Chapter 2 Kim

Question 1

What is learning according to Plato?

Answer 1

process of recollecting what we already knew in our prenatal existence as pure souls.

Question 2

What is folk dualism?

Answer 2

goes beyond duality of mental and physical; each of us has a soul that survives death and that we are really our souls.

Question 3

What is substance dualism

Answer 3

(Descarte defended) the thesis that there are substances of two fundamentally distinct kinds in this world - mind and bodies. Humans are composites of these.

Question 4

What is monism

Answer 4

the thesis that all things in the world are substances of one kind.

Question 5

What is idealism

Answer 5

The mental version of monism; the view that minds, or mental items at any rate, constitute the fundamental reality of the world.

Question 6

What is substance

Answer 6

1. something in which properties “inhere”; it is what has, or instantiates, properties. A vase can not be a property, it is a substance.
2. something that is thought to have the capacity for independent existence. If the mind is a substance, it can exist without the body.

Question 7

What are the three major tenets of Cartesian Dualism

Answer 7

1. There are two different kinds of substances in the world - mental and material.
2. A human person is a composite being of a mind and a body.
3. Minds are diverse from bodies, no mind is identical with a body.

Question 8

What distinguishes Descarte’s philosophy of mind and the positions of many of his contemporaries (Leibniz, Malebranche, and Spinoza)?

Answer 8

Descartle’s belief that minds and bodies are in causal interaction with each other. (

Question 9

The fourth tenet / thesis of mind body causal interaction in Cartesian Dualism

Answer 9

Mind and bodies causally influence each other. Some mental phenomena are causes of physical phenomena and vice versa.

Question 10

What is Descarte’s “cogito” argument?

Answer 10

“I think, therefore I am”

Question 11

What kind of being does Descarte say he is?

Answer 11

A thinking being.

Question 12

What question remains of Descartes thinking being?

Answer 12

Can it be his body?

Question 13

What is argument 1 for distinct mind and bodies / substance dualism?

Answer 13

you can not doubt that you exist, but you can doubt your body exists.

Question 14

What is argument 2 for distinct mind and bodies

Answer 14

Mind is transparent to self, most events are not unknown. None of bodily events have this transparent character.

Question 15

What is argument 3 for distinct mind and bodies

Answer 15

The mind has direct knowledge, no material body has such direct knowledge.

Question 16

What is argument 4 for distinct mind and bodies?

Answer 16

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.

Question 17

What is argument 5 for distinct mind and bodies?

Answer 17

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

Question 18

What is argument 6 for distinct mind and bodies?

Answer 18

Not identical with body because the body did not exist years ago before a complete turnover of cells.

Question 19

What is argument 7 for distinct mind and bodies / substance dualism?

Answer 19

Not identical with body because because I can have another possible body in another world and not be necessarily identical.

Question 20

What is the main idea for these metaphysical arguments?

Answer 20

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.

Question 21

What is argument 8 for distinct mind and bodies / substance dualism?

Answer 21

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.

Question 22

What did Leibniz say that hinted mental states occur to material things?

Answer 22

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)

Question 23

What do emergentists argue about thoughts and consciousness?

Answer 23

Thoughts and consciousness arise in material systems when they reach higher levels of organizational complexity.

Question 24

What did Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia say about Descarte’s opinion that the body is the enabler of the mind’s causal powers?

Answer 24

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.

Question 25

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?

Answer 25

There is a continuous causal chain connecting every event. (doesn’t work independently)

Question 26

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?

Answer 26

Spatial relations do the job of paring causes with their effects.

Question 27

What are relational properties

Answer 27

properties that depend on a relationship with something else. provide explanation of different causal roles.

Question 28

What is needed to solve the pairing problem for immaterial minds?

Answer 28

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)

Question 29

What does substance dualism seem to say about immaterial minds?

Answer 29

They are threatened with total causal isolation - from each other as we’ll as from the material world

Question 30

Does giving locations to immaterial minds solve pairing problem?

Answer 30

No, a principle of impenetrability of mental substance is needed.

Question 31

If you reject substance dualism, what does having a mind mean?

Answer 31

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.

Question 32

What is property dualism?

Answer 32

the view that mental properties are diverse from and irreducible to physical properties. Rejects immaterial mind.

Question 33

What is reductive physicalism?

Answer 33

Defends the position that mental properties are reducible to and therefore can be identified with, physical properties. Rejects immaterial minds.

Question 34

What is substance physicalism?

Answer 34

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.

Question 35

What is the central question for this book?

Answer 35

What is the nature of the relationship between mental features and activities on one hand and the structures’ physical characteristics on the other?