Exam 5: René Descartes Mind and Body

Explain what James means when he 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."

Descartes's position in which he asserts that we have a mind and a body is called "reflective equilibrium."

Locke says, "since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things, in this alone consists _________________, i.e. the sameness of a rational being."

James says, "There is, I mean, no aboriginal stuff or quality of being, contrasted with that of which material objects are made, out of which our thoughts of them are made; but there is a function in experience which thoughts perform, and for the performance of which this quality of being is invoked. That function is knowing."

According to Hume, "It must be some one impression, that gives rise to every real ..."

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

Velmans says, "To avoid confusion, and to enable such research, it is important to reserve the term mind for psychological states and processes that may or may not be ..."

Velmans says, "Following the success of the brain sciences and related sciences, 20th century theories of mind in the West became increasingly materialistic, assuming physical 'stuff' to be basic, and consciousness in some way supervenient or dependent on the existence of physical forms."

According to Conway, material extension is a motion or action which a creature has, whether immediately given from God, or immediately received from its fellow creature.

Explain what Velleman means when he says 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 superimposed."

Locke says, "This may show us wherein personal identity consists: not in the identity of ____________, but, as I have said, in the identity of _____________."

How does Descartes define "body"?

Locke asserts that "we see the substance 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."

There are those who complain about the drawbacks of believing in an enduring self, for example, the loneliness of proprietorship in a single life, and the emotions attendant upon time's passage. They also complain of the sense that they are "moving faster and faster" through the tunnel, toward the "darkness" at its end. However, Velleman says that "the remedy for these anxieties and regrets is not to get out of the tunnel and live 'in the open air'; the remedy is to stop moving."

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

There are those who complain about the drawbacks of believing in an enduring self, for example, the loneliness of proprietorship in a single life, and the emotions attendant upon time's passage. They also complain of the sense that they are "moving faster and faster" through the tunnel, toward the "darkness" at its end. However, Velleman says that "the remedy for these anxieties and regrets is not to get out of the tunnel and live 'in the open air'; the remedy is to ..."

Nagel claims that "Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless."

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

Explain in detail Locke's definition of "person."

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