Self, Death and the Afterlfe: Key Words

Question 1

Dual-Aspect Monism

Answer 1

The view that mind and matter are two aspects of one substance. Mind is first-person subjective experience, whereas brain activity is third-person objective and neither is reducible to the other. Double-aspect theory is complementarity in quantum mechanics, for example, that light manifests sometimes as a wave and sometimes as a particle.

Question 2

First Person

Answer 2

Language which uses the subjective case - ‘I’ and ‘we’, either of which can be used as the subject of the sentence. To say that mental states are experienced first person is to suggest that the ‘I’ is a subjective self - conscious and self-aware. By contrast with the ‘first person’, Daniel Dennett holds that scientific language must be third-person objective. This is because subjective entities cannot be investigated or verified; hence why he argues that language about persons is objective: we cannot talk meaningfully about subjective selves. He therefore rejects the idea of Cartesian selves as absurd.

Question 3

Forms

Answer 3

Plato’s theory of the Forms was that all particular things in the world of sense perception are particular instances of universal forms. For example, all tables are particular instances of the universal forms of a table.

Question 4

Functionalism

Answer 4

Functionalism conceives of the mind as a function. Mental states are identified by their functional role, by what they do rather than what they are made of. This means they can be ‘multiply realised’, for example through human brains or through a non-biological system such as a computer.

Question 5

Interactionism

Answer 5

[In the philosophy of the mind] - Descartes’ [false] view that mind and body interact with the pineal gland.

Question 6

Introspection

Answer 6

To look at one’s own conscious thought processes.

Question 7

Multiple realisability

Answer 7

In Functionalism, this is the argument that minds/mental states can run on a variety of different platforms, including, for example, computers, and potentially (however unlikely) on a metaphysical (Cartesian-type) platform.

Question 8

Neuroscience

Answer 8

Study of the brain and the nervous system.

Question 9

Nous

Answer 9

[Greek] Intellect.

Question 10

Panpsychism

Answer 10

The view that all entities, including quantum particles, are to some extent conscious, so consciousness is not unique to humans and other animals, but is possessed even by what we normally refer to as ‘inanimate objects’, such as rocks.

Question 11

Physicalism

Answer 11

The monist view that there is only one substance - physical matter. For physicalists, mind reduces to matter.

Question 12

Psyche

Answer 12

[Greek] Soul, Spirit, Mind.

Question 13

Qualia

Answer 13

The qualities of subjective conscious experience, for example what it feels like in your mind to experience redness or the smell of a rose.

Question 14

Radical

Answer 14

Extreme, as in ‘radical dualism’: the view that mind and matter are radically different. In particular, mind is not the same as the brain.

Question 15

Scepticism

Answer 15

In philosophy, the view that it is impossible to have certain knowledge.

Question 16

Thumos

Answer 16

[Greek] In Plato’s understanding, that part of the psyche corresponding to ‘pugnacity’, ‘righteous indignation’, ‘courage’ etc. It is (or should be) subordinate to the rational part.