Learn: PHIL 340 Minds and Machines Midterm Prep

Necessary Condition

A condition that must be present for an event or property to occur.

Sufficient Condition

A condition guaranteeed to produce the event or property if met.

Valid Argument

An argument where if all premises are true, the conclusion must be true.

Sound Argument

A valid argument with entirely true premises.

Difference in Degree vs. Kind

A quantitative difference versus a fundamental qualitative difference.

Modus Ponens

If P then Q; P; therefore, Q.

Modus Tollens

If P then Q; Not Q; therefore, Not P.

Hypothetical Syllogism

If P then Q; If Q then R; therefore, if P then R.

Disjunctive Syllogism

P or Q; Not P; therefore, Q.

Challenging a Premise

Offering a targeted counterexample or counterargument to undermine a premise.

Turing's Imitation Game

A test where an interrogator tries to distinguish a human from a machine via text.

Turing's Reframing

Replacing the vague 'Can machines think?' with the precise imitation game.

Theological Objection Reply

Turing argues God could give a soul to a machine if He chose.

Heads in the Sand Objection Reply

Turing rejects the wishful thinking that machines won't surpass humans.

Argument from Consciousness Reply

Turing argues we can only ever know other minds via behavior.

Arguments from Various Disabilities Reply

Turing argues we shouldn't confuse current limitations with permanent incapacity.

Lady Lovelace's Objection Reply

Turing notes machines can surprise us by deriving unforeseen consequences.

Unforeseen Consequences

Machines producing novel outputs that their programmers did not explicitly anticipate.

Weizenbaum's ELIZA

An early natural language processing program simulating a Rogerian psychotherapist.

ELIZA's Transformation Rules

Mechanisms that parse user input into template-based redirection and echoing.

Descartes's Cogito

The foundational certainty that 'I think, therefore I am'.

Thinking vs. Extended Substance

Res cogitans (immaterial mind) versus res extensa (physical matter).

Descartes's Pineal Gland

The designated physical site where mind-body interaction supposedly occurs.

Descartes's Evil Demon

A skeptical hypothesis used to doubt all sensory perceptions.

Doubt-Based Mind-Body Argument

Since I can doubt my body but not my mind, they must be distinct.

Descartes's Divisibility Argument

The mind is indivisible while physical bodies are divisible, proving distinctness.

Doubt Objection to Descartes

Differing dubitability about two names does not prove the referents differ.

Princess Elisabeth's Interaction Objection

Immaterial minds lack contact and extension, making physical causation impossible.

Elisabeth on Bodily Movement

Moving a body requires physical push, which an unextended mind cannot supply.

Dualism

The philosophical view that mind and body are fundamentally distinct substances.

Reductionist Physicalism

The view that all mental states are strictly identical to physical states.

Multiple Realizability

The thesis that a single mental property can be realized by various physical structures.

Phenomenal Consciousness

The subjective, qualitative feel of experience (what it is like).

Qualia

The internal, subjective component of sense perceptions.

Homunculus Problem

An explanatory regress caused by postulating a tiny inner observer.

Nagel's Bat Argument

An argument that physicalism fails because it omits subjective character.

Nagel's Argument Premises

Facts have a subjective character accessible only from a specific point of view.

Akins's 3-D Movie Theater Thought Experiment

A scenario illustrating the limits of human sensory imagination.

Akins's Challenge to Bat Sonar

Challenging the claim that humans cannot experience anything remotely like bat sonar.

Qualitative Sensation vs. Representational Content

Distinguishing the felt sensation from the information carried by the sensory state.

Akins on Empirical Inquiry

Empirical science can teach us how to conceptualize unfamiliar sensory experiences.

Birch's Two AI Challenges

Methodological hurdles in detecting genuine sentience in artificial systems.

Persisting Interlocutor Illusion

The false impression that an AI conversational partner possesses inner mental life.

Perceptual Illusions in AI

Cases where AI processing mimics perception without qualitative awareness.

Psychological Continuity Theory

Personal identity consists of overlapping chains of memory and psychological connectedness.

Parfit's Teletransporter

A thought experiment questioning whether a reconstructed copy is the same person.

Flicker Hypothesis

The idea that AI consciousness might emerge intermittently or in flashes.

Shoggoth Hypothesis

The idea that aligned AI facades mask alien, unpredictable underlying cognitive structures.

The Gaming Problem

AI optimizing for test metrics without possessing the underlying intended capability.

Global Workspace Hypothesis

Consciousness arises from information sharing across a centralized neural network.

Dennett's Physical Stance

Predicting system behavior based on physical constitution and laws of nature.

Dennett's Design Stance

Predicting behavior based on the purpose or function a system was engineered for.

Dennett's Intentional Stance

Predicting behavior by treating a system as a rational agent with beliefs and desires.

Intentional System

Any entity whose behavior is reliably predicted via the intentional stance.

Dennett on Predictions vs. Internal States

Useful mental-state predictions do not settle whether internal states actually exist.

Wilson's 6 Claims of Embodied Cognition

A taxonomy distinguishing various ways cognition is tied to bodily interaction.

Situated Cognition

Cognition heavily reliant on real-time feedback from the immediate environment.

Offline Cognition

Thought decoupled from current environmental inputs, such as memory or planning.

Wilson's Warning on Situated Cognition

Situated approaches cannot fully explain planning or thought about distant things.

Epiphenomenalism

The view that mental states are caused by physical states but have no causal efficacy.

Structuring an Argument from Text

Extracting explicit premises and a single conclusion from a descriptive paragraph.

Basic Turing Machine Components

An infinite tape, a read-write head, a state register, and an action table.

Phenomenal vs. Access Consciousness

Distinction between sensory feel and availability for verbal report and reasoning.

Dualism and Mental Causation

The persistent difficulty of explaining how non-physical minds affect physical bodies.

Reductionist Physicalism Goal

To map every high-level mental property directly onto a specific neural property.

Multiple Realizability Challenge

Showing that brain-specific physicalism is too narrow because minds can have varied substrates.

Lovelace's Original Claim

Babbage's engine only does whatever we explicitly know how to order it to perform.

Turing on Theological Objections

Dismissing dogmatic restrictions on divine creative power regarding machines.

Psychological Continuity Core

Identity is preserved through causal links of psychological states over time.

Teletransporter Challenge

Differentiating between psychological continuity via replication versus bodily survival.

ELIZA's Illusion of Understanding

Tricking users into assuming deep comprehension via clever string manipulation.

Nagel's Focus on Subjective Character

Emphasizing that reductionist science systematically leaves out the organism's perspective.

Cartesian Standard for Certainty

Rejecting any belief that is open to even the slightest possible doubt.

Elisabeth's Mechanical Contact Requirement

Insisting that moving matter requires direct surface contact and spatial extension.

Dennett's Instrumentalism

Treating mental states as useful predictive tools rather than literal internal items.