Mind and Body

These flashcards cover key concepts related to the philosophical debate of mind and body, focusing on dualism, physicalism, and associated theories.

What is dualism in the context of mind and body?

Dualism suggests that mind and body are two different substances that interact, with the mind being primary and non-physical.

What does physicalism assert?

Physicalism asserts that all that exists is physical, and there are no non-physical things.

What is the concept of supervenience in physicalism?

Supervenience explains that mental phenomena depend on physical substrata, meaning changes in the physical result in changes in the mental.

What does reductionist physicalism explain about thoughts?

Reductionist physicalism explains that mental phenomena are reducible to physical occurrences, implying a direct relationship between thoughts and physical events.

What is eliminativism in relation to mental phenomena?

Eliminativism suggests that categories like beliefs and desires do not exist as solid entities, instead we can engage in activities that may be called thinking without those categories.

What problem does Leibniz’s law highlight regarding reductionism?

Leibniz’s law highlights the issue of identity, questioning how we can identify thoughts with physical processes and the transitive nature of identity.

What is a key distinction addressed by the problem of supervenience?

The distinction is between physical processes and the subjective experience of consciousness, challenging the notion that complex hardware alone produces thought.

What kind of knowledge does the example of Mary illustrate regarding physicalism?

Mary's example illustrates that even with complete physical knowledge, there are non-physical facts about human color vision that she does not know until experiencing color.

What is the philosophical problem illustrated by the concept of zombies?

Philosophical zombies are beings identical in all physical respects to humans but lacking conscious experience, raising questions about the nature of subjective awareness.

According to Thomas Nagel, what aspect of experience is difficult to explain via physicalism?

Nagel emphasizes that there is a subjective quality to experiences, such as knowing what it's like to see red, which may not be explainable in purely physical terms.