Comprehension Questions

What is the major difference between semantic physicalism and the identity-theory?

What are mental states or properties according to semantic physicalism, analytic behaviorism, the identity-theory and functionalism?

Sketch two arguments for and against functionalism and the identity-theory, respectively.

What is Frank Jackson‘s knowledge argument?

Sketch three ways philosophers have responded to the knowledge argument.

What is Levine’s explanatory gap argument?

Why according to Levine, is it futile to hope that future neuroscience will close the explanatory gap.

What is the so-called 'sandwich model of cognition' and what was one important historical motivation for adopting it in the first place?

Explain Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment. What is the position he was originally attacking? What was his own stance on the question whether humans are machines?

State and briefly explain Fodor’s Master Argument for the Computer Model of the Mind. What is the major problem with this argument?