Lecture 3 Flashcards
materialism
the position that the world is material or physical and that all things that exist are therefore in some way physical
- used to refer to realist theories about the conscious mind (theories that take the mind seriously) and accept that everything in the universe is material or physical
- takes both the mind and science seriously
mind-body supervenience
the general assumption for all materialist theories: any 2 things alike in all physical properties do not differ in mental properties
Jaegwon Kim
develops the notion of supervenience:
- minimal demand to materialism: fully comitted to mind-body supervenience
- there are various approaches to what supervenience is
- identity
- realization
supervenience relation
one set of properties determines another set of properties
- supervenience base - e.g. properties of the puzzle pieces
- supervenience properties - e.g. properties of the image the puzzle creates
Star Trek assumption
the minimal assumption that the materialists, who are realists about the mind, have to accept
- the idea that the physical determined the mental, just like the physical determines shape
materialist view on supervenience
mental properties supervene on physical properties
- any 2 things that are exctly alike in their physical properties must therefore have the same exact mental properties
identity theory
mental states are identical to brain states
- a kind of materialism
- takes both the mind and science seriously
- arguments against it are not very convincing
quantitative identity
if A is B, then B is A
the principle of the identity of indiscernible objects
if 2 things really can’t be discerned from one another, then they must be the same thing
- known as Leibniz’s Law
- if object A is discernible from object B, then there must be a property P that A has and B lacks, or vice versa
necessarily true
if a statment is necessarily true, denying it will result in a contradiction
contingently true
if something is contingently true, one could deny it without denial resulting in a contradiction
a priori
you can establish the truth of a claim by merely thinking about it, without needing to do empirical research
- thought to be necessary truths
a posteriori
you can establish the truth of a claim only by doing research in the world
- believed for a long time to be contingent truths
- Kripke argued that a posteriori truths are not necessasrily contingent
reductive materialism
mental phenomena can ultimately be explained by and reduced to physical processes in the brain or nervous system
- mental states are nothing more than physical states of the brain or neural activity
eliminativism
the view that some mental states don’t exist