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PSY 173 – SEMESTER 2Masterclass 11. Mind and Reality: 1 Atoms - 2016 – Carlo Rovelli published “The Reality Is Not What It Seems”. - Theoretical journey – starts with Anaximander (610-546BC), the first scientist, who opposed a tradition of myths and phantasies, and started investigating the universe...

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PSY 173 – SEMESTER 2

Masterclass 1

1. Mind and Reality: 1.1 Atoms - 2016 – Carlo Rovelli published “The Reality Is Not What It Seems”. - Theoretical journey – starts with Anaximander (610-546BC), the first scientist, who opposed a tradition of myths and phantasies, and started investigating the universe with Reason and Observation to discover new things and not appealing to authority. - Tradition followed by Leucippus (5th Century BC) and Democritus (460370BC) – developed atomism. - Some atomistic ideas:  All visible macroscopic objects (stones, mountains, plants, animals, humans) are composed of atoms.  Atoms are physically indivisible and indestructible.  There is an infinite number of atoms.  The natural world is composed of two things: atoms and void.  Atoms always have been and will be in motion through the void.  When they collide, atoms repel one another, or they combine into c clusters.  Macroscopic objects are clusters of atoms.  Atoms are eternal, but the clusters are not.  There is no purpose in the universe; things happen by necessity.  The soul is composed of atoms.  Thought is motion of atoms and can cause motion.  Perception and thinking are physical processes - Some influences:  Atoms moving in space – Galileo  Empty space as a container – Newton  Determinism – all modern science

1.2 Purposeful Universe Aristotle: - Most influential of all philosophers - His system of logic based on syllogisms was the authoritative piece of logic for at least 2 millennia.

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Geocentric system of the universe with the addition of Ptolemy’s epicycles was authoritative until the Renaissance (1550-1700). He was a naturalistic – in the nature of things than in non-natural things. Unlike Democritus, Aristotle conceives the world as purposeful – things are not atoms, they are forms. Their essence is their form – the form is what gives matter its definite quality: its essence or primary substance. Soul -

The soul is the form of the body The soul is what makes the body one thing, having unity and purpose. Matter has the potential to obtain a form.

Causes Aristotle postulated existence of four types of causes - Material: what something is made of - Formal: the essence of something – the structure that makes something behave in a specific manner - Efficient: The contact that makes something happen - Final: the goal that someone has in mind that gives shape to something Goals/purposes of things For Aristotle, objects have an essence, and they tend to move towards the places according to their essence: - Earthy objects tend to fall onto earth - Watery objects remain on top of earth - Airy objects (gasses) aim to go above earth and water. - Heat objects aspire to go even higher than gasses.

1.3 Soul - Aristotle’s conception of the universe was not modern at all - Souls are the form of organisms - Aristotle proposed that we have three types of souls:  Vegetative souls – plants and animals – structures and dynamics of organisms allowing them to grow and obtain nutrition to their environment  Sensitive souls – all animals – have a vegetative soul as well as a sensitive soul allowing them to feel, move and perceive their environment  Rational souls – humans – have vegetative, sensitive, and rational souls as well – allows humans to possess the powers of thinking, reason, understand mathematics and philosophy – uses the mind. Some aspects

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of the rational soul may be immortal and independent of the body – Peter Hawker? Some conceptions in favour of the interpretation of soul as characteristics of things include:  Soul perishes with the body  Soul must be a substance in the sense of the form of a material body having life potentially within it. But substance is actuality, and thus soul is the actuality of a body.  Soul is substance in the sense which corresponds to the definite formula of a thing’s essence. It is the essential whatness of a body.  The body with a soul is an organised body.  To ask whether the soul and body are one is as meaningless as to ask whether the wax and the shape given to it by the stamp are one.  Self-nutrition is the only power possessed by plants.  The soul is the final cause of the body.  However, the mind, one of the three souls, seems to be a thing in itself:  The mind is an independent substance implanted within the soul and to be incapable of being destroyed.  "It alone is capable of existence in isolation from all other psychic powers."  "The mind is the part of us that understands mathematics and philosophy; its objects are timeless, and therefore it is regarded as itself timeless."  "The mind can be immortal, though the rest of the soul cannot."

1.4 Mathematical Universe Pythagoras (circa 570-495BC) - By numbers, Pythagoras meant shapes. - “All things are numbers”. Plato (427-347BC) -

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Distinction between reality and appearance The world is as it appears to us is not real. The real world is a world of ideas. The idea of a horse is real, the particular horses we perceive are imperfect copies of the real idea. Mathematical objects are ideas in this world of ideas, but we perceive imperfect triangles. What is presented to the senses can only lead to opinion, not to knowledge. The mind can access to the world of ideas and allow humans to be rational.

Copernicus (1473-1543)

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Heliocentric system of the universe is proposed because it is simpler than Ptolemy’s system with epicycles. Simpler = more beautiful

Kepler (1571-1630) -

Laws of planetary motion: the orbit of a planet is an ellipse rather than a circle. Against the perfection of the circular motion. The trajectory of the planets approximates an ellipse, not a circle.

Galileo (1564-1642) -

Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems (1632) – anti-Aristotelian experiments in inclined planes – law o free fall – thought experiments. Advocated the Copernicus system but ignored Kepler’s. First to postulate that things in earth, not just celestial bodies, follow natural laws that are expressed in mathematical form. Law of free fall

Descartes (1596-1650) -

Anti-Aristotelian; no purpose in the universe Atomism of Democritus and no void, there is ether (coincides with Aristotle here) Analytic geometry and proper knowledge

Newton -

Most influential scientist Laws of motion Calculus Doubt between mathematics describing reality or tool to predict Laws of universal gravitation

Tegmark vs. Hassenfelder -

Contemporary physicists Tegmark believe the furniture of the universe is mathematical. Hassenfelder, as an instrumentalist, considers mathematics as a tool to describe and predict reality. She criticises physicists that are driven by the beauty of mathematical structures.

1.5 Mechanical Universe Universe as a machine: - Mechanical universe

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17th century philosophers (Galileo, Hobbes, Newton, Descartes etc) were subscribed to this view. Movement of one gear affects the movement of another gear and so on and so forth. God moved the first gear, but since then the universal clock has been working without intervention – contrasts with purposeful universe of Aristotle.

Descartes: -

If the universe is a universal machine, the human body, including the brain is not an exception. Contradicted aristotle by postulating that the brain, and not the heart, was the place of basic mental processes. Used a different machine as metaphor of how the brain works – nervous system worked like the nifty statues in the royal gardens of Saint-Germain, whose moving parts were animated by water that ran through pipes inside of them – described what we call a reflex.

Hobbes: -

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Descartes thought that the brain was the seat for elementary mental processes but thinking and will are faculties of an immaterial mind. For Hobbes, the mind is nothing but the processes in the brain. He extended the mechanical conception of the universe to the society.

Laplace: -

Determinist aspect of a mechanical work is epitomised by Pierre-Simon Laplace Published what is usually known as the first articulation of causal or scientific determinism. "We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes." — Pierre Simon Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities[65]

New Mechanism and Metaphor of the Mind: -

End of XX beginning of XXI – Craver, Bechtel, and others. Clock is one of the possible metaphors for the mechanical, deterministic world. Metaphors for the mind has been proposed as new technologies arrived.

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Mind as a telegraph, telephone, and more recently as a computer – analogy returns to the abstraction of mathematics, because computers do computations.

1.6 Mind and Matter Descartes’ mind-body dualism: - Conceived the universe as a big universal machine, with atoms moving across aether, as a machine that like a clock moves automatically and deterministically. - The nervous system as part of that universe is a machine with tubes through which animal spirits (something akin to energy) travel and cause the movement of other parts of the body. - Mind is immaterial entity, a res cogitans, which means a thinking thing. - The mind is indivisible, and because the brain has parts, it cannot be the mind. - The mind is in contact with God who gave humans a conscious, rational, and willing mind. - All humans have the potential of being rational beings. If they are not, it is because they use their faculties in the wrong way. - The mind is connected with the body through the pineal gland in the brain. The interaction with the brain is twofold: some things happening in the body reach the pineal gland in the brain, and whatever is in the pineal gland is sort of observed by the mind. - Cartesian theatre – Daniel Dennett - The other direction of the interaction occurs when the mind makes decisions, and these decisions are transmitted to the brain and body through the pineal gland. - Used the EVIL DEMON ARGUMENT (of which modern versions have been presented like the brain in the vat, and the matrix of the 1999 science fiction film – What if an evil demon is deceiving me and the things, I am perceiving are like those things I perceive when I am dreaming, so the reality as not how I perceive it. Therefore, senses do not guarantee the acquisition of certain knowledge. - All knowledge of the universe cannot be trusted, except one thing – in order to be deceived, I have to think – this is certain knowledge. - Therefore, cogito ergo sum – therefore I think I am conscious therefore I exist. It is only matter: -

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Descartes only conceived the mind as a subjective experience separated by interaction with an automatic, mechanical body. Paradoxically, Descartes is both the most important advocate of an immaterial mind and one of the pioneers on the study of the brain to understand mental processes. Descartes publishes in his book comments of critics, including Hobbes.

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Hobbes claimed that the mind is mechanical, it is what the brain does. Objected Descartes’ conclusion that because he thinks he is thinking. Claims one is a thing that thinks, not thinking. Thinking is a computation or reckoning – reduces to just adding and subtracting. Julien de la Mettrie – Man a Machine – 18th century Materialism is the most dominant philosophical view about the mind.

Mind constructs reality: -

Immanuel Kant – warned about limit of materialism Human mind/brain contains categories or schemas through which reality is perceived We can’t have a direct knowledge of reality Mind is not mechanical as materials suggested Kant’s view – misinterpreted by German idealists like Hegel – proposed immaterial mind Herman and Helmholtz – law of conservation of energy, adopted Kant’s view and criticised the anti-materialist German idealism.

1.7 Scientific Realism and Instrumentalism Einstein’s scientific realism: -

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1905 – Einstein wrote three articles Initiation of quantum mechanics – with Max Planck – in contraposition with the well-established electromagnetic theory of light by Faraday and Maxwell – postulates existence of particles (photons). Gravity occurs because the universe is curved Reality is deterministic – reality is composed of things we cannot observe (atoms) , those things are not real. “Physics is the attempt at the conceptual construction of a model of the real world, as well as its lawful structure”

Bohr’s Instrumentalism: -

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World of tiny particles seems to behave differently than the macroscopic world – cannot establish with certainty the velocity and position of particles Can only use a wave function to determine the probability of the position of particles at any given time "There is no quantum world. There is only abstract quantum physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature." Entire quantum formalism is to be considered as a tool for deriving prediction Hassenfelder emphasises this view – world is not mathematical – mathematics is a tool to understand the world.

Dappled World: -

Nancy Cartwright – accepts realism but criticises the foundational character of theories of reality In "How the laws of physics lie" and "The Dappled world" she says that the universe is patchier than physicists claim. Laws are not universal; they only apply if certain conditions obtain.

Masterclass 2

1. Causality 1.1 From Aristotle to Newton: - "There are four causes underlying everything: first, the final cause, that for the sake of which a thing exists; secondly, the formal cause, the definition of its essence (and these two we may regard pretty much as one and the same); thirdly, the material; and fourthly, the moving principle or efficient cause.” - The four causes include:  Material cause: It refers to the concept of matter. To what things are made of. For example, the material cause of a painting is the paint and the canvass.  Efficient cause: Things that by their activity bring about an effect on another thing. For example, the painter.  Formal cause: The essence of things. For example, the characters or the objects or the landscape in the painting.  Final cause: The purpose an agent aims to achieve. For example, the idea of the character of the painting in the painter's mind. Descartes: -

The efficient cause of Aristotle is interpreted as a mechanical cause God is the source of matter and motion (general cause), particular causes are not motions of matter at specific locations, but the laws of nature Paradoxical Immaterial mind that is volitive Universe becomes an automaton following laws removing agents with purposes

Hobbes: -

All causation is motion – causation requires the contact of objects, there is not action at a distance Causation is a relation between the motions of different bodies In Hobbes’ universe, everything happens by necessity – “all the effects that have been, or shall be, produced have their necessity in things antecedent”

Spinoza: -

From a given determinate cause an effect necessarily follows; and, on the other hand, if no determinate cause be given it is impossible that an effect can follow” ([1677] 1949, Axiom 3).

Leibniz: -

Principle of sufficient reason: "there is nothing without a reason, or no effect without a cause" ([ca. 1680-84] 1969, 268). He rejects the reduction of cause to movement of matter of Descartes, Hobbes and Spinoza.

Locke: -

He was more interested in what can we know rather on how reality is. He did not conceive causes as necessary connections following laws, but things have powers, and they use their powers in specific instances.

Newton: -

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Causation and natural laws of motion are different things. Causes are forces or constraints that compel moving bodies to behave differently than they would have done without them. Thus ‘caused’ means constrained or compelled. Newton used the expression "free" motion to refer to unconstrained motions. Thus, every body that continues in its state of rest, or of uniform behaviour in a straight line, is uncaused or free. Any movement that happens according to the first law of motion is an uncaused event.

1.2 Hume and Kant Hume’s objections to causality: - Hume tidied up the mechanical conceptions of causality and stipulated that causality has three conditions: 1. Contiguity (in space and time) of cause and effect, 2. Priority in time of cause to effect, and 3. Necessary connection between cause and effect - Cannot justify the third condition because the fact that something followed something else in the past does not logically guarantee that it will follow in the future. - Causal reaction is not something that happens in reality – events happen, not causality. - Mental construction derived from repetitive experience of constant conjunction between the event we consider cause and that we consider the effect and the association of the corresponding ideas in the mind.

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Necessary connections – idea, not force of nature

Kant’s rescue of causality in science: -

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Followed Newtonian physics Influenced by Hume’s concerns about possibility of obtaining certain and necessary knowledge of causality. Addressed Hume’s concerns in order to rescue science from the supposed scepticism of Hume’s. Rejected Hume’s view that we first perceive frequently events that occur one after the other, then our mind associates those events and establishes a causal rule and generates the feeling of causality Suggests that we possess in our brains a schema of causality and because of this, we observe events that happen consecutively

1.3 Counterfactuals and interventions -

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“We may define a cause to be an object followed by another, and where all objects, similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to the second. Or, in other words, if the first had not been, the second never had existed.” Two parts to this definition:  The effect occurs immediately after the cause.  If the cause had not occurred, the effect would not have been observed. For John Stuart Mill, causes are cohumesmplex, not just an object or event. Provides ideas and methods as an attempt to find the necessary and sufficient conditions for an effect to occur. Imagination of “possible worlds” in which the event considered cause does not occur. David Lewis proposes that we only consider the second part of Hume’s definition of causality: the counterfactual - he proposed to remove the first part of Hume’s definition. Judea Pearl provides the analogy of the “causation ladder” with three rungs: observation, action, and imagination – combines ideas from computer science, counterfactual views of causality, and Donald Rubin’s potential outcomes framework in statistics. In the observation rung, we can only establish that events or variables are correlated – detection of patterns in the environment (correlation). The second rung refers to interventions in reality; in this level we can establish causal relationship between variables – producing an intervention in the environment to observe the effects (c...