Daniel Dennett’s essay “Where Am I?” tries to argue against dualism. In this essay, Dennett tackles the difference between mind, body, and a person’s identity. Dennett’s views seem to be of empirical monism. In his story, Dennett has his brain removed and preserved in a vat. His body stays alive, and radio transmitters make it so he can still function. Dennett starts to question who “he” is and where he is.
When Dennett first goes to look at his brain, his first thought is that he is outside of the vat, looking at his brain. This confuses him, because Dennett believes that he should think, instead, “Here I am, being suspended in fluids, being stared at by my own eyes.” Puzzled, Dennett starts naming things so it’s easier for him to make sense
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He then starts wondering about committing a crime in a different state. Where would he be tried? The state where his brain is? Or where he committed the crime? Coming to a third alternative, he suggests that Dennett is …show more content…
Property dualism is an attempt to solve the interaction problem. It suggests that there is one type of stuff, with different properties. Property dualism tries to address the interaction problem by saying that there’s only one type of stuff, with different properties. That doesn’t make sense, though. How could a soul and table be made of the same stuff? How can two things of the same kind act so different? This would also mean that the soul decays as the body does. However, I believe that the soul lives in and acts through the body- and continues to exist forever, can’t be physical because all physical things decay and souls last forever.
Dennett is saying you are where you want to be, which I believe is true. If the situation Dennett proposes were to occur, I believe what he tells us up to a point- that point being that he is where he thinks (or chooses) he is. But I also believe that once the body dies, the soul is done living. The soul can’t just jump around from human to human. Once the human body dies, the soul moves onto to something greater… something that lasts
To formulate and express the contents of this reduced awareness, man has invented and endlessly elaborated those symbol-systems and implicit philosophies which we call languages” (Huxley 6). So if Dennett occupies a physical manifestation it is because it is in his nature. The flash to Houston happened fast enough that it took Dennetts point of awareness a little while to even realize that he was physically there. This lag is not to be noted as an absolute difference between consciousness and circumstance but rather as an indirect bearing of that point of view on its personal location. The connection to the outer world is made by that which is a medium to reveal it.
Alter, Adam. "Where We Are Shapes Who We Are." The New York Times. The New York Times, 15 June 2013. Web. 07 Apr. 2014.
In this theory, since it is based upon matter alone then this is a theory that does not correspond the best, in my opinion, with the essay. In the essay Daniel mentions many times where his mind, Dennett, feels like it is elsewhere from his brain and his body. He contemplates on whether or not Dennett resides in his brain that is out of his body in a life support vat or between his ears in his empty skull. He clearly distinguishes that his brain and body and mind are all separate from each other. In this materialism theory, I personally feel like this does not support Daniel Dennett in his understanding of this situation he was put
As an extension to the short story “Where am I?” by Daniel Dennett, Dennett is taking the government to court, claiming that NASA owes him a new body, because he is currently forced to share his body with another person (Hubert). Wanting to make usage of my philosophical expertise, the government called upon me to give my recommendation to the court as to what validity, if any Dennett’s claim has, and whether or not Dennett should be awarded a second body transplant. After careful consideration on various philosophical issues pertaining to this case, I have concluded that there is absolutely some merit to Dennett’s claim, and that Daniel Dennett should be given a new body. I will expand upon the details of each specific issue that I investigated,
This paper aims to endorse physicalism over dualism by means of Smart’s concept of identity theory. Smart’s article Sensations and the Brain provides a strong argument for identity theory and accounts for many of it primary objections. Here I plan to first discuss the main arguments for physicalism over dualism, then more specific arguments for identity theory, and finish with further criticisms of identity theory.
The only logical conclusion to derive from this observation is that what we consider to be ourselves is not our bodies. As a result, an individual’s personal identity cannot be rooted in just his or her body, unlike what body theorists would like to
Physicalists believe in the philosophical position that everything, which exists, is no more extensive than its physical properties, and that the only existing substance is physical (Mastin 2008). Another term used to describe two-way interactive substance dualism is Cartesian dualism, which was defended by Descartes. Cartesian dualism is the idea that mind is not the same thing as matter, although they do causally affect each other.
Dualism claims that the mind is a distinct nonphysical thing, a complete entity that is independent of any physical body to which it is temporarily attached. Any mental states and activities, as well as physical ones, originate from this unique entity. Dualism states that the real essence of a person has nothing to do with his physical body, but rather from the distinct nonphysical entity of the mind. The mind is in constant interaction with the body. The body's sense organs create experiences in the mind. The desires and decisions of the mind cause the body to act in certain ways. This is what makes each mind's body its own.
This paper will discuss the dualism’s Divisibility Argument. This argument relies on Leibniz’s Law and uses a different property to prove the distinctness of brain states of mental states. Mary, who is a materialist, presents several objections to that argument. Her main objection corresponds to the first/third-person approach. She believes that Dave presents that argument only from the first-person approach, which is introspection, and totally disregards the third-person approach, which is observation of another mind. Mary’s objections will follow by the Dave’s response on them from the dualist’s point of view.
Dualism is the idea that the mind is a separate entity that has no connection to the physical body.
. There are two kinds of dualism. One is Substance dualism which holds that the mind or soul is a separate, non-physical entity, but there is also property dualism, according to which there is no soul distinct from the body, but only one thing, the person, that has two irreducibly different types of properties, mental and physical. Substance dualism leaves room for the possibility that the soul might be able to exist apart from the body, either before birth or after death; property dualism does not. A substance dualism is something with "an independent existence". It can exist on its own. This holds that each distinct non-physical entity mind composed a different kind of substance to material objects. Substance dualist believed only spiritual substances can have mental properties. It is “soul” along with certain memory and psychological continuities that constitutes the survival of the person. Physical properties of property dualism are properties like having a certain weight, conducting electricity and mental properties are properties like believing that 1+1=2, being in love, feeling pain, and etc. Property dualism allows for the compatibility of mental and physical causation, since the cause of an action might under one aspect is describable as a physical event in the brain and under another aspect as a desire, emotion, or thought; substance dualism usually requires causal interaction between the soul and the body. Dualistic theories at least acknowledge the serious difficulty of locating consciousness in a modern scientific conception of the physical world, but they really give metaphysical expression to the problem rather than solving it.
Descartes is a very well-known philosopher and has influenced much of modern philosophy. He is also commonly held as the father of the mind-body problem, thus any paper covering the major answers of the problem would not be complete without covering his argument. It is in Descartes’ most famous work, Meditations, that he gives his view for dualism. Descartes holds that mind and body are com...
It is very common for humans to wonder what it would be like to be able to live in someone else’s body. But how could this be achieved? Some philosophers might argue that this body swap could be possible. For Craig Schwartz, in the film Being John Malkovich, this body swapping dream was now a reality. Dualism and the psychoanalysis of Freud could be analyzed in the film Being John Malkovich by comparing and using the views of Rene Descartes and Sigmund Freud.
But, “human persons have an ‘inner’ dimension that is just as important as the ‘outer’ embodiment” (Cortez, 71). The “inner” element cannot be wholly explained by the “outer” embodiment, but it does give rise to inimitable facets of the human life, such as human dignity and personal identity. The mind-body problem entails two theories, dualism and physicalism. Dualism contends that distinct mental and physical realms exist, and they both must be taken into account. Its counterpart (weak) physicalism views the human as being completely bodily and physical, encompassing no non-physical, or spiritual, substances.
...have struggled with the nature of human beings, especially with the concept of “self”. What Plato called “soul, Descartes named the “mind”, while Hume used the term “self”. This self, often visible during hardships, is what one can be certain of, whose existence is undoubtable. Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” concept of transcendental self with just the conscious mind is too simplistic to capture the whole of one’s self. Similarly, the empirical self’s idea of brain in charge of one’s self also shows a narrow perspective. Hume’s bundle theory seeks to provide the distinction by claiming that a self is merely a habitual way of discussing certain perceptions. Although the idea of self is well established, philosophical insight still sees that there is no clear presentation of essential self and thus fails to prove that the true, essential self really exists.