Phil 100D: Philosophy of Mind

Important Dates

Paper 1 Assigned: February 2nd

Paper 1 Due: February 9th

Paper 1 Returned; Paper 2 Due: February 16th

Paper 2 Due: February 23rd

Paper 2 Returned : March 5th

Paper 3 (Final) Assigned: March 16th

Paper 3 (Final) Due: March 21st

Final Grades Posted: March 27th

Sections

Tuesday 8:00-8:50am, Building 387, Room 104

Tuesday 11-11:50am, Theater/Dance West (TD-W), Room 2600

 

Office Hours

Tuesday 1:00-3:oopm, South Hall 5706 and by appointment.

Week 1

Recommended Goals for the Week:

  • Understand the Principle of the Indiscernability of Identicals and how it differs from the Identity of Indiscernables.
  • Understand what intentionality and phenomenality are.
  • Try to remember the commonsense properties of mental states/desiderata for theories of the mental.
  • Understand what substance dualism is and how it differs from property dualism.

 

Links:

Week 2

Recommended Goals for the Week:

  • Understand the arguments for substance dualism, namely the arguments from (1) language, (2), reasoning, (3) consciousness, (4) doubt, and (5) conceivability.
  • Understand the arguments against substance dualism, namely (1) Princess Elizabeth's argument, (2) the argument from the explanatory completeness of physiology, and (3) the explanatory weakness of substance dualism.
  • Understand what epiphenomenalism is and how it differs from interactionism.
  • Understand the arguments against epiphenomenalism, namely (1) Princess Elizabeth's problem, (2) the explanatory completeness of physiology, and (3) the explanatory weakness of property dualism.

 

Links:

Week 3

Recommended Goals for the Week:

  • Understand what the threat of solipsism amounts to and why it poses a problem for the substance dualist.
  • Understand what philosophical behaviorism is and how it differs from substance dualism.
  • Understand what it means to say that there is a scope ambiguity in the statement of a behavioral disposition, and why it is important to disambiguate one way or the other depending on the kind of mental state considered.
  • Understand which of the common properties of mental states behaviorism is able to account for and which it cannot, and understand why this is the case.

 

Links:

Week 4

Recommended Goals for the Week:

  • Understand the criteria for evaluating metaphysical theories: internal consistency, internal coherence, inter-theoretic coherence, ontological parsimony, explanatory power, intuitiveness, and aesthetics.
  • Understand why behaviorism (plausibly) cannot account for the causal teleological, and rational relations between mental states (as well as what such relations amount to).
  • Understand why behaviorism cannot account for the phenomenal qualities of some mental states.
  • Understand the objection that Putnam is raising with his Super Spartan and Super Pretender examples.
  • Understand why it is a problem for the behaviorist that behavioral entailments are defeasible by the occurrence of another mental state..
  • Understand the distinction between types and tokens, as well as type identity and token identity.
  • Understand why identity relations are necessary, rather than contingent.
  • Understand what the relation between mental and brain states is for the identity theorist.
  • Understand the argument for the identity theory from ontological parsimony.
  • Understand the argument for the identity theory from deficit studies.

 

Links:

Week 5

Recommended Goals for the Week:

  • Understand the objection from Leibniz's Law to Identity Theory.
  • Understand the multiple realizability objection to Identity Theory.
  • Understand the four empirical considerations for multiple realizability: (1) neurological equipotentiatliy, (2) convergent evolution, (3) artificial psychologies, and (4) context consideration.
  • Understand how functionalism understand mental states.
  • Understand the distinction between syntactic and semantic properties.
  • Understand what a Turing Machine is and how they operate.
  • Understand how Turing Machine Functionalism elaborates on functionalism.

Links:

Week 6

Recommended Goals for the Week:

  • Understand the objections to Turing Machine Functionalism: (1) distinction between dispositional and occurrent mental states, (2) simultaneous mental states, (3) phenomenal qualities, (4) differences in overall psychology, and (5) the structure of mental states.
  • Understand the three desiderata for functionalist theories that come out of Block and Fodor's paper.
  • Understand the China Brain objection to functionalism.
  • Understand the Blockhead objection to functionalism.
  • Finish writing the second paper.

Links:

  • Very good and accessible article by Fodor where he goes through dualism, behaviorism, identity theory, and functionalism, giving a bit of historical background for each view as well as some of the arguments for and against each. Some of the names for the theories differ (e.g. "physicalism" for "identity theory"), but it should be clear from his discussion which positions he's referring to: http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/fodorphil1.pdf
  • Interesting interview with Fodor on the philosophy of mind generally. Not necessarily relevant to any of the material we're currently covering (though he does talk a bit about functionalism around the 3 minute mark), but nevertheless, it's worthwhile if you have an interest in this area of philosophy generally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs82SsczIpE&t=1535s
  • Lecture by Terry Horgan, giving an overview of some of the naturalistic theories of the mind during the 20th century, which include (among others) functionalism and identity theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmNVcLMFIB0&t=32s

Week 7

Recommended Goals for the Week:

  • Understand what eliminative materialism is.
  • Understand what folk and scientific psychology are and what is similar between them.
  • Understand the arguments for eliminative materialism: (1) folk psychology is a stagnant research program, (2) folk psychology has limited explanatory power, and (3) folk psychology lacks intertheoretic coherence.
  • Understand the objections to eliminative materialism: (1) 
  • Understand what fictionalism is, and in what ways it is similar to and how it differs from eliminative materialism.
  • Understand what the Computational Theory of the Mind is.
  • Understand the distinction between basic and complex symbols.
  • Understand the features of  the Language of Thought: (1) systematicity, (2) productivity, and (3) compositionality.


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