
 Claims future is predictable
o ≠ “I can’t predict future  determinism is false”
o ofc we don’t/can’t know everything about universe/laws of nature

Problems w/ Determinism (+ is it true?)

 can’t/difficult to prove a posteriori (via experience) AND a priori (via reason)

 implications on ethics
o if aggression is deterministic, does this mean that aggressive people are not responsible for their own
actions? (A Clockwork Orange)
o redundancy of moral responsibility?
 Human beings seemingly very complex unlikely one determining factor controlling behavior?
o multiple contributing variables makes study too difficult
 Intuitive sense of freedom
o regret - apologizing + feeling that we could’ve done otherwise
o deliberation + planning (we appear to decide how to allocate time/resources)

Prescriptive vs. Descriptive Laws

 Prescriptive laws are:

o edicts (issued by an authority of power) - e.g. school principal
o violable (can be broken or not - e.g. keep off the grass sign)
o usually carry incentives (tax laws, when violated, will result in fines)
o can be altered (e.g. lifting ban on marijuana)
 Descriptive laws are:
o factual, not logical, truths (e.g. boiling point of water at sea level is 100C vs. every number has a
double)
 o always hold (e.g. F=ma, 2H2 + O2 2H2O are true on Earth & on Mars, in Mesozoic Era and 21st
century)

So do Laws of Nature govern our universe?

One can find in the writing of many contemporary scientists and philosophers two claims which – I allege – are
inconsistent with one another:

1) The laws of Nature are descriptions

2) The laws of Nature govern the world (or what happens does so in accord with the laws of Nature)

 #2 views laws of nature as prescriptive

 if we abandon view that they’re prescriptions, we can free will + causal determinism compatible

Determinism and Free Will

Views

 Hard determinism - phys. determinism true + free will impossible

 Compatibilism - phys. determinism true + free will possible
 Libertarianism - phys. determinism false + free will possible

Hard determinism

 Argument #1
o to have free will, we must have “the ability to do otherwise”, but if determinism is true, we don’t have
that ability  we don’t have free will.
 Argument #2
1) We have free will only if our actions are under our own control.
2) Our actions are determined by (are consequences of) the past and the laws of nature.
3) We have no control over the past or over the laws of nature.
4)  we have no control over our actions  we don’t have free will
 Problem #1: how to explain intuitive feeling of control/free-will?
o back to idea that laws of nature are descriptive (they describe regularities that have been observed in
nature)
o laws of man are prescriptive (e.g. marijuana illegal in Singapore,  possession results in penalty)
HOWEVER, laws of nature (e.g. Newton’s 1st law of motion) as far as we know are inviolable  if
someone broke it, it’d cease to be a law + there’d be a nobel prize awarded
 o think of laws of nature as a subclass of true descriptions of the world (whatever happens, there are true
descriptions to accompany)
o don’t think of LONs as existing independently in a transcendent realm, enforced by some supreme
being (that’d indicate prescription)
o by descriptive account, lawhood (n.b. not the laws themselves) is a part of the map not the territory i.e.
they primarily permit us to construct compressed descriptions of our reality (nature doesn’t flag these
regularities as law, we do) - anthropocentric
o  we can make choices (some trivial, e.g. buy newspaper, eat toast not cereal, others more
consequential e.g. buy house, get married) where these choices are NOT forced upon us/prescribed by
nature -> they simply reflect those regularities we observe to be ‘the law of nature’
o Our contrasting understanding of LONs + idea of choice presents the misconception of needing the
illusion of ‘free-will’
 Problem #2: Quantum mechanics seems to rule out determinism (quantum indeterminancy)
o The (apparent) randomness of the quantum world is well-documented: HUP, the double-slit
experiment, quantum entanglement, etc. all point to a probabilistic, not deterministic, universe
o well, QM doesn’t disprove determinism, it just complicates the task of arguing for it
o most simply, QM postulates that at the subatomic level, particles behave not in a deterministic fashion,
but randomly
 Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle:
1) our observation of an event has a significant effect on the event
2) it is impossible for a single observation to observe all relevant properties of an event.
o  consider ‘LaPlace’s Demon’ - if you knew every single piece of info (location, momentum etc..) for
every atom in the universe at a given time, you could correctly determine their past and future values
(via the laws of nature)
o ofc given HUP, we run into a problem where this isn’t possible, as at the quantum level, we can’t know
such features
o Assuming this is true, ‘the quantum world is indeterministic’ (assume because there are developing
arguments for a deterministic quantum world - manyworlds/nonlocality) -> doesn’t follow that we have
free will. Because random events ≠ ability to choose freely (do we control the prob. of events?)
o In fact, QM as arg. FOR free will is rather weak as bringing arg. down to a microscopic level ignores
the evidence for determinism on a macroscopic level AND unnecessarily complicates matters which
doesn’t work in its favor anyway
 Interesting: the formalism of QM is itself deterministic. Assuming you know the initial state of an isolated
quantum system, the system will evolve forward in time, following Schrodinger’s equation exactly. The
only aspect of quantum theory which is random is what happens when you make a measurement.
o apparent paradox can be reconciled by manyworlds interpretation
o the universe itself becomes a superposition of states w/ every possible outcome, while the
physicist randomly finds himself in one of those outcomes
 o  the universal wavefunction (containing all universes) would be deterministic, whilst the
measurer in one of those universes effectively "sees" non-determinism.
o WHICH to reiterate does not = free will
 Also, when subatomic particles aggregate (into things/objects) the irregularities cancel out statistically & so
we can then speak of nature as uniform and predictable
o ability to calculate such meticulous details requires infinite computational power - inconceivable to
human mind -  most translate this into idea of free will
o can explain ‘large-scale’ - e.g. why one might’ve entered into law (traits, upbringing, relations), but not
‘small-scale’ - e.g. why I typed a particular sentence the way I did, eye movements, abstract thought

Libertarianism

 Their def. of free will: where agent has ability to choose between two or more actions
 argue human minds stand outside nat. world (e.g. Cartesian dualism)  escape causal determinism
 e.g. we can’t choose when sun rises, but we can choose when we get out of bed
 Agent-causal theories
 agents have the power to intervene in the physical world
 actions are caused by agents, but this is in itself NOT determined by agent’s character/desires etc…(this
would be event causation)
o Chisholm: “each of us, when we act, is a prime mover unmoved”
o problem: If a free action was not caused by an event, then what is the difference between saying an
agent caused the event and simply saying the event happened on its own?
o to what should we ‘tack’ this ‘free act’ to if ‘I’ - the agent - am composed of the very desires/beliefs the
theory proposes not to be of any significance? How can I, or the previous, or future I, be responsible?
o raises problems of personal identity - which one agent is actually doing the choosing? can the
origination of actions really be tied to the substance of an agent?
 Event-causal theories
 specifically, Robert Kane’s theory related to the role of will power in decision making
 holds that: a free decision/action is one for which the agent is “ultimately responsible” (1996)
 UR for an action requires, if the action is CD’d, that the cause be a result (at least in part) of some action by
that agent that was not CD’d (self-forming actions - SFAs)
o i.e. ‘moments of indecision’ where agent experiences conflicting wills  faced with need to make a
choice (chosen as a result of her own effort, not from coercion/compulsion)
o not all acts are required to be undetermined, condition of UR only requires that some are (i.e. SFAs)
o SFAs form our character; inform our future choices, reasons & motivations
o  opportunity to make these character-forming decisions entails responsibility for such actions
 two diff. sets of beliefs/values build up in our brains by deterministic processes, then, we choose between
these two visions of who we want to be by means of a random quantum mechanical event.
-> Objection: not truly libertarian, but form of compatibilism

 although outcome of an SFA not determined, one's history up to the event is; so the fact that an SFA will
occur is also determined.
o no diff. than compatibilism: assert that even though our actions are determined, they’re free because
they are in accordance with our own wills, much like the outcome of an SFA
 Kane responds: diff. between causal indeterminism and compatibilism is "ultimate/originative control” - i.e.
UR assures the conditions for one's actions don’t lie before one's own birth.

-> Daniel Dennet: notes SFA not guaranteed  some don’t have FW? though appear the same?

 Other: moral responsibility presupposes free will.

 often think of an evil act as one done intentionally by a free agent who knew what he was doing + freely
chose to do so  morally responsible
o if someone did something accidentally or was compelled to do it, then not morally responsible for the
results of the action.
 So if we think that there is moral responsibility, & moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism,
then we will conclude that we have libertarian free will.
o most prominently endorsed by Peter van Inwagen in ‘An Essay on Free Will’.

-> Objection: compatibilists dispute the claim that moral responsibility is incompatible with determinism.

 Dennet vs. Frankfurt’s Jones + Black scenario

Compatibilism

 where a free act is merely a matter of doing what one wants/wills to do, even though they’re det. by external
events
 most suppose the concept of FW very closely connected to the concept of moral responsibility (i.e. FW is a
necessary condition for responsibility)
o acting w/ FW, on such views, is just to satisfy the metaphysical requirement of being responsible for
one's action.
 importance to the FW problem: includes presumed connection between FW + either agency, autonomy,
creativity or meaning in life