Mind-Body Problem: Comprehensive Quizlet

Argument from Doubt

1. I can doubt my body exists. 2. I cannot doubt my mind exists. 3. If two things do not have exactly identical properties, then they cannot be identical. 4. Therefore, the mind and the body are not identical.

Conscious

1. If something has a mind, it has subjective, _____ experiences. 2. Even computers that pass the Turing Test do not have subjective, conscious experiences. 3. Therefore, even computers that pass the Turing Test do not have minds.

Argument from Consciousness

1. Minds have the property of consciousness. 2. Bodies as materials objects do not have the property of consciousness. 3. If two things do not have exactly identical properties, then they cannot be identical. 4. Therefore, the mind and the body are not identical.

Contradiction

1. The body is a physical thing. 2. The mind is a nonphysical thing. 3. The mind and body interact and causally affect one another. 4. Nonphysical things cannot causally interact with physical things. You can believe any combination of three of them, but when you add the remaining proposition, you end up in a _____, thereby leading to the "mind-body problem"

Argument from Divisibility

1. The body is divisible. 2. The mind is indivisible. 3. If two things do not have exactly identical properties, then they cannot be identical. 4. Therefore, the mind and the body are not identical.

Problems with Dualism

1. Where does the interaction take place? 2. How does interaction occur? 3. What about the conservation of energy? 4. What about the success of brain science?

Molecular assembler

A cell repair machine that in theory could cure human beings of any possible disease:

Intentionality

A feature of certain mental states (such as beliefs) by which they are directed at or are about objects or states of affairs in the world; what a mental state is about

Metaphysical dualism

A metaphysical position that claims that there are two kinds of realities

Metaphysical monism

A metaphysical position that claims that there is only one kind of reality

Functionalism

A philosophy that claims that the mind is characterized by particular patterns of input-processing-output; theory of mind that treats the mind as a functional concept (and not a "stuff" concept)

Primitive

A property that cannot be reduced to or analyzed in terms of any more basic property

Physicalism

A synonym for metaphysical materialism

Metaphysical idealism

A type of monism that claims that reality is entirely mental or spiritual or non-physical or immaterial in nature

Metaphysical materialism

A type of monism that claims that reality is totally physical in nature

Eliminativism (Eliminative materialism)

A type of physicalism that denies the existence of a separate, nonphysical mind and discards all language that refers to mental events

Extended mind

According to philosophers like David Chalmers and Andy Clark, a cellphone is really this:

Software

According to the functionalist, the hardware of the computer (the wires, chips, and so on) are like the brain or whatever substance underlies the mental states. The software is a set of logical relationships that direct the processing of inputs, the changing states of the system, and the outputs. _____ is analogous to the mind.

Emergentism

Also called property dualism, the view that consciousness is an emergent property. The individual neurons that make up our brains are not conscious. But once they become related to one another in the right sorts of ways, consciousness emerges.

Law of Accelerating Returns

An idea associated with futurist and engineer Ray Kurzweil in which, with regards to technology, the rate of change tends to increase exponentially and not linearly

Zombie (argument)

Argument devised by David Chalmers: 1. It is conceivable that there be zombies. 2. If it is conceivable that there be zombies, it is metaphysically possible that there be zombies. 3. If it is metaphysically possible that there be zombies, then consciousness is nonphysical. 4. Therefore, consciousness is nonphysical

AGI

Artificial General Intelligence (general-purpose systems with intelligence comparable to that of the human mind)

Kahn

Artist of Man as an Industrial Palace (1926)

Van Gogh

Artist who painted The Starry Night (1889)

Magritte

Artist who painted The Treachery of Images (1929)

Brain-computer interface

BCI

Brain-Machine Interface

BMI

Inference

Both science and metaphysics go beyond what is observed and try to construct large-scale theories that will explain and make sense out of what is observed. Consequently, both science and metaphysics cannot directly verify their theories but must make use of the method of _____ to the best explanation (abduction).

Pineal gland

Descartes' (unsatisfactory) resolution to the (where) problem of interactionism; we now know it is an endocrine gland that produces melatonin

Minds

Even if it turns out that our brains are what produce our psychological properties, there could be other ways that psychological states could occur. Hence, _____ have the property of multiple realizability. (Think of the analogy with chess.)

Three

Every metaphysical theory attempts to lump things into the following _____ broad categories: things that are not real; realities that can be reduced to more fundamental realities; and things that are fundamentally real

Psychophysical

For David Chalmers, a true theory of everything would entail both physical laws and _____ laws

Constitute

For Searle, passing the Turing Test may be evidence that the producer of the apparently intelligible responses has a mind, but this feat alone does not _____ having a mind

Physicalists

For a functionalist, there is no "official position" on what a system must be made out of to have mental states. However, the fact is that most functionalists are _____. They would say that it happens to be the case that our functional mental states are identified with brain states.

Easy problems (of consciousness)

For philosopher David Chalmers, the name he gives the questions (such as how can a human subject discriminate sensory stimuli and react to them appropriately?) that further research in cognitive psychology and neuroscience will answer

Hard problem (of consciousness)

For philosopher David Chalmers, the question of how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience

Irrelevant

Functionalism claims that a mind is anything that has the functional capabilities to behave in ways characteristic of human minds. The materials composing the system (wet gray matter or electrical circuits) are _____ to its status as a mind. Hence, if a computer running an artificial intelligence program has the same psychological constitution as human beings, then it has a mind.

Internal

Functionalists claim that mentalistic terms (belief, desire, love) do not alone refer to behavior or dispositions to behavior. Unlike the behaviorist, the functionalist says that mental states can function as the inner causes of behavior. Furthermore, the functionalist claims that behavior cannot be explained without understanding the internal processes that produce it. Hence, contrary to behaviorism, functionalism believes that _____ states such as beliefs, desires, and wishes play a causal role within the organism. These states may be realized in brain states, but they also could be realized in other ways.

Official position

Gilbert Ryle's name for the default view of most individuals on the mind-body problem, which is dualism (he argued this position likens a human to a "ghost in the machine")

Singularity

Hypothesis that accelerating progress in technologies will cause a runaway effect wherein artificial intelligence will exceed human intellectual capacity and control, thus radically changing or even ending civilization

Category mistake

If you thought that a school "dance" was some entity apart from the motions of various people's bodies and the music, you'd be guilty of committing a _____ _____

Nonidentity of discernibles (Indiscernibility of identicals)

Implicit within all of Descartes's arguments for mind-body dualism is which principle borrowed from Leibniz?

Growth

In a __________ mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.

Fixed

In a __________ mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort.

Reductionist (reductionism)

In metaphysics, the strategy that argues certain realities can be reduced to more fundamental realities

Bottom-line

In metaphysics, the strategy that clarifies which things are fundamentally real

Eliminativist (eliminativism)

In metaphysics, the strategy that eliminates or gets rid of things that are not real

Cartesian compromise

In the physical realm, science is the dominant authority and gives us the truth. We do not consult the Church or the Bible to see how fast the heart pumps its blood; science informs us about such facts. But according to the _____ _____, science cannot tell us about the eternal destiny of our souls, it can tell us only about our bodies. Hence, in the spiritual realm, says Descartes, religion still retains its authority and truth. This view is today called territorialism.

Placebo (effect)

Inert substances like sugar pills that seem to make people better simply because the people taking them believe they will work:

Transhumanism

Intellectual movement that aims to transform the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies to greatly enhance human intellect and physiology

Bottom-up

Nature can be viewed as having a hierarchical structure where the lower levels give rise to the higher ones. For example, subatomic particles give rise to atoms; atoms give rise to molecules; molecules give rise to cells; cells give rise to organisms; and organisms give rise to societies. These are examples of what's known as ______ causation. The lower levels affect the higher ones.

Occasionalism

Non-interactionist dualism in which although mind and body appear to interact, really it is God making it happen; that is, such an occurrence is an occasion for God to intervene:

Parallelism

Non-interactionist dualism in which mind and body are separate, but they are perfectly coordinated by God, either at that particular moment (occasionalism) or in advance (pre-established harmony):

Pre-established harmony:

Non-interactionist dualism, in which mind and body, at the time of their creation, were perfectly synchronized by God, like two clocks set for exactly the same time. Although they appear to correspond and interact, there is no causal relationship between mind and body.

Turing Test

Operational test produced by Alan Turing to determine whether a computer or machine can think; he called it the "Imitation Game"

Non-Interactionist Dualisms

Parallelism, Pre-Established Harmony, Occasionalism

Folk psychology

Pejorative term used by eliminativists to characterize traditional psychological theories

Biofeedback

Phenomena where subjects are made aware of the firing rates of neurons and asked to control them

Emergent

Properties of a whole that are not found in the parts--such as the wetness that's found in water but not in the hydrogen or oxygen that make up water--are known as ______ properties

2045 CE

Ray Kurzweil's dating for when he thinks the Singularity will occur

Nanotechnology

Science, engineering, and technology conducted at the nanoscale, which is about 1 to 100 nanometers (and, a nanometer is a billionth of a meter)

Consciousness

Self-awareness

Cyborg

Shorthand for "cybernetic organism"; a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts:

Cognitive

Some of the most tantalizing evidence for the causal efficacy of the mental comes from various clinical experiments such as biofeedback, the placebo effect, the nocebo effect, and _____ behavioral therapy:

Neutral

Strictly speaking, functionalism is _____ on the issue of dualism versus physicalism

Cerebral Commissurotomy

Surgery pioneered by Michael Gazzaniga and Roger Sperry in which the surgeon severs the bundle of nerves (the corpus callosum) that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. Patients with these split brains experience a fragmentation within their experience. The part of the brain that processes visual data cannot communicate with the part that processes things linguistically. These considerations seem to indicate that whatever it is that makes up the mind, it is something that has components.

Reductionism

Synonym for the identity theory

Mind-body dualism

Synonyms include Cartesian dualism, substance dualism, interactionism, psychophysical dualism, "Ghost in the Machine," & the "Official Position"

Moore's law

The "law" that processing power and the number of transistors in computer chips double every two years

Chinese Room (thought experiment)

Thought experiment created by John Searle, which was an attempt to refute the strong AI thesis and to show that merely passing the Turing Test was not a sufficient condition for having a mind

Big Blue

The IBM computer that first defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997

Metaphysics

The area of philosophy concerned with fundamental questions about the nature of reality

Intelligence

The capacity to solve problems or to fashion products that are valued in one or more cultural setting--Dr. Howard Gardener

Strong AI (thesis)

The claim that an appropriately programmed computer or machine really is a mind and can be said to literally understand, believe, and have other cognitive states

Weak AI (thesis)

The claim that artificial intelligence research may help us explore various theoretical models of human mental processes while acknowledging that computers or machines only simulate mental activities

Correlation

The constant _____ between mental events and brain events plus the principle of Ockham's razor makes physicalism seem very attractive

Ontology

The field of metaphysics that considers what exists

Identical

The form of Descartes's arguments for dualism: 1. The body has property A. 2. The mind has property non-A. 3. If two things do not have exactly identical properties, then they cannot be _____. 4. Therefore, the mind and the body are not identical. They are two completely different entities.

Functionalist

The identity theory says that mental events or states (believing, doubting, willing, feeling pain, and so on) are identical to a particular brain state. However, the _____ argues that what is essential to a mind is not a certain sort of material (the wet, gray, fleshy-stuff of the brain). Instead, the functionalist claims, minds are constituted by a certain pattern or relation between the parts of a system, independent of the material that embodies the system.

Interactionism

The most common version of dualism, which claims that the mind and body, though different, causally interact with one another

Biological naturalism

The name of Searle's resolution to the mind-body problem, which is a physicalist account: 1.Consciousness is real and irreducible [against the eliminativists]; 2. Conscious states are caused by neuronal processes [against the dualists]; 3. All conscious states are realized in the brain [it does have a spatial location!]

Causal

The positive side of functionalism is the theory that mental states are defined in terms of their _____ role (how they function)

Ockham's Razor

The principle that we should eliminate (shave off) all unnecessary entities and explanatory principles in our theories; also called the principle of parsimony or principle of simplicity

Multiple realizability

The property by which something can be realized (embodied, instantiated) in multiple ways and in different media

Qualia

The raw sensation of experience; individual instances of subjective, conscious experience such as what it feels like to experience a sunset; what a mental state feels like

Phineas Gage

The story of this railroad worker suggests one's personality can be significantly affected by the state of one's brain

Panpsychism

The view that everything has mental properties. That's not to say that everything has a mind, but it is to say that everything has features of the sort we associate with minds, like perceiving, desiring, remembering, and so on. This applies to inanimate as well as animate objects. Although most panpsychists are not willing to go so far as to say that rocks are conscious, they are willing to say that rocks have the earliest glimmers of consciousness.

Double-aspect theory

The view that the mind and the body are two aspects of a single underlying substance

Property dualism

The view that the mind is an arrangement of nonphysical properties arising from yet dependent on physical properties; also called "emergent materialism," "nonreductive materialism," and "soft materialism"

Identity theory

Theory that treats mental events as real but claims that they are identical to brain events; also called reductionism

Mary (knowledge argument)

Thought experiment in which there is a 23rd-century brain scientist who is completely color-blind. She experiences only black, white, and gray. Theoretically, she could have complete scientific knowledge of your brain states while you were experiencing a sunset. However, she still would not know what it was like to experience color. In this case, would it be legitimate to say that a scientific knowledge of the brain gives us only a partial account of the sorts of things that the mind experiences? Are there aspects of our mental life that can be known only by a conscious subject through his or her subjective experiences and that cannot be known through third-person, scientific, objective descriptions of the brain? Does this example show that your mental experiences cannot be completely reduced or understood in terms of brain states?

Materialist

To accept the existence of downward causation is to deny that all human behavior can be explained in purely _____ terms. If mental states can affect brain states, they must be taken into account in any comprehensive explanation of the workings of the brain.

Cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT)

Type of therapy in which patients are told to use self-instructions like "That's not me, that's a part of my brain that's not working" whenever they started to feel the urge to engage in the unwanted behavior

Poe (Edgar Allan)

Well-known author of "Maelzel's Chess-Player" who argued that in principle no machine could play the game of chess

Nocebo (effect)

When patients get worse if they believe they are taking a harmful substance: