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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What is a "disorder"?
The is-ought gap makes it so we can not derive an ought from an is, correct? Without teleology, how can there be such a thing as a "disorder" or "disability"? The word "...
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I need help understanding Ayer's "Other Minds"
In The problem of Knowledge Chap V, Ayer states:
...if someone asks me whether I am in pain and I answer that I am, my reply, as I understand it, is not an answer to his question. For I am reporting ...
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Debate about Free Will [closed]
I had this debate with someone about whether or not we have free will or are we determined and my argument was we are determined because of how we are constructed by nature basically we haven't chosen ...
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What are the best Arguments against solipsism?
I am afraid that only my consciousness exists. That basically my consciousness simulates my body and the entire world. Please help me.
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Should one learn everything?
I like to learn a lot of things. Like dance , magic tricks , business , physics , geography , chemistry , biology , maths. Just everything. Definitely , you understand that all of these topics take ...
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If everything is predetermined, why should I feel motivated to do anything?
I am a proponent of hard-determinism.
Now, the problem is, if free will doesn't exist, why should I feel motivated to do anything? The question "Why should I feel motivated to do anything" ...
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Does instrumental corruption constitute extra-will multi-agency?
Through my previous question on ideology and instinct, a more fundamental query was encountered. In both individual and collective minds, semantic decay can result in mental threads out of alignment ...
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Is ideological dogma an example of exogenous instinct?
By my current understanding: Individual instinct is instantiated primarily by lower brain systems, which provide motivations of attraction and repulsion toward particular internal and external objects ...
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What is meant by other minds?
I recently asked about the argument for proving the existence of other minds. This argument is called the best explanation argument. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/other-minds/#BestExpl
Could you ...
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Something similar to The Knowledge Argument which works within Physicalism?
Here is The Knowledge Argument according to SEP (Mary is either monochrome or views the world through monochrome monitor):
(1) Mary has all the physical information concerning human color vision ...
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How can visual and other sensory information be transmitted by genes?
As we learned from those viral videos –look up “cat cucumber” if you haven’t seen them–, cats seem to be hard-wired to be scared of cucumbers and other objects that resemble snakes.
Behavioural ...
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Help with whether other minds exist, 'best explanation' argument
I recently read an article about other minds and there were two good arguments for other minds.
The first is the analogy argument. As I understand it, this argument is already outdated.
The second ...
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A question about the Turing test
Alan Turing bases his famous test for human-like machine intelligence on a party game between a man and a woman. Each communicates with a hidden judge by teleprinter (text alone). Nowadays, consoles ...
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Philosophy is useless for me! [closed]
What environment is best suited to allow for reprogramming of the subconscious? Let me explain, i am studying Friedrich Nietzsche, the ideas and argument he is presenting is overwhelming my old ideas ...
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‘Libet’s delay’ and the philosophy of mind and free will
If you are not familiar with Libet delay and the neuroscience of free will, you can read it below. It seems philosophers are interested in the topic since it relates to the philosophical notions of ...
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What does it mean for a proposition to be without cognitive content?
As the title states, am wondering what it means for a proposition to be without cognitive content. It seems to me that somehow all propositions are produced by the mind, and therefore cognition is ...
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What does Searle mean by "intentionality" and "causal processes"?
I am struggling to understand the meaning of some of the terminology John Searle uses in "Mind, brains, and programs." For example, right before "IV. The combination reply," he ...
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Which evolutionary concepts or theories are used to either support or undermine 'perception of free will' as accurate?
NOTE: 'Free will' in this question describes an ability to have chosen otherwise, given the same circumstances.
According to American Scientist, Darwin came to a belief that we had no free will 30 ...
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Quotations from Descartes on Animals as Automata
Animals do not feel pain and are automata. This view is commonly attributed to Descartes. And I would agree that in his philosophy no other conclusion makes sense.
But still, I want to distinguish ...
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How does hylomorphism solve mind-body and form-matter problem? How do they interact?
So, I have been reading Aristotle and Aquinas for quite a while, but their nuanced terms make their philosophy hardly graspable. It is not clear to me how do they solve mind-body and form-matter ...
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How does hylomorphic dualism (Thomism) deal with free will?
As I understand, according to hylomorphism the soul and the body are one in the same. The soul "informs" the matter, but does not interact as it would in interactionism. But how does this ...
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Can Cogito, ergo sum be formalized?
I was wondering lately whether Descartes argument for the existence of undoubtable truth could be formalized. I tried to formalize his argument in FOL, but only his light version proving that there ...
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Is there a name for the place in the human mind for *not* knowing - a place of curiosity, anger, insecurity, the void we grow in to as we develop?
Physicists debate about 'zero point' for laws pertaining to fields such as temperature. But in the process of knowledge acquisition and the ascent described by phrases like 'human development' and '...
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Are there thoughts that cannot be put into words?
This question came to me thinking about the notion of computation. I was thinking whether we can extend the notion of tape symbol from something that can be printed on a block of space, to something ...
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A Take on Application of Mathematics
The passage:
"To introduce rigorous mathematics, I believe it's essential to discuss the whys and establish a core relation between mathematics and application. Mathematics begins with ...
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How does the Chinese Room Argument handle the pile of sand paradox?
The Chinese Room setup is as follows, quoted from an earlier question on the same topic:
Imagine a native English speaker who knows no Chinese locked in a room full of boxes of Chinese symbols (a ...
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Why is it impossible for a program or AI to have semantic understanding?
relatively new to philosophy.
This question is based on John Searle's Chinese Room Argument.
I find it odd that his main argument for why programs could not think was that because programs could only ...
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History of The Intrinsic Nature Argument for panpsychism
Argument from Intrinsic nature basically says the intrinsic nature of matter is mental.
It appears to be fairly new argument, being fully developed by Russell and Eddington. I want to know if before ...
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Most important modern/contemporary essays on free will
I enjoy philosophising about free will and formulating arguments as to why it cannot exist. I would like to write about my arguments so that they are relevant in today's literature, and so, I want to ...
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Is Schopenhauer a panpsychist?
Some sources, such as Wikipedia say he is, but I have seen other people such as Bernardo Kastrup say he is pure idealist.
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Does being able to train your brain mean or logically imply that you are distinct from your brain?
While reading Why I am not a Buddhist by Evan Thompson, I came across this quote:
The category mistake is tied to a fundamentally unstable way of thinking about who you are in relation to your brain. ...
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Is there any clue as to whether there are things that cannot be thought or expressed in thought?
Is there any clue as to whether there are things that cannot be thought or expressed in thought? Everything that can be thought may exist, but are there things that maybe we can't possibly express in ...
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Do undefined concepts or assumptions have to exist?
In philosophy, we have the notion that definitions are infinitely regressive if we take the attitude of trying to define everything and it is unending. But of course, the very idea of an “infinite ...
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Does the possession of mind imply sentience and vice versa?
Definitions
I'm aware that there are differences in usage for 'sentience', 'consciousness', and 'awareness' as broadly covered (PhilSE)
So:
This question considers 'sentience' as the ability to have ...
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Positivism and Scientism
Positivists have been criticized for their scientism when in fact it seems that antipositivists are the ones that support scientism. Positivists try to exclude things from the label science, knowledge,...
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How does Descartes's phrase Cogito Ergo Sum help us better understand ourselves? [closed]
How can we apply the concept of "I think, therefore I am" by Rene Descartes in helping us understand who we are?
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How does a dualist explain changing their mind?
If I'm a monist about the mind and physicalism and/or causal determinism, when I change my mind about some topic, I can posit something causally linked to my mind as changing my opinion. Perhaps I ...
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Modeling of persuasion [closed]
I'd like to set out a model of how the mind changes its beliefs based on persuasive evidence, and I'm interested to know what work has been done similar to this.
Borrowing some of the terminology of ...
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What are the strong and contemporary philosophical arguments for believing in other minds? [duplicate]
What are the historically most cited and used arguments that philosophers have made for believing that other people have individual minds and feelings contrary to the assertions of solipsists?
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What does Integrated information theory tell us about non-biological consciousness? [closed]
What does IIT have to say about consciousness in rocks, stars or atoms?
Thank you!
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Panpsychism, consciousness in fundamental particles?
Panpsychism is sometimes stated as: All matter is conscious
What is meant by matter here? For example Philip Goff said:
The basic commitment is that the fundamental constituents of reality —
perhaps ...
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How much content is in the common sense, according to Marvin Minsky?
I remember watching, years ago, a lecture by (or an interview of) Marvin Minsky, in which he gave a numerical estimate of how much information was in the common sense. He stated that the common sense ...
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Experiment to prove that dualism is true
To prove experimentally that dualism is true, the dualist would need to show that:
Let be a person in physical state A at some instant t1 with conscious experience X.
Now, in another instant t2, the ...
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Conceivability as an argument for possibility
In some philosophy books I have encountered that conceivability of something is taken as an argument for its possibility.
In "The Conscious Mind" David Chalmers presents an argument that a ...
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Critique of those missing the Hard Problem?
From everything I've ever seen about the “Hard Problem of Consciousness”, the issue is that materialists and physicalists presume a different question and answer that one instead.
I feel like the two ...
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What does the existence of Anton’s syndrome prove?
For philosophers like Metzinger and Dennett, Anton’s syndrome is a refutation of the Cartesian view that we have infallible access to our own phenomenal consciousness (subjective experience).
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What is a good representation of the mind body problem in TV or film?
I am participating in a local conversation group, and I have briefly studied the mind body problem as a philosophy minor in college many moons ago. I wasn't sure if this question was best for sci-fi, ...
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Which Philosophical Ideas Best Protect Us From Existential Suffering in a Society Increasingly Accepting of the Claim That There is No Free Will?
Discussion of free will seems increasingly prevalent in mainstream media, particularly Youtube and in reputable periodicals such as the Atlantic, the Conversation and the Guardian (to name a few).
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Is Avatar Sexuality Likely to Persist in the Event of a Digitalised 'Humanity'? [closed]
The biological sexual act is vital to current human experience; it is one of our most powerful motivators and vital to the perpetuation of the species.
Humans do not require a present physical partner ...
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What was the Nietzsche's argument against theory of evolution?
I had read about it a decade ago, but it looks like now I have forgotten his point. Can I know what was his argument against Darwin?
