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10 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Define "dualistic interactionism"
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This is the idea that the mind and body are separate, but that they interact, so that what happens to the body can create a state in the mind, which can in turn generate a physical action.
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What are the two critical problems for the interactional dualist?
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1. What is it that makes your mind yours and not someone else's?
2. How can a non-physical substance cause changes in a physical substance, or vice versa? |
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Name three philosophers who dealt with the mind-body problem
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Rene Descartes
Gilbert Ryle William Lycan John R. Searle Elizabeth Spelman Francisco Varela |
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What was Rene Descartes position on the mind-body problem?
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He believed that the mind existed, but that he could not prove the existence of the body.
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What is "identity theory"?
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A form of physicalism; it claims that each mental event can be accounted for by a very specific physical event, such as the firing of a specific, identifiable, neuron.
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Describe the reason that Rene Descartes felt that he could not rely on sensory data as a mechanism for identifying certain knowledge.
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The senses could be deceived. He compared the "sense" that a dreaming person has of being in a real world to the sense that a waking person has of being in a real world and realized he couldn't really say for certain that the latter was any different.
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"I think, therefore, I am." Explain the significance.
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This was what Descartes turned to after he negated the senses as a source of certainty. He reasoned that since he could reason, and since he could convince himself of something, there must be something. He also reasoned that even if he were being decieved in his reasoning, he must still exist, because there must be something there to be deceived.
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What was Descartes' attitude toward the mind?
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It exists as a separate entity from the body.
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What was Descartes' attitude toward the body?
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He could not prove that the body exists, since the only way to perceive it was through the data being gathered through the faulty senses being filtered through the mind.
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Name one philosopher whose work pre-figures Descartes' thinking.
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Plato--he not only believed in a dualistic view; he also believed that mind is superior to body.
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