Philosophy of Mind

1
Philosophy of Mind

• The Mind/Body Problem

2
Overview

• The Mind/Body Problem
• Some Possible Solutions
• Dualist Solutions
• Monist Solutions

3
The Mind/Body Problem

• How are the mind and body related?
• How can mental events cause physical events?
• How can physical events cause mental events?
• Is the mind a computer program? Could a machine
  think?

4
Solutions to the Mind Body Problem

• Dualism
• Substance Dualism The world contains two
  fundamentally different kinds of stuff mental
  stuff (minds) and physical stuff.
• Property Dualism The world contains two
  fundamentally different kinds of properties
  mental properties and physical properties
• Monism
• Idealism The world consists entirely of minds
  and mental states.
• Physicalism/Materialism The world consists
  entirely of the physical there are no
  nonmaterial minds.
• Neutral Monism There is only one kind of stuff
  in the world, and it is not best described as
  physical or as mental.

5
Substance Dualism

• There are two fundamental kinds of stuff mental
  stuff (minds) and physical stuff (such as
  bodies).
• The Problem of Interaction
• Some Solutions
• Interactionism
• Epiphenomenalism
• Occasionalism

6
Physicalism

• The world is the physical world there are only
  physical objects and their properties.
• Physicalist Explanations
• Behaviorism
• Reductive Physicalism
• Functionalism
• Eliminative Materialism