Introductory Lectures: the Nature and History of Cognitive Science Chapter 4: Philosophy’S Convergence Towards Cognitive Science by Dr
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From Locke to Berkeley
From Locke to Berkeley How Berkeley rejects Locke’s Metaphysical Realism in favor of what he calls “Idealism” Locke Summary Like Descartes, Locke believes that we perceive the “real” world only indirectly. • We do not directly perceive material objects, – Just as we do not directly perceive people we see on T.V.; • Rather, we directly perceive only ideas (sensations, things “in” our minds) that are caused by and represent material objects, – Just as, when watching T.V., we directly see only images on the screen. Locke’s Causal Theory of Perception: Indirectly Sensation aware of Matter Do our sensations resemble their objects? • Recall that Descartes’ big worry was whether or not there were any objects outside our minds. – (By the end of the 6th Meditation, he assures that there are.) • But he said we also make mistakes in thinking that our ideas always resembled the objects in the real world that caused us to have those sensations. Why should we believe that the ideas in our minds actually resemble the objects outside our minds that cause them? Mind’s Eye Idea Object Idea Object Mind In Locke’s Terms • Even if we accept that the ideas in our mind are caused by real objects that exist outside our minds – (Locke never really questions this) • Is it true that our ideas always resemble the qualities in the objects that caused us to have those ideas? Locke’s Answer • Only sometimes. Some of our ideas do resemble qualities in the objects, but some of them do not. • Our ideas of primary qualities resemble those qualities. -
Neurophilosophy and Its Discontents How Do We Understand Consciousness Without Becoming Complicit in That Understanding?
Neurophilosophy and Its Discontents How Do We Understand Consciousness Without Becoming Complicit in that Understanding? BY GABRIELLE BENETTE JACKSON dependent on empathy or imagination. Though presumably it would not capture everything, its goal would be to describe, at least in part, the subjective character of hat is consciousness? “It is being awake,” “being responsive,” “acting,” “being experience in a form comprehensible to beings incapable of having those experi- Waware,” “being self-aware,” “paying attention,” “perceiving,” “feeling emo- ences. […] It should be possible to devise a method of expressing in objective terms tions,” “feeling feelings,” “having thoughts,” “thinking about thoughts,” “it is like much more than we can at present, and with much greater precision.” The proposal, this!” simply put, was to develop a language to describe subjectivity in non-subjective Who is conscious? “We humans, surely!” Well, maybe not all the time. “Animals!” terms. And although it is definitely not the case that all theorists pushing past the Debatable. “Computers?” No—at least, not yet. “Other machines?” Only in fiction. problem of consciousness consider themselves to be implementing Nagel’s plan, it “Plants?” Absolutely not, right? does help to understand a particular set of accumulated answers. Two fundamental Nearly twenty-five years ago, we lived through “the project of the decade of the approaches have been neurophilosophy and neurophenomenology, each emphasizing brain,” a governmental initiative set forth by President one aspect of Nagel’s suggestion—either the objective part George H. W. Bush.1 Presidential Proclamation 6158 (viz. neurophilosophy) or the phenomenology part (viz. begins, “The human brain, a three-pound mass of inter- neurophenomenology). -
Chapter Three Classifying, Identifying, and the Function of Substance Concepts §3.1 Orientation Substances, As I Have Described
Chapter Three Classifying, identifying, and the function of substance concepts §3.1 Orientation Substances, as I have described them, are whatever one can learn from given only one or a few encounters, various skills or information that will apply on other encounters. Further, this possibility must be grounded in some kind of natural necessity. The function of a substance concept is to make possible this sort of learning and use of knowledge for a specific substance. For this, the cognizing organism must be able to recognize the specific substance under a variety of different conditions, as many as possible. It needs to do this, first, to grasp that the substance it is learning about over various encounters is one and the same so that knowledge of it can accumulate and, second, so that the accumulated knowledge can be applied. For substance concepts to be employed in the service of theoretical knowing —employed for knowing that rather than knowing how— the substance must be represented in thought in a univocal way, the same substance always represented as being the same. This makes possible a stable, unequivocal and nonredundant inner representational system. The ability to recognize what is objectively the same substance again as the same despite wide variations in the faces it shows to the senses is necessarily fallible. Although you surely have many ways of identifying each member of your immediate family —similarly for water and for cats— there will always be possible conditions under which you would misidentify them, mistaking them for someone or something else. If a concept is genuinely a substance concept, if its extension is really a substance, this extension is not determined by one's fallible dispositions to recognize it. -
Direct Reference 9/26/11
24.251#5 Yablo Direct Reference 9/26/11 Epistemically necessary = knowable a priori. Metaphysically necessary = true in every possible world. They come apart! 'This animal is a dog' is metaphysically necessary but epistemically contingent. 'Jack the Ripper, if he exists, is a murderer' is epistemically necessary but metaphysically contingent. Kripke's Objections to Russell's Name Claim. ('n' means 'the F'). If 'n' means 'the F', then (*) 'a thing is n iff it is the F' should be (i) metaphysically necessary, (ii) a priori. 1. (*) is not necessary left to right; F is not metaphysically necessary for being n 'It could have happened that Twain was an illiterate tramp.' True. 'It could have happened that the author of such and such books was an illiterate tramp.' False. 2. (*) is not necessary right to left; F is not metaphysically sufficient for being n 'Necessarily Bertrand Russell descended from Lord John Russell.' True. 'Necessarily the most famous 20th Century British philosopher descended from Lord Russell.' False. 3. (*) is not a priori left to right; F is not epistemically necessary for being n Say 'Gödel' means the man who proved that arithmetic is incomplete 'Gödel was a mathematician' should be a priori. And it's not; we can imagine discovering he was an impostor. 4. (*) is not a priori right to left; F is not epistemically sufficient for being n Suppose it turns out that the man known as Gödel in fact stole the proof from Schmidt. Does that mean 'Gödel' really refers to Schmidt? Replies (?). To 1. The description gets wide scope. -
Dualistic Physicalism: from Phenomenon Dualism to Substance Dualism
Dualistic Physicalism: From Phenomenon Dualism to Substance Dualism Joseph Polanik, JD Table of Contents Preface.................................................................................................................7 §1 The Central Question......................................................................................9 §2 The Brain/Experience Relation....................................................................11 §2.1 The Elements of Dualism.......................................................................11 §2.2 Proceeding from Common Ground........................................................13 §2.2.1 Evaluating Dennett's Defense of Materialism.................................13 §2.2.1.1 The Contradiction in the Dennett Defense...............................14 §2.2.1.2 Other Problems .......................................................................15 §2.2.1.2.1 Referring to Non-Existents...............................................15 §2.2.1.2.2 Violation of Common Sense..............................................16 §2.2.1.2.3 Denial of Experience.........................................................16 §2.2.1.2.4 Anticipating Type-Z Materialism......................................18 §2.2.1.3 Standing Precisely Against Eliminative Materialism ..............20 §2.2.2 The Argument for Dualism from Experience..................................21 §2.2.3 What Sort of Dualism is This?.........................................................25 §2.2.3.1 Phenomenon Dualism is Not Predicate Dualism.....................26 -
Churchland Source: the Journal of Philosophy, Vol
Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Reduction, Qualia, and the Direct Introspection of Brain States Author(s): Paul M. Churchland Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 82, No. 1 (Jan., 1985), pp. 8-28 Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026509 Accessed: 07-08-2015 19:14 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Journal of Philosophy, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Philosophy. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 142.58.129.109 on Fri, 07 Aug 2015 19:14:45 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 8 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY structureof this idiom, moreover-its embeddingof a subordinate sentence-would have been clearly dictatedby its primitiveuse in assessing children's acquisition of observationsentences. Analogi- cal extension of the idiom to other than observation sentences would follow inevitably,and the developmentof parallel idioms for other propositional attitudeswould then come naturally too, notwithstanding their opacity from a logical point of view. Naturalness is one thing, transparencyanother; familiarityone, clarityanother. W. V. QtJINE Harvard University REDUCTION, QUALIA, AND THE DIRECT INTROSPECTION OF BRAIN STATES* DO the phenomenological or qualitative featuresof our sen- sations constitutea permanentbarrier to thereductive aspi- rations of any materialisticneuroscience? I here argue that theydo not. -
Matter and Consciousness
Matter and Consciousness Historical Parallels As the identity theorist can point to historical cases of successful Paul Churchland, 1984 intertheoretic reduction, so the eliminative materialist can point to historical cases of the outright elimination of the ontology of an older theory in favor of the ontology of a new and superior theory. For most of Chapter 2: The Ontological Problem (the Mind-Body Problem) the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, learned people believed that heat was a subtle fluid held in bodies, much in the way water is held in a sponge. A fair body of moderately successful theory described the way 5. Eliminative Materialism this fluid substance—called “caloric”—flowed within a body, or from one body to another, and how it produced thermal expansion, melting, The identity theory was called into doubt not because the prospects for a boiling, and so forth. But by the end of the last century it had become materialist account of our mental capacities were thought to be poor, but abundantly clear that heat was not a substance at all, but just the energy because it seemed unlikely that the arrival of an adequate materialist of motion of the trillions of jostling molecules that makeup the heated theory would bring with it the nice one-to-one match-ups, between the body itself. The new theory—the “corpuscular/kinetic theory of matter concepts of folk psychology and the concepts of theoretical and heat”—was much more successful than the old in explaining and neuroscience, that intertheoretic reduction requires. The reason for that predicting the thermal behavior of bodies. -
Maintaining Meaningful Expressions of Romantic Love in a Material World
Reconciling Eros and Neuroscience: Maintaining Meaningful Expressions of Romantic Love in a Material World by ANDREW J. PELLITIERI* Boston University Abstract Many people currently working in the sciences of the mind believe terms such as “love” will soon be rendered philosophically obsolete. This belief results from a common assumption that such terms are irreconcilable with the naturalistic worldview that most modern scientists might require. Some philosophers reject the meaning of the terms, claiming that as science progresses words like ‘love’ and ‘happiness’ will be replaced completely by language that is more descriptive of the material phenomena taking place. This paper attempts to defend these meaningful concepts in philosophy of mind without appealing to concepts a materialist could not accept. Introduction hilosophy engages the meaning of the word “love” in a myriad of complex discourses ranging from ancient musings on happiness, Pto modern work in the philosophy of mind. The eliminative and reductive forms of materialism threaten to reduce the importance of our everyday language and devalue the meaning we attach to words like “love,” in the name of scientific progress. Faced with this threat, some philosophers, such as Owen Flanagan, have attempted to defend meaningful words and concepts important to the contemporary philosopher, while simultaneously promoting widespread acceptance of materialism. While I believe that the available work is useful, I think * [email protected]. Received 1/2011, revised December 2011. © the author. Arché Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy, Volume V, Issue 1: Winter 2012. pp. 60-82 RECONCILING EROS AND NEUROSCIENCE 61 more needs to be said about the functional role of words like “love” in the script of progressing neuroscience, and further the important implications this yields for our current mode of practical reasoning. -
Andrew Wong Washington University, St. Louis the Aim of This Paper Is to Support Donald Davidson's Anomalous Monism1 As An
do E s An o m A l o u s mo n i s m hA v E proper construal of Davidson’s principle Ex p l A n A t o r y fo r ce ? of rationality will show the objection to be misguided. Andrew Wong Washington University, St. Louis “Mental Events” reconciles the paradox which arises from three principles Davidson held ex hypothesi: (1) Mental events interact causally with physical events (Principle of Causal Interaction), (2) Where there is causality, there must be a law (Principle of the Nomological The aim of this paper is to support Donald Character of Causality), and (3) There are no 1 strict deterministic laws on the basis of which Davidson’s Anomalous Monism as an account mental events can be predicted and explained of law-governed mental causation in a world (Principle of the Anomalism of the Mental).4 unfettered by psychophysical laws. To this end, I will attempt to answer one principal objection Tension is apparent in that some mental to the theory: the claim that Anomalous events must interact causally with physical events Monism lacks sufficient “explanatory force.”2 and thereby feature in laws, and that this is an Though not quite the standard objection, I explicit contradiction of the Principle of the believe it to be the most formidable, and hence Anomalism of the Mental. Accepting three the most crucial to address.3 The argument’s further principles, in addition to the three strength is that it need not dispute Davidson’s above, will resolve the tension: (4) Each mental assumptions. -
Differentiating Neuroethics from Neurophilosophy
Differentiating Neuroethics From Neurophilosophy A review of Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives in Neuroethics by James J. Giordano and Bert Gordijn (Eds.) New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 388 pp. ISBN 978-0-521-70303-1. $50.00 Reviewed by Amir Raz Hillel Braude Neuroethics is about gaps: the gap between neuroscience and ethics, the one between science and philosophy, and, most of all, the “hard gap” between mind and brain. The hybrid term neuroethics, put into public circulation by the late William Safire (2002), attempts to address these lacunae through an emergent discipline that draws equally from neuroscience and philosophy. What, however, distinguishes neuroethics from its sister discipline—neurophilosophy? Contrary to traditional “armchair” philosophy, neurophilosophers such as Paul and Patricia Churchland argue that philosophy needs to take account of empirical neuroscience data regarding the mind–brain relation. Similarly, neuropsychologists and neuroscientists should be amenable to philosophical insights and the conceptual rigor of the philosophical method. Joshua Greene’s neuroimaging studies of participants making moral decisions provide a good example of this symbiotic relation between neuroscience and philosophy (Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001). A number of possible answers to the distinction between neuroethics and neurophilosophy emerge from Scientific and Philosophical Perspectives in Neuroethics, edited by James J. Giordano and Bert Gordijn. First, neuroethics emerges from the discipline of bioethics and, as such, specifically deals with ethical issues related to neuroscience. As Neil Levy says in his preface to the book, “Techniques and technologies stemming from the science of the mind raise . profound questions about what it means to be human, and pose greater challenges to moral thought” (p. -
Daniel Dennett's Science of the Soul
Daniel Dennett’s Science of the Soul - The New Yorker 3/20/17, 9:38 AM P!FI"S MARCH 27, 2017 I#UE DANIEL DENNE$’S SCIENCE OF THE SOUL A philosopher’s lifelong quest to understand the making of the mind. By Joshua Rothman Daniel Dennett’s naturalistic account of consciousness draws some people in and puts others off. “There ain’t no magic here,” he says. “Just stage magic.” PHOTOGRAPH BY IRINA ROZOVSKY FOR THE NEW YORKER our billion years ago, Earth was a lifeless place. Nothing struggled, F thought, or wanted. Slowly, that changed. Seawater leached chemicals from rocks; near thermal vents, those chemicals jostled and combined. Some hit upon the trick of making copies of themselves that, in turn, made more copies. The replicating chains were caught in oily bubbles, which protected them and made replication easier; eventually, they began to venture out into the open sea. A new level of order had been achieved on Earth. Life had begun. The tree of life grew, its branches stretching toward complexity. Organisms developed systems, subsystems, and sub-subsystems, layered in ever-deepening regression. They used these systems to anticipate their future and to change it. When they looked within, some found that they had selves—constellations of memories, ideas, and purposes that emerged from the systems inside. They experienced being alive and had thoughts about that experience. They developed language and used it to know themselves; they began to ask how they had been made. This, to a !rst approximation, is the secular story of our creation. -
The ('('Orthodox" View of Theories: Remarks in Defense As Well As Critique
-----HERBERT FEIGL----- The ('('Orthodox" View of Theories: Remarks in Defense as well as Critique The purpose of the following remarks is to present in outline some of the more important features of scientific theories. I shall discuss the "standard" or "orthodox" view, mainly in order to set up a target for criticisms, some of which I shall briefly sketch by way of anticipation. The standard account of the structure of scientific theories was given quite explicitly by Norman R. Campbell [7], as well as independently in a little-known article by R. Carnap [12]. A large part of the voluminous literature in the philosophy of science of the logical empiricists and re lated thinkers contains, though with a great many variations, develop ments, modifications, and terminological diversities, essentially similar analyses of the logical structure and the empirical foundations of the theories of physics, biology, psychology, and some of the social sciences. Anticipating to some extent Campbell and Carnap, Moritz Schlick, in his epoch-making AIIgemeine Erkenntnisiehre [38], championed the doc trine of "implicit definition." In this he was influenced by David Hil bert's axiomatization of geometry, as well as by Henri Poincare's and Albert Einstein's conceptions of theoretical physics and the role of ge ometry in physics. These matters were then developed more fully and precisely in the work of H. Reichenbach, R. Carnap, C. G. Hempel, R. B. Braithwaite, E. Nagel, and many other logicians and methodolo gists of science. In order to understand the aim of this important approach in the philosophy of science it is essential to distinguish it from historical, so ciological, or psychological studies of scientific theories.