Clark And Chalmers

First premise I extract from the quote is “The mental state theory errs by identifying all of our interests with our preference interests.” (Varner, 94). In the other words, the main idea shown in the mental state theory is that everything desires the other things only due to its preference interest. To illustrate, it should be a truth that anyone shows his preference interest for money if he wants to use it to buy something he wants. In fact, the conventional mental state theory believes that the interest of

What would a Legal Positivist have to say about the Dudley and Stephens’ Case and why would they say it?

Churchland breaks it down to this: if mental states are identical all to brain states then when you observe you mental states you are also observing the brain state which is identical. Churchland states, “ I may not describe my mental state as a brain state but whether I do depends on what information I have about the brain, not upon whether the mental state really is identical to some brain state . The identity can be a fact about the world independently of my knowledge that is a fact about the world” (Churchland, 2).She gives the following example “ Jones swallows an aspirin, he thereby swallows acetylsalicylic acid, whether or not he thought” in other words “identities may obtain even when we have not discovered that they do”(Churchland, 2).

In the book “The Assault,” by Harry Mulisch, the author demonstrates how the main character, Anton, becomes free of the influence of his memories by showing that Anton's approach to memory changes over the novel course of the novel – from protective denial to acknowledgment. However, what remains static is a constant self awareness that Anton shows in-regards to his attempts to repress these memories. During the beginning of the novel (post-tragedy) Anton is a shell of his memories of the night where is family was killed. This is shown through how many details of his character, from major life aspects such as his wife or his job, to insignificant things such as what sorts of media he likes, can all be traced back to his allegedly forgotten memories.  The

Explicit memory is memory without conscious recollection-memory of skills and routine. Procedures that are preformed automatically (Santrock 219). Explicit memory helps with things like waking up, getting out of bed and putting on your slippers so your feet don’t feel the cold of the floor. Walking out of your room on the second floor and being able to walk down the hallway and to the left to reach the stairs and making it safely down to the first floor without having to turn the lights on. You know your house “like the palm of your hand” because you

Anyone reading Joshua Foer’s “The End of Remembering” can assume that he knows a lot about the brain and how it works. After all he graduated from Yale in 2004, and later went on to become the 2006 United States Memory Champion. With Foer’s interest in mental athletes he decided to do a journalism project to study them. This project would end up being the result of his book, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything from which “The End of Remembering” is one of the chapters. In this chapter Foer’s lays a solid foundation of the development of writing. He also includes historical views of remembering and how we learned in terms of our memory. Foer not only gives historical views but supports his claims with science

This theory assumed that our behaviours and feelings are mainly based on our unconscious thoughts; this also suggests that these behaviours occur because of experiences from our childhood.

Alois Alzheimer was born in Marktbreit, Germany, in 1864, and showed a pioneer ability for science. After gaining his medical degree, he worked in hospitals in Frankfurt, where he met Auguste Deter, a 51-year-old woman suffering from a short-term memory loss. He was soon capable to quarantine the pathological basis of severe dementia, so far-reaching that the condition became known as Alzheimer's disease, named after him (Hippius & Neundörfer, 2003).

The idea that mental states are non-reducible properties of brain states is the central tenant of a theory of mind called property dualism. However, before we can assess the theory we must be aware that the question assumes the existence of mental states and as such we cannot answer this question from some perspectives (e.g. eliminative materialism)

Armstrong does a thorough job of supporting the soundness of his argument. He goes even further by offering an objection and a reply. The objection to Armstrong’s causal theory of mind is the same behaviorists were faced with. That is, it functions for the third-person case, but not the first-person case. The situation of the “automatic driver” is described. The driver is unaware of the fact that mental processes are going on, yet he continues to stay on the road. Armstrong answers this with the idea of consciousness as a higher order perception. He defines consciousness as “nothing but perception or awareness of the state of our own mind” and “a self scanning mechanism in the central nervous system”. The driver’s “inner eye” is shut and is unaware of what is going on inside his mind.

The main assumption of the biological approach is behaviour and experiences can be explained by biological changes in the body. This approach focusses on the investigation of the brain, nervous system and other biological factors such as hormones; whereas the main assumption of the cognitive approach is that information received from our senses is processed by the brain and that this processing influences how we behave or at least justifies how we behave the way we do. Cognitive processes are examples of hypothetical constructs – researchers cannot directly observe processes such as thinking but we can infer what a person is thinking based on how they act (behavioural patterns). Some key researchers in the biological approach are Maguire et. Al (2000) - Navigation-related structural changes in the hippocampi of taxi drivers, and Sperry (1968) - Hemisphere disconnection and unity in consciousness. Some key researchers in the cognitive approach are Loftus and Palmer (1974) - eyewitness testimony and Baron-Cohen (1997) – Autism.

Fodor argues against Kim's conclusion that mental states are unprojectible (when not considered “locally”) and that this is what renders them irreducible to physical states. While he agrees that only projectible states can be kinds appearing in scientific laws, he holds that mental states are such kinds (150). The problem with Kim's test of “projectibility” is that his jade example is not a case of multiple realization and the explanation he provides for jade's lack of projectibility is erroneous. Fodor admits that the general law “jade is green” would not have been adequately proven in Kim's example, as all of the positive instances would be only of jadeite. However, he claims that this is simply because there would be “a sampling error in collecting the data” that prevents confirmation of the

Memory – what it is, how it works, and how it might be manipulated – has long been a subject of curious fascination. Remembering, the mind-boggling ability in which the human brain can conjure up very specific, very lucid, long-gone episodes from any given point on the timeline of our lives, is an astounding feat. Yet, along with our brain’s ability of remembrance comes also the concept of forgetting: interruptions of memory or “an inability of consciousness to make present to itself what it wants” (Honold, 1994, p. 2). There is a very close relationship between remembering and forgetting; in fact, the two come hand-in-hand. A close reading of Joshua Foer’s essay, “The End of Remembering”, and Susan Griffin’s piece, “Our Secret”, directs us

Loftus and Palmer support the reconstructive memory hypothesis. They believe that information gathered at the time of an icident is

There are no mental processes which are distinct from intelligent acts. The operations of the mind are not merely represented by intelligent acts, but are the same as intelligent acts. Thus, an act of remembering, dreaming, knowing, or willing is not merely a clue to some hidden mental process or intellectual operation, it is how that mental process or intellectual operation is defined. A logical proposition is not merely a clue to a particular mode of reasoning, it is that mode of reasoning.