7
votes
What counters are there to Spinoza's argument that acts of free will create infinite regress?
The meta-argument you attribute to Spinoza is closely related to the rule-following regress considered by Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations. To apply a rule in a particular situation we ...
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7
votes
Can the Chinese room argument be used to make a case for dualism?
The short answer is that a defense of dualism is not what John Searle was doing with the thought problem. He was showing how knowledge is different from function -- IE it was an attack on ...
- 10.5k
6
votes
Can physical aspects of the brain reveal everything about what one's subjective experience is like?
You are asking one of the outstanding unknown questions in philosophy: do mental states supervene on brain states or not?
"Supervene" is a really great word. If A supervenes on B, it means that if ...
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6
votes
Can the Chinese room argument be used to make a case for dualism?
I once attended a lecture by John Searle (circa 1996, on the UC Berkeley campus) in which the Chinese room thought experiment and its consequences was a primary topic. At one point I asked him ...
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5
votes
Can science prove or provide evidence that the brain is the source of the mind
Science can, in fact, provide strong evidence for that. We have a lot of very good information that shows very strong correlation between physical processes in the brain and how the mind works, but ...
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5
votes
Is the pleasure of drugs better than long term achievements?
My first point is: hard drugs aren't generally as good as people imagine.
Heroin makes your skin itch all over and gives you terrible constipation. Cocaine turns you into an intolerable arse of a ...
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5
votes
Accepted
From the "inverted spectrum" to the "music transposed by 12" problem?
This question conflates the objective and subjective elements of perception. Or to put it more concretely, we don't question that the cones of the retina each respond to certain wavelengths of light, ...
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4
votes
How might studying philosophy impact your mental health?
PATRICIA TURRISI, 'The Problem of the Philosophical Person', The Pluralist, Vol. 4, No. 1 (SPRING 2009), pp. 68-76, deals with the 'madness' of Socrates and William James. But it's an article, not a ...
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4
votes
If two brains A and B were 100% identical, why would A's self-awareness emerge in A instead of emerging in B and viceversa?
"If two brains A and B were 100% identical, why would A's self-awareness emerge in A instead of emerging in B and vice versa?" Am I missing something? The answer seems trivial. Presumably the question ...
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4
votes
What has modern Neuroscience contributed to philosophy of mind (as opposed to science in general)?
The link between philosophy and science is not so straightforward, it is rarely possible to say that some scientific developments are directly responsible for some specific philosophical developments. ...
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4
votes
According to Chalmers, can neuroscience resolve the "hard problem of consciousness"?
Q: What exactly is referred to by the "hard problem".
A: The hard problem of consciousness, according to Chalmers and the majority of philosophers that use this term, is the problem of how ...
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4
votes
Is there any evidence to suggest that our conciousness regularly replaces itself?
You need to examine what you are saying carefully. What does it mean to say that one's consciousness regularly 'replaces itself'? How would you even know? The article you cited is unsubstantiated ...
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3
votes
Accepted
How might studying philosophy impact your mental health?
in psychology, philosophy or neuroscience who talk about why negative or obsessive thinking is bad for your mental health?
In neuroscience this is correlated with activation of the
https://en.m....
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3
votes
According to Chalmers, can neuroscience resolve the "hard problem of consciousness"?
Short Answer
In his paper, Chalmers answers you directly himself, p.10:
We have seen that there are systematic reasons why the usual methods of cognitive science and neuroscience fail to account for ...
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3
votes
Brain states, morality and free will: What can we discern from the case of the schoolteacher who became a pedophile post-brain tumor?
We have to make a distinction between what we are and what we do. We cannot choose what we are, but we can and we must choose what we do.
What we are does not determine what we do. What we are ...
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3
votes
From the "inverted spectrum" to the "music transposed by 12" problem?
The transposing operation is approached in a wrong manner.
Before, there's no "start" of the light spectrum in you example. If you start from what you see as "red", you will have &...
- 6,830
3
votes
From the "inverted spectrum" to the "music transposed by 12" problem?
I mean the argument for the visual spectrum is essentially that "colors aren't real". Light isn't actually of a certain color it's just an electromagnetic wave of a certain frequency. Our ...
- 4,489
3
votes
Can the Chinese room argument be used to make a case for dualism?
The conclusion to draw from the idea of the code of a conscious AI being run on some kind of steam powered Turing machine, with paper tape and wooden cogs and levers, is that the AI cannot be assumed ...
- 13.1k
3
votes
Is quantum mechanics relevant/irrelevant to explain conscious processes?
We are not even close to having a solid theory of how consciousness arises from, or is facilitated by, chemical activity in brains, so it is too early to rule quantum effects in or out. The Koch and ...
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2
votes
What is the connection between color qualia and color frequencies?
If by "experience" you just mean qualia then the "connection" is purely accidental. We do not need to compare qualia to agree to call the same objects "green", nor do we need it to associate them to ...
- 42.5k
2
votes
Can physical aspects of the brain reveal everything about what one's subjective experience is like?
When McGinn states that knowing everything about your brain tells us nothing about your mind, he is overstating the case: an advanced cognitive neuroscience should indeed be able to say something ...
- 2,689
2
votes
Can science prove or provide evidence that the brain is the source of the mind
The best source I know for an objective but non-physicalist account of the whole issue is Bernardo Kastrup's recent book The Idea of the World (available in Kindle).
Essentially his argument is, the ...
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2
votes
Can science prove or provide evidence that the brain is the source of the mind
Here is the question:
But to what extent do you or philosophers believe (or disbelieve) physicalism because of evidence from science, or is it more from philosophical "evidence" and/or a ...
- 19.2k
2
votes
Accepted
How can we be accountable if we are chemically programmed?
Andrew Eshleman provides an answer to the first question: given determinism can we be accountable, that is, have moral responsibility.
In keeping with this focus on the ramifications of causal ...
- 19.2k
2
votes
Accepted
Physical correlates of consciousness
Information, information that exists in the neural processes, is probably the physical quantity that correlates perfectly with consciousness.
Consciousness is a very complex and dynamic entity: you’...
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2
votes
Accepted
Are neural correlates of consciousness and immortal souls compatible?
The simplest answer to this question is to remember that correlation does not equal causation. Neural correlates are exactly that: biological phenomena that correlate with subjective experiences of ...
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2
votes
According to Chalmers, can neuroscience resolve the "hard problem of consciousness"?
The Wikipedia page states (emphasis mine):
The philosopher David Chalmers, who introduced the term "hard problem of consciousness,"[3] contrasts this with the "easy problems" of ...
- 5,124
2
votes
Is the pleasure of drugs better than long term achievements?
It depends...
If your life contains little in the way of natural satisfaction as generated by successes, then artificial happiness looks attractive, and the illegality of the drug and the ...
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