 A Phrenological mapping of the brain. Phrenology was among the first attempts to correlate mental functions with specific parts of the brain. Philosophy of mind is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness and their relationship to the physical body. 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.[1] Image File history File links Phrenology1. ...
Image File history File links Phrenology1. ...
A 19th century Phrenology chart. ...
In animals the brain, or encephalon (Greek for in the head), is the control center of the central nervous system, responsible for thought. ...
The philosopher Socrates about to take poison hemlock as ordered by the court. ...
For other uses, see Mind (disambiguation). ...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...
Mental functions and cognitive processes are terms often used interchangeably (although not always correctly so, the term cognitive tends to have specific implications - see cognitive and cognitivism) to mean such functions or processes as perception, introspection, memory, imagination, conception, belief, reasoning, volition, and emotion--in other words, all the different...
A mental property is a property of the mind. ...
Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment. ...
Dualism and monism are the two major schools of thought that attempt to resolve the mind-body problem. Dualism is the position that mind and body are in some way separate from each other. It can be traced back to Plato,[2] Aristotle[3][4][5] and the Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy,[6] but it was most precisely formulated by René Descartes in the 17th century.[7] 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.[8] René Descartes illustration of dualism. ...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ...
For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation). ...
Aristotle (Greek: Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ...
Samkhya, also Sankhya, (Sanskrit: सांख्य) is a school of Indian philosophy, and is one of the six astika or Hindu philosophical schools of India. ...
Statue of Shiva performing Yogic meditation Yoga (Devanagari: योग) is a Sanskrit word that has a wide range of different meanings. ...
Hinduism (known as in some modern Indian languages[1]) is a religion that originated on the Indian subcontinent. ...
René Descartes (French IPA: ) (March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius (latinized form), was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer. ...
René Descartes illustration of dualism. ...
Property dualism is a philosophy of mind, and a subbranch of emergent materialism. ...
In philosophy, emergentism is the belief in emergence, particularly as it involves consciousness and the philosophy of mind, and as it contrasts with reductionism. ...
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.[9] 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.[10] In philosophy, ontology (from the Greek , genitive : of being (part. ...
Western philosophy is a modern claim that there is a line of related philosophical thinking, beginning in ancient Greece (Greek philosophy) and the ancient Near East (the Abrahamic religions), that continues to this day. ...
Parmenides of Elea (Greek: , early 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher born in Elea, a Hellenic city on the southern coast of Italy. ...
In epistemology and in its broadest sense, rationalism is any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification (Lacey 286). ...
Benedictus de Spinoza or Baruch de Spinoza (Hebrew: ברוך ×©×¤×™× ×•×–×”) (lived November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin. ...
The term physicalism was coined by Otto Neurath, in a series of early 20th century essays on the subject, in which he wrote According to physicalism, the language of physics is the universal language of science and, consequently, any knowledge can be brought back to the statements on the physical...
In philosophy, idealism is any theory positing the primacy of spirit, mind, or language over matter. ...
Neutral monism, in philosophy, is the metaphysical view that nature consists of one kind (hence monism) of primal stuff, which in itself is neither mental nor physical, but is capable of mental and physical aspects or attributes. ...
Behaviorism (also called learning perspective) is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do—including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors. ...
Type physicalism (also known as Type Identity Theory, Type-Type theory or just Identity Theory) is the theory, in the philosophy of mind, which asserts that mental events are type-identical to the physical events in the brain with which they are correlated. ...
Anomalous Monism is a philosophical thesis about the mind-body relationship. ...
Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviorism. ...
Many 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.[10] These approaches have been particularly influential in the sciences, particularly in the fields of sociobiology, computer science, evolutionary psychology and the various neurosciences.[11][12][13][14] Other philosophers, however, 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.[15][16][17] 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.[18][19] Continued neuroscientific progress has helped to clarify some of these issues. However, they are far from having been resolved, and modern philosophers of mind continue to ask how the subjective qualities and the intentionality (aboutness) of mental states and properties can be explained in naturalistic terms.[20][21] Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines that explains behaviour in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages of social behaviours. ...
Computer scaence, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ...
Evolutionary psychology (abbreviated ev-psych or EP) is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain certain mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as evolved adaptations, i. ...
Drawing of the cells in the chicken cerebellum by S. Ramón y Cajal Neuroscience is a field that is devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system. ...
Drawing of the cells in the chicken cerebellum by S. Ramón y Cajal Neuroscience is a field that is devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system. ...
The mind-body problem -
The mind-body problem concerns the explanation of the relationship, if any, that exists between minds, or mental processes, and bodily states or processes.[1] One of the aims of philosophers who work in this area is to explain how a supposedly non-material mind can influence a material body and vice-versa. René Descartes illustration of mind/body dualism. ...
For other uses, see Mind (disambiguation). ...
Our perceptual experiences depend on stimuli which arrive at our various sensory organs from the external world and these stimuli cause changes in our mental states; ultimately causing us to feel a sensation, which may be pleasant or unpleasant. Someone's desire for a slice of pizza, for example, will tend to cause that person to move their body in a specific manner and in a specific direction to obtain what they want. 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.[10] A related problem is to explain how someone's propositional attitudes (e.g. beliefs and desires) can cause that individual's neurons to fire and his muscles to contract in exactly the correct manner. These comprise some of the puzzles that have confronted epistemologists and philosophers of mind from at least the time of René Descartes.[7] Stimulation is the irritating action of various agents (stimuli) on muscles, nerves, or a sensory end organ, by which activity is evoked; especially, the nervous impulse produced by various agents on nerves, or a sensory end organ, by which the part connected with the nerve is thrown into a state...
This article or section may be confusing for some readers, and should be edited to be clearer or more simplified. ...
A propositional attitude is a relational mental state connecting a person to a proposition. ...
Drawing by Santiago Ramón y Cajal of neurons in the pigeon cerebellum. ...
It has been suggested that Meta-epistemology be merged into this article or section. ...
René Descartes (French IPA: ) (March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius (latinized form), was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer. ...
Dualist solutions to the mind-body problem Dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter. It begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non-physical.[8] One of the earliest known formulations of mind-body dualism was expressed in the eastern Sankhya and Yoga schools of Hindu philosophy (c. 650 BCE), which divided the world into purusha (mind/spirit) and prakrti (material substance).[6] Specifically, the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali presents an analytical approach to the nature of the mind. René Descartes illustration of dualism. ...
For other uses, see Mind (disambiguation). ...
This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...
This article does not cite any references or sources. ...
Galunggung in 1982, showing a combination of natural events. ...
Samkhya, also Sankhya, (Sanskrit: सांख्य) is a school of Indian philosophy, and is one of the six astika or Hindu philosophical schools of India. ...
Statue of Shiva performing Yogic meditation Yoga (Devanagari: योग) is a Sanskrit word that has a wide range of different meanings. ...
In Hinduism, Purusha ([Cosmic] Man) is the self which pervades the universe. ...
Prakrti or Prakriti (from Sanskrit language) is, according to samkhya philosophy, the basic matter of which the universe consists. ...
This article is in need of attention. ...
Patañjali, is the compiler of the Yoga Sutra, a major work containing aphorisms on the practical and philosophical wisdom regarding practice of Raja yoga. ...
In 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 man's "intelligence" (a faculty of the mind or soul) could not be identified with, or explained in terms of, his physical body.[2][3] 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.[7] Descartes was the first to clearly identify the mind with consciousness and self-awareness, and to distinguish this from the brain, which was the seat of intelligence. He was therefore the first to formulate the mind-body problem in the form in which it still exists today.[7] Western philosophy is a modern claim that there is a line of related philosophical thinking, beginning in ancient Greece (Greek philosophy) and the ancient Near East (the Abrahamic religions), that continues to this day. ...
For other uses, see Plato (disambiguation). ...
Aristotle (Greek: Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ...
René Descartes (French IPA: ) (March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius (latinized form), was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer. ...
Consciousness is a quality of the mind generally regarded to comprise qualities such as subjectivity, self-awareness, sentience, sapience, and the ability to perceive the relationship between oneself and ones environment. ...
It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Self-consciousness. ...
Arguments for dualism The main argument in favor of dualism is that it seems to appeal to the common-sense intuition of the vast majority of non-philosophically-trained people. If asked what the mind is, the average person will usually respond by identifying it with their self, their personality, their soul, or some other such entity. They will almost certainly deny that the mind simply is the brain, or vice-versa, finding the idea that there is just one ontological entity at play to be too mechanistic, or simply unintelligible.[8] The majority of modern philosophers of mind think that these intuitions, like many others, are probably misleading and that we should use our critical faculties, along with empirical evidence from the sciences, to examine these assumptions and determine if there is any real basis to them.[8] The self is a key construct in several schools of psychology. ...
Know Your Personality - a poster describing some of the theoretical aspects in the personality research. ...
The soul, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the self-aware essence unique to a particular living being. ...
In philosophy, ontology (from the Greek , genitive : of being (part. ...
Another important argument in favor of dualism is the idea that the mental and the physical seem to have quite different, and perhaps irreconcilable, properties.[22] Mental events have a certain subjective quality to them, whereas physical events do not. So, for example, one can reasonably ask what a burnt finger feels like, or what a blue sky looks like, or what nice music sounds like to a person. But it is meaningless, or at least odd, to ask what a surge in the uptake of glutamate in the dorsolateral portion of the hippocampus feels like. Glutamate is the anion of glutamic acid. ...
The hippocampus is structurally located inside the medial temporal lobe of the brain. ...
Philosophers of mind call the subjective aspects of mental events qualia (or raw feels).[22] There is something 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 physical.[23] Redness is the canonical quale. ...
Interactionist dualism Interactionist dualism, or simply interactionism, is the particular form of dualism first espoused by Descartes in the Meditations.[7] In the 20th century, its major defenders have been Karl Popper and John Carew Eccles.[24] It is the view that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, causally interact with physical states.[8] René Descartes, painting by Frans Hals, ca. ...
René Descartes, painting by Frans Hals, ca. ...
René Descartes (French IPA: ) (March 31, 1596 – February 11, 1650), also known as Renatus Cartesius (latinized form), was a highly influential French philosopher, mathematician, scientist, and writer. ...
Frans Hals (c. ...
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH, FRS, FBA, (July 28, 1902 – September 17, 1994), was an Austrian born naturalized British[1] philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics. ...
Sir John Carew Eccles (January 27, 1903 – May 2, 1997) was an Australian neurophysiologist who won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the synapse. ...
Descartes' famous argument for this position can be summarized as follows: Seth has a clear and distinct idea of his mind as a thinking thing which has no spatial extension (i.e., it cannot be measured in terms of length, weight, height, and so on). He also has a clear and distinct idea of his body as something that is spatially extended, subject to quantification and not able to think. It follows that mind and body are not identical because they have radically different properties. Descartes.[7]
At the same time, however, it is clear that Seth's mental states (desires, beliefs, etc.) have causal effects on his body and vice-versa: A child touches a hot stove (physical event) which causes pain (mental event) and makes him yell (physical event), this in turn provokes a sense of fear and protectiveness in the mother (mental event), and so on. It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles accessible from a disambiguation page. ...
Descartes' argument crucially depends on the premise that what Seth believes to be "clear and distinct" ideas in his mind are necessarily true. Many contemporary philosophers doubt this.[25][26][27] For example, Joseph Agassi believes that several scientific discoveries made since the early 20th century have undermined the idea of privileged access to one's own ideas. Freud has shown that a psychologically-trained observer can understand a person's unconscious motivations better than she does. Duhem has shown that a philosopher of science can know a person's methods of discovery better than he does, while Malinowski has shown that an anthropologist can know a person's customs and habits better than he does. He also asserts that modern psychological experiments that cause people to see things that are not there provide grounds for rejecting Descartes' argument, because scientists can describe a person's perceptions better than he can.[28] Joseph Agassi, born in Jerusalem on May 7, 1927, is an Israeli academic with contributions in logic, scientific method, and philosophy. ...
(19th century - 20th century - 21st century - more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901–2000 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar (1900–1999...
Sigmund Freud (born Sigismund Schlomo Freud) May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939; (IPA: ) was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who co-founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. ...
Pierre Maurice Marie Duhem (10 June 1861 – 14 September 1916) French physicist and philosopher of science. ...
For the Olympic champion athlete see Bronislaw Malinowski (athlete). ...
Other forms of dualism
 Three varieties of dualism. The arrows indicate the direction of the causal interactions. Property dualism is not shown. 1) Psycho-physical parallelism, or simply parallelism, is the view that mind and body, while having distinct ontological statuses, do not causally influence one another. Instead, they run along parallel paths (mind events causally interact with mind events and brain events causally interact with brain events) and only seem to influence each other.[29] This view was most prominently defended by Gottfried Leibniz. Although Leibniz was an ontological monist who believed that only one type of substance, the monad, exists in the universe, and that everything is reducible to it, he nonetheless maintained that there was an important distinction between "the mental" and "the physical" in terms of causation. He held that God had arranged things in advance so that minds and bodies would be in harmony with each other. This is known as the doctrine of pre-established harmony.[30] Image File history File links Dualism. ...
Image File history File links Dualism. ...
Parallelism may refer to: Parallelism (philosophy) - in the philosophy of mind a theistic, dualist solution to the mind-body problem Parallelism in computing Parallelism in grammar or in rhetoric This is a disambiguation page: a list of articles associated with the same title. ...
It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles. ...
Look up Monad in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ...
Gottfried Leibnizs theory of pre-established harmony is a philosophical theory about causation under which every substance only affects itself, but all the substances (both bodies and minds) in the world nevertheless seem to causally interact with each other because they have been programmed by God in advance to...
2) Occasionalism is the view espoused by Nicholas Malebranche which asserts that all supposedly causal relations between physical events, or between physical and mental events, are not really causal at all. While body and mind are different substances, causes (whether mental or physical) are related to their effects by an act of God's intervention on each specific occasion.[31] Image File history File links Gottfried_Wilhelm_von_Leibniz. ...
Image File history File links Gottfried_Wilhelm_von_Leibniz. ...
Gottfried Leibniz Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (July 1, 1646 in Leipzig - November 14, 1716 in Hannover) was a German philosopher, scientist, mathematician, diplomat, librarian, and lawyer of Sorb descent. ...
Occasionalism is a philosophical theory about causation which says that neither matter nor mind can be a true cause of events. ...
Nicolas Malebranche (August 6, 1638 – October 13, 1715) was a French philosopher of the Cartesian school. ...
3) Epiphenomenalism is a doctrine first formulated by Thomas Henry Huxley.[32] It consists in the view that mental phenomena are causally ineffectual. Physical events can cause other physical events and physical events can cause mental events, but mental events cannot cause anything, since they are just causally inert by-products (i.e. epiphenomena) of the physical world.[29] This view has been defended most strongly in recent times by Frank Jackson.[33] Epiphenomenalism is a view in philosophy of mind according to which some or all mental states are mere epiphenomena (side-effects or by-products) of physical states of the world. ...
Thomas Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley F.R.S. (May 4, 1825 – June 29, 1895) was a British biologist, known as Darwins Bulldog for his defence of Charles Darwins theory of evolution. ...
Frank Cameron Jackson (born 1943) is a professor of philosophy at the Australian National University. ...
4) Property dualism asserts that when matter is organized in the appropriate way (i.e. in the way that living human bodies are organized), mental properties emerge. Hence, it is a sub-branch of emergent materialism.[8] These emergent properties have an independent ontological status and cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, the physical substrate from which they emerge. This position is espoused by David Chalmers and has undergone something of a renaissance in recent years.[34] Property dualism is a philosophy of mind, and a subbranch of emergent materialism. ...
Emergent materialism asserts that we will never understand the mechanism of emergence: it will always seem to us like emergence is magical. ...
David John Chalmers (born April 20, 1966) is a philosopher in the area of philosophy of mind. ...
Monist solutions to the mind-body problem In contrast to dualism, monism states that there are no fundamental divisions. Today, the most common forms of monism in Western philosophy are physicalist.[10] Physicalistic monism asserts that the only existing substance is physical, in some sense of that term to be clarified by our best science.[35] However, a variety of formulations (see below) are possible. Another form of monism, idealism, states that the only existing substance is mental. Although pure idealism, such as that of George Berkeley, is uncommon in contemporary Western philosophy, a more sophisticated variant called panpsychism, according to which mental experience and properties may be at the foundation of physical experience and properties, has been espoused by some philosophers such as William Seager.[36][37] Spinoza The two-dimensional work of art depicted in this image is in the public domain in the United States and in those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years. ...
Spinoza The two-dimensional work of art depicted in this image is in the public domain in the United States and in those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years. ...
Benedictus de Spinoza or Baruch de Spinoza (Hebrew: ברוך ×©×¤×™× ×•×–×”) (lived November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin. ...
The term physicalism was coined by Otto Neurath, in a series of early 20th century essays on the subject, in which he wrote According to physicalism, the language of physics is the universal language of science and, consequently, any knowledge can be brought back to the statements on the physical...
To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this section may require cleanup. ...
George Berkeley (IPA: , Bark-Lee) (12 March 1685 – 14 January 1753), also known as Bishop Berkeley, was an influential Irish philosopher whose primary philosophical achievement is the advancement of a theory he called immaterialism (later referred to as subjective idealism by others). ...
Panpsychism, in philosophy, is either the view that all parts of matter involve mind, or the more holistic view that the whole universe is an organism that possesses a mind. ...
Other forms of monism assert that the mental supervenes on the physical or vice versa. Variants of this type of monism include arguments that, as the limits of obtainable information are approached, a strict physicalist understanding and a strict idealist understanding will supervene on each other.[citation needed] Lastly, there are advocates of monism who believe that the mental and the physical are both part of a larger whole, which is generally considered to be not directly perceivable and hence not equivalent to the physical world. This last version of monism is generally associated with Eastern religions and philosophies, including Buddhism, Transcendentalism, and mysticism in general.[citation needed] In philosophy, supervenience is a well-defined dependency relation between higher-level (. mental) and lower-level (. physical) properties. ...
This article needs additional references or sources to facilitate its verification. ...
Transcendentalism was a group of new ideas in literature, religion, culture, and philosophy that emerged in New England in the early-to mid-19th century. ...
Mysticism from the Greek μυστικός (mustikos) an initiate (of the Eleusinian Mysteries, μυστήÏια (musteria) meaning initiation[1]) is the pursuit of achieving communion or identity with, or conscious awareness of, ultimate reality, the divine, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, or insight; and the belief that such experience is one...
Phenomenalism is the theory that representations (or sense data) of external objects are all that exist. Such a view was briefly adopted by Bertrand Russell and many of the logical positivists during the early 20th century.[38] A third possibility is to accept the existence of a basic substance which is neither physical nor mental. The mental and physical would then both be properties of this neutral substance. Such a position was adopted by Baruch Spinoza[9] and was popularized by Ernst Mach[39] in the 19th century. This neutral monism, as it is called, resembles property dualism. In epistemology and the philosophy of perception, phenomenalism is the view that physical objects do not exist as things in themselves but only as perceptual phenomena or sensory stimuli (e. ...
The concept of sense data (singular: sense datum) is very influential and widely used in the philosophy of perception. ...
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell OM FRS (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970), was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician and advocate for social reform. ...
Logical positivism (later referred to as logical empiricism) holds that philosophy should aspire to the same sort of rigor as science. ...
Benedictus de Spinoza or Baruch de Spinoza (Hebrew: ברוך ×©×¤×™× ×•×–×”) (lived November 24, 1632 – February 21, 1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish origin. ...
Ernst Mach Ernst Mach (February 18, 1838 – February 19, 1916) was an Austrian-Czech physicist and philosopher and is the namesake for the Mach number and the optical illusion known as Mach bands. ...
Neutral monism, in philosophy, is the metaphysical view that nature consists of one kind (hence monism) of primal stuff, which in itself is neither mental nor physical, but is capable of mental and physical aspects or attributes. ...
Physicalistic Monisms
Behaviorism -
Behaviorism dominated philosophy of mind for much of the 20th century, especially the first half.[10] In psychology, behaviorism developed as a reaction to the inadequacies of introspectionism.[35] Introspective reports on one's own interior mental life are not subject to careful examination for accuracy and can not be used to form predictive generalizations. Without generalizability and the possibility of third-person examination, the behaviorists argued, psychology cannot be scientific.[35] The way out, therefore, was to eliminate the idea of an interior mental life (and hence an ontologically independent mind) altogether and focus instead on the description of observable behavior.[40] Behaviorism (also called learning perspective) is a philosophy of psychology based on the proposition that all things which organisms do—including acting, thinking and feeling—can and should be regarded as behaviors. ...
This article is about the psychological process of introspecting. ...
Parallel to these developments in psychology, a philosophical behaviorism (sometimes called logical behaviorism) was developed.[35] This is characterized by a strong verificationism, which generally considers unverifiable statements about interior mental life senseless. For the behaviorist, mental states are not interior states on which one can make introspective reports. They are just descriptions of behavior or dispositions to behave in certain ways, made by third parties to explain and predict others' behavior.[41] In philosophy, epistemic theories of truth are attempts to analyse the notion of truth in terms of epistemic notions such as belief, acceptance, verification, justification, perspective and so on. ...
In philosophy, physiology, and psychology, a disposition is a habit, a preparation, a state of readiness, or a tendency to act in a specified way. ...
Philosophical behaviorism, notably held by Wittgenstein, has fallen out of favor since the latter half of the 20th century, coinciding with the rise of cognitivism.[1] Cognitivists reject behaviorism due to several perceived problems. For example, behaviorism could be said to be counter-intuitive when it maintains that someone is talking about behavior in the event that a person is experiencing a painful headache. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), pictured here in 1930, made influential contributions to Logic and the philosophy of language, critically examining the task of conventional philosophy and its relation to the nature of language. ...
The word cognitivism is used in several ways: In ethics, cognitivism is the philosophical view that ethical sentences express propositions, and hence are capable of being true or false. ...
Something is counter-intuitive if it does not seem likely to be true using the tool of human intuition or gut-feeling to perceive reality. ...
Identity theory -
Type physicalism (or type-identity theory) was developed by John Smart[17] and Ullin Place[42] as a direct reaction to the failure of behaviorism. These philosophers reasoned that, if mental states are something material, but not behavior, then mental states are probably identical to internal states of the brain. In very simplified terms: a mental state M is nothing other than brain state B. The mental state "desire for a cup of coffee" would thus be nothing more than the "firing of certain neurons in certain brain regions".[17] Type physicalism (also known as Type Identity Theory, Type-Type theory or just Identity Theory) is the theory, in the philosophy of mind, which asserts that mental events are type-identical to the physical events in the brain with which they are correlated. ...
John Jameison Carswell Smart, or Jack Smart, (born 1920, M.A. (Glasgow, 1946), B.Phil (Oxford, 1948)) is a Scottish-Australian philosopher. ...
Ullin Place (1924 – 2000) was a British philosopher and psychologist. ...
 The classic Identity theory and Anomalous Monism in contrast. For the Identity theory, every token instantiation of a single mental type corresponds (as indicated by the arrows) to a physical token of a single physical type. For anomalous monism, the token-token correspondences can fall outside of the type-type correspondences. The result is token identity. Despite its initial plausibility, the identity theory faces a strong challenge in the form of the thesis of multiple realizability, first formulated by Hilary Putnam.[19] It is obvious that not only humans, but many different species of animal can, for example, experience pain. However, it seems highly unlikely that all of these diverse organisms with 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.[19] Image File history File links Anomalous_Monism. ...
Image File history File links Anomalous_Monism. ...
Multiple realizability, in philosophy of mind, is the thesis that the same mental kind (property, state, event) can be realized by different physical kinds (properties, states or events). ...
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (born July 31, 1926) is an American philosopher who has been a central figure in Western philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. ...
On the other hand, even granted all above, it does not follow that identity theories of all types must be abandoned. According to token identity theories, the fact that a certain brain state is connected with only one "mental" state of a person does not have to mean that there is an absolute correlation between types of mental states and types of brain state. The type-token distinction can be illustrated by a simple example: the word "green" contains four types of letters (g, r, e, n) with two tokens (occurrences) of the letter e along with one each of the others. The idea of token identity is that only particular occurrences of mental events are identical with particular occurrences or tokenings of physical events.[43] Anomalous monism (see below) and most other non-reductive physicalisms are token-identity theories.[44] Despite these problems, there is a renewed interest in the type identity theory today, primarily due to the influence of Jaegwon Kim.[17] Jaegwon Kim (1934- ) is an American philosopher who explores the limitations of theories of strict psychophysical identity. ...
Functionalism -
Functionalism was formulated by Hilary Putnam and Jerry Fodor as a reaction to the inadequacies of the identity theory.[19] Putnam and Fodor saw mental states in terms of an empirical computational theory of the mind.[45] At about the same time or slightly after, D.M. Armstrong and David Kellogg Lewis formulated a version of functionalism which analyzed the mental concepts of folk psychology in terms of functional roles.[46] Finally, Wittgenstein's idea of meaning as use led to a version of functionalism as a theory of meaning, further developed by Wilfrid Sellars and Gilbert Harman. Functionalism is a theory of the mind in contemporary philosophy, developed largely as an alternative to both the identity theory of mind and behaviorism. ...
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (born July 31, 1926) is an American philosopher who has been a central figure in Western philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. ...
Jerry Alan Fodor (born 1935) is a philosopher at Rutgers University, New Jersey. ...
The computational theory of mind is the view that the human mind is best conceived as an information processing system very similar to or identical with a digital computer. ...
David Malet Armstrong, often D. M. Armstrong, (1926 - ) is an Australian philosopher of mind, and scientific metaphysician. ...
David Kellogg Lewis (September 28, 1941 – October 14, 2001) is considered to have been one of the leading analytic philosophers of the latter half of the 20th century. ...
Wittgenstein and Hitler in school photograph taken at the Linz Realschule in 1903. ...
Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (May 20, 1912 - July 2, 1989) was an American philosopher. ...
Gilbert Harman (born 1938) is a contemporary philosopher teaching at Princeton University who has published widely in Ethics, Epistemology, Metaphysics, and the philosophies of Language and Mind. ...
What all these different varieties of functionalism share in common is the thesis that mental states are characterized by their causal relations with other mental states and with sensory inputs and behavioral outputs. That is, functionalism abstracts away from the details of the physical implementation of a mental state by characterizing it in terms of non-mental functional properties. For example, a kidney is characterized scientifically by its functional role in filtering blood and maintaining certain chemical balances. From this point of view, it does not really matter whether the kidney be made up of organic tissue, plastic nanotubes or silicon chips: it is the role that it plays and its relations to other organs that define it as a kidney.[45]
Nonreductive physicalism -
Many philosophers hold firmly to two essential convictions with regard to mind-body relations: 1) Physicalism is true and mental states must be physical states, but 2) All reductionist proposals are unsatisfactory: mental states cannot be reduced to behavior, brain states or functional states.[35] Hence, the question arises whether there can still be a non-reductive physicalism. Donald Davidson's anomalous monism[18] is an attempt to formulate such a physicalism. Anomalous Monism is a philosophical thesis about the mind-body relationship. ...
Donald Davidson (March 6, 1917 – August 30, 2003) was an American philosopher and the Willis S. and Marion Slusser Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. ...
Anomalous Monism is a philosophical thesis about the mind-body relationship. ...
A basic idea which all non-reductive physicalists share in common is the thesis of supervenience: mental states supervene on physical states, but are not reducible to them. "Supervenience" therefore describes a functional dependence: there can be no change in the mental without some change in the physical.[47] In philosophy, supervenience is a well-defined dependency relation between higher-level (. mental) and lower-level (. physical) properties. ...
Eliminative materialism -
If one is a materialist but believes that all reductive efforts have failed and that a non-reductive materialism is incoherent, then one can adopt a final, more radical position: eliminative materialism. Eliminative materialists maintain that mental states are fictitious entities introduced by everyday "folk psychology".[15] Should "folk psychology", which eliminativists view as a quasi-scientific theory, be proven wrong in the course of scientific development, then we must also abolish all of the entities postulated by it. Eliminativists argue that our modern belief in the existence of mental phenomena is analogous to our ancient belief in obsolete theories such as the geocentric model of the universe. ...
Folk psychology (sometimes called naïve psychology) is the psychological theory implicit in our everyday ascriptions of others actions, and includes concepts such as belief (he thinks that Peter is wise), desire (she wants that piece of cake), fear (Alex is afraid of spiders) and hope (she hopes that he...
Eliminativists such as Patricia and Paul Churchland often invoke the fate of other, erroneous popular theories and ontologies which have arisen in the course of history.[15][16] For example, the belief in witchcraft as a cause of people's problems turned out to be wrong and the consequence is that most people no longer believe in the existence of witches. Witchcraft is not explained in terms of some other phenomenon, but rather eliminated from the discourse.[16] Patricia Smith Churchland (born July 16, 1943) is a Canadian-American philosopher working at the University of California, San Diego since 1984. ...
Paul Churchland (born 1942) is a philosopher working at the University of California, San Diego. ...
In philosophy, ontology (from the Greek , genitive : of being (part. ...
This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject. ...
Linguistic criticism of the mind-body problem Each attempt to answer the mind-body problem encounters substantial problems. Some philosophers argue that this is because there is an underlying conceptual confusion.[48] These philosophers, such as Ludwig Wittgenstein and his followers in the tradition of linguistic criticism, therefore reject the problem as illusory.[49] 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 ways - for instance, in a mental and in a biological vocabulary. Illusory problems arise if one tries to describe the one in terms of the other's vocabulary or if the mental vocabulary is used in the wrong contexts.[49] This is the case, for instance, if one searches for mental states of the brain. The 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.[49] Wittgenstein and Hitler in school photograph taken at the Linz Realschule in 1903. ...
A category mistake is a semantic or ontological error by which a property (or some category of being) is incorrectly ascribed to a particular ontological type or token in a proposition and therefore is meaningless or nonsense. ...
Today, such a position is often adopted by interpreters of Wittgenstein such as Peter Hacker.[48] However, Hilary Putnam, the inventor of functionalism, has also adopted the position that the mind-body problem is an illusory problem which should be dissolved according to the manner of Wittgenstein.[50] Peter M.S. Hacker (born 15 July 1939 in London) is a British philosopher. ...
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (born July 31, 1926) is an American philosopher who has been a central figure in Western philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. ...
Naturalism and its problems The thesis of physicalism is that the mind is part of the material (or physical) world. Such a position faces the problem that the mind has certain properties that no material thing possesses. Physicalism must therefore explain how it is possible that these properties can nonetheless emerge from a material thing. The project of providing such an explanation is often referred to as the "naturalization of the mental."[35] Some of the crucial problems that this project attempts to resolve include the existence of qualia and the nature of intentionality.[35] Naturalism is any of several philosophical stances, typically those descended from materialism and pragmatism, that do not distinguish the supernatural (including strange entities like non-natural values, and universals as they are commonly conceived) from nature. ...
Qualia -
Many mental states have the property of being experienced subjectively in different ways by different individuals.[23] For example, it is characteristic of the mental state of pain that it hurts. Moreover, your sensation of pain may not be identical to mine, since we have no way of measuring how much something hurts nor of describing exactly how it feels to hurt. Philosophers and scientists ask where these experiences come from. Nothing indicates that a neural or functional state can be accompanied by such a pain experience. Often the point is formulated as follows: the existence of cerebral events, in and of themselves, cannot explain why they are accompanied by these corresponding qualitative experiences. The puzzle of why many cerebral processes occur with an accompanying experiential aspect in consciousness seems impossible to explain.[22] Redness is the canonical quale. ...
Yet it also seems to many that science will eventually have to explain such experiences.[35] This follows from the logic of reductive explanations. If I try to explain a phenomenon reductively (e.g., water), I also have to explain why the phenomenon has all of the properties that it has (e.g., fluidity, transparency).[35]In the case of mental states, this means that there needs to be an explanation of why they have the property of being experienced in a certain way. Viscosity is a measure of the resistance of a fluid to deformation under shear stress. ...
See: transparency (optics) alpha compositing GIF#Transparency transparency (overhead projector) market transparency transparency (telecommunication) transparency (computing) For X11 pseudo-transparency, see pseudo-transparency. ...
The problem of explaining the introspective, first-person aspects of mental states, and consciousness in general, in terms of third-person quantitative neuroscience is called the explanatory gap.[51] There are several different views of the nature of this gap among contemporary philosophers of mind. David Chalmers and the early Frank Jackson interpret the gap as ontological in nature; that is, they maintain that qualia can never be explained by science because physicalism is false. There are two separate categories involved and one cannot be reduced to the other.[52] An alternative view is taken by philosophers such as Thomas Nagel and Colin McGinn. According 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 required. We are not even able to formulate the problem coherently.[23] For 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 elephants.[53] Other philosophers liquidate the gap as purely a semantic problem. The basic idea of the explanatory gap is that human experience (such as qualia) cannot be fully explained by mechanical processes; that something extra, perhaps even of a different metaphysical type, must be added to fill the gap. The Explanatory Gap has vexed and intrigued philosophers and AI researchers alike...
David John Chalmers (born April 20, 1966) is a philosopher in the area of philosophy of mind. ...
Frank Cameron Jackson is a professor of philosophy at the Australian National University. ...
In philosophy, ontology (from the Greek , genitive : of being (part. ...
Thomas Nagel (born July 4, 1937, in Belgrade, Serbia) is University Professor of Philosophy and Law at New York University and member of the Board of Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. ...
Colin McGinn (born 1950) is a British philosopher currently working at the University of Miami. ...
It has been suggested that Meta-epistemology be merged into this article or section. ...
Intentionality -
Intentionality is the capacity of mental states to be directed towards (about) or be in relation with something in the external world.[21] 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.[54] 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? The possibility of assigning semantic value to ideas must mean that such ideas are about facts. 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. But where does this relation come from? In the brain, there are only electrochemical processes and these seem not to have anything to do with Herodotus.[20] Intentionality, originally a concept from scholastic philosophy, was reintroduced in contemporary philosophy by the philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano in his work Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkte. ...
Philosopher John Searle, taken at a talk at UC Berkeley in spring 2002 by User:Fastfission. ...
Philosopher John Searle, taken at a talk at UC Berkeley in spring 2002 by User:Fastfission. ...
John Rogers Searle (born July 31, 1932 in Denver, Colorado) is the Slusser Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, and is noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and consciousness, on the characteristics of socially constructed versus physical realities, and on practical reason. ...
Biological Naturalism states that consciousness is a higher level function of the human brains physical capabilities. ...
Intentionality, originally a concept from scholastic philosophy, was reintroduced in contemporary philosophy by the philosopher and psychologist Franz Brentano in his work Psychologie vom Empirischen Standpunkte. ...
The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ...
This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...
Philosophy of mind and science Humans are corporeal beings and, as such, they are subject to examination and description by the natural sciences. Since mental processes are not independent of bodily processes, the descriptions that the natural sciences furnish of human beings play an important role in the philosophy of mind.[1] There are many scientific disciplines that study processes related to the mental. The list of such sciences includes: biology, computer science, cognitive science, cybernetics, linguistics, medicine, pharmacology, and psychology.[55] This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...
Computer scaence, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ...
Cognitive science is usually defined as the scientific study either of mind or of intelligence (e. ...
Cybernetics is the study of feedback and derived concepts such as communication and control in living organisms, machines and organisations. ...
Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. ...
medicines, see medication and pharmacology. ...
Pharmacology (in Greek: pharmakos (φάÏμακον) meaning drug, and logos (λόγος) meaning science) is the study of how substances interact with living organisms to produce a change in function. ...
Psychology (from Greek: ψυχή, psukhē, spirit, soul; and λόγος, logos, knowledge) is an academic/ applied discipline involving the scientific study of mental processes and behavior. ...
Neurobiology -
The theoretical 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.[56] 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."[55] Neurobiology is the study of cells of the nervous system and the organization of these cells into functional circuits that process information and mediate behavior. ...
The lunar farside as seen from Apollo 11 Natural science is the rational study of the universe via rules or laws of natural order. ...
Within the field of neurobiology, there are many subdisciplines which are concerned with the relations between mental and physical states and processes:[56] Sensory neurophysiology investigates the relation between the processes of perception and stimulation.[57] Cognitive neuroscience studies the correlations between mental processes and neural processes.[57] Neuropsychology describes the dependence of mental faculties on specific anatomical regions of the brain.[57] 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.[55] Neurobiology is the study of cells of the nervous system and the organization of these cells into functional circuits that process information and mediate behavior. ...
Neurophysiology is a part of physiology as a science, which is concerned with the study of the nervous system. ...
In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. ...
Stimulation is the irritating action of various agents (stimuli) on muscles, nerves, or a sensory end organ, by which activity is evoked; especially, the nervous impulse produced by various agents on nerves, or a sensory end organ, by which the part connected with the nerve is thrown into a state...
The field of cognitive neuroscience concerns the scientific study of the neural mechanisms underlying cognition and is a branch of neuroscience. ...
Neuropsychology is a branch of psychology and neurology that aims to understand how the structure and function of the brain relate to specific psychological processes. ...
This article or section does not cite any references or sources. ...
Ontogeny (also ontogenesis or morphogenesis) describes the origin and the development of an organism from the fertilized egg to its mature form. ...
A phylogeny (or phylogenesis) is the origin and evolution of a set of organisms, usually of a species. ...
 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).[56] A very small number of neurobiologists, such as Emil du Bois-Reymond and John Carew Eccles have denied the possibility of a "reduction" of mental phenomena to cerebral processes, partly for religious reasons.[24] However, the contemporary neurobiologist and philosopher Gerhard Roth continues to defend a form of "non-reductive materialism."[58] Sample fMRI data This example of fMRI data shows regions of activation including primary visual cortex (V1, BA17), extrastriate visual cortex and lateral geniculate body in a comparison between a task involving a complex moving visual stimulus and rest condition (viewing a black screen). ...
Sample fMRI data This example of fMRI data shows regions of activation including primary visual cortex (V1, BA17), extrastriate visual cortex and lateral geniculate body in a comparison between a task involving a complex moving visual stimulus and rest condition (viewing a black screen). ...
Neuroimaging includes the use of various techniques to either directly or indirectly image the structure, function, or pharmacology of the brain. ...
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (or fMRI) describes the use of MRI to measure hemodynamic signals related to neural activity in the brain or spinal cord of humans or other animals. ...
Methodology is defined as the analysis of the // == Headline text == principles of methods, rules, and postulates employed by a discipline or the development of methods, to be applied within a discipline a particular procedure or set of procedures. [1]. It should be noted that methodology is frequently used when method...
Neuroimaging includes the use of various techniques to either directl |
