Materialism (Mind) Flashcards
Philosophical behaviourism, mind-brain type identity, eliminative materialism, functionalism
What is physicalism?
Everything is physical or depends on the physical
What is supervenience?
Mental properties supervene on physical properties. Mental properties layer up on top of physical properties. Properties A will supervene on properties B. A properties can’t change if B properties don’t change.
What is multiple realisability?
A single mental state can be realised by many distinct physical kinds/behaviours.
What is hard behaviourism?
The inner mental state IS the behaviour.
Hempel applies the verification principle, and argued that because mental states are private, they’re analytic and empirically unverifiable, so they are meaningless (feelings are non cognitivist). Mental terms can only be meaningful if they apply to something public and verifiable like behaviour. So hard behaviourists reduce mental terms to behavioural terms. What you see is what you get.
What is Gilbert Ryle’s soft behaviourism?
Mental terms can be analysed into behavioural dispositional terms. They are not CURRENT behaviour but just the disposition someone has given the certain circumstances to take place. Sentences expressing dispositional expressions are hypothetical.
Explain Ryle’s example for soft behaviourism
Smoking. Smoking in his time was cheap and you could do it in most places. You might not be able to do it all the time, but you’d want to, it’s a learned behaviour. What you see is what you get, unless there is something to stop that behaviour.
What is mind-brain type identity?
The mind is the brain, so each mental state or process is literally one and the same thing. Facts about the mind are reducible to physical facts about the brain. Pains, beliefs and desires are nothing less than neurological states.
What is numerical identity?
If A and B are numerically identical then they are one and the same, they are not two. It does not require qualitative identity.
What is qualitative identity?
A and B are not one and the same but share some properties.
List issues with philosophical behaviourism
Circularity, dualist arguments, asymmetry between self knowledge and knowledge of others, the distinctness of mental states from behaviour (super spartans and perfect actors)
Why is mind-brain type identity an ontological reduction?
2 different linguistic ideas reduced to one. Argues that the mind and brain are numerically identical, sharing time and space qualities.
Why is philosophical behaviourism an analytical reduction?
Analytical reduction reduces to symbols; behaviour and language. It concerns concepts and language.
List issues with mind-brain type identity
Talk about the brain doesn’t mean talk about the mind, the spatial location issue, evidence of introspection, irreducibility of intentionality, chauvinism of type identity theory
Explain eliminative materialism
Eliminitist theory arguing mental states including qualia and introspection do not exist and instead it’s all physical processes of the brain. Beliefs, thoughts and desires have no link to mental state. Everything is neurological
What is functionalism?
Mental states are functional states. Mental states are not to be analysed in terms of their ontology (what they are made of) but the functional role that they play within a system of inputs and outputs.
What is a function (functionalism)?
Defined in terms of inputs and outputs. Any functional state can be described in terms of what typically causes it and what it typically causes in turn
What is an example of a functional state (not the mind)?
Eyes- lots of different types of eyes that work in different ways and have different physical properties, such as human eyes, fish eyes, fly eyes and so on. What makes them different is what they do; convert light waves into neurological signals to enable an organism to navigate.
What is Folk Psychology?
The position held by common people, non neuroscientists arguing we have feelings, desires and beliefs. It’s all about qualia, mental states and introspection.
List the issues with eliminative materialism
Rejects qualia. The certainty of introspection. Folk psychology has good predictive power. Eliminative materialism is self refuting.
