Mind Body and Behaviour

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What is the first kind of dualism
Substance
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What is substance?
Mental substances are different from physical substances, not only are the properties of a mental state different from the properties of a physical state but they are made of different things
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What is a substance Dualist?
A person that believes in God, souls, heaven a spirits is a substance dualist
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What is Property dualism?
The qualitative nature of consciousness is different from merely physical states - it is emergent from those physical states but not the same
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What is Predicate dualism?
1: Mental predicates are necessary for a complete theory of the world, 2:mental predicates cannot be reduced to physical predicates
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What is a simple definition of predicate dualist?
People believe there is only one type of stuff but mental predicates (feelings, desires, intentions and want) are necessary for conscious experiences.
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What is interactionism?
To at least some degree mental state can cause physical states and vice versa
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What is epiphenomenalism ?
Mental events are caused by physical events but not vice versa
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What is Parallelism?
Mental events and physical events are in a kind of continual harmony but neither causes the other
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What is the first dualist problem?
The strangeness of the mental, mental events have two unique properties, subjectivity and intentionality
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What do Physical events have?
They need other neurons to connect, there has to be something to physically connect them
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What questions are asked?
Where is the mind? What is the consciousness?
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What could substance dualists say about the consciousness?
It could be anywhere
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What is Physicalism?
It is essentially the metaphysical claim that everything is physical.
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What does it distinguish?
From materialism by the fact that physicalists include such entities as energy, magnetism, gravity etc... which we agree are physical but not they are made out of matter
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What is an important part of physicalism?
The notion of supervenience. E.G. Lewis, It is symmetrical, it is cluttered, yet all there is to picture is dots and non dots. The global properties are nothing but patterns in the dots
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What is a problem for physicalism?
Qualia - the feelings/qualities of things
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What is the Jackson experiment
A famous neuroscientist is confined to a black and white room, she learns about the world by black and white media. Through study, she learns all the physical orld can teach her.
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What happens when she goes into a world of colour?
It is clear that she didnt know what it is like for both herself and others to see colour
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What is another problem for physicalism?
Intentionality
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What is intentionality?
The ‘aboutness’ of thought is difficult to explain within a physicalist account of meaning via a dispositional theory of meaning (a word means what its use suggests e.g. we use the word blue to talk about blue things
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What is the theory of mind?
Claims that mental events and physical events are one and the same (not merely correlated)
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What are two classic papers?
Is consciousness a brain process? The mental and the physical
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What did the identity theorists argue?
That a problem has arisen because philosophers have confused meaning and reference
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For example?
Very bright star in the morning and very bright star in the evening have different meanings but both statements refer to the planet venus. In this sense, identity theory is contingent and subject to empirical investigation
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What does the philosophy of mind come from?
The writings of donald davidson
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What is this based on ?
Three principles
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What are these three principles?
At least some mental events causally interact with at least some physical events, events related by causes must follow strict laws, there are no strict laws that for mental events can relate, explain and predict other events
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In order to resolve some of problems associated with this line of reasoning Davidson invokes what final principle?
Supervenience, if two events share all their physical properties they will also share all of their mental properties
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What did Feyerabend argue?
That our intuitions about the relationship vetween mind and body are simply wrong
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Any form of materialism or physicalism automatically what?
excludes the mental there are no mental events
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If mental events are physical events then what does our lack of a language lead to
Physical events is just that and no more
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Who are the main people supporting eliminative materialism?
The churchlands (Paul and Patricia)
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What is the belief of eliminative materialism?
There is only the physical brain, there is no soul or spooky stuff
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What is functionalism?
The claim that what makes a mental state a particular mental state is not its internal constitution but rather the role it plays in relation to sensory input, behaviour and other mental states
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What is functionalism?
not committed to a physicalist view of the world
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What does functionalism allow?
Different physical instantiations of the same mental states
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What is a functional description of the mental state pain?
It may be something of the form: X tends to be caused by bodily injury & X tends to produce states Y, Z & X tends to produe wincing or moaning
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What is a problem for functionalism?
Absent and inverted Qualia
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For example?
It is possible to imagine a being whose mental state is exactly that as described by a functionalist account but whose mental state has no 'quale'
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It is possible to imagine a being whose mental state is exactly that as described by who?
A functionalist statement but whose 'quale' is not the same as another person
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What is a conceivable zombie?
It is possible to imagine being a Zombie without mental states who is functionally identical to other beings that possess mental states
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If functionalism is correct then what?
machines, animals and martians can think
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What did Searle argue?
This is clearly impossible
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What is the Chinese room experiment?
A English language speaker is locked in a room. In that room there are some Chinese symbols and some rules written in English for manipulating those symbols. Some more symbols are passed into the room and by using rules the person can pass symbols
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After a while what can an outlooker look at?
Input and the output to the room and concludes that the person in the room understands chinese
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However, what would the person in the room tell?
Does not understand chinese
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The ability to manipulate symbols in a functional way is not what?
Evidence that a machine is actually thinking
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What does the system reply to the chinese room experiment?
While the indvidual in the room doesnt understand the 'complete system' does understand
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What does the robot reply to the chinese room experiment?
A robot moving, seeing and acting in the world would aquire the necessary understanding
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What would the brain stimulator replu?
Instead of instantiating the rules via a person in the room you used a complete simulation of a Chinese person’s mind. This would understand
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What would other minds reply
How do you know that other Chinese speakers ‘understand’ Chinese
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What would the intuitions repply?
Perhaps Searle’s intuitions about ‘understanding’ are simply wrong
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Other cards in this set

Card 2

Front

What is substance?

Back

Mental substances are different from physical substances, not only are the properties of a mental state different from the properties of a physical state but they are made of different things

Card 3

Front

What is a substance Dualist?

Back

Preview of the front of card 3

Card 4

Front

What is Property dualism?

Back

Preview of the front of card 4

Card 5

Front

What is Predicate dualism?

Back

Preview of the front of card 5
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