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Summary Philosophy of Mind Essay answers
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Explain what the mind-body problem entails (20 marks)Rene Descartes – claimed that mind and body separate (different attributes)
Minds
1. Conscious acts (thinking, doubting etc)
2. Not extended & don’t take up space
3. Non-physical & spiritual reality
Bodies
1. Not conscious & moved by mechanical forces acting on them
2. Extended & take up space & part of physical world
3. Can be divided into smaller parts
4. Just like animals “machines – cant feel”
Descartes says: my mind (= soul) is the “real” me
If I lose a body part, still whole self = causes Dualism
Mind-body dualism
1. Type of metaphysical dualism
2. claims – two ultimate and irreducible kinds of reality
Descartes on coexistence between bodies & minds:
1. Does the mind direct the body? If true, we wouldn’t feel pain (not the case)
2. What comes first the mind or the body? Can’t be answered – both mutually
influence each other
But the mind ≠ the brain
1. brain has processes that are not mental, but physical (firing neurons)
2. mental properties can exist outside of the mind (calculations)
What makes something mental Descartes?
1. Mental because we know it directly
2. Nobody else can know our mental states like we know them
3. Can’t be mistaken about our mental processes (we are aware that we are in
them)
Main difference between physical and mental – S P A C E
What about Emotions and sensations? (2 types of mental phenomena):
1. Conscious states (with qualia) – directly accessible & private
2. Representations (with content) = Intentionality
Physicalism, functionalism and Epiphenomenalism tries to find a solution to this
problem
, What does the “hard problem” of consciousness entail? (20 marks)
David Chalmers
Easy problems:
1. How a physical system could exercise the mental things (learning or
remembering) – his reason, memory (functional concept – define by the job
that memory preforms)
Hard Problems:
1. How could a physical system experience happiness or pain? – he says that
these experiences “resist a functional characterisation”
2. Science can’t seem to explain this phenomenal, qualitative aspect of
experience (what it is LIKE TO BE happy or in pain)
3. Where does (subjective) experience come from?
4. Why do the physical processes of the brain give rise to complex mental
states?
5. What is consciousness?
6. What is it like to be you?
7. How/why do neurons firing lead to pain/happiness/love?
8. Are our experiences the same?
9. Can’t be investigated “scientifically” (yet)
10. Can’t be created physically (supposedly)
Solution à reduce consciousness to neural states or reductively explain
consciousness in terms of neural processes
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