Chapter 1 Kim

Question 1

What are the three problems that define Philosophy of the Mind

Answer 1

1. What is it like to be a creature with a mind - what is mentality
2. Problems concerning specific mental properties or kinds of mental states and their relationships (are pains only sensory events or must they also have a motivational component (such as aversiveness)
3. Problem concerning the relation between mind and bodies - The MIND-BODY PROBLEM.

Question 2

Why should we think there is a philosophical problem clarifying the relation b/w our mentality and the physical nature of our being?

Answer 2

Mentality seems so different from the physical, yet the two are intertwined. Conscious phenomena arises from certain configurations of physical-biological precesses of the body.

Question 3

What are physical biological systems

Answer 3

complex biological structures wholly made up of bits of matter

Question 4

What is the problem of mental causation

Answer 4

What causes the biological processes based on beliefs and desires to happen? What causes those neurons to fire in the first place?

Question 5

What does Descarte believe about “having a mind”

Answer 5

A mind is outside of physical space, immaterial. Its essence he believed, consists in mental activities like thinking a being conscious. (not like having brown eyes)

Question 6

What does Kim say about “having a mind”

Answer 6

Having a certain group of properties, features, and capacities that are possessed by humans and some higher animals but absent in things like rocks and trees.

Question 7

What are substances

Answer 7

Things or objects that have various properties and stand in various relations to each other.

Question 8

What are attributes

Answer 8

properties and relations together

Question 9

What is a process

Answer 9

(casually) connected series of events and states

Question 10

How do events differ from states

Answer 10

Events can change, states can not.

Question 11

What terms can cover both events and states?

Answer 11

“Phenomenon and “Occurrence”

Question 12

What is Supervenience?

Answer 12

Ontological relation; lower level properties of a system determine higher level properties.

Question 13

What is the thesis Mind-Body Supervenience I

Answer 13

The mental supervenes on the physical in that things that are exactly alike physically, cannot differ with respect to mental properties. Creatures could not be physiologically different and yet physically identical.

Question 14

What is the thesis Mind-Body Supervenience II, or “strong supervenient”

Answer 14

The idea that the instantiation of a mental property in something “depends” on its instantiating an appropriate physical “base” property. Pain has a physical substrate, and anything that has this property has pain.

Question 15

What is the thesis of Mind-Body Supervenience III

Answer 15

Global supervenience. The mental supervenes on the physical in that worlds that are alike in all physical respects are alike in all mental respects as well; worlds that are physically alike are exactly alike overall.

Question 16

What is the doctrine of physicalism?

Answer 16

All things that exist in the world are bits of matter or aggregates of bits of matter. There are no immaterial minds. Successor to materialism.

Question 17

What is the doctrine of materialism?

Answer 17

All things that exist are entities recognized by the science of physics, or systems aggregated out of such entities (can have nonphysical properties such as psychological properties)

Question 18

What is the dualists view on mind-body supervenience

Answer 18

Dualists reject mind-body supervenience

Question 19

What is the Mind-Body Dependance thesis

Answer 19

Mental properties a thing has depends on and are determined by the physical properties it has. Psychological nature is wholly determined by physical nature. Affirmation of the ontological primacy of the physical in relation to the mental

Question 20

What is Substance Physicalism

Answer 20

All that exists in this world are bits of matter in space-time and aggregate structures composed of bits of matter. There is nothing else in the space-time world. Descartes rejects this because he believes in immaterial mind.

Question 21

What is Property Dualism or Nonreductive Physicalism?

Answer 21

The psychological properties of a system are distinct from, and irreducible to, its physical properties. Everything can be described by physics. Mind-Body supervenience agrees.

Question 22

What is Reductive Physicalism or Type Physicalism?

Answer 22

Psychological properties (or kinds, types) are reducible to physical properties. There are only properties of one sort in this world, and they are physical properties.

Question 23

What is “Token” Physicalism?

Answer 23

Form of non reductive physicalism. Thesis that although psychological types are not identical with physical types, each and every individual psychological event, or event-token is a physical event. Pain as a mental state is not identical or can not be reduced to a kind of physical event, although each instance of pain is usually a physical event.

Question 24

What is Phenomenal consciousness?

Answer 24

mental phenomena such as sensory, qualitative states - feel, look, appear (itch, pain, looks green)

Question 25

What are Propositional attitudes?

Answer 25

mental states that are attributed to a person by the use of embedded ‘that’ clauses. Having an attitude towards a proposition. Intentional or content bearing states. hoping, being certain, doubting, believing.

Question 26

What are feelings?

Answer 26

mental states of emotions involving propositional attitudes. Dissapointed that, embarrassed by, etc.

Question 27

What are volitions?

Answer 27

mental state that are propositional attitudes where intentions and decisions have been made. Intend to raise your arm, you must now undertake to raise your arm. All intentional actions must be preceded by an act of volition.

Question 28

What does ‘mark of the mental’ mean?

Answer 28

A criterion that would separate mental phenomena or properties from those that are not mental.

Question 29

What does Epistemological (criteria) mean?

Answer 29

relating to the theory of knowledge, esp with regards to methods, validating, and scope

Question 30

What is Epistemoloical criteria of the mark of the mental?

Answer 30

The way you come to have knowledge (of self)

Question 31

What is Direct or Immediate Knowledge?

Answer 31

Knowledge not based on evidence or inference; not mediated by other beliefs or knowledge. Question of evidence is inappropriate, - your knowledge is direct and immediate, not based on evidence. You know you like the color red.

Question 32

What is Privacy, or First Person Privilege?

Answer 32

Privacy of our knowledge of our own mental states - the apparent fact that direct access to a mental event is experienced by the person to whom the vent is occurring. You have a toothache, but if you see a tree, anyone can see the tree.

Question 33

What is Infallibility and Transparancy?

Answer 33

Your knowledge of your own current mental states is “infallible’ or ‘incorrigible. You can not mistake sensations.

Question 34

What is the essential nature of mind and physical thing for Descartes?

Answer 34

That it is a thinking thing and that a physical thing takes up space

Question 35

What is Franz Brentano’s

“intentional inexistence”?

Answer 35

Used to describe the status of an object of a thought in the mind. Physical phenomena lacks action without intention. Every mental instance is is directed at an object.

Question 36

What is intentionality

Answer 36

The feature of the mind that mental states are about, or directed upon, objects that may or may not exist or have contents that may or may not be true. Mind-World relation

Question 37

Referential Intentionality

Answer 37

Feature of the mind that concerts the aboutness or reference of our thoughts, beliefs, intentions, etc.

Question 38

Content Intentionality

Answer 38

Feature of the mind that concerns the fact that an important class of mental states (propositional attitudes), such as beliefs, hopes, and intentions - have content or meanings, which are often expressed by full sentences. Represent things external too our mind

Question 39

Referential intentionality and content intentionality show what

Answer 39

Mental states have the capacity, and function, of representing things and states of affairs in the world.

Question 40

What is the first problem of intentionality as criterion of the mind

Answer 40

Some mental phenomena do not seem to exhibit either kind of intentionality such as pains, tickles, etc. Does not seem to be “about” or to refer to, anything.

Question 41

What is the second problem of intentionality as criterion of the mental

Answer 41

Minds/mental states are not the only things that exhibit intentionality. Languages refer to things and have representational content. If a physical sentence is capable of reference and content, how can it be exclusive to the criterion of mind?

Question 42

What is intrinsic intentionality

Answer 42

Not derived from, or borrowed from anything else.