phil mind final

mind-brain identity theory

conscious mental states are type identical to brain states

type vs token

type = a kind of something

token = individual things

type identity theory

every type of mental state = type of brain state

ex: having a dream = having a brain state

token identity theory

every token mental state = a token brain state

eg different types of pain in humans vs fish

nomological danglers argument

Rejects dualism by arguing that non-physical mental properties would be unexplained “danglers” outside physical laws.
Example: If pain were non-physical, it would hang outside scientific explanation—so better to identify it with brain processes.

-Connected to the brain only by unexplained correlations (not real identity)

masked man fallacy

A reasoning error where identical things are substituted in belief contexts, even though people can have different beliefs about them.
-Example: You know your father but don’t recognize a masked man → wrongly conclude the masked man isn’t your father.

conceivability argument

if we can think of something, like a physically identical being without consciousness then it must be metaphysically possible

-ex: you can imagine being conscious as a ghost → so mind ≠ body

—> suggests that consciousness is not identical to physical processes

multiple realizability

The idea that the same mental state can be realized by different physical systems.
Example: Human pain = neural firing; octopus pain = ganglia activity.

functionalism

Mental states are defined by their functional roles (inputs, outputs, and relations), not their physical makeup.
Example: Pain = damage → reaction → avoidance, regardless of biology.

qualia

•  raw subjective experiences, cannot be reduced to physical explanations

higher order thought theory

Consciousness occurs when a mental state is represented by a thought about it.
Example: You are conscious of pain when you think “I am in pain.”

higher order representation

• Aware of perceptual state (self awareness not just the world)

• Sufficient to make first order perception conscious

• ex: thinking “i see a red apple” is a higher-order state

circularity problem

• The worry that HOT defines consciousness in terms of itself.
  Example: If higher-order thoughts must be conscious, this creates infinite regress.

representational theories of mind

• Mental states are representational or intentional

• Intentionality = representation, aboutness, directedness

• Representational content: What a representation is about

• ex: beliefs represent facts, desire represents goals

intentionality

The “aboutness” of mental states.
Example: A belief about the weather or a desire for coffee.

infants and animals objection to HOT

If HOT is true, beings without higher-order thought (infants, animals) wouldn’t be conscious.
Example: Babies feel pain but may not think about their mental states.

global workspace theory

Consciousness occurs when information is broadcast across the brain “fame in the brain”

-information becomes conscious when accessible across systems
Example: Recognizing a face and hearing speech combine into one conscious experience.

objection to GWT

Block — P vs A distinction

-access ≠ phenomenal consciousness

-P consciousness = phenomenal

-A consciousness = access

conscious access

Information becomes conscious when it is widely available to other systems.
Example: Seeing Ashley allows speech, memory, and decision systems to engage.

attention

The process that selects which information becomes conscious.
Example: Missing the gorilla in a video due to inattentional blindness.

p-consciousness

The subjective “what it’s like” experience.
Example: What it feels like to taste chocolate.

a-consciousness

• A mental state is A-conscious if and only if it is broadcast for free use in reasoning and the direct rational control of action

• Roughly: global broadcasting 
  Example: Using visual input to decide where to walk.

blindsight - objection to GWT

• access without phenomenology, patients can see without being able to see physically

• + superblindsight case: Hypothetical case with access but no phenomenal experience.
  Example: Navigating visually without any conscious vision.

physicalism

Everything, including the mind, is physical or depends on the physical.
Example: Thoughts arise from brain activity.

substance dualism

Mind and body are separate substances (mental vs physical).
Example: Soul vs brain.

global workspace model

• Unconscious representations are encapsulated within specialized models (eg face recognition, word parsing, speech production)

• Conscious representations are broadcast to the whole brain or large parts of it

unconsciousness: “modules”

• Cognitive processes are largely built up from specialized, unconscious, “modules”

• Examples: face, word, speech, processing

• Module = Small parts that can be used to construct complex structure

  • Example: ikea furniture 

encapsulation

• Modules are relatively “encapsulated” = do not communicate

• Modules use and generate mental states while performing their specialized function but do not broadcast the contents of these states to other modules 

• Face recognition

  • Doesnt recognize what is said, just processing  visually

  • conscious experience is not encapsulated

GWT attention argument

•  Observation: attention and consciousness are highly correlated

  • Empirical examples where a failure to pay attention to something leads to unconsciousness

  • Absent-minded driving 

    • Perception is unconscious 

    • Paying attention to internal thoughts 

• Explanation: something needs to be globally broadcast from one module to another area of the brain

phenomenology without access — GWT

Jackhammer example:

-having intense conversation, suddenly realize theres a jackhammer outside window

-present in your experience but its in the background

→ claim: a case of phenomenal consciousness without access consciousness

physical substances

material things

-extended (located in space) and subject to physical laws

-non-mental, lack consciousness

-consciousness cannot be explained or understood as physical things

mental substances

-souls or spirits

-mental: have consciousness

→ non extended, not located in space and not subject to physical laws

motivation: hard problems of consciousness

-consciousness is hard to reconcile with a physicalist view

-how can objective reality give rise to subjective experience

mind-body problem

how can dualism explain interaction between mind and body

causal closure of the physical

every physical event has a physical cause

-doesnt rule out possibility of random events

-ex: walking is caused by neural activity not a soul

princess elizabeth on mind body problem

asked: how can dualism explain the interaction between mind and body?

-no spiritual interaction between body, something physical cannot transfer to something non physical

nexus thesis:

-If C causes E, there must be a “causal nexus” between C and E: interface by which C transmits energy to E → Ex: billiard balls moving (one has to hit the other)

Descartes objection to elizabeth: deny contact thesis

-Causation at a distance

-Gravitation: objects exert gravitational pull without contact

-Magnetism: magnets attract/repel at a distance

Reply for contact thesis: Apparent action at a distance actually involved contact between electromagnetic and gravitational fields around objects

Causation by omission — Example: joe caused the plants to die by not watering them

Descartes response — causal closure of physical

• physical events can have exclusively spiritual causes 

  • There has to be non physical reasons for us to want coffee

Kim on causal closure of the physical

spiritual causes violate the conservation of energy

-within any closed system (the physical universe) energy can neither be created nor destroyed

Spiritual → physical causes would introduce energy

Kim’s core argument: If physical universe isn't closed, we should see LOTS of violations of 1st law of thermodynamics; we don't

physicalism

-Denies claim that the human mind is a spiritual thing

-Everything is physical, this includes everything mental

-All the facts, everything that's true of the world, are physical facts

-The mental depends on the physical

characteristics of physicalism

• Fundamental physical stuff:

  • Described by physics (protons, elections, etc)

• Non-fundamental stuff

  • Chairs, tables, lakes, human bodies, TVs, neurons

  • Depends on (made up of) fundamental stuff

• Dependence?

  • How do chairs depend on quarks?

    • Super hard philosophical question in metaphysics

    • → In what way are chairs made up of protons and electrons 

    • Proposals: dependence = supervenience, grounding

the knowledge argument

• Theory: mary learns a new fact → physicalism false

• Conclusion: not all facts are physical

-shows even if you understood all the physical facts, you wouldn’t understand consciousness at all

epiphenomenalism

Consciousness exists but has no causal power, denies that consciousness has physical causation.

-consciousness is an epiphenomenon but has no causal powers, it can never do anything
Example: Pain doesn’t cause you to withdraw; brain states do.

Jackson on epiphenomenalism

• Consciousness and physical changes are correlated bc they have a common cause: brain states

• The correlation between spiritual and physical bc the causation comes from the brain state for both

alexander’s dictum

• “to exist is to have causal powers”

  • Epiphenomena arent genuine things, but consciousness is

  • Consciousness exists but the only things that exist have causal powers

ability hypothesis

• Ability knowledge (skills, procedural knowledge)

  • Knowledge how to do something (eg ride a bike)

• Imprisoned mary: knows all the facts before leaving the room (bc all the facts are physical facts)

• Free mary: doesn't learn a new fact, she learns a new ability (remember, imagine, and recognize red)

  • Mary’s factual knowledge doesnt give her the ability to remember, imagine, and recognize red

objections to ability hypothesis

• Brain damage case

  • Suppose Mary gets brain damage affecting memory, imagination, recognition

  • Can still know what it’s like in the moment to see red, but when she goes back into the room she will forget red 

• Expert imaginer case:

  • Suppose mary gets really good at imagining colors between ones she has seen, different shades of red 

  • Suppose she has seen scarlet, crimson, not vermillion

  • Has ability to imagine vermillion

    • Doesn't know what vermillion is like until she sees or imagines it 

  • Abilities are neither necessary or sufficient to see red 

Loar: new way of thinking hypothesis

Mary gains a new way of thinking about the same physical fact.

Knowledge argument doesnt show: Experiences are distinct from the physical things studied by science
Example: Experiencing red vs describing it scientifically.

disembodiment argument (gertler, descartes)

• Conceivable that a mind could exist without the body therefore mind does not equal body

• Strategy: use conceivability test to determine whether its possible to exist without the body

  • Our imagination is what we use to assess truths about what could happen or what could have happened

explanatory gap

• Scientific explanations can never explain how consciousness arises from the world, how mind = body

• Doesn't imply that materialism is false (that mind doesn't equal body)

zombie argument

• Philosophical zombies are physically identical to us but with no consciousness

• Argument:

  • 1. Zombies are conceivable

  • 2. If conceivable then possible

  • 3. If possible then physicalism is complete 

Nagel: point of view dependence

• To understand what its like to be an organism, you must:

  • 1. Have a similar POV and 

  • 2. Use your POV to imagine/experience what it's like to be that organism 

scientific explanations as objective

•  they abstract away from subjective points of view 

• Scientific explanations seek objectivity:

  • → a “view from nowhere”

objectivity response to POV

• Nagel equivocates between objective and subjective understandings of consciousness

• Objectively, all there is is neural firing

• Lightning example

  • Physics can leave out how lightning appears

  • Science of consciousness can leave out how pain appears to us

• Debate:

  • Nagel: cant separate appearance of consciousness from what it really is

  • Churchlands: yes you can, consciousness is just a brain state

inference to the best explanation

• Central to how humans experience the world, by reasoning about it and thinking about it

• Analogy:

  • Groceries are gone, kitchen a mess → infer lazy roommate made food not you got robbed (without ever seeing your roommate do this)

  • Not a perceptual experience but you still experienced this inference, instilled a pov

subjectivity response to POV

neurophenomenology: Can use scientific methods to get clearer on subjective experience

-But have to incorporate subjective, first-person reports into the science of consciousness

Example: dream-research

emergentism

• consciousness = emergent property

•  “emerges” once physical stuff becomes sufficiently complex 

  • Depends on physical but not reducible

• Solves: knowledge argument and conceivability argument

overdetermination

an effect has multiple, independent causes, each sufficient to produce that effect alone.

ex: Poisoning + gunshot → rasputin’s death

-any/either were sufficient to kill him

-What causes rasputin to die? → Any of these causes could have killed him, you didnt need all of these to kill him

emergent property

A new property that arises from simpler components. → Example: Mob behavior from individual people.

-Rough idea: emergent properties (eg life) are made up of basal properties (eg chemical molecules)

-Precise idea: emergent properties supervene on basal properties

supervenience

No change in mental states without a change in physical states.

-Emergentists hold that consciousness supervenes on the physical

supervenience physicalism

Any possible world that is a minimal physical duplicate of our world is a conscious duplicate of our world

downward causation of emergentism

Higher-level states (like consciousness) affect lower-level physical states.
Example: Desire leads to neural changes and movement.

emergentist strategy for hard problems

Emergentism explains hard problems by claiming consciousness is a new property that cannot be reduced to physical facts.
-Knowing all brain facts doesn’t explain experience, just like knowing molecules doesn’t explain life

basal properties

Lower-level physical properties (e.g., neurons, chemistry) that emergent properties depend on.
-Neural firing patterns underlying vision.

non-reduction

Emergent properties cannot be fully explained in terms of their parts.
Example: Knowing everything about neurons doesn’t tell you what pain feels like.

emergentist response to mary

Mary learns a new fact because consciousness is emergent and not reducible to physical knowledge.
Example: Like learning what life is like vs knowing chemistry.

conscious causation

Mental states causally influence other mental or physical states.
Example: Desire for water → intention → reaching for a cup.

anti-zombie claim

Emergentism rejects zombies because identical physical states guarantee identical consciousness.
Example: A “physical duplicate without consciousness” is impossible.

Kim’s critique to emergentism

Emergentism fails because physical causes already fully explain effects.
Example: Brain states already cause behavior—no need for mental causes.

introspection

examining one’s own mental states

-reporting you feel pain or warmth

mind-wandering

• task-unrelated thought 

  • Life: unrelated to “what you're currently doing”

  • Experiment: unrelated to experimental task

• Basic notion of human experience, our minds are not always totally focused 

feeling of warmth in problem solving

subjective evaluation of how close you are to solving a problem

-feel like making progress and how close they feel like they are to solving a problem

Eg “im almost there, i can solve it”

-The “aha” in solving a problem is a phenomenal marker, sudden increase in feeling of warmth

introspection — Goldman

1. Introspection is a scientific method

2. Scientific methods are public: observations can be replicated across experimenters

3. Introspective observations cannot be replicated across subjects (private, no one else can access)

publicity problem

Introspection is private and cannot be independently verified.

Example: No one else can directly access your thoughts.

empirical introspection skepticism

Introspection is unreliable because people often misreport their experiences.
Example: People give inconsistent reports about whether dreams are in color.

anti-skeptical arguments

• 1. Unwarranted under ideal reporting conditions

• 2. Introspection is methodologically necessary 

objection to indeterminacy

People don’t report indeterminate color, suggesting reports are still unreliable.
Example: No one says “my dream had undefined color.”

dream color “arc of opinion”

Historical shift where people reported dreams as B&W, then later as color.
Example: Pre-1960s: mostly B&W reports; post-TV: mostly color reports.

belief driven reporting

Reports reflect beliefs about experience, not the experience itself.
Example: People say dreams are in color because they think they are.

methodological necessity

Dream science must rely on dream reports or methods justified by them.
Example: You need reports to know if dreaming occurred.

windt’s claim

Even if REM perfectly correlated with dreaming, reports would still be needed to establish that correlation.
Example: Without reports, we wouldn’t know REM = dreaming.

strong necessity problem

Claim that no dream science is possible without reports is too strong.
Example: Alternative evidence (behavior, neural data) may exist.

no dream memory thought experiment

Imagine people instantly forget dreams but still act them out.
Example: Scientists study movements instead of reports

dream enactment

Physical behaviors during sleep reflecting dream content.
Example: Moving as if running in a dream.

Irving’s claim on dreaming

Dream science might be possible without reports via behavioral/neural evidence.
Example: Studying sleep movements and brain signals.

memory argument Vedanta

We know we were conscious in sleep because we remember experiencing peacefulness.
Example: “I slept peacefully” reflects a remembered experience.

-Memory requires a prior conscious experience.
-Therefore, we were conscious during dreamless sleep.

Nyaya inference argument

We infer we slept peacefully based on evidence, not memory.
Example: Feeling rested → infer good sleep.

-Dreamless sleep is the absence of consciousness.

-Dreamless sleep is like unconsciousness from a blow to the head.

→ brain shuts down → no experience

circularity problem Nyaya

Nyāya argues no experience because no memory, but lack of memory doesn’t prove no experience.
Example: Forgetting a dream doesn’t mean you didn’t dream.

experience of absence

Dreamless sleep is an experience of nothingness, not absence of experience.
Example: Awareness of “darkness” or blankness.

-no object representation

-no representation

representational theory of mind

All experiences represent something (have content).
Example: Seeing an apple represents the apple.

problem: Dreamless sleep seems to have no representational content.

problem for deep sleep view

If Vedānta is right, the claim that consciousness disappears in sleep is false.
Example: Consciousness persists without content.

-HOT requires representations, but dreamless sleep has none.

vedanta problem for GWT

Global workspace requires representations, but none exist in dreamless sleep.
Example: Nothing to broadcast across the brain.

-also no access: Dreamless sleep lacks cognitive access (no reporting, thinking, deciding).