Lecture 1

Question 1

conceptual analysis

Answer 1

philosophy informing us about relationships between world views

Question 2

manifest world view

Answer 2

everyday world view (Wilfrid Sellars)
- seeing a glass of water

Question 3

scientific world view

Answer 3

provided by scientific research
- mollecules that make up water particles

Question 4

conceptual clarification

Answer 4

you ask someone what they mean by their concept of something (e.g their concept of attention)

Question 5

the science of validity

Answer 5

considers scientist’s use of concepts such as causality
- are often used without asking questions about them
- but, are these concepts well applied? is this a valid use of the concept? can we draw these inferences?

Question 6

taking the mind seriously

Answer 6

different experiences, such as liking different things and feeling emotions are examples of mental states that together form the conscious mind
- these cannot be denied, therefore we have a conscious mind

Question 7

phenomenal experiences

Answer 7

refer to the subjective, qualitative aspects of consicous mental states, such as perceptions, thoughts, emotions, and sensations
- how something feels and how it is experienced

Question 8

what-it-is-likeness

Answer 8

used to describe phenomenal experiences
- coined by Thomas Nagel

Question 9

qualia

Answer 9

the qualitative aspects of phenomenal experiences

Question 10

cognitive states

Answer 10

can be characterized as having intentionality
- they are about something (aboutness)

Question 11

propositional attitudes (PA)

Answer 11

mental states with intentionality
- discrete entities
- the meaning of a sentence

Question 12

emotions

Answer 12

contains both what-it-is-likeness and aboutness

Question 13

the unconscious mind

Answer 13

can become conscious, given the right circumstances
- memory

Question 14

the mind-body problem

Answer 14

how the conscious mind fits into the physical world
- phenomenal experiences
- cognitive states

Question 15

cognition

Answer 15

refers to mental states that have aboutness

Question 16

consciousness

Answer 16

refers to the phenomenal states of the mind

Question 17

metaphysics

Answer 17

the discipline within philosophy that goes beyond physics
- chooses fantasy over methodological ways to gain knowledge

Question 18

the separability thesis

Answer 18

the mind can function and exist separately from the physical world
- Rene Descartes

Question 19

substance dualism

Answer 19

there are 2 distinct kinds of substances in the universe, mental substances and physical substances
- they exist independently of each other and interact in the human person
- res cogitans (essential property of the thinking substance)
- res extensa (essential property of the physical substance)

Question 20

the interaction problem

Answer 20

how can the physical body and the non-physical mind interact with each other?
- Princess Elizabeth and Patick Swayze

Question 21

causal closure (CC)

Answer 21

there is no energy getting in or out of its system
- every physical event has a physical cause

Question 22

occasionalism

Answer 22

God is the sole cause of any event
- an occasional cause is an event that is an occasion for God to cause another event
- does not provide any clear answers to the interaction problem

Question 23

parallelism

Answer 23

the body and the soul run parallel to each other and this will to move depends on a supreme designer who has made them in a way so that they run parallel to each other
- the supreme designer is God
- does not provide any clear answers to the interaction problem

Question 24

dualism

Answer 24

mental phenomena and physical phenomena are fundamentally distinct and irreducible to each other
- carries an important problem and has no empirical support
- unable to explain the interaction problem
- takes the mind very seriously but does not take science seriously