what do we mean by 'mind'

Question 1

substance

Answer 1

• an entity; a thing; stuff
• something that can exist independently of other things

Question 2

property

Answer 2

• substances possess properties
• properties cannot without substances
• a substance will continue to exist through changes in properties

Question 3

intentionality

Answer 3

• intentional states are about something else
• eg my belief that ‘Paris is the capital of France’ is about the city of Paris

Question 4

qualia

Answer 4

• the ‘what is like’ of the mental
• eg what it is like to see red or smell coffee

Question 5

two descriptions of the world

Answer 5

• mental: subjective, private, intentionality (about other things), qualia (something that it is like to have)
• physical: objective, public, measurable, studied by science

Question 6

two main views

Answer 6

• dualism
• physicalism

Question 7

dualism

Answer 7

• the mental and physical are distinct
• this is the reason why we have very different descriptions of the two
• the difficulty is to explain the relationship between the two

Question 8

physicalism

Answer 8

• only the physical exists
• the mental can be explained entirely in terms of physical things
• the difficulty is to figure out how that can be done

Question 9

substance dualism (dualism)

Answer 9

there are physical substances and mental substances

Question 10

property dualism
(dualism)

Answer 10

there are only physical substances but they can have physical and mental properties

Question 11

reduction

Answer 11

mental descriptions could (at least in theory) be replaced with physical descriptions

Question 12

eliminativism

Answer 12

our ‘folk-psychology’ is in error, we must look to science to explain things

Question 13

functionalism

Answer 13

the mental is the processes of the brain