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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Philosophy of Mind
Truly Minimal Criteria For Animal Sentience, Mark Solms
Truly Minimal Criteria For Animal Sentience, Mark Solms
Animal Sentience
The criteria for determining animal sentience proposed in the target article are sensible but they lack an explicit functional justification for the focus on pain. This commentary provides an abbreviated account of the most basic functional principles that underpin animal sentience and articulates some minimal criteria for determining its presence.
On Unifying Declarative Memory, Thomas Ames
On Unifying Declarative Memory, Thomas Ames
Theses
The distinction between episodic and semantic declarative memory systems, as introduced by Tulving (1972, updated in 1984, 1991), was a revolutionary approach to human memory. While the distinction is now widely endorsed in the study of memory, there are debates about what constitutes each system’s domain, how each system is used, how each system functions, and the phenomenal experiences associated with the functioning of each system. On the basis of clinical studies and insights from conditions affecting memory, this paper argues that the episodic/semantic distinction can be reframed as a result of a unified declarative memory system. In this view, …
Global Consciousness: A Functionalist Neurophilosophical Perspective, Connor C. Bowen
Global Consciousness: A Functionalist Neurophilosophical Perspective, Connor C. Bowen
CMC Senior Theses
The purpose of this thesis is to explore a thought-provoking consequence of the functionalist theory of mind. Given the current organizational structure of Earth and field theories of consciousness in neuroscience, Earth is probably conscious. The argument is explored through an examination of the current organizational structure of Earth and field theories of consciousness in neuroscience, which leads to the conclusion that Earth is conscious. Various theories of mind have been proposed by neuroscientists and philosophers alike in an attempt to qualify what consciousness is and what provides the basis for consciousness to occur. Support, in the form of data …
Empirical Evidence And The Multiple Realization Of Mental Kinds, Danny Booth
Empirical Evidence And The Multiple Realization Of Mental Kinds, Danny Booth
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
This thesis explores the use of the concept 'realization' in the philosophy of mind. The primary focus is on the role realization plays in assessing or opposing identity theory. The history of the use of the concept of realization in the philosophy of mind is reviewed, and from that a set of desiderata to be used for assessing accounts of realization is extracted. The desiderata are applied to a sample account of realization proposed by Sydney Shoemaker. (2007) Next the application of 'realization' in contemporary contexts is considered, focusing on the idea that mental kinds are, potentially, multiply realized. Based …
Fish Sentience: A Hypothesis Worth Pursuing, José E. Burgos
Fish Sentience: A Hypothesis Worth Pursuing, José E. Burgos
Animal Sentience
Woodruff’s case for fish sentience is intriguing. Though far from ready for final acceptance, it is worth pursuing. The case is philosophically uncontroversial under functionalism and reductive materialism. It is also highly heuristic, as it raises interesting issues for further investigation, such as the neural causation of behavior, the role of Mauthner cells in conditioned avoidance, and whether operant conditioning is constitutive of fish sentience.
A Pure Representationalist Account Of Belief And Desire, Stephen Pearce
A Pure Representationalist Account Of Belief And Desire, Stephen Pearce
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
According to the traditional view, beliefs and desires are mental representations that play particular functional roles. A belief that P is state which represents P and plays the belief-role, while a desire that P is a state which represents that P and plays the desire-role. In this dissertation I argue that the traditional view has trouble accounting for (a) role that belief and desire play in the causal and rational explanation of behaviour and (b) our knowledge of our own conscious, occurrent beliefs and desires. In its place I argue for Pure Attitude Representationalism (PAR), which holds that beliefs …
Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent
Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent
Doctoral Dissertations
What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …
Decentering Anthropocentrisms: A Functional Approach To Animal Minds, Matthew C. Altman
Decentering Anthropocentrisms: A Functional Approach To Animal Minds, Matthew C. Altman
Between the Species
Anthropocentric biases manifest themselves in two different ways in research on animal cognition. Some researchers claim that only humans have the capacity for reasoning, beliefs, and interests; and others attribute mental concepts to nonhuman animals on the basis of behavioral evidence, and they conceive of animal cognition in more or less human terms. Both approaches overlook the fact that language-use deeply informs mental states, such that comparing human mental states to the mental states of nonlinguistic animals is misguided. In order to avoid both pitfalls -- assuming that animals have mental lives just like we do, or assuming that they …
Metaphor And Metanoia: Linguistic Transfer And Cognitive Transformation In British And Irish Modernism, Andrew C. Wenaus
Metaphor And Metanoia: Linguistic Transfer And Cognitive Transformation In British And Irish Modernism, Andrew C. Wenaus
Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository
This dissertation contributes to the critical expansions that Douglas Mao and Rebecca L. Walkowitz identify as New Modernist Studies. This expansion is temporal, spatial, and vertical. I engage with the effects Modernist texts have “above” the page: lived experience. I examine the structural similarity of linguistic metaphor and the mind as considered by cognitive scientists. Identifying the human mind as linguistic and language as an artifact of the human mind, my research extrapolates upon what I call the “psycho-ecology” of reading, a self-representational knot between text and mind that constitutes lived experience. Far from being an abstraction, psycho-ecology is concrete: …
The Content Of Consciousness: Do We Need Qualia?, Sara Copic
The Content Of Consciousness: Do We Need Qualia?, Sara Copic
Kaleidoscope
No abstract provided.
Who's Afraid Of Multiple Realizability?: Functionalism, Reductionism, And Connectionism, Justin Schwartz
Who's Afraid Of Multiple Realizability?: Functionalism, Reductionism, And Connectionism, Justin Schwartz
Justin Schwartz
Philosophers have argued that on the prevailing theory of mind, functionalism, the fact that mental states are multiply realizable or can be instantiated in a variety of different physical forms, at least in principle, shows that materialism or physical is probably false. A similar argument rejects the relevance to psychology of connectionism, which holds that mental states are embodied and and constituted by connectionist neural networks. These arguments, I argue, fall before reductios ad absurdam, proving too much -- they apply as well to genes, which are multiply realizable, but the reduction of which to DNA is one the core …