Chapter 7

Question 1

Self

Answer 1

The feeling of being an individual with private experiences, feelings and beliefs, who interacts in a coherent and purposeful way with the environment.

Question 2

Mind-brain problem

Answer 2

Issue of how the mind is related to the brain; three main views: dualism, materialism and functionalism.

Question 3

Mind

Answer 3

Aggregate of faculties humans (and animals) have to perceive, feel, think, remember and want.

Question 4

Dualism

Answer 4

View of the mind-body relation according to which the mind is immaterial and completely independent of the body; central within religions and also in Descartes’ philosophy.

Question 5

Consciousness

Answer 5

Word referring to the private, first-person experiences an individual lives through; contains all the mental states a person is aware of; part of the mind that can be examined with introspection.

Question 6

Free will

Answer 6

Situation in which individuals can choose their course of action; choice is the outcome of an informed deliberation.

Question 7

Phlogiston

Answer 7

Substance that was believed to make materials flammable before the chemical processes of combustion were understood.

Question 8

Vital force

Answer 8

Animistic substance thought to be present in living matter before the chemical and biological differences between living and non-living matter were understood.

Question 9

Materialism

Answer 9

View about the relationship between the mind and brain that considers the mind as the brain in operation.

Question 10

Folk psychology

Answer 10

Collection of beliefs lay people have about psychological functioning; no efforts were made to verify them empirically or to check them for their internal coherence.

Question 11

Identity problem

Answer 11

The difficulty the materialistic theory of the mind-brain relationship has to explain how two events can be experienced as the same despite the fact that their realization in the brain differs.

Question 12

Functionalism

Answer 12

In the philosophy of mind is the doctrine that what makes something a mental state of a particular type does not depend on its internal constitution, but rather on the way it functions; predicts that the mind can be copied onto another Turing machine.

Question 13

Thought experiment

Answer 13

Hypothetical scenario that helps with the understanding of a philosophical argument.

Question 14

Meme

Answer 14

Information unit proposed by Dawkins that reproduces itself according to the principles of the evolutionary theory (variation, selection and replication.

Question 15

Symbol grounding problem

Answer 15

The finding that representations (symbols) used in computations require a reference to some external reality in order to get meaning.

Question 16

Embodied cognition

Answer 16

The conviction that the interactions between the human body and the environment form the grounding (meaning) of human cognition.

Question 17

Access consciousness

Answer 17

Access conscious information can be reported by the patient, used for reasoning and acted upon intentionally.

Question 18

Phenomenological consciousness

Answer 18

Refers to the fact that human experiences possess subjective qualities that seem to defy description; experiences have a meaning that goes beyond formal report (semantics instead of syntax).

Question 19

Masked priming

Answer 19

Experimental technique to investigate unconscious information processing, consisting of briefly presenting a prime between a forward meaningless mask and a subsequent target, and examining the effect of the prime on the processing of the target.

Question 20

Global workspace model

Answer 20

Model that explains the role of consciousness by analogy to a theater: consciousness is meant to make some information available to the whole brain (e.g. the play), so that the various background processes can align their functioning to what is going on centrally

Question 21

Chinese room

Answer 21

Thought experiment proposed by Searle (1980) to illustrate the difference between information processing in humans and information processing in computers.

Question 22

Qualia

Answer 22

Qualities of conscious thoughts that give the thoughts a rich and vivid meaning, grounded in interactions with the world.

Question 23

Zombie thought experiment

Answer 23

Thought experiment proposed by Chalmers (1996) to illustrate that consciousness is more than the working of the brain or the implementation of information on a Turing machine because it involves a subjective component with qualia.

Question 24

Hard problem

Answer 24

Name given by Chalmers to refer to the difficulty in explaining in what respects consciousness is more than accounted for on the basis of functionalism. “How and why do physical properties come with subjective experiences?”

Question 25

The interaction problem

Answer 25

How can a nonmaterial entity cause physical events?

Question 26

Eliminative materialism

Answer 26

A part of the materialistic view which states that the mind of a person is nothing but the brain in operation.

Question 27

Identity theory

Answer 27

Theory that maintains that mental states are brain states. Developed to keep a causal role for mental states (not to deny it).

Question 28

Identity theory: type-type identity

Answer 28

Types of mental states are identical to types of brain states (reductionism).

Question 29

What are the steps of reductionism?

Answer 29

Step 1: Start with a scientific law in the higher order science (the science to be reduced, e.g., psychology) Step 2: establish bridge laws: one-to-one correspondence relations between terms in the higher order science and terms in the lower order science (the reducing science, e.g. neuroscience) * Step 3: Show that the higher order law follows from the laws of the reducing science given the bridge laws

Question 30

Identity theory, version II: Token-token identity

Answer 30

Any mental states are identical to any brain states.

Question 31

Mind : body = ?

Answer 31

Software : hardware

Question 32

Problems with dualism

Answer 32

- The interaction problem: The difficulty of explaining the mechanisms by which an independent mind (or soul) can influence the body, because the soul is immaterial. - The discovery that many mental functions seemed to happen outside consciousness as it cannot be explained through dualism. - The existence of an immaterial, mysterious, animistic soul. This does not agree with a scientific world view.

Question 33

Problems with materialism

Answer 33

- The identity problem: the difficulty the materialistic theory of the mind–brain relationship has to explain how two events can be experienced as the same despite the fact that their realization in the brain differs. - Nobody has a convincing idea of how the human mind could be a by-product of the biological processes in the brain.

Question 34

Problems with functionalism

Answer 34

- Correlation does not imply causation. - Symbol grounding problem: The finding that representations (symbols) used in computations require a reference to some external reality in order to get meaning. Digital computers cannot survive independently because they rely on humans for symbol grounding and to remain functional in a changing environment.

Question 35

Three aspects of consciousness

Answer 35

- Access consciousness: Information that can be reported by the patient, used for reasoning and acted upon intentionally. - Phenomenological consciousness: Refers to the facts that human experiences possess subjective qualities that seem to defy description; experiences have a meaning that goes beyond formal report (semantics instead of syntax). - Self-monitoring: The ability of a cognitive system to monitor its own processing and obtain information about itself.

Question 36

Multiple realizability

Answer 36

Mental states are realized differently in different people and different times

Question 37

Cognitive closure

Answer 37

The human desire to eliminate ambiguity and arrive at definite conclusions (sometimes irrationally). Maybe the structure of our cognition just does not permit us to ever comprehend the problem of consciousness?

Question 38

Three conditions must be met before an action can be ascribed to free will:

Answer 38

- The agent must have been able to do otherwise. Free will only exists when there is a choice. - The act must originate in the agent, not in some external force. - The act must be the outcome of rational deliberation (acts that are erratic and unpredictable are not seen as free) => intention.

Question 39

Problem with free will

Answer 39

We normally speak of "free will" when behavior is the outcome of an intention (i.e., intention causes behavior). This implies – The intention of behavior precedes behavior – The behavior wasn't necessary (you could have done something else) Libet and others found that behavior is already started in the brain before the decision is made. For Libet free will is in the decision to inhibit some of the many actions we prepare to do.

Question 40

We can save free will by:

Answer 40

- Criticize Libet's experiments – Maintain that physics does not fully describe the world – Become compatibilist (maintain that free will is consistent with the laws of physics) – Conceptualize free will differently (not as a cause) => see it as a phenomenon to be explained instead as an explanatory entity (something that explains)