Philosophy of Mind
Articles on philosophy of mind.
The first article looks at Gilbert Ryle's attack on the dualism of his day. This is still relevant given the persistence of property dualism and the distinctiveness ascribed to phenomenal consciousness. Jaegwon Kim's supervenience argument is a beautifully constructed and clear argument against property dualism. Gerald Edelman's theory is an attempt to provide a neurobiological account of consciousness. Although speculative, it has much that should be of interest to philosophers, as should the paper by Mashour and Alkire, which combines observations on awakening from anaesthesia with considerations on the phylogeny and evolution of consciousness.
Philosophy of mind is a venerable subject, originating in the metaphysical enquiries of the Ancient Greeks, and that venerability is both a blessing and a curse. It has produced a wealth of philosophical theorising over the centuries, which, by its originality, resourcefulness and method, has influenced philosophical thinking in other areas, as well as providing a conceptual framework for neurobiological studies of mind. But that very wealth of philosophical endeavour has produced such a weight of ideas and terminology that new ways of thinking struggle to break free from it.
Philosophy of mind is still essentially metaphysical in character, which is not surprising given its long pre-scientific development. Whereas meta-ethics and metalogic are the study of the fundamental components and systems which underpin ethics and logic respectively, metaphysics is not an analogous study of the underpinnings of physics, although its origins are in the physical speculations of the Pre-Socratics. It is concerned with the nature of ultimate reality, which transcends the narrower concerns of physics as a subject and indeed transcends what we can know by demonstrably repeatable experience. This has speculative value, contrary to the view of the Logical Positivists, because we have no grounds to suppose that what is the case is limited by what we can know of it. The problem with metaphysics, as practised, is that rather too much is claimed based on dubious appeals to intuition and knowledge that is said to be a priori but is in fact contestable. This defect applies to the philosophy of mind, which also suffers from an over-reliance on introspection and established paradigms. The consequences are unfortunate, not least in the persistence of dualism. Although some account has been taken of scientific advances in contemporary work, these have tended to be treated superficially. Nonetheless, this field has produced some outstanding philosophical argument and, if it embraces scientific developments more fully, is perhaps on the cusp of even greater achievement.
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