In Descartes meditations he argues the mind is a single unified phenomenon. The context of this argument is in favor of Dualism, he argues in favor of it using Liebniz’s “Principle of the Indiscernibility of Identicals”, the principle asserts that for two things to be identical then they must share all of the same properties. Descartes argues that since his body has parts it can be divided, but the mind has no parts and cannot be divided. “For in truth, when I consider the mind, that is, when I consider myself in so far only as I am a thinking thing, I can distinguish in myself no parts, but I very clearly discern that I am somewhat absolutely one and entire;” Descartes(2007). He argues that because both the mind and body exist, and they are
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The left hemisphere cannot testify on the rights behalf either, they are separated, and the right brain could be a completely conscious mute. Verbal confirmation is not valid evidence of consciousness, and if the right brain was autonomous then removing the function of the left brain would cause the patient to become an automaton. The right hemisphere is also capable of behaving in ways that are supportive of consciousness, for example, using plastic letters to answer questions and being able to integrate auditory, visual and tactile information in order to follow the experimenter’s instructions.
Now we have three options left, the patient has two minds, one is a mute. The patient has one mind but it is not unified, rather it is dissociated. The patient has one normal mind most of the time, but under certain conditions another mind can be generated. As you can see none of these views are compatible with Descartes assertion that the mind is a single unified phenomenon. All of this while completely putting aside the fact that damage to the physical brain also causes damage to the function of the mind, which is already a strong counterexample to Descartes dualism.
The above examples indicate that there is no possibility for a single unified mind, the mind is not dualistic, this …show more content…
These neural networks are composed of a massive amount of neurons, each of these neurons is connected to its neighbors and each of these connections are weighted differently. The weighting of these connections is changed to simulate how these neurons would interact using synapses. These neurons are categorized into three different types: first we have input neurons, these neurons are responsible for receiving unprocessed information and sending it to the next type of neuron, in the human mind these neurons would be similar to the sensory neurons, the hidden neurons are what receive and process the information from the input neurons, and once the information has been processed it will be sent to output neurons, in the human mind the output neurons are similar to those that control our motor systems while hidden neurons represent everything between input and output neurons. These artificial networks have displayed that they have the ability to recognize faces, understand grammar and read which is very exciting because it provides an alternate approach to understanding the human mind, one that is very different from the classical
The left hemisphere cannot testify on the rights behalf either, they are separated, and the right brain could be a completely conscious mute. Verbal confirmation is not valid evidence of consciousness, and if the right brain was autonomous then removing the function of the left brain would cause the patient to become an automaton. The right hemisphere is also capable of behaving in ways that are supportive of consciousness, for example, using plastic letters to answer questions and being able to integrate auditory, visual and tactile information in order to follow the experimenter’s instructions.
Now we have three options left, the patient has two minds, one is a mute. The patient has one mind but it is not unified, rather it is dissociated. The patient has one normal mind most of the time, but under certain conditions another mind can be generated. As you can see none of these views are compatible with Descartes assertion that the mind is a single unified phenomenon. All of this while completely putting aside the fact that damage to the physical brain also causes damage to the function of the mind, which is already a strong counterexample to Descartes dualism.
The above examples indicate that there is no possibility for a single unified mind, the mind is not dualistic, this …show more content…
These neural networks are composed of a massive amount of neurons, each of these neurons is connected to its neighbors and each of these connections are weighted differently. The weighting of these connections is changed to simulate how these neurons would interact using synapses. These neurons are categorized into three different types: first we have input neurons, these neurons are responsible for receiving unprocessed information and sending it to the next type of neuron, in the human mind these neurons would be similar to the sensory neurons, the hidden neurons are what receive and process the information from the input neurons, and once the information has been processed it will be sent to output neurons, in the human mind the output neurons are similar to those that control our motor systems while hidden neurons represent everything between input and output neurons. These artificial networks have displayed that they have the ability to recognize faces, understand grammar and read which is very exciting because it provides an alternate approach to understanding the human mind, one that is very different from the classical