How Brains Think

J.J.C. Smart once opined that if we were able to keep a human brain alive outside the skull, there would be no philosophical reason to believe that it could not think, and every physiological reason to believe that it could (“Materialism,” Journal of Philosophy, LX (1963), 651–662, pp. 659–660). Only a short time later, Wilfred Sellars asserted that if one were to deflesh and de-bone a human being, keeping the nervous system intact and discarding the rest, what one would have left would be, in all essentials, a person: a “core person,” Sellars says, thinking perhaps of apples (“The Identity Approach to the Mind-Body Problem,” Review of Metaphysics, XVIII (1965), 430–451, pp. 441–442). Since then, Bernard Gert has provided this view with an argument, describing an example which proves, in his opinion, that it makes sense to speak of brains as thinking. (“Can a Brain Have a Pain?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XXVII (1967), 432–436).

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Conclusion

Ecology of the Brain ◽

10.1093/med/9780199646883.003.0008 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 279-292

Author(s):

Thomas Fuchs

Keyword(s):

Body Problem ◽

Short Circuit ◽

Living Organism ◽

Human Being ◽

Mind And Brain ◽

Mind Body Problem ◽

The Mind ◽

The Brain

The ‘Conclusion’ summarizes fundamental concepts and insights of the book. The brain is presented as an organ of mediation, transformation, and resonance. Its functions are integrated by the living organism as a whole, or by the embodied person, respectively: persons have brains, they are not brains. The deadlocks of the mind–body problem result from a short circuit between mind and brain which follows as a consequence from the systematic exclusion of life. A combination of phenomenological, embodied, and enactive approaches seems best suited to overcome this deficit. In contrast to naturalistic reductionism, this leads to a personalistic concept of the human being which has its basis in intercorporeality: it is in the concrete bodily encounter that we primarily recognize each other as embodied subjects or persons.

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The Mind-Body Problem Revisited

Contemporary Psychology ◽

10.1037/0013579 ◽

1975 ◽

Vol 20 (8) ◽

pp. 660-660

Author(s):

MADGE SCHEIBEL ◽

ARNOLD SCHEIBEL

Keyword(s):

Body Problem ◽

Mind Body Problem ◽

The Mind

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Zombies and Dolls

10.1093/oso/9780198728443.003.0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Marcello Massimini ◽

Giulio Tononi

Keyword(s):

Body Problem ◽

Thought Experiments ◽

Turing Test ◽

Hard Problem ◽

Mind Body Problem ◽

The Hard Problem ◽

The Mind ◽

The Brain

This chapter uses thought experiments and practical examples to introduce, in a very accessible way, the hard problem of consciousness. Soon, machines may behave like us to pass the Turing test and scientists may succeed in copying and simulating the inner workings of the brain. Will all this take us any closer to solving the mysteries of consciousness? The reader is taken to meet different kind of zombies, the philosophical, the digital, and the inner ones, to understand why many, scientists and philosophers alike, doubt that the mind–body problem will ever be solved.

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Brute Necessity and the Mind–Body Problem

10.1093/oso/9780198758600.003.0005 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

James Van Cleve

Keyword(s):

Body Problem ◽

Necessary Truths ◽

Mind Body Problem ◽

The Mind

In a growing number of papers one encounters arguments to the effect that certain philosophical views are objectionable because they would imply that there are necessary truths for whose necessity there is no explanation. For short, they imply that there are brute necessities. Therefore, the arguments conclude, the views in question should be rejected in favor of rival views under which the necessities would be explained. This style of argument raises a number of questions. Do necessary truths really require explanation? Are they not paradigms of truths that either need no explanation or automatically have one, being in some sense self-explanatory? If necessary truths do admit of explanation or even require it, what types of explanation are available? Are there any necessary truths that are truly brute? This chapter surveys various answers to these questions, noting their bearing on arguments from brute necessity and arguments concerning the mind–body problem.

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