Functionalism, Sensations, and Materialism

1977 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-274
Author(s):  
Larry J. Eshelman
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Functionalist Approach

I wish to defend a functionalist approach to the mind-body problem. I use the word ‘functionalist’ with some reluctance, however; for although it has become the conventional label for the sort of approach taken by such philosophers as H. Putnam and D. C. Dennett, I believe it is somewhat misleading. The functionalist, as I understand him, tries to show how there can be machine analogues of mental states and then argues that just as we are not inclined to postulate an ontological dualism between simulated mental states and the machine's physical states, we need not postulate a dualism between mind and body. The functionalist also argues, however, that it is wrong to identify the mental states or simulated mental states with the physical states.Recently functionalism has come under attack, first for not being a coherent alternative, and secondly for not being able to provide an adequate account of sensations. I believe that the first objection is misguided and shall deal with it in section I. However, I agree that functionalists have not provided an adequate account of sensations, but I shall try to help remedy this in section II.

scholarly journals Placebo: Feeling Better, Getting Better, and the Problems of Mind and Body

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
John F. Kihlstrom
Keyword(s):  
Medical Practice ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Scientific Basis ◽  
The Other ◽  
Placebo Effects ◽  
Physical Conditions ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind

Over its history, medicine has vacillated between acknowledging placebo effects as important and trying to overcome them. Placebos are controversial, in part, because they appear to challenge a biocentric view of the scientific basis of medical practice. At the very least, research should distinguish between the effects of placebos on subjective and objective endpoints. Theoretically, placebos are of interest because they underscore the other side of the mind-body problem: how mental states can affect physical conditions.

Neurophenomenology and the Spontaneity of Consciousness

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 133-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Hanna ◽  
Evan Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Spatiotemporal Pattern ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
Dynamic Patterns ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable (Nagel1980, p. 150). My reading of the situation is that our inability to come up with an intelligible conception of the relation between mind and body is a sign of the inadequacy of our present concepts, and that some development is needed (Nagel1998, p. 338). Mind itself is a spatiotemporal pattern that molds the metastable dynamic patterns of the brain (Kelso 1995, p. 288).

Color and Color Experience

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Levine
Keyword(s):  
Spectral Reflectance ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Surface Features ◽  
Color Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Internal Mental States

In this paper I investigate the problems for “locating” color in the world, surveying the various subjectivist and objectivist positions and finding them wanting. I then argue that the problem is that colors are “ways of appearing,” an odd kind of property that essentially implicates the mind and turns the problem of locating color into part of the mind–body problem. Rather than identify colors with objective surface features, such as surface spectral reflectance, or with dispositions to cause certain internal mental states, I treat them as relations holding between the subject and the objects of perception. This is seen to explain why colors are so hard to locate, and also accounts for several other features of color experience.

Mind and Body

1988 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 69-83
Author(s):  
K. V. Wilkes
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Canonical Status

I expect every reader knows the hackneyed old joke: ‘What is matter? Never mind. What is mind? No matter.’ Antique as this joke is, it none the less points to an interesting question. For the so-called mind–body dichotomy, which has been raised to almost canonical status in post-Cartesian philosophy, is not in fact at all easy to draw or to defend. This of course means that ‘the mind–body problem’ is difficult both to describe and to solve—or rather, as I would prefer, to dissolve.

Finite Subjects in the Ethics

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Renz
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Finite Minds

This chapter suggests a new interpretation of Spinoza’s concept of mind claiming that the goal of the equation of the human mind with the idea of the body is not to solve the mind-body problem, but rather to show how we can, within the framework of Spinoza’s rationalism, conceive of finite minds as irreducibly distinguishable individuals. To support this view, the chapter discusses the passage from E2p11 to E2p13 against the background of three preliminaries, i.e. the notion of a union between mind and body as it appears in Thomas Aquinas’ refutation of Averroism, Spinoza’s views on knowledge of actually existing things in E2p8c, and the phenomenological character of E2a2-4. It argues that while this view on the human mind does not undermine radical rationalism, it does require its amendment by some irreducibly empirical concessions.

scholarly journals The dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience: what does philosophy of mind say?

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 186-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elie Cheniaux ◽  
Carlos Eduardo de Sousa Lyra
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Eliminative Materialism ◽  
Brain States ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Objective: To briefly review how the main monist and dualist currents of philosophy of mind approach the mind-body problem and to describe their association with arguments for and against a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.Methods: The literature was reviewed for studies in the fields of psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind.Results: Some currents are incompatible with a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neurosciences: interactionism and psychophysical parallelism, because they do not account for current knowledge about the brain; epiphenomenalism, which claims that the mind is a mere byproduct of the brain; and analytical behaviorism, eliminative materialism, reductive materialism and functionalism, because they ignore subjective experiences. In contrast, emergentism claims that mental states are dependent on brain states, but have properties that go beyond the field of neurobiology.Conclusions: Only emergentism is compatible with a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.

Nagel's Challenge and the Mind-Body Problem

Philosophy ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 74 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-270 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rom Harré
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Causal Power ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The World ◽  
Material State ◽  
Internal Relations ◽  
Brain States ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Person Experience

Nagel has argued that the ‘mind-body’ problem, as traditionally conceived, is insoluble. His challenge to philosophers is to devise a metaphysical scheme that incorporates materialist concepts in describing first person experience and mentalistic concepts in describing third person experience, such that the internal relations between the concepts thereby constructed are necessary. Nagel's own suggestion, a scheme not unlike the ‘underlying process’ schemes of the physical sciences, seems to lead him towards a covert materialism. Progress can be made in meeting the challenge by tackling the problem first by taking the units in each ‘sphere’ to be brains and persons. I show that a metaphysics based on the metaphor of person defined tasks and materially defined tools does satisfy both Nagel's challenge conditions. To devise a scheme for qualia and brain-states I turn back to Locke's presentation of the primary/secondary quality distinction. This depends on the concept of a causal power, grounded in material states of the world. While this scheme is inadequate, a variation, based on Gibson's concept of an affordance, and drawing on Bohr's resolution of the seeming incompatibility between wave and particle ontologies for physics, is promising. The world, whatever it is, affords material states to our perceptual apparatus, and mental states to our proprioceptual apparatus. The mental states/brain states duality is not a duality of types of states, which might stand in causal relations to one another, but is a duality of means of access to two classes of affordances of whatever the world is. There is no mind-body problem in the traditional sense, namely ‘How could a material state cause or be caused by a mental state?’

scholarly journals CONTRIBUCIONES DE LA FENOMENOLOGÍA DE EDITH STEIN AL PROBLEMA MENTE-CUERPO: APUNTES PARA LA PSICOLOGÍA

2021 ◽  
pp. 65
Author(s):  
Tommy Akira Goto
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Edith Stein ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind

La psicología es una rama científica relativamente nueva y a la que todavía le faltan bases metodológicas consistentes para fundamentar sus investigaciones. Dada su inmadurez, tal ciencia tiene dificultades para delimitar su estatuto ontológico, lo que genera diversos equívocos epistemológicos y metodológicos. Así, se impone una cuestión fundamental para la aclaración del objeto de la psicología: el problema mente-cuerpo. En ese sentido, el objetivo de este artículo, basado en la fenomenología de Edith Stein, es analizar algunos trabajos de la filósofa, a saber: “Causalidad Psíquica” e “Introducción a la Filosofía”. De esa manera, a través de las investigaciones de Stein acerca de la psique (que puede situarse en la cercanía de lo que se entiende por mente en el ámbito de las ciencias de la mente) y del cuerpo, se concluye que es posible concebir la cuestión psique/mente-cuerpo como una unidad-dual que se instancia en el Leib.Psychology is a relatively new scientific branch that still lacks consistent methodological foundations to support their investigations. Given their immaturity, that science still faces difficulties to delimit its ontological status, which raises various epistemological and methodological misconceptions. Thus, there is a fundamental question for an elucidation of the object of Psychology: the mindbody problem. The proposal of this article, in this sense, is to discuss the mind-body problem in the light of the Phenomenology of Edith Stein, seeking from there lay the fundation of Psychology. For this, some works of the philosopher was analysed, namely: “Psychic Causality” and “Introduction to Philosophy”. In this way, through the investigations of Stein about the psyche (which can be approximated to what is meant by mind in the context of the Sciences of the mind) and body, concluded that it is possible to conceive the psyche/mind-body issue while a dual-unit that instantiates in the Leib.

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