Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Mind

  • Eben Alexander: “We Are Conscious in Spite of Our Brains”

    I am at the moment listening to Dennis Prager interview Dr. Eben Alexander. Prager asked him whether he now maintains, after his paranormal experiences, that consciousness is independent of the brain.  Alexander made a striking reply: "We are conscious in spite of our brains."  And then he made some remarks to the effect that the brain…

  • Plantinga Reviews Nagel

    I am beginning to feel a little sorry for Thomas Nagel.  It looks as if the only favorable mainstream reviews he will receive for his efforts in Mind and Cosmos  will be from theists.  What excites the theists' approbation, of course, are not Nagel's positive panpsychist and natural-teleological suggestions, which remain within the ambit of naturalism, but his assault…

  • What is Reason? How Did it Arise? Nagel and Non-Intentional Teleology

    This is the sixth in a series of posts, collected here, on Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos (Oxford 2012).  In my last post I suggested that Nagel needs a principle of plenitude in order to explain the actual existence, as opposed to the mere possibility, of rational organisms.  But maybe not, maybe teleology will turn the…

  • Why Can’t Reason Be a Fluke? Intelligibility and the Existence of Rational Animals

    This is the fifth in a series of posts, collected here, on Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos.  The question that concerns me in this entry is whether we can forge a link between the intelligibility of nature and the existence of rational beings.  For Nagel, the existence of rational animals is not a brute fact…

  • Is Neuroscience Relevant to Understanding Prayer and Meditation?

    One aspect of contemporary scientism is the notion that great insights are to be gleaned from neuroscience about the mind and its operations.  If you want my opinion, the pickin's are slim indeed and confusions are rife. This is your brain on prayer: A test subject is injected with a dye that allows the researcher to study…

  • Elliot Sober on Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos

    This is the fourth in a series of posts on Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos (Oxford 2012).  The posts are conveniently collected under the rubric Nagel, Thomas. Before proceeding with my account of Chapter 4, I will pause in this entry to consider Elliot Sober's serious, substantial, and sober Boston Review review.  Sober's sobriety lapses…

  • Can Reason Be Understood Naturalistically? More Notes on Nagel

    This is the third in a series of posts on Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos (Oxford 2012).  The first is an overview, and the second addresses Nagel's reason for rejecting theism.  This post will comment on some of the content in Chapter 4, "Cognition." In Chapter 4,  Nagel tackles the topic of reason, both theoretical and…

  • Nagel’s Reason for Rejecting Theism

    This is the second in a series.  My overview of Thomas Nagel's new book, Mind and Cosmos, is here. I agree with Nagel that mind is not a cosmic accident.  Mind in all of its ramifications (sentience, intentionality, self-awareness, cognition, rationality, normativity in general) could not have arisen from mindless matter.  To put it very roughly,…

  • Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Overview

    I think I shall have to write a number of posts on this exciting and idea-rich book by one of our best philosophers.  Here is the first. Short (128 pp.) and programmatic, Thomas Nagel's new book explores the prospects of an approach in the philosophy of mind that is naturalistic yet not materialistic.  His approach is…

  • Am I a Body or Do I Have a Body?

    In his latest and last book, Mortality, Christopher Hitchens writes, "I don't have a body, I am a body." (86) He goes on to observe that he has "consciously and regularly acted as if this was [sic] not true."  It is a curious fact that mortalists are among the worst abusers of the fleshly vehicle. …

  • A Theism-Materialism Combo?

    If the reality of spirit and the reality of free will cannot be encountered in ourselves, in the depths of our subjectivity, why should we think that they  can be encountered outside ourselves — in God, for example? I don't understand those who attempt to combine theism with materialism about the human mind.  I don't…

  • On the Logical Possibility of Reincarnation

    London Ed says that reincarnation is logically possible.  I agree.  For my use of the first-person singular pronoun does not refer to my (animated) body alone.  Surely I am not identical to my body.  If I were, then reincarnation would be logically impossible.  As Ed says, there is nothing in the sense or reference of…

  • Suppose You Build a Conscious Robot. . .

     . . . would that solve the mind-body problem? One aspect of the mind-body problem is the problem of the subjectivity of conscious experience. As I have argued on numerous occasions, the subjectivity of conscious experience and the manner in which it  connects to its physical substratum in the brain cannot be rendered intelligible from an…

  • The Ultimate in Self-Alienation

    Dennett is so alienated from his own nature as a conscious, thinking being that he denies qualia and holds an ascriptivist theory of intentionality.  It is amazing how, in the grip of a theory, one can bring oneself to deny the self-evident.

  • Homunculus

    The soul anthropomorphized: