Materialism (Mind)

Question 1

What is physicalism?

Answer 1

Everything is physical or depends on the physical

Question 2

What is supervenience?

Answer 2

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.

Question 3

What is multiple realisability?

Answer 3

A single mental state can be realised by many distinct physical kinds/behaviours.

Question 4

What is hard behaviourism?

Answer 4

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.

Question 5

What is Gilbert Ryle’s soft behaviourism?

Answer 5

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.

Question 6

Explain Ryle’s example for soft behaviourism

Answer 6

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.