What I am is what I am,
Are you what you are,
Or what?
Minds and Bodies
What am I, anyway?
Can collections of atoms be the
subjects of conscious mental states?
Am I my brain?
Are Mind and Brain the same?
What’s in a brain?
A Forest of Brain Cells
Interconnected cells
Individual brain cell
Lots of Interconnections
But where am I?
Are brain cells conscious?
The Big Question
Where in the world is the “bubble?”
Mind and/or Matter?
•  What am I?
–  What sort of thing am I?
•  Am I a mind that “occupies” a body?
•  Are mind and matter different (sorts of)
things?
The Material World
“What’s the matter?”
•  Matter:
–  The “stuff” (“substance”) of the world
•  i.e., of the world of things that exists whether or nor
we perceive it, whether or not any “mind” is aware
of it.
–  The subject matter of the “natural sciences”
•  Physics, biology, chemistry, etc.
–  Occupies space, has mass, etc.
–  Descartes and Locke believed in it: Berkeley
did not.
“Never mind!”
•  Are “mind” and “matter” the same thing?
•  Is there “more” to you than your material body?
•  Is consciousness a material (i.e., physical, chemical,
biological) process?
•  Could a conscious being exist with no body—i.e.,
even if there were no material substance?
•  Is there a mental substance in addition to a material
substance?
•  Is you “mind” distinct from your brain?
Mind over Matter?
Am I (just) my body?
•  Is my body what I am,
–  Or is it something that I have,
•  That I “occupy?”
•  Could I (even possibly) exist in a different
body?
–  with no body?
Life After Death?
•  If there is such a thing as life after death, then
there must be a “part” of you that continues to
exist after the death of your body.
•  So, if you believe in life after death, you are
already committed to the idea that you are
something distinct from your body …
–  i.e., distinct from any material object.
What kind of fool am I?
What am I?
•  Descartes:
–  A “thing that thinks.”
•  A thing that: “doubts, understands, affirms and denies,
will and refuses, imagines and has sense experiences.”
–  I am a conscious being,
•  A being that is the subject of consciousness.
•  I am a “mind” or “soul.”
Descartes: “Thinking!”
•  “At last I have discovered it—thought. This
alone is inseparable from me. I am, I exist
—that is certain. …. I am, then, in the strict
sense only a thing that thinks, that is, I am a
mind, or intelligence, or intellect, or reason
….”
•  The kind of thing that I am is a “thinking
thing,” i.e., the kind of thing that is the
subject of conscious experiences.
Mind
•  For Descartes, a “mind” is the kind of thing that
can be the subject of consciousness.
•  It is the thing which “has” sensations, the thing
which “thinks” thoughts, etc.
•  Different minds can have different sensations,
thoughts, etc., but being the kind of thing that can
have sensations, thoughts, etc., is the “essence” of
what it is to be a mind.
•  If there is life after death, it is this “thinking thing”
which continues to exist.
“What else am I?”
•  Am I also a human body?
–  Do I even know that there are such things as
bodies?
•  Might this body (of which I am uncertain)
be “identical with the ‘I’ of which I am
aware?”
•  I am certain that I exist. Could this “I” be
identical to a material body that I am not
certain exists?
2nd Meditation:
p. 204 (p. 188 in 14th ed.)
•  “At present I am not admitting anything except what
is necessarily true. I am then, in the strict sense only
a thing that thinks, that is, I am a mind, or
intelligence, or intellect, … a thinking thing.”
•  Is it possible that this body, of which I am not yet
certain, is “in reality identical with the ‘I’ of which I
am aware?... [F]or the moment, I won’t argue the
point, since I can make judgments only about things
that are known to me ….’
Am I my body?
•  At this point, Descartes is certain that he
exists, and that he is a mind, i.e., a “thinking
thing.”
•  Is it possible that this mind (that he is certain
exists) is identical to some body, to some
material object (that he is not certain exists)?
•  In the 2nd Meditation, he can’t rule this out.
The Essence of the Matter
What is “body,” anyway?
•  In the 2nd Meditation, Descartes was skeptical
of sense experience, and so could not know,
with certainty, whether or not any
“bodies” (material objects) existed.
•  But he still had a concept of what material
objects must be, if they exist at all.
•  For Descartes, the “essence” of a material
object is that it occupies space.
Essence vs. Accident
•  An essential property:
–  A property a thing can’t lose without ceasing to
exist.
•  An accidental property:
–  A property a thing can lose and still exist.
•  Is having a mind/having a body essential or
accidental?
What is my essence?
•  Descartes: I can conceive of myself existing
without a body.
–  E.g., in the after-life, or “mind-swaps”
–  So, having a body is, at best, an “accidental” property.
•  I cannot conceive of myself existing without a
mind.
–  So having (being) a mind is an essential property.
•  So, my essence (what I really am) consists solely
in being a thinking thing—i.e., a mind.
–  I have a body, but I am a mind.
Two for the price of one?
Two Substances?
•  Are “mind” and “matter” different
“substances?”
–  Are they different kinds of things?
•  Is a (conscious) mind, in essence, a
fundamentally different thing than a (material)
object?
•  Materialists (Matter only) say “no.”
•  Dualists (Matter and mind) say “yes.”
Mind/Body (or Substance) Dualism:
There are two distinct fundamental and irreducible sorts
of things in the world…
MINDS
BODIES
•  Res cogitans
•  Res extensa
–  Minds
–  Thinking but non-extended
things
–  Beings that are subjects of
conscious experience, but
don’t occupy are space
–  Matter
–  Extended but non-thinking
things
–  Beings that occupy space but
are not subjects of conscious
experience.