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41. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Robert G. Lantin Restoring Mind-Brain Supervenience: A Proposal
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In this paper I examine the claim that mental causation — at least for cases involving the production of purposive behavior — is possible only if ‘mind/brain supervenience’ obtains, and suggest that in spite of all the bad press it has received in recent years, mind/brain supervenience is still the best way for a physicalist to solve the ‘exclusion problem’ that plagues many accounts of mental causation. In section 3, I introduce a form of mind/brain supervenience that depends crucially on the idea that some brain state-types---namely, those involved in the production of purposive behavior---are nonlocally sensitive, where by ‘nonlocal sensitivity’ I mean cases where relevant causal histories and environmental circumstances effect a difference in some of an organism’s brain state-types intrinsic, causal properties. I will argue that such a mode of sensitivity of brain state-types offers the best way out of the exclusion problem for anyone convinced that mental state-types should be relationally individuated.
42. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Mary Litch Identity Conditions for Indicator State Types within Dretske’s Theory of Psychological Content Naturalization
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Within the context of Dretske’s theory of psychological content naturalization, as laid out in Explaining Behavior, the concept of an indicator state type plays a pivotal role. Providing a general (and non-circular) description of the identity conditions for being a token of an indicator state type is a prerequisite for the ultimate success of Dretske’s theory. However, Dretske fails to address this topic. Thus, his theory is incomplete. Several different approaches for specifying these identity conditions are possible; however, each is inadequate.
43. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Vincenzo P. Lo Monaco La cuestión de la Sistematicidad en el Análisis Computacional de la Mente
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Fodor, Pylyshyn and McLaughlin reject connectionism and argue that connectionists are unable to explain systematicity without implementing a classical architecture. In this paper, I contend that the traditionalist conclusion only seems to follow if they are able to sketch a neutral account of systematicity. But in absence of such an explanation, connectionists bear no special burden in this matter. In support of this view, I set out three specific weaknesses: circularity, epistemological insufficiency, and atomism/reductionism, which affect the classical argument of systematicity. I conclude that there may be other ways to accommodate systematicity in a scientific framework, for instance, in the manner of Davidson’s holistic semantics, and indeed connectionist representation is one of these legitimate ways for doing that.
44. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Pascual F. Martínez-Freire Mind, Intelligence and Spirit
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The mind is a collection of various classes of processes that can be studied empirically. To limit the field of mental processes we must follow the criteria of folk psychology. There are three kinds of mind: human, animal and mechanical. But the human mind is the paradigm or model of mind. The existence of mechanical minds is a serious challenge to the materialism or the mind-brain identity theory. Based on this existence we can put forward the antimaterialist argument of machines. Intelligence is a class of mental processes such that the mind is the genus and the intelligence is a species of this genus. The capacity to solve problems is a clear and definite criterion of intelligence. Again, like in the mind, the human intelligence is the paradigm of the intelligence. There are also three kinds of intelligence: human, animal and mechanical. Searle’s Chinese room argument is misleading because Searle believes that it is possible to maintain a sharp distinction between syntax and semantics. The reasonable dualism in the brain-mind problem defends the existence of brain-mental processes, physical-mental processes, and nonphysical-mental (spiritual) processes. Constitution of the personal project of life, self-consciousness and free volitions are examples of spiritual processes. Usually the intelligence has been considered the most important quality of human beings, but freedom, or the world of free volitions, is a more specific quality of human beings.
45. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Luciano B. Mariano Double Disjunctivitis
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Direct Informational Semantics, according to which [X]s represent (express/mean) X if ‘Xs cause [X]s’ is a law, and Fodorian naturalistic semantics both suffer from double disjunctivitis. I argue that robustness, properly construed, characterizes both represented properties and representing symbols: two or more properties normally regarded as non-disjunctive may each be nomologically connected to a non-disjunctive symbol, and two or more non-disjunctive symbols may each be nomologically connected to a property. This kind of robustness bifurcates the so-called disjunction problem into a Represented-Disjunction Problem, of which Fodor was aware, and a Representer-Disjunction Problem, of which he was on the whole oblivious. Fodor fails to solve these problems: his solution to the former, the Asymmetric Dependence Condition, presupposes a successful solution to the latter, while possible responses that Fodor might make to the latter either beg the former or cannot be met or else flout the Naturalistic Requirement and the Atomistic Requirement. Even setting the Representer-Disjunction Problem aside, the Represented-Disjunction Problem does not get solved, because the robustness involving phonological/orthographic sequences (tokens and types) guarantees that nothing can meet the Asymmetrical Dependence Condition. Indeed there is a serious problem of individuating phonological/orthographic tokens and types in a manner that satisfies Fodor’s expectations. This is made manifest by the presence of orthographic tokens embedded in larger tokens.
46. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Lydia Mechtenberg Getting Rid of the Mind Body Problem: Ontological Relativism and the Pragmatic Notion of Metaphysical Truth
47. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Leonid I. Perlovsky Computational Complexity and the Origin of Universals
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This paper establishes close relationships between fundamental problems in the philosophical and mathematical theories of mind. It reviews the mathematical concepts of intelligence, including pattern recognition algorithms, neural networks and rule systems. Mathematical difficulties manifest as combinatorial complexity of algorithms are related to the roles of a priori knowledge and adaptive learning, the same issues that have shaped the two-thousand year old debate on the origins of the universal concepts of mind. Combining philosophical and mathematical analyses enables tracing current mathematical difficulties to the contradiction between Aristotelian logic and Aristotelian theory of mind (Forms). Aristotelian logic is shown to be the culprit for the current mathematical difficulties. I will also discuss connections to Gödel’s theorems. The conclusion is that fuzzy logic is a fundamental requirement for combining adaptivity and apriority. Relating the mathematical and philosophical helps clarifying both and helps analyzing future research directions of the mathematics of intelligence.
48. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Donald V. Poochigian To Resurrect a Ghost: In Defence of Psychological Dualism
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Cartesian dualism has largely been replaced by empirical theories of the mind. Central to this development is Gilbert Ryle’s criticism of an immaterial ‘ghost’ inhabiting the material ‘machine’ of the body. A metaphysical self is incredible, and even if it is credible, both it and its manifestation in phenomenal experience are unknowable by others. Failure of this approach occurs when it is realized that existence of the physical is just as incredible as existence of the metaphysical. Free will is also inconceivable without the assumption of a metaphysical self, it being the ‘ghost in the machine’ after all. As for consciousness, it is presupposed by the empirical. What counts as physical manifestations of mind are the effects or causes of phenomenal experience. Without this criterion the individual is a unity, it being impossible to separate the psychological since effectively it encompasses every aspect of the individual. Additionally, it is in phenomenal experience that the empirical is observed, and observation is the basis of empirical verification. To advocate the scientific method of intersubjective verification while denying the existence or significance of the phenomenal is inconsistent. At root, the mental attributes are ontologically distinct. Limited to only one ontological substance, empiricists either redefine or exclude troublesome attributes, commiting the error of confusing distinct kinds of substances. Dualism can accommodate all of the properties of mind in a single coherent theory by acknowledging these kinds of substances.
49. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Matja Potr Ontomorph: Mind Meets The World
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Chunking of the world as done by the mind depends on how the world is. The world is one object, but not a simple one. Morphological content is just right to allow organisms which move in the world to perform the appropriate dynamical chunking, which from the perspective of the higher cognition may appear to consist of several separate objects. Embracing nonreductionism is desirable because organisms are part of the world. At bottom, there is nothing else other than physical stuff. But it is possible, and indeed it is true, that the physical stuff is very richly structured. One kind of physical stuff are things such as minds. The intricate structure of minds, particularly the complicated topography of their multidimensional space is ultimately responsible for qualitative experiences and consequently for the hard problems of consciousness. As the space of morphological content is itself a part of the physical world, it can begin to throw light on this problem and primarily at the qualitative states — as products of encounter of one form of physical stuff, organisms, with the rest of the physical stuff around them. Some surfaces of the world are moulded and shaped in their encounter other surfaces in the world. But the world has many dimensions; some surfaces are richer than others. The purpose of the shaping is the tacit expectation of further encounters with surfaces in the world.
50. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Aaron Preston David Hume’s Treatment of Mind
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This paper critically examines Hume’s argument against the knowledge/existence of substantival mind. This denial is rooted in his epistemology which includes a theory of how complex ideas which lack corresponding impressions are manufactured by the imagination, in conjunction with the memory, on the basis of three relations among impressions: resemblance, continuity and constant conjunction. The crux of my critique consists in pointing out that these relations are such that only an enduring, unified agent could interact with them in the way Hume describes. I note that Hume attempts to provide such an agent by invoking the activities of imagination and memory, but that it is unclear where these belong in his system. After discussing the relevant possibilities, I conclude that there is no category within the limits of his system that can accommodate the faculties and allow them to do the work Hume assigned to them. I then note that Hume’s rejection of substantival mind rests upon the assumption that something like substantival mind exists; for the action of the latter is required for the proper functioning of the process of fabrication which creates the fictitious notion of substantival mind. My concluding argument is that if the existence of substantival mind is implicit in Hume’s argument against substantival mind, then his argument resembles an indirect proof, and ought to be considered as evidence for, rather than against, the existence of substantival mind.
51. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Ralph Schumacher Blindsight and the Role of the Phenomenal Qualities of Visual Perceptions
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The aim of this paper is to defend a broad concept of visual perception, according to which it is a sufficient condition for visual perception that subjects receive visual information in a way which enables them to give reliably correct answers about the objects presented to them. According to this view, blindsight, non-epistemic seeing, and conscious visual experience count as proper types of visual perception. This leads to two consequences concerning the role of the phenomenal qualities of visual experiences. First, phenomenal qualities are not necessary in order to see something, because in the case of blindsight, subjects can see objects without experiences phenomenal qualities. Second, they cannot be intentional properties, since they are not essential properties of visual experiences, and because the content of visual experiences cannot be constituted by contingent properties.
52. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Sergei Shevstov About Specific Processing of Mind at the Period of Revaluation
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A new situation is always a discovery. It allows us to see old problems in a new light. The philosopher’s main task is to find new situations. The consciousness of the millions of people living in the countries of the former Soviet Union can be considered new in all senses, except one. Nevertheless the exception gives rise to serious difficulties. Essentially, a situation is always new since none of Aristotle’s kinds of identity can be used for it. At the same time, this same situation can never be new since anything similar must have taken in human history. It is up to the philosopher to see the situation from a new point of view. Now we can observe the changes and its effects. The collapse of the old ideology did not create the changing of mass consciousness per se, because the latter had already taken a skeptical attitude toward it. The real change of mass consciousness began with the change of real human practice. When former engineers, teachers, scientists, and industrial workers clashed with the necessity to support themselves and their families, it was always as an alternative to starting all over again — the option of relying only on themselves or continuing to rely on the state system to do their usual work in the hopes of receiving an illusory reward in the future.
53. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Norman Yujen Teng The Depictive Nature of Visual Mental Imagery
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Tye argues that visual mental images have their contents encoded in topographically organized regions of the visual cortex, which support depictive representations; therefore, visual mental images rely at least in part on depictive representations. This argument, I contend, does not support its conclusion. I propose that we divide the problem about the depictive nature of mental imagery into two parts: one concerns the format of image representation and the other the conditions by virtue of which a representation becomes a depictive representation. Regarding the first part of the question, I argue that there exists a topographic format in the brain but that does not imply that there exists a depictive format of image representation. My answer to the second part of the question is that one needs a content analysis of a certain sort of topographic representations in order to make sense of depictive mental representations, and a topographic representation becomes a depictive representation by virtue of its content rather than its form.
54. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Pär Sundström Consciousness and Intentionality of Action
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One much discussed issue in contemporary philosophy is the relation between consciousness and intentionality. Philosophers debate whether consciousness and intentionality are somehow ‘connected’; whether we have reason to be more optimistic about an ‘objective,’ ‘scientific’ or ‘third person’ ‘account’ of intentionality than about an analogous account of consciousness. This paper is intended as a limited contribution to that debate. I shall be concerned only with the intentionality of action. Not everything which is true of intentionality of action is true of intentionality of other phenomena, such as beliefs. I shall discuss the question, ‘What is the intentionality of action?’ More specifically, I shall discuss one partial answer to this question: that a necessary condition of an agent performing a certain intentional action is that the agent is conscious of performing that action. This answer is fairly unpopular in contemporary philosophy. In this paper, I shall try to say something about the ground for the rather wide-spread philosophical resistance to the answer, and I shall also outline the kind of considerations that I think are required to judge whether a wedge can or cannot be driven between consciousness and intentionality of action.
55. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
Mary Tjiattas Functional Irrationality
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The view that some forms of irrationality may serve a useful purpose is being increasingly entertained despite the disquiet it elicits. The reason for the disquiet is not difficult to discern, for if the view were made good it might threaten the unqualified normative primacy that rationality enjoys in the evaluation of thoughts, beliefs, intentions, decisions, and actions. In terms of the predominant ‘rational explanation’ model, reasons both generate and justify actions, and carrying out the dictates of reason is held up as an ideal. If it can be shown that under some circumstances or for certain types of actions irrational elements or procedures would produce ‘all things considered’ better results, this would put these deliberative ‘ideals’ in question.
56. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 35
David F. Wolf II Why Granny Should Have Read French Philosophers: The Phenomenology of Fodor or the Modularity of Merleau-Ponty
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In 1983, Fodor’s Modularity of Mind popularized faculty psychology. His theory employs a trichotomous functional architecture to explain cognitive processes, which is very similar to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception. Each theory postulates that perception is a mid-level procedure that operates on transduced information and that perception is independent of our cognitive experience. The two theories differ on whether perception is informationally impenetrable. This difference is essentially an empirical matter. However, I suggest that Merleau-Ponty’s allowance of cross-modal communication within perception explains our ability to identify features in noisy backgrounds better because his theory offers a more definitive ontology that matches human substantive behavior. Likewise, evidence within cognitive science suggests that Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology is a more accurate depiction of human cognitive processes.
57. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 36
Artur R. Boelderl Vom Opfergeist: Hegel mit Bataille: (Of Sacrificial Spirit: Hegel with Bataille)
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In this paper, I shall argue as follows: (1) Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit deserves to be called a phenomenology of sacrificial spirit: it sacrifices the world with its unsolvable contradictions on the alter of dialectics by depriving it of its materiality and corporeality in favor of the appearance of the one spirit-world (Weltgeist) to which nothing seems strange anymore, with one exception-the Sacred. The idealistic sacrifice of the world goes hand-in-hand with an unholy sacrifice of the Sacred through the thorough profanization of the latter by historicizing, finalizing, instrumentalizing, and rationalizing it. This disappearance of the Sacred is the condition of the possibility of modern reason. Since it corresponds to the disappearance of the world out of objectivity (Gegenständlichkeit), which is increasingly being conceived of as a mere means-purpose relation, it also means the loss of a whole range of human experiences. (2) It is George Bataille’s philosophical task to reveal the ‘impossible’ and ‘unthinkable’ ‘Other’ of Hegel’s sacrificial spirit. In his a-theological Theory of Religion (1948), he pleads for a ‘return to the Sacred’ by withdrawing the ‘thing’ from the sphere of profane objectivity and restoring it to its sacred origin. This restitution, according to Bataille, is the meaning of ritual sacrifice as a religious practice, as we encounter it in archaic religions. It is an interruption of the profane production process, in which suddenly and violently the Sacred reappears.
58. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 36
Evgeniy Arinin Principles for Cognizing the Sacred
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Today we need a scientific analysis of basic world views which expresses genuine understanding of the sacred. Such world views hold the main principles for cognizing reality. A ‘substratum’ understanding of the Sacred is characteristic of mythology and magic, wherein all spiritual phenomena are closely connected with a material or corporeal bearer. Functional understanding of the Sacred is developed by the earliest civilizations in which the spiritual is separated from the material. For example, Plato, Aristotle, and Neoplatonism created European functional theology. Substantial understanding of the Sacred appears in Christianity. Here we find the synthesis of substratum and functional peculiarities which are looked upon as "creaturous," revealed by God to man and integrated in their fundamental unity as the basis for variety. It is only unity which avoids the mixing of the three images of an object-substratum, function, and substance-that allows us to cognize a true object. In reproducing the Sacred as such, we can show the Sacred as the unity of the mysterious and the obvious, the static and the dynamic, and the passive and the active.
59. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 36
Christophe Berchem Sinn und Bedeutung der philosophischen Gottesbeweise
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Der Sinn der philosophischen Gottesbeweise besteht in der Hauptsache in der Widerlegung pseudowissenschaftlicher Argumente des Atheismus und in der reflexen Unterstützung des religiösen Glaubens. Zwischen der philosophischen Theologie und der Religion kommt eine wesentliche Dialektik zur Geltung. Wird die philosophische Theologie, die eben im philosophischen Gottesbeweis kulminiert, abgelehnt, so tritt an ihre Stelle die Gefahr des Abgleitens in einen irrationalen Dezisionismus. Die Grundgedanken der metaphysischen Gottesbeweise sind unwiderlegbar und damit jederzeit gültig und tragfähig. Ihre für das moderne Bewußtsein erforderliche methodische Absicherung und systematische Entfaltung zeigen, daß sie in einen anthropologischen Gottesbeweis übergehen, dessen Erfahrungsbasis der Mensch selbst ist. Alle Sätze der philosophischen Theologie sind Sätze über die Welt und den Menschen; sie erklären deren Bedingung der Möglichkeit und Wirklichkeit, samt den Implikationen dessen, was ihr ‘Urgrund’ ist. Darüber hinaus ist der Einwand, der philosophische Gottesbeweis sei in bezug auf den religiöses Glauben überflüssig, ebensowenig berechtigt wie der Einwand, der philosophische Gottesbeweis rationalisiere den religiösen Glauben. Einerseits sucht der (weit verstandene) Glaube reflexe Einsicht, andererseits läßt theoretische Gotteserkenntnis dasjenige intakt, worauf es dem religiösen Menschen unbedingt ankommt: die ‘Funktion’ der freien Hingabe.
60. The Paideia Archive: Twentieth World Congress of Philosophy: Volume > 36
Andrzej Bronk Truth and Religion Reconsidered: An Analytical Approach
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I discuss some of the problems of the application of the notion of truth to religion. After introductory remarks on the problem called truth and religion to show the peculiarity and the actuality of the problem discussed, I examine the different meanings of the notions of truth and religion, in order to formulate some comments on the different concepts of the truth of religion. I name the main types of religious truth, and consider the competencies of the diverse types of the study of religion to determine the truth of religion, and to analyze how to understand the truth of distinct types of religion. I conclude with some remarks on the appropriate approach to the question of the truth of religion. The considerations show that there is no simple answer to the question of the truth of religion in general or in particular. As it turns out the answer requires some relativizations, among others to the notion of truth and of religion. The notions of true religion and credibility of religion, though at first sight distinct, seem to condition each other. The notion of the truth of religion can be a valuable instrument of interpretation of religious phenomena not only in philosophy and theology of religion, but in the social sciences of religion too.