Reddit reviews Philosophy of Mind

This is a good introductory essay by Nick Bostrom from The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence. And this is a relevant survey essay by Drew McDermott from The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness.

If folks aren't taking well to the background reading, they might at least do alright jumping to Section 5 from the Descartes' Discourse (they can use this accessible translation). One little snippet:

>I worked especially hard to show that if any such machines had the organs and outward shape of a monkey or of some other animal that doesn’t have reason, we couldn’t tell that they didn’t possess entirely the same nature as these animals; whereas if any such machines bore a resemblance to our bodies and imitated as many of our actions as was practically possible, we would still have two very sure signs that they were nevertheless not real men. (1) The first is that they could never use words or other constructed signs, as we do to declare our thoughts to others. We can easily conceive of a machine so constructed that it utters words, and even utters words that correspond to bodily actions that will cause a change in its organs (touch it in one spot and it asks ‘What do you mean?’, touch it in another and it cries out ‘That hurts!’, and so on); but not that such a machine should produce different sequences of words so as to give an appropriately meaningful answer to whatever is said in its presence—which is something that the dullest of men can do. (2) Secondly, even though such machines might do some things as well as we do them, or perhaps even better, they would be bound to fail in others; and that would show us that they weren’t acting through understanding but only from the disposition of their organs. For whereas reason is a universal instrument that can be used in all kinds of situations, these organs need some particular disposition for each particular action; hence it is practically impossible for a machine to have enough different •organs to make •it act in all the contingencies of life in the way our •reason makes •us act. These two factors also tell us how men differ from beasts [= ‘non-human animals’].

That sets the stage for historically important essay from Turing of Turing-Test-fame. And that essay sets up nicely Searle's Chinese Room thought experiment. Scientific America has two accessible articles: Searle presents his argument here, and the Churchland's respond.

As always, the SEP and IEP are good resources for students, and they have entries with bibliographies on consciousness, the hard problem of consciousness, AI, computational theories of mind, and so on.

There are countless general introductions to philosophy of mind. Heil's Philosophy of Mind is good. Seager's introduction to theories of consciousness is also quite good, but maybe more challenging than some. Susan Blackmore's book Conversations on Consciousness was a very engaging read, and beginner friendly. She also has a more textbook-style Introduction that I have not read, but feel comfortable betting that it is also quite good.

Searle's, Dennett's and Chalmer's books on consciousness are all good and influential and somewhat partisan to their own approaches. And Kim's work is a personal favorite.

(sorry for the broad answer--it's a very broad question!)

Plenty of academics, when engaging in scholarship, accurately and without misrepresentation present the ideas of peers with whom they disagree precisely for the purpose of entering into dialogue with those ideas or the edification of readers. I was recently reading an introduction to philosophy of mind by Jaegwon Kim, in which Kim forcefully disagrees with what we call "dualism"; despite the fact that he holds a contrary opinion, Kim accurately reports dualist arguments and treats them with great seriousness.

A world in which being fair is precluded by having an opinion is sad.

> By the way, I am not trying to show that you are wrong, I am trying to understand how you think about this subject.

All I am doing is giving you a general description of the dualist position. If you're interesting in digging into the subject in greater depth, you might want to pick up an introductory text to the philosophy of mind, such as Jaegwon Kim's.

> Are you saying that the mind doesn't have spatial location or weight? Under identity theory (or functionalism) it certainly does.

This is the classic Cartesian formulation of substance dualism. It doesn't have anything to do with identity theory or functionalism.

> Would you say that identity theory of chairs, as I have defined it, is accurate or not?

I would say that your made-up theory is nonsense, for reasons I've already given.

I really enjoyed Dennett's Consciousness Explained. Chalmers' The Conscious Mind presents another popular view which, if I recall correctly, opposes Dennett's views. I'm slowly getting into work's by Steven Pinker.

Probably a general Philosophy of Mind reader would also benefit you just to get a good idea of the different views and topics out there within the discipline. I cannot remember which one I read years ago, although if I read one today I'd pick Chalmers' Philosophy of Mind or Kim's Philosophy of Mind.

Sorry, I forgot about this post. A question isn't offensive and your post was not offensive in the slightest.

Perhaps that was confusing. I began to read about Philosophy of Mind during my undergraduate years, and have always had a singe of neoplatanism in my blood since I read about Plato's theory of forms. Today, I'm a hylemorphic dualist. I could go in depth, but I actually have to go to sleep as I've got an appt tomorrow morning (EST). On top of that, I'm actually getting off Reddit today and am staying off indefinitely except for /r/medicalschool (med school life, ha). Regardless, I'm glad I caught this when I did (coincidence or divine providence?^^^joking )

As to why I'm Catholic, put simply: I find nothing wrong in Catholicism, and "everything checks out," so to speak (I find the common criticisms vapid). Becoming Catholic was a tedious process that involved many steps, but there are quite a few that have ended up where I am through a similar path.

Anyway, I could go more in-depth here, but I'd recommend just reading what I read. The basis of my adopting a deist perspective is very similar to the reasons why Antony Flew, one of the 20th century's most famous atheist philosophers, adopted a deist persepective--if you want to check that out.

Regarding phil of mind/dualism, I suggest:
The SEP article on dualism:
Note in the intro paragraph:
>Discussion about dualism, therefore, tends to start from the assumption of the reality of the physical world, and then to consider arguments for why the mind cannot be treated as simply part of that world.

Mind/Brain Identity SEP article


If interested, read likewise for "consciousness" and for the other point of view, "physicalism." I currently reject a completely physicalist perspective.

I recommend reading contemporary philosopher Ed Feser's blog (vibrant combox if that's your thing). Here is a post on the above subject.

Lastly, these two books are excellent, I'd start with the first:

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Mind-A-Beginners-Guide/dp/1851684786

http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Mind-Jaegwon-Kim/dp/0813344581

And lastly, the commonly misunderstood Cosmological Argument.

Let me know if you find anything interesting to challenge my beliefs (perhaps I'll respond some months from now, ha), always a truth seeker. Best of luck in your search for Truth.