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- Philosophy of Mind
Philosophy of mind
is the philosophical study of
the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions,
and consciousness.
These areas give rise to some very difficult
problems and questions; there are many
opinions as to their solutions and answers,
if any. This article attempts to suggest the
scope of the philosophy of mind and indicate
some of the important questions, but does not
provide answers.
What is the
Mind?:
Is the mind nothing more than a
series of particular thoughts, feelings, and
so forth, or is it something over and
above those particular thoughts,
feelings, and so forth? When we ask that, we
are simply asking what the relation is
between the mind and mental events. In other
words, we could simply restate the question
in terms of mental events, like this: Is the
mind nothing more than a series of mental
events, or is it something over and above the
mental events that we say occur "in" it? This
isn't a question we are going to try to
answer.
But of course there are
other questions we could ask about
what the mind is; we might raise the mind-body
problem. Are our minds something that
goes beyond our physical bodies? Suppose we
think that the mind is a substance of some
sort -- a MentalSubstance. We might still
ask: Is there some way to explain what the
mind, a mental substance, is in
terms of physical substance? Or will we
maintain that the mind is something
totally different from physical
bodies, and that we cannot explain what the
one is in terms of the other at all?
Mental Events:
Suppose
instead that we deny that the mind is some
mysterious substance, and we hold instead
that there are only mental events
and that "the mind" designates no more than a
series of mental events? We can still inquire
about the relation between mind and body a
different way, in terms of the relation
between mental events and physical events. We can ask: Are
mental events totally different from
physical events, so that you can't explain
what mental events are in terms of physical
events; or are mental events somehow
explainable as being the same as
physical events? For example, when John feels
a pain, a mental event is occurring; now is
that pain even possibly the same as
something that occurs in John's brain, such as the firing
of some special group of neurons?
So far we've
presented several different questions that
the philosophy of mind asks: What is the
mind, a substance or just a series of mental
events? Is the mind somehow reducible to, or
explainable in terms of, the body? Are mental
events somehow reducible to, or explainable
in terms of, physical events? Each of these
questions are ways of interpreting the more
ambiguous questions we started with, such as,
"What is the mind?" and "What are mental
events?"
What is
Involved?:
We can also ask questions
about the different specific cognitive processes,
and of course we might ask what cognitive
processes in general are supposed to
be. In that case, we'd be asking what
distinguishes a cognitive process
from any other kind of process. That
is another way of putting the mind-body
problem. We can also ask a series of more
specialized questions, about each
individual cognitive process.
Take
perception as an example. Philosophers ask
what is going on when we perceive something
-- when we see, hear, taste, touch, and so
on. But philosophers are not interested in
the particular mechanisms that allow us to
see -- for example, they do not study the
shape of the eye or how the optical nerve
carries information to the brain. They are
interested in even more basic questions. They
ask: Do we perceive physical objects
directly with our senses, or do we
form mental images of some sort, which we use
to represent physical objects and
their properties? These are questions raised
by the philosophy
of perception. The philosophy of
perception is all about how our minds come in
contact with the world outside our
minds.
Another example is the will, or
volition. When we choose to do something we
are using our wills, or engaging in volition.
There is, of course, one special and very
difficult question that philosophers ask
about this process, namely, is the will free?
If Mary decides to walk across the room, that
seems to be entirely up to her; she could
have chosen otherwise. But if the universe is
determined, and especially if our will really
is after all just a physical process, then it
certainly does seem as though Mary didn't
have control over everything that
led up to her deciding to walk across the
room. So was she free or wasn't she?
What is
Consciousness?:
We say that there is
something it's like to "be watching
a baby". When we look at a baby we are
conscious of the baby. Is there some way to
explain what makes a mental event, like
looking at a baby, conscious? Well,
what could we explain consciousness in terms
of? If in terms of some physical process,
then we face the same old mind-body question
in yet another form: Can
consciousness be reduced to, or explained in
terms of, mere physical processes? Some
people have said, vociferously,
definitely not. How could a hunk of
grey matter in your brain be the same as
the awareness of a pain? Awareness
is a totally different kind of thing
from grey matter in your skull.
But that
is only one question that can be asked about
consciousness. There are other questions.
Indeed there are a lot of questions that can
be asked about all the other mental
functions, such as memory,
forming concepts, reasoning, the emotions, and so
on.
Some Philosophers of
Mind:
*Daniel Dennett
*Owen Flanagan
*John
Searle
*Jerry Fodor
*Patricia Churchland
*David
Chalmers
*Gerald Edelman
*Francis Crick
*Ned
Block
*Georges Rey
*Thomas Nagel
*Paul Churchland
*Thomas
Metzinger
See also:
*Functionalism (philosophy of
mind)
*neural networks
*genetic algorithms
*reinforcement
learning
*Free
will and determinism.
External Links:
* Hyponoesis
*
Dictionary of Philosophy of
Mind
Some content
adapted from the Wikinfo
article "Philosophy of mind" under the GNU
Free Documentation License. ...
- Cybernetics
Again, in a ship, if a man
were at liberty to do what he chose, but were
devoid of mind and excellence in navigation
(αρετης
κυβερνη
64;ικης), do you perceive
what must happen to him and his fellow
sailors? ...
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