Essay Understanding Phenomenology

Many philosophers have considered the mystery of consciousness to be a “hard problem.” In “The Hornswoggle Problem,” Patricia Churchland rejects the characterization of consciousness as a uniquely hard problem, and asserts her belief that arguing the unknown nature of consciousness, absent any scientific evidence is an argument from ignorance. A proponent of the “hard problem” would instead argue that consciousness possesses a subjective aspect that makes it uniquely different from all other problems. In this paper, it is my contention that Churchland is correct to reject the ‘hard’ problem argument; and without any objective inquiry or research, this “hard problem” argument lacks needed intellectual vigor, and tends to further

Consciousness poses the most baffling challenges in scientific realm of the mind. There’s nothing with which we share an intimate relation than conscious experience, but there’s nothing so strenuous or demanding to explain. Perhaps no other aspect of mind is more puzzling than this mystifying experience that we encounter in our every day life. There’s a widespread disparity amongst individuals regarding the existence of this entity. Some might argue that consciousness is not more than a foolish idea, though there are some stances where investigations over its existence hadn’t yield anything to prove it’s very existence in nature, while others have held an opposite view, and contended that its very existence can be explained in empirical

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”

Thesis: The mind-body problem arises because of the lack of evidence when looking for a specific explanation of the interaction of mental and physical states, and the origin and even existence of them.

As our scientific paradigm has shifted towards a materialist account of the world, many thinkers believe that appeals to the supernatural cannot provide truth. Consequently, beliefs that had once been considered adequate must now be reworked if not torn down entirely to fit this new world view. Daniel Dennett’s book Consciousness Explained attempts to provide an account of our internal experience (i.e. Consciousness) that is rooted in the materialist world view. Though he is not the first to undertake this project, he takes issue with what he perceives to be the popular materialist account of consciousness, and seeks promote his own theory. With this essay I aim to offer an informative summary of the book followed by an evaluative dialogue of its central claims.

With this controversy of trying to figure out reality and the universe comes the understanding of our own consciousness. Alan Wallace takes a look into becoming consciously aware of your own self and consciousness in his book, “Embracing Mind: The Common Ground of Science and Spirituality.” However, this idea of metaphysical materialism and naturalism can challenge this notion of conscious awareness because it involves this idea that our mind can persuade our body, whereas metaphysical materialism/ naturalism believes that the body persuades the mind. Therefore, Wallace’s look at conscious awareness is challenging the notion of metaphysical materialism and naturalism.

“contents of consciousness that possess sensory qualities as opposed to those that are purely verbal or abstract”

Consciousness is not tangible, quantifiable, or physical. Varghese writes, " the I, the center of our consciousness and unifier of our experiences, makes us see things from a first-person perspective unlike anything else in the physical world." (p. 19) The first part of the book is focused on building an experiential case for life after death based on near-death experiences, after-life visitations, and the practically universal belief in an afterlife.

Plato's Allegory of the Cave Plato uses the allegory of the cave to aid understanding on his philosophical knowledge on the differences between the realm of the particulars and the realm of Forms. He believed that his analogy would explain why in the physical world, sense experience was nothing but an illusion; and that true reality must be found in the realm of Forms, which is eternal and unchanging. Plato’s analogy inaugurates in a cave; meant to represent the physical world, or the world we experience through our senses.

What is involved in the claim that one directly perceives an object? The notion of direct perception that I propose to

In chapter 3, I've read up to page 123. I learned that perception is a process that makes these words meaningfull. The brain senses the indirectly, because the sense organse convert stimulation into the language of the nervous system, and neural messages. the retina is the thin light-sensitive layer at the back of the eyeball. An afterimages sensations that linger after the stimulus is removed the gate controled theory eplains why pain can sometimes be blocked or facilitated " top down " by our mental state.The ability to see an object as being the same shape from different angles or distance is just one eample of a perceptual constancy. I've also learned that the laws of perceptual grouping eemplify a more general

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

“In this experience self-consciousness learns that life is essential to it as pure self-consciousness. One (self-consciousness) is self-sufficient; for it, its essence is being-for-itself. The other is non-self-sufficient, for it, life, that is, being for an other, is the essence. The former is the master, the latter is the servant” (Hegel 189). Hegel suggests in the dialectic that there is coherence between subject and object, concrete and abstract, part and whole, and for the purpose of dialectic, master and slave.

Phenomenology is mostly an attempt to relieve the confusion of many modern philosophies that attempt to disprove the realities that we perceive in our world. Its distinction between the natural attitude and the phenomenological attitude is precisely what gives phenomenology the ability to do this. In the natural attitude we perceive and we take things to be true and real: "we intend things, situations, facts, and any other kinds of objects" (42). The natural attitude is our default attitude according to phenomenology. It makes up our everyday actions and intentions. When we see food and eat it, we have intended those objects and actions through our natural attitude. In a way, the natural attitude is simply human nature. We see a fire and intend that it is hot. We do not need to test its heat because we have likely already done that at some point in our lives and no longer need to test the reality of the heat or the fire. In our natural attitude we are able to take things for what they are and act upon our intentions.