A2 Philosophy stuff! :)

BAI!

Fri, 25 May 2012 08:22:59 -0400

HOPE THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN TO YOU!

YEAH, MY CAPSLOCK BUTTON IS STUCK SO I JUST LOOK REALLY REALLY ANGRY, BUT IM NOT

GOOD LUCK EVERYBODY :D xx

Distributive Justice

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 09:24:29 -0400

Can be defined as the fair distribution of societies benefits and burdens…

Legal/Natural Rights.

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 09:13:58 -0400

Natural Rights are universal, in alienable, objective and reside above the human condition, they can be god-given or come from a more athesitic source.

Legal Positivism are sets of right that are decided based on the whim of the ruling masses of a state. These rules and laws do not go beyond the state, they are enforced by the state and can be removed by the state.

Political ideology, better late than never...

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 07:54:17 -0400

Political ideology damages your reasoning and argument in exams.

And also I believe that situtions should be dealt with as they come, based on circumstance… not because an all high authority on an ideology says so. Its like basing every day decisions on the bible… i would imagine not the way people think we should argue in essays or in the house of commons alike.

where i am

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 09:23:54 -0500

The Political Compass

Economic Left/Right: 2.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.26

how intriguing… although, i wouldn’t say I have a political ideology, as it leads you to have a biased and therefore unreliable opinions with regards to debates.

Criticism 2 and Responses to Searles Biological naturalism

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 08:33:32 -0500

Criticism 2 - Searle is attempting to be a materialist and a dualist, this is not possible, neither can he not be a materialist or a dualist, his opinions must fall somewhere.

Response - Searle says that both materialists and dualists have made a mistake. Dualists automatically think that the subjectivity and wonder of consciousness leads us to definately believe that consciousness cannot be physical, whereas materialists believe that the scientific leads un neurology mean that consciousness cannot exist or is an illusion. We must get rid of these traditionalist views. Searle divides tradtional beliefs about the mental and physical into two columns he says that some of the mental do not imply the rest of the mental traits.

subjective, first person ontology, qualitative, intentional.

Critcism 1 and Responses of Searles Biological Naturalism

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 06:43:00 -0500

Critcism 1 - Searle is a interactionist Property Dualist, and therefore we can use criticisms of property dualism against him. Mainly causal - overdeterminism, which suggests that, the versitility of the causal methods between brain states and mental states means that certain brain states and mental states have too many causal paths to get to them.

Response 1 - Why I am not a property dualist. Searle believes in different levels of description, but not different levels of properties. There is a similarity in terms of irreduceable consciousness. However, Searle says that mental states are CAUSALLY reduceble to brain processes.Consciousness does not a distinct, separate phenomenon, something over and above its neurobiological base, rather it names a state that the neurobiological system can be in.

Response 2 - Futhermore, even if I am a property dualist, there are ways of escaping over-determination for example, the brain state and the mental state (MB) occur SIMULTANEOUSLY, and merely the next brain state and mental state (M*B*) occur in the next frame of time.

MB —-> M*B*

NOT

M —-> M*

^ ^

B —-> B*

HA! its all in the brain :P

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 05:18:00 -0500

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16811042

Biological Naturalism - SEARLE

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 04:54:00 -0500

Searle said in order to really see as to how the mind works and what it really is, we must make observations about it, Searle says we can only make 4 observations…

consciousness is real
consciousness is irreducible
consciousness exists spatially in the brain
consciousness reacts causally

Searle says that we should also remove any previous considerations, anything that relies on religious or philosophical belief, as thats all they are, belief. He considers that substance dualism fairs worse than materialism for this reason.

Searle also gives us 4 features of consciousness…

Its qualitative (QUALIA)
Its subjective, as opposed to the neurones, which are objective.
It appears as unified
It directly refers to objects or states of affairs, some of these are even intentional.

Searle believes that there is a physical brain, and merely that these physical neurones give rise to mental characteristics that give us a qualitative experience. However, these mental characteristics supervene on the physical “state.”

He considers that consciousness is merely a “higher level” of brain function, lower levels being things like the regulation of carbon dioxide and digestion.

He suggests that where others have gone wrong is by either not seperating mind and body enough, or seperating them too much. For example, materialists attempt to reduce ontologically subjective thoughts onto ontologically objective neurones (these things have two different ontologies, and therefore this cannot occur,) whereas dualists do not recognise the supervence aspect.

He says thats its one system described in two different ways, much like a car, in that its function can be described as the operation of pistons and spark plugs, or the oxidisation or hydrocarbons and then the movement of metal alloys. Its “one causal structive described at different levels.”

Property Dualism

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:39:41 -0500

Its a half way house between materialism and substance dualism. Whereby there is an acknowledgement that the mind and body are different, but they are not different things. They merely have different properties; the mind has mental properties, but the body has physical properties. Property dualists believe that the mental and physical cannot be reduced to one another and that there is no immaterial mind, i.e there is no soul that can survive your death.

Property Dualism is neither a purely physical, or non-physical explanation of the mind, but neither does it seperate the mind and body into one or the other catagory.

An example could be of a book, it has the property of “red” and the particular shape. There are two properties, but only one ‘thing.’ Therefore, its possible for the one thing that is the brain to have a physical and mental property.

A second example could be of water, which is one thing that can have two different properties, such as being solid when frozen or being a gas when heated. Its still one thing, but can have two very different properties.

inky: Hey bro, why did the clingfish cross the road? Bro? Bro…

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:08:05 -0500

inky:

Hey bro, why did the clingfish cross the road?

Bro?

Bro…

Epistemological Pessimism - McGinn

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:49:00 -0500

McGinn believes that any attempt to explain the mind will fail, because we are extremely limited. We are attempting to discover what conciousness is from within it. Its like attempting to figure out what a box looks like from the outside by merely looking at the internal walls and whats within it, some will make the assumption that the outside of the box is the same colour as the inside, some may say the box is spiky on the outside, but McGinn says from within the box, we’ll never know and therefore there is little point guessing.

McGinn calls this “Cognitive Closure” and says that “total cognititve openness is not guaranteed for human beings and it should not be expected.”

He also draws parallells with physics, in that he says its created by us, used by us as a framework, one we cannot escape from, and that there are still things we dont know, such as what electricity actually is.

Nagels Batty Article

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:34:39 -0500

Nagel uses the anaology of a caterpillar in a box in order to explain how we should approach the problem of “what is the mind.” He said that suppose we know nothing of insectmetamorphosis, then places a caterpillar in a locked box, we then turned a while later to discover that the box has definately stayed locked but that the caterpillar has become a butterfly.

Nagel says that we have every reason to believe that the caterpillar was once a butterfly, but has no idea how. We should not assume that this was done magically, or supernaturally. Therefore, just because we cannot explain it, it does not mean it was not a psychical and completely explainable transistion. Nagel accepts that we may never TRUELY understand what Qualia is, but he says that we can still be materialist and do not have to resort to dualism. (OCCHAMS RAZOR)

Nagel says that there is a reason as to why we will never know what conciousness is, and that is because we will never know what it is like to BE a bat, we can completely understand what echolocation is and exactly how it works, but never what it is LIKE to see by echolocation. Currently reductionist materialist theories have not solved this issue, and this is where the caterpillar anaology comes in.

Hard and Easy problem of conciousness

Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:55:00 -0500

The easy problem of consciousness is explaining how things occur, such as how do we sleep and whats the difference between being awake and asleep, how do we catagorise and discriminate.

The hard problem is why does it feel a certain way. For example, why does the experience of “red” provide us with a subjective “inner feel” or qualia. Where does this come from and how it is created. There are certain features of conciousness that resist reduction

Chalmers describes a “gap” between the easy and hard problem, and that we need a explanatory bridge to cross the gap. He can see the easy problem being solved, but the hard problem forever remaining a mystery.

REBLOG THE DUCK!!!! DO IT!!!! thefluffingtonpost: PHOTO OP:...

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 06:50:35 -0500

REBLOG THE DUCK!!!! DO IT!!!!

thefluffingtonpost:

PHOTO OP: Just Try to Resist This Duckling

Via Cute Factor.

Eliminative Materialism

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 04:10:00 -0500

Eliminative matieralism is the belief that actually “mental states” and all associated terms are in fact a folk psychology, other pre scientific examples of things we have ELIMINATED from our languages are things like caloric, a susbstance that people belieeve transfered heat from one thing to another; this, like mental states, is a redudant theory that was removed. Essentially, they were use by a more primative people to explain what was “going on” and these have stuck. This leads us to think they geniunely exist.

Elimatinative materialists think that taking the “mental state” and attempting to match them with a brain state is backwards. Instead, we should ensure complete neurologocial knowledge before we think any more about how the mind works. I.e. we should look for the brain states, and then delve deeper to see if mental states are genuinely there (though, more than likely not.)

Eliminative materialism is a NON REDUCTIONIST theory as theres nothing to reduce.

Eliminative materialists believe that substance dualism is even further from the truth than materialist theories such as identity theory and behaviourism, as they have used the invented “mental states” AND substance dualism invented a “soul” which then presides over the mental states.

Telelogical Functionalism

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 06:49:19 -0500

This is a response to Functionalism being too liberal…

Elliot Sober suggests that “minds” are only functionally isomorphic when they have evolved in the same way, and their mental states ie. pain has in fact developed for the same reasons.

It widens the scope for the function of mental states, but zooms in on the types of things that actually can have minds, it leave out non biological things such as computers, robots and machines.

Absent Qualia + Intentionality.

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 05:26:00 -0500

ABSENT QUALIA

The “Chinese mind” anaology takes every person in china and imagines them as neurone, they can be give stimuli, and then create an appropriate output, Block then questions where in his model qualia is required. And therefore says there is an issue with functionalism as they have not accounted for qualia seperately from their causal role theory.

Block also asks whether “china mind” is going to be capable of thoughts and feelings, or merely just robotic responses to situations.

INTENTIONALITY

CHINESE ROOM ARGUMENT - a person is given a chinese rule book, a basket of chinese symbols and some questions, they can very capably recieve the question, put the answer together and then give the questionner their answer. He does this without something vital, the understanding, therefore, the causal role is not enough to actually put together a detailed picture of how the mind works.

RESPONSE- “Copeland” says that the labourer or “Joe” is in fact merely one cog in the machine of the system which recieves inputs and gives outputs. in fact, the computer that Joe is using to provide answers DOES have an understanding of maraderin, the “aboutness” lies with the computer and not joe. Saying that there is no understanding because joe doesn’t know maraderin is narrow, someone or something IS telling him how to answer questions in manderin.

Its similar to saying “because bill the cleaner has never sold pjs to Korea, the cleaning company bill works for has never sold pjs to Korea, this statement is illogical.

Inverted Qualia

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 04:15:19 -0500

The inverted Qualia argument suggests that, after being given the same stimulus, i.e a red tomato and blue sky, a person with “normal” qualia and “inverted” qualia would see the opposite, a person with an “inverted” qualia would recognise the blue as red and the red as blue… however, they have been taught from birth that their blue which they see as red is actually called blue and their red that they see as blue is actually called red. This means when asked a person with “inverted” qualia will say that the sky is “Blue” and the tomato is “red.” This is not at all different from what a person with “normal” qualia would say. Therefore, the input and output are the same, but something really important is missed, the qualitative part is missed… The two people are FUNCTIONLY ISOMORPHIC.

REPONSES

“What substance is there to the hypothesis that the experience is nevertheless consciously different?”

CRITICISM

Papineau said that, of course, maybe the in terms of purely functional mental states such as pain, this reponse may in fact be true, however, for far more qualitative mental states like seeing a colour, this does not hold true. There is no desire or behaviour which is typically prompted by an experience of green.

Funtionalism

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 07:00:46 -0500

Functionalism is a response to the issues created by Type/Token identity theory and covers future possibilities for discovering futher mental states in “other” things. It claims that identity theory has so far been Chauvinistic; mental states can be created in many different ways and therefore are mutiply realisable. An example used was of different types of clock, analogue and digital clocks and even sun dials all have different mechanisms, however, they all do the same job, they tell the time. Cunningham said this was important, “belief” mental states are all linked because they all drive the structure the belief is held in to act a certain way. With this theory in mind, analogue and digital clocks and sundials can therefore all be said to be “clocks.”

Functionalism believes that mental states take a “causal” role. When looking at brain states and mental states, we must not consider just what the neurons in the brain are doing (identity) as Marr said it was like looking at the feathers of birds to see how they fly, and we must also not just consider what the resultant actions are (behaviourism) as they are only a small part of the story. We must consider the input, for example, being told its going to rain later, the output, taking an umbrella out with you, but also the fact that the person has no intention of getting wet, the “function” of this is to take the umbrella out with you.

Cunningham says that if you were asked a definition of a boat, you would not immediately turn to giving details of what its made of, i.e. wood or fibreglass, but instead what the boat does. So similary, when asked what the mind is, we will not immediately say that the mind is neurons.

Essentially, functionalism is looking at a wider picture than behaviourism and a much wider picture than identity theory.