Exam 5: René Descartes Mind and Body

Velleman says, "I want to suggest that the existence of an enduring self, if it is indeed an illusion, is one of two illusions that go hand-in-hand. A consequence of shedding the one illusion would be to shed the other as well. The other illusion of which I speak has to do with the nature of ..."

According to Velmans, "we can say that when consciousness is present, ____________________ (consciousness of something) is present."

Velmans says, "If global access is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for consciousness, then global access is materially implicative to consciousness."

Explain what Velmans means when he says, "Once a given reference for the term consciousness is fixed in its phenomenology, the investigation of its nature can begin, and this may in time transmute the meaning (or sense) of the term."

James says, "The physical and the mental operations form curiously incompatible groups. As a room, the experience has occupied that spot and had that environment for thirty years. As your field of consciousness it may never have existed until now."

Velleman says. "Just as a single point in space can contain only part of an extended object, a spatial part, so a single point in time can contain only part of a persisting object, a temporal part. The object fills time by having one temporal part after another, just as it fills space by having one spatial part next to another. An object that persists through time in this way is said to transport."

Shapiro argues that in Elisabeth's correspondence with Descartes, Elisabeth's challenges move Descartes to think more carefully about ...

According to Nagel, "If the subjective character of experience is fully comprehensible only from rigid designators, then any shift to greater objectivity-that is, less attachment to a specific viewpoint-does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us farther away from it."

Locke asserts that "_______ is that conscious thinking thing-whatever substance made up of, (whether spiritual or material, simple or compounded, it matters not)-which is sensible or conscious of pleasure and pain, capable of happiness or misery, and so is concerned for itself, as far as that consciousness extends."

According to Hume, "The mind is a kind of ________, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations."

Nagel says, "Reflection on what it is like to be a bat seems to lead us, therefore, to the conclusion that there are facts that do not consist in the truth of propositions _______________________________. We can be compelled to recognize the existence of such facts without being able to state or comprehend them."

Elisabeth argues that a substance dualist must hold that no matter what condition the body finds itself in-if, for example, a person has fainted-the mind should still be able to exercise its power of thought.

Velleman suggests that an effect produced by "experiential anticipation, in which I prefigure a future experience from the perspective that I expect to occupy in it. A single self appears to have its full existence both now and later, because I who anticipate the experience and the 'I' of the anticipated experience become ..."

What is Conway's point when she says "spirit and body differ not essentially, but gradually, I shall deduce an argument from the intimate band or union, which intercedes between bodies and spirits"?

What is the Vitalism theory, and how does Churchland use its history to her advantage?

According to Shapiro, Elisabeth seems to be arguing the following: "For maintaining that thought is an autonomous activity does not require us to claim that it is an independent reflection; we need not think of thought as an entity subsisting in and by itself."

According to Cavendish, "sensitive perception" pertains to the body.

Locke says, "a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it." This is Locke's definition of ...

Explain what James means when he says, "Experience is only a collective name for all these sensible natures, and save for time and space (and, if you like, for 'being') there appears no universal element of which all things are made."

James says about consciousness, "Let me then immediately explain that I mean only to deny that the word stands for an entity, but to insist most emphatically that it does stand for a function."