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The Metaphysics Of Mind
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Book Synopsis The Metaphysics of Mind by : Anthony Kenny
Download or read book The Metaphysics of Mind written by Anthony Kenny and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Brings together in a systematic way Anthony Kenny's work in the philosopy of mind. It is intended as a sustained attack on a false view of the mind, the Cartesian view, and a demonstration that clarity is impossible without good metaphysics
Book Synopsis Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind by : William Jaworski
Download or read book Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind written by William Jaworski and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Structure and the Metaphysics of Mind is the first book to show how hylomorphism can be used to solve mind-body problems--persistent problems understanding how thought, feeling, perception, and other mental phenomena fit into the physical world described by our best science. Hylomorphism claims that structure is a basic ontological and explanatory principle. Some individuals, paradigmatically living things, consist of materials that are structured or organized in various ways. Those structures are responsible for individuals being the kinds of things they are, and having the kinds of powers or capacities they have. From a hylomorphic perspective, mind-body problems are byproducts of a worldview that rejects structure. Hylomorphic structure carves out distinctive individuals from the otherwise undifferentiated sea of matter and energy described by our best physics, and it confers on those individuals distinctive powers, including the powers to think, feel, and perceive. A worldview that rejects hylomorphic structure lacks a basic principle which distinguishes the parts of the physical universe that can think, feel, and perceive from those that can't, and without such a principle, the existence of those powers in the physical world can start to look inexplicable and mysterious. But if mental phenomena are structural phenomena, as hylomorphism claims, then they are uncontroversially part of the physical world, for on the hylomorphic view, structure is uncontroversially part of the physical world. Hylomorphism thus provides an elegant way of solving mind-body problems.
Book Synopsis Controversies and the Metaphysics of Mind by : Yaron M. Senderowicz
Download or read book Controversies and the Metaphysics of Mind written by Yaron M. Senderowicz and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2010 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since ancient times, metaphysical theories have been shaped by the dialectical relations between metaphysical positions. The present book offers a new account of the role of controversies in the evolution of ideas in current metaphysics of mind. Part One develops a pragmatic theory of metaphysical controversies that combines Kantian themes and themes from current argumentation theory. The theory developed in this book underscores the role of a unique type of dialectical arguments which establish metaphysical positions as "controversial relevant alternatives "in the evolution of "chains of debates" in metaphysics. In Part Two and Part Three, this theory is applied to chains of debates in present day metaphysics of mind which address the problems of consciousness and personal identity. One of the contentions defended in this book is that the intellectual history of metaphysics is not a process in which positions are replaced by opposite positions, but rather, "a history of their status as relevant alternatives." The book analyzes in detail and demonstrates how "progress" in contemporary metaphysics of mind consists in a dialectical process through which challenges to extant positions lead to innovative alternatives that are intrinsically relevant to advancing the understanding of the issues under discussion.
Download or read book Having Thought written by John Haugeland and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2000-09-15 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The unifying theme of these thirteen essays is understanding. Haugeland addresses mind and intelligence; intelligibility; analog and digital systems and supervenience; presuppositions about the foundational notions of intentionality and representation; and the essential character of understanding in relation to what is understood.
Download or read book Personal Agency written by E. J. Lowe and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2008-09-04 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Personal Agency consists of two parts. In Part II, a radically libertarian theory of action is defended which combines aspects of agent causalism and volitionism. This theory accords to volitions the status of basic mental actions, maintaining that these are spontaneous exercises of the will—a 'two-way' power which rational agents can freely exercise in the light of reason. Lowe contends that substances, not events, are the causal source of all change in the world—with rational, free agents like ourselves having a special place in the causal order as unmoved movers, or initiators of new causal chains. And he defends a thoroughgoing externalism regarding reasons for action, holding these to be mind-independent worldly entities rather than the beliefs and desires of agents. Part I prepares the ground for this theory by undermining the threat presented to it by physicalism. It does this by challenging the causal closure argument for physicalism in all of its forms and by showing that a dualistic philosophy of mind—one which holds that human mental states and their subjects cannot be identified with bodily states and human bodies respectively—is both metaphysically coherent and entirely consistent with known empirical facts.
Book Synopsis Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind by : Jaegwon Kim
Download or read book Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind written by Jaegwon Kim and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2010-10-21 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jaegwon Kim presents a selection of his essays from the last two decades. The volume includes three new essays, on an agent-centered first-person account of action explanation, the concepts of realization and their bearings on the mind-body problem, and the nonexistence of laws in the special sciences. Among other topics covered are emergence and emergentism, the nature of explanation and of theories of explanation, reduction and reductive explanation, mental causation and explanatory exclusion. Kim tackles questions such as: How should we understand the concept of "emergence", and what are the prospects of emergentism as a doctrine about the status of minds? What does an agent-centered, first-person account of explanation of human actions look like? Why aren't there strict laws in the special sciences - sciences like biology, psychology, and sociology? The essays will be accessible to attentive readers without an extensive philosophical background.
Book Synopsis The Metaphysics of Mind by : Janet Levin
Download or read book The Metaphysics of Mind written by Janet Levin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-10 with total page 142 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Metaphysics of Mind presents and discusses the major contemporary theories of the nature of mind, including Dualism, Physicalism, Role-Functionalism, Russellian Monism, Panpsychism, and Eliminativism. Its primary goal is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the theories in question, including their prospects for explaining the special qualitative character of sensations and perceptual experiences, the special outer-directedness of beliefs, desires, and other intentional states, and—more generally—the place of mind in the world of nature, and the relation between mental states and the behaviors that they (seem to) cause. It also discusses, briefly, some further questions about the metaphysics of mind, namely, whether groups of individuals, or entire communities, can possess mental states that cannot be reduced to the mental states of the individuals in those communities, and whether the boundaries between mind and world are as sharp as they may seem.
Download or read book Philosophy of Mind written by Jaegwon Kim and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-19 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores a range of issues in the philosophy of mind, with the mind-body problem as the main focus. It serves as a stimulus to the reader to engage with the problems of the mind and try to come to terms with them, and examines Descartes's mind-body dualism.
Book Synopsis The Philosophy of Mind by : Dale Jacquette
Download or read book The Philosophy of Mind written by Dale Jacquette and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2009-06-23 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A clear and accessible introduction to the philosophy of mind, ideal for use on undergraduate courses.
Book Synopsis Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind by : Wilfrid Sellars
Download or read book Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind written by Wilfrid Sellars and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1997-03-25 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most important work by one of America's greatest twentieth-century philosophers, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind is both the epitome of Wilfrid Sellars' entire philosophical system and a key document in the history of philosophy. First published in essay form in 1956, it helped bring about a sea change in analytic philosophy. It broke the link, which had bound Russell and Ayer to Locke and Hume--the doctrine of "knowledge by acquaintance." Sellars' attack on the Myth of the Given in Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind was a decisive move in turning analytic philosophy away from the foundationalist motives of the logical empiricists and raised doubts about the very idea of "epistemology." With an introduction by Richard Rorty to situate the work within the history of recent philosophy, and with a study guide by Robert Brandom, this publication of Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind makes a difficult but indisputably significant figure in the development of analytic philosophy clear and comprehensible to anyone who would understand that philosophy or its history.
Book Synopsis The Metaphysics of Relations by : Anna Marmodoro
Download or read book The Metaphysics of Relations written by Anna Marmodoro and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents thirteen original essays which explore both traditional and contemporary aspects of the metaphysics of relations. It is uncontroversial that there are true relational predications-'Abelard loves Eloise', 'Simmias is taller than Socrates', 'smoking causes cancer', and so forth. More controversial is whether any true relational predications have irreducibly relational truthmakers. Do any of the statements above involve their subjects jointly instantiating polyadic properties, or can we explain their truths solely in terms of monadic, non-relational properties of the relata? According to a tradition dating back to Plato and Aristotle, and continued by medieval philosophers, polyadic properties are metaphysically dubious. In non-symmetric relations such as the amatory relation, a property would have to inhere in two things at once-lover and beloved-but characterise each differently, and this puzzled the ancients. More recent work on non-symmetric relations highlights difficulties with their directionality. Such problems offer clear motivation for attempting to reduce relations to monadic properties. By contrast, ontic structural realists hold that the nature of physical reality is exhausted by the relational structure expressed in the equations of fundamental physics. On this view, there must be some irreducible relations, for its fundamental ontology is purely relational. The Metaphysics of Relations draws together the work of a team of leading metaphysicians, to address topics as diverse as ancient and medieval reasons for scepticism about polyadic properties; recent attempts to reduce causal and spatiotemporal relations; recent work on the directionality of relational properties; powers ontologies and their associated problems; whether the most promising interpretations of quantum mechanics posit a fundamentally relational world; and whether the very idea of such a world is coherent. From those who question whether there are relational properties at all, to those who hold they are a fundamental part of reality, this book covers a broad spectrum of positions on the nature and ontological status of relations, from antiquity to the present day.
Book Synopsis A Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind-Uploading by : Keith Wiley
Download or read book A Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind-Uploading written by Keith Wiley and published by Humanity+ Press and Alautun Press. This book was released on 2014-09-13 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: MIND-UPLOADING: the process of transferring one’s mind from the brain to a new substrate, generally a computer. It is the stuff of science fiction, immediately recognizable in contemporary literature and cinema. However, it has also become increasingly respectable—or at least approachable—within technological, neurological, and philosophical circles. This book begins with a rich taxonomy of hypothetical procedures by which mind-uploading might be achieved, even if only in the realm of thought experiment. This is likely the most thorough collection of such procedures yet compiled and should form the basis of any reader’s personal philosophy of mind and mind-uploading. It then offers one such philosophy of mind, along with an analysis and interpretation of the scenarios in the taxonomy through the lens of this philosophy. This book will be an important component of any curious reader’s developing philosophy of mind and mind-uploading. Please note that this book is copublished by Humanity+ Press and Alautun Press, even though Google's "publisher" entry may only state one publisher. Praise for A Taxonomy and Metaphysics of Mind-Uploading “Starting with a very useful description of the ways that minds may be uploaded in the future, this book steps through some of the key philosophical issues that mind uploading poses. What is consciousness? Is there personal identity? What would the relationship of an organic person be to his mind clone? If we can copy minds would that mean there is no free will? This book makes a useful contribution to a debate that our children will undoubtedly have a stake in.” —JAMES J. HUGHES PH.D. • Executive Director, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies • Author, Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future “Along with AGI, life extension and cyborgs, mind uploading is going to be one of the major transformative technologies in the next century. Keith Wiley has done us all a favor by providing the most careful conceptual analysis of mind uploading that I've seen. The book is bound to become the standard reference regarding the various types of possible mind uploading, and the philosophical and scientific issues involved with each. As mind uploading moves closer to reality, his analysis and others inspired by it will provide valuable practical guidance to scientists and engineers working on the technology, as well as ordinary people making decisions about their own potential uploading to alternate physical substrates.” —BEN GOERTZEL PH.D. • CEO of Novamente • Vice Chair at Humanity+ Magazine • Chief Scientist at Aidyia Holdings • Advisor to the Singularity Institute “Keith Wiley artfully blends key concepts, philosophy, and nascent technologies together in a fascinating work on mind uploading. His coverage of the field is broad and deep, and jolts readers to see that a spark at the end of the tunnel can now be seen in moving this technology from science fiction to science reality.” —ERIC KLIEN • President of the Lifeboat Foundation “Keith Wiley has been involved with the pursuit of technology to accomplish mind uploading or whole brain emulation almost since the very moment those ideas crystalized and the terminology was born. In this book, he has diligently applied that long experience and his attention to detail. Carefully separating and describing the different paths and possible issues on the way to mind uploading, Wiley anchors the science and its philosophy. If you have ever been confused by the cornucopia of concepts bandied about, or if you want to dig deeply into the possibilities and consequences of mind uploading, then this book is for you.” —RANDAL A. KOENE PH.D. • Founder & CEO of Carboncopies.org • Founder of Minduploading.org • Science Director for the 2045 Initiative • Co-founder of the Neural Engineering Corporation • past Director of the Department of Neuroengineering at Tecnalia
Download or read book Mind written by John R. Searle and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-11-01 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The philosophy of mind is unique among contemporary philosophical subjects," writes John Searle, "in that all of the most famous and influential theories are false." One of the world's most eminent thinkers, Searle dismantles these theories as he presents a vividly written, comprehensive introduction to the mind. He begins with a look at the twelve problems of philosophy of mind--which he calls "Descartes and Other Disasters"--problems which he returns to throughout the volume, as he illuminates such topics as materialism, consciousness, the mind-body problem, intentionality, mental causation, free will, and the self. The book offers a refreshingly direct and engaging introduction to one of the most intriguing areas of philosophy.
Book Synopsis Matter and Consciousness by : Paul M. Churchland
Download or read book Matter and Consciousness written by Paul M. Churchland and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In "Matter and Consciousness," Paul Churchland clearly presents the advantages and disadvantages of such difficult issues in philosophy of mind as behaviorism, reductive materialism, functionalism, and eliminative materialism. This new edition incorporates the striking developments that have taken place in neuroscience, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence and notes their expanding relevance to philosophical issues. Churchland organizes and clarifies the new theoretical and experimental results of the natural sciences for a wider philosophical audience, observing that this research bears directly on questions concerning the basic elements of cognitive activity and their implementation in real physical systems. (How is it, he asks, that living creatures perform some cognitive tasks so swiftly and easily, where computers do them only badly or not at all?) Most significant for philosophy, Churchland asserts, is the support these results tend to give to the reductive and the eliminative versions of materialism. "A Bradford Book"
Book Synopsis Kant and the Philosophy of Mind by : Anil Gomes
Download or read book Kant and the Philosophy of Mind written by Anil Gomes and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fourteen original essays in this volume explore Kant's writings on the mind, covering such topics as intuition, imagination, inner sense, self-consciousness, and the will. These are central to any understanding of Kant's critical philosophy and of continuing relevance to contemporary debates.
Book Synopsis Philosophy of Mind by : William Jaworski
Download or read book Philosophy of Mind written by William Jaworski and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-02-16 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PHILOSOPHY of MIND “Philosophy of mind is an incredibly active field thanks in part to the recent explosion of work in the sciences of the mind. Jaworski’s book is a well-written, comprehensive, and sophisticated primer on all the live positions on the mind–body problem, including various kinds of physicalism, emergentism, and his own favorite, hylomorphism. This is a serious and responsible book for philosophy students, philosophers, and mind scientists who want to understand where they stand philosophically.” Owen Flanagan, Duke University Philosophy of Mind introduces readers to one of the liveliest fields in contemporary philosophy by discussing mind–body problems and the range of solutions to them: varieties of substance dualism, physicalism, dual-attribute theory, neutral monism, idealism, and hylomorphism. It treats each position fairly, in greater depth and detail than competing texts, and is written throughout in a clear, accessible style that is easy to read, free of technical jargon, and presupposes no prior knowledge of philosophy of mind. The result is a balanced overview of the entire field that enables students and instructors to grasp the essential arguments and jump immediately into current debates. William Jaworski discusses the impact of neuroscience, biology, psychology, and cognitive science on mind–body debates. Bibliographic essays at the end of each chapter bring readers up to speed on the latest literature and allow the text to be used in conjunction with primary sources. Numerous diagrams and illustrations help newcomers grasp the more complex ideas, and chapters on free will and the philosophy of persons make the book a flexible teaching tool for general philosophy courses in addition to courses in philosophy of mind.
Book Synopsis Reason, Metaphysics, and Mind by : Kelly James Clark
Download or read book Reason, Metaphysics, and Mind written by Kelly James Clark and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-02-09 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 2010, philosophers, family and friends gathered at the University of Notre Dame to celebrate the career and retirement of Alvin Plantinga, widely recognized as one of the world's leading figures in metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of religion. Plantinga has earned particular respect within the community of Christian philosophers for the pivotal role that he played in the recent renewal and development of philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Each of the essays in this volume engages with some particular aspect of Plantinga's views on metaphysics, epistemology, or philosophy of religion. Contributors include Michael Bergman, Ernest Sosa, Trenton Merricks, Richard Otte, Peter VanInwagen, Thomas P. Flint, Eleonore Stump, Dean Zimmerman and Nicholas Wolterstorff. The volume also includes responses to each essay by Bas van Fraassen, Stephen Wykstra, David VanderLaan, Robin Collins, Raymond VanArragon, E. J. Coffman, Thomas Crisp, and Donald Smith.
