physicalsim

physicalism

everything that exists is physical or depends on something physical

behaivourism

the idea that mental states are nothing more than behavioural dispositions

hard behaivourism

all propositions about mental states can be reduced without loss of meaning to propositions about bodily states, to be in mental state X is to behave in way Y

a physicalist theory of the mind that provides 3 implications to support Hempel’s theory:

1st implication- if we cant empirically check the meaning of a statement, it is meaningless

2nd implication- two statements have the same meaning if they are true or false under the same conditions.

3rd implication- we can translate a statement into a *series* of statements that simply describe the conditions of verification

→a statement with the concept - ‘temperature’ - can be translated into a series of statements describing the observations we make to establish whether the first statement, using temperature is true

→eg, ‘it is 25 degrees celsius’ can be translated to ‘the thermostat reads 25 degrees celsius’

soft behaviourism

propositions about mental states are propositions about behavioural dispositions

disposition

how something is likely to behave in a situation

category mistake

to treat a concept as belonging to a different logical category from the one it actually belongs to

mind brain type identity theory

all mental states are identical to brain states, although mental states and brain states are not synonymous

ontological reduction

when something can be reduced to something else without loss of meaning in terms of what already exists

args for MBTIT

* ockhams razor
* mental causation
* solves the problem of other minds and interaction

args against MBTIT

* conceivability argument for dualism
* indivisibility argument for dualism
* zombies argument (dualism)
* knowledge mary argument
* leibniz law
* multiple realisability

eliminative materialism

our common sense understanding of the mind represents folk-psychology and is, therefore, false/ radically misguided. this involves the attribution to people of intentional states such as beliefs and desires as well as sensations or qualia and other mental states and it uses these theoretical concepts to explain and predict their behaviour.

args for elim materialism

* there are many problems with the concept of folk-psychology; it is an inadequate account of human nature, has only loosely defined set of rules, it cannot explain mental illness, sleep or learning. All suggesting folk-psychology may not be the best way to think about the mind
* Churchland argues we should look to replace it with a more rigorous scientific theory such as neuroscience. It will supersede folk-psychology by promising to provide a fuller explanation of such phenomena.

args against elim materialism

* in rejecting folk psychology, eliminative materialism goes against many intuitions we have. Eg. Descartes took ‘I think’ to be his very first certainty. We could argue that the direct certainty we have about our own mental states should take priority over physicalist considerations.
* folk psychology does have predictive power, eg when he is in pain he will shout, whereas neuroscience is bad at predicting behaviour eg. the brain and its highly complex structure making it hard for neuroscience to predict even the simplest behaviours.
* If Churchland is arguing that we should **believe** eliminative materialism is true, then it seems his theory is self-refuting.

functionalism

mental states are defined as functional states within an organism that can be multiply realised

args for functionalism