Chapter 7: Mind-brain problem, free will and consciousness Flashcards
Define self
The feeling of being an individual with private experiences, feelings and beliefs
Define dualism
View in which the mind is immaterial and independent of the material body
People associated with dualism
Plato - the soul exists before lives past the body
Descartes - first to address and defend dualism
Positives of dualism
- consciousness is the focus of human functioning
- free will
Define free will and its conditions
The individual can choose their actions deliberately. Three conditions must be met:
- there must be alternatives
- the individual must originate the action
- rational deliberation
Problems with dualism
- interaction problem
- unconscious control processes - where does the mind go?
- unscientific and mystery substances
- causal closure problem
- brain damage problem
Define materialism
The mind is physical and not independent of the body, it is a biological byproduct of the brain
Consequences of materialism
- consciousness as a folk psychology: people had a misunderstanding
- Dawkins: humans are a means for genes to survive
Problems with materialism
- identity problem
- how does the mind come from biological processes in the brain?
Functionalism
The function of a mental state is important instead of the mechanisms and physical states it is made up of, this helped solve the identity problem and leads from multiple realisability - can machines have consciousness?
Teleportation
Teleportation would move the atoms of the body and reinstate them in a different location.
Dualism: the body would be reinstated without the mind as they are separate and therefore would not be teleported along
Materialism: the mind would also be teleported along as it is made up of the brain functions
Functionalism: the mind would also be teleported along as it is made up of the information and network
Define meme
Information and knowledge which is replicated in a similar way to genes, natural selection also applies, as coined by Dawkins
Problems with functionalism
Cognitive neuroscience argued human processing can be understood with physical brain parts
Symbol grounding - symbols need external references to get meaning in the changing environment
Define embodied cognition
Interactions between human body and environment form meaning of human cognition
Access consciousness
Information can be reported
Phenomenological consciousness
Human experiences have subjective qualities beyond descriptions
Unconscious processing
- semantic priming
- masked priming
- implicit memory
- initiation of Movement (Libet)
So far, no effect has been found that hasn’t also been found during conscious processing.
Wegner’s illusion of free will
Human mind attributes action to free will when:
- thought appears in consciousness before an action
- thought is consistent with the action
- no alternative cause
Global workspace model
Consciousness spreads information throughout the brain so that it can decide which actions to take.
(compared to a theatre, different teams need to know what is happening to know what to do, even independently)
Chinese room thought experiment
A non-Chinese speaker can be taught to provide the correct answer to a stimulus, but do they know Chinese and can they pass a Turing test?
Qualia
Experiential properties of thoughts and mental states that give thoughts meaning in the outside world
Zombie thought experiment
If you created a clone, it would have the exact same body but would not have the same consciousness, it would not feel emotions or pain, although it could portray them as learned responses, it would be a zombie
Eliminative materialism
Mental states are not real at all, they are just folk psychology
Reductive materialism
Consciousness and mental states do exist but are reducible to physical brain states, explained by identity theory
Type-type identity theory
Why is it criticised?
Mental states are identical to brain states across individuals and time, allowing a full reduction of psychology. However, it is criticised due to:
- neuroplasticity
- individual differences
- content of mental states
Non-reductive materialism
Mental states are not reducible to brain states, links to functionalism and implies multiple realisability
Token-token identity theory
Mental states can be different brain states in different people, rejecting type-type identity theory and full reductionismT
Turing test
Can you distinguish between a computer-generated answer and a human-generated one?
Chalmers’ easy and hard problems of consciousness
Easy problem: understanding which brain processes are related to conscious experiences
Hard problem: understanding why we have conscious and subjective experiences
Cognitive closure hypothesis
We will never be able to understand the hard problem of consciousness
