Philosophical Positions on Mind and Body

Question 1

What is the Mind-Body Problem? What are the two overarching positions/concepts on it?

Answer 1

The mind–body problem is a philosophical problem concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness in the human mind, and the body.

The problem is that it is hard to tell how mental states (such as pain) interact with the body. In physicalism, for example, pain as a mental state is just a side effect of the physical damage and firing of c-fibers.

Question 2

What is Ontology? What would be an example of an ontological question?

Answer 2

Ontology is concerned with what there is

What kinds of things, or entities, are there in our world?
Was the 9/11 collapse of the twin towers one single event or two
distinct events?

Question 3

What is Epistemology ? What would be an example of an epistomological question?

Answer 3

Epistemology is concerned with what we can know.
Is any true belief knowledge? If not, why not? What justifies us in holding certain beliefs?

Question 4

What is Monism?

Answer 4

Monism is the idea that there is only one substance- either the physical or the mental- that makes up the human mind (and body).

Question 5

What is Dualism?

Answer 5

(Substance) dualism is the view that minded beings like
you and me are composed of two distinct substances, a material, physical substance (our body), and an immaterial, mental substance (our mind)

Question 6

In which two fundamental categories can monistic positions be divided?

Answer 6

Idealism
the mind has access only to ideas, the existence of an idea consists in being perceived

Materialism
is the view that the physical (the material,
matter) is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of realiity.

Question 7

What is Idealism ?

Answer 7

category: Monism
Idealism is the view that the mental (the mind, spirit, reason, will) is the ultimate foundation of all reality, or even exhaustive of reality.

( According to Berkeley, our mind does not have immediate access to what we would call “the world,” i.e., to the trees, statues etc. surrounding us. The mind has access only to ideas. You may think of ideas as mental images: Suppose you are not currently perceiving the Eiffel Tower, but you conjure up, “in your mind,” as it were, a mental image, an idea of the Eiffel Tower.)

Question 8

What is Interactionalism?

Answer 8

category: Dualism
Interactionism assumes that the body can causally influence the mind and the mind can influence the body (e.g. Descartes)

Question 9

What is Epiphenomenalism?

Answer 9

category: Dualism
Epiphenomenalism assumes that the body can causally influence the mind, but the mind cannot causally influence the body
(e.g. Huxley: conscious automata)

Question 10

What is Parallelism?

Answer 10

category: Dualism
Parallelism assumes that there are two distinct substances but that the two cannot causally interact with each other in any way.

Question 11

Which two versions of Parallelism do you know of?

Answer 11

category: Dualism, Parallelism
Occasionalism assumes that there is no causal interaction between the mental substance and the physical substance and psychophysical correlations are due to the continuous intervention by God. (Malebranche)

Pre-established harmonism assumes that there is no causal interaction between the mental and the physical and psychophysical correlations are due to the fact that God has created these substances in such a way that they are “tuned” to each other and stay so forever. (Leibniz)

Question 12

What is Eliminativism ?

Answer 12

category: Monism, Materialism
Eliminativism assumes that science of the future is likely to conclude that entities such as beliefs, desires, or maybe sensations do not exist

Question 13

What is the alternative monistic material stance to Eliminativism?

Answer 13

Realism:
mental properties really exist, that they are part of the ontological inventory of our world

Question 14

What is Realism?

Answer 14

category: Monism, Materialism
Realism assumes that mental properties really exist, that they are part of the ontological inventory of our world.

Question 15

What is Physicalism?

Answer 15

category: Monism, Materialism, Realism
Physicalist realism, or physicalism, is the view that mental properties are (in some sense to
be explained) fundamentally physical properties.

Question 16

What is Property Dualism?

Answer 16

category: Monism, Materialism
Property dualism is the view that although the world is composed of just one kind of substance—the physical kind—there exist two distinct kinds of properties: physical properties and mental properties.
Mental properties come on top of all the rest. They are not fixed, or determined, by the distribution of the physical stuff.

Question 17

What is Reductionism or reductive Physicalism?

Answer 17

category: Monism, Materialism, Realism, Physicalism
Reductionism or reductive physicalism is the view
that mental properties can be reduced (in some sense or other) to physical
properties. If you are a reductionist, you think that mental properties JUST ARE physical properties.

Question 18

What is Semantic Physicalism

Answer 18

category: Monism,Materialism, Realism, Physicalism, Reductionism
Semantic physicalism is the view that every meaningful mental
expression can be defined solely in terms of physical expressions (or in terms
of the behavioral and the behavioral in turn in terms of the physical).

Question 19

What is Analytic Behaviourism?

Answer 19

category: Monism,Materialism, Realism, Physicalism, Reductionism
Analytic behaviorism is the view that mental properties reduce to behavioral dispositions by means of mental concepts being definable in terms of behavioral dispositions.

Question 20

What is Empirical Reductionism (identity theory) ?

Answer 20

category: Monism,Materialism, Realism, Physicalism, Reductionism
Identity theory/ Empirical Reductionism assumes that what we perceive as different mental and physical properties can be paired up into being two expressions of the same property (c-fibers fireing and being in pain just like water IS H2O)

Question 21

What is Functionalism?

Answer 21

category: Monism,Materialism, Realism, Non-Reductive Physicalism
Functionalism states that mental properties are functional, what makes something the mental state or property it is is (more) a matter of what it does, not what it is made of

Question 22

Which three arguments for Reductive Physicalism did we cover?

Answer 22

The Argument from Simplicity
Quite generally, identities reduce the number of entities to which we are committed and thereby foster ontological simplicity (Occam’s razor)

The Argument from Explanatory Value
We ought to accept psychophysical property-identities, because they offer the best explanation for psychophysical correlations.

The Causal Argument
For something to have a causal effect on something physical, it better ought to be something physical itself. Since the mental seems to have a causal effect on something physical, it thus better ought to be something physical.

Question 23

Which three arguments against Semantic Physicalism / Analytic Behaviorism did we cover?

Answer 23

Sometimes our behavior does not manifest our true mental states: we may be acting, or covering up how we truly feel.

It seems like there can be no adequate, non-circular definition of mental states in a non-mentalistic, purely behavioral vocabulary.

Mental properties can be identical to physical properties even if mental predicates are not definable in terms of purely physical vocabulary, just as water can be identical to H2O even if “water” is not just defined as “H2O”

Question 24

What is argument against identity theory?

Answer 24

Putnam’s Argument from Multiple Realizability
If we can find even one psychological predicate which can clearly be applied to both a mammal and an octopus (say “hungry”), but whose physical-chemical “correlate” is different in the two cases, the brain-state theory has collapsed. . . . Finally, the hypothesis becomes still more ambitious when we realize that the brain-state theorist is not just saying that pain is a brain state; he is, of course, concerned to maintain that every psychological state is a brain state.

Question 25

Name two arguments for Functionalism

Answer 25

“The optimistic Argument”
The possibility of artificial intelligence (AI) seems to require the truth of something like functionalism.

“The pessimistic Argument”
If two creatures function in the same ways, achieve the same results, have isomorphic internal states, etc., then what could justify the claim that one has mental states and the other does not? The identity-theory says that the justification has to do with what kinds of stuff the creatures are made of: only the one with the right kind of brain counts as having mental states. But, the functionalist says, this flies in the face of our ordinary practices of understanding, attributing, and explaining mental states, which don’t rely on which brains state someone is in.

Question 26

Explain the Strange Realisation comment against Functionalism.
What is the Disney Principle?

Answer 26

Strange Realizations
Imagine that AI has advanced to the point where an android with a “brain” consisting of a computer running a program can behave much as normal humans do, maybe by mimicking the operation of a human brain at a neuron-by-neuron level. Note that if functionalism is indeed true, this should be possible!

The Disney Principle:
“[i]n Walt Disney movies, teacups think and talk, but in the real world, anything that can do those things needs more structure than a teacup. . . . laws of nature impose constraints on ways of making something that satisfies a certain description” (Block)

Question 27

Explain the Chinese Nation Argument

Answer 27

The Chinese Nation Argument
Suppose that instead of the program being run on an external computer made of silicon chips, the entire population of China is enlisted to run the simulation. They are equipped with walkie-talkies and communicate with each other in a way that implements the functional profile of the computer, ak´a our brain (Block, 1978).

Question 28

What are inverted and absented Qualia? How does this idea challenge Functionalism?

Answer 28

Philosophical zombies are creatures that do not have inverted qualia, but no qualia at all, although they also behave exactly like us and in fact implement our functional profile. From a functionalist perspective, there is no difference between them and us, yet the states in them are not accompanied by any feel at all. In them “it’s all dark,” there’s no consciousness at all.
Isn’t it essential for at least some of our mental states to be accompanied by certain feelings and qualitative states? And if creatures with absent and inverted qualia are possible, then how can we assume that functionalism captures the mental?

Question 29

Expalin the Knowledge Argument

Answer 29

Jackson’s Version of the Knowledge Argument (against Physicalism)
P1 If physicalism is true, then anyone who knows all the physical facts about the world knows everything there is to know about it.
P2 It is not true that anyone who knows all the physical facts about the world knows everything there is to know about it.
C Physicalism is not true.

Mary, a scientist who exists in a black-and-white world where she has extensive access to physical descriptions of color, but no actual perceptual experience of color. Mary has learned everything there is to learn about color, but she has never actually experienced it for herself. The central question of the thought experiment is whether Mary will gain new knowledge when she goes outside of the colorless world and experiences seeing in color.

Question 30

What are Pysicalist responses to Jacksons Knowledge Argument?
What is the difference between knowing how and knowing that and how ?

Answer 30

Does Mary actually learn something upon her release?

According to Dennett, we are lurked into thinking that Mary does learn something new because we fail to appreciate what exactly it would mean to actually be omniscient, i.e., to not only know a whole lot, but literally everything.

Does her learning consist in acquiring new knowledge, or only in acquiring new abilities?

Knowledge-that is factual or propositional knowledge, i.e.,knowledge that something is the case.
Knowledge-how, in contrast, is practical knowledge, i.e., knowledge how you do something.

Question 31

Describe the Ability Hypothesis

Answer 31

The Ability Hypothesis
Knowing what an experience is like just is the possession of these abilities to remember, imagine, and recognize. It isn’t knowing that certain possibilities aren’t actualized. It isn’t knowing-that. It is knowing-how. Therefore it should be no surprise that lessons won’t teach you what an experience is like. Lessons impart information; ability is something else. (Lewis)

Question 32

What is the “old fact new guise reply” ?

Answer 32

“old fact new guise reply”
Mary indeed learns something, and her new knowledge is factual knowledge-that, but all she does is acquiring new knowledge-that of some physical fact already previously known to her

Question 33

What are mental states or properties according to identity-theory ?

Answer 33

Mental states according to identity theory, are one expression of of a property peing percieved through the mental path way, thus being interpreted as a mental thing. The same property is also being percieved through the physical path way, and in turn interpreted as physical thing.

Question 34

What is the major difference between semantic physicalism and the
identity-theory?

Answer 34

Semantic Physicalism is about how we semantically define properties. It states that, if we define mental properties in physical terms, this shows that mental expressions are really just physical.
Identity theory assumes that both physical and mental experiences are different expressions of the same underlying physical thing.
While Semantic Physicalism can account for something mere mental and attemts to define it in physical terms, Identity theory searches for a correlating physical experience.

Question 35

What are mental states or properties according to functionalism?

Answer 35

For functionalism, mental states are functional and defined by their causal role. They are something between cause and effect. Cause and effect are both physical/behavioural events.

Question 36

What are mental states or properties according to semantic physicalism?

Answer 36

According to semantic physicalism mental states are really physical states we don’t have a physical way of expressing and or relating to, yet.

Question 37

What are mental states or properties according to analytic behaviorism ?

Answer 37

According to analytic behaviourism, mental states are behavioural predispositions we posess.