Actual Consciousness: Database, Physicalities, Theory, Criteria, No Unique Mystery

2015 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 271-300
Author(s):  
Ted Honderich
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
Ordinary Sense ◽  
Adequate Theory ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind

Abstract(i) Is disagreement about consciousness largely owed to no adequate initial clarification of the subject, to people in fact answering different questions – despite five leading ideas of consciousness? (ii) Your being conscious in the primary ordinary sense, to sum up a wide figurative database, is initially clarified as something's being actual – clarified as actual consciousness. (iii) Philosophical method like the scientific method includes transition from the figurative to literal theory or analysis. (iv) A new theory will also satisfy various criteria not satisfied by many existing theories. (v) The objective physical world has specifiable general characteristics including spatiality, lawfulness, being in science, connections with perception, and so on. (vi) Actualism, the literal theory or analysis of actual consciousness, deriving mainly from the figurative database, is that actual consciousness has counterpart but partly different general characteristics. Actual consciousness is thus subjectively physical. So physicality in general consists in objective and also subjective physicality. (vii) Consciousness in the case of perception is only the dependent existence of a subjective external physical world out there, often a room. (viii) But cognitive and affective consciousness, various kinds of thinking and wanting, differently subjectively physical, is internal – subjectively physical representations-with-attitude, representations that also are actual. They differ from the representations that are lines of type, sounds etc. by being actual. (ix) Thus they involve a subjectivity or individuality that is a lawful unity. (x) Actualism, both an externalism and an internalism, does not impose on consciousness a flat uniformuity, and it uniquely satisfies the various criteria for an adequate theory, including naturalism. (xi) Actual consciousness is a right subject and is a necessary part of any inquiry whatever into consciousness. (xii) All of it is a subject for more science, a workplace. (xiii) There is no unique barrier or impediment whatever to science, as often said, no want of understanding of the mind-consciousness connection (Nagel), no known unique hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers), no insuperable difficulty having to do with physicality and the history of science (Chomsky), no arguable ground at all of mysterianism (McGinn).

scholarly journals I. The Croonian Lecture.—On the theory of the vertebrate skull

1859 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 381-457 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Biological Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Small Space ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Organic Structure ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
The Mind

The necessity of discussing so great a subject as the Theory of the Vertebrate Skull in the small space of time allotted by custom to a lecture, has its advantages as well as its drawbacks. As, on the present occasion, I shall suffer greatly from the disadvantages of the limitation, I will, with your permission, avail myself to the uttermost of its benefits. It will be necessary for me to assume much that I would rather demonstrate, to suppose known much that I would rather set forth and explain at length; but on the other hand, I may consider myself excused from entering largely either into the history of the subject, or into lengthy and controversial criticisms upon the views which are, or have been, held by others. The biological science of the last half-century is honourably distinguished from that of preceding epochs, by the constantly increasing prominence of the idea, that a community of plan is discernible amidst the manifold diversities of organic structure. That there is nothing really aberrant in nature; that the most widely different organisms are connected by a hidden bond; that an apparently new and isolated structure will prove, when its characters are thoroughly sifted, to be only a modification of something which existed before,—are propositions which are gradually assuming the position of articles of faith in the mind of the investigators of animated nature, and are directly, or by implication, admitted among the axioms of natural history.

Scientific Change

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anouk Barberousse
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Scientific Progress ◽  
Scientific Change ◽  
General Question ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dynamics Of Science

How should we think of the dynamics of science? What are the relationships between an earlier theory and the theory that has superseded it? This chapter introduces the heated debates on the nature of scientific change, at the intersection of philosophy of science and history of science, and their bearing on the more general question of the rationality of the scientific enterprise. It focuses on the issue of the continuity or discontinuity of scientific change and the various versions of the incommensurability thesis one may uphold. Historicist views are balanced against nagging questions regarding scientific progress (Is there such a thing? If so, how should it be defined?), the causes of scientific change (Are they to be found within scientific method itself?), and its necessity (Is the history of scientific developments an argument in favor of realism, or could we have had entirely different sciences?).

The body in group analysis

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 544-556 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bracha Hadar
Keyword(s):  
Group Analysis ◽  
Radical Change ◽  
The Body ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bodily Sensations ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Embodied History

This article explores the history of the exclusion/inclusion of the body in group analytic theory and practice. At the same time, it aims to promote the subject of the body in the mind of group analysts. The main thesis of the article is that sitting in a circle, face-to-face, is a radical change in the transition Foulkes made from psychoanalysis to group analysis. The implications of this transition have not been explored, and in many cases, have been denied. The article describes the vicissitudes of relating group analysis to the body from the time of Foulkes and Anthony’s work until today. The article claims that working with the body in the group demands that the conductor gives special attention to his/her own bodily sensations and feelings, while at the same time remaining cognizant of the fact that each of the participants is a person with a physical body in which their painful history is stored, and that they may be dissociated because of that embodied history. The thesis of the article is followed by a clinical example. The article ends with the conclusion that being in touch with one’s own body demands a lot of training.

William Whewell, Galileo, and reconceptualizing the history of science and religion

2011 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 343-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
David B. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
William Whewell

This paper advocates a reconceptualization of the history of science and religion. It is an approach to the subject that would aid research by historians of science as well as their message to others, both academic and non-academic. The approach is perfectly illustrated by the life and ideas of William Whewell and Galileo.

Resistance to the Systematic Study of Multiple Discoveries in Science

1963 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert K. Merton
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Systematic Study ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Influential Paper ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Sociological Thought

The pages of the history of science record thousands of instances of similar discoveries having been made by scientists working independently of one another. Sometimes the discoveries are simultaneous or almost so; sometimes a scientist will make anew a discovery which, unknown to him, somebody else had made years before. Such occurrences suggest that discoveries become virtually inevitable when prerequisite kinds of knowledge and tools accumulate in man's cultural store and when the attention of an appreciable number of investigators becomes focussed on a problem, by emerging social needs, by developments internal to the science, or by both. Since at least 1917, when the anthropologist A. L. Kroeber published his influential paper dealing in part with the subject (I) and especially since 1922, when the sociologists William F. Ogburn and Dorothy S. Thomas compiled a list of some 150 cases of multiple independent discoveries and inventions (2), this hypothesis has become firmly established in sociological thought.

scholarly journals EPISTEMOLOGIA E LINGUAGEM: CONJECTURA DE UM “MODELO DE CORRESPONDÊNCIA” E ENSAIO-TESTE EM UM EXPERIMENTO PRELIMINAR / Epistemology and Language: Conjecture of a “Correspondence Model” and Test Essay in a Preliminary Experiment

2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 63
Author(s):  
Dante Reis Jr. ◽  
Eriwelton Soares ◽  
Lucas Moura ◽  
Ricardo Bezerra
Keyword(s):  
History Of Science ◽  
Linguistic Analysis ◽  
Analysis Program ◽  
Linguistic Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Movidos pelo interesse em propor um programa de análise que seja potencialmente replicável para os casos em que se busca uma “identidade linguística” das escolas de pensamento, desenhamos um protótipo sistemático e o aplicamos em um ensaio genérico – compreendendo três matizes. Este experimento investigativo constituiu o escopo de um projeto de Iniciação Científica; e, dada a temática envolvida, se enquadra no âmbito dos estudos de Epistemologia e História da Ciência (tendo, obviamente, o “caso Geografia” como alvo da análise). Neste artigo, narramos os procedimentos executados e avaliamos a virtual fecundidade do programa para ensaios análogos.AbstractMoved by the interest in offering an analysis program potentially replicable for the cases in which it seeks a linguistic identity of schools of thought, we designed a systematic prototype and applied in a generic test – comprising three “hues”. This investigative experiment was the purpose of a Scientific Initiation project; and, given the subject involved, falls within the scope of the studies of Epistemology and History of Science (“Geography case” as target of the analysis, of course). In this article, we relate the procedures performed and evaluate the potential fertility of the program for similar tests.Keywords:History of Geographical Thought; Linguistic Analysis; Vocabulary

Robert Morris, Architecture, and the Scientific Cast of Mind in Early Eighteenth-Century England

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 ◽  
pp. 127-138
Author(s):  
Tanis Hinchcliffe
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Visual Arts ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Applied Science ◽  
Art And Science ◽  
Robert Morris ◽  
History Of ◽  
Early Eighteenth Century ◽  
The Rich

Recent research into the history of science has alerted us to the rich cultural contribution a growing awareness of science made to eighteenth-century society in general and to the literate classes in particular. The boundaries of art and science, it has become apparent, were less stringently defined than today, and a growing literature is revealing the crossover from the visual arts to science, especially to medicine, optics, and the applied science of mechanics. It might be asked how far architecture, so close to the physical world in its materials and in its ambition, connected with science during the eighteenth century.

Stress Again

1904 ◽  
Vol 50 (211) ◽  
pp. 697-699
Author(s):  
Charles A. Mercier
Keyword(s):  
Medical Knowledge ◽  
Ordinary Sense ◽  
Inherent Difficulty ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Mind

Dr. R. S. Stewart's statement, in his paper on “Wages, Lunacy, and Crime,” that he used the term “stress” in the ordinary sense of the term did not escape my attention, and naturally led me to suppose, until I read the subsequent part of his paper, that he meant to use the term in the sense in which it was introduced into psychiatry; and it was his departure from this “ordinary” sense which led me to make my expostulation. I desire to deprecate any notion in the mind of Dr. Stewart, or of anyone else, that I am pursuing this subject from any motive except that of clarifying our terminology from ambiguity and uncertainty. For one of my books I have chosen, as a motto, Huxley's confession: “The whole of my life has been spent in trying to give my proper attention to things, and to be accurate, and I have not succeeded as well as I could wish”; and it is in the continued pursuit of these objects that I venture to resume the subject. No alienist of candid mind will deny that our branch of medical knowledge and art still lags behind other branches; and, while much of this retardation is due to the greater inherent difficulty of the subject, and to other causes, some of it is unquestionably due to looseness of terminology and to that inaccuracy of thought which is indicated by inaccuracy of expression. It is the appreciation of this lack of precision which has prompted me to suggest the abandonment of the terms “mania” and “melancholia,” which no rigour of definition can ever now restrict within useful bounds; and with the same motive I return to the topic of “stress” as a text for the exhortation, not of Dr. Stewart alone, but of all of us, to consider with care what meaning the terms we use will convey to our hearers and readers.

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