Finals

Question 1

What is phenomenal consciousness?

Answer 1

Phenomenal consciousness refers to the subjective, qualitative aspect of mental states—what it feels like to be in those states.

Examples include the feeling of pain, the experience of seeing the color red, and the taste of chocolate.

Question 2

What is intentionality?

Answer 2

Intentionality is the property of mental states that makes them about or directed at something.

Examples include believing that Paris is the capital of France, desiring a slice of pizza, and imagining a unicorn.

Question 3

What is identity theory?

Answer 3

Identity theory is the view that mental states are identical to brain states.

For example, pain is nothing over and above C-fiber firing.

Question 4

What is dualism?

Answer 4

Dualism is the theory that the mind and the body (or brain) are fundamentally different kinds of substances or properties.

Question 5

What is behaviorism?

Answer 5

Behaviorism is the view that mental states are reducible to patterns of behavior or behavioral dispositions.

Question 6

What is functionalism?

Answer 6

Functionalism holds that mental states are defined by their functional roles—what they do within the cognitive system—rather than by their physical makeup.

Question 7

What’s the hard problem of consciousness?

Answer 7

The hard problem of consciousness is explaining why and how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience.

Question 8

What is the distinction between sense and reference?

Answer 8

Reference is what a term points to in the world, while sense is the mode of presentation or way of thinking about that reference.

Question 9

What is a category mistake?

Answer 9

A category mistake occurs when something is presented as belonging to a category it does not belong to.

Examples: (1) Asking to see the university after being shown all its buildings. (2) Thinking the number 3 is blue. (3) Saying that Tuesday is heavier than Wednesday.

Question 10

What is multiple realizability?

Answer 10

Multiple realizability is the idea that a single mental state can be implemented by different physical systems across species or machines.

Question 11

What is the computational theory of mind?

Answer 11

This theory claims that the mind operates like a computer, processing information through algorithmic rules.

Question 12

What is the language of thought (LOT) hypothesis?

Answer 12

LOT posits that thinking occurs in a mental language with syntactic and semantic structure, akin to natural language.

Question 13

What is compositionality?

Answer 13

Compositionality is the principle that the meaning of a complex expression depends on the meanings of its parts and their syntactic arrangement.

Question 14

What is strong AI?

Answer 14

Strong AI is the thesis that a sufficiently programmed computer could genuinely have a mind and mental states.

Question 15

What is belief-desire psychology?

Answer 15

It is a model of explanation that accounts for behavior in terms of the agent’s beliefs and desires.

Question 16

What is misrepresentation?

Answer 16

Misrepresentation occurs when a mental state inaccurately represents the world.

Examples: believing the Earth is flat, mistaking a rope for a snake, thinking it’s Monday when it’s actually Tuesday.

Question 17

What is the disjunction problem to causal theories of mental content?

Answer 17

The disjunction problem is the challenge that if mental content is determined by what causes a representation, then representations that are sometimes caused by the wrong thing must include those wrong causes in their content.

Question 18

What is Smart’s argument for identity theory based on simplicity?

Answer 18

Smart’s argument is that identity theory is the simplest explanation for the correlation between mental states and brain states.

Question 19

What is the justification for Premise 1 in Smart’s argument?

Answer 19

Premise 1 is justified because identity theory avoids positing additional substances or ontological categories, unlike dualism.

Question 20

What is Lewis’s argument for identity theory based on the causal role of mental states?

Answer 20

Lewis’s argument states that mental states cause behavior, and since brain states are the only causes of behavior, mental states must be brain states.

Question 21

What is the justification for Premise 1 in Lewis’s argument?

Answer 21

Premise 1 is supported by our everyday and scientific understanding: beliefs and desires explain and predict behavior.

Question 22

What is Putnam’s analogy between mental states and diseases?

Answer 22

Putnam compares mental states to diseases by indicating that early definitions were based solely on behavioral symptoms, whereas science later identified them with underlying biological causes.

Question 23

How does Putnam’s analogy argue against behaviorism?

Answer 23

The analogy shows that defining something solely by its observable effects is inadequate, similar to how we wouldn’t define polio merely by symptoms.

Question 24

What is Block’s large nation thought experiment against functionalism?

Answer 24

Block imagines a nation where each citizen simulates a neuron, and the whole nation functionally duplicates a brain, yet does not possess consciousness.

Question 25

What is the justification for the premises in Block's argument against functionalism?

Answer 25

Premise 1 is conceivable, while Premise 2 follows from functionalism's core idea. Premise 3 appeals to intuition about the implausibility of a collective feeling pain.

Question 26

What is Aunt Bubbles thought experiment against the Turing Test?

Answer 26

Aunt Bubbles is a giant look-up table that can pass the Turing Test but lacks genuine understanding, illustrating that passing the test is not sufficient for intelligence.

Question 27

What is Fodor's claim about the mind being productive and systematic?

Answer 27

Fodor states that the mind is productive because we can entertain an infinite number of novel thoughts and systematic because understanding one proposition implies understanding structurally related ones.

Question 28

What is the Chinese room thought experiment by Searle?

Answer 28

In the Chinese Room, a person uses a rulebook to respond to Chinese characters without understanding the language, illustrating that syntactic manipulation alone does not equate to semantic understanding.

Question 29

What is Block's view on intentionality and intelligence?

Answer 29

Block believes that a system can have intentionality without intelligence, as seen in objects that represent something without performing intelligent tasks.

Question 30

What does Rescorla argue using the shadow of a car example?

Answer 30

Rescorla argues that mental content, like a shadow, merely reflects the real causes of behavior and does not play a causal role if all causation is explained by syntax.

Question 31

What is the Twin Earth thought experiment?

Answer 31

Twin Earth is identical to Earth but has a different substance called 'water' (XYZ), illustrating that reference depends on environmental context, not just internal psychological states.

Question 32

What is Fodor's disjunction objection to the Crude Causal Theory (CCT)?

Answer 32

CCT claims that a mental state represents what typically causes it, but misrepresentations would imply that 'horse' means 'horse or cow in the dark', blurring correct and incorrect applications.

Question 33

What is Dretske's solution to the problem of misrepresentation?

Answer 33

Dretske proposes that mental content is fixed by evolutionary history, allowing for misrepresentation if a state fails to do what it was biologically designed to do.