Download or read book Epiphenomenal Mind written by William S. Robinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-27 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to epiphenomenalism, our behavior is caused by events in our brains that also cause our mentality. This resulting mentality reflects our brains’ organization, but does not in turn cause anything. This book defends an epiphenomenalist account of philosophy of mind. It builds on the author’s previous work by moving beyond a discussion of sensations to apply an epiphenomenalist outlook to other aspects of mental causation such as beliefs, desires, pleasure, and displeasure. The first four chapters of the book argue for a dualistic theory of sensations and develop an epiphenomenalist version of dualism. The remaining chapters discuss propositional attitudes and valence. The author also responds to potential objections to epiphenomenalism by considering how sensations, intelligence, or understanding might be built into a robot. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in philosophy of mind who are interested in consciousness, mental causation, and how our mentality is situated in the world.
Download or read book Foundational Issues in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science written by M.H. Bickhard and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 1996-10-15 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book focuses on a conceptual flaw in contemporary artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Many people have discovered diverse manifestations and facets of this flaw, but the central conceptual impasse is at best only partially perceived. Its consequences, nevertheless, visit themselves as distortions and failures of multiple research projects - and make impossible the ultimate aspirations of the fields. The impasse concerns a presupposition concerning the nature of representation - that all representation has the nature of encodings: encodingism. Encodings certainly exist, but encodingism is at root logically incoherent; any programmatic research predicted on it is doomed too distortion and ultimate failure. The impasse and its consequences - and steps away from that impasse - are explored in a large number of projects and approaches. These include SOAR, CYC, PDP, situated cognition, subsumption architecture robotics, and the frame problems - a general survey of the current research in AI and Cognitive Science emerges. Interactivism, an alternative model of representation, is proposed and examined.
Download or read book The Mind As a Scientific Object written by Christina E. Erneling and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-01-13 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What holds together the various fields that are supposed to consititute the general intellectual discipline that people now call cognitive science? In this book, Erneling and Johnson identify two problems with defining this discipline. First, some theorists identify the common subject matter as the mind, but scientists and philosophers have not been able to agree on any single, satisfactory answer to the question of what the mind is. Second, those who speculate about the general characteristics that belong to cognitive science tend to assume that all the particular fields falling under the rubric--psychology, linguistics, biology, and son on--are of roughly equal value in their ability to shed light on the nature of mind. This book argues that all the cognitive science disciplines are not equally able to provide answers to ontological questions about the mind, but rather that only neurophysiology and cultural psychology are suited to answer these questions. However, since the cultural account of mind has long been ignored in favor of the neurophysiological account, Erneling and Johnson bring together contributions that focus especially on different versions of the cultural account of the mind.
Download or read book The Conscious Mind written by David J. Chalmers and published by Oxford Paperbacks. This book was released on 1997 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Writing in a rigorous, thought-provoking style, the author takes us on a far-reaching tour through the philosophical ramifications of consciousness, offering provocative insights into the relationship between mind and brain.
Download or read book Humanity in a Creative Universe written by Stuart A. Kauffman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the hard sciences, which can often feel out of grasp for many lay readers, there are "great thinkers" who go far beyond the equations, formulas, and research. Minds such as Stephen Hawking philosophize about the functions and nature of the universe, the implications of our existence, and other impossibly fascinating, yet difficult questions. Stuart A. Kauffman is one of those great thinkers. He has dedicated his lifetime to researching "complex systems" at prestigious institutions and now writes his treatise on the most complex system of all: our universe. A recent Scientific American article claims that "philosophy begins where physics ends, and physics begins where philosophy ends," and perhaps no better quote sums up what Kauffman's latest book offers. Grounded in his rigorous training and research background, Kauffman is inter-disciplinary in every sense of the word, sorting through the major questions and theories in biology, physics, and philosophy. Best known for his philosophy of evolutionary biology, Kauffman coined the term "prestatability" to call into question whether science can ever accurately and precisely predict the future development of biological features in organisms. As evidenced by the title's mention of creativity, the book refreshingly argues that our preoccupation to explain all things with scientific law has deadened our creative natures. In this fascinating read, Kauffman concludes that the development of life on earth is not entirely predictable, because no theory could ever fully account for the limitless variations of evolution. Sure to cause a stir, this book will be discussed for years to come and may even set the tone for the next "great thinker."
Download or read book Mind Language And Society written by John R Searle and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2008-08-04 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disillusionment with psychology is leading more and more people to formal philosophy for clues about how to think about life. But most of us who try to grapple with concepts such as reality, truth, common sense, consciousness, and society lack the rigorous training to discuss them with any confidence. John Searle brings these notions down from their abstract heights to the terra firma of real-world understanding, so that those with no knowledge of philosophy can understand how these principles play out in our everyday lives. The author stresses that there is a real world out there to deal with, and condemns the belief that the reality of our world is dependent on our perception of it.
Download or read book Mental Causation and the Metaphysics of Mind written by Neil Campbell and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2003-01-02 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Descartes’s division of the human subject into mental and physical components in the seventeenth century, there has been a great deal of discussion about how—indeed, whether or not—our mental states bring about our physical behavior. Through historical and contemporary readings, this collection explores this lively and important issue. In four parts, this anthology introduces the problem of mental causation, explores the debate sparked by Donald Davidson’s anomalous monism, examines Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument for the view that qualia are epiphenomenal, and investigates attempts to employ the controversial concept of supervenience to explain mental causation.
Download or read book The Knowledge Argument written by Sam Coleman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cutting-edge and groundbreaking set of new essays by top philosophers on key topics related to the ever-influential knowledge argument.
Download or read book Philosophy of Mind Historical and Contemporary Perspectives Third Edition written by Peter A. Morton and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2020-03-19 with total page 754 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book introduces students to the principal issues in the philosophy of mind by tracing the history of the subject from Plato and Aristotle through to the present day. Over forty primary-source readings are included. Extensive commentaries from the editors are provided to guide student readers through the arguments and jargon and to offer necessary historical context for the readings. The new third edition examines some of the most exciting recent developments in the field, including advances in theories about the mind’s relation to action and agency. Previous editions of this book, published under the title A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, have been praised and widely taught for more than two decades.
Download or read book Inside Reality written by Dr. Thomas Stark and published by Magus Books. This book was released on with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are those, such as scientists, who see only the outside of reality, its appearance, its surface, its phenomenal aspect. They are blind to the inside, the substance, the foundation, the noumenal aspect. They dismiss it as non-existent, or illusion, or epiphenomenon. Scientists are those that believe that phenomena have no underlying noumena. What you see is what you get. Seeing is believing. Everything is appearance. Nothing is concealed. There are no hidden variables, and no unobservables. The scientific method says, "Observe". That works only if everything is observable. If there are foundational unobservables, science is catastrophically wrong and has cut itself off from the truth. The only "truth" it can furnish is that of surfaces and appearances with no substance. Those who truly want to understand reality must become masters of both perspectives – inside and outside, noumenon and phenomenon – and see how they relate, communicate and interact.
Download or read book A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind written by Peter A. Morton and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 1996-12-23 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind is designed both to provide a selection of core readings on the subject and to make those readings accessible by providing commentaries to guide the reader through initially intimidating material. Each commentary explains technical concepts and provides background on obscure arguments as they arise, setting them in the historical and intellectual milieu from which they emerged. The readings concentrate on providing the student with a solid grounding in the theories of representative figures of the major philosophical movements, from Plato and Aristotle to important recent figures such as Fodor and Dennett. A glossary of key terms is also included.
Download or read book A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Second Edition written by Peter Morton and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2010-05-06 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is an expanded and revised second edition of Peter Morton's highly acclaimed A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, a text that combines primary readings with detailed commentary. The book has two aims: to present the philosophy of mind from a historical perspective so that the theories in the field are seen to emerge in the process of solving problems with earlier theories; and to give students access to original source material together with commentaries that explain technical terms and jargon, outline argumentative structures, and place the texts in their historical context. The second edition adds several new chapters covering recent issues in the field, and revises earlier chapters to improve the readings and update the commentaries.
Download or read book Consciousness Explained Scientifically by Substance Dualism written by Sanjeev Kumar Jain and published by White Falcon Publishing. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ‘How the consciousness comes into existence?’ is the second top unanswered mystery in science. The top unanswered mystery is ‘what is the universe made of?’ Physicalism or materialism finds itself quite inadequate to explain mental qualities and free will in terms of excitation of neurons and their modular connections. Untangling the mystery of consciousness has been esteemed as the proudest achievement of humankind. Consciousness is left as the last frontier in science whose explanation may perhaps require the conceptualisation of soul and god; otherwise, any divine soul or god is denied in existence, as it does not fit into the known science. This book explains consciousness by conceiving a scientific soul that leads to a plausible explanation for all aspects of consciousness and also leads to God. This book describes and explains consciousness comprehensively. Its offshoot also leads us a possible explanation for near-death-experiences, the origin of life and parapsychology. This book will lead you to know your thyself. It will awaken your spirit of inquiry for such questions as ‘who am I’ and ‘who is God’ while providing some answers also.
Download or read book Natural Minds written by Thomas W. Polger and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-01-20 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Natural Minds Thomas Polger advocates, and defends, the philosophical theory that mind equals brain—that sensations are brain processes—and in doing so brings the mind-brain identity theory back into the philosophical debate about consciousness. The version of identity theory that Polger advocates holds that conscious processes, events, states, or properties are type- identical to biological processes, events, states, or properties—a "tough-minded" account that maintains that minds are necessarily identical to brains, a position held by few current identity theorists. Polger's approach to what William James called the "great blooming buzzing confusion" of consciousness begins with the idea that we need to know more about brains in order to understand consciousness fully, but recognizes that biology alone cannot provide the entire explanation. Natural Minds takes on issues from philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and metaphysics, moving freely among them in its discussion. Polger begins by answering two major objections to identity theory—Hilary Putnam's argument from multiple realizability (which discounts identity theory because creatures with brains unlike ours could also have mental states) and Saul Kripke's modal argument against mind-brain identity (based on the apparent contingency of the identity statement). He then offers a detailed account of functionalism and functional realization, which offer the most serious obstacle to consideration of identity theory. Polger argues that identity theory can itself satisfy the kind of explanatory demands that are often believed to favor functionalism.
Download or read book Mind and Philosophers written by John Lachs and published by Vanderbilt University Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays collected in this volume and written between 1959-1980 clearly belong to professional philosophy in both tone and context. Yet their ultimate aim is to explore larger problems and to set the groundwork for dealing with them. For the focus of attention throughout is human nature, not so much in the details of its structure or its social and moral manifestations as in its most general features and constituents. What sort of beings we are and how mind and body are related is the question at the very core of all inquiries into human nature.
Download or read book Morality in Times of Naturalising the Mind written by Christoph Lumer and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-10-09 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the millennium, the neurophysiological and psychological bases of moral judgements and actions have been the topic of much empirical research. This volume discusses the relevance and possible usage of this research for (meta-)ethics and action theory. An overview of the empirical research, followed by critical assessments of several of its results, provides orientation on the research and criteria for its reasonable usage.
Download or read book Aspects of Consciousness written by Ingrid Fredriksson and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2012-08-02 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout the ages, the mysteries of what happens when we die and the nature of the human mind have fascinated us. In this collection of essays, leading scientists and authors contemplate consciousness, quantum mechanics, string theory, dimensions, space and time, nonlocal space, the hologram, and the effect of death on consciousness. Although many of these topics have traditionally been considered matters for philosophical and religious debate, advances in modern science and in particular the science of resuscitation have now enabled an objective, scientific approach--which bears widespread implications not only for science but for all of humanity.
