Phil 3: Philosophy Of Mind

Qualia
Intentionality
The Privacy of the Mental

Mental-Physical Causation

How does a brain generate a 'Mind'

The feeling of feeling, Qualia is a problem for Identity theorists, Suggesting that no matter how much you investigate the brain, you will never be able to know the feeling of doing something, only the effects that it has on the brain

Our minds have the ability to represent other things or be about other things.

When you imagine objects, this is your mind representing something

Only I have direct access to my own mind, everybody else has to rely on my behavior or neuroscience. This is a problem for Identity theorists

A problem facing Substance Dualists, this idea that A non-physical event causing a physical event seems not only unlikely, but impossible.

Another problem for substance dualists: how can a brain create a mind? or how is a non physical mind even come into existence?

The Idea that the mind is non physical and the brain is physical. The mind and brain communicate, with the mind being in control of the brain

1.The user of a thing and the thing used are two numerically different and distinct things

2. A person uses his/her body

3.Therefore: a person must be numerically different from his/her body

Descartes pointed out that you can doubt the existence of your body, but you cannot doubt that you have a mind. This implies that they are separate things.

1. Just because you can imagine it, it doesn't mean that it is possible

As the mind is independent of the body, the mind of a bee would have the same complexity as the mind of a human, but we know that minds become more complex as the brain does, implying that mind relies on the brain.

We cannot give any meaningful or definite account of what a soul/mind is or isn't. it is a meaningless concept that cannot be applied empirically.

How could something composed of nothing physical effect the physical world?

Our mental life is heavily reliant on our brain and nervous system, if you drink alcohol it effects your mind, despite it being physical

A strain of Substance Dualism, our mind doesn't react with the physical world.

God made mental events and physical events fit together by ensuring correlation between them.

Logical Behaviourism

The identity theory

Functionalism

Eliminativism

All mental states can be fully reduced to/described in terms of actual or potential behaviour.

We do not need to observe our own behaviour to know how we are feeling, we have direct access.

Pain seems to have a phenomenological quality (the feel of pain), and to be more than pain behaviour or pain-dispositional behaviour.

Logical behaviourism is counter intuitive, we normally think that our mental states cause our behaviour, not that they are the same thing.

People's mental states are dependent on their previous mental states. in order to understand their mental state through behaviour you would need to know all their previous mental states.

The concept that some people can show no emotion at all despite being in considerable pain would defeat logical behaviourism, although this is just a hypothetical

The Mind Is just part of our brain.

Against the Identity theorist view. This is saying that talk of mental states means something completely different to talk of brain states. a reply to this is that you can talk about the same thing with different vocabularies.