Consciousness

In Descartes’s Second Meditation, he aims to determine what “I think, therefore I am” means. He accepts that he is not solely a being who can think and doubt, but that he can also imagine and sense. While Descartes admits that everything may be a deception, he is still convinced that he can sense things and imagine. While sensory perception could be separate from reality, it is still a part of his thinking mind. Descartes begins to examine what he knows of what he is. He acknowledges that he…

Descartes perspective in The Official Doctrine emphasizes mostly on humans having both a body, and mind which are constructed of many different properties. These two according to the doctrine are harnessed together in life, but conceivable situations such as death can cause the body, and the mind to come apart, and the internal mind may continue to exist because the mind is essentially private. Ryle argues that Cartesian Dualism is wrong and should be rejected because he beliefs that the…

In the second meditation Descartes explains why he no longer believes in what he tried to explain in his previous meditation. He now thinks that the mind knows more than the body does. He believes that one can not trust the senses to know things because one object can present itself in many different forms. This explanation is derived from his discussion about wax, and how although when it is heated all of its physical properties change. However, even though the physical properties change, we…

Zombie and Intellectuals All humans are either zombies or intellectuals. No in-betweens. The zombies are the malleable people that are shaped by their environment. Intellectuals are the self-willed people that are very uneasily swayed. In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury incorporates both types of individuals to pass on a message everyone can learn from. The characters in Fahrenheit 451 can be divided into two categories–zombies and intellectuals –that teach readers that intellectuals need to help…

In 1962, Simon Olshansky, a counselor, coined the term “chronic sorrow” after listening to the experiences of parents with profoundly disabled children. He attempted to describe the widespread psychological response parents suffered (Peterson & Bredow, 2013). The middle-range theory of chronic sorrow expands and elaborates on the work of Olshansky. Description of the Theory The Theory of Chronic Sorrow is a middle-range theory developed by Georgene Eakes, Mary Burke, and Margaret Hainsworth in…

“Writing Assignment #3” The unconscious is the part of our minds where certain emotions or memories are inaccessible, thus making the person unaware of these hidden emotions and memories. They usually reside in the unconscious part of our minds due to the act of repression. Repression is the process in which the mind filters as well as suppresses memories, thoughts, desires, and other emotions as a defense mechanism. Therefore these thoughts, memories, etc. become part of unconscious mind.…

In “Hooked on a Myth”, Victoria Braithwaite says Are Nonhuman animals Conscious? I agree with her argument that fish feel pain and that fish are conscious, but I feel like she could’ve taken the argument a lot further than what she did. She talks about how fish feel pain and she uses the evidence of how they injected bee venom under the skin of the trout . When the fish started to feel the bee venom their gills beat faster, they rub the affected area on the walls of their tank, and lose…

The theme behind both the Tetris scenario and Otto’s notebook is what Clark called the Parity Principle (PP): “If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it to go on in the head, we would have no hesitation in accepting as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (for that time) part of the cognitive process.”(Clark, 2005) The Parity Principle infer to a ‘location’ based cognition, where it rejects the assumption that the location of…

What is a profound experience? Profound also is known as pro-fundas or “favorable base of origin” when translated from Latin. experience has the Latin stem of experiēns meaning past principle. So in my experience the most noticeable past principle I learned from my base if origin was to cherish what you have. but whats better the conclusion or the story? the story i have to tell is in the mid spring of 2011. Our spring started with a delightfull trip too new orleans where we ate baguets, saw…

Introduction Philosophical theories of personal identity consider the extent to which a person is considered the same in mind and body throughout the duration of their life. This is commonly characterised through a “sense of attachment or ownership” to oneself physically or mentally (Olsen, 2015). Bodily continuity is an idea which emerges from this, that one person has the same physical body for their lifespan. Various critiques of bodily continuity have been formed to oppose such abstract…