Mind as Immaterial Substance - Lecture 2

These flashcards cover the vocabulary and logic-based arguments for substance dualism as presented in a lecture focusing on Rene Descartes and Leibniz.

Substance Dualism

The view, held by Renee Descartes, that the mind and physical matter are two fundamentally different, distinct kinds of things.

Substance

A thing that does not depend for its existence on anything else, or at least nothing else finite.

Soul (Platonic sense)

An immaterial substance that is simple, divine, immutable, and imperishable; it is believed to dwell in the realm of forms.

Epistemological arguments

Arguments that have to do with what we can know or our ability to know something.

I think, therefore, I am

A famous summary of Descartes' Meditations, asserting that the one thing a subject cannot logically doubt is that they are thinking.

Transparency (of the mind)

The claim that nothing can be in the mind without the subject knowing it is there, at least in the moment it occurs.

Intersubjective

Shared by multiple subjects, referring to how knowledge of material things is public and can be experienced by different people together.

Essential nature

The necessary properties that a thing cannot fail to have, which define the very nature or definition of what that thing is across all possible worlds.

Extended thing

The essential nature of a material body, meaning that it takes up space and possesses dimensions.

Thinking thing

The essential nature of a person or mind; the defining characteristic of existence according to Descartes.

Goldbach's conjecture

The proposition that every even number greater than $2$ is the sum of two prime numbers; used by Kim to illustrate that not everything conceivable is necessarily possible.

NI (Necessity of Identity)

The logical principle that if $x = y$, then necessarily $x = y$, meaning if two things are identical, they are identical in every possible world.

Reductio

A rule of logic where one assumes a premise and shows it leads to a contradiction, thereby proving the negation of the initial assumption.

Time worm

A concept where an object or body is viewed as extending through multiple points in time, undergoing changes while retaining identity over that duration.

Leibniz's Mill Argument

The argument that physical interactions, such as pieces pushing against one another in a machine, cannot explain or generate perception.

Simple substance

The location where perception must be sought, according to Leibniz, as opposed to a composite machine or material body.