Philosophy of mind

from experience. Locke was a British philosopher who pioneered ideas such as the empiricism which now define some leading ideals of psychology and philosophy. Against the claims of other well known philosophers, Locke insisted that neither the speculative principles of logic and metaphysics nor the practical principles of morality are inscribed on our minds from birth. Such propositions do not in fact have the universal consent of all human beings, Locke argued, since children and the mentally…

The Idea of Personal Identity and its Criticism of “I” Both philosophers Rene Descartes and John Locke in their writings “Meditations on First Philosophy” and An “Essay Concerning Human Understanding” go into great depth about what they believe sense of self is or what it means to be a person. Locke calls this personal identity and Descartes calls it the equation of the “I” that thinks with a thinking substance. Locke’s idea of personal identity is actually viewed by many as a critique of…

of the mind would argue the opposite. In what will follow,…

Perhaps locations would be particular qualitative states and, on this view, perhaps minds could be distinguished from one another by appeal to the state that they possess at a given time. However, if “mental space” includes a fundamentally temporal component, as Kim believes it would have to, it follows that multiple minds, being distinct entities, could never occupy the same temporal location. But the idea that two minds could not be in the same qualitative state simultaneously is absurd! While…

mental substances (for example, minds) and physical substances (for example, tables). Philosophers use the word “substance” to denote a fundamental aspect of reality that cannot be broken down further. In other words, substance dualism claims there are two fundamental aspects of reality that are irreducible. Philosophers have argued for the truth of substance dualism in several ways. One type of argument claims that there is a gap between understanding the mind and the brain; these are called…

Our minds and body correlate to each other and are the reason we can move and willingly do what we want. However, are our minds and body distinct? Can we even exist without a mind or without a body? Rene Descartes’ theory of “Mind-Body Dualism” discusses such philosophical questions and claims that although our mind and bodies are synced, they are not similar by way of division. Many questions remain on how “Mind-Body Dualism” works, many of which will be discussed in this paper, beginning with…

think therefore I am,” the popular quote of philosopher Descartes, is the main premise of his theory of Mind-body Dualism. Interactionism is the theory that there are two realities, mind and body, each of which can have an effect on the other. In contrast, dualists claim that the mind and body are two separate realities. The body is a material thing that operates in a physical reality, while the mind and mental states operate in a nonphysical reality. For the dualist, the way of thinking is an…

interaction. She essentially questioned how the mind (immaterial) causally interacts with the body (material), and therefore demanded a description of the mechanisms that give the mind and the body this power . In this paper, I will argue that Princess Elizabeth’s criticism of Cartesian Dualism successfully discredits Descartes’s theory by exposing the theory’s weakness in describing the mechanisms (the how) which enable the causal relation between the mind and the body. I will firstly provide a…

trying to convey one’s understanding of the world is by using the human body. It is impossible for one person to penetrate the mind of another as means of understanding life with their perspective. Rather people convey ideas through actions such…

discusses and comments on an argument for and one against the mind being the same as the brain or physical body in his essay entitled “The Mind is The Brain”. He starts off by saying that mental states are identical and explicitly connected to body defined as the central nervous system. The thesis of mind/brain identity is one that involves thinking about the thoughts as physical actions. To further explain this theory states the mind and brain as the same entity. Carruthers goes on to argue…