Philosophy of Mind and Metaphysics: Mind, Body, Functionalism, and Content

Vocabulary flashcards covering physicalism, identity theory, functionalism, multiple realization, neural plasticity, intentionality, and teleosemantics across all assigned reading sources.

Physicalism

The doctrine in philosophy of mind stating that all concrete objects and phenomena lie entirely within the domain of physics.

Reduction

An explanatory model of physicalism where a macroscopic substance property (such as $\text{WATER}$) is reduced to a micro-structural property (such as $\text{H}_2\text{O}$), showing that two terms pick out a single identical property.

Realization

A relationship between properties at different levels of abstraction where a higher-order functional or structural property (such as $\text{ION}$) is instantiated or realized by a lower-order property (such as $\text{O}_2^{2-}$ or $\text{NH}_4^+$).

First-Person/Third-Person Asymmetry

An epistemological asymmetry wherein a conscious subject knows the contents of their own mind directly via introspection, whereas third parties can only infer those mental states through unmediated behavior, facial expressions, and circumstances.

Substance Dualism

The philosophical position, famously formulated by René Descartes in 1641, asserting that the subject of mental states (the mind) is an actually distinct non-physical substance from the physical body.

Mind-Brain Identity Theory

A reductive physicalist theory advocated by U. T. Place (1956), Herbert Feigl (1958), and J. J. C. Smart (1959) asserting that qualitative mental states are identical to specific neurophysiological brain states.

Explanatory Gap

A term coined by Joseph Levine (2001) denoting the conceptual gap between physical/neurobiological processes and subjective qualitative experiences (qualia), where physical accounts fail to explain why specific qualia feel the way they do.

The Mary Problem

A thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson (1982) involving brilliant vision scientist Mary who learns all physical facts about color perception inside a black-and-white room; upon seeing a red rose, her acquisition of new knowledge suggests that qualia are non-physical facts.

Behaviorism

An eliminativist approach to mind associated with Gilbert Ryle (1949) and B. F. Skinner (1953) asserting that attributions of mental states signify conditional patterns of observable behavior rather than inner causal events.

Machine Table

An abstract specification derived from Alan Turing (1936-7) and applied to functionalism by Hilary Putnam (1967) that defines internal machine states strictly in terms of inputs, outputs, and state-transition probabilities.

Block-head

Ned Block's (1978) thought experiment in which the entire population of China uses two-way radios to realize the machine table of a human mind running a giant robot, illustrating functionalism's failure to capture genuine subjectivity.

Intentionality

Characterized by Franz Brentano (1874) as 'the mark of the mental,' it is the property of mental states and entities of being about, representing, or standing for objects and states of affairs beyond themselves.

Mentalese

Jerry Fodor's (1975) hypothesized 'language of thought,' asserting that human mental representations are physically realized computational symbols possessing both syntactic and semantic properties.

Chinese Room Argument

John Searle's (1980) thought experiment demonstrating that a monolingual English speaker manipulating Chinese symbols via a rulebook performs purely formal syntactic operations without understanding Chinese, refuting strong AI and computational theories of mind.

Conceptual Role Semantics

A naturalistic approach to semantics defended by Gilbert Harman (1982) and Ned Block (1986) holding that a symbol's representational content is determined by its functional profile relative to sensory inputs, behavioral outputs, and connections to other representational states.

Functionalism

An ontological doctrine in philosophy of mind claiming that mental states are type-identical to functional states defined by causal dispositions to inputs, outputs, and other internal mental states.

Psychofunctionalism

An empirical form of functionalism that identifies mental states with Ramsey functional correlates relative to scientific psychological theories rather than commonsense folk psychology.

Liberalism

The error in a psychological theory of mind of ascribing mental properties to systems that in fact lack them.

Chauvinism

The error in a theory of mind of falsely withholding mental properties from systems that in fact possess them (e.g., denying minds to Martians or brainless organisms).

Ramsey Sentence

A single conjunctive formulation of a psychological theory in which all mental-state terms are replaced by existentially quantified variables, implicitly defining mental states strictly through non-mental input-output relations.

Absent Qualia Argument

An argument against functionalism demonstrating that a homunculi-headed or machine-table system could completely satisfy a human functional organization while lacking qualitative experience or raw feels entirely.

Problem of Differentiation

A flaw in commonsense Functionalism where distinct mental sensations (e.g., specific unnamed smells or tannic wine tastes) cannot be differentiated because no distinct commonsense platitudes exist to define them.

Multiple Realization

The canonical thesis formulated by Hilary Putnam (1967) asserting that single psychological kinds can be realized by neuroscientifically dissimilar physical kinds across different species or systems.

Lashleyan Doctrine of Neurological Equipotentiality

Karl Lashley's (1929) hypothesis proposing that learning and cognitive functions in the cortex depend on the total amount of available cortical tissue rather than specific anatomical specialization.

Shapiro's Recipe for Multiple Realization

Larry Shapiro's criteria requiring that multiply realized tokens be classified commonly by psychological system $S_1$ and distinctly by neuroscientific system $S_2$, where relevant $S_2$-variations contribute to $S_1$-sameness in relevant ways ('same in different ways').

Cortical Map Plasticity

A category of functional neural plasticity wherein a specific sensory, motor, or cognitive function mediated by a geometrically specified cortical area at time $t_1$ shifts to an adjacent cortical area at time $t_2$ following use or trauma.

Synaptic Plasticity

The facilitation or inhibition of synaptic connections between individual neurons in response to past co-activation, serving as the biochemical mechanism underlying learning and memory.

Rodent Barrel Cortex

A cytoarchitecturally visible anatomical structure in rodent sensory cortex mapping tactile inputs from facial whiskers, providing empirical evidence that changes in representational function map onto neurobiological structural specialization.

Teleofunctionalism

A modified form of functionalism that individuates psychological categories using normative, selected-effect teleofunctions based on evolutionary selection history.

Selected-Effect (SE) Analysis

An etiological analysis of natural functions formulated by Larry Wright (1973) asserting that the function of a trait is the historical effect for which past tokens of that trait were selected by natural selection.

Disjunction Problem

The challenge faced by crude causal semantic theories wherein non-standard causes (e.g., mistaking a donkey on a dark night for a horse) get incorrectly included in the representation's disjunctive referential content.

Consumer-Based Teleosemantics

Ruth Millikan's biosemantic theory asserting that a mental representation's content is determined by the Normal conditions under which historical consumer mechanisms successfully used the representation to perform their selected functions.

Desire-First Teleosemantics

David Papineau's teleosemantic approach holding that biological satisfaction conditions of desires are primary, and truth conditions of beliefs are derived from the conditions under which actions fulfill collaborating desires.

Functional Indeterminacy Problem

The difficulty highlighted by Fred Dretske (via magnetosomes in anaerobic bacteria) wherein natural selection alone fails to uniquely determine whether an organ's function is to detect an immediate physical proximal cue or a distal biological need.

Swampman

Donald Davidson's (1987) thought experiment involving an accidental physical duplicate spontaneously created by lightning hitting a swamp, used to test whether intentional mental states require a natural evolutionary history.