Philosophy of Mind Flashcards
What is a propositional attitude?
Having an attitude towards a proposition.
What does intentionality refer to?
The mind-world relation.
Weak Behaviour Entailment Thesis
For any pain capable species there is a certain behaviour type B such that, for that species, being in pain entails a propensity to emit behaviour of type B.
What is substance physicalism?
The space-time world consists exclusively of bits of matter and their aggregates.
What is irreducibility of the mental?
Mental properties are not reducible to physical properties.
The Classical Theory of Concepts
Most concepts are structured representations that encode a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for their application, if possible, in sensory or perceptual terms.
The Prototype Theory of Concepts
Most concepts are structured mental representations that encode the properties that objects in their extension tend to possess.
The Theory Theory of Concepts
Concepts are representations whose structure consists in their relations to other concepts as specified by a mental theory.
The Neo-classical Theory of Concepts
Most concepts are structured mental representations that encode partial definitions, i.e. necessary conditions for their application.
The Conceptual Atomism Theory of Concepts
Lexical concepts are primitive, they have no structure.
Philosophical Behaviourism
Being in a mental state (such as being happy) is the same as being in a physical state. There is nothing beyond behaviour re the mind.
Representational States
About things.
Propositional attitudes.
Mind-Body Supervenience
Physical indiscernibility entails psychological indiscernibility
Mind-Body Supervenience 1
Things that exactly alike physically cannot differ with respect to mental properties
Mind-Body Dependence
Mental properties are dependent on and wholly determined by physical properties
Substance dualism
Dualism = two types of fundamental stuff, ie mind and matter
Substances are things that have properties and can in some possible world have independent existence
So substance dualism means that mind can exist independently of matter
Substance physicalism
There are no immaterial substances, ie all substances are made up of matter and aggregations of matter
Behaviour (as in behaviourism)
Bodily events and conditions that are publicly accessible
Quite basic and not task orientated. Example: cannot include waving to a friend as that involves mental states and someone could perform the same action and it would be waving to an enemy
Logical Behaviourism
Any meaningful psychological statement can be translated into physical and behavioural phenomena with no loss of content
The mental being irreducible means…
That it is not a 1 to 1 relationship, not that they aren’t physical goings on. For example, if you, an alien, and an octopus can all feel pain then pain is not reducible to just one and only one physical state.
