@Mr Fight the Power,
Mr. Fight the Power wrote:To this I am responding that those who are trying to ascribe psychological predicates to the mind are revising the qualities and criteria that constitute what it means to "be angry". Basically, all of the qualities necessary to ascribe "is angry" are qualities and behaviors of the brain: to "be angry" means that the brain has certain qualities.
To first address your statements directly: If we accept your principle, we lose our criteria for identification of angry people. To object: qualities and behaviors of the brain cannot be the only criteria.
"...to ascribe psychological predicates to the
mind..."
We're not talking about ascribing psychological predicates to the mind. I hope this is nothing more than a typo.
Quote:While it is quite obvious that the person possesses properties that the brain does not, these properties that are not shared are excluded from the necessary criteria needed to assign the predicate "is angry".
This latter clause is in need of clarification, especially the bit about "excluded from necessary criteria." For one, your sentence on its own is self-inconsistent. For while you "admit"--perhaps in ironic and insincere sense--that it is obvious that the person possesses properties that the brain does not, the logical identification of the brain with the whole organism would contravene such an admittance.
I could take your claim very many ways, and here are but a couple.
(i) From this statement, I might take you to be saying that
no properties which are distinctly human, in contrast to brain properties, constitute any of the criteria necessary to apply the predicate "is angry." This is manifestly false and absolutely contrary to common sense,
let alone convention, and it would require the profoundest sort of justification.
(ii) Or, you might be saying something less opposed to common sense, but which nevertheless makes your statement self-inconsistent: that the criteria of the brain "win out" over the criteria of behavior in application of the predicate to the organism as a whole.
The former clause of your sentence "admits" of a distinction between properties between whole (human) and part (brain) but it at the same time professes that these behavioral properties of the brain allow for logical identification with a certain range of psychological predicates which we typically apply to the human. Thus, you conclude that we (rightly) attribute these psychological predicates to the brain.
But if you admit that brain properties "win" over human-behavioral, then you do not admit that there is a distinction at all. To maintain the predicate "is angry" as our observed predicate: You are forced, by your principle, to say that all those and only those properties of the brain satisfy the criteria for the application of the predicate "is angry." If this is the case, then the predicate of "being angry" which might be had by a human being needs a sense. If the conditions under which one is, as a human being, identified as being angry are only those conditions provided by the brain, then we have said that the behavior of the person
in no way counts. In no way, then, would a raving child's behavior justify our claim that he is angry or gleeful or distraught, for our only logically sufficient (on your assumption) criteria would be that criteria provided by the brain. But this is absurd, for it would, as one consequence, entail that billions of people on the planet systematically apply the predicate "is angry," etc on logically faulty evidence. These people, in applying the predicate "is angry," on your principle, apply it with the wrong kind of justification. I am not one to argue from consequences, and I could provide other arguments, but I must say that your principle must be rejected at least because of its radical opposition with common sense.
Quote:That was the point of only including the brain. If a person has lung cancer, it makes sense to say both that the person and the lung "is cancerous". We only need to observe the skin of an apple to make sensical propositions about the color of both the skin and the apple as a whole.
Surely when we say "X is cancerous" we mean something at least different by degree when X is satisified by "a human" as opposed to "that human's lung." Surely, we go about treatment of the entities in question very differently. No one, for instance, would say that
we brought the cancerous lung a get well card yesterday. And you might feel that this example of mine "misses your point." Well, I pose it because
it is the point I am trying to make. Even if "is cancerous" were to have the exact same sense in both propositions "Bob is cancerous" and "Bob's lung is cancerous", this would not license us to identify Bob with Bob's lung. It is exactly the point of using two different nouns to which I am underscoring.
What's more, your argument is formally invalid because it commits the fallacy of the undistributed middle term.
P is Q
R is Q
Therefore, P is R.
Bob is cancerous.
Bob's lung is cancerous.
Therefore, Bob is Bob's lung.
Thus, your argument is invalid. But I highly doubt you were even trying to make this claim and, furthermore, I feel that you are not getting my point. I am talking about
the identity thesis in philosophy of mind.
Quote:Let me ask you this: I have "been scared" while sleeping during certain dreams. I find it extremely likely that a state of "being scared" can be detected and identified during sleep. Is it meaningful to say that someone "was scared" while sleeping? Is it meaningful to ever say "I was scared" if public criteria is not observed?
If you're scared
in your sleep while dreaming then obviously "being scared" is a predicate that is being use with a "high definition." The exact stipulation you have made by your example gives the predicate in question a bloated sense. If you're talking about the predicate "being scared while asleep" then clearly you cannot be talking about the general predicate ("public" or not) "being scared."
Suppose that "travelling to the store" presupposes that the sense of "to travel" involves travelling by foot. If I tell you, "I will travel to the store" and then later say "Yes, I travelled to the store by car," then I cannot say that I
merely travelled to the store. I travelled to the store under a new sense. If many people go along with our presupposition of what it means to travel to the store, then it would be, at best, subtractive, and, at worst, misleading if I say to someone, "Yes, he travelled to the store" and leave out the qualification "by car."
I hope this analogy helps you see that your "sleep" example employs a qualified sense of "being scared" which is "being scared while asleep." Thus, even if I were to answer your question, it would not address the current discussion because whether or not we do not observe public criteria, "being scared while asleep" does not mean the same thing as "being scared." And you ought not treat them as if they do have the same meaning, for that, against my own argument, would beg the question about what constitutes the meaning of a predicate. I would not admit that the criteria, whatever it is, that partly constitutes the meaning of "being scared while asleep" is exactly the same as "being scared." It is clear, if not by the mere words of the predicates alone, to any competent language user, that the two predicates do not mean the same thing.
