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David asked:

Can you give me some reasons for believing that a human being is not a merely purely physical
thing?

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Three reasons: Consciousness, qualia, intentionality (I am quoting the famous physicalist — more
precisely, central state materialist — David Armstrong here, who identifies these as the three major
threats to his views).

Consciousness I guess you know. Qualia are the actual experiences of sense perceptions (such as
the "redness" of red). Intentionality is the way that our thoughts are 'about' things, whereas brain
states don't seem to be about things in the same way at all.

Tim Sprod

One reason (although not one I would agree with) is that in the physical world, objects follow the laws
of cause and effect whereas human beings have free will, meaning they can go against their previous
experiences. If you hit a golf ball, you know it will go flying, whereas if you hit a person their reaction
is completely free — they may hit you back, they may do a Zulu rain dance, you never know.

Problems with this are:

1. You may not agree with that definition of the physical world; quantum indeterminacy does actually
   show that the physical world does not always follow the laws of cause and effect.

2. Do humans even have free will? Humans might be deterministic "biological machines" with the
   illusion of free will, hence conforming to the laws of cause and effect.

Peter Clarkson

We can give try to give reasons for believing that anotherhuman being is not simply a physical thing.
The argument from analogy is an attempt to provide reasons although it not universally accepted.
Basically, the argument is that we know from our case that when we are in a conscious state such as
being in pain that this is accompanied by particular physical behaviour and when we see this
behaviour in others it is associated in our minds with the conscious state of pain. This is criticised on
the ground that we can only knowthat pain behaviour is evidence of a pain sensation if it is evidence
for the truthof another's pain sensation, because we can only know something if it is true. Since we
can't know if it is true whether or not another is in pain on the basis of an association from our own
case, we do not know that behaviour is evidence for the truth of the occurrence of a sensation. You
can read about this argument, and the criticisms, at length in The Philosophy of Mindby V C
Chappell.

However, the idea of reasons for belief is essentially connected with truth and objective knowledge
but mental life is subjective and our knowledge of it is based on inter-subjectivity as opposed by
intentionality. An intentional state such as belief is an attitude to clear cut conceptual content and that
another person is conscious and has a mental life is far from clear cut! Levinas makes this point in
relation to ethics. When we are the intentional state of perceiving another, we perceive a pose and a
countenance, but this is not what leads us to suppose another is more than physical. Levinas
suggests that we know others are conscious not for reasonsbut because of our responseto them.
We do not even have to look at a person's countenance to open the door for him: Our response is an
ethical awareness. If we start from a Cartesian point of view of an isolated ego, we may need reasons
to believe that others are more than physical, but our awareness of ourselves — from the very
beginning — is an awareness of ourselves as one amongst others and we do not respond to or treat
others as physical objects.

Rachel Browne