Theoretical Flashcards
What is dualism?
The mind/body relationship - Two kinds of things. I “have a brain” vs the monist “I am a brain”
Describe the dogma of the ghost in the machine?
The body is a physical thing and the mind (or soul) is a non-physical thing (the ghost).
The dogma is the belief that the ghost operates the machinery just like a driver drives a car. The body is a vehicle carrying around its driver.
But Ryle thought this was a category-mistake.
What is the hard problem?
Chalmers -How do we explain how phyical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience?
What is the quantity objection?
if one measures…the intensities of colours, tones etc., then one is measuring the intensities of physical phenomena. The colour is not the seeing, the tone is not the hearing and the warmth is not the sensing of warmth
What is the problem of objectivity?
that objective, orderly laws or established theory exist that will provide the criteria by which we may assign numbers to the attributes of objects
the measurement of intelligence in terms of how long it takes to complete certain mathematical problems is based on theories of cognition that are disputed
What is the problem of representation?
All measured objects have attributes and measurement is simply a representation of the varying quantities of these attributes
Dooley (1995) psychological constructs are intangible - “indicators may measure nothing at all, or it may measure something other than the construct of interest” (p. 81).
How do we know that people have ‘intelligence’ and that ‘intelligence’ is measured by the intelligence test?
What is interactionism?
The mind and body interact.
The mind influences the body and the body influences the mind.
Position taken by descartes, also freud and psychoanalysts.
For them, many body ailments are psychogenic - caused by mental states such as anxiety, frustration etc.
What is epiphenomenalism?
physical events cause or give rise to mental events, but mental events have no effect on physical events. They were powerless to affect the machinery of the human brain and body, just as the sound of a locomotive’s steam whistle cannot influence its machinery
What is materialism?
It is only matter.
What is idealism?
you might doubt that real pencils actually exist out there and decide that only ideas or perceptions of pencils exist - making you a mentalist or an ide- alist
What is double aspectism?
Property dualism
What is parallelism?
God did it
What is occasionalism?
God did it
What is Preestablished harmony?
A state that came before it, also relating to God
What did Ryle mean by “a category mistake” regarding the ghost in the machine?
The error of assigning to something a quality or action which can only properly be assigned to things of another category, for example treating abstract concepts as though they had a physical location.
