Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Of A Different Mind: The Early Schelling And Problems In The Philosophy Of Mind, Marcel Lebow

Philosophy ETDs

This dissertation concerns the intersection between the early thinking of the 19^th century German idealist F.W.J. Schelling and some of the problems within the contemporary philosophy of mind. I aim to show that a study of Schelling’s work illuminates research paths still left open to us today when confronting the problems surrounding the mind’s place in the world. I provide an overview of the trajectory of Schelling’s early thought. I argue that while Schelling’s philosophy changes during the course of his career, each of his positions is concerned with establishing a foundationalist monism. I criticize versions of his view …

Searle’S Mind: Brains, Subjects, And Systems, Saul Cuevas-Landeros

Honors Projects

Throughout this project, I ‘step into the Chinese Room’ presented by philosopher John R. Searle and develop the areas where the Chinese Room Argument succeeds. I have aimed to pick out where Searle has succeeded with the Chinese Room Argument and introduce how it fits in with his school of biological naturalism, as it seems that he already had some conception of it when presenting the Argument. From here, I introduce some of the primary arguments against the Chinese Room Argument because they do not fit with Searle’s overarching theme of biological naturalism. Particularly, Searle’s conception of systems and system …

Cognitive Tribalism: A Social Doxastic Model, Robert Ragsdale

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

How are facemasks – seemingly innocuous artifacts of the biomedical industry – currently embroiled in cultural wars? What motivates popular rejections of scientific consensus and messaging about the reality and consequences of anthropogenic climate change or the COVID-19 virus and vaccine? The puzzle is that (a) despite its being in everyone’s rational interests to have a well-informed public and body politic about collective threats, and (b) despite the public availability of accurate and reliable information, scientific messaging and public discourse surrounding climate change, COVID-19, and vaccine hesitancy, nevertheless, tend to be hijacked by political interest. Yet, if belief is essentially …

Some Non-Human Languages Of Thought, Nicolas J. Porot

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

What might we learn if we take seriously the possibility of non-human Languages of Thought (LoT)? A LoT is a combinatorial set of mental representations. And, since mental representations and rules of combination vary in kind, there are many possible LoTs. Simple LoTs might lack familiar features of the putative human LoT, such as object representations, recursively defined rules of combination, sentential connectives, or predicate-argument structure. The most familiar arguments for the existence of LoTs, such as those from productivity, systematicity, concept learning, and perceptual computation, all fail when applied to non-human animals. But recent empirical evidence motivates attributing LoTs …

Wittgenstein And Embodied Cognition: A Critique Of The Language Of Thought, Amber Sheldon

Keck Undergraduate Humanities Research Fellows

The assertions of this paper will be concerned with language acquisition as it is presented in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations in contrast with Jerry Fodor’s theory of tacit language described in The Language of Thought. This symbolic mental language is often analogized with the symbolic “language” of a computer. Fodor theorizes that the mind has an innate symbolic (and physically real) system of representation that comes prior to any natural language. Famously, with the private language argument, Wittgenstein contends that language is performed and produced by activity. One learns a language through practice and participation. In this paper, …

Believing Fictions: A Philosophical Analysis Of Fictional Engagement, Jack Rhein Gleiberman

CMC Senior Theses

Works of fiction do things to us, and we do things because of works of fiction. When reading Hamlet, I mentally represent certain propositions about its characters and events, I want the story and its characters to go a certain way, and I emotionally respond to its goings-on. I might deem Hamlet a coward, I might wish that Hamlet stabbed Claudius when he had the chance, and I might feel sorrow at Ophelia’s senseless suicide. These fiction-directed mental states seem to resemble the propositional attitudes of belief, desire, and emotion, respectively — the everyday attitudes that represent and orient us …

Personality, Psychological Profiling, And Philosophy Of Science: The Insider Threat And Betrayers Of Trust, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This article describes philosophical challenges to the utility of profiling personality, especially with security and intelligence implications.

Counterterrorist Profiling, The Self, And The Problem Of Open And Quiet Skies, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

Psychological profiling supporting counterterrorism may be based on an invalid presumption.

Kant, Neo-Kantianism, And Phenomenology, Sebastian Luft

Philosophy Faculty Research and Publications

This chapter offers a reassessment of the relationship between Kant, the Kantian tradition, and phenomenology, here focusing mainly on Husserl and Heidegger. Part of this reassessment concerns those philosophers who, during the lives of Husserl and Heidegger, sought to defend an updated version of Kant’s philosophy, the neo-Kantians. The chapter shows where the phenomenologists were able to benefit from some of the insights on the part of Kant and the neo-Kantians, but also clearly points to the differences. The aim of this chapter is to offer a fair evaluation of the relation of the main phenomenologists to Kant and to …

In The Mind Of The Machine, Marcia Yang

CMC Senior Theses

As technology becomes more sophisticated, it becomes increasingly important to understand how we should ethically use technology. One question within this area of study is whether we should treat certain types of technology, like artificial intelligence, with more respect. If we do owe these machines some sort of moral status, another question is what level of moral status they have. In order to answer these questions, I argue that machines can be considered as minds under the view of machine functionalism. A significant problem for machine functionalism is whether it can account for emotions within the system it suggests. First, …

Music And What It Is Like: What A Phenomenology Of Perception Tells Us About The Experience Of Music, Chavah Schwartz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op.125 is one of his most brilliant and influential musical compositions. However, at the time that he writes his Ninth Symphony, Beethoven is completely deaf. Beethoven exhibits a unique situation where his mind is unaffected in its ability to continue creating new music even though his body is effected in its ability to experience music. Theories of mind, like reductive physicalism and non-reductive dualism, offer a way of understanding Beethoven's conscious experiences of music in relation to physical or non-physical information about mental phenomena associated with conscious experience. Yet, these theories …

The Numerous Forms Of Occam’S Razor And Their Effect On Philosophy Of Mind, Mikayla L. O'Neal

CMC Senior Theses

In the first chapter of this paper I focus on the general overview of Occam's Razor, and develop several interpretations and adaptations of Occam's Razor as a principle of simplicity. In the second chapter I apply these different interpretations in the Physicalism/Dualism debate, and critically assess the validity of these implementations of Occam's Razor in philosophy of mind. In the final chapter I give an overview of my discussion thus far, and make assertions about what my paper means for the usage of Occam's Razor's as a whole.

Chimpanzee Theory Of Mind: Looking In All The Wrong Places?, Kristin Andrews

Kristin Andrews, PhD

I respond to an argument presented by Daniel Povinelli and Jennifer Vonk that the current generation of experiments on chimpanzee theory of mind cannot decide whether chimpanzees have the ability to reason about mental states. I argue that Povinelli and Vonk’s proposed experiment is subject to their own criticisms and that there should be a more radical shift away from experiments that ask subjects to predict behavior. Further, I argue that Povinelli and Vonk’s theoretical commitments should lead them to accept this new approach, and that experiments which offer subjects the opportunity to look for explanations for anomalous behavior should …

Understanding Norms Without A Theory Of Mind, Kristin Andrews

Kristin Andrews, PhD

I argue that having a theory of mind requires having at least implicit knowledge of the norms of the community, and that an implicit understanding of the normative is what drives the development of a theory of mind. This conclusion is defended by two arguments. First I argue that a theory of mind likely did not develop in order to predict behavior, because before individuals can use propositional attitudes to predict behavior, they have to be able to use them in explanations of behavior. Rather, I suggest that the need to explain behavior in terms of reasons is the primary …

Paradox And Metaphor: An Integrity Of The Arts, Lawrence Kimmel

Lawrence Kimmel

Art is movement, movement is life. Surprisingly, the spareness of paradox in art promotes a fullness of life. We must first speak as simply as possible about art as a fundamental human activity. Only then can we hope to say something of consequence about the so-called “fine arts” — which may be misleading as a description. In substance, the reference “fine art” simply means useless art: “fine” as being free from utility. Art is imaginatively productive, it makes something, whether painting, poem, or partita. But this making has no independent utility, and its character as a work of art is …

Past Desires And The Dead, Steven Luper

Steven Luper

I examine an argument that appears to take us from Parfit’s [Reasons and Persons, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1984)] thesis that we have no reason to fulfil desires we no longer care about to the conclusion that the effect of posthumous events on our desires is a matter of indifference (the post-mortem thesis). I suspect that many of Parfit’s readers, including Vorobej [Philosophical Studies 90 (1998) 305], think that he is committed to (something like) this reasoning, and that Parfit must therefore give up the post-mortem thesis. However, as it turns out, the argument is subtly equivocal and does not commit …

Toward Explaining The Gap : How A Particular View Of Explanation Underwrites The Explanatory Gap, Kimberly Van Orman

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

In my dissertation, I consider a common argument for the existence of an unbridgeable explanatory gap between materialism and conscious experience which purports to show that we can determine a priori that conscious experience cannot possibly be explained by a materialist theory. The claim is: no matter what we might yet learn about the brain (or the world), we know enough right now about materialism and explanation to know that an explanation of conscious experience is beyond our reach. I argue that three well-known examples of this position (Jaegwon Kim, David Chalmers, and Joseph Levine) rely on a very narrow …

Allowing For Every Contingency, Raam P. Gokhale

Raam P Gokhale

A Dialogue on Determinism, Contingency and Free Will

Mindscapes And Landscapes: Hayek And Simon On Cognitive Extension, Leslie Marsh

Leslie Marsh

Hayek’s and Simon’s social externalism runs on a shared presupposition: mind is constrained in its computational capacity to detect, harvest, and assimilate “data” generated by the infinitely fine-grained and perpetually dynamic characteristic of experience in complex social environments. For Hayek, mind and sociality are co-evolved spontaneous orders, allowing little or no prospect of comprehensive explanation, trapped in a hermeneutically sealed, i.e. inescapably context bound, eco-system. For Simon, it is the simplicity of mind that is the bottleneck, overwhelmed by the ambient complexity of the environmental. Since on Simon’s account complexity is unidirectional, Simon is far more ebullient about the prospects …

Are We Three?, Raam P. Gokhale

Raam P Gokhale

A Mindful Trialogue

Locke And Berkeley At Twenty Paces, Frederick J. White Iii

Frederick J White III

Does the world exist? Or more properly questioned, does anything of the world exist beyond our ideas of it? Locke and Berkeley have become seconds at twenty paces on this dichotomy, and we are asked to consider the outcome of the duel.

"Via Platonica Zum Unbewussten. Platon Und Freud", Wien: Turia + Kant, 2012 (Pdf: Inhaltsverzeichnis, Vegetti Vorwort, Einleitung)., Marco Solinas

Marco Solinas

Aristotle’S Naïve Somatism, Alain E. Ducharme

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Aristotle’s Naïve Somatism is a re-interpretation of Aristotle’s cognitive psychology in light of certain presuppositions he holds about the living animal body. The living animal body is presumed to be sensitive, and Aristotle grounds his account of cognition in a rudimentary proprioceptive awareness one has of her body. With that presupposed metaphysics under our belts, we are in a position to see that Aristotle in de Anima (cognition chapters at least) has a di erent explanatory aim in view than that which the literature generally imputes to him. He is not explicating what we would call the “mental”—the private, inner …

Hayek's Philosophical Psychology, Leslie Marsh

Leslie Marsh

Hayek's philosophical psychology as set out in his The Sensory Order (1952) has, for the most part, been neglected. Despite being lauded by computer scientist grandee Frank Rosenblatt and by Nobel prize-winning biologist Gerald Edelman, cognitive scientists -- with a few exceptions -- have yet to discover Hayek's philosophical psychology. On the other hand, social theorists, Hayek's traditional disciplinary constituency, have only recently begun to take note and examine the importance of psychology in the complete Hayek corpus. This volume brings together for the first time state-of-the-art contributions from neuroscientists and philosophers of mind as well as economists and social …

From Slumdog To Maddog, Raam P. Gokhale

Raam P Gokhale

A hearing in the court of Sanity

Introduction To The Achilles Of Rational Psychology, Thomas M. Lennon, Robert J. Stainton

Robert J. Stainton

No abstract provided.

Michael Wheeler: Reconstructing The Cognitive World: The Next Step, Leslie Marsh

Leslie Marsh

Michael Wheeler is the latest in a new wave of philosophical theorists that fall within a loose coalition of anti-representationalism (or anti-Cartesianism): Dynamical –, Embodied –, Extended –, Distributed –, and Situated –, theories of cognition (DEEDS an apt acronym). Against this background, cognition for Wheeler is, or should be, a more ecumenical concept. This ecumenical approach would still be amenable to making theoretical distinctions, the central one being the notion of offline and online styles of intelligence, a distinction that makes conceptual space for another closely related notion, that of propositional knowledge (knowing that) and tacit knowledge (knowing how).

Dewey: The First Ghost-Buster?, Leslie Marsh

Leslie Marsh

Ghost-busting, or less colloquially, anti-Cartesianism or non-representationalism, is a loose and internally fluid coalition (philosophical and empirical) comprising Dynamical, Embodied, Extended, Distributed, and Situated (DEEDS) theories of cognition. Gilbert Ryle – DEEDS’ anglophonic masthead [1] – supposedly exorcised the Cartesian propensity to postulate mind as an apparition-like entity somehow situated in the body. Ryle’s behaviouristic recommendation was, that just as we don’t see the wind blowing but only see the trees waving, so too should we conceive intelligence as manifest though action. The Cartesian ghost of old has mutated, taking the form of the ‘Machine in the Machine’, the brain …

Review Of Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles To A Science Of Consciousness, Leslie Marsh

Leslie Marsh

The question of how a physical system gives rise to the phenomenal or experiential (olfactory, visual, somatosensitive, gestatory and auditory), is considered the most intractable of scientific and philosophical puzzles. Though this question has dominated the philosophy of mind over the last quarter century, it articulates a version of the age-old mind–body problem. The most famous response, Cartesian dualism, is on Daniel Dennett’s view still a corrosively residual and redundant feature of popular (and academic) thinking on these matters. Fifteen years on from his anti-Cartesian theory of consciousness (Consciousness Explained, 1991), Dennett’s frustration with this tradition is still palpable. This …

Past Desires And The Dead, Steven Luper

Philosophy Faculty Research

I examine an argument that appears to take us from Parfit’s [Reasons and Persons, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1984)] thesis that we have no reason to fulfill desires we no longer care about to the conclusion that the effect of posthumous events on our desires is a matter of indifference (the post-mortem thesis). I suspect that many of Parfit’s readers, including Vorobej [Philosophical Studies 90 (1998) 305], think that he is committed to (something like) this reasoning, and that Parfit must therefore give up the post-mortem thesis. However, as it turns out, the argument is subtly equivocal and …