Ch 4 Flashcards
Front of card The theory (e.g., in Spinoza) that mind and body are simply different aspects (or “attributes”) of one and the same substance, thus avoiding the problem of interaction between substances.
Dual aspect theory
In general, the distinction between mind and body as separate substances or very different types of states and events with radically different properties.
Dualism
The thesis that increasing knowledge of neurology eventually will allow us to give up our “folk-psychological” terminology of mental states.
eliminative materialism
The thesis that mental events are side effects of various physical processes in the brain and nervous system but of little importance themselves. The model is a one-way causal model: Body states cause changes in the mind, but mental states have no effect in themselves on the body
epiphenomenalism
The view that the mind is the product of a pattern in the brain, as in a computer, rather than a product of the matter of the brain as such.
functionalism
The thesis that the mind and brain are ontologically one and the same or, more accurately, that mental states and events are, in fact, certain brain and nervous system processes. The theory is usually presented as a form of materialism, but it is important to emphasize that, unlike many materialistic theories, it does not deny the existence of mental events. It denies only that they have independent existence. Mental events are nothing other than certain bodily events.
identity theory
card For certain and without need for argument.
immediate
card Impossible to correct; cannot be mistaken. It has long been argued that our claims about our own mental states are incorrigible—we cannot be mistaken
Incorrigibility
The aboutness of mental states (and other intentional states). A belief is always about something. A desire is always for something. An emotion is directed at someone or some situation. The importance of this concept in phenomenology is that it undercuts the metaphor of mental “contents” (as in a theater, an image explicitly used by Hume, for example. The concept was used by Husserl’s teacher, Franz Brentano, who borrowed it from some mediveval philosophers before husserl used it and made it famous
Intentionality
The thesis that mental events and bodily events parallel each other and occur in perfect coordination but do not interact
Parallelism
as Chalmers defines it a being that is physically just like us, behaving as we do, but completely lacking in conscious experience.
philosophical zombie
card The belief that the order of the universe is prearranged by God. In Leibniz, this view allowed him an alternative to Newton’s theory of causal relationships, namely that the coordination between our ideas and the physical events of the world and our bodies was set up by God in perfect order.
pre-established harmony
card The seeming inaccessibility of mental states and events to anyone other than the person who “has” them.
Privacy
Wittgenstein’s argument that even if there were such “private objects” as mental states and events, it would be impossible for us to talk about them and impossible for us to identify them, even in our own case
private language argument
The technical term used by philosophers to refer to the curious fact that a person usually (if not always) can immediately know, simply by paying attention, what is going on in his own mind, whereas other people can find out what is going on—if they can at all—only by watching the person’s behavior, listening to what he or she says, or asking (and hoping they get a truthful answer).
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