W1: Mind-Body Problem Flashcards
Ch.7, L7 & L8, PA 4 and tutorial
What is the feeling of the self?
The feeling of being an individual with feelings and beliefs and whose interactions w/ the environment follow a purpose
Who proposed Mary’s thought experiment?
Frank Jackson
What is the mind- body problem?
The problem of reconciling how the mind and the brain work together
What are the two types of -isms?
- Monism (there is only one kind of substance)
a. materalism (everything is material)
b. idealism (everything is mental) - Dualism (there are two kinds of substances); substance-dualism (mind and body are kinds of distinct entities)
What are the 3 main views of the mind-brain problem?
- Dualism: the mind is independent of the body
- Materialism: mind is just a by-product of the brain’s biological processing
- Functionalism: the mind is present in the brain, however it could be copied to other such brains
What is the mind?
The faculties of humans & animals used to perceive, feel, think, remember, and want
What did Descartes say about the mind-body problem?
- Views the body, but not the mind, as a machine
- Mind and body must therefore be different entities
- Mind is a causal director of the body
What do religions think about the mind-body problem?
The soul is a divine gift from god which will later leave the body
What did Plato think about the mind-body problem?
The soul is a part of the cosmos-soul from the realm of ideal forms which containted true ideas
Why is dualism an intuitevily attractive model?
- it gives humans free will
- accounts for existence of consciousness in humans
What are the 3 problems with dualism?
- Interaction problem: how can an immaterial entity cause physical events?
- Causal closure problem: if every physical event has a physical cause, sp where does the spiritual mind enter? how about the law of conservation of energy? total amount of energy has to stay constant, where does the energy to do something physical come from?
- Brain damage problem: why would a nonmaterial entity react to brain damage?
What was Leibniz’s view on the mind-body problem?
- saw universe as a living organism consisting of energetic units called monads
- thought the human mind has more than just conscious thinking
What, according to Leibniz, were the 4 types of monads?
- Simple monads: formthe bodies of organic & inorganic matter, have unconscious perception, and try to keep to the harmony of the universe
- Sentient monads: in all living organisms & can feel pleasure and pain
- Rational monads: the human mind, these know apperception, perceiving & reasoning about perceptions using empirical & innate evidence
- Supreme monads: controls & motivates all monads (God)
What was Kant’s view on dualism?
thought of the unconscious representations as “dark representations” but left them out of his “more serious” research
What are 2 reasons why dualism lost its appeal?
- Discovery of how important unconscious processes were
- Dissapearance of “mystery immaterial forces
What “mystery immaterial forces” were found to not exist?
- Phlogiston: substance believed to make things flammable, disproven by combustion discovery
- VItal force: substance believed to be in all alive organisms, disproven by understanding of cell theory
When did Materialism start gaining attention?
towards end of 19th century
What is materialism?
- Idea that the mind is just the brain functioning, there is only matter, mind is a part of physical world and obeys laws of nature
- matter can be fields, states, processes, functions…etc
What are the 3 types of materialism?
- Eliminative materialism
- Reductive materialism
- Non-reductive materialism
What are 2 problems with materialism?
- Identity problem: how can 2 events be experienced as the same, and talked about, if each brain encodes it differently according to their dna etc.
- How can the conscious mind occur as a by-product of the biological brain? subquestions:
a. mental states (or not): if the mind does not exist as a distinct substance, how can mental states exist at all? should we eliminate mental states?
b. Subjective experience (or not)
c. Reductionism (or not)
What are mental states?
we use mental states (“to want ice cream”) explain behaviour (“buying an ice cream”)
- this is called belief-desire psychology, and is part of folk psychology but also of scientific psych
What is the idea of eliminiative materialism?
MENTAL STATES ELIMINATED
- Mind is just physical, the brain functioning
- there is no consciousness or free will
- Humans often termed survival machines or robots in this framework
Who were 2 big supporters of eliminative materialism and their points?
- Churchland: saw consciousness as folk psychology (a collection of beliefs stemming from lay people w no empirical basis)
- Dawkins: humans are slaves of their DNA
What is the problem with eliminative materialism?
mental states seem too important to eliminate, they are the only things that would explain behaviour in a straightforward way
What is reductive vs non reductive materalism
In common:; Materialism with mental states, but deny that the mind exists as a substance. so have to explain how mental states are rooted in brain states (this is what identity theory & functionalism try)
Reductive: mental states exist but are always related to brain states, every mental process is physical. (type type identity theory)
Nonreductive: mental states exist, but are related to brain tokens (token token identity theory, multiple realizability)
Why does consciousness pose a problem for reductionism?
Reductionism involves the type type identity theory which says that all mental states are brain states, which goes against the principle of consciousness as that is a very subjective experience
What is identity theory?(type type)
in reductive materialism
- maintains that mental states are brain states
- “to want an ice cream” = “brain state x”
- developed to keep a causal role for mental states
- “john bought an ice cream cus he wanted one” is true, but really means “john bought ice cream cus he had brain state y”
What are the 3 steps to reductionism (in general)?
- Start w a scientific law in the higher order science (the science to be reduce, ex: psych)
- Establish bridge laws: one-to-one correspondence relations between terms in the higher order science & terms in the lower order science (the reducing science, ex: neuroscience)
- Show that the higher order law follows from the laws of the reducing science given the bridge laws
What is reduction?
process of explaining complex psychological phenomena by breaking them down into simpler components
What is type-type identity theory?
in reductive materialism- Stronger version
- types of mental states (“wanting an ice cream”) are identical to types of brain states (“brain state x”) across individuals and time points
- implies a one-to-one mapping of mental states to brain states
- if true, then full reduction of psych to neuroscience is possibility and in teleportation your full “mind” would be intact since it is the same as ur brain states
Why do most researchers think type-type identity theory is too strong?
Mental states are not always identifcal to brain states, as they are often encoded in different ways by different people and across time and depending on the situation. ex. of differences in encoding:
- neural plasticity: same mental functions can be performed in different ways
- individual differences in physical makeup suggest that brains differ
- even same brain could encode certain thoughts or feelings differently at different time points