The Mind-body Problem - Coursework Example

THE MIND BODY PROBLEM NAME UNIT DATE Introduction Philosophy has been at the forefront of trying to understand the position of the thought process and feelings in the world of today. Philosophy and science have tried to explain where thought and feelings lie in in the natural world as well as understanding oneself. Every philosopher tries to answer this one question ‘What is the relation, in general, between mental and physical phenomena?’ when it comes to trying and solving the processes and feeling. The answer cannot be definitive since every philosopher or scientist have his or her own version to the question (Bermúdez, 2016). As there is no settled answer to the question then a most important gap in the natural world that is each answer has consequences that is not acceptable. Philosophers have made their life mission to try to understand the methodological and peculiar nature of the physical science (Taylor, 2010). The different analysis that have been conducted to try and clarify the truthfulness of each theory, the actual questions and laws, and the questions about the existence of the theoretical parameters. Philosophical theories of the mind Philosophers of the mind can be divided into two broad categories namely the dualist and the materialist theories. The dualist philosophers find themselves arguing forging a stand that the brain is a non-physical substance. On the other hand, the materialist philosophers argue out that the mental nature of the human being is not that different from the physical state. This means that all the mental states, that is, properties, processing and the operations are in line with the physical state of properties, processing and the operations (Bermúdez, 2016). A different faction of the materialist known as the behaviorists argue out that environment stimuli and the responses that are from behavior can removed from the arguments of the psychology. Recently, a different pool of philosophers of the mind have emerged that are neither of the dualist nor materialist school of thought. They argue on the basis that fields such as artificial intelligence, psychology, linguistics, and cybernetics can be used in the development of the philosophical reflection. The fields are all related to cognitive science that explains that there is a common ground in which a predetermined idea and the systems that process the information. These philosophers argue out that human being, machines used in calculating and spirits have a system that recognizes and put everything into place by processing information making them function. As the view of functionalism is taken into consideration then it argued that the systems work by not using the material they are made in but how the material are put together to make them function. Understanding the functionalism concept is not that hard, by reviewing how they work done by the dualist and the materialist philosophers view of how the mind works. What is Consciousness? A conscious state is when a one is in a state of perpetual experience, a sense of imagination, emotional experience and a flow of thought. The word consciousness can be used to mean the ability to differentiate stimuli, report about certain information, check the internal state of a person, or be an oversight of behavior. With the different events that relate to consciousness then, the understanding of it might be so hard to gather into one single school of thought. Trying to put the different scenarios into context then different puzzles arise rather than mysteries that can be explained (Singer, 2007). The place of consciousness of in the natural world that is also comprised with the physical world is not an easy thing to justify how it fits in the physical world (Hutter, 2006). Consciousness does not fit easily in the conception of the natural world but it is not part of the physical world. Therefore, the place to which the consciousness has in the natural order, and then we must be to revise the concept to which consciousness lie in the nature. This misconception or dilemma has been there since the 19th century has been acutely discussed in Broad’s The Mind and its Place in Nature (Eady, 2015). There is a broad nature to how consciousness fits in the physical world regarding on how the mind is structured. The culmination of discussions about the physical nature and consciousness is due to the fact there is a broad exhaustive in a taxonomy of seventeen different views of the mental and physical nature. As Eady, 2015 argued, there is a broad nature, three very distinct views about consciousness emerge, that the mental state is a characteristic of the physical substance, also it can be of a neutral substance, and finally the physical state is either rising or deceptive. There is a subjective experience that human being have when it comes to being conscious in that they cannot be able to explain the state of consciousness in full (Carruthers, 2004). Species that are likely to be conscious. As technology improves in the consciousness research, new techniques have emerged to find out consciousness in the human or non-human animal realm. Access to new data set concerning research about consciousness, is now readily available making the notions that were previously held to be questioned (Harding, 2011). Continuous studies are being conducted to non-human animals but so far, they have a clear indication that there is a homologous part of the brain that has circuits which correlates to the consciousness. Furthermore, there are new ways to conduct survey on humans that are non-invasive and are linked to consciousness. There is significant resemblances in human brains and the animal brains when it comes to the substrates of emotions and where they are being emitted in the brain. Studies have shown that the substrate that is produced by humans when it comes to emotions is not only at the cortical structures of the brain and is the same as in animals. In both human and non-human animals, the part of the brain that produces responses after being artificially aroused generates the expected behavior. Harding (2011), non-human animals, human also show instinctual behaviors when it comes to the inducing arousal therefore ensuring that the behaviors that are being shown are in line with the feeling states and internal states that are both rewarding and punishing. Studies have clearly shown that the part of the brain responsible with the electrophysiological states of the brain, were formed early on in the evolution process as it was found out in the invertebrates such as insects. Studies in birds about their neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and behavior show a different path in consciousness that is clearly parallel to other evolution processes. The best resemblance to human being consciousness is the grey parrot found in Africa. The emotion networks found in mammals and avian and cognitive micro-circuitries are totally corresponding than was previously thought of. Consequently, specific birds have been found out that they contain certain sleep patterns that relate to the ones found in mammals such as the REM sheep and it was also demonstrated in zebras. With this discovery, neurophysiological patterns that was only thought of to be in mammals only, have been found to species such as magpies, which have a resounding similarity to mammals such as the apes due to their mammalian like neocortex (Harding, 2011). If human are exposed to some hallucinogens substances then there is a disruption of the cortical information processing, which is feedforward and feedback. In addition, the same pharmacological intervention that is done in human, also affect the non-human animals by making them not coordinate their conscious behavior. Studies have shown that in humans, awareness is associated with the cortical motion that clearly does not route out the possible addition to the sub-cortical that is linked to the visual awareness. There is significant similarity between the human and non-human species on how they show emotions and how they react that arises from the subcortical part of the brain. Strong evidence backing this argument has been found in the manner in which humans and non-humans share the primal effectiveness qualia (Dainton, 2011). Subjective Experience in Humans and Non-humans In the philosophy of the mind, the term “phenomenology” is most commonly related to the sensory qualities such us pain, hearing and seeing. The study of phenomenology mostly covers the sensory nature ranging from perception, emotions, and the thought process to bodily awareness and social activity. Phenomenology tries to develop a very complex account regarding the temporal, attention, and spatial awareness. Different types of experiences that anybody can go through such as kicking a ball, emotions, desire, and action can be put to perspective through phenomenological activities. Pain can be related to consciousness by the way, in which one can have a descriptive analysis of the experience. According to this then, analyzing consciousness in this manner makes one very familiar with pain. Intention is the main purpose of the study and therefore the structure to which consciousness have will greatly attribute to how long one can endure the pain. As learn more about how phenomena work, then an analysis can be carried out to find out the conditions that makes it possible to react (Quincey, 2006). Zombies Acting Like Humans According to Lee (2011), arguments have been raised towards a system that is possible to be conscious as a human being. An example of the system can be a ‘zombie’, which can be defined as a system that is identifiable physical but lacks the ability to be conscious (Lee, 2011). The system can entirely be identical in terms of being conscious from a third person perspective but the difference will come in the first person view. There is no reason to think that ‘zombies’ do exist in the real world but many can be swayed to think otherwise. Many do hold a belief that there is a duplicate world like ours that does not have consciousness known as the ‘Zombie World’. Proponents of this argument are of the view that the there is a possibility of a metaphysical nature. It is naturally impossible for zombies to exist in the world that we live in making the argument not plausible. With the argument that there is a zombie world, then consciousness can be argued to be a non-physical affair. If there exist a metaphysically possible world, then consciousness can be argued to be a non-physical component of the universe. It is not physically possible for there to be an existent of a creature that is not conscious. There has been constant arguments that computers can be able to be conscious (Hall, 2007). Consciousness in a human being can be defined as the ability to think, make calculations, reason, have feelings, have emotions, have intuition, and finally have faith. Computers can be built to have most of the components in the definition but that does not make it conscious enough. This can be able to be done using computer programs. The ability to give a computer a command and the computer being able to make the exact instruction as commanded may make it seem that the computer or robots have consciousness. The truth of the matter is that robots cannot be able to make conscious decision as human beings make. Human beings have the ability to think and reflect about what they have done and it is a trait known as self-awareness. Computers cannot be able to have this trait inbuilt in them since they just take commands and do not have the ability to process after it is done. Such thing as deaths affect human beings greatly. Robots that are controlled by very intelligent computers cannot be able to comprehend the fact that another machine is dead therefore, robots can never have consciousness. In conclusion, it is not possible to equip an electronic machine with all consciousness that a human being has (Kim, 2011). The fact that computers are duplicable in terms of the programs then that makes it not human. Computers can be intelligent and can be able to compete in terms of calculating but the fact still remains, robots will never have full human consciousness. References Bermúdez, J. (2016). The Self in Question: Memory, the Body, and Self-Consciousness, by Andy Hamilton. Mind, 125(499), pp.903-906. Carruthers, P. (2004). Suffering without subjectivity. Philosophical Studies, 121(2), 99-125. Dainton, B. (2011). Review of Consciousness and its Place in Nature. Philosophy And Phenomenological Research, 83(1), 238-261. Eady, T. (2015). Climbing to Consciousness: The Mind-Body Problem and the Computational Order. Res Cogitans, 06(01), pp.14-20. Hall, J. (2007). Beyond AI. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. Harding, J. (2011). Camera Consciousness. The Cambridge Quarterly, 40(1), 81-85. Hutter, A. (2006). Spiritual Objectivity. A systematic expansion of the body-mind-problem.SATS, 7(2). Kim, J. (2011). Philosophy of mind. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Lee, H. (2011). Zombies and Muscle Memory: Rethinking Somatic Consciousness and the Mind-Body Problem. Human Movement, 12(2). Quincey, C. (2006). I.C.E. World Information, Consciousness, Energy. World Futures, 62(1-2), 47-55. Singer, W. (2007). Phenomenal Awareness and Consciousness from a Neurobiological Perspective. Neuroquantology, 4(2). Taylor, J. (2010). Mind-body problem: New approaches. Scholarpedia, 5(10), p.1580. Read More

What is Consciousness? A conscious state is when a one is in a state of perpetual experience, a sense of imagination, emotional experience and a flow of thought. The word consciousness can be used to mean the ability to differentiate stimuli, report about certain information, check the internal state of a person, or be an oversight of behavior. With the different events that relate to consciousness then, the understanding of it might be so hard to gather into one single school of thought. Trying to put the different scenarios into context then different puzzles arise rather than mysteries that can be explained (Singer, 2007).

The place of consciousness of in the natural world that is also comprised with the physical world is not an easy thing to justify how it fits in the physical world (Hutter, 2006). Consciousness does not fit easily in the conception of the natural world but it is not part of the physical world. Therefore, the place to which the consciousness has in the natural order, and then we must be to revise the concept to which consciousness lie in the nature. This misconception or dilemma has been there since the 19th century has been acutely discussed in Broad’s The Mind and its Place in Nature (Eady, 2015).

There is a broad nature to how consciousness fits in the physical world regarding on how the mind is structured. The culmination of discussions about the physical nature and consciousness is due to the fact there is a broad exhaustive in a taxonomy of seventeen different views of the mental and physical nature. As Eady, 2015 argued, there is a broad nature, three very distinct views about consciousness emerge, that the mental state is a characteristic of the physical substance, also it can be of a neutral substance, and finally the physical state is either rising or deceptive.

There is a subjective experience that human being have when it comes to being conscious in that they cannot be able to explain the state of consciousness in full (Carruthers, 2004). Species that are likely to be conscious. As technology improves in the consciousness research, new techniques have emerged to find out consciousness in the human or non-human animal realm. Access to new data set concerning research about consciousness, is now readily available making the notions that were previously held to be questioned (Harding, 2011).

Continuous studies are being conducted to non-human animals but so far, they have a clear indication that there is a homologous part of the brain that has circuits which correlates to the consciousness. Furthermore, there are new ways to conduct survey on humans that are non-invasive and are linked to consciousness. There is significant resemblances in human brains and the animal brains when it comes to the substrates of emotions and where they are being emitted in the brain. Studies have shown that the substrate that is produced by humans when it comes to emotions is not only at the cortical structures of the brain and is the same as in animals.

In both human and non-human animals, the part of the brain that produces responses after being artificially aroused generates the expected behavior. Harding (2011), non-human animals, human also show instinctual behaviors when it comes to the inducing arousal therefore ensuring that the behaviors that are being shown are in line with the feeling states and internal states that are both rewarding and punishing. Studies have clearly shown that the part of the brain responsible with the electrophysiological states of the brain, were formed early on in the evolution process as it was found out in the invertebrates such as insects.

Studies in birds about their neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and behavior show a different path in consciousness that is clearly parallel to other evolution processes. The best resemblance to human being consciousness is the grey parrot found in Africa. The emotion networks found in mammals and avian and cognitive micro-circuitries are totally corresponding than was previously thought of.

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