In this dissertation, I provide the logical foundation for a solution to the mind-body problem, a solution which is directly based upon Wilfrid Sellars' analogical theory of thought and sensation. Chapters I-IV are devoted to an interpretation, analysis, and constructive criticism of Sellars' notions of the inner thought episode and the sensing state. My analysis is offered in support of three general contentions: I argue that the postulation of inner thought episodes and sensing states is necessary for adequate (...) explanations of agent behavior; I hope to show how the analogical theory of inner thought episodes and sensing states actually generates a legitimate problem concerning the relationship between the mental and the physical; and I demonstrate the importance of the notion of analogy in philosophical theory construction. I suggest that the role of analogy provides the key for the solution to the mind-body problem. ;Chapter One is essentially introductory in nature. I offer an interpretation and reconstruction of Sellars' illustrative story entitled "The Jonesean Myth" . The "Myth" provides a suitable representation of Sellars' overall philosophy of mind. But perhaps more importantly, the "Myth" is a paradigm example of what I shall call the analogical method of inquiry, a method employed for the introduction of the notions of inner thought episodes and sensing states. In brief, I want to show how the "Myth" provides the logical basis for a theory adequate for explanations of the mental activity of agents. ;Chapters II and III are closely related. In Chapter II, I present a theory of linguistic representation which will serve as the analogical base for the introduction and characterization of the inner thought episode. In Chapter III, I develop the notion of the inner thought episode , and I examine its nature and status as a theoretical construct. Chapters II and III are thus related by the Sellarsian thesis that the concept of mental representation is to be understood in terms which apply, primarily, to characterizations of the features of the linguistic framework presented in Chapter II. ;In Chapter IV, I argue, again following Sellars' lead, that the explication of the notion of the perceptual thought episode requires the introduction of a second distinct sort of inner episode, namely, that of the sense experience or sensing state. The argument offered in Chapter IV is designed to show that sensing states are theoretical constructs, the reference to which is essential for explanations concerning the occurrence and nature of perceptual representations. Sensing states are introduced and characterized by an analogical extension of families of predicates which are suitable for the identification and description of ordinary physical objects . ;In Chapter V, I propose a solution to the mind-body problem, as the latter is generated by the analysis given to the thought episode and the sensing state . In general terms, I argue that any purported solution to the mind-body problem must provide an explanatory basis for agent behavior, and it is for this reason that I reject "reductionistic" theories of mind of the kind represented by logical behaviorism, type-identity physicalism, and Turing Machine functionalism. My solution, instead, involves a commitment to what I shall call token physicalism, a thesis which is contingent upon the development of a theory of neurophysiology which is rich enough to capture, in an analogical sense, both the intentional features of the thought episode, and the occurrent-like qualities which are exemplified by the sensing state. (shrink)

This paper was chosen by The Philosopher’s Annual as one of the ten best articles appearing in print in 2000. Reprinted in Volume XXIII of The Philosopher’s Annual. In his very influential book David Chalmers argues that if physicalism is true then every positive truth is a priori entailed by the full physical description – this is called “the a priori entailment thesis – but ascriptions of phenomenal consciousness are not so entailed and he concludes that Physicalism is false. As (...) he puts it, “zombies” are metaphysically possible. I attempt to show that this argument is refuted by considering an analogous argument in the mouth of a zombie. The conclusion of this argument is false so one of the premises is false. I argue at length that this shows that the original conceivability argument also has a false premise and so is invalid. (shrink)

Prevailing theories of consciousness may be characterized as either a physicalist view of mind with material building blocks that grow in complexity unto an emergent conscious experience, or as a dualistic model in which mind-body interaction is taken as the interface of conscious intent and unconscious bodily processing. Roger Penrose supports a model of consciousness that goes beyond dualism by adding a third domain [19]. The Three World model describes interconnected yet independent aspects of consciousness: Physical, Mental (...) & Platonic. These three worlds are grounded in the three axioms of quantum mechanics: measurement, superposition and entanglement. The Mental World corresponds to the superposition principle in which all possible future realities are superposed as potentials before a choice is made. The superposition is analogous to the choices we make everyday. In the Physical World, the measurement principles states that the quantum system must collapse the superposed possibilities into a single actuality. The most peculiar phenomenon in quantum mechanics is entanglement. Quantum systems may be entangled in a timeless and spaceless way such that they will still be connected despite separation in space or time. The Platonic World is akin to entanglement, because mathematics and conceptual forms are unchanging regardless of space or time. Finally, a new model called Fractal Trialism is proposed which describes how there is a nested trialism within each of the three worlds in order to elaborate their interconnectedness. This model describes digital computers, quantum computers and shared experience. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}. (shrink)

In this chapter, the author wants to respond to Noam Chomsky's claim, repeated often in different ways. He argues both that Chomsky's own position suffers from inconsistency – he dismisses the apparent problem while at the same time promoting it as a “mystery” – and that his principal reason for maintaining his position, that there is no clear conception of body, or the physical, with which to contrast the mind, or the mental, does not really dispense with the (...) issue that rightfully worries philosophers. A good analogy for the mind–body problem is the “naturalization” debate in metaethics; indeed, naturalization is a term that occurs often in the context of both debates. Chomsky explicitly disparages the claim that the mental–physical relation poses an “explanatory gap." Maybe, as Chomsky says concerning at least some mental attributes, it will always remain a mystery how the organized matter of our brains can support these features. (shrink)

In the history of thought the relation between the mind and the body has been discussed in terms of various analogies. Plato, for example, examined the analogy of a man and his clothes and of the music of an instrument and the instrument itself; Aristotle advocated the analogy of an instrument's capacity and the instrument itself; Descartes alluded to that of a pilot and his ship; and Ryle derided that of a ghost and a machine.What I (...) wish to discuss, however, are the analogies used by contemporary philosophers to explain their theory that the mind is the brain, that the mind's states, capacities and qualities are the brain's states, capacities and qualities, that our thoughts and our thinking are brain elements and brain movements and that our mental experiences, such as having images or sensations, are brain processes. Various analogies have been advanced to explain the sense in which one of the former is one of the latter. (shrink)

This article discusses Hilary Putnam's views on the mind-body problem, by locating them in the general context of a satisfying pluralistic naturalism that he tried to articulate throughout his entire philosophical career. The first attempt in this direction was computational functionalism, his version of psychological functionalism centered on the analogy between mind/body and software/hardware, which (differently from David Lewis and others) he came to think of as an empirical hypothesis. That was a very successful proposal; (...) however, later Putnam abandoned it and embraced what he called 'liberal functionalism'. The reason for this change of mind was twofold: on the one hand, Putnam reached the conclusion that computational functionalism was incompatible with his views on semantic externalism; on the other hand, he began to think that mental states, besides being compositionally plastic (i.e., two entities can be in the same psychological state without being in the same physical state), are also computationally plastic (i.e., two entities can be in the same psychological state without being in the same functional state).In conclusion, I will argue that 'liberal functionalism' opened an interesting perspective for a successful non-reductive version of naturalism. (shrink)

This paper argues that to progress with philosophical issues concerning brain-mind relations one needs to combine philosophical reflection and empirical research with theoretical model building. Philosophy and abstract theorizing alone do not carry us far, as will be illustrated by analyzing the views about panpsychism by the quantum physicist David Bohm, who builds his reasoning on quantum mechanical analogies. His reflection around the notion of active information, adopted in his causal interpretation of quantum mechanics to replace the Newtonian notion (...) of force, turns out to be a fallacy of equivocation. His other line of reasoning to specify matter-mind unity in terms of soma-significance and signa-somatic processes yields problems of its own. To illustrate empirical investigations on brain-mind relations, I shall present the tripartite model of the experiential selfhood and the related Self-Me-I index as proposed by the neuroscientists Fingelkurts and Fingelkurts, along with their background theory called operational architectonics (OA) of brain-mind functioning. The model states that the three components of selfhood, Self, Me, and I, correlate to three distinct operationally synchronized cortical areas, the frontal cortex, the right posterior cortex, and the left posterior cortex. The philosophical and practical benefits of their framework will be exemplified by presenting the results of a series of studies with the philosopher Tarja Kallio-Tamminen about the effects of meditation reflected in the Self-Me-I index. (shrink)

Imagine slicing your hand with a steak knife. Inevitably, this leads to a characteristic unpleasant sensation, and just as reliably, to a withdrawal of the wounded limb. But can this rather mundane fact--and other similar facts--shed any light on the mind-body problem or the issue of the role of experience in causing behavior? In my dissertation, I explore this issue head on, and in the process clarify and criticize the arguments of philosophers who have given an affirmative answer (...) to this question--philosophers such as William James and Herbert Spencer. These arguments have coupled evidence like the above with the fact that human beings have evolved, in order to make the case that epiphenomenalism with respect to qualia is false. My first task will be to formulate a rigorous version of a James-Spencer style argument, which will occupy us in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 is dedicated to answering a number of objections to the argument, in an effort to show that if there is a problem with it, this problem lies elsewhere. Chapter 3 explores alternative arguments in the spirit of the original one formulated in Chapter 1, and discusses any resulting effects on the plausibility of the conclusion. Chapter 4 is the capstone chapter of the dissertation. In it, I discuss a crucial objection to all arguments in the spirit of that given in the first chapter--namely, that physicalism has analogous flaws to epiphenomenalism where accommodating the relevant evidence is concerned. My conclusions in this final chapter are twofold. First, that even if there is no fatal flaw in the general strategy the evolutionary argument employs, it works against all forms of dualism, not just epiphenomenalism. And second, the accusations made in the objection are correct; physicalism suffers from problems analogous to those faced by epiphenomenalism. Although the primary findings of the dissertation are negative, there are many lessons we can take from them along the way. Most prominent among them is an improved perspective on the appropriate roles of empirical findings and armchair philosophical theorizing in debate over the mind-body problem. (shrink)

Isaac Newton’s views on the mind–body relation are of interest not only because of their somewhat unique departure from popular early modern conceptions of mind and its relation to body, but also because of their connections with other aspects of Newton’s thought. In this paper I argue that (1) Newton accepted an interesting sort of mind–body monism, one which defies neat categorization, but which clearly departs from Cartesian substance dualism, and (2) Newton took the (...) power by which we move our bodies by thought alone to be a member of the family of forces that includes gravity and electricity. Time and again, Newton draws an analogy between the ultimate cause and nature of the volitional powers of mind and the ultimate cause and nature of these other forces. (shrink)

This paper puts forward the hypothesis that consciousness might be linked to matter in a way which is more sophisticated than the traditional macroscopic Cartesian hypothesis suggests.Advances in the biophysics of the nervous system, not only on the level of its macroscopic functioning but also on the level of individual ion channels, have made the question of how finely consciousness is tied to matter and its dynamics more important. Quantum mechanics limits the attainable resolution and puts into doubt the idea (...) of an infinitely fine-woven attachment. A recent approach to physics rekindles such a rationalist hope. Endophysics focuses on the global implications of microscopic computer simulations of chemical and biophysical processes. A complete artificial universe can be set up in the computer. It produces non-classical and nonlocal effects inside — on the interface that exists between an internal observer (fluid neuron) and the rest of the world. This interface is finer than any brain property to which the status of the mind-body interface has been attributed hitherto. A new class of experiments becomes possible in the artificial world and, by analogy, in the real world. Magnetic resonance imaging experiments, routinely performed under open-loop conditions, can be repeated under psychophysical (closed-loop) conditions — in search for microscopically induced changes in the perceived and measured structure of the world. (shrink)

The paper defends the philosophical method of "regimentation" by example, especially in relation to the theory of mind. The starting point is the Place-Smart after-image argument: A green after-image will not be located outside the skull, but if we cracked open your skull, we won't find anything green in there either. (If we did, you'd have some disturbing medical news.) So the after-image seems not to be in physical space, suggesting that it is non-physical. In response, I argue that (...) the green blob is a fictional object, while assuming a weak sort of realism about fictional objects (where they exist as mind-dependent objects). This view can look like dualism, however, but I try to interpret it not as implying metaphysical dualism, but rather as reflecting a dualism of theory. Roughly, there can be a theory of mind-independent objects, and a theory of mind-dependent objects. Yet there are principled reasons why we cannot integrate the two into a consistent whole, for reasons related to Russell's vicious circle principle. Most of the paper motivates this by an analogy between the physicalist's theory of the world, and drawing a map with a complete representation of the map itself. Regimentation unearths the inconsistencies that arise, when trying to represent as part of a model the very representations used to define the model. (shrink)

Argues that relations between mind and body are analogous to those between subject matter and style in art.

The machine-organism analogy has played a pivotal role in the history of Western philosophy and science. Notwithstanding its apparent simplicity, it hides complex epistemological issues about the status of both organism and machine and the nature of their interaction. What is the real object of this analogy: organisms as a whole, their parts or, rather, bodily functions? How can the machine serve as a model for interpreting biological phenomena, cognitive processes, or more broadly the social and cultural transformations (...) of the relations between individuals, and between individuals and the environments in which they live? Wired Bodies. New Perspectives on the Machine-Organism Analogy provides the reader with some of the latest perspectives on this vast debate, addressing three major topics:1) the development of a ‘mechanistic’ framework in medicine and biology; 2) the methodological issues underlying the use of ‘simulation’ in cognitive science; 3) the interaction between humans and machines according to 20th-century epistemology. (shrink)

Does God have a mind? Western theism has traditionally construed God as an intentional agent who acts on creation and in relation to humankind. God loves, punishes, and redeems. God's intentionality has traditionally been construed in analogy to human intentionality, which in turn has often presumed a supernatural dualism. Developments in cognitive science, however, render supernatural dualism suspect for explaining the human mind. How, then, can we speak of the mind of God? Borrowing from Daniel Dennett's (...) intentional stance, I suggest that analogical reasoning regarding the mind of God be abandoned in favor of an ontologically agnostic approach that treats God as an intentional system. In this approach, God's purposive action is an explanatory feature of the believer's universe, a real pattern that informs our values and beliefs about the world and our place in it. (shrink)

As study of knowledge, epistemology attempts at identifying its necessary and sufficient conditions and defining its sources, structure and limits. From this pointof view, until present, there are no applied approaches to the Romanian archaeology. Consequently, my present paper presents an attempt to explore the structural characteristics of the knowledge creation process through the analysis of the results of a series of interviews conducted on Romanian archaeologists. The interviews followed a qualitative approach built upon a semi-structured frame. Apparent data saturation (...) was reached after four interviews within initial target group (senior researchers with institutional authority). Under these conditions a decision was made to continue the interviews within a secondary control group (young doctoral or post-doc researchers guided by members of the initial target group) in order to both verify the observed data saturation and to assess the impact of the attitude of senior researchers towards scientific research on the younger generation. The preliminary results allow to assert that Romanian archaeology is still caught in a highly conservative and intradisciplinarian manner of knowledge production with a negative effect on both new knowledgeproduction and future specialists’ education. (shrink)

In some areas of cognitive science we are confronted with ultrafast cognition, exquisite context sensitivity, and scale-free variation in measured cognitive activities. To move forward, we suggest a need to embrace this complexity, equipping cognitive science with tools and concepts used in the study of complex dynamical systems. The science of movement coordination has benefited already from this change, successfully circumventing analogous paradoxes by treating human activities as phenomena of self-organization. Therein, action and cognition are seen to be emergent in (...) ultrafast symmetry breaking across the brain and body; exquisitely constituted of the otherwise trivial details of history, context, and environment; and exhibiting the characteristic scale-free signature of self-organization. (shrink)

The recent studies on the relations between humanism or humanists and jurisprudence convince that Reneaissance, especially in XVIth century, when the national states began to raise, belonged to the periods of increased interest in the issue of law. Although Erasmus was not a layer, nor he introduced in any of his works a complete theory of law, he maintained close relations with many leading theoreticians of the law and jurists and sometimes spoke in the legal discussions of his age. Among (...) hist most important works concerning the matter of law were: Institutio principis Christiani, Ratio seu Methodus verae theologiae, Christiani matrimonii institutio, De interdicto esu carnium and Ecclesiastes. In the paper I’m going to concentrate on this latter work, in which Erasmus discusses the significance of preaching, preacher and widely understood Christian rhetoric. In the Ecclesiastes Erasmus touches the law subject with the special emphasis on historical character of law and relations between the divine law, the law of Christ and the law of Nature. After a short discussion about his understaning of law I will concentrate on the essential differentiation between the letter of law and the spirit of law, and I will point at proposed by Erasmus ways of introduction of law into human life. Erasmus, on the one hand, escaped a rigidity and abstraction of law and, on the other, he neutralised an aspect of the coercion of law. In his solution Erasmus appreciated the political dimension of preaching and acknowledged preacher as a more important guide of the people, than ruler. I’m going to interpret the Erasmian concept of preaching as an rhetorical mean of introduction of law in analogical way to “introduction” proposed by Plato in his Nomoi. (shrink)

Simmias' famous epiphenomenalist analogy of the soul-body relation to the harmony and strings of a lyre leads to Socrates' initial refutation and subsequent prolonged defense of soul's immortality in the Phaedo. It also yields in late antiquity significant treatments of the harmony relation by Plotinus and Porphyry that present a larger context for viewing the nature of harmony in the soul and the psycho-somatic compound. But perhaps the most detailed treatment of the musical analogy, and certainly the (...) most radical, is to be found in Gregory of Nyssa's De Hominis Opificio. Gregory's remarkable development of the musical instrument analogy provides a multi-layered analysis of interrelated causality on the mechanistic, physiological, psycho-somatic and intellectual/spiritual planes. Gregory not only sees mind/soul and body as radically equal and yet multilayered in their mutual development; he also refuses to restrict mind to the brain alone, for all physiological systems, in his view, are holistically and individually expressive of mind's activity. Gregory's theory is more innovative than Augustine's view of the mind/soul-body relation and, in my view, the most important account between Plotinus and Aquinas. (shrink)

Enlightenment optimism over mankind's progress was often voiced in terms of botanical growth by key figures such as John Millar; the mind's cultivation marked the beginning of this process. For agriculturists such as Arthur Young cultivation meant an advancement towards virtue and civilization; the cultivation of the mind can similarly be seen as an enlightenment concept which extols the human potential for improvable reason. In the course of this essay I aim to explore the relationship between ‘culture’ and (...) ‘cultivation’ through botanical metaphor. By using the recurring motif of the mind's cultivation as a site from which to explore enlightenment views on female understanding, I investigate how far concerns with human progress extended to the female mind. I examine the language of botany and cultivation in texts by authors such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Anna Laetitia Barbauld alongside that of Rousseau and Millar. Wollstonecraft's appropriation and subsequent inversion of the conventional cultivation metaphor, for example, demonstrates her desire to draw attention to society's neglect of women's educational potential by substituting images of enlightened growth with those of luxuriant decay. By pushing this analogy further she indicates how society has cultivated women rearing them like exotic flowering plants or ‘luxuriants’ where ‘strength of body and mind are sacrificed to libertine notions of beauty’. I discuss the antipastoral rationalism which enables her to unmask the false sentiment behind this traditional metaphoric association between women and flowers arguing that such familiar tropes are the language of male desire and are indicative of women's problematic relationship to culture. (shrink)

What is the body? How was it culturally constructed, conceived, and cultivated before and after the advent of rationalism and modern science? This interdisciplinary study elaborates a cultural genealogy of the body and its legacies to modernity by tracing its crucial redefinition from a live anatomical entity to disembodied, mechanical and virtual analogs. The study ranges from Baroque, pre-Cartesian interpretations of body and embodiment, to the Cartesian elaboration of ontological difference and mind-body dualism, and it (...) concludes with the parodic and violent aftermath of this legacy to the French Enlightenment. It engages work by philosophical authors such as Montaigne, Descartes and La Mettrie, as well as literary works by d'Urfé, Corneille and the Marquis de Sade. The examination of sexuality and the emergence of sexual difference as a dominant mode of embodiment are central to the book's overall design. The work is informed by philosophical accounts of the body (Nietzsche, Foucault, Merleau-Ponty), by feminist theory (Butler, Irigaray, Bordo), as well as by literary and cultural historians (Scarry, Stewart, Bynum, etc.) and historians of science (Canguilhem, Pagel, and Temkin), among others. It will appeal to scholars of literature, philosophy, French studies, critical theory, feminist theory, cultural historians and historians of science and technology. Dalia Judovitz is Professor of French, Emory University. She is also author of Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit and Subjectivity and Representation in Decartes: The Origins of Modernity. (shrink)

Educational philosophy in English-speaking countries tends to be informed mainly by analytic philosophy common to Western thinking. A welcome alternative is provided by pragmatism in the tradition of Peirce, James and Dewey. Still, the habit of the so-called linguistic turn has a firm grip in terms of analytic philosophy based on the logic of non-contradiction as the excluded middle. A body∼mind approach pertains to the edusemiotic turn that this article elucidates. Importantly, semiotics is not illogical but is informed (...) by the paradoxical logic of the included middle. The process of reasoning is however indirect or mediated; it involves active interpretation (in a variety of forms) versus direct representation; it is analogical and connects what are otherwise doomed to remain isolated substances of body versus mind with a separation of knowledge and action. Analysing and synthesising the philosophies of Charles Sanders Peirce and Gilles Deleuze, together with a brief excursion into the cutting-edge science of coordination dynamics, this article will demonstrate how the body∼mind assemblage is created in practice, and what may be the implications of such a stance for educational philosophy and pedagogical practice. (shrink)

If the argument from analogy is an argument for other minds it must rely on a single case, The correlation of your mind with your body. If instead it only attempts to show that certain sorts of experiences are associated with other bodies, It can rely on innumerable correlations of your experiences with your behavior. Having determined in this way that ostensive memories are associated with another body and that they are the kind one would expect (...) if one mind had been associated with this body throughout its existence, You can then offer another argument to this effect--And you could do so even if your own memories associated your own experiences with a succession of different bodies. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to show that McGinn’s argument from analogy for the possibility of human cognitive closure survives the critique raised on separate occasions by Dennett and Kriegel. I will distinguish between linguistic and non-linguistic cognitive closure and argue that the analogy argument from animal non-linguistic cognitive closure goes untouched by the objection Dennett and Kriegel raises.

There is a need to disentangle various distinct kinds of claim. The body may be important in schooling, though not in education. Movement, sport, fitness and health need to be distinguished. Does sport improve character? Does education imply knowledge about matters of health? Is learning to dance analogous to either learning to play cricket or learning to play a musical instrument? The most challenging questions concern whether the body provides an alternative route to knowledge, if so of what. (...) For example, is ballet a unique form of language with its own intrinsic value, an alternative way of arriving at valued propositional knowledge, or does it provide access to a unique kind of knowledge? The conclusion is drawn that none of these claims is sustainable in terms that make them of any great educational significance. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mind, Theaters, and the Anatomy of ConsciousnessDonald Beecher"All unified theories of cognition today involve theater metaphors."—Bernard J. BaarsAmong the most perplexing challenges for cognitive philoso-phers are those pertaining to representationalism, Gilbert Ryle's denial of the "ghost in the machine," the languages of cognition, and the "self" as the one-time audience and author of consciousness.1 Each of these topics can be discussed metaphorically in terms of the theater. The (...) mind is a kind of acting space in which thoughts and images are in some fashion prepared and represented in rapid sequence. Consciousness is a theatrical machine behind which there is a director who helps to determine how the narrative of the mind will play itself out. The discrete "I" is not only the prompter of consciousness, but its audience, receiving all that is played in the mind's theater. Or, in the words of C. S. Sherrington, "each waking day is a stage dominated for good or ill, in comedy, farce or tragedy by a dramatis persona, the 'self,' and so it will be until the curtain drops."2 The problem, however, is that in matters so difficult to comprehend as the workings of the human brain and the mind operations attached to it, metaphors develop vectors of their own that shade and nuance understanding in ways that obstruct the plasticity of analysis. For this reason, theater analogies in relation to consciousness have been widely endorsed in characterizing its distinctive operations, yet widely criticized for epitomizing the philosophical thinking in the past (and the present) that detaches consciousness from the emotions, the body, and the material world. For the latter reason, the metaphor of [End Page 1] the theater will generally be found wanting, as it is in Dennett's assault on what he labels "the Cartesian theater." And yet there are compelling reasons why this metaphor may persist for a time to come as the image of choice for illustrating the operations of consciousness.Arguably, the earliest intimations of mind as resembling a theater emerged at the beginning of the sixteenth century. It was not only an age that fostered a renewed interest in dramatized spectacle, but one that confronted, through theater metaphors, the illusory nature of human experience. The rise of the modern theater, and speculations upon reality in relation to happenings in the mind, are quite separate phenomena, but, arguably, a sense of the theater as a place of memory, of illusions projected as realities, and of experience provided the best "thought experiment" for dealing with the paradoxes of mentation. In fact, the emerging sense of reality as an illusion was tantamount to a major paradigm shift, one that has remained at the center of western philosophy from the time of Descartes to the present day. That there could be a disparity between the phenomena of mind and the world of extension was a watershed in epistemological thinking, and it followed, as a matter of course, that the illusions associated with perception would find expression in the illusions associated with theatrical representation. The result was that the medieval metaphor of the speculum, emphasizing the mind as the faithful reflection of reality, was replaced by the theater, in which the necessary conventions permitting belief came to bear on the understanding of the data which the mind represented to itself. In short, conventions are to the theater what adequate representation is to the mind—the necessary slippages whereby perceptions function as reality.Parallel insights into the mind as a theater came about through sixteenth-century inquiries into mnemonics techniques for the improvement of memory. This metaphor of mind came about by analogy with memory theaters of the kind epitomized in the Idea del Theatro (1550) of Giulio Camillo. He chose the theater simply as the most apt edifice in which to house his elaborate set of memory prompts. His goal was to devise an actual working machine for enhancing recall. He chose the theater because of its architectural complexity and multi-sectionality which he could in turn invest with information. Yet insofar as the theater functioned in relation to memory through the art of mnemonics, it became an extension of mind, and... (shrink)

Thomas Reid, Adam Ferguson and Dugald Stewart were exponents of the experimental philosophy of mind in the Scottish Enlightenment. The unique character of their philosophical project lies in the adoption of the mind-matter dualism as a necessary condition for the study of mental phenomena. This fact led them to recognize the importance of Descartes, both for being the first to clearly delimit the mental and material realms and for emphasizing the relevance of reflection as an instrument for the (...) study of mind. But at the same time, the Frenchman was also the target of their criticism for dismissing the value of experimentation and appealing to hypotheses to explain natural behaviour. This paper aims to review this group of Scottish philosophers’ views of the mind, explaining, at the same time, the reasons for their ambivalent attitude towards Descartes. In order to make sense of this ambivalence, I will argue that it is useful to bear in mind two different aspects of the methodology that the Scots put forward to study mental phenomena: firstly, the one between analogy and reflection and, secondly, the one between induction and hypothesis making. (shrink)

Freedom of mind.--Subjunctive conditionals.--Multiply general sentences.--Dispositions.--Fallacies in moral philosophy.--Ethics: A defense of Aristotle.--Ryle's the Concept of mind.--The analogy of feeling.--On referring and intending.--Feeling and expression.--Disposition and memory.--Spinoza and the idea of freedom.--A kind of materialism.--Sincerity and single-mindedness.

Do plants represent according to Kant? This is closely connected to the question of whether he held plants are alive, because he explains life in terms of the faculty to act on one’s own representations. He also explains life as having an immaterial principle of self-motion, and as a body’s interaction with a supersensible soul. I argue that because of the way plants move themselves, Kant is committed to their being alive, to their having a supersensible ground of their (...) self-activity, and to their having desires (although these are not conscious). This has important ramifications for Kant’s teleology and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The analogical position, as traditionally understood, is the claim that a person can inductively infer the existence of other minds from what he knows about his own mind and about physical objects. Of course this body of knowledge must not include such propositions about physical objects as "that human body over there is animated by a human mind," or "this automobile was designed by a human mind"; nor could my evidence for the existence of other (...) minds be that I have it on the authority of some of the best minds in the country. The body of knowledge in question must not entail that there are any other minds. In "Induction and Other Minds" I used the term "total evidence" to refer to this body of knowledge, defining that term as follows. (shrink)

Introduction -- Epistemology, metaphysics, and rhetoric : contexts of imagination -- Aristotle, Phantasia, and the problem of epistemology -- Plato, the neoplatonists, and the vagaries of the sublunar world -- Phantasia and ecstatic knowledge -- A more skillful artist than imitation -- Dreams, doubts, and evil demons : Descartes and imagination -- Mediatio prima : certainty, the cogito, and imagination -- Imagination in the rules -- Meditatio secunda : the world of the cogito -- Descartes, Montaigne, and Pascal -- Analogies (...) and enthusiasm -- Excogitations : fabulating the cogito -- The reasonable imagination : Immanuel Kant's critical philosophy -- Imagination in the limits of pure reason -- Dreamers and madmen : imagination in the anthropology -- Natural art and sublime madness : imagination in the critique of judgment -- The highest point of philosophy : Fichte's reimagining of the kantian system -- The logics of positing intellectual intuition and the absolute subject -- Ecstasy, inspired communication, and philosophical genius -- Light, dusk, and darkness : the reconciliation of opposites -- The metaphysics of oscillation and the truth of imagination -- Reason fixations : arresting imagination -- A system without foundations : poetic subjectivity in Friedrich von Hardenberg's Ordo inversus -- A system without foundations -- Fantasy and the body -- Divine law and abject subjectivity : Coleridge and the double knowledge of imagination -- Divine imagination -- The abyss of the empirical self -- Coda: Imagining ideology. (shrink)

According to a familiar modern view, color and other so-called secondary qualities reside only in consciousness, not in the external physical world. Many have argued that this “Galilean” view is the source of the mind-body problem in its current form. This paper critically examines a radical alternative to the Galilean view, which has recently been defended or sympathetically discussed by several philosophers, a view I call “anti-modernism.” Anti-modernism holds, roughly, that the modern Galilean scientific image is incomplete – (...) in particular, it leaves out certain irreducible qualitative properties, such as colors – and that we can solve (or dissolve) the hard problem of consciousness by accepting these properties as objective features of the external physical world. I argue, first, that anti-modernism cannot fulfill its promise. Even if the outer world is resplendent with primitive colors, color experience remains a mystery. Second, I argue that the theoretical costs of accepting irreducible colors in the world are enormous. Even if irreducible colors in the world could dispel the mysteries surrounding consciousness, the theoretical benefit would not be worth the cost. If the problems of consciousness and color require that we posit irreducible properties somewhere, it would be far more plausible to accept irreducible phenomenal properties on the side of the subject, and to reject irreducible colors on the side of the object. (shrink)

This is in no sense an attack on the theory of relativity but, instead, an attempt to clarify some points about its epistemology and ontology. It is quite probable that the queries I have had in mind are products of the past. But I observe enough uncertainty in writings here and there to justify a brief discussion.Discarding both ether and Newtonian Space either as entities or as frames for light, we have left the problem of relating the behavior of (...) light to physical bodies, such as the proverbial rods. (shrink)

Philosophical debate about the ethics of abortion has reached stalemate on two key issues. First, the claim that foetuses have moral standing that entitles them to protections for their lives has been neither convincingly established nor refuted. Second, the question of a pregnant woman's obligation to allow the gestating foetus the use of her body has not been resolved. Both issues are deadlocked because philosophers addressing them invariably rely on intuitions and analogies, and such arguments have weaknesses that make (...) them unfit for resolving the abortion issue. Analogical arguments work by building a kind of consensus, and such a consensus is virtually unimaginable because (1) intuitions are revisable, and in the abortion debate there is great motive to revise them, (2) one's position on abortion influences judgments about other issues, making it difficult to leverage intuitions about other ethical questions into changing peoples' minds about abortion, and (3) the extent of shared values in the abortion debate is overstated. Arguments by analogy rely on an assumption of the commensurability of moral worldviews. But the abortion debate is currently unfolding in a context of genuinely incommensurable moral worldviews. The article ends by arguing that the default position must be to permit abortion as a consequence of the freedom of conscience protected in liberal societies. (shrink)

The analogical position, as traditionally understood, is the claim that a person can inductively infer the existence of other minds from what he knows about his own mind and about physical objects. Of course this body of knowledge must not include such propositions about physical objects as "that human body over there is animated by a human mind," or "this automobile was designed by a human mind"; nor could my evidence for the existence of other (...) minds be that I have it on the authority of some of the best minds in the country. The body of knowledge in question must not entail that there are any other minds. In "Induction and Other Minds" I used the term "total evidence" to refer to this body of knowledge, defining that term as follows. (shrink)

The emphasis is always on the arguments used, and the way one position develops from another. By the end of the book the reader is afforded both a grasp of the state of the controversy, and how we got there.

Descartes with his sharp separation of the mental and the physical set the stage for the philosophy of mind for the next 350 years. Philosopher Patrick T. Mackenzie finds in the later writings of Wittgenstein the suggestion that Descartes got off on the wrong foot. Following Wittgenstein's lead, Mackenzie argues that instead of analyzing our human nature as a composite of mind and body, we should view ourselves as whole persons. One of the dividends of this approach (...) to the mind-body problem is that it provides us with a resolution to the problem of human freedom—i.e., how can a human being be free if his or her body (including the brain) belongs to a deterministic world? Mackenzie here argues that the person is largely free even though the movements of the body are determined by neurophysiological events. He takes the same approach to the philosophy of mind as that taken by M.R.Bennett and P.M.S.Hacker in their recent and controversial book, The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience. Mackenzie's approach is, however, much more accessible. Students of philosophy and philosophers interested in the problem of human freedom will welcome Mackenzie's fresh approach, especially those disenchanted by the present list of mind-body "isms.". (shrink)

Chronic pain is one of the most disabling medical conditions globally, yet, to date, we lack a satisfying theoretical framework for research and clinical practice. Over the prior decades, several frameworks have been presented with biopsychosocial models as the most promising. However, in translation to clinical practice, these models are often applied in an overly reductionist manner, leaving much to be desired. In particular, they often fail to characterize the complexities and dynamics of the lived experience of chronic pain. Recently, (...) an enactive, affordance-based approach has been proposed, opening up new ways to view chronic pain. This model characterizes how the persistence of pain alters a person’s field of affordances: the unfolding set of action possibilities that a person perceives as available to them. The affordance-based model provides a promising perspective on chronic pain as it allows for a systematic investigation of the interactive relation between patients and their environment, including characteristic alterations in the experience of their bodies and the space they inhabit. To help bridge the gap from philosophy to clinical practice, we unpack in this paper the core concepts of an affordance-based approach to chronic pain and their clinical implications, highlighting aspects that have so far received insufficient attention. We do so with an analogy to playing video games, as we consider such comparative illustration a useful tool to convey the complex concepts in an affordance-based model and further explore central aspects of the lived experience of chronic pain. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology 13.2 (2006) 133-141MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Dysfunctions, Disabilities, and Disordered MindsBengt BrüldeFilip RadovicRichard Gipps' and Jerome Wakefield's commentaries on our article are so different from each other that we have decided to deal with them separately. Gipps suggests that we adopt a different framework altogether. In his view, our main question—"What makes a mental disorder mental?"—is somehow defective, and it ought to be replaced by (...) an alternative question, namely, "What makes a mind disordered?" He thinks he can answer this question by providing an alternative account of the mental in terms of intentionality and suigeneris psychological understanding. He also suggests that mental disorders are "alterations within the intentional order." Wakefield, on the other hand, shares most of our "framework assumptions"; for example, he accepts the way we formulate our central question and how we present the different possible answers. The only part of our general project to which he objects is the attempt to find a principled account of what makes a mental function (dysfunction, mechanism, ability, or the like) mental. His main purpose is to defend and develop his own version of the internal cause view, namely, the idea that mental disorders are (harmful) mental dysfunctions. Because Gipps' comments are of a far more general nature than Wakefield's, we respond to Gipps first. This gives us an opportunity to make our "framework assumptions" more explicit.Gipps' Criticism of the Notion of Mental DisorderLet us first note that Gipps' suggestions are often vague. As Gipps himself puts it, his account is "clearly in need of much further clarification and elaboration" (121). This means that we sometimes have to reconstruct what he says to attribute sufficiently clear views to him.Gipps questions our assumption that there is such a thing as a general category of disorder, of which mental and somatic disorders can be regarded as subcategories. Or more precisely, he rejects the view that "disorder" is a proper category (or "semantic category," as he puts it), and he also seems to deny that "mental disorder" is a category. This is supposed to imply that our central question is somehow wrongly formulated, and to pave the way for his reformulation of this question (from now on, "the move").To determine whether Gipps' objection is valid or not, we need to know what he means by the term "category." However, all we are told is that a noun designates a (semantic) category if and only if it has a "unitary sense." Unfortunately, he does not specify what this "unitary sense" consists in. For example, does he implicitly assume that a noun designates a category if and only if there are necessary conditions for membership that are jointly sufficient? The example he offers (see [End Page 133] p. 118) suggests another possible interpretation, however. Here, he claims that the relation between the terms "mental disorder" and "physical disorder" are analogous to the relation between the terms "chemical reaction" and "emotional reaction." This suggests that the term "disorder" as it occurs in the phrase "physical disorder" and the term "disorder" as it occurs in the phrase "mental disorder" have different senses. This is an interesting suggestion that may well be correct, but Gipps does not offer any arguments for the assumption that "disorder" behaves like "reaction." Neither does he offer any examples of proper (semantic) categories.The Move from "Mental Disorders" to "Disordered Minds"In Gipps' view, mental disorders are best conceived of as disorders of the mind, and physical disorders as disorders of the body, and he therefore suggests that we ask what makes a disordered mind disordered rather than what makes a mental disorder mental. But why does Gipps believe that this move from "mental disorder" to "disordered minds" constitutes an improvement? The first reason has already been given, namely that the term "disorder" might not designate a proper category. But this is not a good reason for making the move Gipps suggests unless we assume that "mind" and "body" are proper categories. At this... (shrink)

The mind-body problem is the problem of explaining how our mental states, events and processes—like beliefs, actions and thinking—are related to the physical states, events and processes in our bodies. A question of the form, ‘how is A related to B?’ does not by itself pose a philosophical problem. To pose such a problem, there has to be something about A and B which makes the relation between them seem problematic. Many features of mind and body (...) have been cited as responsible for our sense of the problem. Here I will concentrate on two: the fact that mind and body seem to interact causally, and the distinctive features of consciousness. A long tradition in philosophy has held, with René Descartes, that the mind must be a non-bodily entity: a soul or mental substance. This thesis is called ‘substance dualism’ (or ‘Cartesian dualism’) because it says that there are two kinds of substance in the world, mental and physical or material. One reason for believing this is the belief that the soul, unlike the body, is immortal. Another reason for believing it is that we have free will, and this seems to require that the mind is a non-physical thing, since all physical things are subject to the laws of nature. (shrink)

We cannot perceive the minds or experiences of other people, but only their bodies and behaviour. The 'inner' therefore appears to be hidden behind the 'outer' and to be inferred from perceptible behaviour by analogy. Our knowledge of the experiences of others, in comparison with what philosophers think of as self‐knowledge, seems distinctly shaky. Wittgenstein conceived of the 'constitutional uncertainty' of the inner not as a consequence of defective evidence, but as a reflection in the rules of evidence of (...) disagreement in human attitudes and responses that antecede our language‐games. The non‐uniformity in our instinctive reactions of trust and mistrust towards each other is one source of the constitutional uncertainty of psychological concepts. There is no such uncertainty in numerous other language‐games, and that too is determined by the character of our reactions. Indeed, it is tempting to misconstrue the constitutional uncertainty of the mental as confirmation of the idea that the 'inner' is hidden. (shrink)

Our ethical obligations to another being depend at least in part on that being’s capacity for a mental life. Our usual approach to inferring the mental state of another is to reason by analogy: If another being behaves as I do in a circumstance that engenders a certain mental state in me, I conclude that it has engendered the same mental state in him or her. Unfortunately, as philosophers have long noted, this analogy is fallible because behavior and (...) mental states are only contingently related. If the other person is acting, for example, we could draw the wrong conclusion about his or her mental state. In this article I consider another type of analogy that can be drawn between oneself and another to infer the mental state of the other, substituting brain activity for behavior. According to most current views of the mind–body problem, mental states and brain states are non-contingently related, and hence inferences drawn with the new analogy are not susceptible to the alternative interpretations that plague the behavioral analogy. The implications of this approach are explored in two cases for which behavior is particularly unhelpful as a guide to mental status: severely brain–damaged patients who are incapable of intentional communicative behavior, and nonhuman animals whose behavioral repertoires are different from ours and who lack language. (shrink)

Hofstadter [1979, 2007] offered a novel Gödelian proposal which purported to reconcile the apparently contradictory theses that (1) we can talk, in a non-trivial way, of mental causation being a real phenomenon and that (2) mental activity is ultimately grounded in low-level rule-governed neural processes. In this paper, we critically investigate Hofstadter’s analogical appeals to Gödel’s [1931] First Incompleteness Theorem, whose “diagonal” proof supposedly contains the key ideas required for understanding both consciousness and mental causation. We maintain that bringing sophisticated (...) results from Mathematical Logic into play cannot furnish insights which would otherwise be unavailable. Lastly, we conclude that there are simply too many weighty details left unfilled in Hofstadter’s proposal. These really need to be fleshed out before we can even hope to say that our understanding of classical mind-body problems has been advanced through metamathematical parallels with Gödel’s work. (shrink)

Panentheism has received widespread support among theologians involved in the religion‐science dialogue, due in no small part to the success with which panentheism addresses a range of issues. Nevertheless, panentheism as a theological premise needs continued development and elucidation. Panentheism is often presented as a theoretical model of the God‐world relationship, yet the supporting arguments rely on metaphors that are varied and open‐ended. Analogy from the mind‐body relationship leads to a “weak” panentheism that emphasizes the presence of (...) God, while whole‐part analogies suggest a “strong” panentheism that emphasizes some level of identity between God and the world. In turn, these analogies and metaphors bear nontrivial similarities to early Trinitarian and Christological debates in their treatment of God and world as distinct substances. This similarity suggests the importance of panentheistic approaches. Nevertheless, panentheists need to further clarify the relation of theory and metaphor in their work, as well as more precisely develop the central claim that God is in the world. (shrink)

Argument for Epiphenomenalism [I]: (A) Mental event-tokens are identical with physical event-tokens. (B) The causal powers of a physical event are determined only by its physical properties; and (C) mental properties are not reducible to physical properties.

The author expresses appreciation to Professor Drees for his careful and mostly accurate reading of God and Contemporary Science. The exchange provides the opportunity to step back from the specifics of the debate and clarify what it is that gives rise to the increasing talk of panentheism within religion‐science discussions today. What is the central challenge that the natural sciences raise for theistic belief? How far does panentheism go toward answering this challenge, and what work still needs to be done? (...) Locating the book in this way clarifies questions of where the burden of proof lies, especially with regard to the relation of physical, mental, and spiritual qualities. (shrink)