Deck 4: Mind and Body

Question 1

The connectionist claims that the mechanical and physical interactions that occur in the brain determine the types of behavior that computers are capable of processing.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

Descartes said there were two types of substances: mind or mental substance and body or physical substance.

Answer 2

True

Question 3

Ryle believed that it was a mistake to think that "the mind" and its events were some strange and mysteriously private sort of thing behind our behavior when, in fact, the mind was the pattern of our behavior and not "behind" behavior at all.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

J. J. C. Smart argued that the identity theory was false because it was incompatible with modern science.

Question 5

Freud claimed that everything mental was knowable and therefore that surely everything "in the mind" could be described incorrigibly.

Question 6

Thomas Nagel argued that it was consciousness that made the mind-body problem so "intractable."

Question 7

Functionalism is the view that minds are produced by the relations between parts not particular kinds of material.

Question 8

Merleau-Ponty believed that there should be a sharp distinction between mind and body.

Question 9

Philosophers refer to the ability of knowing one's own mind by simply paying attention as Privileged access.

Question 10

Freud's concept of the unconscious considers all thoughts that we are aware of at the moment and know everything about.

Question 11

Strong behaviorists believe that there are no mental events.

Question 12

Epiphenomenalism does not allow for causal interaction.

Question 13

The "official doctrine," hailing from Descartes, states that everyone has a body and a mind and that at the death of the body the mind (soul) continues to exist.

Question 14

According to Ryle, attributing a mental property to someone is logically equivalent to saying that the person will act in a certain way.

Question 15

Philosophers of the mind and neuroscientists now understand the function of sleep.

Question 16

According to eliminative materialists, our increasing knowledge of the workings of the brain will outmode our "folk-psychology" talk about the mind and we will all learn to talk the language of neurology instead.

Question 17

Nagel pointed out that if we try to imagine what it is like to be a bat, the best we can do is imagine what it is like for us to be bats (which isn't the question).

Question 18

Husserl described consciousness as a kind of container in which one finds ideas, thoughts, feelings, desires, and so forth.

Question 19

Schopenhauer was thought to have refuted the "picture theory of thinking" in 1819.

Question 20

The "Chinese Room" is a thought experiment designed by John Searle to show that a mind is not like a computer because, although both minds and computers manipulate formal symbols, only minds are capable of understanding what the symbols mean.

Question 21

Behaviorism is the idea that __________.

A) all of our mental acts are knowable
B) our mental acts determine our behavior
C) only what is observable can be used as evidence in research regarding humans
D) the mind and body causally interact

Question 22

The key to Ryle's analysis is __________.

A) disposition
B) dualism
C) functionalism
D) identity theory

Question 23

The quote below belongs to__________ .
"Since brains do produce minds, and since programs by themselves can't produce minds, it follows that the way the brain does it can't be by simply instantiating a computer program."

A) Gilbert Ryle
B) Rene Descartes
C) John Searle
D) Paul M. Churchland

Question 24

If you believe that Data, the android on the TV show Star Trek, is sentient and conscious, even though his "brain" is made out of silicon and metal, then you would be a(n) __________.

A) eliminative materialist
B) identity theorist
C) functionalist
D) dualist

Question 25

Incorrigibility is the term philosophers, especially Descartes, have given to __________.

A) persistent afterimages
B) the immediate certainty of our own conscious experiences
C) the arbitrary nature of intentional objects
D) dogmatic beliefs

Question 26

How did Freud's concept of the "unconscious" raise doubts about Descartes's claim that whatever is mental can be described as incorrigible?

A) By suggesting that our ideas may not correspond to reality.
B) By suggesting that only our unconscious ideas are clear and distinct.
C) By suggesting that there are ideas in our minds that we don't, and cannot, know.
D) By suggesting that no one is truly conscious and, therefore, that no mental activity can be said to be incorrigible.

Question 27

Intentionality may be defined as __________.

A) volition
B) temporality
C) privileged access
D) aboutness

Question 28

Elizabeth V. Spelman uses __________ hierarchical account of the relationship between mind and body to illustrate how the problem of mind and body can impact other philosophical views.

A) Plato's
B) Aristotle's
C) Descartes's
D) Hume's

Question 29

When Aristotle wrote about the soul, he was referring to __________.

A) the unconscious mind
B) the form of the body
C) the spirit within the body
D) the bottom of the feet

Question 30

According to Galen Strawson, consciousness consists of two elements, __________.

A) the ego and the id
B) awareness and attention
C) sensations and intentionality
D) primary consciousness and subconsciousness

Question 31

__________ warns us not to slide form distinguishing between mind and body to formulating dubious views about the inferiority of some groups of people relative to others.

A) Galen Strawson
B) Elizabeth V. Spelman
C) David Braddon-Mitchell
D) Frank Jackson

Question 32

The notion that a mind can be instantiated in anything that functions like a brain is called __________.

A) multiple realizability
B) intentionality
C) incorrigibility
D) the dual aspect theory

Question 33

According to Ryle, it is a necessary feature of whatever has physical existence that it is in __________.

A) space but not necessarily time
B) time but not necessarily space
C) neither space nor time
D) space and time

Question 34

Husserl's conception of consciousness depends on __________.

A) intentionality
B) incorrigibility
C) dual aspect theory
D) multiple realizability

Question 35

__________ claimed that our experiences and ideas were one aspect of some events or activities of which the various chemical reactions of the brain were another aspect. This theory has often been called the dual aspect theory.

A) Descartes
B) Leibniz
C) Husserl
D) Russell

Question 36

__________ offered the solution that there was no mind-body interaction and that monads were not physical. God programmed us so that our mental activities and our so-called bodily activities were exactly coordinated. This is called parallelism.

A) Descartes
B) Leibniz
C) Husserl
D) Russell

Question 37

__________ claimed that his various fleeting thoughts could not be unified into a coherent, enduring self without the intervention of a higher power.

A) Descartes
B) Leibniz
C) Husserl
D) Russell

Question 38

__________ believed that belief in consciousness went back to the ancient days of superstition and magic.

A) John Watson
B) Gilbert Ryle
C) Galen Strawson
D) Bertrand Russell

Question 39

Nagel claims that the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means that there is something it is like to __________ that organism.

A) know
B) be
C) fear
D) understand

Question 40

Descartes's account of mental changes causing bodily changes, and vice versa is called __________.

A) parallelism
B) functionalism
C) causal interactionism
D) epiphenomenalism

Question 41

Behaviorism __________.

A) embraces dualism
B) rejects dualism
C) provisionally accepts dualism
D) is another way to talk about dualism

Question 42

Ryle discussed __________, which generally means to mistake one type of thing for another.

A) concept mistake
B) metaphysical mistake
C) epistemological mistake
D) category mistake

Question 43

According to Ryle, a(n) __________ is a tendency for something to happen given certain conditions.

A) attitude
B) disposition
C) behavior
D) determination

Question 44

__________ argued that because the two languages that we could use to describe mental-neurological events were so different, the thing(s) that they referred to must be different as well.

A) Gilbert Ryle
B) Paul Churchland
C) Jerome Shaffer
D) J. J. C. Smart

Question 45

__________ argues that, sensations are nothing over and above brain processes.

A) Gilbert Ryle
B) Paul Churchland
C) Jerome Shaffer
D) J.J.C. Smart

Question 46

__________ believed that with our increasing knowledge of neurology, our ordinary language about human behavior would be seriously revised.

A) Gilbert Ryle
B) Paul Churchland
C) Jerome Shaffer
D) J.J.C. Smart

Question 47

The __________ are materialists but they are not reductionists; they believe that consciousness is a result of the complicated connections that go on in the brain.

A) connectionist
B) functionalist
C) behaviorist
D) eliminative materialist

Question 48

__________ had a view similar to those of Merleau-Ponty and Husserl, he argued for what he called "cognitive experience."

A) John Watson
B) Gilbert Ryle
C) Galen Strawson
D) Bertrand Russell

Question 49

David Chalmers has made use of the notion of __________ to challenge physicalist views of the mind.

A) dualism
B) infinity
C) matter
D) zombies

Question 50

The dual aspect theory seems similar to Merleau-Ponty's notion of a unified body. What are the differences and similarities in these views? Could these theories be combined in an interesting way? Why or why not? Where does the identity theory fit in? How does it compare with the other two accounts?

Question 51

The argument for functionalism is ultimately concerned with the relations between elements of the brain; mental acts occur as a "function" of elements. Logical behaviorism claims that the mind is only the "pattern" of our behavior. What is different between these two accounts? What is similar about these accounts? In what ways are they using the same ideas to provide different accounts of the mind?

Question 52

Can an adequate behaviorist account of a nonhuman animal's consciousness be given? A sparrow's? A dog's? A chimpanzee's? If behaviorism fits some of these cases and not others, how would you separate them?

Question 53

Write your account of a debate between Ryle and Nagel on the question of the nature of consciousness. Who do you side with, and why?

Question 54

Explain Husserl's concept of intentionality. Does this solve the mind-body problem? If so, how? If not, why not?

Question 55

Why do you suppose it was much easier for Descartes to prove the existence of his own mind than anyone else's? Why was Descartes's proof of his own mental existence foundational? How did he eventually argue for the existence of other minds?

Question 56

Differentiate between two senses in which an occurrence was said to be explained, according to Ryle. For instance: Why did the glass break? One explanation is "because a stone hit it," and another is "because it is brittle." Which explanation is causal, and which is expressing an underlying law like proposition? How did Ryle apply this concept of "different senses of an explanation" to the concept of "disposition" in his analysis of the mind?

Question 57

Differentiate between the two senses of the meaning of "identity," that is, empirical identity could be discovered through observation, experimentation, and experience, whereas logical identity is about synonymous terminology.

Question 58

Why do eliminative materialists believe that a smooth intertheoretic reduction between folk psychology and neurobiology is not possible? They don't think that mental states, such as thoughts, desires, fears, beliefs, and so forth, match up in a one-to-one correspondence to brain states (i.e., particular patterns of neuronal firings). Paul Churchland, for one, was convinced that folk-psychological terms were not simply incomplete representations of our inner states but rather that they were misrepresentations, in the way phlogiston was. Use the phlogiston example to argue the eliminative materialist's case that the poverty of our current conceptual framework will be overhauled with the advancement of neuroscience.

Question 59

In which sense do identity theorists such as J. J. C. Smart and their critics such as Jerome Shaffer mean that "thought" and "brain process" are or are not, identical? Hint: Is it correct to say that the terms water and H₂O are synonyms, or do water and H₂O have different properties (e.g., water is wet, but an H₂O molecule is not wet) and do not, therefore, have the same meaning?

Question 60

Merleau-Ponty attacked __________ from the side that has so far seemed least controversial, the idea that the human body is just another "bit of matter."

Question 61

__________ is the "immediate" certainty that you feel in the case of your own conscious experience.

Question 62

__________ complained that __________ started with behavior, either human behavior or computer behavior, and claimed that understanding human consciousness was just a matter of finding the right "program" for that behavior.

Question 63

Shaffer argues that no amount of research could possibly show that __________ and __________ have the same properties.

Question 64

The __________ denied dualism by insisting that mental terms referred to a neurological process that scientists someday would be able to specify precisely.

Question 65

__________ proposed to defend materialism without claiming an identity between what we call "mental states" and the workings of the brain.

Question 66

__________, in all forms, becomes nonsense in one's own case when one is trying to understand and talk about one's own mental states.

Question 67

__________ believed that with our increasing knowledge of neurology, our ordinary language would be seriously revised.

Question 68

In reference to the "contents" of consciousness philosopher William James developed this popular phrase, __________.

Question 69

For __________, mental events and physical events were different aspects of the same "something," in his case, the same substance.