Philosophy

Sarti 4

Andres Sarti

Professor Jessica Williams

Philosophy of the Mind

Date

Objection to the Identity

Smart responds to his objection on identity thesis of imagining himself turned to stone yet having images, aches and pains by saying that experience and brain process does not have the same meaning. But it does not show that experience is not a brain process, which makes the objection much the same as the one summed up by the slogan: “What can be composed of nothing cannot be composed of anything’’ (Smart 152) He explains imagining that the electrical theory of lightning is false but that lightning is a sort of purely optical phenomenon and not an electrical discharge (Smart 152-53). He also imagined that the evening star is not the morning star but it is, explaining what the objection shows that experience and brain process do not have the same meaning.

Brie Gertler addresses Smart’s objection to conceivability arguments in revising premise 2 of her argument for mind-body dualism by saying that conceivability tests can reveal what is possible or impossible, as long as the concepts involved are sufficiently comprehensive. In conceiving of something, we are simply exercising our concepts and why we should think that our concepts accurately reflects the way the world is; is because perhaps we are out of reach of reality, and our concepts do not correspond to real objects or properties (Gertler 306-07). And for that case, the fact that we can conceive of a particular scenario occurring provides no reason to think that the scenario is genuinely possible.

In reply to this criticism, it is important to note that all of our reasoning, which is in philosophy or elsewhere, must use some concepts to define the topic we are investigating. For example in biology, we begin with some concept of reproduction, which empirical investigation may lead us to refine. In ethics, we begin with some concept of the good, which philosophical reasoning helps us to clarify and develop and for physicalists, they rely on concepts like concepts of the physical in defending their view. On certain occasions, we may find out that nothing satisfies a given concept, and so we may leave out the investigations that relate to it and this is what happened in the case of witchcraft where most people came to deny that anything in reality corresponded to the concept witchcraft, and the study of witchcraft was replaced by research into superstitions and mental pathologies, phenomena that led to the mistaken belief in witchcraft.

Even though we must allow for the possibility that we’ll refine or even leave our concepts, concepts are indispensable at the outset of investigation because there is no way to proceed with an inquiry unless we have some concept of the subject matter we are investigating. The objection that conceivability arguments are illegitimate because they are our concepts is therefore misguided. There is however a more nuanced version of the worry that premise 2 oversteps our intellectual bounds and unlike the previous objection, it acknowledges that we must employ concepts to reason at all (Gertler 306). It also concedes that thought experiments using simple concepts can help us to determine what is possible. But it rejects premise 2 in that it’s too general since not everything we can conceive is possible. For some of our concepts are obscure and so cannot play the proper role in inconceivability tests. Specifically, this objection says that our concepts of pain and physical are limited or unclear, and using such faulty concepts, what we can or cannot conceive does not reveal what is or not possible

The objection was advanced against Descartes’ original argument by his contemporary Antoine Arnauld who pointed out that a geometry student who hadn’t yet encountered the proof of the Pythagorean theorem could argue that he can conceive a right angle triangle with the property of the square of its hypotenuse is unequal to the sum of the squares of its other two sides and therefore possible for a right triangle to have this property. The argument is invalid because the fact that the student could conceive this scenario does not mean that the scenario is possible. Descartes anticipated Arnauld's objection and responded by acknowledging that his argument will fail unless the relevant concepts are complete and adequate.

It is therefore unobjectionable that if using sufficiently comprehensive concepts, I can conceive of a particular scenario occurring, then that scenario is possible. Which then follows that conceivability tests using sufficiently comprehensive concepts reveal what is and what is not possible.

Works Cited

Gertler, Brie. "In defense of mind-body dualism." Reason and responsibility (2007): 285-297.

Smart, J. J. C. “Sensations and Brain Processes.” The Philosophical Review, vol. 68, no. 2, 1959, pp. 141–156, www.jstor.org/stable/2182164, 10.2307/2182164. Accessed 13 Nov. 2019.