Philosophy paper 2- the metaphysics of Mind

Question 1

What is consciousness?

Answer 1

All that you are directly aware of, including thoughts, emotions, sensations etc. (all the contents of the mind)

Question 2

What is Qualia?

Answer 2

a subjective feel or the phenomenal qualities of certain conscious experiences, e.g. the taste of an apple, or the smell of petrol.

Question 3

What is Dualism?

Answer 3

the view that the mind and body are not identical, meaning the mental, immaterial mind cannot be reduced to the physical, material body, and vice versa

Question 4

What do we mean by mind?

Answer 4

-made of phenomenal properties (like qualia)
-composed of properties of first person conscious experience (awareness of the contents of our own mind)
-intentional mental states that direct mental to things in external world. forms our beliefs, desires, and fears

Question 5

what is an intentional property?

Answer 5

Some mental states have intentional properties, this refers to the fact that they can be directed towards other things such as other mental states, or world or other people. For example, the mental state of hunger, can be directed towards food we observe. Beliefs have intentional properties because they don’t just exist by themselves, but are directed or about something. (Not just fear, but fear something.)

Question 6

what is Chalmers ‘hard’ problem of consciousness?

Answer 6

An ‘explanatory gap’ between our understanding of the nature of brain processes and what most people underlie conscious experience and the nature of conscious experience itself.
eg. we know what happens psychologically when someone feels pain- like the neurons firing in the brain, but we don’t know why pain feels the way it does, it doesn’t explain qualia