Analysis Of Dennett 's ' Qualia '

I’ve always loved the thrill of a challenge, and what’s more challenging than attempting to study the most mysterious thing known to mankind: the human brain? Dr Oliver Sacks said ‘If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a log or an eye; but if he has lost a self – himself – he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.’ Without memory, what are we at all? Memory makes us the person that we are; we build from our past experiences and use them to adapt our personality, and the complexity of it all is what intrigues me to pursue psychology at university and into a career as a neuropsychologist. In 2009 a family member of mine was diagnosed with Huntington’s disease. This was one of the first elements that sparked

This thought- experiment only posits the possibility of different qualia, but does not argue 3 anything significant or empirical. The problem of consciousness is mysterious to humans only given our current, limited understanding. Churchland claims that adding “I cannot imagine” is merely an epistemological fact about the speaker and is not significant or interesting. Such an argument merely states a fact about human limitations: There is no

In the wake of slavery, the black body is constantly under attack. The hold co-exists within the wake of slavery. According to Christina Sharpe, college professor, author of In the Wake on Blackness and Being, (2016) “The wake; a state of wakefulness and a state of consciousness” (pg. 5). Being in the wake of slavery means one still faces the negative effects it and is aware of the negative affects it has on the black community. The hold co-exists in the wake of slavery and the black body is inhibited by this hold. Sharpe defines the hold as, “A large space in the lower part of a aircraft in which cargo is stowed (of a ship or aircraft); keep or detain (someone)” (p. 68). In the hold, the black body has been introduced, taught, ingrained and continues this idea of the language of violence. Through the actual hold of the ship during the Middle Passage, to the perception of blacks which also holds the black body, and to the engrained idea of the “masculine black body” which keeps queer black bodies in their own hold. In this paper, I will examine the intersectionality of blackness and queerness which is being held in the wake of slavery.

Nella Larsen, a luminary of the Harlem Renaissance, explores the nature of racial identity and double-consciousness in her novella Passing. W.E.B Du Bois’s theory of double-consciousness is characterized in The Souls of Black Folk as a sense of “twoness,-- an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body” (Du Bois 2). Irene and Clare, Larsen’s novella’s primary characters, both lack a “dark body” which allows them to oscillate, by choice, between playing the part of the white “American” and the “Negro”. The appeal of racial passing lies in how it provides disenfranchised minorities access to otherwise unattainable

In October of this year, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) released a news article titled “Vegetative Patients Show Glimmers of Consciousness” (Mundasad, 2014). The article brought attention to the fact that while a patient may fit the medical description of being unconscious or in a vegetative state, research shows that some patients have brain activity similar to healthy adults, which suggest that the patients have mental awareness. The article referenced a study conducted by Chennu et al. (2014) comparing the structure and network differences between healthy adult brains to the brains of patients with disorders of consciousness (DoC).

It is here that one may believe that Dennett makes a mistake by categorizing his brain and his body as two distinct entities. After all, he claims that his brain, after surgery, will be "kept in a safe place where it could execute its normal control functions by elaborate radio links" (ibid, 379). In other words, these radio links are intended to take the place of normal neurological pathways such that "no information would be lost, all the connectivity would be preserved" (ibid, 379). Thus, after surgery, while there does exist a great temporal gap between his brain and his body, the relevant connection between the two does not appear to be much different than the connection between the brain and the body of someone with a "normal" temporal gap. And since the connection is still, in essence, the same regardless of however peculiar Dennett's case may be, it could be concluded that Dennett is no more entitled to name and categorize his body and his brain as distinct entities than anyone else.

Carr does not present his theory on cognition with only his own opinion and reason; he adds many different resources from which he compiled information in support of his argument, including that from many prominent scientists in the field of neuroscience. However, Carr only seems to focus on the fact that technology

Consciousness it is a state of awareness on both the external and internal actions and reaction toward different stimulus. Consciousness has greater impacts on our daily life and could influence survival of different organisms that lives on planet earth. The benefits is that it offers protection as it control the self .Consciousness regulate what we think and the reaction that we respond to the different experiences that we undergo on daily basis. Also, it allows us to either allow a thought or respond or terminating the thought as it might be not useful both the inner and outer experiences.

Tobias Wolf uses imagery in his short story “Bullet in the Brain” which provides a visual portrait to capture attention to the story. He clarifies in an interview with Sanford University what a short story requires, “You want large results from it, and you 're compelled by its very shortness to using all your resources of language, form and understanding” (Schrieberg 1998). He uses language in the story which offers various instances of imagery describing Anders as weary and elegantly savage in his reviews. In each scene of the story Anders observes and uses biting words to offer his approval or distaste. While waiting with the customers at the bank, with the thieves, with the gun shot and with his recollections there is a deeper vision into his brain. The use of imagery in his short story provides a distorted image of the character Anders, not the real image of the man but one with passion for the use of words and happiness.

Carson was no ordinary man. His intricate way of thinking was like no other. One of the most obvious and well-known achievement is his concept of incorporating lasers in neurosurgery to nullify complexities faced whilst operating. He knew there was an easier way and took the initiative to act upon his ideas. Comparing Carson’s accomplishments and initial circumstances serves as living proof that anyone can be an influential figure in our society.

In the paper "Epiphenomenal Qualia," Frank Jackson presents the concept of Qualia and the knowledge argument in order to prove physicalism false. Jackson 's knowledge argument introduces a thought experiment about a neuroscientist called Mary. His thought experiment is designed to refute physicalism by showing that there is non-physical knowledge in the world. However, there are many flaws in Jackson 's thought experiment that lead to its ultimate failure in proving that physicalism is wrong, such as its appeal to a misleading intuition, the ambiguity of its premises, and the assumption that it is possible to gain all physical knowledge of color from a colorless room.

In the video, Neurons to Nirvana: The Great Medicines; it presents many discussion around the social taboos of psychedelics. Interviews featuring professors, writers, and researcher adds more insight to the field of psychedelic psychotherapy. Throughout this hour and nine minutes video, three ideas and/or concepts stood out to me. Beginning within the first following eight minutes, in the 1940s, it mentioned how those who were administered into the psychiatric hospital. People suffering from schizophrenic were said to be the cause of mothers failing in child care. Whether if the mother weren’t nurturing or she didn’t breastfeed her child. Although professionals back in the 1940s stated this, there weren’t any connection to what happened in

Throughout the text, the word ‘neocortex’ is brought up a plentiful amount of times. Over time, the idea of certain items evolves into complex statements that’ll potentially be understood by the reader after they endure the various explanations over a chapter or more. To exemplify this, the term ‘neocortex’ first appears in the introduction; where the basic description of its responsibility to deal with patterns of information(10). Further along, in chapter three, the same term advances into a labyrinth of connections. Not only does this mass, that consists of eighty percent of the human brain, influence memory patterns and such, but that it, “is a comparable hierarchy of pattern recognizers processing actual images of objects...and a hierarchy of concepts… and a hierarchy of thought,”(49). What this means is that our memory is prone to a humans main five senses: smell, sight, hearing, touch, and taste. If one

The Representational Theory of Mind proposes that we, as both physiological and mental beings, are systems which operate based on symbols and interpretations of the meanings of such symbols rather than beings which operate just on physiological processes (chemical reactions and biological processes). It offers that humans and their Minds are computing machines, mental software (the Mind) which runs on physical hardware (the body). It suggests, too, that we are computing machines functioning as something other than a computing machine, just as every other machine does.

In this essay, I will talk about Jean-Paul Sartre’s work about the Nature of Consciousness. Firstly, I will discuss his theories of Consciousness and secondly, I will talk about how they developed in response to the work of other philosophers. Lastly, I will state why his work is still interesting today.