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Lecture Notes - Philosophy of Mind, Brain and Behaviour
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Here are my lecture notes of all lectures of the course Philosophy of Mind, Brain and Behaviour. The notes include the pictures used in the slides.
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College 1Substance dualism
Preliminaries
- Mind: umbrella-term for all mental states
- Mental: intentional (state can be about something else/refer outside themselves)
and/or phenomenal (subject qualitative experience)
Two kinds of dualism
- Substance dualism: mind is a non-physical substance (a soul) that is causally
connected to the body
- Property dualism: the mind is produced by the physical brain, but some of its
properties (phenomenal properties) are non-physical
Psychological behaviourism
Methodological problems with dualism
- Dualism implies introspection as the only feasible scientific methodology
- Introspection is neither objective, nor intersubjective
- Unconscious mental states cannot be topics of scientific research
- Response: define psychology as behavioural science
Logical behaviourism
Background: theoretical problems with dualism
Methodological point of view everything is wrong with
dualism, but this is not the fact for philosophical view
- Interaction problem: matter and mind are two
distinct and independent substances that have
causal effects on one another
Concept of mind:
1
, If you believe dualism, you believe mind and body are depicted as puppeteer and puppet.
This is wrong.
We postulate the mind as a hidden locus of control in order to explain the difference
between intelligent (speaking, writing, riding a bike - there must be an operator: the mind
and non-intelligent behaviour (tripping over something, sneezing - the body doing its
thing)
But we can only do that if we already understand the difference between intelligent and
non-intelligent behaviour
- Conceptual analysis of mind, ordering language philosophy, analyse language.
- Mind is not a thing (that is a category mistake: putting certain things in the wrong
category). The mind is more like an atmosphere at a party, it’s everywhere.
- Mental states are behavioural dispositions
Problems with behaviourism:
- Super stoic: someone who can experience extreme pain but is able to not show it
experience and behaviour are separated things
- perfect pretender: someone who can perfectly pretend to experience pain while he
is not experience and behaviour are separated things
- Mental holism
Identity theory
Background
- Ullin Place introduces Boring to philosophers such as J.J.C. Smart
- The mind is as manipulable as the brain
Theory
- Mentalistic languages ‘topic neutral’
- Dualism may have been true; but it isn’t
- Mind = brain (= means is identical with)
- This is a scientific discovery comparable to water = H2O
Two problems
- The explanatory gap: you can’t explain why the mind is the same as the brain
- Stating that mental states are brain states doesn’t explain anything
- How can intentionality and phenomenality be physical?
- The water = H2O example is not convincing
- Multiple realization
- According to the identity theory, organisms with different brains cannot
have the same types of mental state
- This is unlikely (think e.g. of pain)
College 2
Functionalism – answer to previous three problems
The basic idea
- Do not define mental states in terms of what they are (brain-stuff, soul-stuff,
behavioural dispositions). Problem for dualism.
2
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