Category: Mind
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Zombie Girl: But She’s Not There!
The Zombies were a 1960's British Invasion rock group that had a couple of smash singles before vanishing into the oblivion whence they sprang. Out and about one Saturday afternoon, surfing the FM band, I came across one of their hits, "She's Not There." I have heard it countless times, and it is probably playing…
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Can Consciousness Be Explained?
To answer this question we need to know what we mean by 'explain' and how it differs from 'explain away.' 1. An obvious point to start with is that only that which exists, or that which is the case, can be explained. One who explains the phenomenon of the tides in terms of the gravitational…
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Questions About Religion and Superstition. Superstitious Materialism
1. Is there a difference between religion and superstition, or is religion by its very nature superstitious? There seem to be two main views. One is that of skeptics and naturalists. For them, religion, apart perhaps from its ethical teaching, is superstitious in nature so that there could not be a religion free of superstition.…
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Four Uses of ‘Of’ and Non-Intentional Conscious States
The thesis of intentionality can be stated roughly as follows: Every consciousness is a consciousness of something. I claim that this Brentano thesis is false because of the existence of non-intentional states of consciousness. Peter Lupu understands and agrees but no one else hereabouts does. So I need to take a few steps back and issue some…
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Consciousness and Existence: Is Every Consciousness a Consciousness of What Exists?
What follows in purple are two quotations (from separate works) from the Ayn Rand Lexicon. If nothing exists, there can be no consciousness: a consciousness with nothing to be conscious of is a contradiction in terms. A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness,…
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Searle on Non-Intentional Mental States
Herewith, a quotation from John Searle that supports my contention that there are non-intentional mental states: Now clearly, not all our mental states are in this way directed or Intentional. For example, if I have a pain, ache, tickle, or itch, such conscious states are not in that sense directed at anything; they are not…
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Are There Non-Intentional Mental States?
The thesis of this post is that there are non-intentional mental states. To establish this thesis all I need is one good example. So consider the felt pain that ensues when I plunge my hand into extremely hot water. This felt pain or phenomenal pain is a conscious mental state. But it does not exhibit…
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Philosophy From the Twilight Zone: “The Lonely”
Rod Serling's Twilight Zone was an outstanding TV series that ran from 1959-1964. The episode "The Lonely" aired in November, 1959. I have seen it several times, thanks to the semi-annual Sci Fi channel TZ marathons. There is one in progress as I write. One can extract quite a bit of philosophical juice from "The Lonely"…
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Aquinas on Intellect’s Independence of Matter: Summa Contra Gentiles, II, 49, 8
In an earlier post on hylomorphic dualism, I said that Aquinas cannot do justice to his own insight into the independence of the intellect from matter from within the hylomorphic scheme of ontological analysis he inherits from Aristotle. His metaphysica generalis is at war with his special-metaphysical insight into the independence of intellect from matter. To…