Minds and Machines Exam

What are René Descartes' two primary philosophical goals?

Show modern mechanical science coexists with religious faith and free will, and dismantle Aristotelian physics and metaphysics.

What is Descartes' Method of Doubt (Foundationalism)?

A foundationalist method treating any doubtable belief as false to isolate indubitable truths as a knowledge foundation.

What is the scope of Descartes' Sense Doubt?

It casts uncertainty over small or distant objects because sensory organs occasionally deceive us.

What is doubted and what survives under Descartes' Dream Doubt?

It doubts physical objects, body existence, and composite sciences like physics, but simple non-composite truths like arithmetic and geometry survive.

What is the scope of Descartes' Malicious Demon Doubt?

An all-powerful evil deceiver casts doubt on everything, including basic arithmetic, geometry, and extended physical space.

What is the Cogito argument (Cogito, Ergo Sum)?

Doubting is thinking and thinking requires a thinker, making "I am, I exist" necessarily true whenever mentally affirmed.

How does Descartes' Trademark Argument prove God's existence?

An imperfect mind cannot originate the idea of a perfect God, so a real perfect God must exist to place that idea in the mind.

What is Descartes' Epistemic Guarantee for Rationalism?

Because God is perfect and not a deceiver, whatever the intellect perceives clearly and distinctly is guaranteed true through reason alone.

What does the Piece of Wax Argument prove about physical matter?

Melting changes all sensory qualities, proving matter's essence is spatial extension known by pure intellect rather than sense or imagination.

What nuance exists in Descartes' connection between conceivability and possibility?

Descartes assumes clear conceivability guarantees real possibility, raising the question of whether humans can conceive impossible things.

What are the 5 traditional reasons for dualism listed in the materials?

Dualism is defended by considerations of religion, introspection, free will, creativity, and the explanatory gap.

What are John Locke's primary goals in his empiricist philosophy?

Restore sensory validity, find human understanding's limits, respect science and common sense, and reject Cartesian innate ideas.

What is Locke's Natural Faculties argument against innate ideas?

Natural senses and memory explain all knowledge acquisition without requiring built-in innate impressions.

What is Locke's Poverty of Experience argument against innate ideas?

A person born blind or deaf lacks ideas of colors or sounds, proving mental ideas depend entirely on physical sensory organs.

How does Locke's Acquisition of Truths argument refute innate mathematical knowledge?

Children are not born knowing 3+4=7, but must learn numbers and equality before assenting to the truth.

What is Locke's Tabula Rasa concept and its Two Fountains of Experience?

The mind begins as a blank slate (tabula rasa) acquiring all ideas from external Sensation and internal Reflection.

What are Simple Ideas according to Locke?

Simple ideas are basic, unmixed inputs from sensation or reflection that the passive mind cannot create or destroy.

What three operations does the mind use to form Complex Ideas in Locke's view?

The mind actively builds complex ideas by combining simple ideas, comparing ideas to form relations, and abstracting general concepts.

How does Locke explain Substance using the Indian Elephant and Tortoise analogy?

Calling substance an underlying support for qualities is as clueless as claiming Earth rests on an elephant, resting on a tortoise, resting on "something I know not what".

What is the core epistemic contrast between Descartes and Locke?

Descartes claims real knowledge derives from pure intellect and clear/distinct ideas, whereas Locke claims the mind starts blank and knowledge derives from experience.

What is the core claim of Cartesian Substance Dualism?

Mind (res cogitans) and body (res extensa) are distinct substances, allowing scientific study of body while preserving free will, faith, and survival of death.

What is Descartes' Divisibility Argument for Dualism?

Physical bodies are always divisible while minds are indivisible, so Leibniz's Law dictates mind and body are not identical.

What is Leibniz's Law (Indiscernibility of Identicals)?

If thing A has property F and thing B lacks property F, A and B are not identical.

What objections are raised against Descartes' Divisibility Argument?

Fundamental physical particles may be indivisible, while split-brain cases, schizophrenia, and conflicting desires suggest minds can be divided.

What is Descartes' Conceivability Argument for Dualism?

Clearly conceiving a thinking mind without an extended body guarantees via God that mind and body can exist separately.

What is Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia's Interaction Problem?

She questioned how an immaterial, non-extended soul can exert physical push or contact to move bodily spirits.

What dualist alternatives to Interactionism failed to solve the mind-body connection?

Alternatives like Occasionalism and Parallelism were rejected as weird, while physics assumes Causal Closure.

What is Gilbert Ryle's "Official Doctrine" (the "Ghost in the Machine")?

The dualist myth that a human lives two collateral histories: a public, spatial, mechanical body and a private, non-spatial, non-mechanical mind.

Why does the Official Doctrine lead to Solipsism?

Claiming private phosphorescent introspection for one's own mind while other minds remain hidden makes proving other minds impossible.

How does Gilbert Ryle define a Category Mistake?

Allocating mental concepts to an incorrect logical category, such as treating mind as an extra non-physical entity or cause.

What does Ryle's University example illustrate?

Asking where the University is after seeing colleges and labs fails to see that the University is just how those buildings are organized.

What do Ryle's Division Parade and Team Spirit examples demonstrate?

A division is not an extra unit beyond its regiments, and team spirit is not an extra player role beyond performing tasks keenly.

What do Ryle's British Constitution and Average Taxpayer examples illustrate?

The British Constitution is not an institution like the Home Office, and the Average Taxpayer is not a real ghost-like citizen walking the street.

What is a Conjunction Absurdity according to Ryle?

Combining terms of different logical categories in one sentence—like coming home in a flood of tears and a sedan-chair—is logically absurd.

What is Ryle's Polysemy of "Exist" argument?

Minds and bodies exist in different logical senses, just as "rising" has different senses in rising tides, rising hopes, and rising average age of death.

What was the origin of Descartes' category error according to Ryle?

Descartes accepted Galileo's mechanics but rejected Hobbes' human clockwork view, creating a para-mechanical hypothesis of minds as ghost engines ("bits of not-clockwork").

How does Philosophical Behaviorism define mental terms?

Mental terms ("pain", "belief") mean observable physical behaviors and behavioral dispositions.

What are two major flaws in Philosophical Behaviorism?

Pain cannot cause screaming if pain is defined as screaming, and behaviorism ignores internal feelings (qualia) or unexpressed pain.

What historical shift led from Behaviorism to the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM)?

Noam Chomsky's critique of B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior proved behaviorism cannot explain language acquisition, prompting CTM.

What is the core postulate of the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM)?

The mind is software running on biological brain hardware, where mental states are physical computational states.

How do logical commands translate into physical hardware switches in CTM?

Logic commands encode into binary (1s and 0s), mapping directly to physical voltage switches being on or off.

How does Alan Turing operationalize the question "Can machines think?"

He replaces the vague question with an operational text-based test called the Imitation Game or Turing Test.

What is the setup and passing condition of the Turing Test?

An interrogator texts with a human and computer in separate rooms, and the computer passes if indistinguishable from the human.

What was Turing's prediction regarding machine storage and test success by the year 2000?

Computers with 10^9 storage will fool judges over 30% of the time in 5-minute tests by year 2000.

What does Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine prove about electricity in digital computers?

Babbage's mechanical computer using wheels and cards proves electricity is a superficial similarity rather than a theoretical necessity for thinking.

What are the three main components of a digital computer, and what makes them universal?

Computers consist of Store, Executive Unit, and Control, and are universal because they can mimic any discrete-state machine.

What specimen Q&As are highlighted in the Turing Test description?

Declining a sonnet on Forth Bridge, solving 34957 + 70764 = 105621 after a pause, and stating chess move R-R8 mate.

How does Turing reply to the Theological Objection?

Claiming God cannot grant a machine a soul restricts divine omnipotence, and building computers merely provides mansions for souls like procreation does.

How does Turing respond to the "Heads in the Sand" Objection?

Fear of losing human superiority is not a real argument, and consolation can be sought in soul transmigration.

How does Turing refute the Mathematical Objection based on Gödel's Theorem?

Gödel's limits apply to specific discrete machines, but no proof shows human intellect lacks similar limits given routine human logical errors.

How does Turing reply to Jefferson's Argument from Consciousness?

Demanding internal feeling leads to solipsism, whereas real-life exams (Viva Voce) test observable understanding rather than private experience.

How does Turing distinguish Errors of Functioning from Errors of Conclusion?

Errors of functioning are physical hardware faults, while errors of conclusion are wrong logical claims, which machines can easily make.

How does Turing address Lady Lovelace's Objection that machines cannot originate anything?

Programmers are frequently surprised because they fail to calculate all consequences, an ability expanded by learning machines.

How does Turing answer the Argument from Continuity in the Nervous System?

A discrete-state computer can simulate continuous analog responses closely enough that an interrogator in the text game won't notice.

How does Turing reply to the Argument from Informality of Behaviour?

It confuses conscious rules of conduct with natural laws of behavior, which science has not disproved for humans.

How does Turing respond to the Argument from Extrasensory Perception (ESP)?

Telepathy is a strong challenge, so competitors should be tested inside a telepathy-proof room.

What is Turing's Child Machine and its Evolution Analogy?

Program a simple notebook-like child machine where initial structure equals genes, program changes equal mutations, and experimenter judgment equals natural selection.

What are the key elements of Turing's Training Architecture for learning machines?

It combines reward/punishment signals, unemotional symbolic channels, automatic imperatives, and a random element to avoid infinite loops.

What is Turing's Atomic Pile Analogy for the human mind?

An injected idea dies in a subcritical mind (less than one response idea) but explodes into a full theory in a supercritical mind.

What does Turing's Skin-of-an-Onion Analogy suggest about consciousness?

Stripping away mechanical operations layer by layer eventually leaves nothing inside, indicating the entire mind is mechanical.