1. What is the mind-body problem?

What goes on in our bodies has physical properties. However,

thoughts are not something that has physical properties. Therefore,
does that mean that the mind is immaterial? If the mind is immaterial
then how can the mind affect the body, and how can the body affect
the mind.
2. Compare and contrast dualism and materialism.
Dualism is the idea that reality contains both mental and material
things. Materialism the idea that matter is the sole reality. Dualism and
Materialism are similar in the sense that they both believe that
material things are a part of reality, however dualism believes that
mental and material things are part of reality and materialism doesn't
believe that reality contains mental properties.
3. According to Descartes, what are the essential properties of
minds and of bodies?
properties of the body are physical properties. mass, charge,
momentum, and location in space. Properties of the mind are purely
mental; the things we think with, aka our thoughts.
4. Describe why one might accept a version of parallelism.
It is a way to preserve dualism without violating the causal closure of
the physical.
6. What is epiphenomenalism? What are its strengths and
weaknesses?
the doctrine that the mind is an ineffective by-product of physical
processes. strengths include the ease for those that believe science can
explain everything that happens in physical terms. weaknesses are it
leaves unexplained the mechanism by which the body affects the
mind, but doesn't give an observable cause.
7. How does Logical Behaviorism attempt to solve the mindbody problem?
logical behaviorism is the doctrine that mental states are a behavioral
disposition. mental states are tendancies a person has to respond in
certain ways to certain stimuli.
8. What does the Perfect Pretender purport to show?
The perfect pretender behaves just like someone who can feel pain,
but he can't feel pain, and if he can't feel pain, he can't be in pain. So
having the right behavioral dispositions isn't sufficient for being in a
mental state.
9. What does the Super Spartans example purport to show?
The Super Spartan experiences pain but doesn't exhibit pain behavior
because they don't want to.
10. What is identity theory?
mental states are brain states. brain states are a particular pattern of
firing in a particular groups of neurons.
11. What does Lewis Pained Martian purport to show?
that if something feels pain as humans do but doesn't have the same
physical makeup as humans its mind can still experience pain in the
way that we do but its pain is not the same in the sense of pain that we
experience.
12. What does Blocks Chinese nation purport to show?
provide all the people in china with a radio that connects them with
each other and an artificial body. if all the people were connected in
such a way that neurons in the brain are connected then the people
could then be a single person themselves.
13. What is functionalism?
mental states are functional states. functionalism claims that the mind
is what the brain does. mental states are defined by their characteristic
inputs and outputs.
14. What is qualitative content? What does it show?
the feelings associated with specific mental states. mental states
include things like pain, love, and fear. without experiencing specific
feelings associated with a mental state, a person is not in said mental
state. a person can't be in a mental state of pain without experiencing a
feeling of discomfort.
15. What is intentionality? What does it show?
the "aboutness" of a thought. mental states have intentionality but
unlike people doing things intentionally, mental thoughts can have
intentionality about things that don't exist. we can think about unreal
things therefore, intentionality about nonreal things is conceivable.
16. What does the inverted spectrum problem purport to show?
the problem of accounting for the fact that people's color experiences
could be very different even though they are functionally equivalent.
17. What does the absent qualia objection purport to show?
the objection to functionalism based on the belief that a functional
state could have all the functional properties of a mental state without
having any of its qualitative content.
18. What does the Turing test purport to show?

The Turing Test states that if a machine could play a game as well as a
normal man-that is, if it could convince an interrogator that it was a
man as often as a normal man could-then the machine would be
intelligent. By this test, there is nothing more to being intelligent than
being able to use language as we do.
19. What does the Blocks Conversational jukebox purport to
show?
that even if a machine can carry on a conversation with a person in the
same way a person would, the machine is still not anything more than
a machine because it cannot experience any mental states like a
human can. there is more to being intelligent than producing an output
for a given input.
20. What does Searles Chinese room purport to show?
if given a set of rules, a person can respond to specific inputs without
knowing what the input was. However, like a computer, there is no
way to ever learn the meaning of the what was being input and output.
21. What is Folk Psychology?
the commonsense theory of mind that explains people's behavior in
terms of mental states like beliefs and desires. it assumes that we have
beliefs and desires, and it also assumes that they affect what we do.
22. What is eliminative materialism?
the doctrine that there are no mental states. It claims that reductive
theories of the mind have failed because mental terms do not refer to
anything. The reason why there has been no reduction of the mental to
the physical is that there is nothing to reduce.
23. What do Rortys demons purport to show?
illnesses are caused by demons. There are different demons for each
sort of illness.
24. What is Ockhams razor?
the principle that entities should not be explained beyond necessity.
Don't assume the existence of anything that's not needed to explain the
phenomena. To shave off unneeded entities from theories.
25. What is the Causal Closure of the Physical principle?
no physical effect has a nonphysical cause.
26. What is the Indescernability of identicals?
if two things are identical, then they must both possess the same
properties. If two things are identical, then whatever is true of one
thing must be true of the other as well.