Exam 5: René Descartes Mind and Body

Descartes says, "Nature likewise teaches me by these sensations of pain, hunger, thirst, etc., that I am not only lodged in my body as a pilot in a vessel, but that I am besides so intimately conjoined, and as it were intermixed with it, that my mind and body compose a certain ..."

According to Cavendish, "rational perception" pertains to the ...

Explain Elisabeth's implication that there are certain limits to or conditions on the soul's autonomy. Does Descartes agree with Elisabeth?

According to Conway, "In every visible creature there is _________ and _________, or a more active and more passive principle."

What does "epiphenomenalism" mean, and how does it figure in Shapiro's arguments?

Those who claim that consciousness is a special kind of property that is itself non-physical, but which emerges from physical systems such as the brain once they attain a certain level of complexity, are called ...

Nagel says, "Let me first try to state the issue somewhat more fully than by referring to the relation between the structure and the formalism, or between the pour-soi [for-itself] and the en-soi [in-itself]."

Explain Locke's meaning when he says, "This may show us wherein personal identity consists: not in the identity of substance, but, as I have said, in the identity of consciousness."

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 ...

According to Cavendish, "rational perception" pertains to the mind.

Hume says, "I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement." Do you agree with Hume? Explain your answer.

Velmans says, "As with any term that refers to something that one can observe or experience it is useful, if possible, to begin with an operational definition, i.e., to 'point to' or 'pick out' the phenomena to which the term refers and, by implication, what is excluded."

Shapiro suggests that "we can read Elisabeth as here working towards an intermediary position, one between the substance dualism she originally identified with Descartes's own and the materialism which she then seemed to take to be the only alternative."

Locke asserts that "Self 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."

Locke asserts that "we see the ___________ whereof personal self consisted at one time may be varied at another, without the change of personal identity; there being no question about the same person, though the limbs which but now were a part of it, be cut off."

According to Cavendish, "perception, observation, and intelligence do not make reason-reason being the _________, and they the _________."

Hume says, "I may venture to affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but the thoughts of an infinite and unknowable God, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement."

According to Velleman, "Under the alternative conception, an object's extension in time is different from its extension in space. Whereas only part of an object can be present at a single point in space, the object can be wholly present at a single point in time. An object that persists through time in this way is said to materialize."

What does Nagel mean when he 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 expressible in a human language. We can be compelled to recognize the existence of such facts without being able to state or comprehend them"?

Velmans says, "To achieve a genuine reduction, conscious experiences would have to be shown to be ontologically identical to their neural causes and/or correlates."