Mind Midterm

Our midterm will be in class on Tuesday, March 12. There will be three sections to the midterm:

Part 1:  Terms and Concepts

For 5-8 of the terms on this list, you will be required to 1) state a brief, accurate definition for the term, 2) give an example that illustrates it, and 3) name the relevant philosopher.  

Ontology of mind

Epistemology of mind

Material vs immaterial conceptions of mind

Dependency thesis

Substance dualism

Property dualism

Panpsychism

Idealism

Physicalism

LLM

Turing Test

Connectionism

Neurophilosophy

Introspection

Anti-introspectionism

Problem of other minds

Argument by analogy

Solipsism

Part 2:  Identify the Philosopher

I will give several (4-8) quotes from our readings.  You will need to identify the philosopher who wrote them.  

Part 3: Essay questions.  You will be given 3-6 of the following questions and required to give detailed, thorough answers to them that synthesize the lectures, the discussions, and the readings.  

1.  What are Descartes' views that we considered in class about introspection's capacity to inform us about the nature and content of the mind?  What are the biggest problems, in your view, with this position?  

2.  What are the standard criticisms of Cartesian substance dualism that we considered in class that philosophers typically take to be devastating?  How do they undermine Descartes’ argument?  

3.  What is anti-introspectionism, as we addressed it in class, and what is the evidence for it?  

4. What is the inverted qualia argument, as we considered it in class, and what does it allege to show about theories of mind?  

6.  As we considered it in class, what is a functionalist account of mind?  How does it address the problems with physical identity theories of mind?  What are the three types of functional theory and how do they propose to divide the labor of mind?  

7.  As we considered it in class, what is the methodology for investigating the mind in functionalist accounts?  How does it differ from other approaches?  What are its virtues?  What are the major problems with functionalism according to Block?  What impact do they have on functionalism as an explanatory approach to the mind?

8.  What are the philosophically significant differences we considered in class between GOFAI (good old fashioned AI) and ANN (artificial neural networks)?  Which one shows more promise for succeeding at natural language processing, or for having consciousness or being a human level reasoner?  Why?   

9.  Explain the differences in approach between the Language of Thought position and Connectionism with regard to the contents and structure of an adequate theory of mind, as we addressed them in class.    

10.  Summarize and explain Ramsey’s account of the major arguments in favor of eliminative materialism. as we considered them in class.    

11.  Turing believes that being able to pass as a human in conversation is sufficient for consciousness/thinking.  We considered several distinct cognitive capacities under the heading "consciousness."  Which of these capacities might it be reasonable to conclude a machine could have?  Which do you think a machine is not likely to be able to have?   

12.  As we considered it in class, what's is Searle's Chinese Room argument?  What does it allege to show about the position it targets?  What is the best response we considered to the argument?