Notes for Meeting (October 12)

Notes for 10/12

Paper: Knowing One's Own Mind by Donald Davidson

Initial Questions
How do we learn about the minds of others?
-Generally, we learn through observation: We say, “He is hungry. I know he is hungry because his stomach is growling, he is staring at my pie, he says, 'I am hungry,'' etc...
-Skepticisms?
- “She is hungry. I know she is hungry because her stomach growls, etc...”
- She could be a robot
- A demon could be deceiving us, making us believe that her stomach is growling where, in reality, it is not
How do we learn about our own minds?
- Through observation?
- “I see my stomach is growling and I have just said that, 'I am hungry.' Therefore I must be hungry.”
-Do we just “know”?
-Is there some intuition we have, prior to any action, about our own mental state?
-Who knows more about our own minds—us, or others?
-Who has better actions to our own mental states? A 1st person or a 3rd person?
-Jane has two tickets—one for a Rolling Stones concert, and one for a Beatles concert. Both concerts occur on the same night. Nick wants to go to the same concert as Jane, so he asks Susie who Jane likes more, the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. Susie says, “Oh, Jane likes the Rolling Stones. Her iPod has all the Rolling Stones albums, all she does is listen to the Stones, etc...” Nick then goes to Jane herself and asks her which concert she will attend. She replies, “the Beatles concert,” but does not give any reason for her choice.
-The 3rd person seems to be able to give reasons for the information it knows, whereas the 1st person does not
-Is the 3rd person, then, more capable of knowing Jane's mind than she is?
-Should we differentiate between the “feelings” we have and our thoughts and beliefs? What are the consequences that follow if we do or do not?
What is 1st person authority?
-Can we explain it biologically? Is there a link between the brain, our language, and our mental state that only the 1st person has access to?
-How do we use 1st person authority, and does it fail under the weight of the Superman and Twin Earth Paradoxes?

Twin Earth Paradox: two identical people, on two identical planets, experiencing identical mental states, using the same exact words, nevertheless mean different things when referring to “water.” This shows that external and historical circumstances dictate the meaning of some of our words. As a result, we may not know the exact meaning of our words, and our 1st person authority, our ability to know what we mean or our mental states, dissolves.

Swampman paradox: in a freak accident, a tree transforms into the exact replica of a man. This “swampman” returns to the original man's friends and converses with them, then returns to the man's home and writes the philosophy papers the original man might have written. Yet when this “swampman” utters the word “house” he cannot mean the same thing as when the original man uttered it, because the “swampman” never had the context with which to utter that word in a meaningful way. Our words must have some kind of connection with the world to mean anything.

Davidson concludes that we may not know what we think, at least not in the way we think we do.

That is, we cannot be knowing our own mind simply by observing our actions. But what is the solution to the problem of 1st person authority? How can we use it?

At the end of the discussion, there was some disagreement as to the nature of Davidson's solution. Ultimately, it seemed as though, while we all have separate languages and separate minds, we can, through language and in language, come to a consensus about a great number of things. It is the fact that we CAN know things that outweighs the things that we might get wrong.

A Reminder

...that we're meeting Thursday at 7:00 to talk about Korsgaard [link]. Since few people made it to the meeting at which we discussed Parfit, we may want to go back to his paper [link].

Papers

Here are links to the papers being presented on Saturday. The time at which each paper will be presented is in parentheses.

[.doc] [.pdf] - Andrew Wong - "Personal Value Skepticism" (9:00)

[.doc] [.pdf] - Wesley Bronson - "Intentionality, Intending ..." (10:00) 

[.doc] [.pdf] - Josh Hancox - "The Brothers' Predicament" (12:00) 

[.doc] [.pdf] - Gavin Arnall - "Free To and Responsible..." (1:00)

See two posts down for more information about the conference.

Time Slices

We now have a nifty Google calendar.

See it the usual way [here].
Mac users, subscribe using ICal [here].
Readers of RSS feeds and Firefox users, subscribe [here].

Thanks, Sarah!

Lo, A Conference!

Philugs is pleased to announce that our second annual undergraduate conference will take place this Saturday, February 23rd in the Reynolds Club South Lounge. We'll hear from three undergraduates from out of town, one undergraduate from the University of Chicago, and UChicago's very own Professor James Conant.

Here's the schedule:
9:00 - ANDREW WONG (Wash. U.)
"Personal Value Skepticism"
Comment: Daniel Smyth
10:00 - WESLEY BRONSON (Princeton)
"Intentionality, Intending, and Moral Responsibility"
Comment: Daniel Groll
11:00 - Lunch, provided
12:00 - JOSH HANCOX (UChicago)
"The Brothers' Predicament"
Comment: Elizabeth Shurcliff
1:00 - GAVIN ARNALL (Cornell)
"Free To and Responsible for Producing Jargon"
Comment: Thomas Ferguson
2:00 - PROFESSOR JAMES CONANT
"Cartesian and Kantian Varieties of Skepticism"

Reading copies of all of the undergraduate papers will be made available right here by Wednesday morning, in case you wish to print out a copies to bring along or wish to have a look at the papers in advance.

Everyone is welcome to attend. Hope to see you there!

Chalmers Paper

Here's a link to the Chalmers paper which somehow came up in our discussion of Locke: [link]. From the conclusion:

"...what, finally, of the self? Does the extended mind imply an extended self? It seems so. Most of us already accept that the self outstrips the boundaries of consciousness; my dispositional beliefs, for example, constitute in some deep sense part of who I am. If so, then these boundaries may also fall beyond the skin..."

Winter 2008 Reading Group Schedule

Meetings are at 7 pm, somewhere in Stuart (usually the second floor lounge, sometimes in Stuart 101).

The topic for the quarter is personal identity. We'll read and discuss one paper at each meeting.
1/17 - John Locke, Of Identity and Diversity [link]

1/31 - Bernard Williams, The Self and the Future [link]

2/14 - Derek Parfit, Personal Identity [link]

2/28 - Christine Korsgaard, Personal Identity and the Unity of Agency: A Kantian Response to Parfit [link]

3/13 - Galen Strawson, The Self [link] (this meeting only tentatively scheduled due to its being during reading period)

Nathana suggests that it might be helpful and interesting to read the entries on personal identity in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which are [here] and [here].

Also, Professor Anton Ford will hopefully be talking to us about Anscombe's paper on the first-personal pronoun--which we were going to read last quarter but decided to put off until this quarter--some time in February. The above schedule may have to be shifted around to accommodate this.

As always, newcomers are very welcome.