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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Consciousness And Physicalism, Brian Mcgowan
Consciousness And Physicalism, Brian Mcgowan
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Physicalism is a philosophy of mind which attempts to explain consciousness as resulting from physical causes. The lack of a complete and consistent mathematical theory to explain physical causation has led other philosophers of mind to propose that consciousness is a nonphysical essence, property, or substance. However, the idea that physics can be defined atomically and/or deterministically leads to explanatory problems for consciousness, as well as for the dualisms which explain consciousness under these assumptions. This thesis advances a position called “continuous physicalism” which takes all material to result from deformations in the physical medium of space, and any changes …
The Fragmented Mind: Working Memory Cannot Implement Consciousness, Javier Gomez-Lavin
The Fragmented Mind: Working Memory Cannot Implement Consciousness, Javier Gomez-Lavin
Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
In both philosophy and the sciences of the mind there is a shared commitment to the idea that there is a center—the seat of consciousness, the source of deliberation and reflection, and the core of personal identity—in the mind. My dissertation challenges this deeply entrenched view. I review the empirical literature on working memory, psychology’s best candidate for the workspace of the mind, and argue that it is not a natural kind and cannot inform these central cognitive processes. This deflationary view directly imperils many naturalistic theories of consciousness that rely on working memory, which are reviewed in this project. …