Are Persons bodies?
...e machine”. The idea that that the physical body (machine) being under control from a non-physical (ghost). He claims that this commits a category mistake. If, as he believes, there is only physical things there would be no such entities (ghosts). He believes the only world is entirely physical…………… He argues his case in that we are driven by “an unfortunate linguistic fashion”, Mental and physical are described in two different languages, i.e. the language of the mental is that someone is upset, but their physical state would be described in terms of the electro-chemicals in their body. ………………………………………………………………………………………….. Another cause of worry for the materialists is the notion of intentionality (an alternative way of distinguishing physical from the mental) Franz Brentano (1838 -1917) said on the subject, “Every mental phenomenon is characterised by what the Scholastics of the Middle Ages called the intentional (or mental) inexistence of an object and what we might call……reference to a content, direction toward an object, or immanent objectivity. Every mental phenomenon includes something as object within itself…” (Brentano, Psychology,88) Intentional states are those that are about something and have content, i.e. happy and sad, non-intentional states are those that are not about something and do not have content, i.e. black and cold. Therefore, we can distinguish between mental states and physical states and they cannot be identical (similar to the Cartesian Dualist approach). However, Brenato’s intentionality approach does have its downfalls. The intentionality approach does not account for all mental states, i.e. being in pain, and it could also account for machines in that it would suggest that if a machine were ‘calculating’ this would be a mental state, something quite inconceivable. Behaviourism is a materialistic theory, the essence being that mental states are fiction. B.F.Skinner states, “I do not believe there is a world of mentation or subjective experiences, thinking is simply behaving and may be analysed as such”. Skinner claimed the notion of intention should be abandoned as we are actually talking about behaviour, i.e. I intend to diet, would mean from now on my behaviour will be that so to lose weight. ………………………………………………………………………………………. Physicalism is a materialistic theory that everything supervenes on the physical. The mind is just a physical part of the body, emotions and feelings are just a state of the brain and mental events are the same as physical events occurring in the brain. Matter is conceived as “an inert senseless substance , in which extension, figure and motion do actually subsist” (Berkley, Principles of Human Knowledge, Par 9). However, physicalism does not provide us with an account of intentionality in physical terms, nor does it answer Saul Kripke’s objections to contingent identity (any identity statement containing one rigid-designator and one non-rigid-designatoris not necessary truth, i.e. as Jenny Teichman writes, if ‘mental processes’ and ‘brain processes’ are rigid designators, therefore ‘mental processes’ are ‘brain processes’ and, if true, then the identity of mental processes and brain processes is necessary and also the identity statement itself is a necessary truth. Hence the identity is not contingent at either level. Functionalism is the theory that what makes something, i.e. a thought or a feeling does not depend on its constitution but on its function. It has close ties to behaviourism and tries t o explain how a person, as a whole, behaves as a result of the interrelated behaviour of substances within it. These subsystems can be described using neurophysiological language and are often linked to the debate about the possibility of machine consiousness. However, the theory is flawed in that it claims any brain event has the right casual role. Pain, for example, is described as phenomenological, when someone feels pain you can sympathise with them as you know how it feels – phenomenological similarities. However, people can act very differently to pain, whether acting or reacting. Therfore, it seems, there must be something w...