Philosophy key words (Mind and God)

Actual world

The world as it is. It is a possible world, specifically the one we live in.

Argument from analogy

The argument that I can use the behaviour of other people to infer that they have minds because they behave as I do, and I have a mind.

Aquinas’ First Way

A form of cosmological argument presented by Aquinas, said to be from ‘motion’. By ‘motion’, Aquinas means ‘change’ from the potential to actual state of something. Such change must be caused by something that is already actual. If the cause was previously potential, then it must in turn have been caused to become actual. There must be a ‘first cause’ of change in this sequence, a cause that is not itself changed from actual to potential. This is God.

Aquinas’ Second Way

A form of cosmological argument presented by Aquinas, said to be from ‘atemporal’ or ‘sustaining’ causation. As nothing depends on itself, things are sustained in their continued existence. Therefore, there must be a first sustaining cause, which does not depend on any other cause. This is God.

Aquinas’ Third Way

A form of cosmo;ogical argument from contingency by Aquinas. Anything that exists contingently, at some time does not exist. If everything exists contingently, then at some point time does not exist. If nothing existed, then nothing could begin to exist. Therefore, something must exist necessarily, not contigently. This is God.

‘Hard’ behaviourism

Hempel’s version of philosophical behaviourism that claims that statements containing mentla concepts can be reduced or translated into statements about behaviour and physical.

Methodological behaviourism

The theory that claims that because science can only investigate what is publicly accessible, psychology is concerned only with the explanation and prediction of behaviour and not with any “inner” mental states.

Philosophical behaviourism

The family of theories that claim that our talk about the mind can be analysed in terms of talk about behaviour. The meaning of our mental concepts is given by behaviour and behavioural dispositions. Also known as ‘logical’ behaviourism.

‘Soft’ behaviourism

Ryle’s version of philosophical behaviourism that claims that our talk of the mind is talk of how someone does or would behave under certain conditions. However, behavioural dispositions are not reducible to a finite set of statements about how someone would behave, nor to a set of statements containing no mental concepts.

Blik

An attitude or view of the world that is not held or withdrawn on the basis of empirical evidence.

Category mistake

Treating a concept as belonging to a logical category that it doesn’t belong to, e.g. ‘this number is heavy’ commits a category mistake as numbers are not the sorts of things that can have weight.

Causal closure

Another term for the completeness of physics.

Causal principle

The claim that everything that exists has a cause.

China thought experiment

A thought experiment presented by Block, presented as an objection to functionalism. If the population of China, using radios, duplicated the functioning of your brain, would this create conscious experiences (just as your brain does)? If not, functionalism (about consciousness) is false.

Cognitive

Language or thought that can be true or false and aims to express how things are.

Compatibilism

The theory that the causal determination of human conduct is consistent with the freedom required for responsible moral agency.

Completeness of physics

The thesis that every physical event has a sufficient physical cause that brings it about in accordance with the laws of physics. Also known as causal closure.

Conceivability argument

Arguments for dualism from conceivability of mind and body being distinct. Descartes argues that:
1) It is conceivable that the mind can exist without the body
2) Conceivability entails possibility
3) It is possible that the mind can exist without the body
Therefore the mind and the body are distinct substances. The zombie argument is a form of conceivability argument for property dualism.

Conceivable

Capable of being imagined or grasped mentally without incoherence or contradiction.

Consciousness

The subjective phenomenon of awareness of the world and/or of one’s mental states.

Easy problem of consciousness

The problem of analysing and explaining the functions of consciousness, e.g. that we can consciously control our behaviour, report on our mental states, and focus on our attention. According to Chalmers, it is ‘easy’ to provide a successful analysis of these facts in physical and/or functional terms.

Hard problem of consciousness

The problem of analysing and explaining the phenomenal properties of consciousness, what it is like to undergo conscious experiences. According to Chalmers, it is ‘hard’ to provide a successful analysis of these properties in physical and/or functional terms.

Contingent existence

The type of existence had by a being, such as human beings, that can exist or not exist.

Correlation

A relationship between two things whereby one always accompanies the other, e.g. the properties of size and shape are correlated. Correlation should be distinguished from identity.

Cosmological argument

Arguments for God’s existence that claim that unless God exists, the question ‘why does anything exist?’ is unanswerable. Oversimplified, arguments from causation claim that everything must have a cause, and causal chains cannot be infinite so there must be a first cause. Arguments from contingency claim that every contingent thing must have an explanation for it’s existence, and this can ultimately only be provided by something that exists necessarily.

Free will defence

An argument to show that there is no inconsistency between the existence of evil and the existence of God, because it if possible that God would allow evils to arise from free will in order that we (or other beings) can have free will.

Design argument

Arguments for God's existence that claim that there is complexity in the world that is evidence of design, and design requires a designer, which is God. The evidence of design that is appealed to is usually the organisation of parts for a purpose or temporal regularities expressed by the laws of nature. Also known as teleological arguments.

Determinism

Commonly understood as the claim that everything that happens, including each human choice and action, has a cause, in accordance with laws of nature. Many philosophers argue that given a particular cause, only one outcome is possible.

Disposition

How something or someone will or is likely to behave under circumstances: what it or they would do, could do, or is liable to do in particular situations or under particular conditions that they are not in at the moment. For example, sugar is soluble (it tends to dissolve when placed in water) while someone who has a friendly disposition tends to smile when they are smiled at.

Interactionist dualism

The theory that mental and physical events can cause one another even though the mind and the body are distinct substances (interactionist substance dualism) or mental and physical properties are distinct fundamental properties (interactionist property dualism).

Property dualism

The theory that there is only one kind of substance, physical substance, but two ontologically fundamental types of property - mental properties and physical properties.

Substance dualism

The theory that two kinds of substance exist, mental substance and physical substance.

Elimination

Ceasing to use a concept on the grounds that what it refers to does not exist. E.g. the idea of ‘caloric fluid’ was eliminated by a new theory of heat as molecular motion.

Eliminative materialism

The theory that at least some of our basic mental concepts, such as consciousness or intentionality, are fundamentally mistaken and should be abandoned, as they don’t refer to anything that exists.

Epiphenomenalism

The theory that mental states and events are epiphenomena, by-products, the effects of some physical process, but with no causal influence of their own. Often combined with property dualism.

Eschatological

The study (-ology) of the ‘last things’ (Greek eskhatos) - death, the final judgement, and the ultimate destiny of human beings.

Eternal

Timeless (atemporal). What is eternal cannot have a beginning or end.

Euthyphro dilemma

Does God will what is morally good because it is good, or is it good because he wills it? If the former, God is not omnipotent, if the latter, morality is arbitrary and ‘God is good’ is tautologous.

Everlasting

Existing throughout all time, without beginning or end.

Moral evil

Bad things that arise as a result of the actions of free agents, e.g. murder.

Natural evil

Bad things, especially pain or suffering, that arise as a result of natural processes, e.g. people dying in earthquakes.

Falsifiable

A claim that is logically incompatible with some (set of) empirical evidence.

Falsification principle

A claim is meaningful only if it is falsifiable, i.e. it rules out some possible experience.

Fatalism

The view that human choice and action makes no (important) difference to what will happen in the future.

Folk psychology

A body of knowledge or theory regarding the prediction and explanation of people’s behaviour constituted by the platitudes of the mind ordinary people are inclined to endorse, i.e. ‘if someone is thirsty, they will normally try to find something to drink’.

Free will

The capacity of rational agents to choose a course of action from among various alternatives.

Function

A mapping from each of the possible inputs to some state to its output. The description of a state’s function describes what that state does.

Functionalism

The theory that mental states are (can be reduced to) functional states, i.e. what it is to be a mental state is just to be a state with certain input and output relations to certain stimuli, behaviour, and other mental states.

Functionalism, causal role

The version of functionalism that interprets the function of mental states in terms of the role they play in a network of causes and effects. The mental state can be ‘realised’ by any state that plays that causal role.

Ghost in the Machine

Ryle’s name for substance dualism

Idealism

The theory that minds are the only kind of substance. Therefore, all that exists are minds and what depends on them (ideas).

Incompatibilism

The belief that determinism and free will cannot both be true. If human beings have free will, determinism is false; if determinism is true, human beings do not have free will.

Indefinitely heterogenous dispositions

Dispositions that can be manifested in many, many different ways. Ryle argued that mental states are indefinitely heterogeneous behavioural dispositions, so that while mental concepts can be analysed in terms of behaviour, they cannot be reduced to talk about behaviour.

Indiscernibility of identicals

Leibniz’ principle that if two things are identical (i.e. are just one thing") then they share all their properties and are so indiscernible, i.e. you cannot have numerical identity without qualitative identity.

Indivisibility argument

Descartes’ argument that bodies are divisible into spacial parts, but minds have no such parts. Therefore, the mind is a distinct substance from the body.

Intentionality

The property of mental states whereby they are ‘directed’ towards an ‘object’, that is they are ‘about’ something; e.g. the belief that Paris is the capital of France is about Paris and the desire to eat chocolate is about chocolate.

Conceptual interaction problem

The objection to interaction dualism that mind and body (mental and physical properties) cannot interact causally, because they are too different in nature, e.g. the mind is outside of space while the body is space.

Empirical interaction problem

The objection to interactionalist dualism that the claim that the mind or mental states cause changes to the body or physical states conflicts with scientific theory or evidence, e.g. hat the total energy in the universe stays constant.

Intrinsic/extrinsic

Distinction in the properties of things. The intrinsic properties of a thing are those which it has in and of itself, e.g. the size of a physical object. Its extrinsic (or relational) features are those which it has only in relation to something else, e.g. the function of a mental state.

Introspection

Direct, first-personal awareness of ones own mental states.

Inverted qualia

The thought experiment that supposes that two people experience subjectively different colours when looking at the same object, but otherwise think and behave in identical ways; e.g. they both call the same object ‘red’. The argument is presented as an objection to a functionalist account of phenomenal consciousness.

Kalām argument

A form of cosmological argument that claims that everything that begins to exist has a cause, and that the universe began to exist because it is impossible for a temporal sequence of things to be infinite, and so there is a cause of the universe.

Knowledge argument

Jackson’s argument for property dualism, presenting the thought experiment of Mary, a neuroscientist who has lived her entire life in a black-and-white room, but who knows all the physical information there is to know about what happens then we see a ripe tomato. When she first leaves the room and comes to see something red for the first time, does she learn something new? If so, some properties are not physical properties.

Laws of nature

Fixed regularities that govern the universe; the statements that express these regularities.

Leibniz’s principle of the indiscernibility of identicals

Leibniz’s principle that if two things are identical (i.e are just one thing), then they share all their properties and so are indiscernible; o.e. you cannot have numerical identity without qualitative identity.

Logical positivism

The twentieth-century philosophical movement that used the verification principle to determine meaningfulness.

Machine table

A table listing every possible combination of input and output for a machine, describing the operations of its software.

Masked Man fallacy

A fallacious form of argument that uses what one believes about an object to infer whether or not the object is identical with something else; e.g. “I believe that the Masked Man robbed the bank; I do not believe that my father robbed the bank, therefore the Masked Man is not my father”. This is a fallacy, because one’s beliefs may be mistaken. More generally, it is said to challenge the use of conceivability to infer what is possible/actual.

Materialism

The theory that the only substance is matter (or physical substance). Everything that exists, including the mind, depends on matter (or physical substance) to exist.

Mental states

Mental phenomena that can endure over time, such as beliefs and desires. The term is sometimes used more broadly to cover mental phenomena or mental properties in general (states, processes and events).

Monism

The theory that only one kind of substance exists. Both materialism (physicalism) and idealism are monist theories.

Monotheism

The view that there is only one God.

Multiple realisability

1) The claim that there are many ways in which one and the same mental state can be expressed in behaviour. This is presented as an objection to the claim that mental states are reducible to behavioural dispositions.

2) The claim that one and the same mental state can have its function performed by different physical states. This is presented as an objection to the claim that mental states are identical to physical states.

Multiverse theory

The claim that there are or have been (many) other universes. It can be used as an objection to the argument from design, to argue that the chance that some universe with laws that enabled order is high. So we shouldn’t infer that there is a designer.

Omnibenevolent

Being perfectly or supremely good. Often defined as being perfectly morally good.

Omnipotent

Having perfect power. Often defined as having the ability to do anything it is possible to do.

Omniscient

Having perfect knowledge. Often defined as knowing everything that it is possible to know.

Ontological argument

Arguments that claim that we can deduce the existence of God from the concept of God.

Ontologically distinct

Two things that are not the same thing, neither is able to be reduced to the other, and the existence of one is not determined by the existence of the other, e.g. mind and body to substance dualists.

Ontologically independent

Not depending on anything else for existence. According to traditional metaphysics, only substances can be ontologically independent.

Paradox of the stone

Can God create a stone that he can’t lift? If the answer is “no”, then God cannot create the stone. If the answer is “yes”, then God cannot lift the stone. So either way, it seems, there is something that God cannot do. If there is something God cannot do, then God isn’t omnipotent.

Para-mechanical hypothesis

Ryle’s name for understanding mental states and processes as akin to physical states and processes, but non-spatial and non-mechanical

Phenomenal concept

A concept by which you recognise something as of a certain kind when experiencing or perceiving it, e.g. recognising red as “this” colour. Contrasted with theoretical concepts, which describe something in terms of theoretical terms, e.g. red as light with a frequency of 600 nm.

Phenomenal consciousness

A form of consciousness with a subjective experimental quality, as involved in perception, sensation and emotion. Awareness of '“what it is like” to experience such mental phenomena.

Phenomenal properties

Properties of an experience that give it its distinctive experimental quality, and which are apprehended in phenomenal consciousness.

Physicalism

A modern form of materialism, which claims that everything that exists is physical, or depends upon something that is physical. More precisely, the theory that everything that is ontologically fundamental is physical, that it comes under the laws and investigations of physics, and every physical event has a sufficient physical cause.

Reductive physicalism

A form of physicalism that claims that mental properties are phycial properties.

Possible world

A way of talking about how things could be. Saying that something is possible is saying that it is true in some possible world. Saying that something is impossible is saying that it is false in all possible worlds.

Possible, logically

Something that doesn’t involve a contradiction or conceptual incoherence.

Possible, metaphysically

Something which is true in at least one possible world.

Possible, physically

Something which could be true given the laws of nature in the actual world.

Presuppose

To require or assume an antecedent state of affairs, e.g. if Jones has stopped playing basketball, this presupposes that he was playing basketball.

Principle of sufficient reason

The principle, defended by Leibniz, that every true fact has an explanation that provides a sufficient reason for why things are as they are and not otherwise.

Private

Capable of being experienced or known by no one other than the subject themselves.

Problem of evil

The existence of evil either logically rules out or is evidence against the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent being.

Problem of other minds

The question of how we can know that there are minds other than our own, given that our experience of other minds (if they exist) is through behaviour.

Property, intentional

A property of a mental state that enables it to be '“about” something, to represent what it does. It is an extrinsic or relational property.

Qualia

Phenomenal properties understood as intrinsic and non-intentional properties of mental states.

Reducible

A phenomenon or property is reducible to another if the first can be completely explained in terms of, or identified with, the second (which is considered more ontologically fundamental), e.g. type identity theory claims that mental properties are reducible (identical) to physical properties.

Reduction

The reducing of one thing to another. An analytic reduction claims that one set of concepts can be translated without loss of meaning into another set of concepts, e.g. Hempel’s “hard” behaviourism claims that mental concepts are reducible to behavioural and physical concepts. An ontological reduction claims that the things in one domain are identical with (or can be completely explained in terms of) some of the things in another domain, e.g. type identity theory claims that mental properties are reducible to physical properties.