...Epiphenomenalism and Physicalism Physicalism, which is often, in contemporary philosophy interchangeably called Materialism, asserts that the physical world, and everything in it conforms to a certain condition, that of being Physical, either as a causal force or as material. The main argument against Physicalism, Jackson’s argument claims that there exists a contradiction between the existence of Qualia (The felt qualities of experience) and Physicalism. Jackson’s argument is given in the form of a thought experiment in which Mary, a neuroscientist, isolated in a black and white room is given all of the physical facts regarding other people, and so must therefore know everything there is to know about other people. However, it is evident in the second premise that because she learns something new about these people upon being released, she must not have known everything there is to know, though the facts she understood hold true, her experience yields new...
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...FEDERAL UNIVERSITY OYE-EKITI, EKITI STATE, NIGERIA. A TERM PAPER TITLE:- “THE ESSENCE/SUBSTANCE OF MAN” BY FACULTY: SCIENCE DEPARTMENT: MICROBIOLOGY COURSE TITLE: PHILOSOPHY AND LOGIC COURSE CODE: GST 205 CONTENT * Introduction * What is man * Philosophically * Scientifically * The essence and substance of man * What constitute man * Man as a dualist * Man as a monad * Man as a socialist * Man as a spiritual entity * Man as a physical entity * Intrinsic characteristics that man have in common * Illustration of the mental essence(when man is abnormal is he still half or full) INTRODUCTION The essence of man is the constituent of man which goes beyond his body alone but extends to his mind, soul, spirit and other attributes of man. But we cannot talk about the essence of man without the existence of man because without an existence of man, man’s essence is of no use and nothing to talk about. This brings about the proposition ‘existence precedes essence’. The proposition that existence precedes essence is a central claim of existentialism, which reverses the traditional philosophical view that the essence (the nature) of a thing is more fundamental and immutable than its existence (the mere fact of its being). To existentialists, human beings—through their consciousness—create their own values and determine a meaning for their life because the human being does not possess any inherent identity or value. By posing the acts that constitute...
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...Consciousness and its Place in Nature David J. Chalmers 1 Introduction1 Consciousness fits uneasily into our conception of the natural world. On the most common conception of nature, the natural world is the physical world. But on the most common conception of consciousness, it is not easy to see how it could be part of the physical world. So it seems that to find a place for consciousness within the natural order, we must either revise our conception of consciousness, or revise our conception of nature. In twentieth-century philosophy, this dilemma is posed most acutely in C. D. Broad’s The Mind and its Place in Nature (Broad 1925). The phenomena of mind, for Broad, are the phenomena of consciousness. The central problem is that of locating mind with respect to the physical world. Broad’s exhaustive discussion of the problem culminates in a taxonomy of seventeen different views of the mental-physical relation.2 On Broad’s taxonomy, a view might see the mental as nonexistent (“delusive”), as reducible, as emergent, or as a basic property of a substance (a “differentiating” attribute). The physical might be seen in one of the same four ways. So a fourby-four matrix of views results. (The seventeenth entry arises from Broad’s division of the substance/substance view according to whether one substance or two is involved.) At the end, three views are left standing: those on which mentality is an emergent characteristic of either a physical substance or a neutral substance,...
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...named differently and explained through objects materiality and soul divinity, the modern perception of the same correlation was emphasized by Descartes as body/mind problem. In the present paper, the essence of the problem is outlined in the context of one of the modern philosophies of mind, meaning physicalism. The main aims of this essay is to identify the corner stone of physicalist concept, its main supporting and opposing arguments, and distinguish which position is the strongest one and understand the reason why. Key words: physicalism, body/mind problem, knowledge, exclusion, consciousness. What is mind? In the history of human thought, there were various dilemmas which the brightest minds of their times were trying to solve and which remained enigmas until our times. The mind/body problem is one of those issues. While, in times of Aristotle and Plato, it was named differently and explained through the objects materiality and soul divinity, the modern perception of the same correlation was shaped by Descartes as body/mind problem. In the present paper, the essence of the problem is explained in the context of one of the modern philosophies of mind, meaning physicalism. The main aims of this essay is to identify the corner stone of physicalist concept, its main supporting and opposing arguments, and distinguish which argument is the strongest and why. First of all, it is worth to identify what Descartes meant by body/mind problem. According to his argument, mental...
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...By their very premise, the Zombie argument shows that the mind cannot be physical, as it threatens the argument upon which this premise stands on. As stated above, Zombies combine the presence of physical phenomenal features with the absence of non-phenomenal ones ie. Consciousness. This threatens the physicalist perspective as it suggests that not only can physical beings exist and function without a conscious mental state, but that the mind cannot be reduced to it’s physical properties. Saul Kripke’s metaphor regarding God and the creation of the universe helps me to further show how the theory of philosophical zombies threatens physicalism and the notion that, in the possibility of a zombie world, the mind cannot be phsysical. It follows...
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...Substance Dualism vs. Materialism At the center of the debate over human nature, the existence of free will, and the validity of science are two opposing viewpoints: materialism and dualism. Dualism is the belief that a person is made up of two kinds of substances: physical matter and above all else, an immaterial force known as the mind, or soul. Materialism refutes dualism, asserting that man and matter are inseparable, and that there is no mysterious, supernatural force directing our actions. Both viewpoints were derived in an attempt to place philosophy on firmer, more scientific ground. The arguments of Descartes and Hobbes for substance dualism and materialism, respectively, are representative of this debate. Although materialism and dualism have their own internal problems and flaws, I will argue that many of the objections that have been leveled against materialism can be met and that, on the whole, materialism is a much more plausible theory than dualism. The Greek philosopher Socrates believed that nothing could be certain without divine knowledge, which no man possesses. However, René Descartes, a 16th century French philosopher believed that some things could be determined to be certain as long as they were deduced through the proper methods. This method, known as the method of doubt, led Descartes to the foundational beliefs that became the basis for Substance Dualism. Simply put, Substance Dualism is the belief that there are two types of substances:...
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...To explore this question, it is crucial to define consciousness or a conscious experience, more to the point, does it even exist? In this paper I will mention the standard view about consciousness and the nature of conscious experiences that I can summate from Nagel’s “What it is like to be bat?” argument and Jackson’s knowledge argument in “Epiphenomenal Qualia.” The local worldview interprets that consciousness is basically a state of awareness of a person’s surroundings and sensations. Rather one’s own existence. Howbeit, if we adhere to this definition, all life could be contemplated as conscious. Plants are ‘aware’ of the direction of the sun, animals are ‘aware’ if they’re hungry or if a predator’s on their trail and so on. Either this state of being aware is a mere biological or chemical reaction to particular situations, smell, soil ingredients or awareness of we call consciousness is simply not relevant to such a simple definition. While naturally there is no one philosophical opinion on this matter, this is where Nagel’s argument comes into play. In “What is it like to be a bat” argument Nagel (1974, p. 436) believes that many different forms of animal life do have conscious experiences. Nevertheless, he also states the fact that if conscious experience exists in an organism at all, means that “there is something it is like to be that organism” (1974, p. 436) supporting the “subjective character of experience” (1974, p. 436). Over the years the...
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...independent substances. -Parmenides, Spinoza * Physicalist: only entities postulated by physical theory exist, and that mental processes will eventually be explained in terms of these entities as physical theory continues to evolve. * Behaviorism: dualism and physicalism both make categorical mistakes * Type identity theory: Type the tokenevery token instantiation of a single mental type corresponds to a physical token of a single physical type. * Anomalous monism: Token without typeType identity: the token-token correspondences can fall outside of the type-type correspondences. Davidson: mental events are identical with physical events, the mental is anomalous, and i.e. relationships between these mental events are not describable by strict physical laws. Supervenience vs realization * ------------------------------------------------- Functionalism: mental states (beliefs, desires, being in pain, tic.) are constituted solely by their functional role, i.e. they are causal relations to other mental states, sensory inputs and behavioral outputs. * Reductive: all mental states and properties will eventually be explained by scientific accounts of physiological processes and states. * Non-reductive: although the mind is not a separate substance, mental properties supervene on physical properties, or that the predicates and vocabulary used in mental descriptions and explanations are indispensable and cannot be reduced to the language and...
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...A Cybernetic Defense of Type Physicalism Abstract In this paper, I examine the tenability of type physicalism within the context of a second-order cybernetic analysis of phenomenality. I begin by describing the philosophical problem type physicalism attempts to resolve and follow up with an examination of arguments against type physicalism. I then describe how arguments against type physicalism tend to rely on the ontological distinction between system and observer. Next, I show that this distinction is purely conceptual and dissolves when phenomenality is analyzed from a second-order cybernetic perspective. Within this context, type physicalism remains a tenable solution to the mind-body problem so long as an isomorphic mapping between physical and psychological processes is possible. Introduction The motivation for type physicalism stems from empirical evidence of pervasive and systematic psychoneural correlations, that is, correlations between mental phenomena and brain processes. These correlations are systematic enough to allow scientists to successfully sense, transmit, analyze, and apply the language of neurons using an assortment of sophisticated imaging techniques and brain-computer interfaces. For instance, in 2003, Dr. Miguel Nicolelis, associate professor of neurobiology at the Duke University Medical Center, used a brain-computer interface system to successfully filter and utilize motor command impulses from the electrical activity of a primate brain to operate...
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...mental phenomena and its mystery Philosophy of human persons is always a difficult question for humankinds. We are the highest form of animals equipped with supreme functions. We not only have soul which is the principle of life, but we are also believed to have mind or consciousness which is much more functional, divine and peculiar to the soul. But often times, we are unaware of what we are having and how our body operates in our daily life. Therefore, many philosophers, psychologists, religionists or even mathematicians, and sciences have been actively trying to define the nature, attributes and affections of our brain/soul. There are many different views and perspectives on the soul and the mind-body problem, such as materialism, physicalism, dualism, mysterianism and so on… So, how exactly do we understand humankinds, and all living beings as a whole? How exactly do we understand our own self? Do both material and immaterial parts exist? If so, how do they relate to each other? Although most of these questions have convincing answers, I believe we are still in the mystery of defining the true nature of mental phenomena. (1) Thomas Nagel said that: “Conscious experience is a widespread phenomenon. It occurs at many levels of animal life, though we cannot be sure of its presence in the simpler organisms...” His main thesis is that fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is to be that organism – something it is like for...
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...PHIL 127: History of Ancient Philosophy Socrates and His Mission When is a Question Philosophical? Philosophical questions have answers. (A question that has no answer is not a question; it just masquerades as one.) But a question is philosophical for a particular culture at a particular time when no means of answering it are available – or, none of the prevailing methods have any authority. A problem is a philosophical problem when the way to go about answering the question is in question. An issue is a philosophical issue when the right way to settle the issue is at issue. A Philosophical Crisis If the claims in the previous paragraph are true, then 5th century Greece was in a philosophical crisis. It was a crisis in morality. In our culture we think of morality as being concerned with rules. Here are some rules – You should not kill. – You should not steal. – Don’t hit people. – Lying is wrong. – It’s wrong to promise to do something and then not do it. – You should not covet your neighbors wife, or his ox or his ass or his male or female slave, or anything that is your neighbor’s. – You should not lie with a man as with a woman. – Thou should not wear fabric woven of wool one way and linen the other. – Do (imperative) unto others as you would have them do unto you. – Help (imperative) other people who are in need when you can do so at no great risk or cost to yourself. Why do we think of morality as consisting of rules? This question is important...
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