Philosophy Stack Exchange
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Questions tagged [philosophy-of-mind]

Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the nature of the mind, mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness, and their relationship to the physical body, particularly the brain.

Questions about the philosophy of mind are, at their roots, about the nature of consciousness and how it relates to the world. They can branch from here into numerous problems:

Qualia

What is consciousness "made of"? Are there fundamental building blocks, "qualia" of sensations from which every conscious moment is composed? Where do qualia come from? Are they physical stuff tied to our physical forms, or a different "kind of thing" entirely? Or is everything mental?

Perception

We perceive stuff, and from our perception we learn about stuff, but what is our perception itself made of? How reliable is it? Illusions, dreams, imagination, and implicit biases are all food for thought here.

Cognitive Science

Not necessarily separate from the above, but importantly scientific: what have we learnt from experiments about the mind? What do we understand about the brain and how it relates to our experiences of our own minds? From all this, can we extrapolate anything about artificial intelligence, e.g. whether or not robots can "feel"? Many ethical questions are seeded here.

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Are people capable of generating a random number?

Let's say you tell me to produce randomly a number from 1-100, and I choose the number 47. Can it be said that there is a specific reason I chose the number 47, and that it is not completely random? By random I mean that there is absolutely no…
Snowman
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Why do people believe a turing machine can be fully conscious?

In his book Consciousness Explained Dennett writes "Anyone or anything that has such a virtual machine as its control system is conscious in the fullest sense" [p281] referring to a Joycean machine which (if I understood correctly) may be…
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Is imagination limited to what we have already perceived with our five senses?

Is it possible to imagine something that is not a combination of what we have already perceived with any of our five senses? I mean, was it possible for humans to think of flying if there were no birds out there? Has there been any study to show…
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What would Panpsychist Mary learn, and how would she learn it?

Frank Jackson's "Mary the Neuroscientist" thought experiment, from his "Epiphenomenal Qualia" paper, has been continually debated since its publication in 1982, and appears to be a significant motivation for believing physical science alone will…
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What does it mean to be an eliminativist with regards to propositional attitudes?

What does it mean to be an eliminativist with regards to the propositional attitudes? Philosophers that call themselves eliminative materialists like Churchland and Dennett to some extent have proposed that our brains function without possessing…
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If one has a tendency to self doubt, how does one know if their next doubt is genuine or a false one because of this tendency?

Suppose you have a brain that has a tendency to self doubt more than others. How would an agent, after analyzing a claim, coming up with a belief, and then doubting his belief, know if the doubt should be made for genuine reasons (such as a lack of…
user62907
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Is suffering unfair in life?

There are ideas that everyone suffers somewhat -- nobody gets out of life alive at the end. But why do others live good lives with more happiness and why am I miserable? Is this life carved in stone for me? Can I truly make my life do a 180 and can…
China Man Swing
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Why is Sam Harris arguing against himself in this bizarre 6-minute clip?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fajfkO_X0l0 In this short "big think" video clip on consciousness and the idea of a self, Sam Harris spends the first few minutes saying stuff like We can't reduce the experiential side to talk about information…
mind
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What is the most useful boundary on the definition of 'thinking'?

Hard AI is one of the perennial problems of philosophy, but it immediately becomes mired down in notions like consciousness, qualia, etc. and whether a machine can have those. This usually skips right over whether animals have those qualities and…
user9166
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Searle's criticism to Dennets theory of consciousness

The exchange can be found here. (it's very worth reading) Searle's and also others like Strawson accuses Dennett of denying consciousness. His term is only about the 3rd person perspective, where materialism would show that qualias (and experience…
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What does the existence of Anton’s syndrome prove?

For philosophers like Metzinger and Dennett, Anton’s syndrome is a refutation of the Cartesian view that we have infallible access to our own phenomenal consciousness (subjective experience). Patients who suddenly become completely blind due to a…
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Is an idea that cannot be fully comprehended by a single human mind still an idea?

If an idea requires the correlation of two persons' thought processes to be fully comprehended, is it still an idea, or has it become something else? If I was born deaf and understood the idea of blue and my born-blind friend was a great music…
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What is David Chalmers' Naturalistic dualism?

Can somebody explain to me exactly what David Chalmers' Naturalistic dualism is, because I have heard a lot of conflicting explanations on it?
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Isn't the question "Why is there something instead of nothing" flawed in that the questioner's existence started after the universe's?

Before the brain of any sentient species had evolved intelligent enough to ask the question "Why is there something instead of nothing", the universe did not require a purpose or reason to exist because nobody was there to ask the question, so why…
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How do modern substance dualists answer the question of WHERE the interaction between the mind and the brain take place?

Descartes thought that the interaction took place in the pineal gland, but today we know that this is wrong. So, how do modern substance dualists answer the question of where the interaction between the mind and body take place? Could it be that the…
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