Philosophy of mind

Consciousness (kinda) Humanity likes to put a face on things. We enjoy logos, patterns, and color schemes. We feel comforted by associations that remain constant. Familiarity makes for a comfortable existence. Anything mankind can’t visualize puts itself in a category of fear and discomfort. One could even argue that the electron microscope exists solely to aestheticize what ails mankind-- influenza, cancer, and the common cold now all have mugshots. CAT scans give an aesthetic to medicine and…

efficiency of mental states, in the view of acknowledgement of a type of functionalism more suitable than the perspectives spoke to by the specialists in the situation. In this essay, what is being presented is an unusual situation which presents the mind-body problem. The patient (girl) who has sustained some sort of injuries, must have had her brain replaced by some sort…

of the relationship between mind and body, I would say that Leibniz offers a more satisfying theory of the mind and body interaction than Descartes. Let me explain why by understand Leibniz’s and Descartes view on mind and body. Descartes came up with a concept called Dualism of the mind and body, where he believed that there are two distinct substances; 1) matter of which the essential property fits together extended in space (like body, chairs, and rocks). 2) the mind or immaterial, of which…

1. Introduction Let us say that a phenomenal quality or concept, as I will use the terms interchangeably, is “a feature of a conscious state that is notable introspectively, ostensively, as that aspect of the state, the way it feels, appears, etc.” (Loar, 81). The knowledge argument objects to physicalism through establishing conscious experiences as having non-physical properties. In “Epiphenomenal Qualia”, Frank Jackson proposes a thought experiment in which a brilliant neuroscientist named…

maintained? Though inwardly there is turmoil, why does the mind cling to these outward and inward gratifications? There is a constant pursuit of striving to be (this movement is what gives a sense of self), giving the feeling that one is alive, gives some purpose, and the hope of progressively striping away the causes of conflict to arrive at some form of freedom. If this were to stop we feel that we would be nothing, be lost, have no meaning. So the mind continues to strive for one thing or…

Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, the author aims to create an unshakable foundation of metaphysics for the sciences. In doing so, the work’s meditator comes to conclude that he is a thinking substance distinct from material substance, and thus all mental substances are independent of corporeal bodies. Central to how this view explains conscious experience of sensing and perceiving external bodies is the interaction between the mental substance of the mind and corporeal substance of…

states that the mind is ultimately the bit that thinks about thinking, his oft quoted “I think therefore I am” is a case in point. I also think that to have cognition one must also have intentionality, in that something must drive or exist in the conscious that supports the thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes. This is what is missing from the aids to thought or mental states which is extended cognition. The central tenets of extended cognition are that cognition extends out of the mind and body.…

The way we as humans think and behave can be (and has been) traced down to two main ontologies: behaviorism and functionalism. Where behaviorism tends to focus on a being’s reaction to a certain stimulus (the way one would react to a sad movie, for example), functionalism can be defined as the focus on a reaction of the reaction. The consequence of a pain (stimulus) and its relation to other mental states is where functionalists tend to concentrate their theories. “Where the behaviorist hoped…

involved in machinery. They consider how ethics must be involved when harm is the most likely outcome in a scenario and highlight the ways that ethics can be included into AI programming. The issue with implementing ethics is the inclusion of a moral philosophy, which could include moral faults, causing the machine to make an…

I argue that substance dualism is true. Substance dualism claims that people and bodies are distinct. People, such as you and I, are nonphysical beings. We are connected human bodies, but we are not bodies. The reason is that (1) If we can exist without bodies, then we cannot be bodies. (2) We can exist without bodies. Therefore (3) we cannot be bodies. (1), (2) and (3) constitute the modal argument for substance dualism. The modal argument has a valid form. An argument has valid form means that…