1. Time, Self and Mind (ATS1835) Introduction to Philosophy B Semester 2, 2015
Dr Ron Gallagher
Office Hours: Clayton: Thu 1-2pm E664 (please for appointment)
Week 8: Self 2 -
(3 tutorials left)
Spock and Spock
Transporter Malfunction
Coma – Amnesia – Brainwashing
The Measure of a Man 

2. What makes a person the same person over time?
Locke: Memory; consciousness;
Reid: Persons are continuing entities; Butler: Memory presupposes personal identity, because there needs to be a consciousness to do the remembering; Parfit: Not identity, survival;
Williams: Not psychological survival, bodily survival;
Lewis: Connected temporal-person-stages.

3. Time - Introduction and Time Travel
Week
Beginning
Topic
Assessment
Readings W1
27-Jul-14
Time - Introduction and Time Travel
Readings 1.1 & 1.2 W2
03-Aug-14
Time Travel; Freedom, Determinism, and Indeterminism
Readings 1.5 & 1.6 (sections 1-2 & 6-10) W3
10-Aug-14
Logic Primer
AT1 Mon August 10, 10am
Readings W4
17-Aug-14
Mind- Dualism versus Materialism about the Mind
Readings W5
24-Aug-14
Mind - Can Machines Think? Computationalism and the Turing Test
Readings 3.3 W6
31-Aug-14
Mind - Can Machines Think? Objections to Computationalism
AT2 Mon Aug 31st, 10am
Reading 3.4 W7
07-Sep-14
Self - Lockean Psychological Theory and Identity
Readings W8
14-Sep-14
Self - Identity, the Body & Person Stages
Readings W9
21-Sep-14
Knowledge What is Knowledge and Gettier's Account
AT3 Mon Sep 21st, 10am
Readings
28-Sep-14
Mid-semester Break
W10
05-Oct-14
Knowledge - Nozick's Account and Scepticism
Readings
W11
12-Oct-14
Knowledge - The Moorean Response
AT4 Essay Mon Oct 12th
Readings 5.5
W12
19-Oct-14
Revision (no lectures, no tutorials)

4. Assessment Hurdle Requirements to Pass this Unit
Due Date
Assessment Task
Value
Mondays 10am
Reading Quizzes (10)
5% (bonus)
Mon Aug 10th
AT1 words)
10%
Mon Aug 31st
AT2 words)
Mon Sep 21st
AT3 words)
Mon Oct 12th
AT4 Essay words)
30%
TBA
Exam
40%
Hurdle Requirements to Pass this Unit
Your overall grade for the unit must be at least 50%
You must achieve a grade of 40% or more on the final exam
You must not fail more than one assessment task (not including Reading Quizzes)
You cannot miss more than 3 tutorials

6. AT3: Due Monday 21st September at 10am (@600 words, 10%)
What is Locke's theory of personal identity and what major challenges did Butler and Reid put to it?
(2) Searle’s Chinese Room argument attacks the Turing Test by trying to show that even if a machine passes the test it still may not be thinking. How exactly is the argument supposed to show this?
(Thoroughly explain your answers in your own words, and be sure to define any key terms and positions. 300 words max.)

7. AT3: Due Monday 21st September at 10am (@600 words, 10%)
It says in the AT instructions: “Thoroughly explain your answers in your own words, and be sure to define any key terms and positions.”
Don’t just quote from the lecture slides and change a few words around.
I am looking for evidence that you have read and understood the original readings by Locke, Turing and Searle.

8. Identity
Two different objects might be ‘identical’ in the sense that they share many intrinsic properties. This is called qualitative identity. This is obviously not the sense in which you are the same person through many changes. This involves the concept of numerical identity. Two identical coins or pens are still two different things, even if it is hard to tell them apart. Identical twins, even if they were exact duplicates would still be two different people.

9. Numerical identity
Superman
Clark Kent
Superman is Clark Kent Two different names might refer to the same individual

10. Identity statements Superman = Clark Kent Batman = Bruce Wayne
Charles Dodgson = Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll = the author of Alice in Wonderland
George Elliot = Mary Anne Evans = the author of The Mill on the Floss
The first man on the moon = Neil Armstrong
2 + 3 = 5
The ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter = p
Heat = molecular motion
Light = electromagnetic radiation

11. Identity statements
The question about personal identity is one about numerical identity.
I had eggs for breakfast yesterday.
The person who had eggs for breakfast yesterday = me
The person responsible for the crime committed 20 years ago is John Smith.
The person responsible for the crime committed 20 years ago = John Smith.
I hope I have enough money to retire 20 years from now.
The person who will retire 20 years from now = me

12. Properties of identity
Reflexive: a = a Symmetric: If a = b then b = a Transitive: If a = b and b = c then a = c Relations with these three properties are called equivalence relations. Other examples: a is the same age as b; a is just as tall as b; a is the same colour as b; a is in the same box as b.

13. Leibniz Law
What is special about the identity relation is that it satisfies Leibniz’s Law: If a = b, then anything true of a is true also true of b and vice versa. Equivalently: If there is something true of a which is not true of b (or vice versa), then a  b. Example Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll = Charles Dodgson; Therefore; Charles Dodgson wrote Alice in Wonderland.

14. Locke on consciousness and memory
Locke argues that different kinds of thing have different criteria for being the same over time. A is the same ship as B A is the same tree as B A is the same animal as B A is the same person as B Ships, trees, animals and people are very different kinds of thing. So what makes them the same over time is different. For example, Locke equates being the same animal over time with having the same living body. But that is not the right criterion for being the same person. To understand personal identity, we need to understand what it is to be a person.

15. Locke on consciousness and memory
Locke’s definition of person “…a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places …which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it.” A person is a thinking (conscious) being with a concept of itself as existing through time. So a is the same person as b if a and b are the same conscious being.

16. Locke on consciousness and memory
 “For since consciousness always accompanies thinking and it is that that makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things; in this alone consists personal identity, ie, the sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now as it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done.” 
Essay Concerning Human Understanding, chapter 27.

17. Locke’s memory criterion
It is continuity of consciousness that makes you and the child you once were the same person. But how are distinct conscious experiences united into one person? Locke’s answer: psychological continuity and in particular memory. The memory criterion for personal identity A (at a later stage) is the same person as B (at an earlier stage) if and only if A remembers experiencing the things experienced by B (and only B).

18. Locke’s memory criterion
Why think that continuity of consciousness is what matters? Locke’s examples: The Prince and the Cobbler One person might occupy different bodies. Two people could swap bodies. We say that the prince is now in the cobbler’s body because there is continuity of consciousness and memory between the prince before the swap and the prince after the swap. The day man and the night man One and the same body might be occupied by two different people

19. Locke’s memory criterion
Phineas Gage, 1848 accident Is GageBA (before-the-accident) the same person as GageAA (after-the accident)? “… his mind was radically changed, so decidedly that his friends and acquaintances said that he was ‘no longer Gage’.” - John Harlow The memory criterion says: yes, if GageAA can remember doing things that GageBA did.

20. Thomas Reid: forgotten events
“Suppose a brave officer to have been flogged when a boy at school, for robbing an orchard, to have taken a standard from the enemy in his first campaign, and to have been made a general in advanced life: Suppose also, which must be admitted to be possible, that when he took the standard, he was conscious of his having been flogged at school, and that when made a general he was conscious of his taking the standard, but had absolutely lost the consciousness of his flogging.”

21. Thomas Reid: forgotten events
“These things being supposed, it follows, from Mr Locke's doctrine, that he who was flogged at school is the same person who took the standard, and that he who took the standard is the same person who was made a general. When it follows, if there be any truth in logic, that the general is the same person with him who was flogged at school.” [transitivity of identity]
General
Officer
Boy =

22. Thomas Reid: forgotten events
“But the general's consciousness does not reach so far back as his flogging, therefore, according to Mr Locke’s doctrine, he is not the person who was flogged. Therefore the general is, and at the same time is not the same person as him who was flogged at school” The problem is that identity is a transitive relation, but ‘A remembers the experiences of B’ is not.
General
Officer
Boy = X

23. Joseph Butler: the circularity objection
“And one should really think it self evident, that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity.” Think about the conditions for genuine memory (2) S did indeed do or experience x at time t The person who remembers must be the same as the person who had the experience. Genuine memory presupposes identity. So memory cannot be used as a criterion for establishing personal identity. And it cannot explain it.

24. Joseph Butler: the circularity objection
Circular explanations Why is the sky blue? Because it is not green or red or any other colour … Why is unemployment falling? Because more people have jobs now. Why does paracetamol alleviate pain? Because it is an analgesic. In all these cases nothing is really explained because the fact to be explained is (at least partly) included in the ‘explanation’.

25. Joseph Butler: the circularity objection
On Locke’s View: The reason A is the same Person as B is because A (correctly) remembers what B did. Butler’s Objection: What it is for A to remember what B did is (in part) for A to be the same person as B. So memory cannot explain why A is the same person as B.

27. Butler – by invoking memory to define identity you are invoking the concept you are trying to explain.
What is it to be a bearer of experiences?

28. Which means that the statement ‘I’ am memories can’t be true.
If I and memories are the same thing – numerically identical – who is having the memories?
Presumbly there must be an ‘I’ to have memories. In which case ‘I’ is the thing that is having the memories – ‘I’ can’t BE the memories.
Which means that the statement ‘I’ am memories can’t be true.
[This scenario seems to invoke a Cartesian Theatre concept which involves an ‘I’ that is looking at the memories.]

30. What does the Turing Test show?
(Is it good test for Artificial Intelligence, thinking or understanding?)
What does the Chinese Room thought experiment show?
(Does it show that there can never be artificial intelligence? Or just that the Turing Test is a bad test for understanding?))
Does the whole Chinese Room system (including rule books, Searle etc) understand Chinese?
(Would an embodied system understand Chinese?)

31. If you can have a good Chinese conversation with the Chinese Room, then we could say of the Chinese Room that it `understands` Chinese in the sense that we say a person `understands` Chinese.
So what is missing from the Chinese Room?
(What sense of the word `understanding` is missing?)

32. “If you take care of the syntax, the semantics will take care of itself.”
(Haugeland, 1985, p. 106)
“A computer whose only input and output was verbal would always be blind to the meaning of what was written“
(Dennett 1969, p . 182).

33. “When we imagine our hero "incorporating the entire system" are we to imagine that he pushes buttons with his fingers in order to get his own arms to move?
Surely not, since all the buttons are now internal. Are we to imagine that when he responds to the Chinese for "pass the salt, please" by getting his hand to grasp the salt and move It in a certain direction, he doesn’t notice that this is what he is doing? In short, could anyone who became accomplished in this imagined exercise fail to become fluent in Chinese
in the process?”
Dennett, D. C., 1980, "The Milk of Human Intentionality," (commentary on Searle, "Minds, Brains, and
Programs,") Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3, pp. 428–430.

34. Any system that possesses a mental life is simply a complex Turing Machine instantiating a certain machine table. Each mental state (a thought, e.g.) is actually a machine state that arises in the course of that program. As such, every mental state can only be defined as part of a network of sensory inputs, other mental states, and behavioral outputs. So a computer, programmed with the correct machine table, could think.

35. The Chinese Room: A thought experiment devised by John Searle in his 1980 paper “Minds, Brains and Programs.” It is designed to demonstrate that software cannot make a computer conscious or give it a mind that is anything like a human mind. Suppose an English speaker, who cannot speak Chinese, is locked in a room with two windows and an instruction book in English. Pieces of paper with questions in Chinese written on them are put into the room through one window. The person matches these pieces of paper with other pieces of paper with Chinese symbols according to the instructions in the book and then passes these other pieces of paper through the other window. Searle believes that this is basically what the set-up inside a computer is like and that the non-Chinese-speaking person is like the computer. He processes everything received from the input according to a program, and his output might, as a matter of fact, take the form of answers to the Chinese questions he received. Hence he passes the Turing test, but still does not gain an understanding of Chinese. Similarly, a computer only operates according to designed formal rules, and cannot be aware of the contents of the symbols it manipulates. Searle then concludes that a program is not a mind, for the former is formal or syntactical, while the latter has semantic content.

36. Like This https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TryOC83PH1g

37. Syntax and Semantics
P1. Programmes rely on syntax. P2. Understanding relies on semantics. P3. Syntax is not sufficient for semantics. C Programmes are not sufficient for understanding.

42. Syntax versus semantics
A computer operates purely syntactically, by manipulating formal symbols. The thought experiment is supposed to show that formal symbol manipulation can be taking place without any understanding of the meaning of the symbols. “Syntax is not sufficient for semantics”. Therefore, even if a computer program could pass the Turing Test, this would not show that it really understood anything.

43. Syntax versus semantics
In general ‘syntax’ refers to grammar, spelling, form while ‘semantics’ refers to meaning, interpretation, representation. In this context, the claim that the computer only has syntax is simply to claim that it operates only with ‘formal symbols’. ‘Formal’ means that the symbols do not need to represent or refer to anything. Think of the symbols on the tape of a Turing Machine...

44. Syntax versus semantics
The symbols on the tape could mean something or nothing at all. The Turing Machine works regardless of any meaning we might give to the symbols. S1
IF symbol =  THEN move right; go to S1
IF symbol =  THEN write ; go to S2 S2
IF symbol =  THEN move left; go to S2
IF symbol =  THEN STOP

45. Syntax versus semantics
We provide the semantics or interpretation for the symbols the computer is manipulating. The computer does not need to know what the symbols mean in order to work – the symbols are not meaningful to the program.

46. Intentionality
Intentionality is another term for the concept of a symbol representing, or being about something else. So Searle also puts his point by saying that formal symbol manipulation is not sufficient for intentionality. He suggests there is no reason to think it is necessary either.

49. ‘The original question “Can machines think
‘The original question “Can machines think?” I believe to be too meaningless to deserve discussion.’
Turing TSM Reader p132

50. Essay Topics
Write on one of the following topics.
1. Time Travel
How can David Lewis's solution to the Grandfather paradox be used to solve the problem of the logically pernicious self-inhibitor discussed in your Unit Reader? Be sure to clearly lay out the problem and solution to the grandfather paradox, draw the parallels between that paradox and the logically pernicious self-inhibitor problem. 
Required reading:
David Lewis, 'The Paradoxes of Time Travel'
2. Free Will
Consider this argument: 'If the future is already determined, then it must be possible to know in advance what will happen. But, if that is so, then free will is impossible.' Do you agree? Is there any satisfactory way of acting freely if determinism is true?
David Lewis, 'The Paradoxes of time Travel'
Richard Taylor, 'Freedom, Determinism and Fate'
Kane, ‘Libertarianism’
3. Thinking Machines
On the question whether machines can think, Descartes and Turing are in strong disagreement. Evaluate the arguments on either side. Does Searle's 'Chinese Room' argument help resolve the debate?
Alan Turing, 'Computing Machinery and Intelligence'
John Searle, 'Minds, Brains and Programs'
(Quotes from Descartes can be found in the Notes to Part 3 of the Study Guide.)