For a view of the distribution of letter grades earned by the PHI 340 Spring 2000 dualism papers, see this chart.
In apparent violations of the Honor Code, five students used other people's work without citation. It took less than a total of five minutes to find all of the web sites used in these cases.
Eight students did not make a serious attempt to do part C. of the paper. The syllabus and "Dualism Paper Rules and Guidelines" (then) said that this was sufficient reason for an "F" for the course. But I'm terribly soft-hearted. So instead of giving these eight students what the rules said they'd earned, I zeroed out their points on the paper, the optional final (if any) and on the Intuition Inventory. (One of these students said, with some heat, that I was obligated to be even more lenient, and I explained, as coolly as I could, that I was not.)
It appeared that two students did not submit a paper and made no arrangements for extensions. When this omission was not caused by circumstances beyond the student's control, then (according to the Spring 2000 syllabus) each deserved an F for the course.
In about 10% of the papers, there were problems with grammar, vocabulary, etc., that were severe enough to cause substantial point losses, and in another 15-20%, such problems with writing mechanics were closely correlated with more modest point losses. About one paper, I was unable to determine whether the author was trying to do option I. or option II. - and I don't give up easily.
There was (again) little if any difference in quality between papers done for option I. and papers done for option II. I estimate that over 80% of the point losses were caused by the following mistakes:
1. The author did not explain the three replies to the No Interaction Argument anywhere near fully enough for the specified (ignorant, intelligent, interested) audience. Although the role of purpose-directed explanation was often alluded to, it was rarely made clear. This cost an average of about 7 points.
*2. The author wholly ignored the discussion of mediated causation. The concept of mediated causation is crucial to a correct understanding of the second premise of the No Interaction Argument. Failure to discuss that concept caused an immediate loss of 3 points, but, disastrously, it typically led the author to offer ineffective, irrelevant counterexamples to the second premise of the No Interaction Argument, costing 15-30 points for part C.
3. Mistake 2. was often, though not always, coupled with a version of the very bad, blatantly question-begging argument in "Dualism Paper Rules and Advice." (One student even reproduced the very bad argument word-for-word as the whole of part C. on the No Interaction Argument!) This cost 15-30 points for part C.
*4. The author correctly rendered the first premise of the Problem of Other Minds as: "If CD is true, then for all I know, I am the only person," but then offered a refutation not of this premise, but of the ridiculous falsehood, "If CD is true, then I am the only person." This is of course precisely the misstatement that was warned against ("Dualism Paper Rules and Advice"). The effect was equivalent to simply assuming the truth of dualism, thus rendering any proffered refutation blatantly question-begging. The cost was 15-30 points for part C.
5. The author correctly rendered both premises of the Problem of Other Minds, but then offered a refutation of the second premise misinterpreted as, "I am absolutely certain [or, have a classically self-evident belief] that there are other people," thus incorrectly imposing on the objector the irrationally high and refuted standards of Classical Foundationalism. The cost was 10-20 points for part C.
6. The author misrepresented the evidence of common usage for dualism as a proof of dualism; or did not explain how the systematic and straightforward account yielded by dualism provides (non-conclusive but persuasive) evidence for dualism; or both. 5-10 points were taken off for this error.
7. The author attempted to resist the evidence of common usage mainly by pointing out that wide, even universal, acceptance of a belief is no guarantee of truth, often giving "The Earth is flat" as an illustration. Adverting to the latter falsehood is not an effective way to resist a theory - dualism - that has the virtue of accounting systematically and straightforwardly for the truth of sentences commonly used to describe people. Nor does it give any hint about how to account non-dualistically for these true sentences, which must be done to make the resistance minimally plausible. Points lost for this error: 15-30 for part C.
8. The author did not accurately explain how the concept of "classically self-evident belief" entered into Descartes's argument for distinctness of mind from body. Typically, this was the result of either failing to state the definition of "classically self-evident", or by confusing statements of the form "P" and "I believe P," or both. This cost an average of 5 points.
*9. The author misrepresented the first premise in Descartes's argument for distinctness of mind from body, which actually says: minds are infallible about some of their current states. Instead, the author wrote as if the first premise was: minds are always infallible about all of their (current) states, a preposterous claim that Descartes, better than most, knew was false. This made it far too easy to 'refute' the premise, thus costing the author 15-30 points in part C.
There were of course other mistakes made, but the nine described above were common ones, with 2. , 4. and 9. predominant. Some of the other mistakes were unprecedented in my long experience, and were made more than once.
An especially striking example of the latter was the extraordinary assertion by some that dualism is true because brain damage (up to and including total brain loss!) will not result in mental malfunction, thus demonstrating the total independence of mind and body. (This is reminiscent of Flourens's analysis of his experiments with decapitated chickens.) No dualist who claims that mind and body interact would ever agree to such an assertion, and even those theorists who deny interaction (e.g. idealists, occasionalists) realize that there is at the very least an appearance of interaction which needs to be explained.
Another infrequent, but still too frequent, claim was that there would be no psychological differences among people if they were physical and did not have souls, since all people and all human brains are made out of the same physical stuff. In support of this contention, clones and identical twins were usually mentioned. This ignores (among other things) the biological fact that both before and after birth, such genetically similar organisms are influenced differently by their environments.
Although far less frequent than last semester, there were still a fair number of students who tried to do I.C. by doing II.A. and/or II.B. or who tried to do II.C. by doing I.A. and/or II.B. Happily, only one student misstated the first premise of the Problem of Other Minds in precisely the way warned against.
Reports of religious experiences, expressions of faith and quotations from sacred scriptures were offered and were welcome, as always, but only three students even tried to integrate this material into relevant reasoning that went beyond the warned-against and unhelpful "preaching to the converted" (see "Dualism Paper Rules and Advice"). (All three of these students achieved very high scores: two 100's and one 84.)
Here is a small sample of prose from the less successful of these papers. These are all actual quotes. (Neither George Bush was among the students.)
"I can feel the afflictions of my mind."
-so one student wrote as part of his/her proof that a mind exists. Why this rather weak assertion would need proof was not made clear.
One page earlier that student had written,
"Contact between baseball molecules and space is a logical impossibility."
One page after the initial quote, the same student wrote,
"This is an argument against using ... logic to advance any theory of mind. Logic cannot apply to mind ... theory."
-thereby using logic in a way s/he'd said (in the same sentence) was impossible.
[You might think that I'm unfairly taking remarks out of context. On the contrary: I'm being generous by isolating these remarks from an even more confusing verbal environment. You might also think it helps to know which argument "This" refers to in the remark last quoted. You'd be wrong - terribly wrong.]
Let's get some fresh air:
"People breath[e] air into there [their] bodies. Air is not physical. So physical and not physical things can interact."
"Bodies are sometimes intangible. If I am paralyzed from the waist down and someone touches my leg I can't feel it. Even if I touch my own leg I can't feel it. My leg is intangible."
"With souls and bodies, it's like the chicken and the egg."
"The presence of a non-physical entity (soul) within a physical body is a subject of high stress." [- the first sentence of the paper.]
"To move forward, one must regress to ask and explain the following point?"
[-question mark in the original]
"If one looks at the idea of the mind as being a simple theoretical idea without a physical presence, then it would therefore take up no space at all while at the same time take up an infinite amount of space. With this amount of space, it would be present throughout the body and would be able to make contact with the body at all times."
"We have convictions, personalities, and motivation that must be the products of the presence of souls/minds. Otherwise what would keep us from having the same likes, dislikes, motivations and convictions? ... Since I have brown hair, would the ... [person] next to me with brown hair also be a morning person?"
"It is obvious and foundational to know when someone is dead. If you have ever looked into a dead person's eyes you get the feeling that there is nothing inside. You know definitely that you are alone. While there are many physical signs of death: cold skin, rigamortous [rigor mortis], unresponsive to your voice. I'll argue that it is only the lack of mind that is recognizable as death. Death is the ultimate extreme state of intuition. We know completely and inherently that they are dead. We relate on some level because some day we know we will have that same blank stare. It isn't that they are unresponsive or motionless that scares us, it is that they have no identify or personality. Yes, you are given physical signs of a non-physical exit, but it is the non-physical exit that impacts us because every physical part of the body is still there. There is communication on many levels about what has happened."
"We can think an endless amount of thoughts, thousands upon thousands of thoughts, yet those thoughts take up no space since they are inside our mind. Maybe we weigh a bit less after thinking them simply because our heart beats, we breathe and sit, and we might have burned up a few calories, ..."
"Descartes, the philosopher behind Cartesian Dualism ..."
"Perhaps you would think to yourself that this individual is a hamburger shy of a Happy Meal. Indeed we all would."
(I liked that line, but it did not advance the argument, as we say in the Phil biz.)
"... modern science has yet to determine exactly why these people posses the will and desire to randomly slaughter people who were previously unknown and unthreatening to them. Perhaps it is a physical imbalance or simply a case personal misinterpretation."
"At the cornerstone of the argument for dualism is an argument by a now deceased gentleman named Rene Descartes."
One student relied heavily on the dictionary to try to resolve questions about mind/body interaction. S/he carefully transcribed three definitions s/he'd found of a key term, and applied each in detail to show how arguments against Cartesian Dualism failed. The term that s/he should have looked up (if any) was "c a u s a l." The term s/he actually looked up was "c a s u a l."
Finally, one of the best lines from a paper that I've seen in years, combining truth with wit:
"Even photons are described as restless masses, and thereby are 'physical'."
Selections from the Fall 2000 Dualism papers