Talk:Philosophy of mind/Archive 1

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Contents

Why are there so many questions in this article?

Why are there so many questions in this article? No less than 25. An encyclopedia is intended to provide answers to questions, not questions to answers. Much of the drafting has to be reformulated.

In response; There are so many questions because they are the questions that the philosophy of mind is struggling to deal with. No answers are provided because no accepted answers exist. If they did it wouldn't be such an interesting subject. I think the article is a reasonable attempt at giving some idea of what Philosophy of mind is about. Teutanic 14:36, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Adam Z

Who is "Adam Z." ?

Hegel needs a mention

Hegel's third major work in the Encyclopaedia, the Philosophy of Mind, needs inclusion here; I'll be attempting to write an article on the work itself sometime later this week, but collaboration would be wonderful CriminalSaint 18:45, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Made a little entry, could use some expansion.Poor Yorick 10:32, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
I find it odd the fascination you Americans have for continental and post-modern views. It's extremely noteworthy that the German FEATURED ARTICLE WINNER version of the disastrous article makes not the least mention of Hegel or anyone else in the alledgedly continental tradition. I have been studying philosophy in Italy for the last five years (befire that I studied it in the US) and I find that the general attitude toward "existenialism" and the like is that it is just "bad poetry." --Lacatosias 15:44, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm trying to get that article translated ASAP, BTW. It's immensely better than this one.--Lacatosias 15:46, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

Needs cleanup

This article is written like an essay, not like an encyclopedia entry. Therefore, it needs cleanup. Katefan0 08:07, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

..and all of the related articels require more precision.. the "emergentism" article doesn't show the different definitions.. the wiki-links in "mind-body-problem" are incomplete and so on...

Needs more internal links,

eg functionalism. Sorry to crit and run... Thx, "alyosha" 22:06, 20 December 2005 (UTC)


LeDoux's Functionalism

From Joseph LeDoux's "The Emotional Brain: the Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life"; 1996; ISBN: 0684836599; p. 27.

One of the most important conceptual developments in the establishment of cognitive science was a philosophical position known as functionalism, which holds that intelligent functions carried out by different machines reflect the same underlying process.
{According to functionalism, the mental states that make up consciousness can essentially be defined as complex interactions between different functional processes. Because these processes are not limited to a particular physical state or physical medium, they can be realized in multiple ways, including, theoretically, within non-biological systems.}
For example, a computer and a person can both add 2 + 5 and come up with 7. The fact that both achieve the same answer cannot be explained by the use of similar hardware—brains are made of biological stuff and computers of electronic parts. The similar outcome must be due to a similar process that occurs at a functional level. In spite of the fact that the hardware in the machines is vastly different, the software or program that each executes may be the same. Functionalism thus holds that the mind {software} is to the brain {hardware} as a computer program {applications and data base—software} is to the computer hardware.
Cognitive scientists, carrying the functionalist banner, have been allowed to pursue the functional organization of the mind without reference to the hardware that generates the functional states. According to functionalist doctrine, cognitive science stands on its own as a discipline—it does not require that we know anything about the brain. This logic was a shot in the arm to the field, giving it a strong sense of independence. Regardless of whether they do experiments on humans or use computer simulations of the human mind, many cognitive scientists today are functionalists.

Yesselman 21:35, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Disputed

I removed one fake entry from this list of philosophers of mind, but there might be more, so I tagged it with a disputed accuracy template. —Ruud 15:00, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

Can the list be made into two columns? Rtdrury 02:04, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Done, although I strongly suggest we shrink the section to something like Notable philosophers of mind with just a few entries, rather than attempting some sort of big laundry list of philosophers, which is a job for categories. WhiteCat 08:39, 7 February 2006 (UTC)


Happy talk, keep talkin' happy talk

Re AT THE CONGRESS. The Herren Professoren from Deutschland talked to their Verehrte Kollegen in Amerika about KEHRE, GEVIERT, GESTELL und GEWORFENHEIT. These terms do not mean anything in English. But this does not matter because they do not mean anything in German either, at least not in the sense that they are used by the Herren Professoren from Deutschland.
In return, the Herren Professoren from Amerika talked to their Verehrte Kollegen in Deutschland about the MIND. There is no such concept in the German language. As a matter of fact, there is not even a WORD for it. Does it matter? Certainly not! A good time was had by all. --BZ(Bruno Zollinger) 09:46, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Reductionism

In the topic of reductionism, there's a "refutation" of it. I don't consider informative to include refutation of a 'philosophical postion', much less something complex like reductionism wich is analyzed in a more detailed way in the philosophy of science.

Other types that aren't discussed

There needs to be more sections; notably:

  1. Idealism: everything is just thoughts and ideas
  2. Dualism: Cartesian and otherwise
  3. Occasionalism: mind and body are synchronized by God
  4. Behaviorism, both radical and logical
  5. Physicalism: Type and Token Physicalism as well as Central State Identity Theory (CSIT)
  6. Representational Functionalism

Notable people that should be mentioned:

  1. Colin_McGinn
  2. Jerry Fodor
  3. Noam Chomsky

128.6.175.51 16:43, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Functionalism rejects physicalism?

In the paragraph on functionalism, it says that 'functionalism rejects physicalism and reductionism wholesale.' Is this accurate? I was under the impression that functionalism still held that the mind was brought about by physical processes in the brain, but ultimately the underlying physical component does not matter as does the functions of said physical component.-Laplace's Demon 01:26, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

No, Laplace's Demon, you are correct That statement is simply false. Functionalism (in all of its almost infinite guises) is a form of non-reductive physicalism. What counts, in most forms of functionalism, in the explantion of mental phenomena is the causal or functional role that they play, abstracting away from the lower-level details of physical implementation. Nevertheless, they all take for granted that there is' a physical lower-level realization. A mouse-trap can be realized in many different ways, with parts made of plastic, metal, ossified horse-manure or what have you, and with diferent lengths, proportions and so on, but it needs the essential functional equivalents of the spring, the bait, etc.. Functionalists view the mind analogously. --Lacatosias 12:01, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
Oops, mistatement. I almost feel into another common fallacy myself. In the case of functionalism, it should be obvious, that since the low-level realization base is abstracted away from, it could hypothecially, be a non-phyical realiztion base. Hence functionalism is not neither ontologically commitedd to physicalism nor to mentalism. It is, howvere, commited to monism (this could even be neutral monism). Most functionalist are, in practice, physicalists. --Lacatosias 13:42, 5 March 2006 (UTC)
It is amusing that, although most functionalists consider themselves to be physicalists, they are probably dualists see Wikibook entry where it points out that "some philosophers introduce the dualist notion of a "logical space" containing disembodied information".
This is actually (something like) the explicit view of Hans Moravic. The case can be made, but it would be a rather odd form of dualism and it would face the same problems as all other forms of dualism in addition to the many oher problems of functionalism. Personally, I consider it a second-order type-idntity thesis and hence too reductionist. Maybe I'm an unknowing triplist from someone's perspective.--Lacatosias 13:36, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

These main article links

are not in the German version. If you include one , you will have to include type identity, behaviorism, functionalism. etc.. But there are already prominent links to these artciles.--Lacatosias 14:03, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I think they make it all the easier to go to the main article if you're interested. But OK, I'll add the others. Kripkenstein 14:08, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I added the MA links when the main article is actually a decent reference. In the case of intentionality, however, I don't know if it's worth pointing to the main article. Kripkenstein 14:13, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Sometimes I wonder if it's worth pointing to any of these philosophy articles. Every time I turn around, I find an article that looks almost as if it had been written by my seven-year-old niece. Maybe we should point to the German versions?? And the call it Anglo-American analytic-style philosophy!! Hmm...the continentals seem to know more about it than English speaking folks, if one were to judge by Wikipedia. It started out with Frege and then the Vienna circle anyway. Alright, never mind...--Lacatosias 14:40, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
I know what you mean, but pointing to the German articles is not an option. What one can do is improve the articles one by one. What happened at the German wiki is that a few guys took upon themselves all the work and excelled. It could happen here too. Kripkenstein 15:44, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
That's what I'm trying to get going.--Lacatosias 15:56, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Vote

Ok, some of us are apparently unhappy about the changes that I have made to this article and the merger with the now-redundant mind-body problem. Seeking consensus on the matter, I call for a vote:

Keep the current version or revert back to the old one and create a separate page for mind-body problem as before:

Keep

  • Lacatosias 18:28, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
  • Kripkenstein 19:49, 8 March 2006 (UTC) (the mere suggestion of reverting to the old version is ludicrous~)
  • Laplace's Demon 22:50, 8 March 2006 (UTC) (Wow, nice job with the complete overhaul of this article. Much, much better than the previous one.)
  • Poor Yorick 11:41, 9 March 2006 (UTC) (Looks good, though I think a reference or link to an Eastern & Continental philosophy of mind would be in order to prevent bias).
This is an important objection actually. I have reintegrated some of the text of the previous version on Continetals and expanded on it somehat in order to provide some context. It's interesting to observe that the German (and the Spanish which is just a direct tralsnation of the German), the so-called continentals, do not mention anything about phenomenology, etc.. This confirms me in the opinion that "Continental philosphy " versus "Anglo-American" is nonsense and always has been. I aslo point this out in the new section. But there are different "schools" or "styles" of philosophy: analytic, phenonemology, post-modern or what have you. I think the article is, in fact, the better for including this material.

On the other hand, I really don't know how to deal with the "Eastern" question in the context of this artcile. More importanty, the article is getting FAT now. I'll see what I can do though.--Lacatosias 12:57, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, well personally I dislike continentals dismissing analytics as boring, and analytics dismissing it, as you put it "bad poetry". I studied in the analytic tradition but I find that both traditions have greatness, I like Kierkegaard & Nietzsche as much as Russell & Wittgenstein; Heidegger as much as Carnap; Marx as much as Rawls. There's a piece by Richard Rorty about the divide that I find very informative [1]. Cheers on the article, by the way Poor Yorick 13:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)
Analytics ARE all too often excruciatingly boring. But never mind...--Lacatosias 14:06, 9 March 2006 (UTC)