Self-consciousness

Zimmer discusses how humans possess a “self” in their brain. This allows us to differentiate ourselves from others. The neuro-biological view focuses on the brain and how it becomes aware of differences when our predictions aren’t being supported. The brain will increase our self-awareness to make us pay more attention, which causes our actions to change in order to get the results we want. When we do not get…

Locke’s argument is that the mind is the self is a blank slate on which experience writes. Locke doesn’t believe that the self necessarily exists in one soul or substance. He argues the conscious awareness of the self is itself as a thinking, reasoning, and reflecting identity. Locke also argues that despite physical changes to your body your personal identity remains. He uses the example of cutting off a hand and that separates it from the consciousness of the person who did that. So overall…

Understanding, “Of the identity and Diversity”. Locke discusses how personal identity is the continuity of life and consciousness. Referencing section nine, Locke explains that what a person stands for can reflect ones personal identity in a sense. Along with this idea, the mere process of thinking and consciousness gives one the ability to have a personal identity. If one can refer to them as self then they have the capability of having…

The Turing Test: What Does it Accomplish? The growth of technology over the past several decades has brought about immense inquiry regarding the intelligence, awareness, and consciousness of computers and other forms of technology. From the Jetsons, and Star Wars, to iRobot and Westworld, society has been enthralled with the potentiality of computers possessing human-like qualities; or even having the ability to think on their own. Decades before the growth of technology and the development…

tangle of misunderstanding between different cultures, religions, races and disabled people. It radicalizes the difference, turning our terrestrial neighbour into the star-away alien in order to elaborate a fundamental method of interaction between the Self and the Other. However, a fresh approach to the problem does not prevent it from the old blunders. SETI researchers and astrolinguists…

“Pay attention!” is snapped at the 8th grade boy in Montana, the young taekwondo student in Korea, the inattentive boyfriend in Brazil, the crime investigator in France. This phrase can be utilized and interpreted in a myriad of ways, so how can one know what is truly meant by the word attention? According to Jon Kabat-Zinn, attention can be broken into two actions of cognition – focusing and monitoring. The former targets the mind’s ability to focus on a single idea, emotion, or phenomenon…

The Conceptualised Nature of Discovery? A dynamic of consciousness, "discovery" is one of the essential driving forces of living entities. Even basic primate behaviours such as the drive for social interplay can be said to be based in the act of "discovery". So, what is the nature of this drive? Could a machine be instilled with this? Is it simple matter of novelty, or is it a factor of "learning"? Is it conceptualised? Indigenous Australian Playwright Jane Harrison’s when asked how her play,…

‘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…

Following the readings and presentations on the mind/body problem, and having read the synopsis and viewed the episode, I have come to believe that Piccard and Maddox view the personhood (or lack thereof) of Data entirely from different perspectives - at least for much of the episode. Piccard, from the very start of the suggestion of disassembling Data to further knowledge and create additional beings like him, is extremely convicted that the very proposal of such an act is not just wrong, but…

Substance Dualism is a theory of mind that asserts the thesis that there exists the mind (nonphysical) and the body (physical) and that they are two distinct substances. Moreover, it identifies a being immediately with their mind and only secondarily with their body. Logical Behaviorism is branch of philosophical behaviorism. Behaviorism, essentially, is the thesis that mental states, if they exist, are identical to behavioral states. Logical Behaviorism posits that descriptions of mental states…