PHIL 340 Exam 1

Necessary Condition

A condition that must be present for an event or state to occur; if absent, the event cannot happen.

Sufficient Condition

A condition that, if present, guarantees that an event or state will occur.

Validity

A property of a deductive argument where if all premises are true, the conclusion must necessarily be true.

Soundness

A property of a deductive argument that is both logically valid AND has all true premises.

Difference in Degree vs. Difference in Kind

A difference in degree is a quantitative shift along a spectrum; a difference in kind is a fundamental qualitative shift in nature.

Turing Machine

A theoretical mathematical model of computation introduced by Alan Turing that manipulates symbols on an infinite tape according to set rules.

The Imitation Game (Turing Test)

Turing's behavioral test where an interrogator communicates via text to distinguish between a human and a computer.

Lady Lovelace's Objection

The argument that computers cannot show true originality or creativity because they only do whatever we know how to order them to perform.

ELIZA

Joseph Weizenbaum's 1966 NLP program that mimicked a psychotherapist using simple keyword matching and transformation rules.

Searle's Chinese Room

A thought experiment disproving Strong AI, showing that symbol manipulation according to rules does not constitute genuine understanding.

The Mind-Body Problem

The philosophical puzzle regarding how mental states (thoughts, feelings) relate to physical states (brain, body).

Dualism

The view that mental states and physical states are two fundamentally distinct kinds of entities or substances.

Reductionist Physicalism

The view that mental states are identical to physical brain states and processes ('mind states are just brain states').

Multiple Realizability

The thesis that the same mental state (like pain) can be instantiated/realized by many different physical substrates.

Phenomenal Consciousness (p-consciousness)

Subjective experience; defined by Thomas Nagel as when 'there is something that it is like to be that organism.'

Qualia

The private, subjective, qualitative sensations or 'feels' of conscious experience (e.g., the aroma of coffee, seeing red).

Nagel's Bat Argument

Argument that objective physical science cannot capture the fundamentally subjective 'what it is like' experience of bat sonar.

Akins' 3-D Movie Thought Experiment

Kathleen Akins' critique of Nagel, proposing science could reconstruct bat sonar spatial properties for human visual senses.

Homunculus Problem

The fallacy of explaining mental control by positing a 'little man' inside the mind, merely delegating explanation to another mind.

Persisting Interlocutor Illusion

The psychological illusion where users perceive a continuous, persistent person behind an LLM conversation history.

Flicker Hypothesis

The hypothesis that LLMs might experience brief, momentary flickers of consciousness during single forward passes without long-term continuity.

Shoggoth Hypothesis

The hypothesis that LLMs possess a stable, persisting, but profoundly alien non-human consciousness beneath surface role-play.

The Gaming Problem (Consciousness-Washing)

When AI systems learn to game behavioral markers of consciousness from training data, making behavioral indicators uninformative.

Global Workspace Theory

Architecture where specialized cognitive processors compete to broadcast information globally across a central workspace.

Janus Problem

When the same evidence (e.g., a global workspace in AI) is interpreted by functionalists as evidence FOR consciousness, but by biological naturalists as proof that the theory is incomplete.

Cogito Ergo Sum

Descartes' principle ('I think, therefore I am') that the act of thinking guarantees one's existence as a thinking substance.

Thinking vs. Extended Substance

Descartes' distinction between res cogitans (unextended non-physical mind) and res extensa (extended physical body).

Princess Elisabeth's Objection

Challenge to Cartesian dualism asking how an unextended non-physical soul could exert physical force to move a body.

Pineal Gland

The brain structure hypothesized by Descartes to serve as the physical 'seat of the soul' where mind and body interact.

Psychological Continuity Theory (Parfit)

Theory that personal identity over time consists in overlapping chains of psychological connections (memories, beliefs, desires).