Chapter 2 Kim Flashcards
What is learning according to Plato?
process of recollecting what we already knew in our prenatal existence as pure souls.
What is folk dualism?
goes beyond duality of mental and physical; each of us has a soul that survives death and that we are really our souls.
What is substance dualism
(Descarte defended) the thesis that there are substances of two fundamentally distinct kinds in this world - mind and bodies. Humans are composites of these.
What is monism
the thesis that all things in the world are substances of one kind.
What is idealism
The mental version of monism; the view that minds, or mental items at any rate, constitute the fundamental reality of the world.
What is substance
- something in which properties “inhere”; it is what has, or instantiates, properties. A vase can not be a property, it is a substance.
- something that is thought to have the capacity for independent existence. If the mind is a substance, it can exist without the body.
What are the three major tenets of Cartesian Dualism
- There are two different kinds of substances in the world - mental and material.
- A human person is a composite being of a mind and a body.
- Minds are diverse from bodies, no mind is identical with a body.
What distinguishes Descarte’s philosophy of mind and the positions of many of his contemporaries (Leibniz, Malebranche, and Spinoza)?
Descartle’s belief that minds and bodies are in causal interaction with each other. (
The fourth tenet / thesis of mind body causal interaction in Cartesian Dualism
Mind and bodies causally influence each other. Some mental phenomena are causes of physical phenomena and vice versa.
What is Descarte’s “cogito” argument?
“I think, therefore I am”
What kind of being does Descarte say he is?
A thinking being.
What question remains of Descartes thinking being?
Can it be his body?
What is argument 1 for distinct mind and bodies / substance dualism?
you can not doubt that you exist, but you can doubt your body exists.
What is argument 2 for distinct mind and bodies
Mind is transparent to self, most events are not unknown. None of bodily events have this transparent character.
What is argument 3 for distinct mind and bodies
The mind has direct knowledge, no material body has such direct knowledge.
What is argument 4 for distinct mind and bodies?
The essential nature of being is to be a thinking being, the body’s is being an extended thing in space, the essential nature of being does not include being an extended thing in space.
What is argument 5 for distinct mind and bodies?
If anything is material, it is essentially material. I am possibly immaterial, possible world where I exist without a body, I am not essentially material. I am not material
What is argument 6 for distinct mind and bodies?
Not identical with body because the body did not exist years ago before a complete turnover of cells.
What is argument 7 for distinct mind and bodies / substance dualism?
Not identical with body because because I can have another possible body in another world and not be necessarily identical.
What is the main idea for these metaphysical arguments?
the thought that although I may be a composite being consisting of a mind and a body, my relation to my mind is more intimate and essential than my relation to my body and that I am “really” my mind and could not exist apart from it, while it is a contingent fact that I have the body that I happen to have.
What is argument 8 for distinct mind and bodies / substance dualism?
thoughts and consciousness occur, and must occur to something, but not material - they must belong to immaterial things like Cartesian substances. Mental substances exist and they are the things that think and are conscious, and bear other mental properties.
What did Leibniz say that hinted mental states occur to material things?
perception, and that which depends on it, are inexplicable by mechanical causes, that is by figures and motions. (Material thing is at bottom a mechanical system that are the wrong kind of thing to bear thoughts, etc)
What do emergentists argue about thoughts and consciousness?
Thoughts and consciousness arise in material systems when they reach higher levels of organizational complexity.
What did Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia say about Descarte’s opinion that the body is the enabler of the mind’s causal powers?
If we allow for the possibility of mental causation, she would rather accept materialism concerning the mind - not plausible that immaterial mind could be causal to a material body.
What is the first idea that that some relation must ground the fact that a given cause of the particular effect that is caused by it?
There is a continuous causal chain connecting every event. (doesn’t work independently)
What is the second idea that that some relation must ground the fact that a given cause of the particular effect that is caused by it?
Spatial relations do the job of paring causes with their effects.
What are relational properties
properties that depend on a relationship with something else. provide explanation of different causal roles.
What is needed to solve the pairing problem for immaterial minds?
Mental space /coordinate system and principle of impenetrability of minds (minds that occupy the same “location” in this space must be one and the same)
What does substance dualism seem to say about immaterial minds?
They are threatened with total causal isolation - from each other as we’ll as from the material world
Does giving locations to immaterial minds solve pairing problem?
No, a principle of impenetrability of mental substance is needed.
If you reject substance dualism, what does having a mind mean?
Having a mind would mean having a certain special set of properties, capacities, and characteristics - something humans and some higher animals possess but not sticks and stones.
What is property dualism?
the view that mental properties are diverse from and irreducible to physical properties. Rejects immaterial mind.
What is reductive physicalism?
Defends the position that mental properties are reducible to and therefore can be identified with, physical properties. Rejects immaterial minds.
What is substance physicalism?
Anti-Cartesian position that acknowledges objects of one kind in this world - bits of matter and increasingly complex structures aggregated out of bits of matter.
What is the central question for this book?
What is the nature of the relationship between mental features and activities on one hand and the structures’ physical characteristics on the other?
