Relationship Between Intentionality And Phenomenal Character, Separatism And Inseparatism

Our memories are in fact like a “car” that disappears around a corner. Just because it is no longer visible it doesn’t mean that the car is no longer existent. It is the same with our thoughts and memories. Once we think or experience something it becomes stored in our minds. This is then what begins to dictate the way in which we carry out our lives. Our minds are continuously working and our personal unconscious allows us to store information and experiences that can either be retrieved or unconsciously applied. The personal unconscious, therefore, is distinguished by the fact that “the materials contained in this layer are of a personal nature in so far as they have the character partly of acquisitions derived from the individual’s life and partly of psychological factors which could just as well be conscious” (494). Not only is the personal unconscious different for each individual, it can easily be recalled or conscious. This is what separates the personal conscious from the collective unconscious.

He believes that people cannot be morally responsible for their actions, and the only reason that many people believe they can is because free will is an illusion. Strawson utilises the “basic argument” to help prove his point. The “Basic Argument” is (1) Nothing can be the cause of itself, (2) In order to be morally responsible for one’s action, one would have to have caused one’s self (at least the mental qualities), and (3) Therefore no one can be truly morally responsible. To be morally responsible for an action means one can receive a particular form of reaction; praise and blame are some of the most obvious forms of reactions for being morally responsible. A choice of one’s nature must be based on intentions that come from one’s previous nature. Strawson applies the example of heaven and hell to dramatically characterize the notion of ultimate responsibility for easier understanding. The failure to find causes for something to have occurred doesn’t establish that there aren’t any. This means that determinism could never be conclusively refuted. Even with the quantum theory, people still believe that underlying deterministic causes will eventually be

The id, the ego and the superego are another prominent theory that acts off of the conscious and un-conscious mind. Freudian psychology initiates with a earth full of objects. Among them is a exceptional object, the organism. An extremely meaningful portion of the organism is the nervous system. At birth, the nervous system is a little many than of else animals, an “it”

1. Introduction In the present essay, I will refute the standard argument of multiple realization against the identity theory of mind. The currently predominant view in philosophy of mind is that mental states are multiply realized by distinct physical states; this is the first premise of the standard argument. The second premise states that multiple realization is inconsistent with the identity theory.

In Meditations on First Philosophy, Descartes argues that the mind and the body are distinct because the differ in their essence, especially their essence of thinking, extension, and divisibility. In this essay, I will argue that Descartes’ argument is unsound, because his claim on the indivisibility and non-extension of the mind for his argument appears to be false based on modern studies and research on cases of mental illness and the brain’s connection to the mind. Furthermore, his mere assumption about the existence of the mind can also result in his premise about the mind’s essence to be false if the mind doesn’t actually exist. However, Descartes might respond that I am viewing his argument in the incorrect way, where in the text his

Eliminative materialism (eliminativism) is an ontologically radical approach that claims that a matured cognitive science will show that mental states that common sense takes for granted, such as beliefs, do not exist (or do not have referents). Instead, it claims that these mental entities are theoretical terms for the ‘false’ theory of folk psychology (common sense psychology), which can be defined as the cognitive ability to explain and predict the behaviour and mental state of other people. In essence, the theory aims to discredit folk psychology by claiming that people will discover that there is no neural basis to mental entities and thus, they are non-existent. I shall argue that there are significant fundamental flaws to both the arguments for eliminativism about propositional attitudes and eliminativism about qualia (subjective experience). For the former, I will argue that the eliminative materialist’s theory-theory is flawed and show that propositions alone can discredit the position on philosophy of mind. This will lead to identifying the position as self-refuting. Furthermore, I will show that science itself has proven simulation theory to be true so that I can discredit eliminative materialism. For the latter, I will argue that qualia exist due to introspection. Combined, the deconstruction of eliminative materialism with regards to propositional attitude and qualia will show that the materialist position is flawed and should not be agreed with.

Consciousness for many years has been a debatable topic between people, where some take the materialist approach while others take the dualist approach. Metaphysical materialism is the view that there is no such thing as spooky substances only matter. This type of view goes on to say that phenomenon’s such as the conscious is just byproducts of material substances interacting with one another. Materialist’s views for a long time were hard to rebuke. However, in 1996 David Chalmers wrote The consciousness mind, which does rebuke materialism’s very view. In his piece, he has people imagine a world exactly like the one conscious human beings

However, perceptions and senses could oftentimes be false, but the ability to introspect helps one to regain clarity on his or her environment. Thus, one essential condition of human consciousness is that one must be able introspect and have a sense of self. Rene Descartes’ famous “I think, therefore I am” is an example that supports this condition. (I will and need to expand on this)

What are we talking about when we speak of human intentionality? It seems one possible description is of it as an emergent property. Essentially, an emergent property is an entity which has arisen from the interaction of smaller, much simpler entities. For example, the stock market is made up of individual investors, or even

Rosenthal’s definition of what is consciousness revolves around two distinctions – creature consciousness and state consciousness. Creature consciousness is a state where an organism is simply awake and aware of surroundings, but that is all that needs to happen for an organism to be creature conscious. On the other hand, state consciousness involves mental and intentional states. In other words, there is an existence of beliefs and desires. Therefore, it is argued that state consciousness is transitive, meaning there is intentionality behind an action. In terms of phenomenal

59), writing "we cannot conceive of half a soul, as we can in the case of any body, however small." (Descartes, Philosophical Writings, 1984, p. 9) (Calef, no date). Because of this, the dualist would need to argue for the indivisibility of awareness, as it is a property of the soul (Calef, no date). However, this contradicts our everyday experiences. For example, when we are sleeping there is a gap in human awareness (Uzgalis, 2016). Locke argues along this line, highlighting that ‘consciousness’ – which is developed through our experience of the world - is the key element in maintaining personal identity, regardless of whom the ‘consciousness’ is within (Locke, 2000, p. 108). Thus gaps in consciousness results in personal identity being discontinued (Uzgalis, 2016), as this is a divisible property of the mind (Calef, no date). For Hume, because of our experiences, there is no cause to “suppose a unity of consciousness” (Calef, no date). Self-examination uncovers the presence of thoughts,

Taken advantages of identity claims, Place (1956) suggest the thesis that “’consciousness is a process in the brain’” (Place, 1956/1970, p. 42). Let us do some remarks about this statement, interestingly, Place use the word ‘process’, and this may be expectable from his theory, and this word was not chose by chance, similarly, the use of “is” shall be fundamental in Place’s view. To defends his identity theory, the first line of argument according to Place is to setup the semantic use of ‘is’, he identify ‘is’ as definition and composition; the use of ‘is’ in an identity statement according to Place should be a composition, therefore the expression “consciousness is a brain process” needs to be understood in terms of composition rather than

In the stages leading up to self-consciousness, consciousness placed the locus of truth into that which it took to be other than itself. The particular and immediate being of the

Consciousness allows a person to recognize their existence, and subsequently, to form their essence. The

The modern view of self is articulated in the works of 17th century philosopher Rene Descartes. He pioneered the dualistic understanding of the human being, which is made up of the "mental substance (mind) and the physical substance (body)" (Warburton, N., 1992). Here, the body has physical properties like having weight and using space, whereas the mind is a non-material substance, responsible for thought and experience and hence is the abode of consciousness. In his view, the self is a spiritual "subject of experience" which is fundamentally different from the body and nature, where the body inessential and the mind can exist independently. His radical scepticism led to the formation of the "Illusion argument", where the bodily senses are deemed unreliable and thus the existence of the external world and body is uncertain. The only thing one can be