Questions tagged [philosophy-of-mind]
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness, and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain.
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Are these arguments -- in philosophy of mind?
Do any of these arguments [epiphanies] exist in the philosophy of mind?
Consciousness is a complex structure, and it is unlikely to be realizable in just any structure, else anything big enough would ...
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Question about anchoring and adjustment (Tversky and Kahneman) and why anchoring often yields correct judgments
I am working on a problem set and I am having some difficulty wrapping my head around a concept introduced by Tversky and Kahneman. My problem set asks the question "Why does anchoring nevertheless ...
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What is the utility of consciousness if free will is an illusion?
Introspectively speaking, it seems to me obvious that free will is illusion. Thoughts just emerge from background causes, and actions are just thoughts about actions that we have more thoughts about ...
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How to dive into philosophy?
I'm a high school student with some basic knowledge of philosophy by far (I've taken an Intro to Philosophy course online, read Plato's Republic, some Camus, some Nietzsche and plenty of Marx), but ...
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Does our experience with habits lead us to believe in free will?
Notoriously intractable, free will have had no success in being proven physically. Even phenomenally it is difficult to pin down precisely. So why do people believe each other when claiming that they ...
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Confusion about the nature, defininition, and subject of study of Epistemology, Gnosiology and Phillosophy of Science
I am confused with the terms and the branches of phillosophy.
Here is an example where all 3 terms were used.
I always though phillosophy of science and epistemology were the exact same thing while ...
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Is it possible to make decisions without some kind of belief system? [closed]
Normally when we talk about belief, we mean religious beliefs. But even the criticizers of religions have some kind of belief system. They base all their decisions on the premise of logic. Thats why I ...
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Epistemology and definition of Theory in Science
Which branch of philosophy is the authority and thus has the capacity to define what IS theory in science? I have linked to the definition of Theory by Simon Blackburn in Oxford Dictionary of ...
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What is David Chalmers' Naturalistic dualism?
Can somebody explain to me exactly what David Chalmers' Naturalistic dualism is, because I have heard a lot of conflicting explanations on it?
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Why does Searle's room receive three batches of Chinese characters and two English instruction manuals as input?
Searle's Chinese room receives input in the form of a batch of chinese characters, then twice after receives a batch of Chinese. The second batch of Chinese comes with English instructions for "...
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According to physics, do our visual thoughts (possibly others) appear to be not real because they occupy physically inaccessible higher dimensions?
I wanted to know how physics explain the mind.I will first share my thoughts on whether thoughts are real or that the mind is real (Mind is the arena where we have thoughts).
I think we usually ...
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On the Donald Davidson Discourse of Contradictory Beliefs
The following excerpt is taken from Donald Davidson, Problems of Rationality, Chapter 14, Who is Fooled (1997), page 217:
We should not agree that believing the contradictory or the contrary of a ...
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Did Freud really suggest translating the manifest into the latent to interpret it?
Is the bold section of the following text correct about Freud's hypothesis? Does it mean to use the manifest dream thoughts in order to find the meaning of the latent ones?
According to Derrida, ...
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Can we create a paradox of self-consciousness?
On the theme of Russell's paradox:
Does the set of all sets that do not contain themselves contain itself?
And the Barber's paradox:
Does a barber who shaves all men who do not shave themselves ...
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Philosophy of concepts - can it be (gradually) expressed in type theory?
Reasoning in mathematics is simple and subject to automation and discipline/system, because every concept (e.g. integer number, real number, derivative, integral, differential equation and its ...
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Is the concept of Aporia the same as the Zen concept of A Beginners Mind?
Is the concept of Aporia the same as the zen concept of A Beginners Mind, or related to it, or a completely different concept?
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How does mediation inherent in the senses not refute Searle's "direct realism"?
In an answer to this question How to start Philosophy and find the branches that are related to my questions?, an article by Searle came up http://www.klemens.sav.sk/fiusav/doc/organon/prilohy/2012/2/...
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Ontological Foundations of Epistemology: Perspectives on Entities Regarding Knowledge
A review of the SEP article of epistemology indicates that there are 5 sources of knowledge: perception, memory, introspection, reason, and testimony. Robert Audi in his Epistemology: A Contemporary ...
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Objective idealism and realism can be similar?
So, Hegel's objective idealism believes in manifestations of reason which is nothing but ideas. And which exists in this world is nothing but the ideas, everything is idea and idea is everything.
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Is space experienced?
Space doesn't have a taste, a smell, a sound or a "shape". Anything we experience and think seem to require it. It doesn't have any experiential property whatsoever, but we still normally refer to it ...
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Which books do you recommend for me?
I read a lot about philosophy but it’s so huge that I stand confused. I am not sure which branch of philosophy suits me. I request your help.
I don’t believe in god or spirituality.
I want to live ...
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Is willful ignorance ethically acceptable? [closed]
Disclaimer: This is an open/opinion based question. Coming from StackOverflow something like this isn't looked fondly upon but I hope it's more commonly accepted practice over here. Also I am not a ...
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The experience of simultaneously holding very different interpretations of reality
Disclaimer: I am describing here something that's been my personal perception/interpretation/mode of being for many many years. I may not (probably don't) know the correct terminology, or whether this ...
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What makes things real?
Suppose that a person can't sense anything. He can't see, hear, feel. Nothing. So for him, does anything even exist?
Does that mean only things we can sense are real or existent?
Also, how would you ...
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Has any philosopher discussed pre-cognitive or pre-linguistic conceptualization?
To get an idea of what I'm talking about one may pay close attention to their own thought process. It may become evident that one can gain awareness of certain conceptual assemblages. If awareness at ...
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Fear of death is prior feature of human T or F
A group of people have the fear of death, another group of people do not, the group of people that do not have fear of death believe the consequence is to go to heaven. Part of the first group think ...
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Why is the concept of self-awareness important?
When we discuss whether something (an animal, a strong AI, a Boltzmann brain, etc) would have the kind of intelligence like a human, there are often materials saying whether they would be possibly ...
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In how far is experiencing other Consciousness' part of the Hard Problem of Consciousness?
To start with the easy problem of Consciousness - this is really more around the mechanics. It is asking about our scientific understanding of our neurological hardware and the processes thereon. It ...
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Putnam on computationalism
Just looking at this wikipedia article
Putnam has claimed along lines similar to, but more general than Searle's arguments, that the question of whether the human mind can implement computational ...
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Authors on consciousness and its relation with suffering
Let's say we take a group of volunteers willing to receive a 120V discharge under fMRI scanners. They all may receive the same intensity but how can we know that they all recieve the same amount of ...
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What responses have been made to Churchland's claim that the Knowledge Argument is equivocal?
In "Knowing Qualia: A Reply to Jackson" [1], Paul Churchland reiterates his claim that Frank Jackson's Knowledge Argument [2] equivocates on the sense of "knows about". This claim, originally made in “...
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Poincare says we are born geometric or arithmetic thinkers. Which was Grothendieck and why?
Poincare proclaims that the mathematical continuum originates from the sensible intuition and that intuition by pure number or logic alone could not have given us this notion.
Source for the claim:
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How to make sense of minds of others? [closed]
I've asked a question about the criteria for existence, but here I want to focus on a particular aspect. What does it mean If I say: Bob has a mind - Bob's mind exists - Bob is not a philosophical ...
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The Farmer narration by Alan Watts
Is anyone aware of the story of a Chinese farmer (A Taoist parable) who keeps saying "maybe" to every event (Good or bad) that happens to him because we don't know the consequences of those events in ...
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Does modern physics lend support to or reject dualism?
I have seen a few papers/articles which apparently show that dualism is supported by modern quantum mechanics:
A Quantum-Mechanical Argument for Mind–Body Dualism
QUANTUM MECHANICS AND DUALISM
...
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How our brain can trick us when me and my brain are possibly the same?
I was discussing with my friend and we were talking about how brain can trick you to do or not to do something.
And it begs this question :
Why do psychologists state this theory like we are ...
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Transcendental and non-transcendental god and objectivism
Objectivism rejects transcendence as it is not part of the objective world that exists and which we can explore. But what if we put time in this equation?
As we see through the years, many phenomena ...
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Does property dualism imply survival in the teletransportation paradox?
Property dualism posits the existence of only the physical substance, but the existence of both mental and physical properties.
The teletransportation paradox presents a situation in which a person ...
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Can any philosophy of mind be empirically verified?
(This is sort of a follow-up from this question)
Can dualism, materialism, or anything in between be empirically verified? There seems to be some disagreement here. This page presents both views ...
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Can anyone recommend a good book on The Self?
I don't have any formal education on philosophy but I read some books including Think by Simon Blackburn that got me interested in this subject.
Thanks.
Edit:
Specifically, I was intrigued by Kant's ...
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Who can I read that talks about this?
I’d like to know if there has been anyone that has taken my point of view on this so I can read him.
Some kind of relativism based on the belief that everything follows the physical laws of the ...
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Goal of liberation in yoga - Isn't it Boring?
I see that the goal of yoga is liberation from the karma and from the birth/death cycle. People say that it is the ultimate happiness forever. But wouldn't that be boring and monotonous if there is ...
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What does it truly mean to have a will? Is it the same as being conscious?
Like if we talk about making choices, how can we know if it's made out of a habitual or automatic thought process or is independent and conscious?
To most degree, the succession of thoughts in a ...
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What did Bohm exactly mean when he said that mind and matter were the same?
In 1990, the physicist David Bohm published a paper named "A new theory of the relationship of mind and matter" promoting a "panpsychist" theory of consciousness based on Bohm's interpretation of ...
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Do all arguments against mind-body identity theory assume that every pain is the same?
I don’t get (any of) the arguments against mind-brain identity theories.
It’s usually argued that multiple realisability kills MBIT (see also this post). In a talk I attended it was stated as ...
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Is Spiritual aspect a part of Western Philosophy?
I am from India and hence, I am little aware of Western ways thinking with respect to Spiritual matters.
I would like to clarify that the Spiritual that I am referring to is
an individual practice, ...
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Are there philosophers who argue for a close connection between consciousness and existence?
(I'm not entirely satisfied with this question because I can't quite express it clearly, but a personal experience has moved me to ask it. I know it may be too vague or general.)
The consciousness my ...
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Is the story "The happiness of fish" in Zhuangzi about naïve realism?
Here is the story, translated by Victor Mair:
Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling along the bridge over the Hao River. Zhuangzi said, “The minnows swim about so freely, following the openings ...
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What is horizontal attentional displacement? [closed]
I recently came across this article
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjop.12399
an excerpt from it says
Furthermore, other concepts were also shown to rely on horizontal ...
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Is there an argument against physicalism on the grounds that the view would make what we call a subjective experience astronomically unlikely?
If we assume that physcialism is true and all that there is, then we can safely assume that what we think of as subjective experience and consciousness, is driven by the atoms in our brain and the ...
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