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Physiological Explanation of Behavior
(One of Four explanations)
Relates a behavior to the activity of the brain and other organs. It deals with the machinery of the body-for example the chemical reactions that enable hormones to influence brain activity and the routes by which brain activity controls muscle contractions.
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Ontogenetic Explanation of Behavior
(One of Four Explanations)
Describes how a structure of behavior develops, including the influence of genes, nutrition, experiences, and their interactions. For example, the ability to inhibit impulses develops gradually from infancy through the teenage years, reflecting gradual maturation of the frontal parts of the brain.
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Evolutionary Explanation of Behavior
(One of Four Explanations)
Reconstructs the evolutionary history of a structure of behavior. For example, frightened people get "goose bumps." The evolutionary explanation is that the behavior evolved in our remote ancestors and we inherited the mechanism.
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Functional Explanation of Behavior
(One of Four Explanations)
Describes why a structure of behavior evolved as it did. A functional explanation identifies what advantage a behavior might have, or have had in its ancestry. Functional explanation of camouflage is that it makes animals inconspicuous to predators.
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How does an evolutionary explanation differ from a functional explanation?
An evolutionary explanation states what evolved from what. A functional explanation states why something was advantageous and therefore evolutionarily selected.
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Dualism
The belief that mind and body are different kinds of substance that exist independently.
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Monism
The belief that the universe consists of only one kind of substance.
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Materialism
The view that everything that exists is material, or physical. In "eliminative materialism" mental events do not exist at all, and any folk psychology based on minds and mental activity is fundamentally mistaken.
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Mentalism
The view that only the mind really exists and that the physical world could not exist unless some mind were aware of it.
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Identity Position
The view that mental processes and certain kinds of brain processes are the same thing, described in different terms (i.e. the universe has only one kind of substance, which includes both material and mental aspects.
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What is meant by the "hard problem?"
The hard problem is why minds exist at all in a physical world. Why is there such a thing as consciousness, and how does it relate to brain activity?
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