Dualism

What Is It Like? The Materialist without Phenomenal Qualities Rejean Allen Prof. Sanchez Philosophy 1305 Section 21 Materialism deals with the proposed fact that in reality, to be able to have an experience of a physical object in any given situation; a person will have to physically experience that moment, otherwise, they will never know what it is like. You will have to be in direct contact with that physical object and all the properties of it; to be able to say…

Aquinas claimed that a human person is made up of two parts, the body and the soul. The soul is the form of the body. Although the soul exists, it should not be interpreted as the soul and the body being independent elements. The soul is distinguished from the body however it has to be added to the body, making the body alive. The soul is the first principle of life that makes a potentially human body what it is. It is because the soul is the principle of intellectual understanding. This…

One of the most important physical properties of molecules is their chirality, or lack thereof which is known as achirality. Chirality is defined as the ability of a molecule to exist in two no superimposable images called enantiomers. This means that achirality is the opposite, in which molecule is superimposable on its mirror image. When two molecules are related in the fact that they are stereoisomers of each other, but are not mirror images. In nature chiral molecules do not exist in their…

Personal identity refers to certain properties that make a person feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. Both philosophers John Locke and Rene Descartes had contrasting views about one’s working mind. Descartes believes that the mind cannot be identical to the body whereas Locke emphasizes that our bodies and mind are the same thing. Locke’s ideas on personal identity are primarily focused on memory, whereas Descartes is focused on the “thinking mind.” The thinking mind is our way of…

In "Putnam's BIV and The Disjunctive Argument", Brueckner breaks down what Hilary Putnam was trying to communicate. Putnam first establishes the setting of the "brains in a vat" hypothesis, which is a world filled with envatted brains and computers that stimulate the brains, and it turns out that you are a brain inside a vat. These brains go by the name of BIV, and then she goes on to state that she is not a BIV due to the considerations pertaining to meaning, which concerns reference and truth.…

Analysis In the following passage, Nagel argues physicalism to strengthen the idea of subjective character: While an account of the physical basis of mind must explain many things, this appears to be the most difficult. It is impossible to exclude the phenomenological features of experience from a reduction in the same way that one excludes the phenomenal features of an ordinary substance from a physical or chemical reduction of it---namely, by explaining them as effects on the mind of human…

INTRO: The theory of materialism is a branch of monism that proposes the world is made up solely of materialistic objects. Socrates spoke of this theory and referred to it as the Mind-Body Problem, the question of whether the conscious mind and physical body coexist, or exist individually. Because materialism is a monistic theory, the mind and body are not able to coexist; therefore, we are forced to decide which one truly exists. THESIS: While the Mind-Body Problem is a theory with many…

What does it mean to say that brain states and processes are identical with the mental states and processes? Mention four objections to this theory along with Smart’s reply to the same. The brain-mind identity theory (also known as physicalism) claims that the mental states and processes are identical to the processes and states of the brain. This does not, however, imply that the mind is the brain or vice versa. For instance, in saying that ‘Tom has a good mind’, we are not referring to his…

The Brain’s Limitless Capacity One of humankind's biggest mysteries is from within: the mind. How did humans gain consciousness? How can humans perceive time? The mind is capable of greater endeavors than the menial tasks it performs every day. During the waking hours, the mind is constrained by the laws of reality. By night, our minds are free. In “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, Peyton Peyton irrationally struggles for hope, moments before his execution. Peyton’s body is…

‘A human being is spirit. But what is the spirit? Spirit is the self. But what is the self? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself or is the relations relating itself to itself or is the relations relating itself to itself in the relation.’ (Kierkegaards, The Sickness Unto Death P.13) Throughout this essay we will discuss in depth Kierkegaards two deep understandings of ‘The Self and Despair’. The self is a means of trying to understand itself in the world today. This notion may…