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Detailed notes on Hans Dooremalen's book "8 questions about the conscious mind" for the course Philosophy of Mind.
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8 QUESTIONS ABOUT THE CONSCIOUS MINDMATERIALS FOR LECTURES
CHAPTER 1
What is the conscious mind?
1. Taking the mind seriously
tasting, having thoughts, feeling emotions are examples of mental states
mental states form the conscious mind
- “state” is used in a neutral sense
- mental phenomena might be properties/events
- “phenomenal” is used to classify mental types and would result in phrases like “non-
phenomenal mental phenomena”
no one would deny consciousness exists (experiences, thoughts, emotions surely exist)
doubting is a mental state, which further proves that the conscious mind exists
2. A preliminary characterization of the conscious mind
qualitative differences are established by experiences
qualia = what-it-is-likeness (Thomas Nagel) – qualitative aspects of experiences
- singular: quale
- Nagel argued that when our senses are stimulated we have all kinds of experiences
ex. bats which use echolocation
- only bats know what it is like to experience echolocation (humans do not possess that
sense) – this what-it-is-likeness describes a phenomenal experience
phenomenal experiences – the first type of mental states
- they are characterized by their qualitative feel
- our first type of mental state is formed by phenomenal experiences which are
characterized by their what-it-is-likeness
- qualia are the qualitative aspects of phenomenal experiences
- “phenomenal” refers to how something feels, how something appears to us, how
something is experienced
- “phenomenal experience” is a pleonasm – it uses more words than are necessary to
convey meaning for emphasis but it is customary to do so in this example (ex. round
circle)
cognitive state (cognition)– the second type of mental states
- preliminary described to possess intentionality
- intentionality = aboutness – the property of being about something
- representation – when something is about a particular thing
- intentionality is confusing
- intentionality may refer to the mental state of wanting to do something on purpose
- intentions (mental states) have intentionality (aboutness)
- the archetype of a mental state with intentionality is the propositional attitude
* proposition – the meaning of a sentence
ex. the same sentence translated into different languages has the same meaning
- sentences/ words are put between double inverted commas
- propositions/ meaning/ concepts are put between single inverted commas
* we may have different stances/ attitudes towards a preposition
ex. knowing, believing, hoping, wanting
* propositional attitudes:
1) you know that I like coffee
2) you believe that I like coffee
propositional attitudes have intentionality
, phenomenal experiences possess qualia/ what-it-is-likeness
cognitive states possess intentionality/ aboutness
it is conceivable (possible to imagine) that there are mental states with only one of these
properties
pressing on your eyelids and “seeing stars” has nothing to do with real stars therefore,
this experience possesses what-it-is-likeness but not aboutness
in the future, intelligent robots will probably have cognitive states while lacking the
ability to experience anything at all (intentionality with no single quale)
emotion – the third type of mental states
- possesses both what-it-is-likeness and intentionality
ex. love – the phenomenal feeling (qualia) is directed at someone (it is about someone -
intentionality)
3. The conscious and the unconscious mind
the states of the unconscious mind can become conscious given the right circumstances
- “The notion of an unconscious mental state implies accessibility to consciousness”
(Searle)
ex. personal memory
* memories are unconscious initially
* memories can become conscious thoughts
* there are many things going on in our brain that we will never be conscious of
ex. the brain state that regulates our heartbeat belongs to neither the conscious or the
unconscious mind
- such states are unconscious but they are not mental states because they lack the ability to
become conscious states
4. The mind-body problems
central problem: the mind-body problem
- how does the conscious mind fit into the physical world?
- 3 mental types/conscious states = 3 mind-body problems
1) how do phenomenal experiences fit into the physical world?
2) how do cognitive states fit into the physical world?
3) how do emotions fit into the physical world?
- 3 types of mental states but only 2 properties (qualia/intentionality)
this creates only 2 problems:
1) how do qualia fit into the physical world?
2) how does intentionality fit into the physical world?
* once we know how qualia and intentionality fir into the world, we will not only know
how respectively phenomenal and cognitive states fit into the world, but we would also
figure out the place of emotions
5. Consciousness and cognition
reduction of the problems of the conscious mind to two
cognition – refers to the part of the mental states that has aboutness
consciousness – refers to the phenomenal states of the mind, mainly because cognitive
states are mental states that can also be conscious states
- all cognitive states are mental states that can become conscious
- many cognitive states are mental states while not being a part of the conscious mind –
they do have the ability to become a part of it
- a phenomenal state is by definition conscious so therefore consciousness is used as a
default for phenomenal states
- it does not mean cognitive states are never conscious states
6. Taking science seriously
, the debate about the conscious mind – seen as a philosophical as well as a metaphysical
debate
metaphysics – the discipline in philosophy that goes beyond physics
- tell us what is beyond palpable nature
- philosophical discipline which tells us how the world came to be
- armchair philosophy that is detached from the real world
- does not take into account what science has discovered
- it chooses fantasy and wild speculation over the methodological way of gaining
knowledge
- David Hume: books which contain claims that have nothing to do with empirical data/
logic should be discarded
- the problem about the conscious mind should be answered by science: this question
cannot be answered by employing philosophy alone
- results of conceptual analysis are relevant for answers to questions about the conscious
mind
- philosophy comes up with hypotheses that scientists themselves do not propose
- philosophers are trained to discover false reasoning
we are able to reason properly but we are also prone to making errors (Descartes)
if we ignore science, we might end up with theories that feel good but which are totally
wrong
we also run a risk of taking science seriously: finding out the world is different from what
we thought it was
7. Conclusion
we do not know what the conscious mind is and what its place in nature is
CHAPTER 2
Can the mind function separately from the brain?
“I am really distinct from my body and can exist without it” (Descartes)
1. A bar in Paris
Descartes – the father of modern philosophy
2. Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
spiritual/ religious beliefs:
- the soul survives our bodily death
- conscious mind = soul
- separability thesis - the mind can exist and function separately from the physical world
- inseparability thesis – the idea that the mind cannot function separated from a physical
body
separability thesis – Descartes
skeptics (like Montaigne) – philosophers who argue we can never be certain about
anything and that will always postpone out judgments
- Montaigne did not make any claims at all – saying “there is nothing which is certain” is
a knowledge claim
- he posed the question “What do I know?”
3. Descartes’s method of doubt
not satisfied with the skeptical conclusion that we do not know anything for certain
he desired true knowledge about the world
he initially accepted the method of the skeptics: doubt everything
he argued he should not trust anything or anyone who had ever deceived him in the past
distrusted humans and senses as a source of knowledge
ex. visual illusions like the Muller-Lyer illusion
, Descartes said he could conceive of a malicious almighty demon: a demon so powerful
that it was able to deceive Descartes into thinking that he had a body or that there was a
physical world
doubted that 2+3=5 (it might have been the almighty demon that made him falsely believe
this)
he is sure about: “just the one fact that nothing is certain”
4. Descartes’s foundation
however bad the almighty demon is, he cannot have him doubt his own existence
doubting is a way of thinking and if you think – you exist
“I am, I exist” (Cogito ergo sum) – necessarily true whenever it is put forward by
someone or conceived in one’s mind
“I think therefore I am”
he knows that he exists and that he is a thinking being
- this is the foundation which the rest of his knowledge has to be built on
- there will always be doubt
- “Cogito” is not an argument but an insight
- after doubting, a new method comes – those claims that he perceives clearly and
distinctly have to be true
- when he examines the contents of his mind, he realizes he has ideas
- one idea is that of God as the most perfect being
* Descartes acknowledge he could not himself be the origin of this idea because he is
imperfect (proof for the existence of God)
* he sees clearly and distinctly God’s goodness
* God would not deceive him (deception is imperfection)
* the almighty evil demon has been replaced by a virtuous demon: God
* since God does not deceive, Descartes’s ideas about his body and the rest of the physical
world must actually originate from those corporeal things themselves and they also must
exist
Descartes is now certain he is both a mind and a body (his body is a physical thing
that exists in a world among other physical things)
5. Substance dualism
Descartes is a dualist and a rationalist
Descartes is both a thinking thing and a physical thing
- those two are substances which can exist on their own
- the property of the thinking substance (res cogitans) is merely that it thinks
- the property of the physical substance (res extensa) is that it is extended (it is three-
dimensional) and it has a place in space
- there can be only one physical object at a certain place in space at a particular time
- physical bodies are moved by other physical bodies by collision/ bumping (because
physical bodies are extended they are able to bump into each other and set each other into
motion)
- the thinking substance is not extended – it does not have a place in space
- defender of the separability thesis because thinking things and physical things were
perceived by him as independent substances that do not need each other to exist
human beings consist of those two substances
- animals are mere machines – they are physical things without a mind
- the human body is a machine which is closely related to the human mind
- we (our minds) are much more closely related to our bodies than a sailor is with his ship
(the latter does not feel pain when the ship is damaged but we experience pain when our
bodies are damaged)
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