Category: Mind
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Malcolm on Mysterianism
No, not Norman Malcolm, our Malcolm: Re: your recent post on Mysterianism, it seems that the central paragraph is this: And so it is with the mysterian materialist. He bids me accept propositions that as far as I can tell are not propositions at all. A proposition is a sense, but the 'propositions' he bids me…
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The Ultimate Mystery Meat
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Of Meat and Meaning
Learning more and more about a piece of meat won't make manifest how that meat means.
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The Mysterian Materialist Speaks
There are different sorts of materialism about the mind, among them eliminative materialism, identity-materialism, and functionalism. There is also mysterian materialism. Here is a little speech by a mysterian materialist: Look, we are just complex physical systems, and as such wholly understandable in natural-scientific terms, if not now in full, then in the future. And yet…
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Pascal Again on the Immateriality of the Subject of Experience
It is surprising what different people will read into and read out of a text. A reader challenged me to find a valid argument in Blaise Pascal, Pensees #108 (Krailsheimer, p. 57): "What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial." Rising…
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Pascal on the Subject of Experience: A Non Sequitur?
I recently quoted Blaise Pascal, Pensees #108 (Krailsheimer, p. 57): "What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial." A reader comments, "Doesn't P. 108 strike you as a hopeless non-sequitur, if we take it as an argument at all? Just…
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What am I?
Blaise Pascal, Pensees #108 (Krailsheimer, p. 57): What part of us feels pleasure? Is it our hand, our arm, our flesh, or our blood? It must obviously be something immaterial. Is it my eyeglasses that see yonder mountain? No, they are merely part of the instrumentality of vision. Is it my eyes that see the…
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Zombies and Other Minds
Zombies and Other Minds are both well-known philosophical topics, though Zombies are 'hotter': the heyday of Other Minds debates was back in the '50s and '60s. How are they related? Not by identity, though some do confuse the two topics. They are…
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The Problem of the Existence of Consciousness
I tend to the view that all philosophical problems can be represented as aporetic polyads. What's more, I maintain that philosophical problems ought to be so represented. You haven't begun to philosophize until you have a well-defined puzzle, a putative inconsistency of plausibilities. When you have an aporetic polyad on the table you have something…
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Could the Mind be the Brain?
Few philosophers nowadays would maintain the bald thesis that the mind is identical to the brain, but it is a view that one hears among the laity. So it is worth refuting, this being a blog that I hope is somewhat accessible to the proverbial 'educated layman.' (One of my motives in starting it over seven…
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Three Dualisms: Simple, Compound, and Hylomorphic
This post continues my critique of hylomorphic dualism in the philosophy of mind. (See Hylomorphism category.) I will argue that hylomorphic dualism inherits one of the difficulties of compound substance dualism. But to understand the latter, we need to contrast it with simple or pure substance dualism. By 'substance' I mean primary substance, prote ousia…
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Feser Defends Hylomorphic Dualism Against My Criticism
I want to thank Edward Feser for responding to my recent post, A Problem for the Hylomorphic Dualist. And while you are at Ed's site, please read his outstanding entry, So you think you understand the cosmological argument?, an entry with which I agree entirely. Ed writes, Naturally, since I am a hylemorphic dualist, I…
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Butchvarov: Objects, Entities, and Transcendental Idealism
This entry extends and clarifies my post, Blackman Versus Butchvarov: Objects, Entities, and Modes of Existence. Preliminaries For Butchvarov, all consciousness is intentional. (There are no non-intentional consciousnesses.) And all intentionality is conscious intentionality. (There is no "physical intentionality" to use George Molnar's term.) So, for Butchvarov, 'consciousness' and 'intentionality' are equivalent terms. Consciousness, by…
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A Problem for the Hylomorphic Dualist
A position in the philosophy of mind that is currently under-represented and under-discussed is Thomistic or hylomorphic dualism. Whereas the tendency of the substance dualist is to identify the person with his soul or mind, the hylomorphic approach identifies the person with a soul-body composite in which soul stands to body as form (morphe) stands…
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Self-Reference and Individual Concepts
The following can happen. You see yourself but without self-recognition. You see yourself, but not as yourself. Suppose you walk into a room which unbeknownst to you has a mirror covering the far wall. You are slightly alarmed to see a wild-haired man with his fly open approaching you. You are looking at yourself but you don't…