Glossary
Behaviourism: The theory of mind according to which mental states are identical to behaviour or behavioural dispositions.
Cartesian Dualism: See Substance Dualism. Named after Rene Descartes.
Chinese Room: A thought-experiment devised by John Searle in an attempt to refute functionalism.
Dualism: See Substance Dualism.
Eliminative Materialism: The linguistic thesis that we should not use language that implies the existence of mentality.
Epiphenomenalism: The view that though our physical states can affect our mental states, the converse does not hold; our mental states cannot affect our physical states.
Functionalism: The theory of mind according to which mental states are identical to functional states, usually of the brain.
Interactionism: The view that there is two way interaction between our mental and physical states, i.e. that both the mental causes the physical and the physical causes the mental.
Materialism: The monist view that everything is physical.
Mind-Body Problem: The problem for dualists of explaining the causal relation between our mental and physical states.
Monism: See Substance Monism.
Occasionalism: The parallelist view that the harmony between our physical and mental states results from God intervening on a case-by-case basis to ensure that the two match up.
Parallelism: The view that there is no causal interaction between our mental and physical states. Parallelists can explain the harmony between our physicality and mentality via either occasionalism or pre-arranged harmony.
Pre-Arranged Harmony: The parallelist view that the harmony between our physical and mental states results from God’s designing us and the world so that this occurs.
Physicalism: See Materialism.
Qualia: The phenomenological qualities of mental states.
Substance Dualism: The view that there are two fundamentally different types of substance: mental and physical.
Substance Monism: The view that there is only one type of substance, pace substance dualism.
Super-Spartans: Beings (invented by Hilary Putnam) identical to us in terms of the consciousness of pain, but who do not exhibit pain in pain behaviour.
Zombies: Beings identical to us in all physical respects, but lacking consciousness or qualia.
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