Mind-brain, consciousness and free will. Flashcards Preview

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Flashcards in Mind-brain, consciousness and free will. Deck (92)
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1
Q

Why is there a measurement difficulty in consciousness experiments?

A

Normally we would measure- X vs. No X

But we cant have this, because everyone has a conscious.

2
Q

What is introspection?

A

The examination of one’s conscious thoughts and feelings.

3
Q

It is hard for people to describe their _______ thoughts and feelings and put them into _______.

A

Conscious, words.

4
Q

What do we mean by inverted spectrum?

A

Do we think/see the same as others.

5
Q

A problem for measuring conscious thoughts and feelings is that we way not have the ______ in our language to say our feeling.

A

Words.

6
Q

What is an issue with introspection?

A

Can we trust what others say to be true?

7
Q

What did Nisbett and Wilson 1977 conclude from their experiment?

A

They is little or no direct introspective access to higher order cognitive processes.

8
Q

In Nisbett and Wilson, people were given two of the same dressing gowns and asked to pick one, what one did they pick?

A

They picked the one on the right.

9
Q

When asked why they picked the dressing gown on the right, what did participant’s do?

A

They consciously made up a reason, eg. it felt softer, as we think that we “must” have had a reason for choosing the one on the right.

10
Q

We tend to chose things on the ____ and at the _______.

A

Right, Top.

11
Q

Nisbett and Schater (1966) concluded what from their pill/electric shock experiment?

A

It showed that we can unconsciously act and think. (People given pill could receive more shocks because they thought it was the pill causing problems, yet none of them mentioned pill as cause.)

12
Q

What does the Cognitive Unconscious help us do?

A

It helps us to function, either on it’s own or with the conscious mind.

13
Q

Give an example of the cognitive Unconscious working collaboratively with the conscious mind.

A

Unconscious emotional experience feeding into conscious decision making.

14
Q

What is incubation?

A

When a thought/solution suddenly comes to you after a period of time.

15
Q

Incubation is an example of the Cognitive Unconscious working in _______.

A

Isolation.

16
Q

Explain Damasio’s Somatic Marker.

A

People learn to do things unconsciously; if something doesn’t feel right then we won’t do it.

17
Q

Even if people have amnesia, what can still remain?

A

Implicit memory and language functions.

18
Q

If someone has blindsight, explain this.

A
  • The eyes can still see however there is a problem in the brain with receiving the visual information = can’t see.
  • However they can guess where a moving dot is and post a letter through a gap etc.
19
Q

What does blind sight (and functioning with amnesia) display?

A

It shows that there’s a distinction between what the conscious knows and what the unconscious can do.

20
Q

One component of consciousness is that we are aware of our own _______.

A

Existence.

21
Q

What test is used to test self-consciousness?

A

Rouge Test.

22
Q

Elephants, monkeys and humans pass the _____ test.

A

Rouge test.

23
Q

What is the rouge test?

A

Put a bit of red on subjects face and put them in front of a mirror, if they are self-conscious they will wipe it off their own head instead of their reflection in the mirror.

24
Q

Block came up with two types of consciousness, name these.

A

Access Consciousness

Phenomenal Consciousness.

25
Q

Thoughts, beliefs and desires are all part of _______ consciousness.

A

Access.

26
Q

What consciousness is involved with “qualia” and the fact that we experience things?

A

Phenomenal Consciousness .

27
Q

Having Access Consciousness without Phenomenal Consciousness would result in what?

A

Blindsight.

28
Q

Give an example of Phenomenal Consciousness without Access?

A

When you hear a noise before you notice a drill in the background.

29
Q

What problem did Chalmers come up with?

A

The hard and easy problem of consciousness.

30
Q

Explain what the hard and easy problem of consciousness is.

A
Easy= we know what gives us consciousness (eg.brain etc.)
Hard= But we don't know how?
31
Q

What phrase did Levine use to say that we may never quite understand the concept of consciousness?

A

The “explanatory gap”.

32
Q

Name the 2 important people to do with Dualism (Cartesian).

A
  • Plato

- Descartes

33
Q

Who believed this?-
“that souls travel the universe and know of the perfect, eternal realm so true knowledge can be derived from contemplation of the soul.”

A

Plato.

34
Q

Who believed this? (he came up with the concept of dualism)-

“the soul contains God-given innate knowledge which could be realised”.

A

Descartes.

35
Q

Descartes is the most influential figure in the ________ theory.

A

Dualism.

36
Q

What is Dualism?

A

The theory that the mind and body are 2 separate entities. (different stuff).

37
Q

Explain what Descartes thought in terms of the mind and body being separate.

A

Body= physical body
whereas
Mind= our non material soul if you like

38
Q

Interactionism, Epiphenomenalism, Parallelism and Occasionalism are ________ causations.

A

Dualist

39
Q

What is interactionism?

A

When the mental and physical interact.

40
Q

Name this-

Mental states are “by products” of physical states- they don’t do anything.

A

Epiphenomenalism.

41
Q

Explain what parallelism is.

A

The theory that mental only affects mental, and physical only affects physical- god has made it so harmonious that it just seems as though they interact.

42
Q

The belief that God causes everything is known as ________.

A

Occasionalism.

43
Q

Why did Chalmers support dualism?

A

As it easily allows free will.

44
Q

Also in support of dualism was Nagel, explain his theory.

A
  • That conscious experience is widespread, present in many animals (particularly mammals)
  • For an organism to have a conscious experience it must be special, in the sense that its qualia (experience) are unique.
45
Q

We know understand the _______ behind consciousness, what is this proof against?

A

Causality (eg. brain processes), Dualism.

46
Q

What evidence is there against Dualism?

A

Brain Damage; wiping out of bits of the brain causes profound behavioural damage, meaning the mind can’t be separate from the body.

47
Q

A problem for dualism is the ______ of the mind, whereabouts during the process of evolution is it added.

A

Development.

48
Q

Phlogiston and Vital Force are more ______ theories, what are they against?

A

Modern, Dualism.

49
Q

What does Dualism go against?

A

It goes against Occam’s razor.

50
Q

What is Occam’s razor?

A

When we take the simplest answer to a problem.

51
Q

What is materialism?

A

The belief that we are only a physical brain and body; all mental processes derive from the brain.

52
Q

Who believed in materialism and that we were just “machines” built to allow the survival of our genes?

A

Darwin.

53
Q

What view do most scientists have regarding the mind and body problem?

A

They believe in Materialism.

54
Q

Wilder Penfield was a ______, he numbered different parts of the ______. What did he do?

A
  • Neurosurgeon
  • Brain
  • He stimulates the brain at different numbers/areas which generated experiences.
55
Q

Identity theory is a problem with _______.

A

Materialism.

56
Q

What is Identity theory?

A

The brain’s complexity means that the same event cannot be experienced the same by two different people.

57
Q

Explain Chalmer’s hard and soft problem when it comes to materialism.

A

His question was- how can we be just a “brain”/ biological processes.

58
Q

What is another problem for materialism?

A

Free will- this would mean free will doesn’t actually exist.

59
Q

Free will is ____ to humans as we have this feeling that we can freely make ____ that affect us.

A

Important, Choices.

60
Q

Free will is behaviour ________. If free will doesn’t actually exist it is argued should we be ______ people for ______?

A

Deterministic.

Punishing, Crime.

61
Q

What is free will necessary for?

A

For any religious belief, as “judgement” in afterlife etc.based on your actions with your free will.

62
Q

What can allow brains to have “free will”?

A

Quantum Forces (sometimes referred to as “indeterministic”).

63
Q

____________ is the concept that events are not caused, or not caused deterministically by prior events.

A

Indeterminism.

64
Q

Name the Extension of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle from the quantum to macroscopic world.

A

Schrodinger’s cat.

65
Q

Fill in the blanks for Schrodinger’s cat explanation:

  • cat in room with unstable ______
  • There is no way of telling if they went off or not without opening the ______
  • Hence the cat is both ____ and _______ at the same time, since you have no way of proving either way (until you open it).
A

Explosives
Room
Alive
Dead

66
Q

What is the meaning of Schrodinger’s cat?

A

If you aren’t looking at something- it could be anything

But when observed it has to behave one way or the other.

67
Q

Showing that 2 states do not necessarily need to be reconciled prior to a decision, means what?

A

It means that decisions may not be deterministic.

68
Q

The 2 problems with indeterminism-

  • Can we equate indeterministic as _____?
  • Can _______ effects really describe ______ events?
A
  • Random

- Quantum, Macro-events.

69
Q

_______ is not intrinsically indeterministic because we can’t measure all the ________.

A

Chaos, Parameters.

70
Q

What is “chaos”?

A

The idea that a butterfly flying in japan can affect our weather.

71
Q

Name this-

A tactile illusion evoked by tapping two or more separate regions of the skin in rapid succession.

A

Cutaneous Rabbit

72
Q

What series of experiments told participants to make a finger movement while watching a clock face with a revolving light, they then had to say where the light was when the finger movement decision was made?

A

Libet’s Movement Experiments.

73
Q

What did Libet’s Movement Experiments show?

A

That the brain was ready before they were conscious of thinking about saying “ready”.

74
Q

Why was Libet’s Movement Experiment controversial?

A

It showed that the brain already it was ready decided before they were consciously ready- does this mean that we don’t have free will?

75
Q

Who’s experiment was very similar to Libet’s experiment and showed the same results?

A

Soon et al. (2008)

76
Q

An event can be thought of as being _____ or ________.

A

Active or passive.

77
Q

Explain the idea of active and passive, use blinking as an example.

A
  • passive= we don’t think about blinking

- active = but when someone orders us to blink, or we want to blink, then we can perform it consciously.

78
Q

Urges and desires are thought to be _______.

A

Passive.

79
Q

When we perform an action like a blink, this can be passive or active, this action comes from the ______ cause but has different ______ _______.

A

Same, Subjective Experience.

80
Q

Libet and Soon say that the act must appear _____ and freely _____, but in reality, not be the product of _____ agency. (aka. the brain decides)

A

Active, Chosen, Free.

81
Q

What could be a possibility in terms of passive/active events in Libet/Soon experiments?

A

That these decisions were passive, the participants were not making a decision, it was just random.

82
Q

What couldn’t even the participants of Libet/Soon Experiments Claim?

A

They couldn’t even claim their movements were voluntary, consciously controlled movements, they felt it was “spontaneous”.

83
Q

Name this-

Memory without the subjective feeling of remembering (priming).

A

Implicit Memory.

84
Q

What is priming?

A

The facilitation in recognising/recalling a stimulus item caused by prior exposure of that stimulus item (or e related item).

85
Q

When doctor is sais, nurse will also be activated, what is this known as?

A

Semantic priming.

86
Q

In priming experiment, Eich (1984) used the homophones Pain and Pane, what were the results?

A

Due to priming, the participants spelt the less common homophone Pane instead of pain :)

87
Q

Jacoby et al (1989) did a false fame experiment, what does this show?

A

That we can create an unconscious sense of familiarity with previous exposure.

88
Q

Squire and McKee (1992) repeated the false fame experiment, but what did they do differently?

A

They replicated the experiment of amnesic participants.

89
Q

Word fragment completion has _____ performance after 1 week whereas word ______ does not.

A

Similar, Recognition.

90
Q

Deeper LOP (levels of processing) give better _____ memory but similar _____.

A

Explicit, Priming.

91
Q

Crossing modality reduces ____ but not explicit ______.

A

Priming, Memory.

92
Q

Does interference affect Explicit Memory or Priming (Implicit Memory)?

A

Interference only affects explicit memory.