MIND BODY PROBLEM POWERPOINT SLIDES

DUALISM
- Substance Dualism
     - Cartesian (interactionist)
     - popular
- Property Dualism
     - epiphenomenalism
     - interactionist
     - elemental property

Arguments about DUALISM

            PRO
- Religious Belief
- Introspection
- Irreducibility
- Parapsychology

            CON
- Parsimony
- Explanatory Impotence
- Neural Dependence
- Evolution

MONISM
- Idealism: everything is ideas (mental)
- Materialism: everything is matter (physical)
     - Philosophical Behaviorism
     - Reductionism (Identity Theory)
     - Functionalism

PHILOSOPHICAL BEHAVIORISM
- scientific approach to clarifying concepts, especially by analyzing mental 
terms more carefully
- mental states are shorthand for describing observable behaviors, or 
dispositions to them
- operational definitions of mental states given in terms of observables, e.g., 
"pain" = moaning, etc.
- BUT, leaves out "qualia", the experience itself
- also leaves out dependence on other mental terms like "beliefs" about 
aspirin's effectiveness, etc.

IDENTITY THEORY (REDUCTIVE MATERIALISM)
- every mental state is identical to some brain state (redness, curiosity, love, 
belief
- "reductionism" means changing statements using basic terms in one theory into 
statements using basic terms in another theory
      (e.g., chemistry -> physics; biology -> chemistry)
- thus, loudness of sound (in psychology) corresponds to density of air 
molecules in pressure waves (in physics)
- thus reductionism says minds can have size: 1400 cm3
- and brain states can have MEANING!!!...(wha?)

A THEORY OF MEANING
"Intentionality" means being about something else, like MENTAL states are about 
something else -- not just a thought, but a thought about something; not just a 
belief, but a belief about something
So how can a BRAIN state be "about" something?
- naive view of meaning: a word identifies a concrete thing in the world (e.g., 
"elephant")
- but what about "justice," "that," "stream," etc.?
- alternative view of meaning: a word gets its meaning by playing a certain role 
in all the things people say, i.e., its relations to all other words
- maybe brain states have meaning by virtue of their relations to all other 
brain states that occur

FUNCTIONALISM
- mental states are defined by
a) relations to environmental causes
b) relations to other mental states
c) relations to behavioral consequences
- so a mental state is "functionally" defined by the role it plays in our 
cognitive system as a whole
- analogous to how chess pieces are really defined by how they move, rather than 
by their shape

Different from Philosophical Behaviorism: relation to other mental states 
matters, since these states are taken to be real
- example of a "behaviorist machine", involving no internal states:
     - gumball machine: nickel in -> gumball out
- example of a "functionalist machine", involving internal states:
     - soda machine costing 25¢ (in, um, 1970...):
- quarter in -> soda out... OR,
- dime in -> "awaiting 15¢" -> dime in -> "awaiting 5¢" -> nickel in -> soda out... OR,
- dime in -> "awaiting 15¢" -> nickel in -> "awaiting 10¢" -> dime in -> soda out... OR,
- dime in -> "awaiting 15¢" -> dime in -> "awaiting 5¢" ->
dime in -> "owing 5¢" -> soda and nickel out

Different from Identity Theory: functionalism claims a token identity (mental 
state = SOME physical state), instead of type identity (mental state = 
particular state of human brain)
- by NOT linking mental states to the human brain, we allow the possibility of 
mental states in animals...
... or in Martians...
... or in computers!
... or in Cliff again.

      William James (1890), The Principles of Psychology, pp. 181-182

      I confess, therefore, that to posit a soul influenced in some mysterious 
way by the brain-states and responding to them by conscious affections of its 
own, seems to me the line of least logical resistance, so far as we yet have 
attained...

      [A] mere admission of the empirical parallelism [between states of 
consciousness and brain-processes] will ... appear the wisest course. By keeping 
to it, our psychology will remain positivistic and non-metaphysical; and 
although this is certainly only a provisional halting-place, and things must 
some day be more thoroughly thought out, we shall abide there in this book, and 
... we shall take no account of the soul. The spiritualistic reader may 
nevertheless believe in the soul if he will; whilst the positivistic one who 
wishes to give a tinge of mystery to the __expression of his positivism can 
continue to say that nature in her unfathomable designs has mixed us of clay and 
flame, of brain and mind, that the two things hang indubitably together and 
determine each other's being, but how or why, no mortal may ever know.