Philosophy of Mind

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Thought I would gather and gauge the opinions of those members of this board with regards to there stance, and maybe start a debate around this topic.

To lay my stance down:
I personally identify myself as a Cartessian Dualist and am willing to delve deeper through constructed discussion further into this interesting area of philosophy.

Regards,
Andrew James Ltham

Beyond the fact that duels are illegal these days, the separation of the body and the mind as two essentially independent entities makes no sense to me at all. The mind was developed by the body to aid it in its efforts to maintain itself and reproduce and the construction of the virtual universe models within each of our heads is useful only as it conforms sufficiently to the reality outside so that the body can react to stimuli purposely and with success. Some of our individual model universes work and some do not.

Dualist here.

Then think about it more.

I have thought about it a good deal and come to the conclusion that the conscious mind is a surface phenomena with much invisible activity going on below tied intimately to all the other body functions. To assume the conscious mind has much independence is like assuming the surface of the sea contains all to be known about he sea.

I know what electrical and chemical processes can be used for, and disagree.

I think I am a property dualist. The mind is a separate entity that emerges from biological processes, and with activity caused by biological processes.

So you're almost like Democritus? Interesting.

In this respect at least, I am much closer to Plato or Descartes.

I think dualism is too much a simplification and Descartes' dualism with mind and body, solely those two options is too restricted for me. I prefer four but that's mine subjective perception of course.

Will
Mind
Soul
Body

But they're not separated, they make one.

Later,
C.

I see no evidence for dualism.
It may be intuitive, but thats not evidence.
I'm a big fan of Thomas Metzinger's work on this topic.

I'm with sand.

Concepts of philosophy react in my mind much the same as concepts of religion and spirituality. I find them very interesting, but after a while it makes my brain hurt and I just have to throw my hands in the air and say... What the crap do I know?

Anyway, I chose physicalism. It makes the most sense to me.

Both make sense to me

Thank You, its great to see some opinions coming forth. I do apologize for the restrictive catergories, that I chose, and can expand on them if any one desires so.

Letum:
His work was very interesting. Have you read any work by David Chalmers.

Sand:
The analogy put forward by yourself was very well done. I try however not to base to much of my understanding of the matter on assumptions, but like most of what we try pertain to in philosphy and science requires the use of these necessary evils. Any argument I put forward will be in the form of a 'thought' experiment, or a contigency.

Also if I am to one day try pioneer in this area and bring it and all its glory into cognitive science, I wish to know both sides of the coin, and go in with an open mind. Although bias is inevitable I hope that I will not let it blind me from the truth.

Awesomelyglorius:
Thank you for contributing.
Just a question, do you believe that computers of sufficient power may one day display the 'conciousness' that you or I show?

Chever:
I am going to assume your correlation with both Plato and Descarttes has you leaning towards and Interactionist stand point.

Erminea:
A very interesting position and one similar that my mother has actually argued to me for. Hers pertaining to the seperation of Body, Mind and Soul. To me however, I have merged in your case, Will, Mind and Soul, not because I dont believe that they cannot be seprete entities, but because I believe the latter 3 fall under the same metaphysical catergory.

Far, far from comprehensively.
I have read more attacks against him than I have read his own words.
His qualia-less zombie seams to be entry level target practice in theory of mind.

Despite that, he is certainly one of the giants of the subjects and he isn't going away any time soon.
He has don't a lot to clarify his side of the argument.

As in:

[url=
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(philosophy)#What_is_Phenomenology.3F]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(philosophy)#What_is_Phenomenology.3F[/url]

Maybe

Last edited by chever on 11 Oct 2008, 10:30 am, edited 1 time in total.

At the moment I have no clue as to being able to discern consciousness directly in anything, living or otherwise aside from my internal observations. It must be presumed from external indications and the possibility of extrapolating from myself in a wide field has obvious limitations. Since I am human I think it is reasonable to accept the possibility that other humans are conscious but even in myself there are variabilities in its intensity and extent so there is no way to gauge how acute or intense it may be in even other humans. I have had wide contact with a fairly large number of other species and I tend to assign consciousness to many of them on the basis of interactive experience which seems to be contradictory to the opinion of a good many fairly intelligent humans. But throughout history the callous use of animals for food and other utilities has strongly prejudiced society in general to exclude our fellow animals from those possessing consciousness, partly through hubris and a good deal to relieve people of the guilt they might feel for the brutality that humans regularly use in dealing with other species. Until rather recently dark skin colored races were, to a large degree, excluded from common humanity largely for utilitarian reasons although I doubt that they were denied consciousness.