Lecture 3 Flashcards
materialism
the position that the world is material or physical and that all things that exist are therefore in some way physical
- used to refer to realist theories about the conscious mind (theories that take the mind seriously) and accept that everything in the universe is material or physical
- takes both the mind and science seriously
mind-body supervenience
the general assumption for all materialist theories: any 2 things alike in all physical properties do not differ in mental properties
Jaegwon Kim
develops the notion of supervenience:
- minimal demand to materialism: fully comitted to mind-body supervenience
- there are various approaches to what supervenience is
- identity
- realization
supervenience relation
one set of properties determines another set of properties
- supervenience base - e.g. properties of the puzzle pieces
- supervenience properties - e.g. properties of the image the puzzle creates
Star Trek assumption
the minimal assumption that the materialists, who are realists about the mind, have to accept
- the idea that the physical determined the mental, just like the physical determines shape
materialist view on supervenience
mental properties supervene on physical properties
- any 2 things that are exactly alike in their physical properties must therefore have the same exact mental properties
identity theory
all mental states are identical to certain brain states, but not all brain states are mental states
- a kind of materialism
- takes both the mind and science seriously
- arguments against it are not very convincing
quantitative identity
if A is B, then B is A
the principle of the identity of indiscernible objects
if 2 things really can’t be discerned from one another, then they must be the same thing
- known as Leibniz’s Law
- if object A is discernible from object B, then there must be a property P that A has and B lacks, or vice versa
necessarily true
if a statment is necessarily true, denying it will result in a contradiction
contingently true
if something is contingently true, one could deny it without denial resulting in a contradiction
a priori
you can establish the truth of a claim by merely thinking about it, without needing to do empirical research
- thought to be necessary truths
a posteriori
you can establish the truth of a claim only by doing research in the world
- believed for a long time to be contingent truths
- Kripke argued that a posteriori truths are not necessasrily contingent
reductive materialism
mental phenomena can ultimately be explained by and reduced to physical processes in the brain or nervous system
- mental states are nothing more than physical states of the brain or neural activity
eliminativism
the view that some mental states don’t exist
type physicalism
states that every individual case (a token) of a certain mental category (a type) is identical to an individual brain state of a certain category
token identity theory
every particular mental state is identical to some particular brain state, without claiming that the physical tokens all belong to the same type
principle of parsimony
this rule states that entities should not be multiplied without necessity and is known as Ockham’s razor
- when confronted with 2 different but equally good explanations for a phenomenon, we should choose the more simple explanation
Jack Smart
used Ockham’s razor to argue for the identification of mental states with certain brain states
- argued that a statement about a sensation is also a statement about some brain process
- supports identity theory
David Armstrong
argued that one way of getting at identity claims is to employ causal role analysis
- we start by asking the question of what the phenomenon we want to investigate does, then ask what its causal role is
- a similar causal role analysis should be possible for mental states
- supports identity theory
causal role analysis for mental states
we start by making the question of what the relevant mental state does. afterwards, we ask what it is that fills this causal role
- when it comes to pain, it is the activity in the SCIC
- supports identity theory
differentiating property
a property that mental states have but brain states do not, or vice versa
epistemic properties
properties of knowledge or understanding
spatial properties
the location or arrangement of entities in space
