Deck 15: Materialist Monism

Question 1

The story of Phineas Gage showed that brain damage can affect the personality.

Answer 1

True

Question 2

The form of materialism embraced by Thomas Hobbes was the view that only money or material things have value.

Answer 2

False

Question 3

Another name for reductive materialism is identity theory.

Answer 3

True

Question 4

Reductive materialism denies that mental substances exist, but admits the existence of mental events.

Question 5

Richard Rorty claims that belief in demons is analogous to our belief that we have pains.

Question 6

Leibniz's law states that two things are numerically identical if and only if they have all the same properties in common.

Question 7

The dualist points out that the mind and the body must be different substances since they have different properties.

Question 8

In the passage quoted from Tom Nagel, he argued that a scientific, objective standpoint can explain everything in the world and life.

Question 9

In the debate over the mind and body, Leibniz's law is used to argue that

A) the mind and the body are separate but do not interact.
B) interactionism violates the conservation of energy.
C) mental events do not exist.
D) the mind and body are not identical.

Question 10

The materialist responds to the argument that the mind and body have different properties by saying

A) this fact is true, but insufficient to establish dualism.
B) this fact is true, but it actually is an argument in favor of materialism.
C) two things that appear to be different are not always different.
D) at present, there is no explanation for this, but the other arguments for materialism make this one problem insignificant.

Question 11

The eliminative materialist differs with the reductive materialist by claiming that

A) the mind exists, but has no causal effects.
B) whenever we talk about mental events, we are talking about brain events.
C) mental events are separate from brain events but caused by them.
D) there are no mental events.

Question 12

The eliminative materialist refers to dualism as

A) anti-phenomenological psychology.
B) folk psychology.
C) epiphenomenalism
D) all of the above

Question 13

In arguing against dualism, the eliminative materialists point out that psychological experiments seem to show that

A) most people do not believe in dualism.
B) we can be mistaken about our introspective reports.
C) no one can know when another person is in pain.
D) when we see a green apple, the memory image in our brain is green.

Question 14

Which of the following would be a violation of Leibniz's law?

A) Superman is six feet tall and Clark Kent five feet tall.
B) The mind and the body are identical, but the body is divisible and the mind is not.
C) C-fibers firing are identical to pain, but they have different properties.
D) all of the above

Question 15

What do reductive materialists and eliminative materialists agree upon? How do they differ?

Question 16

What is folk psychology? What is the eliminative materialists evaluation of it? Why?

Question 17

How is Leibniz's law used by the dualist? How does the materialist respond to these sorts of arguments?

Question 18

What happened to Phineas Gage that is relevant to the mind-body issue? Which position could use this account as ammunition? How so?

Question 19

What is Tom Nagel's complaint against materialism? Do you agree or disagree with him? Why?

Question 20

According to the materialist, what goes on when we imagine a green apple?