Review Sheet for Final
To prepare for the exam, be sure you know what each of the following mean, and what bearing they have on the issues we discussed in class.
- valid argument, sound argument
- sufficient condition, necessary condition
- a "criterion" or practical test for X vs. a definition or analysis of what we mean by X vs. a stipulative definition of X
- What is a thought-experiment? Why are science fiction examples relevant to philosophy?
- begging the question
- equivocation
- dilemma
- reductio
- substance vs. property vs. process/activity
- "not every noun names a substance"
- process-based definitions of life vs. ingredient-based definitions
- Feldman's "Jonah objection" to vitalism
- mind vs. soul
- mental state
- dualism vs. materialism/physicalism
- Leibniz's Law
- "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."
- examples of using Leibniz's Law to argue for dualism; examples using it to argue against dualism
- saying the statue is not identical to the clay vs. saying that the statue is separate from, and can exist without, the clay
- examples where the A facts are claimed to settle the B facts; supervenience
- Turing Test: what is it? what is passing it supposed to show?
- behaviorism
- dispositions
- counterfactual claims
- manifestation of a disposition
- categorical basis of a disposition
- inverted color spectrums
- privileged access
- epiphenomenalism
- interactionism
- "the physical world is causally closed"
- causal "overdetermination"; why is it unattractive to say this happens everytime the mental causes a physical effect?
- using probability to describe your evidence/information vs. using probability to describe how show 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 determinism, soft determinism
- libertarianism
- going through the psychological process of "making" a choice vs. having several choices really open to you
- compatibilist's analysis of "could have done otherwise"
- "If we have no control over certain things (such as the past), then we have no control over their necessary consequences either."
- 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
- What is a functional state? For instance, what makes something the ZERO state of a Coke machine?
- Causal Theory of Mind, functionalism
- "the mind is the brain" vs. "the mind is the brain's software"
- multiple realizability
- representational states, intentionality
- derivative vs. intrinsic (or "original") intentionality
- Searle's Chinese Room Argument
- the "Systems Reply" to Searle
- numerical identity vs. qualitative identity
- intrinsic properties vs. extrinsic or relational properties
- essential properties vs. accidental properties
- the difference between intrinsic properties and essential properties
- relation between Leibniz's Law and qualitative change
- Ship of Theseus
- conventionalism about personal identity
- brain transplant vs. "information transplant"
- teletransportation
- time-slice, person-stage (comparison of stages in a person's life to innings in a baseball game)
- "genuine memory presupposes identity", the circularity objection to Proposal #3
- quasi-memory
- psychological continuity
- fission, fusion
- what does it mean for a relation to be transitive?
- the "psychological continuity + no competitors" view of personal identity
- "Identity should be an intrinsic matter, that is, intrinsic facts should settle how many people there are. It shouldn't depend on extrinsic facts!"
- the "bodily continuity" view of personal identity
- the "soul theory" of personal identity
- the differences between the materialism/dualism debate and the debate about personal identity
- surviving in the strict sense vs. surviving in Parfit's sense (having someone around who is psychologically continuous with you)
- "Personal identity isn't what we care about!"