Science

  • to Philosophy of Mind"> An Introduction to Philosophy of Mind

    adminAnimals, Computers, Dualism, Free Choice, Knowledge, Mental States, Pain, Pleasure, Science

    When you think about the mind you can easily find yourself feeling confused. You might start asking questions like these: What is a mind? How does it relate to the body, something that is physical? Is it something we have control over? How does one know that other people have minds? Could computers have minds? Do animals have minds? These are the sorts of questions that philosophers of mind wonder about and have also given answers to. Though there is no consensus to these answers. In the lectures to come, you will get to think about these questions and other related questions. You will see how philosophers think about them too. As you ponder the questions try to think slowly about them. I once read that to do philosophy is to think in slow motion. You may react initially emotionally to a question, but try to fight this reaction. Think about your reasons for your beliefs and think about why someone might disagree with you. You strengthen your views when you can give reasonable responses to objections to them. The questions that philosophers ask about the mind are difficult to answer. This is why philosophers are still trying to answer them for so many centuries.  Part of the reason philosophy is enjoyed is that it can be therapeutic. Even if you can’t be sure of the answers to the questions, the act of thinking about them in a slow, reasoned way can sometimes help remove some of the confusion.

    In the paragraph above I used the term ‘mind’. However, in the lectures I will rarely, if ever, use this term. Instead, I will use the term ‘mental state’ for two reasons. One reason I do this is that the term ‘mind’ may suggest that it is a kind of thing, and this view is controversial. Some philosophers do think of the mind as a kind of thing that has or supports mental states, such as thoughts and feelings. But there are other philosophers who think of the mind, not as a thing, but rather as collection of mental states, that belong to a brain. Although philosophers disagree about whether a mind is a thing, almost all agree that there are mental states. Another reason I have chosen to use the term ‘mental state’ instead of ‘mind’ in the lectures is that the term ‘mind’ may cause you to think that we’re just talking about human minds. We must, however, think more generally when thinking about the mind, for there may be other things besides humans that may have minds. Most of us believe that animals have minds. Some philosophers believe that computers could have minds. If there are extra-terrestrial beings or if God exists, we may wonder about their minds. So for the sake of generality, the questions that we will explore will focus on mental states, not minds. Let me say a little more about these questions. (more…)

  • Mental States and Science

    adminMental States, Science

    What can science tell us about mental states?

    For one, it can tell us that mental states are related to what’s going on in the physical states of the brain. For instance if your brain is denied oxygen, say, from a cardiac arrest, you may go into a vegetative state and lose consciousness (this may have been what happened to to-warmbier-has-extensive-brain-damage-doctors-say-n773036″>Otto Warmbier). Science can also tell us about the relation between specific areas of the brain and mental states. We know, for example, that the area of the brain called the visual cortex is related to seeing. But can science tell us how mental states are related to brain states? Can science explain why the visual cortex, for example, is related to seeing, as opposed to smelling or some other mental state, or no mental state at all?

    There is a debate in philosophy of mind about this question. On one side of this debate are philosophers who believe that at present we have no scientific idea of how mental states are related to the physical states of the brain. On the other side of this debate are those philosophers who deny this.  In this post, we will examine one of the central issues underlying this debate, namely whether mental states can be described scientifically.

    When we scientifically describe the nature of something in the physical world we think about its properties that can be measured, such as its weight, size, shape and motion, and these properties are understood mathematically. When we scientifically describe something in the physical world we do not think of how it appears to us. Consider, for example, how science describes the nature of water. Science says its two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen (H2O). Notice that this scientific description does not say how water appears to us – that is, how it tastes or looks or smells or feels or sounds. We could scientifically understand things in the physical world, such as water, as the philosopher Thomas Nagel puts it, “even we had none of our present senses, so long as we were rational and could understand [its] mathematical and formal properties.” [The View from Nowhere – pg. 14]

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