Philosophy of mind - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Most modern philosophers of mind adopt either a reductive or non-reductive physicalist position,
Other philosophers, however, adopt a non-physicalist position that challenges the notion that the mind is a purely physical construct.

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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. The mind-body problem, i.e. via…

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retical background of biology, as is the case with modern natural sciences in general, is fundamentally materialistic. The objects of study are, in the first place, physical processes, which are considered to be the foundations of mental activity and behavior.^[77] The increasing success of biology in the explanation of mental phenomena can be seen by the absence of any empirical refutation of its fundamental presupposition: "there can be no change in the mental states of a person without a change in brain states."^[76]

Within the field of neurobiology, there are many subdisciplines that are concerned with the relations between mental and physical states and processes:^[77] Sensory neurophysiology investigates the relation between the processes of perception and stimulation.^[78] Cognitive neuroscience studies the correlations between mental processes and neural processes.^[78] Neuropsychology describes the dependence of mental faculties on specific anatomical regions of the brain.^[78] Lastly, evolutionary biology studies the origins and development of the human nervous system and, in as much as this is the basis of the mind, also describes the ontogenetic and phylogenetic development of mental phenomena beginning from their most primitive stages.^[76] Evolutionary biology furthermore places tight constraints on any philosophical theory of the mind, as the gene-based mechanism of natural selection does not allow any giant leaps in the development of neural complexity or neural software but only incremental steps over long time periods.^[79]

Since the 1980s, sophisticated neuroimaging procedures, such as fMRI (above), have furnished increasing knowledge about the workings of the human brain, shedding light on ancient philosophical problems.

The methodological breakthroughs of the neurosciences, in particular the introduction of high-tech neuroimaging procedures, has propelled scientists toward the elaboration of increasingly ambitious research programs: one of the main goals is to describe and comprehend the neural processes which correspond to mental functions (see: neural correlate).^[77] Several groups are inspired by these advances.
ack to one of the pioneers of computation Alan Turing. As an answer to the question "Can computers think?", he formulated the famous Turing test.^[82] Turing believed that a computer could be said to "think" when, if placed in a room by itself next to another room that contained a human being and with the same questions being asked of both the computer and the human being by a third party human being, the computer's responses turned out to be indistinguishable from those of the human. Essentially, Turing's view of machine intelligence followed the behaviourist model of the mind—intelligence is as intelligence does. The Turing test has received many criticisms, among which the most famous is probably the Chinese room thought experiment formulated by Searle
nervous systems (human or other animal) and machines (e.g. computers). Cognitive science consists of multiple research disciplines, including psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and education.^[85] It spans many levels of analysis, from low-level learning and decision mechanisms to high-level logic and planning; from neural circuitry to modular brain organisation. Rowlands argues that cognition is enactive, embodied, embedded, affective and (potentially) extended. The position is taken that the "classical sandwich" of cognition sandwiched between perception and action is artificial; cognition has to be seen as a product of a strongly coupled interaction that cannot be divided this way
ansformed (in faculties such as perception, language, memory, reasoning, and emotion) with

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Philosophy of mind - branch of philosophy of how the mind and body are separate components (dualism) seeing one as subjective and the other as objective

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Reductive physicalists
Non-reductive physicalists

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mental events, mental functions, mental properties
studies the nature of the mind
consciousness
their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain
determine the nature of the mind and mental states/processes
minds are affected by and can affect the body
divided the world into purusha (mind/spirit) and prakriti (material substance)

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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
mind to the body, is commonly seen as the central issue in philosophy of mind,
Dualism and monism are the two major schools of thought that attempt to resolve the mind-body problem. Dualism can be traced back to Plato,^[3] Aristotle^[4]^[5]^[
mind is a group of independent properties that emerge from and cannot be reduced to the brain, but that it is not a distinct substance.^[9]
mind is an independently existing substance,
Most modern philosophers of mind adopt either a reductive or non-reductive physicalist position, maintaining in their different ways that the mind is not something separate from the body.
, adopt a non-physicalist position which challenges the notion that the mind is a purely physical construct. Reductive physicalists assert that all mental states and properties will eventually be explained by scientific accounts of physiological processes and states.^[16]^[17]^[18] Non-reductive physicalists argue that although the brain is all there is to the mind,
predicates and vocabulary used in mental descriptions and explanations are indispensable, and cannot be reduced to the language and lower-level explanations of physical science.^[1
Dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter (or body). It begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical.^[
Western Philosophy, the earliest discussions of dualist ideas are in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. Each of these maintained, but for different reasons, that humans' "intelligence" (a faculty of the mind or soul) could not be identified with, or explained in terms of, their physical body.^[3]^[4] However, the best-known version of dualism is due to René Descartes (1641), and holds that the mind is a non-extended, non-physical substance, a "res cogitans".^[8]
David Chalmers in his book The Conscious Mind.
t one can imagine one's body, and therefore conceive the existence of one's body, without any conscious states being associated with this body. Chalmers' argument is that it seems very plausible that such a being could exist because all that is needed is that all and only the things that the physical sciences describe about a zombie must be true of it
mind depends only on events and properties taking place inside the subject's body or it depends also on factors external to it.
Proponents of externalism maintain that the surrounding world is in some sense constitutive of the mind.
Externalism differentiates into several versions. The main ones are semantic externalism, cognitive externalism, phenomenal externalism. Each of these versions of externalism can further be divided whether they refer only to the content or to the vehicles of mind.
content of the mind is totally or partially defined by state of affairs external to the body of the subject.
Cognitive externalism is a very broad collections of views that suggests the role of the environment, of tools, of development, and of the body in fleshing out cognition. Embodied cognition, The extended mind, enactivism are good example.
Many mental states seem to be experienced subjectively in different ways by different individuals.^[24] And it is characteristic of a mental state that it has some experiential quality, e.g. of pain, that it hurts
the sensation of pain between two individuals may not be identical, since no one has a perfect way to measure how much something hurts or of describing exactly how it feels to hurt.
Philosophers and scientists therefore ask where these experiences come from
puzzle of why many cerebral processes occur with an accompanying experiential aspect in consciousness seems impossible to explain.^[
substances that bear properties.^[5
very concept of qualitative experience is incoherent in terms
This problem of explaining introspective first-person aspects of mental states and consciousness in general in terms of third-person quantitative neuroscience is called the explanatory gap.
gap as ontological in nature;
qualia can never be explained
, the gap is epistemological in nature
Intentionality is the capacity of mental states to be directed towards (about) or be in relation with something in the external world.^[22] This property of mental states entails that they have contents and semantic referents and can therefore be assigned truth values
When one tries to reduce these states to natural processes there arises a problem: natural processes are not true or false, they simply happen
It would not make any sense to say that a natural process is true or false. But mental ideas or judgments are true or false, so how then can mental states (ideas or judgments) be natural processes
assigning semantic value to ideas must mean that such ideas are about facts
Humans are corporeal beings and, as such, they are subject to examination and description by the natural sciences. Since mental processes are intimately related to bodily processes, the descriptions that the natural sciences furnish of human beings play an important role in the philosophy of mind.^[
disciplines that study processes related to the mental.
physical processes, which are considered to be the foundations of mental activity and behav
can be no change in the mental states of a person without a change in brain state
studies the correlations between mental processes and neural processes.
tself with the automatic processing of information (or at least with physical systems of symbols to which information is assigned
programs which permit computers to carry out tasks for which organic beings need a mind
Within AI, it is common to distinguish between a modest research program and a more ambitious o
"weak AI", according to Searle, is the successful simulation of mental states, with no attempt to make computers become conscious or aware
a weak AI and strong A
bjective of strong AI, on the contrary, is a computer with consciousness similar to that of human beings.^[6
The question about the possible sensitivity (qualia) of computers or robots still remains open.
Psychology is the science that investigates mental states directly. It uses generally empirical methods to investigate concrete mental states like jo
laws that bind these mental states
Western culture, usually called analytic philosophy
other schools
differ from the analytic school in that they focus less on language and logical analysis alone but also take in other forms of understanding human existence and experienc
relation to the philosophy of mind the various schools that fall under this label
discussion of the mind, this tends to translate into attempts to grasp the concepts of thought and perceptual experience in some sense that does not merely involve the analysis of linguistic forms.^[72]
Eastern traditions such as Buddhism do not hold to the dualistic mind/body model but do assert that the mind and body are separate entities. Buddhism in particular does not hold to the notion of a soul, or
ssert that a very subtle level of mind leaves the body at the time of death and goes to a new life
explained that although mind lacks form, it can nevertheless be related to form. Thus, our mind is related to our body and is "located" at different places throughout the body. This is to be understood in the context of how the five sense consciousnesses and the mental consciousness are generate
are many different types of mind
they are all formless (l
they all function to cognize or know. There is no such thing as a mind without an object known by that mind. Even though none of these minds is form, they can be related to form
countless subjects that are affected by the ideas developed in the philosophy of mind

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heir relationship to the physical body, particularly the brai
nature of the mind
mind-body problem, i.e. the relationship of the mind to the body, is commonly seen as the central issue in philosophy of mind,
Dualism and monism are the two major schools of thoug
Dualism
René Descartes in the 17th century.
mind is an independently existing substance
by Parmenides in the 5th
Monism is the position that mind and body are not ontologically distinct kinds of entities
7th century rationalist Baruch Spinoza
maintaining in their different ways that the mind is not something separate from the body
planation of the relationship that exists between minds, or mental processes, and bodily states or processes.^[
The question, then, is how it can be possible for conscious experiences to arise out of a lump of gray matter endowed with nothing but electrochemical properties
mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physica
e writings of Plato and Aristotle
clearly identify the mind with consciousness and self-awareness, and to distinguish this from the brain, which was the seat of intelligence
René Descartes (1641), and holds that the mind is a non-extended,
s that it appeals to the common-sense
tuitions are misleading and that we should use our critical facultie
monism implies, all of our thoughts are the effects of physical causes, then we have no reason for assuming that they are also the consequent of a reasonable ground.
subjective aspects of mental events 'qualia' or 'raw feels
omething that it is like to feel pain, to see a familiar shade of blue, and so on. There are qualia involved in these mental events that seem particularly difficult to reduce to anything physic
y Descartes in the Meditation
simply interactionism,
t follows that mind and body are not identical because they have radically different properties
Seth's mental states (desires, beliefs, etc.) have causal effects on his body and vice-versa:
person's perceptions better than the person herself c
tal properties emerge. H
Strong emergentism asserts that when matter is organized in the appropriate wa
emergent properties have an independent ontological status and cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, the physical substrate from which they emerg
It consists of the view that mental phenomena are causally ineffectual, where one or more mental states do not have any influence on physical states.
Epiphenomenalism is a doctrine first formulated by Thomas Henry Huxley
sical events can cause other physical events and physical events can cause mental events, but mental events cannot cause anything
piphenomena) of the physical world
Physicalistic monism
the only existing substance is physical,
, idealism, states that the only existing substance is menta
ure idealism, such as that of George Berkeley, is uncommon in contemporary Western philosophy,
Phenomenalism is the theory that representations (or sense data) of external objects are all that ex
his neutral monism, as it is called, resembles property dualism.
ntrospective reports on one's own interior mental life are not subject to careful examination for accuracy and cannot be used to form predictive generalization
just descriptions of behavior or dispositions to behave in certain ways, made by third parties to explain and predict others' behavior.^[
ental states are not interior states on which one can make introspective reports.
desire for a cup of coffee" would thus be nothing more than the "firing of certain neurons in certain brain regions"
mental state M is nothing other than brain state B
th the same pain experience are in the same identical brain state. And if the latter is the case, then pain cannot be identical to a specific brain state. The identity theory is thus empirically unfounded
The idea of token identity is that only particular occurrences of mental events are identical with particular occurrences or tokenings of physical events
layers arranged in terms of increasing complexity and each corresponding to its own special science.
water having a new property when Hydrogen H and Oxygen O combine to form H2O (water). In this example there "emerges" a new proper
to physical properties of the brain giving rise to a mental state.
Mind emerges from processes of Matter and the Energies these processes bring about
William Blake's "I am My Mind", by stating that all Matter and Energy is Mind, what he calls Proto-Mind, and from this Proto-Mind's processes, a threshold barrier is overcome, and Life emerges as Self-Working Energy (Mind
They argue that it is an error to ask how mental and biological states fit together. Rather it should simply be accepted that human experience can be described in different way
he brain is simply the wrong context for the use of mental vocabulary—the search for mental states of the brain is therefore a category error or a sort of fallacy of reasoning
mind-body problem is an illusory problem which should be dissolved according to the manner of Wittgenstei
xternalism maintain that the surrounding world is in some sense constitutive of the mind.
f internalism are committed to the view that neural activity is sufficient to produce the mind
physicalism is that the mind is part of the material (or physical) worl
that no other material thing seems to possess. Physicalism must therefore explain how it is possible that these properties can nonetheless emerge from a material thing.
he puzzle of why many cerebral processes occur with an accompanying experiential aspect in consciousness seems impossible to explain
his means that there needs to be an explanation of why they have the property of being experienced in a certain way
Martin Heidegger criticized the ontological assumptions underpinning such a reductive model, and claimed that it was impossible to make sense of experienc
e nature of our subjective experience and its qualities is impossible to understand in terms of Cartesian "substances" that bear "propertie
ncept of qualitative experience is incoherent in terms of – or is semantically incommensurable with the concept of – substances that bear propertie
is called the explanatory gap.
rpret the gap as ontological in nature
g to them, the gap is epistemological in nature
For Nagel, science is not yet able to explain subjective experience because it has not yet arrived at the level or kind of knowledge that is requ
McGinn, on other hand, the problem is one of permanent and inherent biological limitations. We are not able to resolve the explanatory gap because the realm of subjective experiences is cognitively closed to us in the same manner that quantum physics is cognitively closed to elephan
ot even able to formulate the problem cohere
reduce these states to natural processes there arises a problem: natural processes are not true or false, they simply happen
would not make any sense to say that a natural process is true or false. But mental ideas or judgments are true or false, so how then can mental states (ideas or judgments) be natural processes? T
Thus, for example, the idea that Herodotus was a historian refers to Herodotus and to the fact that he was an historian. If the fact is true, then the idea is true; otherwise, it is false
here can be no change in the mental states of a person without a change in brain states
natural laws completely determine the course of the material world.
which means human behavior and decisions would be completely determined by natural laws
people cannot determine by themselves what they want and what they do. Consequently, they are not free
A free act is one where the agent could have done otherwise if it had chosen otherwise. In this sense a person can be free even though determinism is true
mpatibilist in the history of the philosophy was David Hume.^[
They argue as follows: if our will is not determined by anything, then we desire what we desire by pure chance. And if what we desire is purely accidental, we are not free
our will is not determined by anything, we are not free.^[

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Dualism and monism are the two major schools of thought that attempt to resolve the mind-body problem. Dualism can be traced back to Plato,^[3] Aristotle^[4]^[5]^[6] and the Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy,^[7] but it was most precisely formulated by René Descartes in the 17th century.^[8] Substance Dualists argue that the mind is an independently existing substance, whereas Property Dualists maintain that the mind is a group of independent properties that emerge from and cannot be reduced to the brain, but that it is not a distinct substance.^[9]
Monism is the position that mind and body are not ontologically distinct kinds of entities. This view was first advocated in Western philosophy by Parmenides in the 5th century BC and was later espoused by the 17th century rationalist Baruch Spinoza.^[10] Physicalists argue that only the entities postulated by physical theory exist, and that the mind will eventually be explained in terms of these entities as physical theory continues to evolve. Idealists maintain that the mind is all that exists and that the external world is either mental itself, or an illusion created by the mind. Neutral monists adhere to the position that there is some other, neutral substance, and that both matter and mind are properties of this unknown substance. The most common monisms in the 20th and 21st centuries have all been variations of physicalism; these positions include behaviorism, the type identity theory, anomalous monism and functionalism.^[11]

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Philosophy of mind is a branch of modern analytic 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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Philosophy of mind is a branch of modern analytic 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. The mind-body problem, i.e. the relationship of the mind to the body, is commonly seen as the central issue in philosophy of mind, although there are other issues concerning the nature of the mind that do not involve its relation to the physical body.
Dualism and monism are the two major schools of thought that attempt to resolve the mind-body problem.
Substance Dualists argue that the mind is an independently existing substance, whereas Property Dualists maintain that the mind is a group of independent properties that emerge from and cannot be reduced to the brain, but that it is not a distinct substance.
Monism is the position that mind and body are not ontologically distinct kinds of entities.
Physicalists argue that only the entities postulated by physical theory exist, and that the mind will eventually be explained in terms of these entities as physical theory continues to evolve. Idealists maintain that the mind is all that exists and that the external world is either mental itself, or an illusion created by the mind. Neutral monists adhere to the position that there is some other, neutral substance, and that both matter and mind are properties of this unknown substance.
Most modern philosophers of mind adopt either a reductive or non-reductive physicalist position, maintaining in their different ways that the mind is not something separate from the body.
Reductive physicalists assert that all mental states and properties will eventually be explained by scientific accounts of physiological processes and states.
Non-reductive physicalists argue that although the brain is all there is to the mind, the predicates and vocabulary used in mental descriptions and explanations are indispensable, and cannot be reduced to the language and lower-level explanations of physical science.

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Philosophy of mind is a branch of modern analytic 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. The mind-body problem,

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Philosophy of mind is a branch of modern analytic 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. The mind-body problem,

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It is the view that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, causally interact with physical states.^[9]
scientists can describe a person's perceptions better than the person herself can