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Sunday 4 March 2018

The Basic ideas in Philosophy of mind

Introduction.
The subject matter of philosophy of mind is the mind-body problem other issues are addressed, such as the hard problem of consciousness, and the nature of particular mental states.: the problem of reconciling man’s understandings of the causal structure of the physically described world, including our bodies and brains, with the apparent capacity of our conscious thoughts and efforts to cause our bodies to move in consciously intended ways. Due to a faulty understanding and application of a relevant part of contemporary science, philosophers of mind have encountered many difficulties in analyzing man, and this many call the quantum mechanics. Philosophy of mind is a vast field, so to make my task manageable I shall limit my remarks to the opinions and arguments presented in two recent books, John Searle’s Freedom and Neurobiology: Reflections on Free Will, Language, and Political Power, and Physicalism, or Something near Enough. This naturally created causal link effectively allows consciously felt intentions to affect brain activity in a way that tends to produce the intended feedback. This quantum mechanism provides an eminently satisfactory alternative to the classical physics conclusion that the physical present is completely determined by the physical past, and hence provides a physics-based way out of the dilemma that Searle and Kim tried to resolve by philosophical analysis.
Mind and body: Aspects of the mind that are studied include mental events, mental functions , mental properties , consciousness, the ontology of the mind, the nature of thought, and the relationship of the mind to the body. Dualism and monism are the two central schools of thought on the mind–body problem; although nuanced views have arisen that do not fit one or the other category neatly. This problem is traceable to ancient philosophers like PLATO, but its entry into Western philosophy was from René Descartes in the 17th century. Substance dualists like Descartes argue that the mind is an independently existing substance, whereas property dualists maintain that the mind is a group of independent properties that emerge from and cannot be reduced to the brain, but that it is not a distinct substance. Monism: is the position that mind and body are not ontologically distinct entities (independent substances). Physicalists argue that only entities postulated by physical theory exist, and that mental processes will eventually be explained in terms of these entities as physical theory continues to evolve. Idealists maintain that the mind is all that exists and that the external world is either mental itself, or an illusion created by the mind. The mind–body problem concerns the explanation of the relationship that exists between minds, or mental processes, and bodily states or processes.
Dualism is a set of views about the relationship between mind and matter (or body). It begins with the claim that mental phenomena are, in some respects, non- physical. This began with
interactionalism which is the view that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, causally interact with physical states. It follows that mind and body are not identical because they have radically different properties. Other forms of dualism four varieties of dualism. The arrows indicate the direction of the causal interactions. Occasionalism is not shown. Psychophysical parallelism. , is the view that mind and body, while having distinct ontological statuses, do not causally influence one another. Instead, they run along parallel paths (mind events causally interact with mind events and brain events causally interact with brain events) and only seem to influence each other.
Occasionalism is the view that body and mind are different substances, causes (whether mental or physical) is related to their effects by an act of God's intervention on each specific occasion.
Free will: In the context of philosophy of mind, the problem of free will takes on renewed intensity. This is certainly the case, at least, for materialistic determinists. According to this position, natural laws completely determine the course of the material world. Mental states, and therefore the will as well, would be material states, which means human behaviour and decisions would be completely determined by natural laws. Some take this reasoning a step further: people cannot determine by themselves what they want and what they do. Consequently, they are not free. This argumentation is rejected, on the one hand, by the compatibility. Those who adopt this position suggest that the question "Are we free?" can only be answered once we have determined what the term "free" means. The opposite of "free" is not "caused" but "compelled" or "coerced". It is not appropriate to identify freedom with in determination. A free act is one where the agent could have done otherwise if it had chosen otherwise. In this sense a person can be free even though determinism is true.
Conclusion
Large-scale brain dynamics can be largely controlled by macroscopic brain activities that generate classically describable oscillating states of the electromagnetic field measured by EEG and MEG procedures. These states contain huge amounts of energy, on the atomic scale. Nevertheless, if we accept the principle that the underlying brain dynamics must in principle be treated quantum mechanically, then we must replace these classically conceived brain activities by their quasi-classical quantum counterparts. These are physically described SHO projection operators, each of which specifies the potentiality for the arising since the brain of a particular template for action. The physical structure underlying each such template is instantiated in the neuroplastic brain, in association with a conscious effort, by a natural quantum process that exploits the quantum Zeno effect. A subsequent activation of this template can be sustained by a similar later conscious effort via the same quantum- Zeno-based process.

Refference:
1. John Searle, Freedom & Neurobiology: Reflections on
Free Will, Language, and Political Power, Columbia University Press, New York, 2007.
2. J. Kim, Physicalism,Or Something Near Enough, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2005
3.K.Vols and J. Schooler, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080129125354.html
4. William James, Principles of Psychology, Dover, New York, 1890.
5. Niels Bohr, Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge MA, 1934.
6.Werner. Heisenberg, (1958). The representation of Nature in
contemporary physics, Daedalus 87 (summer) 95-108.