Parallelism or Psychophysical Parallelism , holds that mental causes only have mental effects, and physical causes only have physical effects, but that God has created a pre-established harmony so that it seems as if physical and mental events which are really monads , completely independent of each other cause, and are caused by, one another.
This unusual view was most prominently advocated by Gottfried Leibniz. Property Dualism maintains that the mind is a group of independent properties that emerge from the brain, but that it is not a distinct substance.
Thus, when matter is organized in the appropriate way i. Epiphenomenalism , which asserts that mental events are causally inert i. Physical events can cause other physical events, and physical events can cause mental events, but mental events cannot cause anything, since they are just causally inert by-products of physical events which occur in the brain i.
This doctrine was first formulated by Thomas Henry Huxley in the 19th Century, although based on Thomas Hobbes ' much earlier Materialism theories.
Predicate Dualism argues that more than one predicate how we describe the subject of a proposition is required to make sense of the world, and that the psychological experiences we go through cannot be redescribed in terms of or reduced to physical predicates of natural languages. Monism is the position that mind and body are not ontologically distinct kinds of entities. There are three main Monist schools of thought : Physicalism also known as Materialistic Monism argues that the mind is a purely physical construct the only existing substance is physical , and will eventually be explained entirely by physical theory, as it continues to evolve.
With the huge strides in science especially in atomic theory, evolution, neuroscience and computer technology in the 20th Century, Physicalism of various types has become the dominant doctrine. There are two main types: Reductive Physicalism , which asserts that all mental states and properties will eventually be explained by scientific accounts of physiological processes and states , has been the most popular form during the 20th Century.
The arm moves, but it is difficult to see how the thought or desire could make that happen. It is as though a ghost were to try to lift up a coffee cup.
Its ghostly arm would, one supposes, simply pass through the cup without affecting it and without being able to cause it or the physical arm to go up in the air. It would be no less remarkable if merely by thinking about it from a few feet away we could cause an ATM to dispense cash. Our minds are not physically connected to our bodies! How could they be, if they are nonphysical? That is the point whose importance Princess Elisabeth and Gassendi saw more clearly than anyone had before them, including Descartes himself.
Global events such as pandemics can momentarily focus attention on a fundamentally overlooked pre-existing human condition: the sheer inequality of how individuals in power decide who lives and who dies. John Troyer Sep Alexis L. Boylan Sep 8. The idea that other worlds might be home to alien beings has been part of our thought for as long as we have been looking skyward.
Wade Roush Aug 3. Even before the idea of climate change took hold, sci-fi began to think of the planet as something that preceded our species and could conceivably continue without us. Sherryl Vint Jul The reality is more complicated than that. By: Jonathan Westphal. Posted on Aug 8, Facebook Twitter Reddit Pocket Flipboard. On the Politics of Death Global events such as pandemics can momentarily focus attention on a fundamentally overlooked pre-existing human condition: the sheer inequality of how individuals in power decide who lives and who dies.
How visual culture can be mobilized to address the most altering event in the story of humanity. Alien Dreams: The Surprisingly Long History of Speculation About Extraterrestrials The idea that other worlds might be home to alien beings has been part of our thought for as long as we have been looking skyward. Do they lie within the brain? Since neurophysicians treat patients with a wide variety of abnormalities of the brain and neurosurgeons lay bare the brain and often work in its interior, can they provide insights?
Neurologists and neurosurgeons rank high among scientists participating in philosophical debates about what might extend beyond the physical world. They are constantly dealing with patients who have fallen into the deep hole of unconsciousness. In their attempts at restoring normalcy to bodies and minds, they also grapple with life and death. Inevitably, they ponder spirituality and the dominion of the soul. We are embodied spirits and inspirited bodies, or, if you will, embodied minds and minded bodies.
Anonymous, The term is often used to refer, by implication, to the thought processes of reason. Prioreschi concluded that by the end of the 5 th century B.
This changed with the works of Hippocrates ca. Quoted by Prioreschi []. In his book De anima On the soul , Aristotle BC— BC felt that man is born with a blank slate tabula rasa on which experiences and perceptions are written to form the mind. Although tabula rasa is a concept traditionally attributed to Locke, Aristotle first referred to it. Aristotle, :. What it thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be on a writing tablet on which as yet nothing actually stands written: this is exactly what happens with mind.
Over the centuries that followed Avicenna — , Ibn Tufail c. See Trimble, Jean Fernel — treated mind and brain together in his Physiology. He felt that the brain refined the animal spirits. Purged of all corporeal dross, they became concepts, finally even universal concepts and the ideas of the moral values Sherrington, He acknowledged the problems encountered in attempting to restrict the mind to the brain.
Pinker has recently discussed the role of nature vs nurture in the development of the mind. Locke recognized this problem and alluded to something called the understanding , which looked at the inscriptions on the white paper and carried out the recognizing, reflecting, and associating.
Neurologists and neurosurgeons see patients with injured or diseased brains. Neurosurgeons attempt restoration of the internal structure of the brain to normalcy or correct disordered function in select areas by such modes as deep brain stimulation or ablation. Some operations are performed on patients who are awake. Observations on patients provided clues to the functions of the mind in relation to the structure of the brain. Neuroscientists can knock a gene out of a mouse a gene also found in humans and prevent the mouse from learning, or insert extra copies and make the mouse learn faster.
Studies on patients who have suffered brain injury such as Phineas Gage have also provided interesting clues on the mind in relationship to the brain. We now know that damaged frontal lobes can no longer exert inhibitory influences on the limbic system with consequent aggressive acts.
The relation between the amount of grey matter in the frontal lobes and intelligence; the inferior parietal lobules and spatial reasoning and intuitions on numbers as in Albert Einstein and the third interstitial nucleus in the anterior thalamus and homosexuality Pinker, are a few more examples of specific areas of the brain linked to characteristics attributed to the mind. Paul Broca showed that damage to the area subsequently named after him in the dominant cerebrum results in an inability to talk.
Subsequent studies showed several other areas within the cerebrum that govern other aspects of speech. Bilateral frontal lobotomy and subsequent more sophisticated variants such as stereotaxic amygdalotomies or cingulotomies reduce an aggressive, maniacal individual to docility Heller et al.
Wilder Penfield — , Canadian neurosurgeon, was known for his groundbreaking work on epilepsy. He operated on patients with intractable epilepsy using local anaesthesia, ensuring that they remained awake throughout the operation. He stimulated areas of the brain surface in these patients in order to demarcate the part producing epilepsy.
In many patients, electrical stimulation of certain areas of the brain triggered vivid memories of past events. One patient, while on an operating table in Montreal, Canada, remembered laughing with cousins on a farm in South Africa. It brings psychical phenomena into the field of physiology. It should have profound significance also in the field of psychology provided we can interpret the facts properly.
We have to explain how it comes about that when an electrode producing, for example, 60 electrical impulses per second is applied steadily to the cortex it can cause a ganglionic complex to recreate a steadily unfolding phenomenon, a psychical phenomenon. But the mechanism seems to have recorded much more than the simple event. When activated, it may reproduce the emotions which attended the original experience. On 1 September , Dr. William Beecher Scoville performed bilateral mesial temporal lobe resections on a patient known as H.
The inadvertent severe damage to the important limbic structures resulted in permanent loss of memory in this patient Scoville, But, he could remember almost nothing after that. Damage to discrete areas within the brain can thus produce a variety of disorders of the mind. In his Nobel Lecture, Sperry described the implications on concepts of the mind of the observations made after splitting the corpus callosum Sperry, Myers, showed that the cat with divided corpus callosum now had two minds either of which was capable of learning on its own, and of responding intelligently to changes in the world around it on its own.
Subsequent experiments with rats, monkeys and later with human epileptic patients gave similar results. Psychological tests showed that both John Does had remarkably similar personalities. Except for language ability, they were about as much alike as identical twins. Their attitudes and opinions seemed to be the same; their perceptions of the world were the same; and they woke up and went to sleep at almost the same times.
There were differences however. John Doe Left could express himself in language and was somewhat more logical and better at [planning…]. John Doe Right tended to be somewhat more aggressive, impulsive, emotional - and frequently expressed frustration with what was going on. Such experiments led Sperry, Ornstein and others to conclude that each of the separated hemispheres has its own private sensations, perceptions, thoughts, feelings and memories, in short, that they constitute two separate minds, two separate spheres of consciousness Gross, In addition to structure, we must consider the chemical processes within the brain.
The effects of caffeine, alcohol, marihuana and opium on the brain and mind are common knowledge. Chemicals within the nervous system, such as adrenaline, serotonin, dopamine, the endorphins and encephalins, enable and modify the many functions of brain and mind and body we take for granted. Carter described modern techniques for mapping the brain and mind. Sounding a cautious note, Carter pointed out that whilst the optimist might wish for a complete understanding of human nature and experience from such studies, others may insist that a map of the brain can tell us no more about the mind than a terrestrial globe speak of Heaven and Hell.
The brain is the organ of the mind just as the lungs are the organs for respiration. Consciousness, perception, behaviour, intelligence, language, motivation, drive, the urge to excel and reasoning of the most complex kind are the product of the extensive and complex linkages between the different parts of the brain.
Likewise, abnormalities attributed to the mind, such as the spectrum of disorders dealt with by psychiatrists and psychologists, are consequences of widespread abnormalities, often in the chemical processes within different parts of the brain. Jackson suggested that the evolutionary development of the prefrontal cortex is necessary to the emergence of self. In this sense it could be called the organ of mind. However, this is not to say that self resides in the prefrontal cortex.
Rather, the new structure allows a more complex coordination of what is anatomically a sensori-motor machine. He used the terms lowest, middle, and highest centres…as proper names…to indicate evolutionary levels.
Ascending levels show increasing integration and coordination of sensorimotor representations. The highest-level coordination, which allows the greatest voluntary control, depends on prefrontal activity. Self is a manifestation of this highest level of consciousness, which involves doubling. This doubling is established by the reflective capacity that enables one to become aware of individual experience in a way that gives a sense of an inner life. Sherrington addressed function and emphasised the limitations of our means for analysis:.
The physico-chemical produced a unified machine… the psychical, creates from psychical data a percipient, thinking and endeavouring mental individual… they are largely complemental and life brings them co-operatively together at innumerable points… The formal dichotomy of the individual … which our description practiced for the sake of analysis, results in artifacts such as are not in nature… the two schematic members of the puppet pair… require to be integrated… This integration can be thought of as the last and final integration.
Impenetrable, Unentered, unassailed, unharmed, untouched, Immortal, all-arriving, stable, sure, Invisible, ineffable, by word And thought uncompassed, ever all itself, Thus is the Soul declared! Arnold, Socrates — Now do you think one can acquire any particular knowledge of the nature of the soul without knowing the nature of the whole man? Phaedrus — If Hippocrates the Asclepiad is to be trusted, one cannot know the nature of the body, either, except in that way.
I was being mischievous. Where is it? The search for the location of the human soul probably dates back to the awareness of such an entity. Termed atman by ancient Indian philosophers, psyche by the Greek and anima by the Romans, it has been considered resident within, but distinct from the human body. Many consider it immortal, postulating death to be the consequence of the departure of the soul from the body.
Several questions arise when considering the soul. Here are some examples. When does the soul enter the human body, as the sperm enters the egg or as they fuse into one cell or at a later stage?
Does the soul influence the body, mind and intellect? Is the soul identical with what we term conscience? What happens to the soul during dreams, anaesthesia, trance-like states? To understand this requires more than a strictly cognitive framework, he says. Philosophers address the questions we care about for which there is no specialized — typically empirical — methodology, says Derk Pereboom, Susan Linn Sage Professor in Philosophy and Ethics and Stanford H.
Taylor '50 Chair of the Sage School. The topic of consciousness has attracted considerable attention in recent years. As he explains, if preceding events render succeeding events inevitable, then going back in time, the way the universe was before you were born fixes all your choices and actions. All of our actions would be causally determined. Would it then be right to blame and punish people for their bad choices, or would believing people are free and holding them morally responsible involve a mistake?
But is thinking an entirely neural process? Philosophers often use thought experiments to explore ideas; one of the most famous ones involves a character named Mary:. Mary is a brilliant scientist of the future who lives in a room that only displays shades of black, white and gray. Mary has learned everything there is to know about the physical functioning of the world; she knows everything about how sensation works from the neurophysiological perspective.
But can she know everything there is to know about the human mind, by virtue of knowing everything physical there is to know?
One day Mary is suddenly freed from the room and is confronted with a red tomato. But is color a physical perception? Or is it language-based, as some have shown? Only in the last 30 or so years has language even become a topic for cognitive science.
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