Tags / 6 quotes from 2 sources
#mind-body-problem
Beyond Zero and One (Andrew Smart)
The mysterious flame of consciousness
The fundamental problem arises because all our current physics, including the Theory of Everything, has no prediction for, or understanding of, how subjective states can be objective states—or even how subjective states could be based in an objective state. Here we can see the…
Mind: A Brief Introduction (John R. Searle)
Causal interaction between mind and body
What exactly are the relations between the mental and the physical, and in particular how can there be causal relations between them? It seems impossible that there should be causal relations between two completely different metaphysical realms, the physical realm of extended…
Epiphenomenalism: consciousness as froth on the wave
Some philosophers who think that we could explain how consciousness is caused by brain processes cannot see how consciousness could have any causal powers of its own. Granted that somehow or other consciousness, and mental phenomena generally, are dependent on brain processes…
Not like a pilot in a ship
In a famous passage Descartes said we should not think of the mind as lodged in the body like a pilot in a ship, but we should really think that it is somehow suffused throughout the body. If I bump into something I do not observe my body banging into another object in a way…
Property dualism
There is a weaker version of dualism called “property dualism,” and that view is fairly widespread. The idea is this: Though there are not two kinds of substances in the world, there are two kinds of properties. Most properties, such as having an electrical charge, or having a…
Biological naturalism
Suppose an animal gets a shortage of water in its system. The shortage of water will cause “saline imbalances” in the system, because the ratio of salt to water is excessive in favor of salt. This triggers certain activities in the kidneys. The kidneys secrete rennin, and the…