minds,machines,persons midterm1

Physicalism

There is nothing to reality over and above the physical; a complete physical description would be a complete description of the world.

Dualism

The mental is something over and above the physical, so a complete physical description would leave something out.

Substance dualism

The mind is a nonphysical thinking substance and the body is a physical extended substance.

Mind/brain identity theory

Mental states and properties are literally states and properties of physical brains.

Meditation I

Descartes uses radical doubt to reject anything that could possibly be mistaken and searches for something absolutely certain.

Dream argument

The possibility that present experience could be a dream gives Descartes reason to doubt ordinary sensory beliefs.

Cogito

"I think, therefore I am"; Descartes' first unshakeable certainty that he exists while thinking.

Thinking thing

What Descartes initially knows himself to be after the Cogito; a thing whose essential activity is thought.

Descartes conceivability argument

If the mind can be clearly conceived existing without the body, then it is possible for the mind to exist without the body, so mind and body are not identical.

Conceivable → possible bridge

The principle that whatever is genuinely conceivable is metaphysically possible.

Descartes divisibility argument

The body is divisible while the mind is supposedly indivisible, so by Leibniz's Law they cannot be identical.

Leibniz's Law

If two things are identical, they must share all the same properties; if one has a property the other lacks, they are not identical.

Elisabeth argument

Physical motion was understood as requiring pushing, contact, shape, and extension, but a nonphysical soul has no extension, making mind-to-body causation mysterious.

Mind-body interaction problem

The problem of explaining how a nonphysical mind could causally affect a physical body.

Pairing problem

Even if minds can affect bodies, it is unclear what makes one particular mind interact with one particular body rather than another.

Causal closure of the physical

The idea that physical events have sufficient physical causes.

Overdetermination

An effect has more than one independently sufficient cause.

Causal exclusion argument

If a physical event already has a sufficient physical cause, a separate mental cause seems unnecessary or excluded unless the event is overdetermined.

Interactionism

The view that mental events cause physical events and physical events cause mental events.

Epiphenomenalism

The view that physical events cause mental events, but mental events do not cause physical events.

Parallelism

The view that mental and physical events systematically correspond without directly causing one another.

Descartes response to Elisabeth

Descartes says mind, body, and mind-body union involve different basic notions, so mind-body causation should not be understood simply as body-body pushing.

Official Doctrine

Ryle's name for the Cartesian picture that a person consists of a physical body plus a separate nonphysical mind.

Ghost in the Machine

Ryle's mocking name for the Cartesian Official Doctrine.

Category mistake

Treating something as if it belongs to the wrong logical category or type.

University example

After seeing the buildings and departments of a university, asking where the university itself is as if it must be one extra building.

Disposition

A tendency to respond in certain ways under certain conditions even when the response is not currently happening.

Analytical behaviorism

The view that the meanings of mental-state terms can be analyzed in behavioral or dispositional terms.

Methodological behaviorism

The scientific approach of focusing psychology on publicly observable behavior.

Single-track disposition

A simple disposition linking one circumstance to one characteristic response.

Multi-track disposition

A disposition that can produce many different responses across many different situations.

One-to-many behavior problem

One mental state can lead to many different behaviors depending on circumstances and other mental states.

Many-to-one behavior problem

The same outward behavior can result from many different underlying mental states.

Behaviorism circularity problem

Defining one mental state behaviorally often requires mentioning other mental states, producing circular or recursive definitions.

Epistemology vs metaphysics

Epistemology asks how we know something; metaphysics asks what something fundamentally is.

Smart identity theory

Sensations and other mental states are literally brain processes rather than separate things caused by brain processes.

Qualitative vs numerical identity

Qualitative identity means two things share similar properties; numerical identity means they are literally one and the same thing.

Lightning identity

Lightning = electrical discharge; an example of an identity discovered empirically rather than known from meaning alone.

Morning Star / Evening Star identity

The Morning Star and Evening Star were discovered to be the same object, Venus, showing that two descriptions can refer to one thing.

A priori vs a posteriori

A priori knowledge comes from reasoning independently of experience; a posteriori knowledge comes through observation or empirical discovery.

Necessary vs contingent

A necessary truth could not have been otherwise; a contingent truth could have been otherwise.

After-image objection

An after-image can seem yellow or orange while a brain process is not literally yellow or orange, apparently challenging identity theory.

Smart response to after-image objection

Smart identifies the experience of seeming to see the colored after-image with a brain process, not a literally colored object in the brain.

Privacy objection

Sensations seem privately accessible while brain processes seem publicly observable, suggesting they might be different things.

Conceivability objection to identity theory

If a sensation without its brain process seems conceivable, one might argue that the separation is possible and therefore the two are not identical.

Pryor amnesiac professor example

An amnesiac Jim Pryor can imagine a situation in which he exists and Jim Pryor does not, showing that something can seem conceivable even when it is impossible.

Functionalism

A mental state is defined by the functional or causal role it plays rather than by the exact physical material that realizes it.

Functional role

A state's network of causal relations to inputs, other internal or mental states, and outputs or behavior.

Multiple realizability

The same mental state or functional role can be realized by different physical systems or materials.

Gold vs mousetrap example

Gold is identified by physical composition, especially atomic number 79, while a mousetrap is identified mainly by what function it performs.

Egg-protector example

What makes something an egg protector is whether it performs the protective function, not what material it is made from.

Coke-machine example

A machine's internal states are characterized by how inputs lead to outputs and transitions into other internal states.

Eiffel Tower coin-press example

A pressed Euro costs two Euros; after inserting one one-Euro coin, the machine dispenses nothing and moves into a one-Euro-credit state while waiting.

Machine table

A table describing how a current state plus an input determines an output and a next state.

Total state

A machine-table state representing the system's entire condition at a given moment.

Total-state problem

If a machine state represents an entire mental condition, two people both in pain may still fail to share the same total state because their other beliefs, desires, moods, and sensations differ.

Ramsification

Defining a whole network of interrelated states all at once through their causal relations rather than defining each term separately.

Belief-desire interaction

Behavior depends on combinations of mental states; for example, believing it will rain plus wanting to stay dry may lead someone to carry an umbrella.

Functionalism and physicalism

Functionalism is not automatically physicalism because it defines mental states by causal role rather than by one required physical substance.

Qualia

The what-it's-like or felt qualities of experiences; how an experience feels from the inside.

Nagel bat argument

Objective facts about a bat do not automatically reveal what it is like to experience the world from the bat's first-person point of view.

Inverted qualia

Two systems have the same functional organization and behavior but different inner qualitative experiences.

Absent qualia

A system has the same functional organization and behavior as a conscious system but has no qualitative experience at all.

Mary

Frank Jackson's scientist who knows every physical fact about color vision while living in a black-and-white environment.

Knowledge argument

Mary knows every physical fact before seeing color, learns something new when she sees red, so physical facts appear not to capture everything about experience.

Weaker functionalism

The view that functionalism may explain nonqualitative states such as beliefs and desires while qualia require some additional theory.

Platitude

A widely accepted common-sense claim that helps make up an ordinary theory or concept.

Folk psychology

Our everyday framework for explaining and predicting people using beliefs, desires, intentions, pain, fear, and other ordinary mental categories.

Folk theory confirmation / refinement / overturning

Science can confirm a folk claim, refine a category by making it more precise, or overturn a claim completely.

Analytic functionalism

The version of functionalism that defines mental states using common-sense platitudes and ordinary folk psychology.

Too-liberal worry

A functional theory may be so loose that strange systems satisfy the required causal organization and incorrectly count as having minds.

Bolivian economy example

A Block-style example used to illustrate the worry that a sufficiently complex economy might satisfy a coarse functional description without intuitively having a mind.

Psychofunctionalism

The version of functionalism that lets empirical cognitive psychology and science determine which functional states and roles actually matter.

Psychofunctionalism chauvinism worry

If scientific roles are defined too narrowly or finely, creatures with broadly similar minds but different internal organization may wrongly be classified as lacking our mental states.

Eliminativism

The view that some folk-psychological categories such as belief and desire may belong to a false theory and could eventually be eliminated rather than reduced.

Phlogiston analogy

Phlogiston is an example of a theoretical entity abandoned when the larger theory failed, illustrating how folk-psychological categories might also be eliminated if the theory behind them fails.

Self-refutation objection to eliminativism

The objection that someone who says beliefs do not exist still seems to believe eliminativism; the eliminativist replies that current language may use folk terms even if future science replaces them.