SSA 1 for Philosophy and Psychology Year 2 - Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
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Philosophy & psychology
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Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU)
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Philosophy of mind, brain and behaviour
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Samenvatting Philosophy of mind, brain and behaviour - Philosophy of Mind, Brain and Behaviour (SOW-PSB2AS20E) -- Readings & Lectures
P_BFILPSY philosophy full course summary
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Yvette Balata
Group 19
SSA Week 1 (Lecture 1 & 2)
a. What’s wrong with the arguments for substance dualism?
The substance dualism theory suggests that the body and the mind are two different and
separate entities because the first one’s existence can be doubted and the other’s can-
not. The reason for this is that, according to Descartes, a person can doubt themselves
because they are conscious and rational beings in that the mind is a mental substance.
Therefore, any physical object, which characteristic is the very lack of consciousness,
simply is incapable of reason and thought and, for this reason, cannot exist. However,
one issue with substance dualism arises when viewed from today’s perspective. The
technological advancement poses a threat to this stance as we have no reason to believe
that in the future, material objects such as computers, will not be able to elevate their use
and understanding of the language, as well as their ability to reason independently, to the
point in which even a substance with its own dimensional properties in space will be ca-
pable of consciousness. This would debunk the idea that the defining property of an ob-
ject should be the ability to doubt that object’s existence, and more specifically, the idea
that this property is exclusive of immaterial substances, and by extension, of human
beings. Moreover, substance dualism fails to address the interaction between mind and
body. Particularly, it is not able to explain how two substances of two different natures,
that is, the immaterial mind and material body, can interact with each other.
b. Explain why mental holism is a problem for behaviorism
Behaviorism suggests that behavior can only be explained in terms of the relation bet-
ween a stimulus and the response to that stimulus. Every mental state and process is the-
refore reducible to a particular behavior. This concept constitutes the core aspect of be-
haviorism according to which mental states must be discarded in favor of observable be-
havior. Furthermore, the latter must be broken down into smaller parts to be analyzed and
understood.
The philosophical behaviorism, on the other hand, does not eliminate the idea of mental
states, however, these are seen as behavioral dispositions, that is, the tendency to pro-
duce a certain behavior depending on the context. The mind is no longer seen as a cau-
sal entity that produces behavior but rather as a conceptualization of that behavior. Ac-
cording to this theory, however, mental states can only be referred to as single indepen-
dents elements. In contrast, mental holism, argues that there is no such thing as isolated
mental states. Instead, it proposes that there is a whole network of states that influence
and affect behavior. The idea is that a behavior cannot be ascribed to one single mental
state but a combination of different ones. This suggests that no behavior can be conside-
red truly universal as there is no single identifiable cause. Mental states have no limits in
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