Intro to Philosophy Exam #3 Study Guide

Philosophy of Mind

Definitions of Dualism, Materialism, Idealism

Explain the difference between Interactionism and Epiphenomenalism, and the difference between Reductive and Eliminative Materialism.

What are the relative advantages and disadvantages of Dualism and Materialism? What are Qualia?

Joad – Summarize and evaluate his arguments for Dualism: Purposiveness, Meaning, and Aesthetic Appreciation.

Robinson – Examples of sensations. The three ways in which Materialists try to explain how sensations are material in nature and their problems. The difference between being caused by something and composed of something.

Taylor – The difficulty of reducing mental phenomena to material phenomena (illustrated by the Pythagoras example). Taylor’s attempt to get around this problem by citing states of matter that are unfamiliar or unobservable.

Free Will and Determinism

Definitions of Hard Determinism, Libertarianism, Soft Determinism, Incompatibilism, and Indeterminism

Blatchford – Incompatibility of Libertarianism and the scientific attempt to explain everything causally. What are the two things that causally determine human actions? How do drives function, and how can we use them to respond to the objection that since we sometimes hesitate or apparently act against our wishes, our actions must not be causally determined? Problem: Incompatible with moral responsibility?

Stace – Motivation for Soft Determinism: Moral responsibility requires free will. Demonstrating the compatibility of determinism and free will. Offering a different definition of free will than that found in Hard Determinism or Libertarianism. How Stace interprets “The ability to act otherwise” and the potential problem with this interpretation. Is this really the ordinary meaning of “free”? Stace’s justification for punishment.

Taylor – Definition of free will. Criticism of Soft Determinism. Potential arguments for Libertarianism: Why Indeterminism does not prove that there is free will; agent causation; the intuition of free will.

Possible Essay Questions

1. Out of the following – Interactionist Dualism, Epiphenomenalist Dualism, Reductive Materialism, and Eliminative Materialism – pick the one theory that you prefer over the others, explain the theory in detail, discuss its advantages and disadvantages, and evaluate the strength of the theory, justifying your evaluation.

2. Of the following – Hard Determinism, Soft Determinism, and Libertarianism – pick the one theory that you prefer over the others, explain the theory in detail, discuss its advantages and disadvantages in relation to the other two theories, and evaluate the strength of the theory, justifying your evaluation.