A Comparative Analysis of Searle's and Dennett's Theory
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Dialectic at a Moving Standstill: the Neurotic Midadventures Of
Macalester Journal of Philosophy Volume 13 Article 6 Issue 1 Spring 2004 5-1-2004 Dialectic at a Moving Standstill: The eurN otic Midadventures of Philosphy of Mind Dan Ganin Macalester College Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/philo Recommended Citation Ganin, Dan (2004) "Dialectic at a Moving Standstill: The eN urotic Midadventures of Philosphy of Mind," Macalester Journal of Philosophy: Vol. 13: Iss. 1, Article 6. Available at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/philo/vol13/iss1/6 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy Department at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Macalester Journal of Philosophy by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Dialectic at a Moving Standstill: The Neurotic Misadventures of Philosophy of Mind Dan Ganin Introduction Relatively recently, numerous philosophers of mind have espoused the epistemic intractability and impenetrability of both the mind-body problem and the problem of consciousness. While past and present attempts to theoretically resolve and circumvent these metaphysical questions have assumed many forms and postulated numerous conceptual paradigms (substance dualism, property dualism, eliminative materi alism, functionalism, mind- body identity theory, logical behaviorism, idealism, etc.), the fundamental problem of epistemic inexplicability has not substantially dissipated since the rationalist ruminations of Descartes and Leibniz. The nascent articulatio n of the epistemological insolvability of the mind-body problem that has so gravely and garishly confronted contemporary theorists of mind can, in fact, be found in the philosophical work of these two notable modernist thinkers. -
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. -
Animal Welfare and the Paradox of Animal Consciousness
ARTICLE IN PRESS Animal Welfare and the Paradox of Animal Consciousness Marian Dawkins1 Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK 1Corresponding author: e-mail address: [email protected] Contents 1. Introduction 1 2. Animal Consciousness: The Heart of the Paradox 2 2.1 Behaviorism Applies to Other People Too 5 3. Human Emotions and Animals Emotions 7 3.1 Physiological Indicators of Emotion 7 3.2 Behavioral Components of Emotion 8 3.2.1 Vacuum Behavior 10 3.2.2 Rebound 10 3.2.3 “Abnormal” Behavior 10 3.2.4 The Animal’s Point of View 11 3.2.5 Cognitive Bias 15 3.2.6 Expressions of the Emotions 15 3.3 The Third Component of Emotion: Consciousness 16 4. Definitions of Animal Welfare 24 5. Conclusions 26 References 27 1. INTRODUCTION Consciousness has always been both central to and a stumbling block for animal welfare. On the one hand, the belief that nonhuman animals suffer and feel pain is what draws many people to want to study animal welfare in the first place. Animal welfare is seen as fundamentally different from plant “welfare” or the welfare of works of art precisely because of the widely held belief that animals have feelings and experience emotions in ways that plants or inanimate objectsdhowever valuableddo not (Midgley, 1983; Regan, 1984; Rollin, 1989; Singer, 1975). On the other hand, consciousness is also the most elusive and difficult to study of any biological phenomenon (Blackmore, 2012; Koch, 2004). Even with our own human consciousness, we are still baffled as to how Advances in the Study of Behavior, Volume 47 ISSN 0065-3454 © 2014 Elsevier Inc. -
Theoretical Models of Consciousness: a Scoping Review
brain sciences Review Theoretical Models of Consciousness: A Scoping Review Davide Sattin 1,2,*, Francesca Giulia Magnani 1, Laura Bartesaghi 1, Milena Caputo 1, Andrea Veronica Fittipaldo 3, Martina Cacciatore 1, Mario Picozzi 4 and Matilde Leonardi 1 1 Neurology, Public Health, Disability Unit—Scientific Department, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Neurologico Carlo Besta, 20133 Milan, Italy; [email protected] (F.G.M.); [email protected] (L.B.); [email protected] (M.C.); [email protected] (M.C.); [email protected] (M.L.) 2 Experimental Medicine and Medical Humanities-PhD Program, Biotechnology and Life Sciences Department and Center for Clinical Ethics, Insubria University, 21100 Varese, Italy 3 Oncology Department, Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research IRCCS, 20156 Milan, Italy; veronicaandrea.fi[email protected] 4 Center for Clinical Ethics, Biotechnology and Life Sciences Department, Insubria University, 21100 Varese, Italy; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected]; Tel.: +39-02-2394-2709 Abstract: The amount of knowledge on human consciousness has created a multitude of viewpoints and it is difficult to compare and synthesize all the recent scientific perspectives. Indeed, there are many definitions of consciousness and multiple approaches to study the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). Therefore, the main aim of this article is to collect data on the various theories of consciousness published between 2007–2017 and to synthesize them to provide a general overview of this topic. To describe each theory, we developed a thematic grid called the dimensional model, which qualitatively and quantitatively analyzes how each article, related to one specific theory, debates/analyzes a specific issue. -
Artificial Intelligence Is Stupid and Causal Reasoning Won't Fix It
Artificial Intelligence is stupid and causal reasoning wont fix it J. Mark Bishop1 1 TCIDA, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK Email: [email protected] Abstract Artificial Neural Networks have reached `Grandmaster' and even `super- human' performance' across a variety of games, from those involving perfect- information, such as Go [Silver et al., 2016]; to those involving imperfect- information, such as `Starcraft' [Vinyals et al., 2019]. Such technological developments from AI-labs have ushered concomitant applications across the world of business, where an `AI' brand-tag is fast becoming ubiquitous. A corollary of such widespread commercial deployment is that when AI gets things wrong - an autonomous vehicle crashes; a chatbot exhibits `racist' behaviour; automated credit-scoring processes `discriminate' on gender etc. - there are often significant financial, legal and brand consequences, and the incident becomes major news. As Judea Pearl sees it, the underlying reason for such mistakes is that \... all the impressive achievements of deep learning amount to just curve fitting". The key, Pearl suggests [Pearl and Mackenzie, 2018], is to replace `reasoning by association' with `causal reasoning' - the ability to infer causes from observed phenomena. It is a point that was echoed by Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis in a recent piece for the New York Times: \we need to stop building computer systems that merely get better and better at detecting statistical patterns in data sets { often using an approach known as \Deep Learning" { and start building computer systems that from the moment of arXiv:2008.07371v1 [cs.CY] 20 Jul 2020 their assembly innately grasp three basic concepts: time, space and causal- ity"[Marcus and Davis, 2019]. -
Mind and Social Reality
Masaryk University Faculty of Economics and Administration Study program: Economics METHODOLOGICAL INDIVIDUALISM: MIND AND SOCIAL REALITY Metodologický Individualizmus: Myseľ a Spoločenská Realita Bachelor´s Thesis Advisor: Author: Mgr. Josef Menšík Ph.D. Ján KRCHŇAVÝ Brno 2020 Name and last name of the author: Ján Krchňavý Title of master thesis: Methodological Individualism: Mind and Social Reality Department: Department of Economics Supervisor of bachelor thesis: Mgr. Josef Menšík, Ph.D. Year of defence: 2020 Abstract The submitted bachelor thesis is concerned with the relation between mind and social reality and the role of the mind in the creation of social reality. This relation is examined from the perspective of the social ontology of John Searle, an American philosopher who is considered to be the proponent of methodological individualism. This thesis aims to reconsider the standard, mentalistic interpretation of Searle’s social ontology, one that is centred around the primary role of the mind in the construction of social reality, to examine criticisms of such approach which highlight the professed neglect of the role that social practices have for social reality, and to provide an alternative, practice-based reading of Searle’s social ontology. The thesis thus proceeds first by outlining the standard interpretation of Searle’s theory as put forward mainly in his two monographs on social reality. Subsequently, the objections against such an approach from an alternative, practice-based approach, which highlights the role of social practices for the constitution of society, are raised. Following these objections, the Searle’s social ontology is looked at again in an effort to find an alternative interpretation that would bring it closer to the ideas and principles of the practice-based approach, and thereby provide a response to some objections against the missing role of the social practices in his theory as well as open the way for the novel interpretation of his social ontology. -
Julian Jaynes's Software Archeology
Julian Jaynes’s Software Archeology DANIEL DENNETT Daniel Dennett received his B .A. from Harvard and his D. Phil. from Oxford. Following academic positions at the University of California at Irvine, at Harvard, and at Oxford, he joined the Department of Philosophy at Tufts University, where he is currently Professor of Philosophy. Dr. Dennett has also held the position of Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He lectures widely in North America, Great Britain and Europe. His publications include books such as Brainstorms, The Mind’s I (with Douglas Hofstadter), and most recently Elbow Room, and journal articles on the issues of mind, consciousness, self hallucinations, and even grey matter. He has also written numerous reviews of theories of prominent philosophers. linguists, and psychologists, such as Passing the Buck to Biology on Noam Chomsky and Why do we think what we do about why we think what we do? on Nelson Goodman. What a philosopher would usually do on an occasion like this is to begin to launch into a series of devastating arguments, criticisms, and counter-examples, and I am not going to do that today, because in this instance I don’t think it would be very constructive. I think first it is very important to understand Julian Jaynes’ project to see a little bit more about what the whole shape of it is, and delay the barrage of nitpicking objections and criticisms until we have seen what the edifice as a whole is. After all, on the face of it, it is preposterous, and I have found that in talking with other philosophers my main task is to convince them to take it seriously when they are very reluctant to do this. -
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, IV-2 | 2012 Darwinized Hegelianism Or Hegelianized Darwinism? 2
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy IV-2 | 2012 Wittgenstein and Pragmatism Darwinized Hegelianism or Hegelianized Darwinism? Mathias Girel Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/736 DOI: 10.4000/ejpap.736 ISSN: 2036-4091 Publisher Associazione Pragma Electronic reference Mathias Girel, « Darwinized Hegelianism or Hegelianized Darwinism? », European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy [Online], IV-2 | 2012, Online since 24 December 2012, connection on 21 April 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/ejpap/736 ; DOI : 10.4000/ejpap.736 This text was automatically generated on 21 April 2019. Author retains copyright and grants the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Darwinized Hegelianism or Hegelianized Darwinism? 1 Darwinized Hegelianism or Hegelianized Darwinism? Mathias Girel 1 It has been said that Peirce was literally talking “with the rifle rather than with the shot gun or water hose” (Perry 1935, vol. 2: 109). Readers of his review of James’s Principles can easily understand why. In some respects, the same might be true of the series of four books Joseph Margolis has been devoting to pragmatism since 2000. One of the first targets of Margolis’s rereading was the very idea of a ‘revival’ of pragmatism (a ‘revival’ of something that never was, in some ways), and, with it, the idea that the long quarrel between Rorty and Putnam was really a quarrel over pragmatism (that is was a pragmatist revival, in some ways). The uncanny thing is that, the more one read the savory chapters of the four books, the more one feels that the hunting season is open, but that the game is not of the usual kind and looks more like zombies, so to speak. -
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 Thought Experiments Are Rigged: Mechanistic Understanding Inhibits Mentalistic Understanding
Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University Philosophy Theses Department of Philosophy Summer 8-13-2013 The Thought Experiments are Rigged: Mechanistic Understanding Inhibits Mentalistic Understanding Toni S. Adleberg Georgia State University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/philosophy_theses Recommended Citation Adleberg, Toni S., "The Thought Experiments are Rigged: Mechanistic Understanding Inhibits Mentalistic Understanding." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2013. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/philosophy_theses/141 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Philosophy at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS ARE RIGGED: MECHANISTIC UNDERSTANDING INHIBITS MENTALISTIC UNDERSTANDING by TONI ADLEBERG Under the Direction of Eddy Nahmias ABSTRACT Many well-known arguments in the philosophy of mind use thought experiments to elicit intuitions about consciousness. Often, these thought experiments include mechanistic explana- tions of a systems’ behavior. I argue that when we understand a system as a mechanism, we are not likely to understand it as an agent. According to Arico, Fiala, Goldberg, and Nichols’ (2011) AGENCY Model, understanding a system as an agent is necessary for generating the intuition that it is conscious. Thus, if we are presented with a mechanistic description of a system, we will be very unlikely to understand that system as conscious. Many of the thought experiments in the philosophy of mind describe systems mechanistically. I argue that my account of consciousness attributions is preferable to the “Simplicity Intuition” account proposed by David Barnett (2008) because it is more explanatory and more consistent with our intuitions. -
An Anthology of Philosophical Studies
Introduction AN ANTHOLOGY OF PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES Edited by PATRICIA HANNA ADRIANNE L. MCEVOY PENELOPE VOUTSINA ATINER 2006 1 An Anthology of Philosophical Studies 2 Introduction Athens Institute for Education and Research 2006 An Anthology of Philosophical Studies Edited by Patricia Hanna Adrianne L. McEvoy Penelope Voutsina 3 An Anthology of Philosophical Studies PUBLISHED BY ATHENS INSTITUTE FOR EDUCATION AND RESEARCH 14 Solomou Street, 10683 Athens, Greece Tel. +30 210 36.34.210 Fax +30 210.36.34.209 Email: [email protected] URL: www.atiner.gr This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of the Athens Institute for Education and Research. First Published: 2006 ISBN: 978-960-6672-11-8 Typeset, printed and binding by Theta Co. 4 Introduction Table of Contents List of Contributors i Introduction 1 Voutsina, P. PART I EPISTEMOLOGY 1. Imagination in Descartes’ Skepticism 7 Scholl, A. 2. Descartes on Sensations and Ideas of Sensations 17 Cunning, D. 3. The Myth of Hume’s Compatibilism 33 Morris, E.W. 4. From Contextualism to Skepticism 43 Wilburn, R. 5. The Puzzle of Self-Knowledge 51 Voutsina, P. 6. Unconfined Rationality: A Normative yet Realistic Model of 59 Inference Morado, R. and Savion, L. PART II METAPHYSICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 7. Language as Community Property: What’s Wrong with 75 Chomsky’s Individualism? Hanna, P. 8. What do Concepts Consist of? The Role of Geometric and 93 Proprioceptive Information in Categorization Dellantonio, S. and Pastore, L. -
Poetry and the Multiple Drafts Model: the Functional Similarity of Cole Swensen's Verse and Human Consciousness
University of Denver Digital Commons @ DU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Graduate Studies 6-1-2011 Poetry and the Multiple Drafts Model: The Functional Similarity of Cole Swensen's Verse and Human Consciousness Connor Ryan Kreimeyer Fisher University of Denver Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd Part of the American Literature Commons, and the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Fisher, Connor Ryan Kreimeyer, "Poetry and the Multiple Drafts Model: The Functional Similarity of Cole Swensen's Verse and Human Consciousness" (2011). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 202. https://digitalcommons.du.edu/etd/202 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate Studies at Digital Commons @ DU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ DU. For more information, please contact [email protected],[email protected]. POETRY AND THE MULTIPLE DRAFTS MODEL: THE FUNCTIONAL SIMILARITY OF COLE SWENSEN’S VERSE AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS __________ A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of Arts and Humanities University of Denver __________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts __________ by Connor Ryan Kreimeyer Fisher June 2011 Advisor: W. Scott Howard Author: Connor Ryan Kreimeyer Fisher Title: POETRY AND THE MULTIPLE DRAFTS MODEL: THE FUNCTIONAL SIMILARITY OF COLE SWENSEN’S VERSE AND HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS Advisor: W. Scott Howard Degree Date: June 2011 Abstract This project compares the operational methods of three of Cole Swensen’s books of poetry (Such Rich Hour , Try , and Goest ) with ways in which the human mind and consciousness function.