As an overall introduction to the problems addressed by philosophy of mind, I wanted to review what our standard, intuitive commitments are. These are the four parts of the tetrad presented in class:
1. The mind is non-material.
2. The body is material.
3. The body and mind interact.
4. Material and non-material do not interact.
So, at least one of the above premises must be abandoned. The fun part about this problem is, we don't have any good reason to choose any one of the four over any other. And even worse, any one we choose carries with it enormous problems that must be addressed.
The standard view of the mind (which I assume for the moment that most of you hold)-- interactionism-- tells us that premise 4 must be given up. But that decision immediately introduces the question of how, exactly, the mind can control the body. Hmmm.
Parallelism allows us to give up premise 3. The mind and the body each follow their individual (admittedly correlated) paths, and never the twain shall meet. Problem is, that means one of the two pieces is useless.
Materialism-- the complete reducibility of the mind to the brain-- lets us get rid of premise 1. But then consciousness, sensation, thought content, and even logic don't make any sense.
Giving up on premise 2 is just plain nuts.
So those are your choices. Good luck with that one.
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