Lecture 7 Flashcards
Monism 2 variants
Materialism: everything is material
Idealism: everything is mental
Problems with substance-dualism
- Interaction problem: how can nonmaterial entity cause physical events
- Causal closure problem: if every physical event has a physical cause, where does the mind enter
- Brain damage problem: why would a nonmaterial entity react to brain damage
3 problem areas for materialism
- Mental states
- Reductionism
- Subjective experience
Eliminative materialism
Completely deny the existence of mental states
Paul and Patricia Churchland
Problems for eliminative materialism
Mental states appear to be too important to dismiss them entirely.
Unclear what should replace the belief-desire explanations of behaviour
Non-eliminative materialism
Tries to produce an account of how mental states are rooted in brain states.
Identity theory and functionalism try to do this
Identity theory
Says that mental states are brain states.
Type-type identity theory
Types of mental states are types of brain states.
This implies psychology can be reduced to neuroscience.
Problems with type-type identity theory
- Neural plasticity implies that the same mental functions can be performed in different ways.
- Individual differences in physical makeup say that the brain is heterogeneous.
- Mental states are defined by their content, which is likely encoded in different ways
Multiple realizability
Mental states can be realized in many different ways.
Token-token identity theory
Certain groups of mental states can be associated with groups of brain states.
Functionalism
- Mind:body = Software:hardware
- Mental states are characterized by function and not realization.
Property dualism
States that the mind could be an autonomous mental property or multiple properties.
