Category: Mind
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Consciousness and the Conservation of Energy
This just over the transom: I've been reading your blog recently and find it to be very good. [. . .] Since you question mortalism, a doctrine I've had some doubts about myself, I thought you might find a use for some ideas of mine on the matter. Posting on machineslikeus.com, I encountered someone who…
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Consciousness, Free Will, and Illusion
This just over the transom: I'm an occasional reader of your wonderful blog, "Maverick Philosopher". I was wondering if I could probe you a bit regarding an argument you make in your post, "Could Freedom of the Will be an Illusion?" You make the statement, "An illusion is an illusion to consciousness, so that if…
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Two Behaviorists Post Coitum
"It was good for you, how was it for me?" This old joke is well-nigh a one-sentence refutation of philosophical behaviorism.
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Modern Materialism as Essentially Cartesian
Arthur W. Collins, The Nature of Mental Things, Notre Dame 1987, pp. 61-62: Modern materialists have been so profoundly convinced by the general structure of Cartesian thinking about the mind that they manage to promote only a materialist version of a philosophy of mind that is essentially Cartesian in its underlying attitudes and its extensive…
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A Hylomorphic Solution to the Interaction Problem?
Interactionist substance dualism in the philosophy of mind is supposed to face a devastating objection, the interaction objection. In the first part of this post I will present this objection in its traditional form and suggest that it is not all that serious. In the second part, however, I take the objection seriously and consider…
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The Pairing Objection to Substance Dualism
As I understand the Pairing Objection to substance dualism it goes like this. Let m1 and m2 be mental tokens of type M and b1 and b2 brain tokens of type B, and suppose that M-type events cause B-type events. Suppose m1 and m2 both occur at time t, and b1 and b2 both occur at…
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Supervenience, Emergence, Mind, and Magic
Peter Lupu has come out in favor of emergentism in the philosophy of mind. Here is an argument he could use to defend the thesis that mental properties are emergent properties: 1. Materialistic Anti-Dualism: Human beings are nothing more than complex material systems. 2. Anti-Reductivism: Mental properties are not identical to physical properties, nor do…
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Does Substance Dualism Explain Subjectivity? The Nagel-McGinn Parity Argument
In my humble opinion, materialist theories of mind are all of them quite hopeless. All of them founder on the reef of irreducible subjectivity. But is substance dualism in a better position than materialism when it comes to explaining the subjectivity of conscious experience? Colin McGinn, drawing on Thomas Nagel, thinks that the same problem…
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Classical Theism and Global Supervenience Physicalism
This is a paper I read at the Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy, Boston, Massachusetts, August 10-15, 1998. It explains the notions of strong and global supervenience, notions which will serve as foils in getting a handle on the concept of emergence. ABSTRACT: Could a classical theist be a physicalist? Although a negative answer to this…
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Could I Be a Brain-Body Composite?
The upshot of an earlier argument was that I cannot be a soul-body composite. So if I have a soul, then I am identical with it. This is a conclusion that Roderick Chisholm also arrived at: If we say that (1) I am a thinking being and (2) that thinking beings and souls are the…
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Could I Have Parts?
A strange question, but one to which sense can be attached. What I am asking is whether or not the self can be a composite entity, a whole of parts. Or am I a simple entity? The question has a dualist, a materialist, and an idealist form. Dualist: Could I be a mind-body or soul-body…
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The Value of Consciousness
If you are ever in Flagstaff, Arizona in search of a coffee house, I recommend Macy's. I met up with Peter Lupu there on Saturday and an excellent discussion ensued fueled in part by by my triple espresso con panna and his triple latte. We discussed consciousness, its existence, meaning, and value.
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Could Freedom of the Will be an Illusion?
Could freedom of the will in the strong or unconditional 'could have done otherwise' sense be an illusion? Suppose A and B are incompatible but possible courses of action, and I am deliberating as to whether I should do A or B. (Should I continue with this blogging business, or devote more time to less…
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On Searle: Irreducibility Without Dualism?
As I said earlier, John R. Searle is a great philosophical critic. Armed with muscular prose, common sense, and a surly (Searle-ly?) attitude, he shreds the sophistry of Dennett and Co. But I have never quite understood his own solution to the mind-body problem. Herewith, some notes on one aspect of my difficulties and his.
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Searle, Dennett, and Zombies
A zombie is a critter that is physically and behaviorally exactly like a human being (or any being that we consider to be conscious) but lacks consciousness. That is a stipulative definition, so don't argue with me about it. Just accept it. I'll use 'zombie' to refer to human zombies and won't worry about cat…