Philosophy self and mind

Which of the following best describes the philosophical problem of personal identity?

It is the problem of explaining the nature of personhood (the nature of the self)

The main reason to distinguish between the concept of personal identity and the concept of personality is that..

The same person can have different personalities at different points in time

Fingerprints are not a good solution to the problem of personal identity because…

random skin ridges and patterns have nothing to do with who you are as a person

you could survive the loss of your fingerprints and remain the same person

your adult fingerprints are not the same as when you were a child

The problem with counting on DNA to solve the puzzle of personal identity, according to Hales, is that…

identical twins have the same DNA, but are different people

According to the soul criterion of personal identity, the soul is…

something supernatural, imperceptible, immaterial, and immortal

One objection to the soul criterion is that…

there is no scientifically acceptable evidence that souls in the relevant sense exist

Hales considers the following argument in connection with his discussion of the soul criterion:

1. Suppose that Juan is identical to his soul

2. Souls have no physical properties.

3. The only way to recognize someone is by observing his or her physical properties

4. If someone has the same physical properties as the last time you saw them, then the same soul is present as well. We can abbreviate this as same body, same soul.

5. Therefore, you can recognize Juan

The main problem with this argument, according to Hales, lies with…

Premise (4)

Clarifying the nature of the soul criterion problem is the point of the ___ example in the reading.

Chocolate caramel

According to the physicalist criterion for personal identity,….

the closest physical continuer relation is what unites a person from one time to the next

Under the physicalist criterion, Little Abby is the same person as Toddler Abby because…

Little Abby is physically more similar to Toddler Abby than she is to anyone else, and this similarity obtains because Little Abby is the causal successor of Toddler Abby

The main reason for thinking that you go wherever your brain goes, as Hales points out, is that…

the brain is the repository of your memories, thoughts, desires, intentions, and other mental states

The philosopher John Locke defends which criterion of personal identity?

Psychological

According to Locke, you are identical to some person who existed in the past because…

you have the same consciousness as that person

Locke rejects the soul-based theory of personal identity because…

we have no way of comparing souls to differentiate between them or to recognize them

One objection to Locke’s theory of personal identity is that it seems to violate which logical principle?

The transitivity of identity

The transitivity of identity objection is known as

Thomas Reid’s Brave Officer Paradox

Butler argued that the distinction between genuine memories and false memories poses a problem for Locke’s theory of the self because..

to explain what makes any of your memories genuine, we have to know which person in the past was you (so the theory is circular)

Hales uses the examples of Clive Wearing and Phineas Gage to argue that the psychological criterion is..

too vague to be of use in cases where a person’s psychological traits have significantly changed

Which of the following is true for split-brain patients?

The left and right hemispheres of their brain are unable to communicate

Scottish philosopher David Hume defends the view that…

we are an ever-changing collection of perceptions (Bundle Theory)

If Hume’s theory is righty, then the self, according to Hales, is like…

a sports team, an army, or a rock band

According to Hume, there is a single, stable self that persists through time and that survives that death of the body (T or F)

False

The most shocking feature of Hume’s theory, according to Hales, is that when you go out of existence is vague: there are times in the future when there is no fact of the matter whether you exist (T or F)

True

According to the Principle of the Indiscernibility of Identicals, if any two things are identical, then..

they share all of the same properties

Accidental properties

traits that could be taken away from an object without making it a different thing

Essential properties

The core elements needed for a thing to be the thing that it is

Fungibility is the property of being…

Interchangeable with other objects of the same kind

According to crash course #20, Hume thinks that the idea that we have a constant, essential self is..

an illusion

Derek Parfit thinks that parts of you survive the passage of time because they are..

psychologically connected to your previous selves

In the video, a mind with a body is described as…

a non-physical mind that could exist without a body

The notion of a nonphysical, conscious mind, according to the video…

echoes the belief in a nonphysical soul in many religions

In the rubber hand illusion, both your real hand and a rubber hand are…

simultaneously stroked with a paint brush

Neuroscience suggests that activity in our physical body and, in particular, our brain is wholly responsible for consciousness (T or F)

True

Mind uploading involves somehow..

transferring a conscious mind into a computer

If we are not physical things, Alex Byrne suggests in the video, then a natural alternative is that we are…

immaterial minds (souls)

The most famous proponent of Substance Dualism, Alex Byrne states is…

Rene Decartes

Alex Byrne presents a simplified version of Decartes’ argument for Substance Dualism developed by…

Saul Kripke

Which of the following is an example of a truth that could NOT have been false?

There were no dinosaurs

There were dinosaurs or there were no dinosaurs

There were dinosaurs

There were dinosaurs or there were no dinosaurs

Substance Dualism maintains that the universe has two kinds of substances in it. They are..

Physical substance

Mental substance

Substance

something in which properties inhere

According to substance dualism, the mind is..

unextended and immaterial

According to substance dualism, the body is

extended in space

Which of the following is NOT a premise in the conceivability argument as presented by Hales?

It is conceivable that I might exist even though no extended thing exists

It is conceivable that I myself do not now exist

Whatever is conceivable is possible

It is conceivable that no extended thing now exists

It is conceivable that I myself do not now exist

The conclusion of the conceivability argument is that..

My mind cannot be an extended thing

One objection to the conceivability argument is that

conceivability is not a reliable guide to possibility

Substance Dualism (as princess Elizabeth objected) has a hard time explaining…

How the mind and body can causally interact (if one is physical and one is not)

The other minds objection to substance dualism is that of SD is true, then…

it is impossible for you to know anything about the minds of other people

According to Thomas Nagel, if a creature is conscious, then…

there is something that it is like to be that creature

According to Behaviorism (about the mental)…

every sentence that refers to a mental state can be translated without loss into a sentence that only refers to behavior

If behaviorism is right, which of the following views are wrong?

The view that the mind is immaterial. 

The view that mental states are the inner causes of outer behavior.

The view that mental states are mysterious from an objective, scientific point of view.

That knowledge of other minds is impossible. 

All of these

The objection by Ned Block to behaviorism is known as…

the intentional circle objection

According to the intentional circle objection…

it isn’t possible to define the conditions under which a given mental state will issue in a given behavioral disposition without referring to other mental states (circular)

According to the identity theory in the philosophy of mind (mind-brain identity theory) …

mental states are just brain states

The subjectivity of experience objection to the identity theory (mind-brain) claims that…

Neuroscience can never explain the “what-it-is-likeness” of conscious experience

The subjectivity of experience objection is posed in connection with a thought experiment involving…

a neuroscientist who has spent her life in a black and white room

(Mary the neuroscientist)

The multiple realizability argument is an argument against the type version of the identity theory (T or F)

True

One assumption of the multiple realizability argument is that bees can perceive yellow (T or F)

True

According to functionalism as described by Hales, your mind is like…

computer software

According to functionalism, to identify the functional role of a mental state, you need to know…

the perceptual inputs that cause it to be present in the mind and its effects on behavior and other mental states

Alan Turing argued that human level linguistic behavior is…

good, sufficient evidence of mentality, not that it is the very same thing as mentality

if you can talk to a computer as sensibly as you can with a human being, then according to the Turing test, the computer…

exhibits intelligence

An objection to the Turing test is that no matter what their conversational abilities, computers cannot have feelings or emotions and therefore don’t have minds. a reply is that…

there are humans without emotions, but they still have minds

Lady Lovelace objected to the possibility of machine intelligence on the grounds that…

computers cannot learn or do anything truly original

John Searle’s Chinese Room argument is designed to show that…

computers are just input-output devices that perform algorithmic operations on the input and have no understanding or other mental states

The Chinese room argument is used by its author to criticize…

The turing test

Most modern computers, Hales says, are able to overcome the turing test

(T or F)

False

A computer named__ was a superior chess player compared to any of its human programmers and developed its own strategies during the course of play

Deep Blue

A machine or system that mimics or simulates some aspect of human intelligence is known as…

Weak AI

According to Turing, a computer has strong AI if it can…

fool the human beings with whom it communicates into thinking that it is a person

William Lycan argues that the robot Harry in his thought experiment…

really counts as a person

Multiple Realizability

A given TOKEN mental state can be realized by many different TYPES of physical structures so long as those structures play the right functional role

Functional kinds

Have a common function, but no common microstructure or biological nature

Natural kinds

Have a common underlying microstructure or biological nature