scholarly journals DEKARTIŠKAS DUALIZMO ĮRODYMAS ŠIUOLAIKINĖJE SĄMONĖS FILOSOFIJOJE

Problemos ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonas Dagys
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Dimensional Theory ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Zombie Argument ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Modal Semantic

Straipsnyje analitinės filosofijos požiūriu analizuojamas Descartes’o sąmonės ir kūno skirtingumo įrodymas, siekiant atskleisti jo panašumus su šiuolaikinėje sąmonės filosofijoje populiariu Davido Chalmerso pateiktu „zombio“ mintiniu eksperimentu ir juo grindžiamu dualizmo įrodymu. Siekiama parodyti, kad šiuolaikinis modaline semantikos analize grindžiamas įrodymo variantas yra techniškai sudėtingesnis ir atsparesnis fizikalistinei kritikai, tačiau jis paremtas nutylėta ir nepagrįsta episteminio sąvokų skaidrumo prielaida, kuri išskirstina kaip viena originalaus dekartiško įrodymo silpnybių. Tai leidžia tvirtinti, kad Antoine’o Arnauld kritika, pateikta Descartes’o įrodymui, lygiai taip pat sėkmingai taikytina ir Chalmerso antifizikalistiniams samprotavimams.Reikšminiai žodžiai: sąmonės filosofija, dualizmo įrodymai, „zombio“ mintinis eksperimentas, fizikalizmas. DESCARTES’ ARGUMENT FOR DUALISM IN CONTEMPORARY PHILOSOPHY OF MINDJonas Dagys Summary The paper analizes Descartes’ argument for the mind–body dualism from the perspective of contemporary analytical philosophy of mind. It attempts to show that the popular zombie argument, mostly due to David Chalmers, is reminescent of this Cartesian proof of dualism. The intended conclusion is that although the contemporary argument invokes modal semantic analysis and two-dimensional theory of conceptual content and so is technically more difficult and resistant to certain physicalist criticism, it neverhteless rests on an unstated and unjustified assumption. This assumption is that of epistemic transparency and completeness of at least some of our concepts. It was the same assumption that had been identified as one of the weaknesses of the original Cartesian argument for dualism. Therefore, one could argue that Arnauld’s objections to Descartes are well applicable to Chalmers’ antiphysicalist arguments without substantial modification.Keywords: philosophy of mind, arguments for dualism, zombie argument, physicalism.

scholarly journals On the Return to Metaphysics in Analytical Philosophy of Mind

2018 ◽  
pp. 130-142
Author(s):  
G. A. Zolotkov
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Ordinary Language ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Logical Positivism ◽  
Ordinary Language Philosophy ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
Language Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind

The article examines the change of theoretical framework in analytic philosophy of mind. It is well known fact that nowadays philosophical problems of mind are frequently seen as incredibly difficult. It is noteworthy that the first programs of analytical philosophy of mind (that is, logical positivism and philosophy of ordinary language) were skeptical about difficulty of that realm of problems. One of the most notable features of both those programs was the strong antimetaphysical stance, those programs considered philosophy of mind unproblematic in its nature. However, the consequent evolution of philosophy of mind shows evaporating of that stance and gradual recovery of the more sympathetic view toward the mind problematic. Thus, there were two main frameworks in analytical philosophy of mind: 1) the framework of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy dominated in the 1930s and the 1940s; 2) the framework that dominated since the 1950s and was featured by the critique of the first framework. Thus, the history of analytical philosophy of mind moves between two highly opposite understandings of the mind problematic. The article aims to found the causes of that move in the ideas of C. Hempel and G. Ryle, who were the most notable philosophers of mind in the 1930s and the 1940s.

Inferentialism and the Transcendental Deduction

2009 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Landy
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Conceptual Content ◽  
Contemporary Debate ◽  
Transcendental Deduction ◽  
Founding Fathers

One recent trend in Kant scholarship has been to read Kant as undertaking a project in philosophical semantics, as opposed to, say, epistemology, or transcendental metaphysics. This trend has evolved almost concurrently with a debate in contemporary philosophy of mind about the nature of concepts and their content. Inferentialism is the view that the content of our concepts is essentially inferentially articulated, that is, that the content of a concept consists entirely, or in essential part, in the role that that concept plays in a system of inferences. By contrast, relationalism is the view that this content is fixed by a mental or linguistic item's standing in a certain relation to its object. The historical picture of Kant and the contemporary debate about concepts intersect in so far as contemporary inferentialists about conceptual content often cite Immanuel Kant not only as one of the founding fathers of a tradition that leads more or less straightforwardly to contemporary inferentialism, but also as the philosopher who first saw the fatal flaws in any attempt to articulate the content of our concepts relationally.

scholarly journals Mente, consciencia y cuerpo en la obra de Friedrich Nietzsche / Mind, Consciousness and the Body in Friedrich Nietzsche’s Opus

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-82
Author(s):  
Mario Colon
Keyword(s):  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Causal Determinism ◽  
German Philosopher ◽  
The Mind

ABSTRACTThe study of consciousness possess considerable relevance in contemporary philosophy of mind. However, the “scientistic” approach that dominates the aforementioned discipline, although of undisputed usefulness, contributes to the rejection of other approaches whose explanatory value has proven to be illuminating in the study of mind, consciousness and the body. One of these approaches can be found in the philosophical works of Friedrich Nietzsche. The causal determinism of the mind-body relation proposed by the german philosopher has been posited through similar proposals for renowned neuroscientists and philosophers. Nevertheless, the historical and theoretical importance of Nietzsche’s contributions hasn’t been recognized as such. The purpose of this article is to show the subtleties of the causal determination in the mind-body relation and its implications in the actual discussions about the nature of consciousness.RESUMENEl estudio de la conciencia es de considerable relevancia en la filosofía de la mente contemporánea. Sin embargo, el enfoque “cientificista” imperante en esta disciplina, aunque de indiscutible utilidad, ha contribuido al rechazo de perspectivas cuyo valor explicativo resulta revelador en la investigación sobre la mente, la consciencia y el cuerpo. Una de estas perspectivas la podemos encontrar en la obra filosófica de Friedrich Nietzsche. El determinismo causal de la relación mente-cuerpo que propuso el filósofo alemán ha sido defendido por medio de propuestas similares de neurocientíficos y filósofos de probada pericia. No obstante, la relevancia de la aportación nietzscheana no ha sido reconocida en su importancia histórica y teórica. El propósito de este artículo es señalar las particularidades sobre la determinación causal de la relación mente/cuerpo y sus implicaciones en los debates actuales sobre la naturaleza de la consciencia.

scholarly journals What's in a Concept? Conceptualizing the Nonconceptual in Buddhist Philosophy and Cognitive Science

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Concept Formation ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Buddhist Philosophy ◽  
Comprehensive Treatment ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
The World ◽  
The Mind

A recurrent problem in the philosophical debates over whether there is or can be nonconceptual experience or whether all experience is conceptually structured or mediated is the lack of a generally accepted account of what concepts are. Without a precise specification of what a concept is, the notion of nonconceptuality is equally ill defined. This problem cuts across contemporary philosophy and cognitive science as well as classical Indian philosophy, and it affects how we go about philosophically engaging Buddhism. Buddhist philosophers generally argue that our everyday experience of the world is conceptually constructed, whereas “nonconceptual cognition” (nirvikalpa jñāna) marks the limits of conceptuality. But what precisely do “conceptual” and “nonconceptual” mean? Consider that “concept” is routinely used to translate the Sanskrit term vikalpa; nirvikalpa is accordingly rendered as “nonconceptual.” But vikalpa has also been rendered as “imagination,” “discriminative construction,” “discursive thought,” and “discrimination.” Related terms, such as kalpanā (conceptualization/mental construction) and kalpanāpoḍha (devoid of conceptualization/mental construction), have also been rendered in various ways. Besides the question of how to translate these terms in any given Buddhist philosophical text, how should we relate them to current philosophical or cognitive scientific uses of the term “concept”? More generally, given that the relationship between the conceptual and the nonconceptual has been one of the central and recurring issues for the Buddhist philosophical tradition altogether, can Buddhist philosophy bring fresh insights to our contemporary debates about whether experience has nonconceptual content? And can contemporary philosophy and cognitive science help to illuminate or even resolve some older Buddhist philosophical controversies? A comprehensive treatment of these questions across the full range of Buddhist philosophy and contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science would be impossible. I restrict my focus to certain core ideas from Abhidharma, Dharmakīrti’s apoha theory, and Yogācāra, as refracted through current philosophical and cognitive science views of concepts. I argue for the following five general theses. First, cognitive science can help us to clarify Abhidharma issues about the relation between nonconceptual sense perception and conceptual cognition. Second, we can resolve these Abhidharma issues using a model of concept formation based on reading Dharmakīrti through cognitive science glasses. Third, this model of concept formation offers a new perspective on the contemporary conceptualist versus nonconceptualist debate. Fourth, Yogācāra offers a conception of nonconceptual experience absent from this debate. In many Yogācāra texts, awareness that is said to be free from the duality of “grasper” (grāhaka) and “grasped” (grāhya) is nonconceptual. None of the contemporary philosophical arguments for nonconceptualism is adequate or suitable for explicating this unique kind of nonconceptuality. Thus, Yogācāra is relevant to what has been called the problem of the “scope of the conceptual,” that is, how the conceptual/nonconceptual distinction should be drawn. For this reason, among others, Yogācāra has something to offer philosophy of mind. Moreover, using cognitive science, we may be able to render some of the Yogācāra ideas in a new way, while in turn recasting ideas from cognitive science. Fifth, in pursuing these aims, I hope to show the value of thinking about the mind from a cross-cultural philosophical perspective. Sixth, from an enactive cognitive science perspective informed by Buddhist philosophy, a concept is not a mental entity by which an independent subject grasps or represents independent objects, but rather one aspect of a complex dynamic process in which the mind and the world are interdependent and co-emergent poles.

Is the Theatre a Zombie? On the Successful Failures of Émile Zola

2018 ◽  
Vol 136 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Rebellato
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Emile Zola ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Chinese Room ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Zombie Argument ◽  
The Mind

AbstractNaturalist theatre, in its late-nineteenth-century incarnation, and particularly in the work of Émile Zola, is often seen as advancing a physicalist view of the mind, where all mind states can be reduced to brain states. The novels and the plays do not uniformly or unambiguously support this analysis, so is the theory or the practice wrong? Physicalism is an idea that has had a recent renaissance, helped by the discoveries of neuroscience. Nevertheless I express some caution about the claims made for the eradication of free will. A range of thought experiments in the philosophy of mind have cast doubt on physicalism, culminating in David Chalmers’s much-debated zombie argument. I argue that zombies and their analogues represented deep social anxieties in the late nineteenth century, and make repeated appearances in Naturalism. The essay goes on to suggest that Naturalism should be considered to have conducted thought experiments, rather than just to have attempted to embody the theory on stage. Turning to John Searle’s ‘Chinese Room’ thought experiment, I suggest that theatre-making itself may be a kind of thought experiment model of the mind.

scholarly journals Tearing the Fabric: a Critique of Materialism

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-65
Author(s):  
Passia Pandora
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Subjective Experience ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
David Chalmers ◽  
Mental Experience ◽  
Reduction Problem ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
Mental Properties ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Ned Block

One of the long-standing questions in the field of philosophy of mind is called the mind-body problem.The problem is this: given that minds and mental properties appear to be vastly different thanphysical objects and physical properties, how can the mind and body relate to and interact with eachother? Materialism is the currently preferred response to philosophy’s classic mind-body problem.Most contemporary philosophers of mind accept a materialist perspective with respect to the natureof reality. They believe that there is one reality and it is physical. One of the primary problemswith materialism has to do with the issue of physical reduction, that is, if everything is physical,how does the mental reduce to the physical? I argue that the materialistic model is problematicbecause it cannot sufficiently explain the reduction problem. Specifically, the materialist model doesnot account for our subjective experience, including qualia. I also consider the question of why thematerialist stance is so entrenched, given all the problems with the reduction problem that havebeen raised. I argue that the paradigmatic influence of materialism explains the puzzling conclusionsdrawn by philosophers. In closing, I argue that the failure of materialist perspectives to explainreduction is our invitation to take a fresh look at the alternatives. In support of my position, I will consider the reduction problem in two sections. In the first section I will present some contemporary arguments put forth by Jaegwon Kim, Ned Block, Thomas Nagel, John Searle, David Chalmers, Frank Jackson and Roger Penrose. These contemporary arguments address four different reduction problems. Although the arguments presented by Kim, Block, Searle, Nagel, Chalmers, Jackson and Penrose are compelling, I will argue that their arguments have not succeeded in altering the mainstream materialist viewpoint. In the second section of this paper, I will address three of my concerns regarding the reduction issue, i.e., 1) concerns regarding unresolved issues with respect to the reduction problem, 2) concerns that materialism cannot account for common characteristics of our mental experience 3) concerns regarding the validity of the materialist stance in general. In closing, I will argue that the failure of materialist perspectives to conclusively explain mind and consciousness is our invitation to take a fresh look at the alternatives. mind-body problem; materialism; physical reduction; qualia; point-of-view

scholarly journals VI—Panpsychism and Free Will: A Case Study in Liberal Naturalism

2020 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-144
Author(s):  
Philip Goff
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Liberal Naturalism ◽  
The Mind

Abstract There has been a resurgence of interest in panpsychism in contemporary philosophy of mind. According to its supporters, panpsychism offers an attractive solution to the mind–body problem, avoiding the deep difficulties associated with the more conventional options of dualism and materialism. There has been little focus, however, on whether panpsychism can help with philosophical problems pertaining to free will. In this paper I will argue (a) that it is coherent and consistent with observation to postulate a kind of libertarian agent causation at the micro-level, and (b) that if one if believes in libertarian agent causation at the macro-level, there are significant advantages in also postulating its existence at the micro-level.

Wilhelm Diltheys Philosophie der Verkörperung

2015 ◽  
Vol 63 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Roman Madzia ◽  
Matthias Jung
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
External World ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Objective Reality ◽  
Wilhelm Dilthey ◽  
The Mind

AbstractThe philosophical tradition reaching from antiquity up till the contemporary philosophy of mind had tended to conceive of the mind as something which is ‘contained’ in the head. In recent decades such cognitive internalism has been called into question by the ‘embodied cognition’ movement in the philosophy of mind. The interactionist critique of cognitive and epistemological internalism, however, is not new. As the authors demonstrate, Wilhelm Dilthey, especially in his texts from the 1880s, came up with a profound critique of internalism and was able to clearly recognise its solipsistic ramifications. Dilthey took a strong interactionist stance with regard to internalism and presented an interesting argument in favor of the objective reality of the external world. The authors reconstruct these arguments and demonstrate the closeness of Dilthey’s work to the philosophy of the American pragmatists as well as Dilthey’s possible influence on some of them.

Body and Mind

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Renz
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Identity Theory ◽  
Abstract Model ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Mental Events ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Contemporary Approach

This chapter discusses the way in which Spinoza’s so-called identity theory addresses the mind–body problem and critically assesses several interpretations of his approach in contemporary philosophy of mind. The chapter takes Charles Jarrett’s and Michael Della Rocca’s interpretation of the attributes as opaque contexts as its point of departure. It argues that, rather than relating mental and bodily items to each other, Spinoza’s identity theory establishes an abstract model that allows for interpreting mental events as irreducible, yet completely intelligible, entities. This, it is further argued, distinguishes Spinoza’s position from the contemporary approach that comes closest to it: Donald Davidson’s anomalous monism. In contrast to Davidson—who, by rejecting the possibility of nomological reduction, relinquishes the expectation of granting third-person explainability to the mental—Spinoza assumes that, on the basis of his rationalism, mental events are not only no less real but also no less explainable than physical events.

Kant and Cognitive Science Revisited

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias Schlicht ◽  
Albert Newen
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Mental Content ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
The Mind

To which extent is it justified to adopt Kant as a godfather of cognitive science? To prepare the stage for an answer of this question, we need to set aside Kant’s general transcendental approach to the mind which is radically anti-empiricist and instead turn our attention to his specific topics and claims regarding the mind which are often not focus of Kant’s epistemological investigations. If someone is willing to take this stance, it turns out that there are many bridges connecting Kant with contemporary cognitive science. We investigate possible bridges suggested in the literature between some of Kant’s central claims about consciousness, mental content, and functions of mind, and some specific treatments of these topics in contemporary philosophy of mind and cognitive science. While doing so, we offer additional arguments for some proposed bridges, reconstruct others and completely destroy still other bridges by demonstrating that some suggested links between Kant and cognitive science remain only apparent.

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