01:730:329 Study Guide - Midterm Guide: Physicalism, Behaviorism, Verificationism
Document Summary
Descartes believed that non-human animals" behaviors can be explained completely by their physical mechanisms. But human behavior cannot be explained that way. Descartes believed that a machine could not imitate human behavior, because it required an immaterial mind, which is something beyond the physical. If this is true, then there cannot be a world that is like ours but lacks the human mind. Physicalism - the idea that consciousness involves only physical processes. But it"s hard to account for consciousness this way. Imagine a universe where everything is purely physical; consciousness would have to partly depend on something that is non-physical properties that would not exist in a pure physical world like the zombie world. Physicalists believe that the universe was created in such a way that everything relies on the physical, so if something changes in the physical then it changes the mental state; therefore a zombie world cannot exist.
