Lecture 7&8 Chapter 7

Question 1

What is the mind body problem?

Answer 1

How does the mind relate to the body

Question 2

What is described as ‘self’

Answer 2

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

Question 3

What are the 3 approaches to the mind-brain problem

Answer 3

Dualism, materialism and functionalism

Question 4

Monism

Answer 4

there is only one kind of thing

Question 5

Materialism

Answer 5

everything is material; the mind is a by-product of the biological workings of the brain.

(Opposite of idealism)

Question 6

Functionalism

Answer 6

the mind is realised in the brain, but the information can be copied to another machine with the same structure.

Question 7

Dualism

Answer 7

there are two kinds of things, the mind and body are different substances

Question 8

Which philosopher adressed the relationship between the mind and the body first?

Answer 8

Descartes

Question 9

What are the 2 reasons why dualism has an intuitive appeal?

Answer 9

1. Consciousness at the centre of human functioning: dualism generally gives priority to the mind and states that actions are guided by consciousness, which coincides with the mind
2. Having a free willl: because consciousness is the center of the mind, nothing happens unless it is approved by the mind. This gives us the feeling of having a free will

Question 10

What are the 3 conditions that must be met before an action can be ascribes to free will?

Answer 10

1. alternatives: the person must have been able to do otherwise; the action is a choice
2. origin; the act must originate in the person, not in some external force
3. deliberation; the act must be the outcome of rational deliberation, not be erratic or unpredictable.

Question 11

5 problems with substance-dualism

Answer 11

1. interaction problem
2. control processes
3. mystery substances
4. causal closure problem
5. brain damage problem

Question 12

Materialism doesn’t require

Answer 12

free will and consciousness

Question 13

What are some extreme positions as a consequence of materialism (2)

Answer 13

1. Folk psychology
2. Slaves of our genes

Question 14

Folk psychology

Answer 14

Churchland: collection of beliefs that lay people have about psychological functioning: no efforts made to verify them empirically or to check them for their internal coherence

Question 15

Slaves of our genes

Answer 15

Dawkins
we don’t have free will and are just survival machines for our genes

Question 16

What are 2 problems with materialism

Answer 16

1. identity problem: the difficulty the materialistic theory of the mind brain relationship has to explain how two events an be experiences as the same, despite the fact that their realisation in the brain differs.

Question 17

memes

Answer 17

information unit that reproduces itself according to the principles of the evolutionary theory

Question 18

access consciousness

Answer 18

conscious information that can be reported, used for reasoning and acted upon intentionally

Question 19

phenomenological consciousness

Answer 19

the fact thtat human experiences possess subjective qualities that seem to defy description; they have meaning that goes beyond formal report

Question 20

the more mental processes started to escape conscious control…. the less

Answer 20

central became the position of consciousness in human functioning.

Question 21

the mind of a person is nothing but the brain in operation. This is called? (2)

Answer 21

eliminative materialism or complete reductionism

Question 22

What is a solution to the identity problem in the brain?

Answer 22

The solution is that information is independent of how it’s physically stored or processed. Just like computers can represent the same data in different ways (as long as they keep the same code), our brains can recognize the same experience even if it’s encoded differently each time.