Your third paper is due by the end of the day (midnight) on Tuesday Nov 23 Sunday Nov 28. Papers should be 1000-2000 words (typically this will be 4-6 pages).
The procedure for submitting your papers for anonymous grading is the same as last time: Compose your paper as a Google Doc (or paste it into a new blank Google Doc). The first line of the file should be your PID (not your name). The second line of the file should be the UNC Honor Pledge: “I certify that no unauthorized assistance has been received or given in the completion of this work.”
When you’re ready to submit:
All the advice from the last assignments applies even more so this time. Try to write as clearly, straightforwadly, and accessibly as you can. It can help to read your papers out loud. If your words sound unnaturaly complicated or formal as spoken discourse, or it’d be hard for an audience to keep track of what you’re saying, that’s a good sign that you could probably find a simpler way to express yourself.
You need to explain any special vocabulary you’re using, even if it was introduced and explained in class. Your readers need to know precisely what you mean by those terms. Write as though your audience has never encountered the vocabulary before.
Also write as though your reader doesn’t know what the question prompts are, or which one you’re addressing. But you definitely should be addressing one of the prompts, and you should make it clear early in the paper which one.
To write a good paper, you’ll need develop a clear plan or outline for how you want your paper to go. (You might only figure this out in the process of writing; that’s okay. But by the end you should know what your paper’s plan is.) You’ll also need to write several drafts. As before, you are welcome to share ideas and drafts with each other before submitting them. Just be sure the final product represents your own developed thoughts and expression, and give others credit for how they substantially helped you achieve that.
Here is more information about the university honor code; see also honor.unc.edu. Papers submitted for this and another class (whether taken the same semester or not) must be substantially different.
As with any philosophical writing, your papers must present some reasons for or against something.
Here are more guidelines about philosophical writing.
Here is the grading rubric I’ll use.
Information about extensions and missed deadlines is on the course’s front webpage.
Read the topics carefully and be sure to answer the specific questions asked. Don’t try to write everything you know or think up about the topic. 1000-2000 words is not much space, so you will have to budget. What are the most important things to say? What can you leave out?
An important feature of our mental states is that they (at least seem to) cause our behavior. If you go to the ice-cream shop, in part that will be because you believe that there is ice cream there. The materialists gave several arguments that dualists couldn’t account for this causation. Some of the philosophers we looked at (Armstrong, pp. 8 and following; Kim Chapter 6, pp. 183 and following) have argued that it’s only the specific “hardware” neural states that realize our mental dispositions or programs that can do this causing. More general “role states” that we share with subjects having different hardware aren’t doing any causal work. In the same way, these philosophers might argue, dispositions like fragility don’t do any causal work when fragile glasses break. Explain and evaluate their arguments for these claims. Will functionalists who identify mental states with “role states” have as much trouble with mental causation as dualists do?
In “A Conversation with Einstein’s Brain,” the Tortoise describes a process by which you could use the Einstein book to carry on a “conversation.” Would this process merely create a simulation of an intelligent, thinking being? Or would it generate an intelligent, thinking bring, in the way that turning the handle on a hand-cranked record player generates music, and (the functionalist claims) a computer running the program of your brain generates the same thoughts and other attitudes you have?
Searle argues that the guy inside his Chinese Room doesn’t need to understand Chinese, even if he “internalizes” all the instructions for how to manipulate Chinese symbols, and does so perfectly. What is your take on that? How does Searle’s story connect to the Einstein book, and to the debate about functionalism?
Functionalism says that mental states can be defined in terms of their causal roles. In this class, we’ve looked at several categories of mental states, including (a) propositional attitudes, (b) perceptual experiences of “primary qualities” like shape, (c) perceptual experiences of “secondary qualities” like colors, and (d) sensations like pain. (Other mental states like emotions might be a hybrid of several of these.) Is functionalism less plausible as an account of some of these states than others? Or is its plausibility (or implausibility) the same for all of them? Defend your answers.
Give an example of (a) a correlation that’s required to hold by conceptual analysis, (b) a correlation that’s required to hold because of something’s essential propoerties, that aren’t part of the definition of the relevant concept, (c) a correlation that’s required to hold because of a scientific law, and (d) a correlation that holds “accidentally.” What would be reasonable criteria to use in deciding which category some previously unconsidered correlation falls under?
Some philosophers think that what Jackson’s Mary learns when she leaves her black-and-white room and sees red for the first time is a new concept. (They’re not saying that she only then learns the concept “red” for the first time; they agree with Jackson that Mary can know that ripe tomatoes are red before she leaves the room. But she either learns a new concept for red, or a new concept for describing her experiences.) If these philosophers are right, how does that bear on the debate about physicalism? Are physicalists committed to saying that Mary would be able to learn every concept before she leaves the room? Why or why not?