This page is meant to summarize the notions, theories, and arguments discussed in the first half of the class (up until we began discussing personal identity). To prepare for the final exam, be sure you know what each of the following mean, and what bearing they have on the issues we discussed in class.
General
These are some general philosophy concepts that were introduced in these introductory readings:
and some of which were also used later in the class or in readings. If you’re unclear on any of them, go through those introductory readings again.
- valid argument, sound argument
- sufficient condition, necessary condition
- a “criterion” or practical test for X (the epistemology of X) vs a definition or analysis of what we mean by X (the metaphysics of X) vs a stipulative definition of X
- What is a thought-experiment? Why are science fiction examples relevant to philosophy?
- notion of a “question-begging” argument (as philosophers use this expression)
- equivocating
- dilemma
- reductio
- contrast between what’s part of the definition of some notion (for example, “substance”), and substantive, possibly contentious claims about that notion
See also the discussion of conditionals at the start of the first webpage on Leibniz’s Law, for these notions (also discussed in the introductory readings above):
- antecedent and consequent of a conditional
- difference between converse and contrapositive of a conditional
- biconditional, “if and only if” (“iff”)
Free Will
- relations between questions of free will and questions of blame, credit, and moral responsibility
- going through the psychological process of “making” a choice vs having several choices really open to you
- your actions/choices/decisions vs things that merely happen to you
- difference between your arm’s moving and you raising your arm on purpose/intentionally
- using probability to describe your evidence/information vs using probability to describe how some parts of the world (such as the past) objectively settle how the rest of the world has to be
- determinism vs indeterminism; what is it for the laws of nature to be “deterministic”?
- compatibilism vs incompatibilism
- hard determinist/pessimistic views about free will, soft determinism
- libertarianism
- “Claims about what people can do can be understood in different ways”
- “Freedom is opposed to constraint, not to causal necessity!”
- “The fact that you won’t do E does not imply that you can’t do E!”
- compatibilist’s analysis of “could have done otherwise”
- counterfactual claims
- reasons-responsive mechanisms
- “If we have no control over certain things (such as the past), then we have no control over their necessary consequences either.” (Consequence/Before-You-Were Born Argument)
- If all our actions are uncaused, does that show that we’re in control of them? Does it show we’re morally responsible for them?
- libertarian views which say that our actions are uncaused vs agent-causation theories
Mind/Body
- ethics, epistemology, metaphysics/ontology
- abstract vs concrete
- events/states/processes, properties/relations, facts and propositions, individuals/substances
- substances vs “derivative or dependent” objects (like smiles, wits, waves, hikes, dances)
- reducing some notion to another notion vs taking it as real but primitive/irreducible vs having an “error-theory” about the notion
- debate between (substance) dualists about the mind/body relation and materialist/physicalists, who are one kind of substance monists
- substance dualism vs property dualism
- mind vs soul, which can a materialist believe in?
- being a materialist but denying that “your mind” is any substance
- what is a “mental state”? what is the difference or relation between a mental state and a mind?
- Leibniz’s Law/the indiscernibility of identicals
- Does Leibniz’s Law say that if A and B have all the same properties, they are numerically identical?
- intrinsic vs extrinsic/relational properties
- qualitative identity (being copies of each other) vs numerical identity (being one and the same thing)
- “I know that reporter is alive right now. I don’t know whether Superman is still alive. Hence that reporter is not Superman.”
- “I have no doubts about my own existence. I do have doubts about whether my body really exists. Hence I am not my body.”
- the “divisibility” argument for dualism
- the “continuity of nature” argument for materialism
- epiphenomenalism
- interactionism
- the “remote control” argument against dualism
- the complaint that dualism has no good story about how causal influences “jump the gap” from the soul into the physical world (Princess Elisabeth)
- Kim’s “Pairing Problem”
- “physical events are causally closed”
- difference between causal determinism and notion of “overcausing” (sometimes called “causal overdetermination”)
- why is it unattractive to say there’s “overcausing” everytime something mental causes a physical effect?
- Ockham’s Razor
- ways in which our access to our own mental states is claimed to be “special” or “privileged”
- representational states, intentionality
- propositional/intentional/representational attitudes
- phenomenal/qualitative feels, sensations
Other Minds
- proving something with certainty vs having reasonable grounds for believing it
- something’s being necessary for having mentality vs its sufficing for/guaranteeing the presence of mentality vs its making it reasonable to attribute mentality
- evidence for mentality from physical makeup/structure vs from non-verbal behavior vs from use of language vs from ability to learn/solve problems
- Turing Test: how does it work? what is passing it supposed to show?
- passing the Turing Test reliably vs there being a trick question that will expose the candidate
- the difference between a “chatbot” that just uses a lookup table, and a program following algorithms that are more complex and resemble rules that our brains use
- behaviorist vs more moderate “pro-machine” views on the Turing Test
- why Turing thinks it’s wrong to assume that, so long as there are no errors in their input, “machines can’t make mistakes”
- arguments about whether machines are less likely to have free will than humans