A full-blown essay on this is a big job, so I'm not going to try it
here. (I think there's a good introductary essay by Paul and Patricia
Churchland, so it might be worth looking for a book by them.)
Anyway, let me just throw a few things out there and maybe you can
turn up some good stuff by doning a google search on them....
The classic view on the mind-body was expressed by Renee Descartes and
is known as dualism. It argues that minds are composed of mental
stuff, and mental stuff is not the same as physical stuff. The two
types of stuff are completely separate; they are linked in one way
only: the pineal gland in the brain.
Modern thinkers have differentiated two types of dualism: property
dualism and substance dualism.
An alternative to dualism is called physicalism. This idea holds that
the our mind's (philosopher's use the term "our intentional states")
are just unique configurations of our brain's neurons. That is, a
mental state just is unique configuration of neurons (a so-called
"brain state").
One problem with physicalism is called "the multiple realizibility
problem". It goes like this: if "anger" is a specific configuration
of neurons, then what happens when we encounter a being whose brain
isn't made of carbon-based neurons. Obviously, that being won't have
the same brain states that we have. Does that mean that it won't be
angry? (Remember, in physicalism, the anger just is the neurons in
their particular configuration. There is nothing else to it.)
Once you think about multiple-realizibility -- you say "the alien has
"anger", it's just that his anger is a different physical
configuration of whatever stuff his brain is made of" -- but then we
ask ourselves, "well, then what makes his "anger" the same as our
"anger"? Remember, in physicalism, the anger is *nothing* more than
the state of the neurons. You will probably say "ohhh, we know the
alien is angry because he frowns, stomps around, and hollers", that
is, the alien behave angry. That view is called "functionalism" It
says that the intentional state of anger is identified functionally,
by a set of behavior that we call "angry". Functionalism is a good
answer to multiple-realizability, but it has its own problems because
you know that you can pretend to be in pain, say, without really being
in pain.
John Searle has written some good stuff on all of this, and recorded a
good set of lectures for "The Learning Company"
There's an idea called supervenience, and a name that I associate with
that is Jaegwon Kim (although he is hardly the only one)
Those are just a few things to get you started. |
