The Cartesians

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Ott
Keyword(s):  
Direct Realism ◽  
Brain Image ◽  
Natural Geometry ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Antoine Arnauld ◽  
Sensible Qualities ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Independent Existence ◽  
Extended Bodies

This chapter examines the crisis of perception as it figures in the work of four of Descartes’s immediate successors: Louis de la Forge, Robert Desgabets, Pierre-Sylvain Régis, and Antoine Arnauld. La Forge opts for a version of Descartes’s last view, which has no place for natural geometry. Desgabets defends a version of Descartes’s earliest view, which requires the mind to turn to the brain image. Régis thinks we sense colors and sounds and the rest and then use these to imagine extension. Arnauld’s case is especially problematic, since he rejects the mind-independent existence of sensible qualities but seems committed to some version of direct realism. He is then left with the question how the mind projects these illusory states on to extended bodies, a question for which he has no answer.

The Early Descartes

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Ott
Keyword(s):  
Brain Image ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Sensible Qualities ◽  
The Brain

Descartes’s earliest theory of perception attempts to marry the remnants of the Baconian and Aristotelian views while divorcing them from hylomorphism and the innocent view of sensible qualities. Descartes holds the ‘overlap thesis,’ the claim that any behavior exhibited by non-human animals and inattentive humans must receive the same explanation. Corporeal perception requires the presence of a brain image that resembles its object. When the mind attends to its environment, it is immediately aware of this brain image and, through it, of the common sensibles. The claim that the mind ‘turns toward’ the brain is a thoroughly traditional one. The proper sensibles are summoned by the mind on the occasion of its undergoing certain brain events. Descartes thinks of the mind as ‘decoding’ the language of the brain in order to provide itself with the appropriate sensations. But those sensations do nothing to explain our awareness of objects.

The Dioptrique

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Ott
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Brain Image ◽  
Brain Motion ◽  
Natural Geometry ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Brain

Descartes’s treatment of perception in the Optics, though published before the Meditations, contains a distinct account of sensory experience. The end of the chapter suggests some reasons for this oddity, but that the two accounts are distinct is difficult to deny. Descartes in the present work topples the brain image from its throne. In its place, we have two mechanisms, one purely causal, the other inferential. Where the proper sensibles are concerned, the ordination of nature suffices to explain why a given sensation is triggered on the occasion of a given brain motion. The same is true with regard to the common sensibles. But on top of this purely causal story, Descartes re-introduces his doctrine of natural geometry.

The Meditations

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Ott
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Developmental Reading ◽  
Basic Structure ◽  
Brain Image ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Third ◽  
Real Work ◽  
Sensible Qualities ◽  
The Brain

Despite its difference in aspiration, the Meditations preserves the basic structure of perceptual experience outlined in Descartes’s earliest works. The chapter explores Descartes’s notion of an idea and uses a developmental reading to clear up the mystery surrounding material falsity. In the third Meditation, our protagonist does not yet know enough about extension in order to be able to tell whether her idea of cold is an idea of a real feature of bodies or merely the idea of a sensation. By the time she reaches the end of her reflections, she has learned that sensible qualities are at most sensations. As in his earliest stages, Descartes believes that the real work of perceiving the geometrical qualities of bodies is done by the brain image, which he persists in calling an ‘idea,’ at least when it is the object of mental awareness.

Mind and Psychology in Descartes

2019 ◽  
pp. 105-123
Author(s):  
Gary Hatfield
Keyword(s):  
Theory Of Mind ◽  
Sensory Perception ◽  
Active Role ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Functional Aspects ◽  
Natural Geometry ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

This chapter reviews the basic tenets of Descartes’s mind–body dualism and its context, including the epistemological role of mind in its capacity as a pure intellect and as part of a being with sensory perception. Then, putting aside the metaphysics of dualism, it focuses on the functional aspects of mind and its relation to body, and on the role of the bodily machine in Descartes’s psychology. Within this large territory, it examines mind and psychology as categories applicable to Descartes’s writings before turning to the active role of the brain in Descartes’s theory of mind and machine psychology, including his “natural geometry”, his theory of the passions, and the machine psychology of mindless non-human animals—and of human beings, when the body acts without direction from the mind.

Descartes, Malebranche, and the Crisis of Perception

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter Ott
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Nicolas Malebranche ◽  
Early Modern France ◽  
Cognitive Economy ◽  
Philosophy Of Perception ◽  
Modern France ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Antoine Arnauld ◽  
Sensible Qualities ◽  
Do So

The seventeenth century witnesses the demise of two core doctrines in the theory of perception: naïve realism about color, sound, and other sensible qualities and the empirical theory, drawn from Alhacen and Roger Bacon, that underwrote it. Ejecting such sensible qualities from the mind-independent world at once makes for a cleaner ontology, since bodies can now be understood in purely geometrical terms, and spawns a variety of fascinating complications for the philosophy of perception. If sensible qualities are not part of the mind-independent world, just what are they, and what role, if any, do they play in our cognitive economy? We seemingly have to use color to visually experience objects. Do we do so by inferring size, shape, and motion from color? Or is it a purely automatic operation, accomplished by divine decree? This book traces the debate over perceptual experience in early modern France, covering such figures as Antoine Arnauld, Robert Desgabets, and Pierre-Sylvain Régis alongside their better-known countrymen René Descartes and Nicolas Malebranche.

Lighting Up the Brain to Illuminate the Mind

2004 ◽  
Vol 49 (6) ◽  
pp. 713-716
Author(s):  
Ellen S. Berscheid
Keyword(s):  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

How Does the Brain Make the Mind? We Do Not Know.

PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 61 (32) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher A. Was
Keyword(s):  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Big Heads title page

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
vernon thornton
Keyword(s):  
Title Page ◽  
Language Of Thought ◽  
Correct Version ◽  
Evolutionary Context ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

A description of of the mind and its relationship to the brain, set in an evolutionary context. Introduction of a correct version of 'language-of-thought' called 'thinkish'.

The Brain Mechanism of Developmental Dyslexia:Evidences From The Brain Image*

2009 ◽  
Vol 36 (11) ◽  
pp. 1394-1401
Author(s):  
Yang YANG ◽  
Hong-Yan BI ◽  
Jiu-Ju WANG
Keyword(s):  
Brain Image ◽  
Brain Mechanism ◽  
The Brain

Zombies and Dolls

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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