耶魯大學公開課：哲學-死亡
1-16
Can I survive the death of my body?
? What am I? What are the fundamental building blocks of a person?
Whether there is a soul:
- Dualist：body and soul
Soul is something nonphysical, separate and distinct from body.
Body?Soul, two-way interaction: Souls can control the body, bodies are able to affect the soul.
Death is the separation of the mind and the body.
Does the soul survives the death of the body?
Material body can influence the immaterial soul, then the death of the body might set up to the destruction of the soul.
If soul survives, how long does it survive? Are we immortal?
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- Physicalist: body
A Person is just a material object, is a body that has a certain set of abilities. A person is a body that is P-functioning.
Mind, the abilities of the body to do various things. There is no extra thing above and beyond the body.
Death is the end of the set of functioning.
- Idealism: soul
? Is there a soul?
*Phaedo, Plato
Inference to the best explanation
Feature F?
- Emotion
No merely physical thing could feel emotions, so there must be more to us than a merely physical thing.
Physical objects(robots) could do the behavioral side of the emotion. But they don't have the feeling/experience side at all.
No physical object can get the qualitative aspect of experience.
- Consiouseness?
- Free Will
- We have free will.
- Nothing subject to determinism has free will.(incompatibilism)
- All purely physical systems are subject to determinisim.
- We are not a purely physical system.
If 123 are true, 4 is true.
Cartesian argument:
A exist, B doesn't exist.→A and B are not the same thing.
I can imagine my mind existing without my body.→my mind and body have to be logically distinct thing.
If I can image one thing without the other, they must be separate things.
- Counter example: Evening Star and Morning Star
Maybe imagination is a flawed guide to possibility.
Maybe identity is contingent.
? Is the soul immortal?
Socrates's arguement: The soul is rational, taking care of the thinking side of things.
Platonic Forms(Ideas) 型相: perfect. Ordinary things can participate in to varying degrees, but they are not forms itself.
(beauty/ justice/ goodness/ circularity/ health)
eternal
The argument from the nature of the forms
Premise 1: Ideas(Forms) are eternal/ non-physical. √
Premise 2: Eternal/ non-physical can only be grasped by the eternal/ non-physical. ?
Conclusion: that which graspes the Idea(Forms) must be eternal/ nonphysical. ?
The argument from recycling
Is the soul one of the fundamental building blocks that were being recycled? Is it existed before I was put together? Is it something that will be recycled and continue to exist after I fall apart?
The argument from recollection
If the thing participate in the forms remind me of the forms, I must have met or been acquainted directly with the forms before. ?
The argument from simplicity
Premise 1: Only composite things can be destroyed.
Premise 2: Only changing things are composite.
Premise 3: Invisible things don't change.
Conclusion: Invisible things can't be destroyed. ?
Soul is invisible → Soul can't be destroyed ？
Socrates:" The soul is indestructible or nearly so. "
- Simmias' s objection: harmony can be destroyed by destroyed the instrument.
- radio wave
Invisibility
- can't be seen.
- can't be observed. (5 sense)
- can't be detected.
the arguement depends on 3, but the soul can be detected in someway→ soul is invisible
→ conclusion doesn't work (the definition of invisible is different)
The argument from essential properties
Essential property: a property that a given object must have, as long as the object exists.
Contingent property: a property that an object may have, without it the object could still existed.
- Life is an essential property of the soul.
→Soul is deathless.
→Soul can not die, indestructible.
→Soul can not be destroyed.
Deathless
- can't be that the soul exists and is dead.
- can't be that the soul was destroyed.
? Personal Identity 人格同一性
- Soul theory: sameness of the soul.
- Body theory: sameness of the brain.
Van Inwagon:" if you have an object and take it apart, and then put it bake together. You don't have the very same object that you started out with."
→ Judgment Day: God build a duplicate.
Brain is the key.
- Personality theory: slowly evolving personality.
Personality in terms of being a set of beliefs, memories, desires, goals and so on.
gradual overlap, evolve.
no branching.
? The nature of identity should depend only on intrinsic facts, but extrinsic. But "no branching rule" got the identity depends on what is happening eleswhere.
? What happens when we die?
KEY: What matters? What did you want out of survival?
Someone is able to engage P-functioning.(maybe is not engaging the P-f.)
→ He is still alive.
Someone can't engage in P-functioning.
→ He is dead.
How to distinguish suspended animantion from alive?
Do we believe we will die?
Imagination: We can picture our death from the outside, but the inside.
*The Death of Ivan Ilyich, Tolstoy
We believe we will die consciously: writing wills, buying insurance...
We may don't believe we will die unconsciously: we usually discover our illness surprisingly.
(When we find the fact of our mortality is made vivid, we probably change our priorities. Doing something truly important to us.)
Everyone dies alone?
Alone: sb. doing sth. not in the presence of other./ sb. doing sth. alone.
- Can dying be a joint activity/ joint undertaking?
Joint suicide pact.
- Nobaby can die your death for you.
My death is something that only I can undergo.
As for that, we do everything alone, we can only undergo our experience ourselve.
- Psychological sense: lonely ?
In some accident, people die painlessly and immediately.
Socrates's death.
→ Seems like this sentence can't tell us the deep insight of death.
