"The relationship between mind and matter has eluded and puzzled philosophers and scientists since the earliest times. In this book, a distinguished scientist reminds his readers of some of the paradoxes of this relationship, and offers his own suggestions towards a solution of the problem"--.

Experiments with remote perception and Random Event Generators (REG) performed over the last decades show small but significant anomalous effects. Since these effects seem to be independent of spatial and temporal distance, they appear to be in disagreement with the standard scientific worldview. A very simple explanation of quantum mechanics is pre- sented, rejecting all unjustified claims about the world. A view of mind in agreement with cognitive neuroscience is introduced. It is argued that mind and consciousness are (...) emer- gent properties of the brain and are understandable without any nonphysical assumptions. A plausible explanation of the results of anomalous experiments, based on the concept of synchronicity, introduced by C.G. Jung and advocated by W. Pauli, is offered. A proof is given that strong correlations should exist between any systems that once interacted. Synchronicity events between parts of the brain and physical objects may be sufficient to explain the results of anomalous experiments. Standard physics is sufficient to understand these phenomena. Motto. (shrink)

A critical reply to the anti-mindfulness critics in the collection, who oppose the popular secularized adoption of mindfulness on various grounds (it is not Buddhism, it is Buddhism, it is a tool of neo-capitalist exploitation, etc.), I argue that mindfulness is a quality of consciousness, opposite mindlessness, that may be cultivated through practice, and is almost always beneficial to those who cultivate it.

In his The Phenomenon of Man, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin develops concepts of consciousness, the noosphere, and psychosocial evolution. This paper explores Teilhard’s evolutionary concepts as resonant with thinking in psychology and physics. It explores contributions from archetypal depth psychology, quantum physics, and neuroscience to elucidate relationships between mind and matter. Teilhard’s work can be seen as advancing this psychological lineage or psychogenesis. That is, the evolutionary emergence of matter in increasing complexity from sub-atomic particles to the (...) human brain and reflective consciousness leads to a noosphere evolving towards an Omega point. Teilhard’s central ideas provide intimations of a numinous principle implicit in cosmology and the discovery that in and through humanity evolution not only becomes conscious of itself but also directed and purposive. (shrink)

Panpsychism is an eminently sensible view of the world and its relation to mind. If God is a metaphysician, and regardless of the actual truth or falsity of panpsychism, it is certain that he regards the theory as an honest and elegant competitor on the field of ontologies. And if God didn’t create a panpsychist world, then there’s a fair chance that he wishes he had done so, or will do next time around. The difficulties panpsychism faces, then, are (...) not metaphysical ones. They are, instead, difficulties of understanding, and of acceptance by philosophers. The main difficulty of this sort the theory faces is that its ontology – with consciousness in some sense at the heart of all that exists1 – is deemed too bizarre, frankly, too humano-centric to be taken seriously. Why should anyone think that consciousness, widely held to be the preserve only of ourselves, plus the most recently evolved organisms, infuses the basement level of all existence? Such a thought seems to many – especially, to scientifically scrupled philosophers of mind – a narcissistic (or at best hopelessly anti-realist) folly, which doesn’t even deserve its day in court. Panpsychism.. (shrink)

Prominent non-speciesist attempts to determine the amount of moral standing properly attributable to conscious beings argue that certain non-human animals should be granted the highest consideration as self-conscious persons. Most of these theories also include a lesser moral standing for the sentient, or merely conscious, non-person. Thus, the standard approach has been to advocate a two-tiered theory—'sentience' or 'consciousness' and 'self-consciousness' or 'personhood'. While the first level seems to present little interpretative difficulty, the second has recently been criticized as a (...) rather obscurantist label. For it would seem, both on empirical and conceptual grounds, that self-consciousness/personhood comes in degrees. If these observations are at all revealing, they indicate that the two-tiered model is inadequate. This is the view I will support here, replacing the standard dichotomy with a more accurate seven-tiered account of cognitive moral standing adaptable to all three major perspectives of moral reasoning, namely, utilitarianism, deontology and virtue ethics. (shrink)

This book is the first volume featuring the work of American women philosophers in the first half of the twentieth century. It provides selected papers authored by Mary Whiton Calkins, Grace Andrus de Laguna, Grace Neal Dolson, Marjorie Glicksman Grene, Marjorie Silliman Harris, Thelma Zemo Lavine, Marie Collins Swabey, Ellen Bliss Talbot, Dorothy Walsh and Margaret Floy Washburn. The book also provides the historical and philosophical background to their work. The papers focus on the nature of philosophy, knowledge, the philosophy (...) of science, the mind-matter nexus, the nature of time, and the question of freedom and the individual. The material is suitable for scholars, researchers and advanced philosophy students interested in (history of) philosophy; theories of knowledge; philosophy of science; mind, and reality. (shrink)

partial review of Thomas Nagel’s book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False is used to articulate some systems-theoretic ideas about the challenge of understanding subjective experience. The article accepts Nagel’s view that reductionist materialism fails as an approach to this challenge, but argues that seeking an explanation of mind based on emergence is more plausible than seeking one based on pan-psychism, which Nagel favors. However, the article proposes something similar to (...) Nagel’s neutral monism by positing a hierarchy of information processes that spans the domains of matter, life, and mind. As depicted in this hierarchy, subjective experience is emergent, but also continuous with informational phenomena at lower levels. (shrink)

A post-Newtonian understanding of matter includes immaterial forces; thus, the concept of ‘physical’ has lost what usefulness it previously had and Cartesian dualism has, consequently, ceased to support a divide between the mental and the physical. A contemporary scientific understanding of mind that goes back at least as far as Priestley in the 18th century, not only includes immaterial components but identifies brain parts in which these components correlate with neural activity. What are we left with? The challenge (...) is no longer to figure out how a physical brain interacts with a nonphysical mind, but to try to unify theories of mind and theories of brain that to date do not share a single property. The challenge is enormous, but at least we can be quite clear about what its nature is, as there is no reason to be distracted by the idea of two distinct substances. In the present volume, many historical perspectives on the mind-body problem are discussed. In what follows, we follow major currents of thought regarding the mind-body problem so that it can be seen how we arrived at the modern conception that it makes sense only to talk about theory unification. (shrink)

Revisionary theories of logic or truth require revisionary theories of mind. This essay outlines nonclassically based theories of rational belief, desire, and decision making, singling out the supervaluational family for special attention. To see these nonclassical theories of mind in action, this essay examines a debate between David Lewis and Derek Parfit over what matters in survival. Lewis argued that indeterminacy in personal identity allows caring about psychological connectedness and caring about personal identity to amount to the same (...) thing. The essay argues that Lewis's treatment of two of Parfit's puzzle cases—degreed survival and fission—presuppose different nonclassical treatments of belief and desire. (shrink)

….it [is] wholly irrational to regard as doubtful matters that are perceived clearly and distinctly by the understanding in its purity, on account of mere prejudices of the senses and hypotheses in which there is an element of the unknown.Descartes, Geometrical Exposition of the MeditationsSubstance dualism, once a main preoccupation of Western metaphysics, has fallen strangely out of view; today’s mental/physical dualisms are dualisms of fact, property, or event. So if someone claims to find a difference between minds and bodies (...) per se, it is not initially clear what he is maintaining. Maybe this is because one no longer recognizes ‘minds’ as entities in their own right, or ‘substances.’ However, selves - the things we refer to by use of ‘I’ - are surely substances, and it does little violence to the intention behind mind/body dualism to interpret it as a dualism of bodies and selves. If the substance dualist’s meaning remains obscure, that is because it can mean several different things to say that selves are not bodies. (shrink)

William Whewell’s 19th century philosophy of science is sometimes glossed over as a footnote to Kant. There is however a key feature of Whewell’s account worth noting. This is his appeal to Aristotle’s form/matter hylomorphism as a metaphor to explain how mind and world merge in successful scientific inquiry. Whewell’s hylomorphism suggests a middle way between rationalism and empiricism reminiscent of experience pragmatists like Steven Levine’s view that mind and world are entwined in experience. I argue however (...) that Levine does not adequately explain exactly how mind and world entwine. He could nonetheless do so if he appealed to Whewell’s hylomorphic metaphor. We may prefer a reductive metaphysical explanation, but I suggest that pragmatists only have recourse to metaphor in this case. Both reductive and metaphorical explanations can enjoy great explanatory power if they exhibit a suitable measure of what I will call sematic distance. Semantic distance measures how close or how far apart explanandum and explanans are from each other in meaning. Metaphorical explanation - as evident in Whewell’s hylomorphism and as detailed via the notion of semantic distance - presents a valuable new explanatory tool to those who hold that mind and world are entwined sans recourse to metaphysics. (shrink)

Chimpanzee language studies have generated much heated controversy, as Roger Fouts can attest from firsthand experience. Perhaps this is because language is usually considered to be what truly distinguishes humans from apes. If chimps can indeed be taught the rudiments of language, then the difference between them and us is not as great as we might have thought. It is a matter of degree rather than kind, a continuity, and our species is not so special after all. The advantage (...) of this continuity thesis, as Fouts has emphasized, is that it conforms to the general tenets of evolutionary theory, and fits well with the evidence from paleontology and genetics that suggests that apes and humans are close cousins. It also .. (shrink)

The problem of consciousness – the problem of how the matter of our brains produces perception, sensation, emotion and thought – is often described as one of the outstanding remaining problems for science. Although a lot is known in detail about how the brain works it is widely believed that the explanation of consciousness is something which still eludes us. According to a recent survey in (of all places!) The Economist, ‘consciousness awaits its Einstein’.1 Consciousness researchers are looking for (...) that missing piece of the jigsaw which will explain how the lived world of conscious experience arises out of the initially unpromising yoghurt-like matter of the brain. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a framework that supports both free will and anomalous mind-matter interaction (psychokinesis). I begin by considering the argument by the physicist Sean Carroll that the laws of physics as we understand them rule out psychokinesis (and other modes of psi). I find Carroll’s claims problematic, in part due to what I believe are misunderstandings of arguments borrowed from David Hume. I proceed to consider a more dispositional notion of causality (in contrast to one (...) characterized by universal and necessary laws) which I argue is more hospitable to both psychokinesis and free will. I then incorporate recent work from the philosophy of mind and science to arrive at a framework that supports both real volition and psychokinesis, which I argue are intimately linked. This approach is fundamentally dispositional, but grounded in an ontologically prior field of awareness and potentiality. I also consider that the regularities (or causal natures) we observe in our physical world are ultimately supported by what we might term teleological “intentions” within a nonlocal, mind-like quantum ground. (shrink)

In recent years, academics and educators have begun to use software mapping tools for a number of education-related purposes. Typically, the tools are used to help impart critical and analytical skills to students, to enable students to see relationships between concepts, and also as a method of assessment. The common feature of all these tools is the use of diagrammatic relationships of various kinds in preference to written or verbal descriptions. Pictures and structured diagrams are thought to be more comprehensible (...) than just words, and a clearer way to illustrate understanding of complex topics. Variants of these tools are available under different names: “concept mapping”, “mind mapping” and “argument mapping”. Sometimes these terms are used synonymously. However, as this paper will demonstrate, there are clear differences in each of these mapping tools. This paper offers an outline of the various types of tool available and their advantages and disadvantages. It argues that the choice of mapping tool largely depends on the purpose or aim for which the tool is used and that the tools may well be converging to offer educators as yet unrealised and potentially complementary functions. (shrink)

This volume presents new essays exploring important aspects of Nietzsche's philosophy in connection with two major themes: mind and nature. A team of leading experts address questions including: What is Nietzsche's conception of mind? How does mind relate with the nature? And what is Nietzsche's conception of nature? They all express the thought that Nietzsche's views on these matters are of great philosophical value, either because those views are consonant with contemporary thinking to a greater or lesser (...) extent or because they represent a rich alternative to contemporary attitudes. (shrink)

Regular physics is unsatisfactory in that it fails to take into consideration phenomena relating to mind and meaning, whereas on the other side of the cultural divide such constructs have been studied in detail. This paper discusses a possible synthesis of the two perspectives. Crucial is the way systems realising mental function can develop step by step on the basis of the scaffolding mechanisms of Hoffmeyer, in a way that can be clarified by consideration of the phenomenon of language. (...) Taking into account such constructs, aspects of which are apparent even with simple systems such as acoustically excited water (as with cymatics), potentially opens up a window into a world of mentality excluded from conventional physics as a result of the primary focus of the latter on the matter-like aspect of reality. (shrink)

Many people regard the mind as something separate from the body. This includes many religious believers, who regard personality and self as attributes of an immortal soul. Some philosophers, relying on logic instead of faith, also have taken the position that the mind is distinct from the body and is not explainable in terms of bodily processes alone. The belief that a person is composed of a mind and a body, with neither one reducible to the other, (...) has traditionally been called dualism. (shrink)

It has always been a matter of curiosity what kind of information art, which is far from ordinary and untouchable, provides people. Confronting a person with an art object means looking at the window of a world different from the world of daily routines, with his head stuck out. We can describe this world as magical in a romantic way. This magic arises from the difference in the functioning of perception, interpretation and judgment processes, which the person confronted with (...) an art object has difficulty in explaining to himself from time to time. Because the acquisition of perception in the world of routines and the acquisition of perception from the art object are different in terms of the functioning of mental processes... (shrink)

This article aims to show how mind, matter and meaning might be united in one theory using certain concepts of information, building on ideas of empathy and intentionality. The concept of intentionality in philosophy of mind (“aboutness”), which is “the ineliminable mark of the mental” according to Brentano, can be viewed as the relationship between model and object, and empathy can be viewed as a form of mental modelling, so that the inclination to attribute mentality can be (...) identified with the inclination to empathise with the relevant entity. Physical information, a concept quite well established within the discipline of physics, is basically a reconceptualization of material form. Daniel Dennett's concept of the intentional stance allows the development of a concept of “intentional information,” a broad term that encompasses mental content and semantic information generally, as encoded within physical information/material form. (shrink)

Two stories have dominated the historiography of early modern philosophy: one in which a seventeenth century Age of Reason spawned the Enlightenment, and another in which a skeptical crisis cast a shadow over subsequent philosophy, resulting in ever narrower "limits to knowledge." I combine certain elements common to both into a third narrative, one that begins by taking seriously seventeenth-century conceptions of the topics and methods central to the rise of a "new" philosophy. In this revisionist story, differing approaches to (...) the central subject matter of early modern metaphysics--knowledge of substances through their essences and causal powers--arise as a result of disagreements about the powers of the human cognitive faculties. Methodological writings are seen as attempts to direct readers in the proper use of their cognitive faculties. The early modern rejection of the Aristotelian theory of cognition ranks equally in importance with rejection of Aristotelian doctrines about nature. Skepticism is more often than not a tool to be used in teaching the reader the proper use of the cognitive faculties, or indeed in convincing the reader of the existence or inexistence of certain cognitive faculties or powers. Instead of early modern "epistemology" or "theory of knowledge," one speaks, with seventeenth century writers, of theories of the cognitive faculties and their implications for the possibility of human knowledge. The early modern rejection of Aristotelian logic can then be seen as reflecting a negative assessment about the fit between syllogistic reasoning and logic as an art of reasoning or thinking which refines the use of the cognitive faculties. -/- Central to this new historiography is the story of the relation between the intellect and senses as cognitive faculties or powers. The development of philosophy from Descartes to Kant can be portrayed as a series of claims about the power of the intellect to know the essences of things, with resulting consequences for ontology and the foundations of natural philosophy. I illustrate this revised narrative by comparing three conceptions of the intellect in three philosophical settings, provided by several late scholastic Aristotelians, Descartes, and Locke. I have two aims: first, to exhibit the central role played by the conception of intellect or understanding in these authors, and, second, to locate their discussions of the cognitive faculties in relation to recent understandings of psychology, epistemology, logic, mind, and their relations. Early modern writings do not easily fit into the modern categories of epistemology and psychology; more generally, the early modern concern with the workings of mind does not coincide with recent conceptions of naturalism. These findings can help us to see problems with our current categories. (shrink)

The great divide of modern thought is whether mind is real or naught. The conceit that either mind is reducible to matter or that mind is utterly ethereal is rooted in a mind-versus-matter dichotomy that can be characterized as the modern error, a fatally flawed fallacy rooted in the philosophy and culture of nominalism. A Peircean semiotic outlook, applied to an understanding of social life, provides a new and full-bodied understanding of semiosis as the (...) bridge between mind and matter, and human biology and culture. I begin by first delineating the false divide and showing Charles Sanders Peirce’s alternative to it, then explore the implications of a semiotic approach to mind as trans-action, then consider the self-transcending nature of the human body-mind. Finally I outline my ecological, biosemiotic account of mind, which reveals that, indeed, mind matters, and in ways that unexpect-edly resemble the forms of animism that characterized the hunting-gathering foragers through whom we anatomically modern humans emerged. (shrink)

Physicalism as a worldview and framework for a mechanistic and materialist science seems not to have integrated the tectonic shift created by the rise of quantum physics with its notion of the personal equation of the observer. Psyche had been deliberately removed from a post-Enlightenment science. This paper explores a post-materialist science within a dual-aspect monist conception of nature in which both the mental and the physical exist in a relationship of complementarity so that they mutually exclude one another and (...) yet are together necessary to explain Reality while being irreducible to one another. Both mind and matter emerge from an underlying holistic domain known as the unus mundus in the Jung-Pauli formulation or as the analogous implicate order in the framing of physicist David Bohm and his colleagues. Kuhnian anomalies such as the role of reflective consciousness in evolution, and phenomena including so-called “near death experiences” (NDEs), are considered from the perspective of dual-aspect monism in conjunction with an emerging evolutionary panentheism. (shrink)

A central dispute in social ontology concerns the existence of group minds and actions. I argue that some authors in this dispute rely on rival views of existence without sufficiently acknowledging this divergence. I proceed in three steps in arguing for this claim. First, I define the phenomenon as an implicit higher-order disagreement by drawing on an analysis of verbal disputes. Second, I distinguish two theories of existence—the theory-commitments view and the truthmaker view—in both their eliminativist and their constructivist variants. (...) Third, I examine individual contributions to the dispute about the existence of group minds and actions to argue that these contributions have an implicit higher-order disagreement. This paper serves two purposes. First, it is a study to apply recent advances in meta-ontology. Second, it contributes to the debate on social ontology by illustrating how meta-ontology matters for social ontology. (shrink)

Bohm and Hiley suggest that a certain new type of active information plays a key objective role in quantum processes. This paper discusses the implications of this suggestion to our understanding of the relation between the mental and the physical aspects of reality.

This book discusses two of the oldest and hardest problems in both science and philosophy: What is matter?, and What is mind? A reason for tackling both problems in a single book is that two of the most influential views in modern philosophy are that the universe is mental (idealism), and that everything real is material (materialism). Most of the thinkers who espouse a materialist view of mind have obsolete ideas about matter, whereas those who claim (...) that science supports idealism have not explained how the universe could have existed before humans emerged. Besides, both groups tend to ignore the other levels of existence—chemical, biological, social, and technological. If such levels and the concomitant emergence processes are ignored, the physicalism/spiritualism dilemma remains unsolved, whereas if they are included, the alleged mysteries are shown to be problems that science is treating successfully. يناقش هذا الكتاب أقدم وأصعب مشكلتين أو سؤالين في العلم والفلسفة معا : ما المادة؟ وما العقل؟ يتناول الكتاب في نصفه الأول الأسئلة الفلسفية والعلمية المتعلقة بالمادة، ويدور نصفه الثانى حول أسئلة العقل. ويسعى الكتاب إلى إعادة توحيد المادة والعقل بمساعدة العلم المعاصر، وخاصة فيزياء الكوانتم وعلم الأعصاب الإدراكي. وفي فلسفة الفيزياء يدافع بونجى عن التصور الواقعي للمادة، وفي فلسفة العقل يدافع عن التطابق العصبي النفسي أو الهوية العصبية النفسية. إنه كتاب مهم لفيلسوف عالم، قال عنه النقاد إن قلة من الفلاسفة يستطيعون تأليف عمل مثله في عمقه واتساع أفقه الفكرى . (shrink)

This paper briefly discusses some of David Bohm’s views on mind and matter and suggests that they allow for a stronger possibility for conscious free will to influence quantum dynamics than Henry Stapp’s approach.

The aim of this paper is to apply the metaphysics of John Duns Scotus in constructing a new conception of matter which does not stand in opposition to the mental realm, but is rather composed of both physical and mental elements. The paper is divided into four parts. Section one addresses Scotus’ claim that matter is intelligible and actual in itself. Section two aims to show that matter can be seen as a deprived thinking being. Section three (...) analyzes Scotus’ conception of place. The final section brings together the conclusions of the three preceding parts to confront the Cartesian psycho-physical problem anew and to suggest a viable solution. (shrink)

Neutral monism claims that both mind and matter are categories derived froma single underlying realit y that is univocally identified with none of them. In this paper atheoretical outline is presented from the neutral-monism perspective on the different configurations of reality referred to as “mind” and “matter”, while also discussing its consequences and the approaches it could give raise.

The science of the mind, and of consciousness in particular, needs carefully to consider people's common-sense views of the mind, not just what the mind really is. Such views are themselves an aspect of the nature of (conscious) mind, and therefore part of the object of study for a science of mind. Also, since the common-sense views allow broadly successful social interaction, it is reasonable to look to the common-sense views for some rough guidance as (...) to the real nature of the mind. On the other hand, to the extent that common-sense views are inaccurate, and perhaps even in gross conflict with the true nature of the mind, one interesting scientific question is: why do we hold such views, given our access to our own minds? Why should introspection be limited in a way that allows inaccurate views to hold sway? Now, common-sense views of the mind are revealed in natural language discourse that describes mental states, and such descriptions are largely metaphorical. The metaphors are used within thinking about the mind as well as in language. Therefore the study of metaphor is central to the study of mind. The present article is a preliminary study of the importance of metaphor in the scientific study of consciousness. It concentrates on analysing the nature of a range of important metaphors of mind, briefly discussing the extent to which they can be used to describe or qualify states of consciousness, and pointing to important questions about the nature of consciousness that the study of the metaphors raises. The article further conjectures that the reason people use metaphors in describing themselves is often not (just) that they have intellectually worked out some structural analogy --- e.g., between interactions of physical objects in physical space and interactions of ideas in the mind --- but rather that they {\it feel} their own minds to be as described by the metaphor --- e.g., they feel that the ideas in their minds are interacting physical entities. This matter of how a mind feels to itself is an aspect of the central issue of consciousness, namely its phenomenal quality. -/- (NB: The archived file is a preprint. However, it is substantially the same as the published version.). (shrink)

This piece continues ideas developed in my essay, Mind Matters, through responding to the critique of that essay by Peter K. Manning. Manning cannot conceive that human conduct involves full-bodied semiosis rather than disembodied conceptualism, and that the study of human signification requires a full-bodied understanding. The ancient Greek root phren, basis for the concept of phronesis, is rooted in the heart-lungs-solar plexus basis of bodily awareness, and provides a metaphor for a discussion of bio-developmental, biosemiotic capacities as crucial (...) for human culture. Manning’s use of Wittgenstein is contrasted with the outlook of Charles Peirce. The intense attunement to and reverence for animals and plants in hunter-gatherer peoples is more than some conceptual collective representations system or interaction order or psychological belief system, explainable by Durkheim or Goffman, or Jung’s universal structure of the “collective unconscious,” or by neural net theory. It exemplifies how those peoples are in real learning relationships to the instinctive intelligence of their habitats, deep learning expressed not only in trial-and-error experience but also in the sense of wonder, communicated in ritual life. Mind is found literally in those transactions, not in isolate brains or disembodied conceptualism. (shrink)

ABSTRACT. This essay addresses the interpretation of Descartes’ understanding of the mind-body relationship as a substantial union in light of a statement he makes in the Passions de l’âme regarding the role of the blood and vital heat. Here, it seems Descartes cites these corporeal properties as the essential dispositions responsible for accommodating the soul into the human fetus. I argue that this statement should be read in the context of certain medical texts with which Descartes was familiar, namely (...) those of Jean Fernel and William Harvey. Reviewing Fernel’s comments on substantial union, one finds that the soul joins the body on the basis of a celestial spirit that not only bears the vital heat, it also directs the generation of the body. Similar to Harvey, Descartes locates these properties in the blood itself, although, in contrast to Harvey, Descartes reduces these processes to matter and motion. Finally, I highlight the role this heat plays in Descartes’ embryological writing, contrasting it with that of Fernel. I conclude that although Descartes makes various comments supporting a reading of the mind-body relation as a substantial union, his physiological writings on generation and his idea of ‘life’ contradict this interpretation. -/- . (shrink)

This paper examines the processes involved in attempting to capture the subtlest aspects of nature by the scientific method and argues on this basis that nature is fundamentally elusive and may resist grasping by the methods of science. If we wish to come to terms with this resistance, then a shift in the direction of taking direct experience into account may be necessary for science’s future complete development.

In this paper, I aim to address a specific issue underpinning Cartesian metaphysics since its first public appearance in the Discourse right up until the Meditations, but which definitely came to the surface in the Second and Fifth Replies. It involves the possibility that to be thinking and to be extended do not actually contrast as two entirely different properties; hence, these two essences cannot serve as the basis for a disjunctive, real distinction between two corresponding substances, the mind (...) and the body. I dub this problem the ‘thinking matter issue.’ I suggest that Descartes’s concerns about the ‘thinking matter issue’ characterizes and structures the entirety of Meditation Two and its connection with Meditation Six, especially in the attempt to covertly implement what I refer to as Descartes’s ‘prejudice strategy.’ The core of the ‘prejudice strategy’ lies in the idea that the ‘thinking matter issue’ is just a false problem, one raised by the inadequate notions of the mind and the body that we apply to this problem. In section 1, I set out the way in which the ‘thinking matter issue’ emerged in Descartes’s philosophy after the first exposition of his metaphysics in the Discourse. Section 2 deals with the new argumentative path Descartes draws for the Meditations and with the new role that he assigns to the inference about the mind’s non-physical nature after the cogito. In section 3, I contend that the ‘prejudice strategy’ structures Meditation Two and, partially, Six. Section 4 shows that Descartes himself reveals this in his Replies to the Second and the Fifth Set of Objections. In section 5, I delve into Descartes’s foundational theory of the ‘prejudice strategy,’ i.e. his theory of infancy as set out especially in the Replies to the Sixth Set of Objections. -/- . (shrink)

The extended mind thesis claims that a subject’s mind sometimes encompasses the environmental props the subject interacts with while solving cognitive tasks. Recently, the debate over the extended mind has been focused on Markov Blankets: the statistical boundaries separating biological systems from the environment. Here, I argue such a focus is mistaken, because Markov Blankets neither adjudicate, nor help us adjudicate, whether the extended mind thesis is true. To do so, I briefly introduce Markov Blankets and (...) the free energy principle in Section 2. I then turn from exposition to criticism. In Section 3, I argue that using Markov Blankets to determine whether the mind extends will provide us with an answer based on circular reasoning. In Section 4, I consider whether Markov Blankets help us track the boundaries of the mind, answering in the negative. This is because resorting to Markov Blankets to track the boundaries of the mind yields extensionally inadequate conclusions which violate the parity principle. In Section 5, I further argue that Markov Blankets led us to sidestep the debate over the extended mind, as they make internalism about the mind vacuously true. A brief concluding paragraph follows. (shrink)

In exploring how our brains contribute to shaping our mind’s construction of reality McGilchirst draws together the domains of neuropsychology, epistemology and metaphysics; how we can come to know, and the nature of what it is that is known are subjects inextricable from the equipment we rely upon in our exploration. His contention is that today there is an urgent need to transform how we see the world and thus what we make of ourselves. As such his ambition is (...) to disclose a way of looking at the world which diverges significantly from the manner of seeing that has dominated human civilisations for millennia and which, he contends, has produced systemic misunderstandings of the nature of reality. with The Matter With Things, McGilchirst takes the reader on a tour de force of the world of ideas and into a landscape not of a material world composed of ‘things’, but rather discloses the more fundamental ‘process’ quality of reality. We explore the relevance and application to the philosophy of cognitive science and psychological practice. (shrink)

Many believe that a suitably programmed computer could act for its own goals and experience feelings. I challenge this view and argue that agency, mental causation and qualia are all founded in the unique, homeostatic nature of living matter. The theory was formulated for coherence with the concept of an agent, neuroscientific data and laws of physics. By this method, I infer that a successful action is homeostatic for its agent and can be caused by a feeling - which (...) does not motivate as a force, but as a control signal. From brain research and the locality principle of physics, I surmise that qualia are a fundamental, biological form of energy generated in specialized neurons. Subjectivity is explained as thermodynamically necessary on the supposition that, by converting action potentials to feelings, the neural cells avert damage from the electrochemical pulses. In exchange for this entropic benefit, phenomenal energy is spent as and where it is produced - which precludes the objective observation of qualia. (shrink)

It might become possible to build artificial minds with the capacity for experience. This raises a plethora of ethical issues, explored, among others, in the context of whole brain emulations (WBE). In this paper, I will take up the problem of vulnerability – given, for various reasons, less attention in the literature – that the conscious emulations will likely exhibit. Specifically, I will examine the role that vulnerability plays in generating ethical issues that may arise when dealing with WBEs. I (...) will argue that concerns about vulnerability are more matters of institutional design than individual ethics, both when it comes to creating humanlike brain emulations, and when animal-like emulations are concerned. Consequently, the article contains reflection on some institutional measures that can be taken to protect the sims' interests. It concludes that an institutional framework more likely to succeed in this task is competitive and poly-centric, rather than monopolistic and centralized. (shrink)

This article takes off from Johan van Benthem’s ruminations on the interface between logic and cognitive science in his position paper “Logic and reasoning: Do the facts matter?”. When trying to answer Van Benthem’s question whether logic can be fruitfully combined with psychological experiments, this article focuses on a specific domain of reasoning, namely higher-order social cognition, including attributions such as “Bob knows that Alice knows that he wrote a novel under pseudonym”. For intelligent interaction, it is important that (...) the participants recursively model the mental states of other agents. Otherwise, an international negotiation may fail, even when it has potential for a win-win solution, and in a time-critical rescue mission, a software agent may depend on a teammate’s action that never materializes. First a survey is presented of past and current research on higher-order social cognition, from the various viewpoints of logic, artificial intelligence, and psychology. Do people actually reason about each other’s knowledge in the way proscribed by epistemic logic? And if not, how can logic and cognitive science productively work together to construct more realistic models of human reasoning about other minds? The paper ends with a delineation of possible avenues for future research, aiming to provide a better understanding of higher-order social reasoning. The methodology is based on a combination of experimental research, logic, computational cognitive models, and agent-based evolutionary models. Keywords Epistemic logic - Cognitive science - Intelligent interaction - Cognitive modeling. (shrink)

This article takes off from Johan van Benthem’s ruminations on the interface between logic and cognitive science in his position paper “Logic and reasoning: Do the facts matter?”. When trying to answer Van Benthem’s question whether logic can be fruitfully combined with psychological experiments, this article focuses on a specific domain of reasoning, namely higher-order social cognition, including attributions such as “Bob knows that Alice knows that he wrote a novel under pseudonym”. For intelligent interaction, it is important that (...) the participants recursively model the mental states of other agents. Otherwise, an international negotiation may fail, even when it has potential for a win-win solution, and in a time-critical rescue mission, a software agent may depend on a teammate’s action that never materializes. First a survey is presented of past and current research on higher-order social cognition, from the various viewpoints of logic, artificial intelligence, and psychology. Do people actually reason about each other’s knowledge in the way proscribed by epistemic logic? And if not, how can logic and cognitive science productively work together to construct more realistic models of human reasoning about other minds? The paper ends with a delineation of possible avenues for future research, aiming to provide a better understanding of higher-order social reasoning. The methodology is based on a combination of experimental research, logic, computational cognitive models, and agent-based evolutionary models. (shrink)

The extended mind thesis claims that a subject’s mind sometimes encompasses the environmental props the subject interacts with while solving cognitive tasks. Recently, the debate over the extended mind has been focused on Markov Blankets: the statistical boundaries separating biological systems from the environment. Here, I argue such a focus is mistaken, because Markov Blankets neither adjudicate, nor help us adjudicate, whether the extended mind thesis is true. To do so, I briefly introduce Markov Blankets and (...) the free energy principle in Section 2. I then turn from exposition to criticism. In Section 3, I argue that using Markov Blankets to determine whether the mind extends will provide us with an answer based on circular reasoning. In Section 4, I consider whether Markov Blankets help us track the boundaries of the mind, answering in the negative. This is because resorting to Markov Blankets to track the boundaries of the mind yields extensionally inadequate conclusions which violate the parity principle. In Section 5, I further argue that Markov Blankets led us to sidestep the debate over the extended mind, as they make internalism about the mind vacuously true. A brief concluding paragraph follows. (shrink)

> Context • The alleged dichotomy between mind and matter is pervasive. Therefore, the attempt to explain mat- ter in terms of mind (idealism) is often considered a mirror image of that of explaining mind in terms of mat- ter (mainstream physicalism), in the sense of being structurally equivalent despite being reversely arranged. > Problem • I argue that this is an error arising from language artifacts, for dichotomies must reside in the same level of abstraction. (...) > Method • I show that, because matter outside mind is not an empirical observation but rather an explanatory model, the epistemic symmetry between the two is broken. Consequently, matter and mind cannot reside in the same level of abstraction. > Results • It then becomes clear that attempting to explain mind in terms of matter is epistemically more costly than attempting to explain matter in terms of mind. > Implications • The qualities of experience are suggested to be not only epistemically, but also ontologically primary. > Constructivist content • I high- light the primacy of perceptual constructs over explanatory abstraction on both epistemic and ontic levels. > Key words • Idealism, physicalism, pancomputationalism, anti-realism, hard problem of consciousness, epistemic symmetry, explanatory abstraction, levels of abstraction. (shrink)

The view that phenomenally conscious robots are on the horizon often rests on a certain philosophical view about consciousness, one we call “nomological behaviorism.” The view entails that, as a matter of nomological necessity, if a robot had exactly the same patterns of dispositions to peripheral behavior as a phenomenally conscious being, then the robot would be phenomenally conscious; indeed it would have all and only the states of phenomenal consciousness that the phenomenally conscious being in question has. We (...) experimentally investigate whether the folk think that certain (hypothetical) robots made of silicon and steel would have the same conscious states as certain familiar biological beings with the same patterns of dispositions to peripheral behavior as the robots. Our findings provide evidence that the folk largely reject the view that silicon-based robots would have the sensations that they, the folk, attribute to the biological beings in question. (shrink)

This dissertation contains four independent essays addressing a cluster of related topics in the philosophy of mind. Chapter 1: “Fundamentality Physicalism” argues that physicalism can usefully be conceived of as a thesis about fundamentality. The chapter explores a variety of other potential formulations of physicalism (particularly modal formulations), contrasts fundamentality physicalism with these theses, and offers reasons to prefer fundamentality physicalism over these rivals. Chapter 2:“Modal Rationalism and the Demonstrative Reply to the Master Argument Against Physicalism” introduces the Master (...) Argument Against Physicalism and investigates its crucial premise: the inference from an a priori gap between the physical and consciousness to a lack of necessitation between the two. I argue against the strong form of modal rationalism that underwrites the master argument and offer a more moderate rationalist view. I offer a novel demonstrative reply to the master argument, according to which a connection between conscious experience and demonstratives, not dualism, is the source of the epistemic gap between consciousness and the physical. Chapter 3: “Conceptual Mastery and the Knowledge Argument” argues that Frank Jackson’s famous anti-physicalist knowledge argument featuring Mary, a brilliant neuroscientist raised in a black and white room, founders on a dilemma. Either (i) Mary cannot know the relevant experiential truths because of trivial obstacles that have no bearing on the truth of physicalism or (ii) once the obstacles have been removed, Mary can know the relevant truths. Chapter 4: “Toward a Theory of Conceptual Mastery” investigates the question “Under what conditions does a thinker fully understand, or have mastery of, a concept?” I argue against three views of conceptual mastery, according to which conceptual mastery is a matter of holding certain beliefs, being disposed to make certain inferences, or having certain intuitions. I propose and respond to objections to my own “meaning postulate view” of the conditions under which a thinker has mastery of a concept. (shrink)

The investigation of the act of Sex protrudes an intricate analysis more so if thus should be justified as an activity of the Mind and not purely physical. This philosophical endeavor investigates on the matter of incorporating Passion in the assertion of Sex as such that will beget Pleasure. In order for the proper direction setting of this inquest, the opus posited a literature review that is akin to the variables of this research. It is therefore qualifiable to (...) assert the variables of Passion, Sex, and Pleasure. As such, these properties allow the rudiments which shall be tackled on the explication. The researcher delved on the investigation on anatomizing Sex and even the Passions involve for it to be protruded in a state that is occupied by the Mind. The very purpose of the opus is to intricately expose the inner workings of the activities that ought to be done in banality. There is also an explication of thought experiments to highlight the integration to the epistemological property of the variable exposed in this endeavor. In the canopy of this research, the highlight is on the ontological property of the faculties ascertained and the epistemological qualification of the properties that are seemingly isolated from the Mind. It is therefore, phenomenological since it protrudes the nature of the properties as they exist in the current circumstance, as such it is less existential simply because what it ascertains is the circumstance upon which the action attributes itself to. -/- . (shrink)

Higher education institutions are mining and analyzing student data to effect educational, political, and managerial outcomes. Done under the banner of “learning analytics,” this work can—and often does—surface sensitive data and information about, inter alia, a student’s demographics, academic performance, offline and online movements, physical fitness, mental wellbeing, and social network. With these data, institutions and third parties are able to describe student life, predict future behaviors, and intervene to address academic or other barriers to student success (however defined). Learning (...) analytics, consequently, raise serious issues concerning student privacy, autonomy, and the appropriate flow of student data. We argue that issues around privacy lead to valid questions about the degree to which students should trust their institution to use learning analytics data and other artifacts (algorithms, predictive scores) with their interests in mind. We argue that higher education institutions are paradigms of information fiduciaries. As such, colleges and universities have a special responsibility to their students. In this article, we use the information fiduciary concept to analyze cases when learning analytics violate an institution’s responsibility to its students. (shrink)

This special issue, which includes papers first presented at two workshops on ‘Memory, Mind, and Media’ in Sydney on November 29–30 and December 2–3, 2004, showcases some of the best interdisciplinary work in philosophy and psychology by memory researchers in Australasia (and by one expatriate Australian, Robert Wilson of the University of Alberta). The papers address memory in many contexts: in dance and under hypnosis, in social groups and with siblings, in early childhood and in the laboratory. Memory is (...) taken as a test case for evaluating the optimistic vision of a new kind of cognitive science defended by Andy Clark. Clark (2001:154) argues: Much of what matters about human intelligence is hidden not in the brain, nor in the technology, but in the complex and iterated interactions and collaborations between the two ... The study of these interaction spaces is not easy, and depends both on new multidisciplinary alliances and new forms of modelling and analysis. The pay-off, however, could be spectacular: nothing less than a new kind of cognitive scientific collaboration involving neuroscience, physiology, and social, cultural, and technological studies in about equal measure. So the central motivation is to investigate critically how well the case of memory would fit the extended mind’ thesis put forward by Clark and Chalmers (Clark and Chalmers 1998; Clark 1997, 2006)—according to which mental states and processes can spread across the.. (shrink)

Different cognitive functions recruit a number of different, often overlapping, areas of the brain. Theories in cognitive and computational neuroscience are beginning to take this kind of functional integration into account. The contributions to this special issue consider what functional integration tells us about various aspects of the mind such as perception, language, volition, agency, and reward. Here, I consider how and why functional integration may matter for the mind; I discuss a general theoretical framework, based on (...) generative models, that may unify many of the debates surrounding functional integration and the mind; and I briefly introduce each of the contributions. (shrink)